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respect

The Socialist Workers Party is substantially the largest group on the British revolutionary left. In joining forces with George Galloway, expelled Labour MP and a major figure in the anti-war movement, it has created a movement in the Respect Coalition which warrants the most careful analysis by all communists.

The RED Platform was born out of a debate in the CPGB over the correct tactics to adopt towards the coalition, and a summary of our proposals and the politics behind them can be found in our founding statement: click here to read it.

However, the argument was developed more fully in the Weekly Worker between April 8 and April 15 (issue numbers 523 to 525), in an exchange between comrades Manny Neira and Cameron Richards (now RED Platform members) and PCC member comrade Ian Donovan. We reproduce the relevant articles here for those who wish to understand more fully the disagreements which led to the creation of our platform.

The articles are listed below. Click on titles to read them, and on the issue dates to download a copy of the original paper as a 'PDF' (portable document format) file. (To read PDF files you will need a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for free download from the Adobe Systems download page by clicking here.)

This article was written by comrade Manny Neira and appeared in the Weekly Worker of April 8 (issue 523).

We are living through a period of some political complexity. Within the last year, for instance, Sean Matgamna of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty defined Zionism as simply the recognition of the right of the state of Israel to exist. As one of his own comrades pointed out, this would make Yasser Arafat a Zionist. Yasser Arafat - Zionist? It would make a surprising news headline. What next? ‘Peter Tatchell launches gay islamic jihad’? ‘Elvis found in packed Iraqi WMD warehouse’? ‘CPGB calls for unconditional Respect vote’? ‘George Galloway voted AWL man of the year’?

Did you spot the odd one out? Yes, one of those headlines was true. At the aggregate on March 21, the CPGB passed the following resolution: “Recognising the need for the anti-war, pro-working class opposition to Blair to take on partyist form, the CPGB will work to ensure the biggest possible vote for Respect on June 10.”

If you have not followed our coverage of Respect, you may find my surprise, well, surprising. A brief summary of the ‘story so far’ may help.

The Socialist Workers Party-dominated Respect coalition was founded on January 25. The Weekly Worker following the launch carried the headline, “A bonfire of principles: John Rees ditches the politics of the Socialist Alliance for the platitudes of Respect”. Jack Conrad’s ‘Party notes’ from that issue commented:

“Under the leadership of John Rees the SWP’s craving for respectability is palpable. Increasingly elections are seen not as a means of making propaganda and enhancing class combativity; rather as an opportunity to say what you think people want to hear in a desperate bid to get yourself elected - the fond hope is that lucrative careers as councillors, GLA members, MPs and MEPs beckon” (Weekly Worker January 29).

Not overly enthusiastic, then. What of Jack’s view of the coalition’s class basis? “There can be no doubt that Respect, even with the addition of Mohammed Naseen of the Birmingham central mosque, is a manifestation of left populism. Nor can there be any doubt that the SWP leadership is nowadays consciously acting as a conduit for bringing petty bourgeois influences into the socialist and workers’ movement - not least from their Stop the War Coalition reservoir.”

I wrote a report of the conference itself. Reading back over it, it employed a tone so critical, it suggested a writer with a bad case of piles. My own summation ran thus:

“More likely, though, Respect will fail to improve on SA results, because socialism was never the problem. The SA needed to go forward, not back. Instead of moving on from a socialist alliance to a socialist party, as the Scottish Socialist Party did, the SWP has moved back from a socialist alliance to a non-socialist alliance. Non-socialist? Well, perhaps a bit socialist. Aretha had it again: ‘Just a little bit, uhuh, just a little bit …’ This last was a reference to the soul hit Respect, which the conference organisers, in an aching but ultimately doomed desire to be hip, had been playing before and after sessions.

Marcus Ström, in the same issue, commented on John Rees’s dismissal of the Socialist Alliance: “This speaks volumes about the SWP’s attitude to electoral activity and to the unity of the socialist left. The SWP treats such adventures lightly. Rather than providing serious, long-term engagement with the working class along principled socialist lines; rather than a means to unite the whole left around a coherent Marxist programme in order to forge the weapon needed by our class (ie, a Communist Party); the SWP views elections as just its opportunity to break into the mainstream. To that end any principle can be junked. Parliamentary cretinism par excellence.”

Altogether, seven of the 12 pages of the January 29 Weekly Worker concerned Respect. The quotes are not selective. Stick a pin in that issue and, chances are, you’ll spear yourself a quote something like those above. We were critical: and there was much to be critical of.

As might be imagined, most of the rest of the left was little more impressed than the CPGB. The AWL, chiefly citing their near fundamentalist distrust of George Galloway MP - Respect’s shiniest acquisition since the days of the SA - refused to join. So did the Socialist Party, Workers Power, the Revolutionary Democratic Group … and indeed every other ex-SA group other than the SWP-faithful International Socialist Group.

