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Weekly Worker 546 Thursday September 30 2004
Open letter to Respect
Comrades and friends
We are writing to express our serious misgivings about the proposed arrangements
for the forthcoming Respect conference at the end of October. We are very
concerned that the format for the meeting reveals a desire on the part
of the executive committee to squeeze the already narrow space for minority
voices and critical trends within the coalition.
Currently, we have three immediate areas of concern:
- The decision to have a delegate-based conference is clearly motivated
by a desire to avoid the type of robust and educative debate that characterised
the founding convention in January of this year. At that meeting, there
was energetic discussion over a range of issues, particular the demand
for open borders, the principle of a worker’s wage for elected Respect
representatives and the abolition of the monarchy. Members of the Socialist
Workers Party took the lead in arguing against the inclusion of these
principles as Respect policies - while assuring us that they agreed with
them 100%, of course.
It seems that a delegate-based conference is a means to avoid - or at
least minimise the chance of - an embarrassing repeat performance for
our comrades in the SWP.
The justification we have heard for this arrangement is that, with just
under 4,000 Respect members nationally, we cannot book a venue big enough
to hold them all. This is clearly nonsense. Nothing like the full national
membership will make the trip to London for a two-day conference - comrades’
experience of the conferences of the Socialist Alliance should tell them
that. Given the still embryonic nature of Respect’s national infrastructure,
a delegate-based conference is premature at best, at worst a crude means
to exclude dissenting voices. Reports we receive from local branches of
Respect around the country unfortunately appear to confirm the latter.
- The provision in the executive’s draft constitution for 20 members
to have the right to submit resolutions to conference appears be a guarantee
that minority voices will have some degree of representation. Indeed,
it is described by the comrade who actually wrote the draft as a “similar
provision to the existence of platforms in the Scottish Socialist Party”
(Alan Thornett Socialist Resistance September).
But is this true? Provision is indeed made in the SSP for political platforms
(such as the SWP’s sympathising organisation, for instance) to have
real political representation at varying levels of the organisation. Nothing
like this is being proposed in Respect.
Indeed, according to Rob Hoveman in the Respect office, unless one of
the 20 members who have sponsored a given motion is actually an elected
delegate and thus able to move it, then there is no guarantee that the
motion will even be discussed or voted on! We believe that the Respect
executive must clarify this situation immediately.
- Our belief that the leadership of Respect is determined to restrict
debate and controversy in the ranks of the organisation is confirmed by
the proposed timetable for the conference. Just one hour, on the afternoon
of the second day, is devoted to resolutions from the executive, branches
and groups of members. Only 90 minutes is given over to the discussion
of our constitution and 45 minutes to the election of the national committee.
Frankly, this is an insult to the hundreds of comrades who will attend
this important event from around the country. Inevitably, sessions will
run over and the already pathetic amount of time allocated to these core
elements of the conference will be further restricted. Indeed, we wonder
why delegates are needed for an event that seems to have more of the character
of a two-day school rather than a gathering that democratically debates
and decides on the future political direction of Respect.
The EC must urgently reconsider the whole structure of the conference.
The proposed discussions on ‘War and imperialism’, ‘Housing’,
‘Kashmir’, ‘Kurdistan’, ‘Asylum’ and ‘Crime’
are important. So surely the place to debate these and other vital topics
is on the floor of conference itself, around motions that attempt to fill
out the political programme of Respect and to map out what it is going
to do about these questions.
What we are proposing is hardly original. The substantive business of
the conference of Respect should be democratic debate around, amendment
of and votes on motions submitted by its constituent parts. We are aware
that there is tendency of some comrades in the ranks of the coalition
to dub such arrangements as the “boring” habits of the “old
left”.
On the contrary, full democratic accountability, transparency and a commitment
to inclusion of dissenting voices would be a welcome - long overdue -
break from the old, bureaucratic methods of work that have done so much
to discredit the left.
Provisional Central Committee, CPGB
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