[Marxism] Respect in split

[Jscotlive@xxxxxxx]

Lenin's Tomb has replied refuting my previous post on the current crisis in  
Respect. For the purposes of clarification, here is the by-line which heads  
Chris Bambery's piece on the Socialist Worker website. It reads:
 
'Stop the attacks on the left vision for Respect.'
 
The assumption implied in this heading, and the tenor of the piece in  
general, is that only the SWP hold, are capable of holding, a left vision for  
Respect. Again, the arrogance and hubris in such a pronouncement lies at the  
heart 
of this. Lenin's Tomb fails to address my query as to what motivation lies  
behind such notable figures on the Left as Ken Loach, Alan Thornett, Linda  
Smith, et al, lining up with Galloway against the SWP on this issue. 
 
Regards his assertions that the original conception of the Respect project  
was that it would begin with the Muslim vote and then farm out to wider layers  
of the working class, surely then this is a question of tactics. Perhaps  
Galloway and others, among them socialists of some regard and experience, have  
judged that the priority for now must remain with mobilising in the  Muslim  
and immigrant communities. 
 
This constant refrain of the SWP that the working class in Britain is on  the 
move is just arrant nonsense. There have been a recent wave of one and two  
day strikes, unrest within the public sector, which hardly constitutes a class  
being on the move. The truth is that the SWP leadership have decided to 
change  priorities away from the muslim and immigrant community because they 
have 
failed  to win them to their left vision. 
 
This is not principle, this is opportunism. It is a constant criticism of  
the SWP from those outwith their ranks who have worked with them in the past.  
The history of the left in Britain is littered with abandoned campaigns by the  
SWP. I was at the national Stop the War conference in London last weekend. 
John  Rees had the audacity to claim that it was Stop the War (which means the 
SWP)  responsible for forcing Blair out of office. What shit. The antiwar 
movement in  the UK has had no meaningful impact on the policies of the British 
Government  with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraqi Resistance forced 
Blair from  office.
 
Finally, Galloway's support for the former Soviet Union and his criticism  of 
Leninist formations in Britain is no contradiction. You simply cannot  
conflate the two. The Soviet Union, which by the way I also support, arose and  
developed out of far different material conditions that we are faced with in 
the  
UK today. It is this deterministic recreation of an organisational model  
designed to combat conditions in Tsarist Russia that Galloway is referring to.  
You cannot ride two horses with the one arse. You are either in a mass party or 
 
in a vanguard party. Oil and water do not mix.
 
A letter has been sent out by Socialist Worker in New Zealand. It contains  
in my view the best analysis and way forward thus far presented. I have pasted  
the link below.
 
_http://respectuk.blogspot.com/_ (http://respectuk.blogspot.com/) 
 
 



   
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