Except, that is, for the CPGB. We argued that the SWP, as Britain’s largest revolutionary group, could not simply be ignored. Without them, the SA was largely moribund. For good or ill - no, just for ill - it had been supplanted by this opportunist project cooked up by comrades Rees and Galloway.

While the project might be opportunist, we believed then and now that the majority of the membership were not. People do not serve long spells in the SWP rank and file for fun, unless they are desperately unimaginative, or for political careerism, unless they have been spectacularly misinformed. We might have political differences with them, but they remain comrades and socialists. We determined not to hold our breath until Respect went away, but to go in and fight: to fight for socialism, to fight for democracy, and to fight for the socialist, workers’ party that the Socialist Workers Party was not but we believed could be won to.

At the founding conference, we supported motions calling for three basic, socialist demands. First, republicanism: no demand for democracy could be satisfied within the framework of monarchy which extended beyond merely the person of the queen and into every branch and twig of government. Second, open borders. New Labour was scapegoating asylum-seekers and immigrants for social problems of their own creating, and using the law to maintain a desperate, non-unionised underclass of near-slave workers. Thirdly, workers’ representation on a worker’s wage: a demand common to working class political movements for generations.

The SWP leadership whipped their membership into voting against all three - and the strain this caused them was evident in the resentful speeches given through gritted teeth (yes, it seems it is possible) their speakers made as they argued, time and again, that, while they supported these principles, they would vote against them. Why? Because Respect was not socialist, because the SA had tried all that and it had not worked, and because Respect was to be the mirror of the anti-war movement, and anti-war members of (for instance) the Countryside Alliance might be put off by policies like republicanism.

For two months, in issue after issue of our paper, and Respect meetings all over Britain, Respect leaders and possible electoral candidates have been challenged by members and supporters of the CPGB on these issues. They are starting to twitch. At home in the evenings, they check under the beds for Weekly Worker reporters. We have reported both the good (as when Respect candidate and SWP member Dean Ryan clearly endorsed the call for open borders), the bad (as when fellow SWP member Unjum Mirza declared himself “against the idea of a workers’ party, quite frankly”) and the evasive (as when Liz Wheatley, also SWP, also a Respect candidate, claimed that whether she would take a worker’s wage if elected was “academic”). We called this critical engagement.

Chris Bambery, clearly infuriated, challenged us on this at the SA conference: “I’ve heard them talking about ‘engaging’ with Respect, whatever that means.” In my report of the event, I tried to, as it were, fill him in: “It means exposing to the mass of its membership, the rank and file of the SWP, the gap between the opportunism of the leadership of Respect and the political passion which led them to join and support a socialist party. It means principled political opposition to the opportunism that rejects republicanism and open borders which we believe most Respect members support. It means democratic criticism and debate: or did you really think that just setting up a new organisation would relieve you of the responsibility of facing that?” (Weekly Worker March 18).

In short, the CPGB has sought to win Respect to the project to build a revolutionary workers’ party - the aim shared by so many genuine SWP comrades - and to expose every effort of the SWP leadership to drag it in exactly the opposite direction. We have no interest in building a mere vehicle for the electoral ambitions of the Respect leadership Jack Conrad so rightly identified. We do not wish to build Respect regardless of its form, whatever its programme, paying any price in principle. It either brings working class organisation closer or moves it further away: and that will depend on whether we win our fight within it.

No leader of Respect is unaware of what the Weekly Worker is saying and, judging by our sales and web access, we know thousands of the rank and file are also turning to us to find out what their coalition is doing. None can be in any doubt where we stand. Chris Bambery has already warned that if Respect fails he will blame those whose support was merely “conditional”. We wish to see success more than he does, but we measure that success not simply in votes, but in the increased power and organisation of the working class. Any support which is ‘unconditional’ on these terms is mere electoral populism - and not socialism.

It is for this reason that the resolution passed at our aggregate must be reversed. It breaks with the essential strategy of winning Respect to a revolutionary perspective, and simply lauds a crude tally of votes. It takes the Respect’s leadership’s intermittent claims to be “pro-working class” at face value, rather than testing them. It does not serve our aims or represent our strategy, about which we have been consistently open. We wish to win Respect to socialism, and thus have it elected: not elect it in the hope it can be made socialist.

We cannot, therefore, call for an unconditional vote for Respect. We must continue to demand socialist policies and oppose opportunism, all the way to the ballot box. Candidates must know that they cannot simply rely on the whipped vote of socialists and spend their time pandering to a sprinkling of petty bourgeois groups - and worse. Let the ‘s’ in Respect really be for socialism.

About this article

It is only fair to comment that some comrades had reservations about the inclusion of this article in the Weekly Worker. It might be used as a stick to hit us with, or seem inconsistent with our membership of Respect.

