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RESPECT Conference Roundup (The SWP dominted, nuff said)

General Gar-Gar | 01.11.2004 00:38 | London

In a venue once used by Indymedia for slightly more noble actions, Camden saw the return of the left this weekend. Delegates heard pulpit speeches and mostly voted with the crew of the merry Ship (read: Destroyer?) SWP.

Motions voted against were either targetted for having too much detail (read, too little room for SWP interpretation) or for setting up focus groups (too cumbersome, read, too difficult to find enough SWP cronies to fill). SWP control freakery was ever present throughout.

The lone member of National Committee from the loony party that is the CPGB was voted off and seemed to imply he was off to found an english versio of the Scottish Socialist Party. Good luck to him, but I doubt he's the person for the job considering what a prat he looked like throughout.

One motion which might have caught Indymedia readers eyes was a motion to include and open-borders policy in the manifesto. Apparently this one motion would have been seized upon by the mainstream media and used to prove RESPECT was unelectable. This in turn, given the opposing speakers response, would have led to a BNP goverment. Or simply, to more blackmail from above, perhaps? Also, apparently this would have been a banner statement and not something we would ever be able to carry out, purely because

The conference rightly welcomed speeches from Moslems (soceities new Jews?) and Kurds and even saw George Galloway stand up for the British aid worker being held on the basis that she is "one of their kind and not Blair's kind". The only vaguely mainstream press in the building were Arab News Network and Al-Jazeera, who seemed delighted to tape Galloway's statements. According to him, the whole of the middle east was looking to RESPECT. They're obviously desparate.

General Gar-Gar

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

Sadly -It's All Down Hill

01.11.2004 01:25

A Single Issue Party with which the media has no sympathy, without a broad base on the left or in the community, will do very badly in a general election. And that, very likely, will be the end of Respect.

If respect had been set up a year earlier, it may have had time to build into something more substantial before the Euro and GLA elections and thus had more significant success, but at that time the SWP was intent on using the Socialist Alliance in By-elections. When it failed to capitalise on the anti-war vote, and Galloway way expelled from the Labour Party, Respect was formed.

However, what has been impressive is the brilliant way the SWP has unnecessarily alienated potential allies and supporters - it has few troops to do campaigning.

But where one flower dies another comes into to bloom; so they'll be back, after the general election, maybe as themselves this time, if they can rediscover their identity - the SWP.

HH


Shocking developments in North London

01.11.2004 02:31

Shocking developments in North London. A meeting of left wingers agreed to work together to discuss how the disenfranchised in this country can get some sort of representation. What was worse they agreed a common platform and agreed to fight the next general election on a platform of troops out of Iraq, against privatisation and in favour of a womans right to choose, whilst shamefully campaigning to defend the rights of asylum seekers under attack in this country. I gather from the comments in the previous post that the author feels the involvement of people from the moslem community, or kurds, or anyone else who is not white and not doing a BA in development studies at Sussex University is a bad thing, as they are obviously reactionary, unlike the collection of unelected so-called 'autonomists' who disrupted a meeting on fighting the far right at the ESF, and attacking a black man and jewish woman at that meeting of course. What a pity that Respect did not adopt a raft of abstract and divise positions - they could then settle for the sort of marginal [position within the movement that is currently inhabited by the so-called 'black block'. Never mind.

agree with me or I will shout you down


Always nice to see

01.11.2004 02:46

Always nice to see an unbiased and informative post like this, with lots of useful information rather than the usual bash the SWP rants.

end sarcasm

Any chance of some actual information, how many people were there? what motions got passed, were there any union delegations etc etc etc.

Or perhaps our resident Cassandra HH could help out, who seems to know everything about the SWP.

Sonic


Sonic

01.11.2004 10:22

You're reactionary attempts to defend the SWP by slating any criticism on Indymedia makes you look like a prat. Please dont do it. It does your cause no good whatsoever.

John Clarke


...

01.11.2004 10:24

Totally agree Sonic. I have searched everywhere for a report on what was passed yesterday. All I know is that the motion that called for Respect to be secular fell, because Bambery believed it was 'islamophobic'.

LDT


C´mon SWappies!

01.11.2004 11:31

Ok, so some arguments by the "autonomists" against the "smallest mass party in the world" are wrong, - indeed they are! But there are so many others "who have loved and left" the SWP whose arguments against this rotting pile of ex-Trots cannot as easily be rejected as those arguments of the "autonomists". Please, assorted Callinicos-adorers, Waterson-fearers, branch-nodders, party-hacks and plackard-bearers - tell me: why is the Scottish Socialist Party so much more succesfull than the PERRRRRTY? They have got branches from the last Hebridian Island to the main cities, whereas the SWP gave up branch meetings in favour of district meetings. Is it because the SSP are more rooted in the communities - and care about small fry such as ferry schedules - and are above all less keen on SWP-tactics inside Respect, and are more honest, more transparent? Good luck, SWP lemming-comrades, go on fucking up things, as you have done for the past twelve years or more!

Continental