the RESPECT turn-out was the 0.6 percent overall vote in the giant South East Region -equivalent to almost 13,500 votes.
Even this average conceals some variations, most notably the remarkable 5.8 percent notched up by RESPECT in Slough, where the local branch only held an inaugural meeting a few days before the June 10 polling day, and no organised groups were functioning before.
In both Slough and Oxford (where RESPECT got 2.3 p. cent) it beat the BNP, while in Slough RESPECT also outpolled the Greens.
However no other city or town in the South East gave RES ECT as much as 2 percent of the poll. W were the factors that brought such a disa inting result?
An obvious facto rom the start was the weak and scattered base of support for RESPECT across th vast and diverse reagion, with many supporters dotted along the South coast and relatively few in other key areas.
Another was the hot competition between RESPECT and the Green Party, the re-election of sitting MEP Caroline Lucas - probably the only MEP most people have ever heard of, and one with a good record in opposing the war, defending refugees and asylum seekers and raising other issues.
This was made more of a factor by the decision of the Muslim Association of Britain to recommend a vote for RESPECT in every EU region except the South East, where it called for a vote for Caroline Lucas and the Green slate.
The final coup-de-grace in a campaign which was inevitably heavily dependent upon the postal delivery of the pre-election mail-shot was that literally tons of RESPECT leaflets were never delivered to households in the South East.
Coupled with the comprehensive media blackout of RESPECT and its activities, this meant that hundreds of thousands of potential voters had not even been informed that RESPECT existed.
Given these odds against, the vote can perhaps best be seen as a challenging base for progress rather than a defeat.