I believe the very opposite. It is a tribute to the democratic culture of the CPGB that this minority opinion was published. It expresses no aim which any sincere socialist in Respect could possibly disagree with: they would not support Respect themselves if they did not believe it would serve their principles. It is, above all, the demonstration of the very democracy which we have missed in the Respect coalition itself.

Some comrades have also pointed out that we have not always demanded a minimum platform before endorsing candidates of other parties: and this is perfectly true. We have called for votes for some left unity projects unconditionally, such as the Socialist Labour Party. The reason, though, is clear. No Marxist examines any political force ripped from its context. The SLP represented a move left from Labour: perhaps towards a real prospect of a revolutionary, partyist perspective. Respect is a move right from the SA. It is driven by an increase in opportunism. It is our job to demand that move be reversed, and to check that it is.

Resolution to reverse

Comrade Cameron Richards has proposed a motion which will be put to the next aggregate of the CPGB. I recommend all comrades attend the aggregate and support it: we have made a mistake, and it is vital that we acknowledge it openly, and reverse it. One comrade commented that we had stubbed our toe, but there was no need now to shoot ourselves in the foot. I counter that we have already shot ourselves in the foot: it is no use grinning and pretending we meant to do it.

The motion runs as follows: “This aggregate overturns the decision of the previous meeting to give blanket support to Respect in the June elections. Instead, the CPGB will advocate voting for Respect where individual candidates in single-member constituencies (GLA, mayor, council) announce their support and campaign for the following: open borders, republicanism and a worker’s wage.

“Given the closed list nature of the multi-member constituencies for the European elections and the ‘top-up’ section for the GLA, it will be impermissible to vote for Respect in these elections except where the candidate at the top of a slate campaigns for open borders, republicanism and a worker’s wage”.

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This article was written by Ian Donovan, and was a reply to the article above. It appeared in the same issue: the Weekly Worker of April 8, issue number 523.

Manny’s Neira’s article, ‘No unconditional support for Respect’, published in this issue and bearing the name of several co-signatories, is riddled with inconsistencies and faulty logic. He puts forward his case for a course of action that in reality would cripple our attempts to fight to “win Respect to a revolutionary perspective” - the aim he claims to be fighting for.

I suppose one slight saving grace of Manny’s article is that he does not seem to be pushing the idea that Respect somehow constitutes a ‘popular front’. This confused notion of what Respect is about was not entirely unreasonable initially because of the public musings of some Socialist Workers Party leaders in the period before the formation of Respect about the possibility of dropping elementary demands for women’s and gay rights as “shibboleths”. But it has now been revealed to be erroneous - no wing of the ruling class is involved in Respect, nor are there any signs of aspirations to bring in such ruling class forces. Respect is simply a reprise of many of the features of the Socialist Alliance, albeit with the dilution/removal of the quasi-revolutionary positions the SA adopted particularly in its most leftwing period in the run-up to the 2001 general election.

Manny claims to be driven by some kind of principled programmatic intransigence in opposing a critical vote for all Respect candidates in the upcoming European, GLA and local elections this coming June. All through his article he makes illogical claims, such as “the resolution passed at our aggregate … breaks with the essential strategy of winning Respect to a revolutionary perspective”; or that this position “is mere electoral populism - and not socialism”. Yet such claims are not backed up by any concrete argumentation. Nowhere does Manny even begin to put forward any coherent evidence that calling for a vote for Respect candidates in this election - which by a terminological sleight of hand he dubs “unconditional” support - amounts to “giving up” any aspiration to win Respect to a “revolutionary perspective”.

In fact, the support of communists for Respect in these elections is certainly not unconditional - it is perfectly obvious to any intelligent observer that our support is conditional on Respect maintaining basic class demands in its programme - such as opposition to privatisation, anti-union laws, the persecution of immigrants and asylum-seekers, imperialist war, etc. Those are our conditions for support for Respect - and I can confidently postulate that in the extremely unlikely event that Respect abandoned these basic tenets of a minimal pro-working class political stance, we in the CPGB would not be alone in withdrawing our support from it. However, what is also true is that there is little point in making such ‘conditional support’ into a formulated tactic - since the chances of such a political transformation are rather less than overwhelming.

The particular ‘principled’ tactic Manny is advocating is not support that is conditional in this way, but rather support conditional on the acceptance by Respect candidates of a series of demands that would constitute elements of a revolutionary programme - ie, republicanism, workers’ representatives on a worker’s wage, and opposition in principle to all immigration controls. But making these conditions for support for a leftwing/working class political formation against the parties of opposing classes is a clear sectarian break from the communist tradition. If these kinds of conditions had been insisted upon throughout the history of the communist movement, it would have been unprincipled to ever call for votes for the Labour Party in an election (it has never stood for these things); for the Socialist Labour Party; for Militant Labour/Socialist Party candidates; for Ken Livingstone in 2000 - and no doubt there are other examples of such critically supportable election campaigns which did not stand for these particular demands.

