The National Council on Saturday May 21 Was well-attended and extremely upbeat meeting, though Galloway himself was not there since he was speaking at the Palestine Solidarity Campagn rally in Trafalgar Square.
The buoyancy of the meeting reflected the huge opportunities which have opened up for Respect following, first, its election results, and its break though into Parliament, and then George Galloway's spectacular Capitol Hill intervention.
Galloway's Washington performance had had a worldwide impact. In the days following his intervention supportive emails poured in from all over the world, 1500 from the USA alone.
His intervention has swept away, at a stroke, much of the mud which had been thrown at him for a long time (some of which had inevitably stuck) and given him a new credibility which is shared by Respect itself.
It was reported, for example, when Galloway walked on to the Question Time set in Edinburgh the previous week, he got a standing ovation from the entire studio audience This apparently something which had never happened before.
National Secretary and leading SWP member John Rees introduced the discussion on the election by saying that, whilst the results were extremely good they represented bridgehead from which Respect could develop.
The problem with bridgeheads is that if you did not advance out of the bridgehead you would get pushed back into the sea.
The British establishment now saw Respect as a threat and they will do everything they can to destroy it. The attacks on George Galloway and the attacks on Respect itself will continue.
Respect, therefore, had to
forward and become stronger or it would be pushed back. This, he said, meant building it into a massmembership campaigning party as an urgent task.
There was clearly agreement on this perspective in the meeting. There was also agreement that Respect had to both consolidate the bases it had won and at the same time expand outwards into new areas.
There was not so much
however, on exactly what this meant or how it should be done.
Resistance supporters John Lister and I, amongst others; argued that turning Respect into a mass membership party (an initial membership of 10,000 plus is what was being projected) had implications for what kind of organisation Respect needs to be, and how it needs to organise.
Unless these new members are given a party to which they can relate, with functioning accessible branches that have a political life and a campaigning profile, they will not last very long.
There was a great deal of stress on having local meetings, but there was also opposition by some to what they called traditional meetings. which seems to be an opposition to meetings of the members to discuss politics in favour of set-piece meetings with outside speakers, or film shows and cultural events. What is really needed is a mixture of both
I argued, as did several others, that Respect needs take advantage of its election results make fresh approach to the trade union left - particularly those union leaders who remain 'awkward' and continue to confront the employers:
If Respect lets the current period past without making new gains in the unions it would be a serious problem. Mass recruitment is
but so is the recruitment of established activists and socialists who remain outside of Respect.
There was also some discussion on the Greens and the sectarian stance they had