'Respect' and George Galloway

The split between the SWP and Galloway-sycophants in Respect has politically destabilised and reduced both sides. Destabilised in the sense that the SWP was presented with the problem of sticking to its perspective of building a populist alternative to New Labour whilst the Galloway faction lost its best organisers and activists. Reduced in the sense that both sides fared miserably in the recent London elections. The SWP, having lost the “cachet” of the Respect name through purely legalistic manoeuvring, resorted to running a campaign under the “Left List” title. In the face of major obstacles...

The Left List's explanation of the results of Thursday's elections strongly suggests that the SWP is stubbornly refusing to learn the lessons or even face reality. We can only hope that some of its more thoughtful members will notice that their emperors have neither clothes nor answers, and will call them to account and/or join with others in renewing and reorienting socialism. The Left List's claim that "voters punished New Labour for ten years of privatisation and warmongering" is not exactly wrong, but certainly simplistic. Of course war and privatisation are two of the main issues that...

Over on Stroppyblog, Janine warns of a gloomy result in the London elections and picks apart how we got into this state; and looks at the Left List's response .

On 23 April, the Guardian published a letter from the three Tower Hamlets Respect councillors linked to the SWP, Oliur Rahman, Rania Khan and Lufta Begum, which denounces the “extremist” views of Islamist organisations like al-Muhajiroun, calls on the government to “stop” them and requests a meeting with Tower Hamlets police to discuss the issue. (See www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/23/uksecurity.bbc ) On one level, it is quite encouraging to hear left-wing Muslim activists display such stark hostility to Islamic derived fascism. Like socialists in Muslim-majority countries from Indonesia to...

For the first time in its history, the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers debated a motion submitted by LGBT teachers from their own conference. The motion, entitled “International Homophobia and Transphobia” condemned the current levels of anti-LGBT bigotry in Britain and the rising tide of militant right-wing attacks on LGBT people and Pride demonstrations around the world. Poland, Russia, Israel and Iran were among the places singled out for mention. Tim Lucas and Claire Jenkins from the NUT LGBT Working Party proposed and seconded the motion and a number of delegates...

Respect Renewal MP George Galloway has been far from sympathetic to the case of Mehdi Kazemi, instead choosing to spew homophobic bile and defend the Iranian regime. Showing his complete contempt for human rights and democracy, he has levelled the ridiculous accusation that people campaigning against the deportation of Mehdi Kazemi are “the pink contingent of imperialism” — even though the protests are against our own government. The controversy started on 13 March on Channel 5’ s The Wright Stuff chat show, where Galloway said that the papers’ coverage of Mehdi’ s story amounted to...

AWL members, supporters and friends collected money for the campaign to free the jailed socialist students in Iran on the Stop The War demonstration in London on 15 March. We don't have complete returns yet, but the total must come to a few hundred pounds. The ordinary marchers had more positive attitudes than those expressed on the platform, where George Galloway sneered at "the pink contingent of the khaki brigade", suggesting that anyone who opposes the victimisation of LGB people in Iran is a pro-Bush warmonger. Sales of Solidarity on the demonstration were also passable. It was pretty...

“Red” Ken Livingstone’s campaign for re-election is being supported with a high profile statement signed by... trade union militants? left activists? anti-cuts campaigners? No, instead we have a statement of the great and good, launched by that oh so radical organisation Compass. Its signatories include Sir Jeremy Beecham of the Local Government Association, former Unison gen sec/sell-out Rodney Bickerstaffe, NUS president/sell-out Gemma Tumelty, NUS president/sell-out-in-waiting Wes Streeting, various Blairite MPs and the head of the Cooperative Party. To be fair, it does include a few trade...

SWP: bad times If you believe the official SWP and Respect reports, everything is going swimmingly, with both groups marching steadily from one triumph to the next. But what about debacles like the defection of one of their councillors in Tower Hamlets to the Tories? And the recent Respect rally in Leeds (19 February), considered “big” enough for both John Rees and Oliur Rahman to travel up from London? The total turnout was 12 including the two speakers and interveners from other groups. Meanwhile, in many big cities such as Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester, SWP full-timers, once...

One of the four SWP-Respect councillors in Tower Hamlets has defected... to the Tories. SWP-Respect issued a statement on 14 February: “We are sorry to hear that Cllr Ahmed Hussain has joined the Tories. We had discussions with him yesterday where he agreed that he was going to stay with Respect. We issued a statement saying that, in good faith, but clearly his assurances meant nothing. “He has joined a party which supports war and privatisation, which has little representation among ethnic minorities, and which has few supporters among working class people in Tower Hamlets or anywhere else....