Manny’s explanations of why we should adopt his tactic, in seeking to insist on revolutionary demands as a precondition for electoral support to Respect, are completely subjective. What little attempt Manny does make to motivate and theorise his position is very weak indeed.

He states near the end of his article that “Some comrades have … pointed out that we have not always demanded a minimum platform before endorsing candidates of other parties: and this is perfectly true. We have called for votes for some left unity projects unconditionally, such as the Socialist Labour Party. The reason, though, is clear. No Marxist examines any political force ripped from its context. The SLP represented a move left from Labour: perhaps towards a real prospect of a revolutionary, partyist perspective. Respect is a move right from the SA. It is driven by an increase in opportunism …”

Manny’s is a completely inadequate form of reasoning - a one-sided and therefore wrong analysis of the basis of Respect. It takes one component of Respect, the Socialist Workers Party - an important one, to be sure, with its pre-existing collection of activists - and applies logic that really concerns the evolution of that organisation alone to the whole Respect project. But, in case Manny has not noticed, there are other elements involved in Respect who have some real political following, and were never in the Socialist Alliance. Such as George Galloway MP. Such as four RMT branches, from two major cities (London and Manchester) and two rail networks (London Underground and Network Rail) that have now voted to endorse the Respect campaign for the European and GLA elections - more are almost sure to follow - and quite likely not just from the RMT but also possibly the FBU. Then there are people like Salma Yaqoob, and potentially other left-moving elements among muslim anti-war activists, from the Stop the War Coalition - who were also not involved in the Socialist Alliance. Are all these forces ‘moving to the right’? Was George Galloway expelled from the Labour Party for being too rightwing? Is the public association and candidacy of at least one prominent former leading activist from the Muslim Association of Britain with a formation dominated by avowed communists and socialists a step to the right? To ask this question is to answer it.

Manny claims that the position of critically supporting Respect candidates in the coming elections “takes the Respect leadership’s intermittent claims to be ‘pro-working class’ at face value, rather than testing them”. Thus even Manny admits that Respect claims to be “pro-working class” in terms of its public propaganda and political profile. Quite how it is only ‘intermittently’ so defeats me, however. As far as I can see, the statements in its propaganda opposing privatisation, anti-union laws, attacks on asylum-seekers, opposition to discrimination on grounds of ethnic origins, gender or sexual orientation, or opposition to imperialist intervention in the Middle East, etc have not been ‘intermittently’ retracted or contradicted by Respect. These pro-working class positions are not ‘intermittent’. Respect’s ‘pro-working class’, anti-imperialist public profile is what this new and unconsolidated formation has been propagating since its foundation.

The core of Manny’s argument, insofar as it has a logical core, is thus exposed as nonsense to begin with. Yes indeed, it is correct to say that “no Marxist examines any political force ripped from its context”, and it is also true that the tactic of selectively supporting some candidates as against others, based on some sort of minimal programmatic test, is a correct tactic in some circumstances. We favour applying this tactic to the Labour Party, for inducing differentiation between those candidates who claim in some real way to stand for the interests of the working class, and those who do not, who are loyal to the openly pro-capitalist, openly imperialist Blair leadership. We also advocated the Socialist Alliance use this tactic; it would also be correct to advocate that Respect does likewise. The adoption of some concrete pro-working class position, representing a break from the neoliberal/bourgeois mainstream, must be a precondition for support to individual Labour candidates.

But the problem with applying this to Respect is that simply by virtue of the statements in its founding declaration (opposition to imperialist wars, privatisation and anti-union laws, defence of asylum-seekers, its vision of “a world in which the democratic demands of the people are carried out”, as opposed to the current “chasm between ordinary working people and the political establishment” - a downbeat but unmistakable aspiration to represent the independent interests of “working people” against the bosses) any candidate standing on this minimal basis would pass this test anyway, hands down.

For me, this means that Respect’s candidates in general are supportable, albeit critically, where they confront the bosses’ parties - on the basis that, while the positions it puts forward are sufficient to indicate subjective commitment to working class interests, they are qualitatively insufficient as a programme to advance the real, historic interests of the working class. Furthermore, since Respect, at this point in time, is not a closed sect but rather an open-ended formation which does not demand exclusive agreement with its overall platform in order to join, it is possible to fight within it to improve its politics. Indeed, I consider it our duty to do so.

It would be irrational, and also incomprehensible to both the membership of Respect, as well as the wider working class movement, to use fundamentally different criteria in confronting the candidates of one leftwing organisation (Respect) with a minimum programme, than those we simultaneously use in confronting the would-be socialist and leftwing candidates of another erstwhile working class party (Labour) standing in the same elections.

