SUCCESSFUL public meetings of Respect branches have been arranged in the major cities and towns of the West Midlands, accompanied ised. by leafleting, stalls, video showings and a cerCar and health workers have been two sectors that have been targeted for leafleting. 200 people attended the George Galloway meal in Birmingham and over £1300 was raised at the Coventry meal. A lot of work has gone into raising the required amount of funding for the election campaign, and big
Weekly planning meetings are taking place in Birmingham and Coventry, and there In Birmingham the People's Justice Party is calling on all its supporters to vote for RESPECT in the European have been moves to set up 4 geographical
of Respect in Birmingham. Hustings are in the process of being organIn Birmingham, the People's Justice Party, which has two councillors, is having a high profile campaign for council seats on June 10th, but leading members are simultaneously advising people to vote for Respect in the Euro elections (see below).
The PJP is based in Asian/Muslim areas and originally started out as a "Justice for Kashmir" organisation.
It does not seem to be a homogeneous organisation, but contains left-wingers who are open to debate and collaboration with ple of the inner city.
I used to be a Labour councillor, and I joined the People's Justice Party a couple of
because Labour was moving towards a Tory agenda. We call it the mark two Tory party because its not a Labour party any more: it doesn't believe in socialism it believes in privatisation, a two-tier system of the NHS and Blair's appalling record interIn 1997 when People's Justice first came on the scene they got elected to the council against a very strong Labour councillor who was also a personal assistant to a member of parliament, Roger Godsiff. They kicked him out. In the last local elections we won one seat with a 3000 majority.
We were all involved in the Stop the War
Coalition, where we were very active and so were the people who formed RESPECT. We had no intention of standing in the European
elections because we are a local regional
The people in the Stop the War Coalition
are our natural allies and if we could support
An important development has bee strike at the "Europackaging" facto Birmingham, against slave labour condit Respect, in the persona of Salma Yaqool others has made contact with the str and given solidarity
So there is a lot of important activity on, and this has squeezed out much chance for political debate. That will n sarily change after June 10th.
Depending on the result, the new lay people who have been helping out c drawn into a permanent campaigning tionship with the setting up of demo functioning structures anyone it would be RESPECT. Ever we're hoping that we could combine one together and have one very strong
The Liberal party in Birmingham hav efited recently where they took twel city seats in the last local elections back of the anti war vote because the no RESPECT.
Its appalling that politicians are there are only a few bad apples in the army who are torturing people, yet v comes to the Muslim community w supposed to be extremists. The I party are trying to strengthen themsel the basis of racism against Muslims.
One day we hope that RESPECT ar selves and trade unionists, disillu
working class people will join togeth form one strong party and leave our
anism behind. It would be a criminal if we didn't do it
We've been having meetings her
300 people. When Robin Cook cam
he could only muster 70 people.