"We would all subscribe to the aspiration of workers' representatives on a worker's wage", said Paul Holborow of the SWP at the launch conference on Sunday 25 January of the new George Galloway electoral coalition ("Respect").
But, said Holborow, "we must remember that 'Respect' is not an explicitly socialist organisation". To commit it to workers' representatives on a worker's wage might "put off some people we want to attract, for example George Galloway". The "worker's wage" policy must therefore remain only "an aspiration".
Holborow was replying to an amendment from Lesley Mahmood which called for "Respect" candidates to reject the gravy train" as those of the Scottish Socialist Party have done. His speech focused the realities: despite all the talk of "broadness", this was a lash-up of the SWP and its close friends with George Galloway as electoral figurehead. It will presumably gain a bit more momentum in the coming weeks, but as of today it was very little more.
A motion from Solidarity and Workers' Liberty for the coalition to break with Galloway was ruled out of order (as were many others); but Sean Matgamna was able to speak briefly, amid much heckling and slow-handclapping, to challenge the platform.
Galloway, said Matgamna, is known as an apologist for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. He admits to taking money from the governments of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Pakistan. That the coalition is making Galloway central, as its Euro-election candidate in London, should not go undebated.
After Matgamna's challenge to the platform had been voted down - in this very closely-controlled conference, none of the critical propositions got more than a few dozen votes - Galloway himself denounced us as "the so-called Alliance for so-called Workers' Liberty" and equated us with the News of the World,
Stung by the "worker's wage" debate, he came back to the question of his personal integrity in his second speech, at the end of the conference. He said he spends his money on travelling to speak to meetings, and on employing a larger staff than MPs' office allowances provide for. Just why we should excuse him for taking money from Saudi, the Emirates, and Pakistan, and insisting that £150,000 a year is the minimum he "need[s] to function", because he employs a chauffeur and other MPs don't, he did not explain.
The conference filled the Friends Meeting House at Euston, London, about 1200 people. The executive of the coalition - elected by getting the conference to put their hands up for a slate announced from the platform - is about half SWP and close friends, the remainder a scattered miscellany with no oppositional or critical voices at all.
The organisers' one triumph was the support of Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS trade union. Back in December Serwotka refused to sign the launch statement for the coalition, and he told Socialist Alliance chair Nick Wrack that he was unhappy both about the coalition's anti-euro policy and about the role of George Galloway.
At the conference, however, Serwotka shelved all his socialist ideas. He called for a "left electoral alternative to New Labour that represents working-class people who have been disenfranchised", but did not define what is needed for authentic workers' representation, nor measure the Galloway coalition against it.
After denouncing New Labour, he concluded lamely: "In any coalition, we will not agree on every dot and comma. I agree with the principle of a single European currency [while the coalition is anti-euro]. But it would be nonsense to stay out of the coalition because of disagreement in one policy area. There is more that unites us than divide us".
Serwotka allowed his name to go forward for the coalition's executive. The conference organisers were able to show no other prominent trade-union supporters for the coalition, but SWP member Kambiz Boomla was sufficiently encouraged to claim that the coalition has "the support of the PCS". (The PCS as a union, as distinct from Serwotka personally, has not supported the coalition and is not remotely likely to).
Many of the platform speakers seemed genuinely to fail to understand the idea of independent working-class political representation. Speech after speech would refer to constituencies to be represented - pensioners, students, anti-war activists, community campaigners, Muslims, trade-unionists - apparently without noticing that the listing omitted the majority of the working class.
The whole event was much more reminiscent of the Communist Parties in their heyday than of anything to do with independent socialist politics. Like the CPs then, the SWP promotes itself as a "hard" revolutionary party, but for practical politics will operate through a "front", limited to "progressive" politics and filled out with "progressives", people who do not join the "party" but are available for the "front".
All impulses to independent working-class politics are deflected by talking about the need to be "broad" and have "unity", although everyone knows that the "front" is entirely a construction by the "party".
The analogy between the SWP and the old CPs extends wider. On the postal executive of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU), for example, the SWP has supported the job-cutting deal with Royal Mail now being ballotted on by postal workers. Their excuse: the need for "unity". Real reason: they want to keep on side with Dave Ward, the leftish CWU official who negotiated the deal, in the hope of inveigling him into the Galloway coalition.
Meanwhile SWP members in the rank and file explain that they "can't support" the deal. It's a classic bit of CP political two-facedness.