Manny is actually advocating his own particular idiosyncratic version of ‘conditional support’ in the wrong place: in reality it would be perfectly principled to use such criteria for support to candidates in elections for office, candidate selections, etc, within Respect, and it is indeed conceivable that such a tactic or something similar could be of use to us in the future within Respect or some successor organisation if such a thing comes into being. But the ‘conditional support’ tactic using the criteria Manny is advocating in bourgeois elections is subjectivist sectarian idiocy: it is a Spartacist-like non-tactic. It would render us correspondingly impotent and irrelevant, and would be a priceless gift to the most backward and opportunist elements in the SWP in seeking to rally Respect against a supposedly ‘disloyal’ opposition that was incapable of committing itself to supporting Respect candidates in elections.

And there is no other political explanation, as far as I can see, for such a stance other than a sectarianism linked to a subjective dislike of some of the forces involved in initiating Respect. But when subjective dislike clouds political judgement, and is allowed to determine policy, one is actually involved in beginning to transform one’s own organisation into a sect. If the CPGB adopted the policy advocated by comrade Manny, then as far as I am concerned it would not be the reassertion of some kind of ‘principled’ policy for our organisation, but a real milestone of our sectarian degeneration - something that would itself require a serious struggle to reverse and defeat.

And that is the core of Manny’s reasoning - that the undeniable rightward motion and capitulations undergone by the SWP leadership in order to cement the alliances that got this project off the ground should be equated with the project itself. For Manny, a precondition for any support to the project as a whole is that the SWP reverse the capitulations on matters concerning its own, quasi-revolutionary world outlook, in the process of initiating the project. This is a very narrow view of our tasks: it reduces our activities around Respect to a war of words with the SWP around these capitulations. It is a purely reactive approach, which in reality excludes any real initiative on our part in the broader movement. While the methods the SWP used to get this bloc off the ground are not ours, nevertheless I would argue that, given the concrete conditions of the anti-war movement in 2003, were we in a stronger position and able to initiate blocs with forces drawn into that movement, we would also have sought some sort of political alliance with the likes of George Galloway, and many of the radicalised petty bourgeois elements the SWP have sought to ally with.

Not by means of the methods of the SWP, of actively opposing positions that it could have won wider support for, in the interests of unity with absent but broader forces. These are unprincipled tactics, that involve the surrender of positions already won - I believe that if the Socialist Alliance had had a better leadership than was provided by the SWP, particular during the crucial war period, many of the forces now gathering around Respect, and indeed much more, could have been pulled towards and incorporated into the Socialist Alliance as it evolved into the beginnings of a genuine working class party. But that did not happen, and now communists have to take account of the new situation represented by the eclipse of the SA and the advent of Respect - and draw the correct tactical conclusions with the aim of maximising communist influence in this new situation.

The subjectivist, irrational and sectarian positions put forward by Manny must be firmly rejected by the CPGB because they are an obstacle to the growth of communist influence in Respect that Manny claims to want to see come about.

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This article was written by Manny Neira, and was a reply to the article above. It appeared in the the Weekly Worker of April 15, issue number 524.

Comrade Ian Donovan has found a new approach in countering the argument I presented last week under the title ‘No unconditional vote for Respect!’ He is trying to confuse me to death.

If you missed it, I, and indeed five other comrades, argued that we should reverse the following resolution passed at the CPGB aggregate on March 21: “Recognising the need for the anti-war, pro-working class opposition to Blair to take on partyist form, the CPGB will work to ensure the biggest possible vote for Respect on June 10.”

His snappily titled ‘Communist tactics, not sectarian subjectivism’ (printed across the page in the same issue, but with prior sight of my own piece) asserts that I offer either no arguments, or only irrational ones. In fact, by my count, it argues this 17 times in the space of one page, so he clearly feels it quite strongly. I must have had a bad day: what did I fill the page with - recipes?

Presumably driven by the absence of any arguments in my article to respond to, Ian chooses the only possible course: write some of his own, and then knock them down. It was with a certain bemusement that I watched Ian’s brutal shadow-boxing begin.

“I suppose one slight saving grace of Manny’s article is that he does not seem to be pushing the idea that Respect somehow constitutes a ‘popular front’. This confused notion …”

Well, he’s got himself on the ropes there. I don’t know who to back in this fight: Ian or Ian. This swift uppercut to his own jaw seems to have woken him to the absence of an opponent. He turns to where he thinks I am standing …

“Manny claims to be driven by some kind of principled programmatic intransigence …”

… only to punch the air and fall over. Having read my article again several times, I cannot find this claim, do not support it, do not wish to make it, and (if all else fails to persuade him) would like to formally withdraw any intention of ever claiming it in the future. This is chiefly because, while I have no idea what it means, I feel confident it does not mean ‘I’m happy with any tactic which advances the building of a Communist Party, and don’t think unconditional Respect votes fit the bill’.

There is still not much for me to do in this fight.

