Liam Mac Uaid looks at the prospects for Respect in the coming year. The announcement by Labour deputy leadership hopeful, Jon Cruddas, that the party is losing a member every twenty minutes should be good news for socialists who want to build a class struggle party to the left of Labour. Blair's leadership lost the party 160,000 members between 2000 and 2006.
Even uber-Blairite Hazel Blears has admitted that much of this has to do with Blair's predilection for imperialist wars. The majority of people who leave Labour do so with a sense of disgust at its rightward drift, frequently after years or decades of party membership.
Many of these people, if questioned, would find themselves in very close agreement with Respect's programme of opposition to Blair's wars and support for public services run for need not profit. Yet they stubbornly refuse to join it.
In fact Respect's loss of members parallels that of Labour. The un-massaged version of the annual report submitted to the 2006 conference said the organisation had 2160 members, a drop from 3040 the previous year. The organisation is now more politically narrow than at any time in its short history. It is entirely hegemonised by the SWP in all but two or three branches.
Other than supporters of Socialist Resistance, no other left current tries to operate
the experience of other new European anti capitalist parties such as Portugal's Left Bloc or Italy's Rifondazione Comunista which incorporate a political pluralism into their Respect is now more politically narrow than at any time in its short history. It is entirely dominated by the SWP in all but two or three branches.
functioning. Reports from around the COULLY indicate that the exodus from Respect has been of independent members not aligned to political organisainside it. This is in contrast to tions. Many branches are moribund, meeting only once or twice a year. At the 2006 Respect conference several branches sent delegations comprising more than fifty per cent SWP members. This indicates an absence of nonaligned Respect members willing to attend the event.
The most serious attempt to bring fresh blood into Respect was the "Organising For Fighting Unions" conference. This was a numerical success
political failure. this he was given a lot of latitude by the SWP.
Some prominent members described things like regular meetings and MP's report backs as "boring", "bureaucratic" and "unnecessary drains on George's time" when it was proposed that these standard Labour Movement practices be made part of Respect's culture.
However Galloway does bind together and occasionally brokers truces between the SWP and other remaining socialist section of the organisation and the councillors and their support bases.
The re-selection will be very messy and potentially bloody since the party in Tower Hamlets lacks an obvi-