There was surprisingly little effort to dress up SWP control in the conference. It started with speeches from Mark Serwotka and Tommy Sheridan of the SSP, and Nick Wrack of the Socialist Alliance (a very close ally of the SWP) in the chair. Then Serwotka and Sheridan left, and the chair was handed over to SWPers Candy Udwin and Lindsay German.
Four SWPers and a few "progressives" were taken from the floor in general discussion, where the only speech not simply puffing the coalition was one from Hannah Sell of the Socialist Party, explaining that the SP will give the coalition critical support from the outside but will not join because they are about its lack of democracy.
Lindsay German moved the organisers' draft political statement. Steve Freeman (Revolutionary Democratic Group) and Mark Hoskisson (Workers' Power) got a few minutes to move more left-wing alternatives, and then the draft was voted through without further debate.
Ken Loach and someone from Rifondazione Comunista spoke. Linda Smith announced the motions ruled out of order, and was challenged. Galloway spoke, and a representative from the Muslim Association of Britain (British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic-fundamentalist movement in the Arab world) read a message of greetings to the conference and "Brother George".
He said: "The MAB does not, as a matter of policy, join political parties, but we urge our supporters to back the coalition". According to Nick Wrack, reporting at the Socialist Executive, in fact MAB objects to the (very bland) clause in the platform on gender rights.
A few left-wing amendments to the platform were moved by the SWP and allies, presumably cleared with Galloway beforehand. Instructively, none of them attracted a single speech against.
Probably the "workers' wage" proposition and the amendments for open borders and for republicanism would have had no opposition either, were it not that the SWP had decided to tailor the platform to Galloway. Instructively again, all the speeches against those left-wing propositions were taken by SWP cadres.
Politically, in fact, the essence of the conference was the SWP assembling 1200 left-wing activists in a hall in order to tell them that they should be less left-wing - that they should redefine ideas which until now they had regarded as active, urgent, campaigning policies as "aspirations" to "subscribe to".
I spoke against an SWP amendment to add "Support for the Palestinians" to the platform, arguing instead for a definite demand - "Israel out of the Occupied Territories" - and a clear demarcation from those who want an Islamic state from the Jordan to the sea, or want to destroy Israel. Ian Donovan (Weekly Worker) moved that the platform's anti-euro point be replaced by "no to the euro, no to the pound".
The conference concluded with further platform speeches from Salma Yaqoob, John Rees (SWP), and George Galloway.
Despite a lot of tinny claims about broad unity and great prospects, a lot of the platform speeches betrayed uneasiness by a defensive tone. Lindsay German's speech moving the draft declaration focused on explaining why it had to be only "a limited programme" (because, she claimed, that was the way to "break out of small group politics and create a new political agenda").
John Rees, in his concluding speech, felt he had to convince us that we can trust George Galloway. Galloway, he said, was offered a deal by the Labour Party when it started expulsion proceedings against him. Apologise, and he could remain a member. Galloway refused. Of course, Galloway knew that however much he apologised, the Labour Party, even if it kept him in membership, would refuse him selection as a Labour candidate for the next parliamentary elections. To refuse to apologise was not bravery but just minimal common sense.
The wheeling-dealing old Stalinist Galloway, in his final speech, said that he had spent his whole political life on the opposite side from John Rees of the major ideological and political debates (about Stalinism, I guess he meant) and he didn't "take back one word of it". It wasn't the revolutionary Rees explaining that he held to his ideas despite his alliance with the "reformist", but the other way round!
Galloway talked of getting one million votes on 10 June. I'm no psephologist, but that seems unlikely with such a thin coalition. Even more strangely, in fact incomprehensibly, he declared: "If we get a million votes, we'll knock them off their chairs in Westminster", and claimed: "Respect will bring Blair and his New Labour clique down". What does he mean? That Respect will take enough votes away from Labour for the Tories to regain office in 2005?
The best speech of the day from the platform was by Salma Yaqoob, a Muslim activist from Birmingham who became a close SWP ally in the anti-war movement. It was not a socialist speech, but it was clear and strong. If war was considered normal, she was proud to be marginal. If racism was considered normal, she was proud to be marginal.
Maybe that is because Yaqoob - genuinely moving leftwards, but halted in her movement by meeting up by the SWP - knew what she believed and was arguing for it, whereas the SWPers hardly know any longer what they believe.
In any case, if trailing behind Galloway, and relegating explicit socialist and working-class politics to the level of "aspiration", is to be "normal" on the left, then we are proud to be marginal.
And, if we rouse the energy to match our responsibilities as the remaining voices of explicit working-class politics, then the margins can soon be rather larger than the "normal" area.
