Respect's roots in the anti-war movement are not enough to ensure a Labour Left collapse results in a growth in Respect the morale of its dwindling numbers of non-aligned
The Respect website also displays this obvious disorientation and weakness: the "Events" panel contains just three feeble items - a sponsored charity run by Cllr Oliur Rahman, an art exhibition that began in January and a cartoon exhibition!
The nearest to a response to the Labour Party debate is a statement from May 17 diately after the McDonnell campaign collapsed. This boldly promises that:
"It must now be clear to everyone on the left that the main arenas for rebuilding progressive politics are very far from the Labour Party and its enervated local organisation."
"Over the coming weeks we will be seeking to discuss with key figures in the trade unions, on the left, in the Labour Party and across the progressive spectrum as a whole what ini- The SWP's tiatives might be taken to rally and resistance to unify our forces. developing it as
has a party is aspirations to advance whole left as well gains that have as our part of it."
been made, and
But while there
be more hobbling the back-room development of approaches to a few left union leaders for another series of "fighting Unions" rallies, there is little sign that the trade union intervention is being carried through with any real conviction. The Trade
section of the Respect website on June 17 had just six entries for 2007, the most recent dating back to May 29.
A good June 7 statement on the CWU strike ballot is trailed on the home page, but there is no broader sense of seeking to relate politically to the activist left in the unions that rallied to McDonnell while their union leaders grovelled to Brown.
A Respect circular on June 5 calls for volunteers for the June 24 demo, Pride on June 30 and the SWP's Marxism event on July 5-9. Only subsequently did a hasty circular seek help in mounting an intervention at this year's UNISON conference.
Socialist Resistance has continued to argue that Respect remains the only plausible base from which a broad and campaigning alternative to Blairism can be built in the short or medium term.
But the SWP's stubborn resistance to developing it as a party - or a coalition that acts and fights like a party - is jeopardising the gains that have been made, and hobbling the development of the organisation as a whole.
We remain convinced that to build a genuinely broad
and active political alternative to the left of New Labour we need more than the collapse and demorthe jeopardising the alisation of the
Labour Left: we need a Respect leadership that goes out to build the organisation, and to mobilise it. That means taking every chance to promote and pursue political debates and dialogue with those sections of the labour movement who are closest to us: but it also means developing real politics and real political life in Respect. It remains to be seen whether the SWP is brave enough to take on that chailenge: sadly, on present showing, their narrow and limited view seems set to reduce Respect to an irrelevance on the sidelines of British politics.
page 4 of the scan
Parting
shots: John Reid is about
to stand
down as
Secretary