“Nowhere does Manny even begin to put forward any coherent evidence that calling for a vote for Respect candidates in this election - which by a terminological sleight of hand he dubs ‘unconditional’ support - amounts to ‘giving up’ any aspiration to win Respect to a ‘revolutionary perspective’.”

Here, at last, is something I actually said. Now, first, let me explain the sneaky trick behind the “terminological sleight of hand” Ian accuses me of for using the word ‘unconditional’.

I am arguing that we should only recommend votes for candidates on the condition that they commit themselves to stand for republicanism, open borders, and workers’ representation on a worker’s wage: hence ‘conditional’. The resolution passed at aggregate imposes no conditions, and simply calls for the “biggest possible vote”, hence ‘unconditional’. I apologise unreservedly to anyone who was misled by this clearly dishonest use of these words.

Like Ian, for instance. “It is perfectly obvious to any intelligent observer that our support is conditional on Respect maintaining basic class demands in its programme - such as opposition to privatisation, anti-union laws, the persecution of immigrants and asylum-seekers, imperialist war, etc. Those are our conditions for support for Respect.”

But not republicanism, open borders, and workers’ representation on a worker’s wage, eh? This is fascinating. It seems that Ian is happy to impose conditions, but for some reason just not on those issues we presented to the founding conference and have been questioning Respect leaders and candidates about ever since.

So to impose republicanism as a condition is “sectarian subjectivism”. To impose “opposition to privatisation” as a condition, though, seemingly is not. What possible logic can lie behind this?

A moment’s thought makes it clear: Ian has chosen to make ‘conditions’ all those things he feels Respect is already committed to! This is truly a fighting stance. These are the conditions he is selecting: things that the Respect leadership have already volunteered before the conditions were raised. It is on these grounds that he considers the label ‘unconditional’ to be unjust.

Perhaps I can illustrate Ian’s use of these terms by an example. Your employer demands a pay freeze. Your union strikes in support of a demand for a 10% increase. The union leaders then come back to you and recommend a return to work without additional pay. You are outraged: ‘What, we’re just going to give in unconditionally?’ ‘No,’ you are told, ‘not unconditionally. We’re going back only on condition they don’t cut our pay.’

And this brings us to his substantive question, and indeed the question on which the politics of this whole tactic depend: how is calling for an unconditional vote (or, in case anyone can see the difference, restricting our conditions to what was granted before they were raised anyway) giving up any aspiration to win Respect to a revolutionary perspective?

I cannot do better than quote comrade Marcus Ström in last week’s ‘Party notes’.

“Yet for these conditions to be generally accepted by mainly SWP candidates it would take a political revolution within Respect. Therefore to adopt such a position is to deliberately seek a situation whereby electoral support for Respect can be withheld. This must be rejected.”

The statement deserves the most careful attention, because it is a direct answer to Ian’s question, and goes right to the heart of the issue. Imposing these conditions is equivalent to withholding electoral support only if we have already decided that the conditions will not be met. And, as Marcus rightly says, for the conditions to be accepted would take a “political revolution” within Respect: precisely the revolution we sought to bring about by demanding them in the first place!

Is it not transparently clear, therefore, that any hope of winning that argument, and causing that revolution in Respect, have been given up with the call for an unconditional vote? Do Marcus’s words bear any other analysis?

Well, I think he is wrong, and I do not think we should give up. The pressure has been effective: we have exposed the regressive, rightward trend of Respect clearly, and I see no reason to stop now. But, having said that, if I was as certain as Marcus and Ian that this fight was already lost, then I would question why we are still in Respect at all. What would we have left to gain? John Rees MEP?

It has been argued that this, in itself, is a worthwhile victory - indeed, this is all that is left if the political revolution we sought to bring about is really impossible. So let us finally turn to this question.

What is likely to happen if Respect is successful and John Rees elected?

I can see two consequences. Firstly, John Rees will argue that this is proof that his trajectory was right all along. Remember his speech at the Respect launch? “Whatever went before was not as strong as this. We fought for the declaration and voted against the things we believed in, because, while the people here are important, they are not as important as the millions out there.”

This opportunist garbage was the high point of his speech: the central message. The Socialist Alliance failed because it was too socialist. We will not make that mistake again. We will give people what they want, whatever they want, if it gets us elected.

Of course, the real reason the SA failed was precisely because of the on-off electoral front treatment it received at the hands of the Socialist Workers Party leadership. Remember that no SA speaker was allowed onto the platform at Hyde Park during the biggest demonstrations in our history, though the Greens, Plaid Cymru and even Charles bloody Kennedy were welcome: Respect has been rather better treated.

But in the most cowardly move of all, rather than leave the SA, which would clearly have been more honest as they no longer believed in it, the SWP leadership used their majority to force it to commit suicide, hand over its support to Respect, and prevent it standing candidates of its own.

