(Camden Respect) AS MY MUM always used to say, I have a sunny and optimistic disposition, so despite some concerns about the agenda and the lack of pre conference discussions I turned up on the first day of Respect's conference with sense or noper anacipation.
However, by the end of the second day I left depressed and profoundly concerned about the health and future development of our party.
It wasn't that the conference was uniformly bad; a number of useful resolutions were passed, and lnere were several worthwhile (if limited) debates.
But overall it was a curate's egg, and like any such dodgy comestible it ended up leaving a bitter taste. Positive
The conference had a number of positive features. There were a number of excelJenl Irom invited guests, including moving speeches by Haifa Zengana, an exiled Kurdish novelist and Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six. and valuable contributions from Colin Fox of the SSP and Renato Soeiro of Portugal's Left Bloc.
The number of resolutions on climate change and the discussion on them showed that Respect has at last begun to take environmental issues serious v and the debate on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill showed that it is possible for Respect members to discuss a 'difficult' issue without too much rancour and in a fairly comradely way.
Unfortunately the conference naa more lnan lls lall share of negative teatures as well.
There were no more delegates than last year - possibly fewer. While there were a few welcome new faces, mainly of students newly recruited in what seems to be a successful autumn campaign campuses, MOSL delegates appeared to have been recycled from the previous year's conterence.
Once again the majority of the delegates were SWP members: and once again the conference gave every appearance of being (slightly clumsily) stage managed throughout.
There written
Was report from the National Council, and no Treasurer's report. Such omissions could be forgiven if they were mistakes committed by a national leadership demonstrably committed to democrac accountability and to developing Respect as a membership driven broad based party of the left.
However. at the conterence Respect's leadership showed itself to be hypersensitive to criticism - real or imagined -and more or less openly conlemptuous to any suggeshon of extending accountability or actively trying to involve ordinary members more by facilitating better communication and policy discussions.
The final conference session discussed seven resoluall putting forward LIONS. basically the same message: Respect has to become much more open, more democratic, must movolve members more. must have much more (and better) internal communications, and must have more ana beller agilamonal malerial. Response
Three of the seven were passed. However the response of the leadership was depressing.
John Rees boomed that if
National We wanted Secretary that sat behind a desk we would have to get another National Secretary (of course we have never had the opportunity to elect the National Secretary, but that is apparently not the point).
George was, as ever, clear and direct about his views. We are a huge success.
We have achieved things that no other socialist organisation has managed since God knows when, we are "practically a household name", not only in this country but internationally (they talked of little else in Biarritz and St Tropez this summer I hear) and the growing opposition to Blair on health and education in the PLP is down to New Labour backbenchers' fear of
But none of our manifest achievements have been due to members discussing policy - or indeed it seems anyone discussing anything. Talk to ourselves
We don't need a paper, that would simply be an opportunity for us to talk to ourselves rather than the masses.
We don't need any sort of web based forum because we are not going to achieve anything "stuck behind a computer"
We may have no more members than a year ago, but these days people don't join parties, they form networks. So that's all right then.
So it seems that all this nonsense about debate and discussion of ideas being essential to democracy and the lifeblood of a socialist party can be forgotten.
The Galloway/Rees conception of organisation is that we don't need to discuss policies or ideas because that could divide us; we should just concentrate on the main issues that we agree on, and GEORGE IS