Probably the "weightiest" item so far in the literature of the Galloway side of the current split in Respect is a long open letter to the SWP from Socialist Worker New Zealand, available for example on the Socialist Unity blog.
Two things should be kept in mind when reading this letter.
1. SW NZ has been bitterly at odds with the SWP for some time, since SW NZ have become full-on, enthusiastic supporters of Hugo Chavez's regime in Venezuela. The SWP, while far from sharp on Chavez, objects.
2. SW NZ has an odd history. It was previously the "official" Communist Party of New Zealand. Becoming disillusioned with Moscow, the CPNZ first adopted the Maoist formula of state-capitalist degeneration in the USSR, and then bit by bit swung over to the SWP's version of state capitalism.
Eventually the SWP dumped its previous NZ offshoot - which continues in (limited) activity under the name ISO NZ - and adopted the ex-Stalinoids.
Whether the ex-CPNZ types had ever really come over to any sort of Trotskyism was always doubtful. Their stance on Venezuela and Galloway suggests not.
The story is, of course, another sad example of what Australian Marxists call the "Pominternist" nature of the SWP's international activities.
Much more interesting than what SW NZ says is what the ISO-USA and Socialist Alternative Australia will say. ISO and SAlt are the main organisations in what is now a fairly wide network of "excommunicated" groups previously linked to the SWP (and still pretty much aligned to basic SWP politics). ISO is the only SWP-line group in the USA, and SAlt is much stronger than the "official" SWP group in Australia.
Given the common language, and the ease of travel these days between USA, Australia, and Britain, it cannot but be that ISO and SAlt have "their people" in Britain.
In both of the (quite separate) disputes that earned ISO and SAlt excommunication, ISO and SAlt were, in formal terms, for a "narrower" orientation, for more "party profile" and less "broad alliance" stuff.
It was all very organisational, though, and certainly no political principles have been laid down that would stop ISO and SAlt, if they have an eye for the main chance, trying to organise the SWPers peeling away towards Galloway into a British ISO/SAlt.
As far as I know neither group has commented so far. But I will certainly be watching that space.