We understood and exposed this clearly enough at the time. In the Weekly Worker of January 29, Marcus wrote: “This is the two-faced nature of opportunism. Talk left, act right. It’s already socialist, that’s why we should have absolutely no socialist principle in it! Leave the socialist principle to the SWP and its recruitment machine.

“... We shall energetically work in Respect and seek a wider audience there for what is needed: a mass working class alternative to both Labourism and the non-class politics of populism.”

The second consequence, perversely, is that John Rees will be in a more central position to peddle exactly the lack of principle Marcus decried so eloquently. And what is the usual course of opportunists once they have got their positions and their expense accounts? Do they tend to become more assiduous class fighters? Is John Rees playing a trick, acting soft now but ready to fight the corner of the working class once he has tricked them into electing him?

If this is the way to use elections to raise political consciousness and advance the argument for a workers’ party, then I’m a sectarian subjectivist.

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Comrade Donovan replied to comrade Neira's second article, 'For a political revolution in Respect!', in the letters page of the following Weekly Worker, dated April 22, issue number 525.

This letter was written by comrade Cameron Richards, and tackled the issue of Respect's status as a popular front raised by comrade Donovan in his article "Communist tactics not sectarian subjectivism". It appeared in the Weekly Worker of April 22, issue number 525.

Manny Neira’s latest contribution to the debate on Respect, replying to my own article ‘Communist tactics or sectarian subjectivism’, makes considerable use of his capacity for humorous commentary to give his argument the appearance of coherence. Unfortunately, on this occasion, it does not succeed in disguising the lack of substance.

Manny does not really come up with any new arguments as to why it amounts to “giving up” any aspiration to “win Respect to a revolutionary perspective” for the CPGB to offer critical electoral support to Respect candidates in the June elections based on their agreed electoral platform. Nor does he give any further elaboration as to why such a tactic amounts to “electoral populism”. His claim that my arguments are meant to “confuse him to death”, and his word games with the term ‘conditional’ to imply that the CPGB leadership is in favour of support for Respect come what may, with no conditions whatsoever (even that it continues to adhere to the basic class elements in its platform that are the basis of our critical support, that it does not abandon those demands, etc) are just playing with concepts, not a serious argument.

In fact, Manny’s claim of ‘confusion’ about this, and his pretence that my formulation on the conditional nature of our electoral support is comical and meaningless, are simply the product, unfortunately, of a certain degree of cynicism and ignorance of principled communist tactics. All communist tactics involving critical support for non-communist political formations are conditional, and are capable of being withdrawn if a formation renounces the elements in its programme that are the basis of such support. That was our position, for instance, when we gave critical support to Ken Livingstone in 2000. If Livingstone had executed a complete volte-face before that election, and announced that after all he supported the Blair government’s privatisation of London Underground, then we would have withdrawn our critical support very sharply indeed. And we would not have been alone in doing so, indeed by such a tactic we would have found a ready audience among large numbers of disillusioned Livingstone supporters.

Manny’s latest article is mostly repetition of arguments he has already made, dressed up with journalistic witticisms. But such witticisms, however pleasing to the reader, cannot substitute for political substance, any more than can more conventional forms of spin. And the one question that Manny does not even begin to address is the simplest one of all. Why does he advocate different criteria when dealing with Respect than in all other cases of leftwing forces standing against New Labour and its Kinnockite predecessor over the last decade and a half - since Lesley Mahmood’s candidature signified the eruption of the crisis caused by the deLabourisation of Labour into the electoral field? Why in his view is it principled to vote for Militant Labour, the Socialist Labour Party, today’s Socialist Party, Ken Livingstone and even elements of the Labour left standing on a record of fighting Blairism, but not Respect? None of the former stood foursquare for Manny’s holy trinity of open borders, republicanism and workers’ representatives on a worker’s wage. So why was it OK to give these people critical support, as they stood for many of the same things that are in the Respect platform, and why is it unprincipled to apply the exact same approach to Respect in elections?

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On the same letters page, comrade Cameron Richards tackled the question of Respect's popular frontism raised by comrade Donovan in 'Communist tactics not sectarian subjectivism'.

In his reply to Manny Neira’s article, ‘No unconditional support for Respect’, Ian Donovan claims Manny’s piece is “riddled with inconsistencies and faulty logic” (April 8). To these sins, I feel Ian, instead, ought to plead guilty. Let me expand.

Ian sarcastically notes that “one slight saving grace” of Manny’s article is that it didn’t claim that Respect is a popular front. Fair enough, one would suppose, given that Ian has been the most consistent supporter of Respect in the CPGB. Yet, in the very next paragraph, Ian, our toughest fighter against ‘sectarian positions’, gives a little credence to the popular front nature of Respect himself.

