'Respect' and George Galloway

AWL leaflet for Respect meeting on London elections, 31 January 2008

On Thursday 27 September the London Transport Regional Council of the rail union RMT voted to call on the union to "draw up lists of candidates to stand in the London mayoral elections and GLA elections in 2008. "These lists should be drawn from RMT members, socialists, anti-capitalists, local campaign groups, etc...[and] speak to the many different issues facing workers, working-class communities and oppressed groups in London, such as education, the health service, housing, a living wage and trade union rights - while of course making the demand for a 100% publicly owned, democratically...

Galloway proposes "Progressive List" to back Livingstone

The "Respect Renewal" movement, George Galloway's bit of the now-split Respect coalition, has proposed a "Progressive List" to stand in the May 2008 Greater London Assembly elections and to back Ken Livingstone. Or, rather, George Galloway personally has. The proposal appears on the Respect Renewal website, but, as if to emphasise the feeble nature of the organisation, is signed only by Galloway personally. "In the broadest terms, I believe the slate needs to be based on opposition to privatisation. It needs to be anti-racist, and opposed to discrimination of all kinds. It needs to campaign...

Chris Harman on Respect

The split in Respect though ‘finalised’ in the sense that the SWP and George Galloway are unlikely to work together again has still not run its course. In addition to outstanding issues around the legal standing of both organisations – the status of the SWP-Respect National Committee, nominating officers, financial recourses etc… - ‘official’ versions of recent events and responses to them are now being churned out. The SWP is to hold its national conference this month, a conference where some very difficult questions could well be posed to the party leadership. Chris Harman – the editor of...

SWP: from "IS tradition" to Respect

11 articles on the SWP's political collapse into a decade of alliance with Islamic clerical fascism. Solidarity has commented on the SWP's ongoing political collapse at each stage. The "Reactionary Anti-Imperialists" The Prophet and the demoralised opportunists An open letter to Chris Harman of the SWP: Break with Galloway and the communalists How the "IS tradition" was shaped by the ILP The IS tradition and the birth of Respect - An open letter to a SWP leader The Sharia socialists Ms German replies to her critics Respect woos the Muslim vote Tony Cliff on the "Clerical-Fascist" Muslim...

ISO-USA backs Galloway in Respect split

The International Socialist Organization of the USA has thrown its weight on George Galloway's side in the Respect split. The ISO is perhaps the most important group in the world, after the SWP-UK, with the same general politics as the SWP, but was expelled by the SWP from its international network in 2001. Then, the SWP claimed that the ISO was "sectarian" , specifically towards to the "new anti-capitalist" milieu manifested in such actions as the famous demonstrations against the World Trade Organisation meeting in 1999. In fact, as far as I can see, the ISO's approach to the "new anti...

Why I left the SWP

Many people reading this article may ask themselves “why join the SWP in the first place?” Others still will ask “why go on to join the AWL?” These are legitimate questions. In fact, the answer to the question “why I left the SWP” revolves almost entirely around answering the other two. Some people fill hours of their lives writing lists of incidents, outrages and ‘crimes against socialism’ carried out by the SWP. This documentation is a time-consuming and important work, but this article will be no such list. Others have provided us with impressionistic sketches of leading SWP ‘personalities’...

Blessed?

George Galloway was addressing a Whitechapel Respect Renewal rally on Sunday 2 December. According to the East London Advertiser it was “Muslim-dominated”. In that case a socialist message to such an audience could have been anything from fighting low pay to issues about council housing or fighting racism. But according to the Advertiser, and perhaps predictably, Galloway chose to spread a little religious fervour and to highlight the sanctity of his new organisation: “There’s one God, there’s one Respect”, he said.

Barred from Student Respect conference

Galloway and his fanclub having departed, I recently joined Respect, in order to see what was going on and make the arguments to as many people as possible for a turn towards independent working-class politics. I haven't had time to go to a branch meeting yet; my first foray was an attempt to attend the Student Respect conference on 2 December. Since £26 had disappeared from my debit card (no concessionary rate!) I assumed that I was now a member of Respect. To be sure, however, I emailed Student Respect in order to explain why I joined and ask about attending the conference (on 2 December)...

A toxic mix

About an hour and a half into the "Respect Renewal" conference held by George Galloway and his allies on 17 September (at which point I left), there were about 200 people present. So the widely cited figure of 250 is probably about right. “The hall was packed out with a genuinely diverse crowd - young and old, men and women, black and white, Asian, Muslim, Christian and those of no faith, plus trade unionists and socialists from different traditions,” enthused the next day's Morning Star. There were certainly a variety of people there. However, my impression of the mix was rather different. In...

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