He writes that such a notion “was not entirely unreasonable initially because of … the possibility of dropping elementary demands for women’s and gay rights as ‘shibboleths’”. What explains the apparent inconsistency here of Ian recognising the potential popular front thrust of Respect in its earlier incarnation, Peace and Justice? A mere slip of the pen? Or has Ian changed his mind?

None of these are likely, given, as I have already noted, that Ian’s position has remained consistent throughout. He gives the game away when he adds that such notions proved to be “erroneous - no wing of the ruling class is involved in Respect, nor are there any signs of aspirations to bring in such ruling class forces”. Note the inconsistency here. Ian’s true position is that a popular front can only exist when a bloc is made with fully fledged bourgeois forces. For Ian it is not the programme of a bloc - for example, dropping women’s and gay rights - that is crucial.

As an aside, which ruling class forces, in any case, would, have blocked with Respect had it dropped these demands? Rather Ian is playing attorney for others in the party - above all, Jack Conrad. For Ian knows full well that the leadership, during the Peace and Justice stage, more than toyed with labelling Peace and Justice a popular front.

Permit me to quote Jack Conrad at some length. Last summer Jack wrote that in “swapping auto-Labourism for auto-anti-Labourism and now an electoral alliance with a section of the mosque, the Socialist Workers Party has retreated from flawed class politics and is in danger of adopting the fatal politics of the popular front” (Weekly Worker July 3 2003). Indeed Jack then asks the pertinent question: “What is a popular front? It is not, as some erroneously suggest, any and all examples of cross-class cooperation, let alone marching on the same demonstration as muslims. Such brittle sectarianism is completely alien to the tradition and practice of Marxism.”

He goes on: “A popular front is typically a bloc of parties in which the working class component practically limits itself to achieving a ‘progressive’, ‘just’ or ‘peaceful’ capitalism. Those not contented with the hollow promise of such a capitalist utopia become a problem to be surgically removed or brutally crushed - the logic of the popular front is counterrevolutionary.” Splendid stuff. And there’s more: “The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain forgets nothing and learns nothing. Robert Griffiths, John Haylett and Andrew Murray - the CPB’s leadership - laud popular fronts retrospectively and yearn to see them again. Not surprisingly then, SWP and CPB tops nowadays are at pains to emphasise how much they have in common.”

So there we have it. According to our leading theoretician, the SWP was heading in a popular front direction last summer with Peace and Justice. It didn’t matter to Jack that there were no sections of the ruling class involved in Respect. Above all, it was the liquidation of the SWP’s cherished principles to court non-working class forces - for example, sections of the mosque - that was decisive. No wonder sections of the leadership of the CPB thought there had been no better time since the 1930s to execute its popular front strategy.

Yet it has to be noted that since last summer Jack has not taken forward this analysis of the popular front. In fact nowadays, in meetings of the CPGB, Jack is heard to echo the Ian Donovan line that a popular front must have within it the forces of the ruling class. So what went wrong?

The truth is that the party buckled at the time of the Monbiot-Yaqoob document. Having thought it had seen off the Peace and Justice project, the leadership of the CPGB were surprised when this ‘new’ initiative arrived. Initially, the party was armed with the analysis that it had developed in the summer. Peter Manson, the editor of Weekly Worker, put it bluntly: “Delegates must reject any notion of some green-liberal-pacifist coalition that will take the working class movement precisely nowhere. The irony of the Yaqoob-Monbiot-SWP ‘peace and justice’ hogwash is that it is likely to be ignored by voters even more than the Socialist Alliance itself was in last month’s Brent East by-election” (Weekly Worker October 16 2003).

Yet very quickly the tone of the Weekly Worker changed. The most consistent advocate of the new course was Ian. He wrote: “The Monbiot-Yaqoob draft programme is a classic hodgepodge, but it is also something that communists and revolutionary socialists need to engage with, albeit critically. It is still quite feasible that this could be the basis of something that could give a positive political expression to the mass anti-war movement, whose evident political potential has so far only been expressed (as a complete travesty) by the treacherous Liberal Democrats” (October 30 2003).

Fair enough, perhaps. Only comrade John Pearson (now expelled from the CPGB) disagreed with critically engaging with Respect. Yet the popular front designation given to Peace and Justice was not applied to Respect. Apparently, the vaguely worded statement about equal rights in the Monbiot-Yaqoob document and the subsequent Respect statement of principles were sufficient to satisfy our leadership that what we were engaging with was a populist coalition of largely pro-working class forces. In this sense, then, the leadership saw something qualitatively superior in Respect over Peace and Justice. Yet a cursory glance at Jack Conrad’s earlier article showed that the popular front nature of Respect was alive and well. Has the working class component of Respect - chiefly the SWP- practically limited Respect to achieving a capitalist utopia? Yes. Have those in opposition to this ‘bonfire of principles’ - the CPGB - become a problem to be surgically removed? In practice, yes.

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