Martin Sullivan FOLLOWING THE degeneration of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party into a tiny Stalinoid sect, and with the Socialist Alliance having succeeded only in demonstrating its own political irrelevance, we now see yet another attempt to build a left alternative to Labour, Respect, the Unity Coalition, headed by the Socialist Workers Party and former Labour MP George Galloway.
Respect has set itself the aim of attracting the forces that were mobilised around the big demonstrations against the Iraq war last year, in order to mount an electoral challenge to the Labour Party in elections to the European Parliament and the Greater London Authority. Indeed, in a press release in February announcing its failure to agree a joint slate of candidates with the Green Party, Respect proudly declared that the new organisation was "seen as the political wing of the anti-war movement". The problems with this approach are surely obvious.
The first, of course, is the political irresponsibility of trying to harness the campaign against military intervention in Iraq to an electoral alliance centred on the Socialist Workers Party. Faced with the choice of using their own organisation to build a genuinely broad anti-war movement, or using the anti-war movement to build their own organisation, the SWP leaders have predictably chosen the latter. With the likes of Observer journalist Nick Cohen energetically denouncing the Stop the War Coalition as a Trot front, the SWP has helpfully provided such liberal supporters of US imperialism with further ammunition to attack the anti-war movement.
True, the formal position of the Stop the War Coalition is that it is organisationally and politically separate from Respect. But that is a tactical compromise the SWPers in the StWC leadership had to make in order to keep Labour lefts like Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn on board, along with other non-supporters of Respect like CND. In practice, where they have been able to get away with it the SWP and its allies have turned local StWC groups into de facto branches of the Respect Coalition. And the fact that prominent SWP members such as Lindsey German and John Rees are standing as Respect candidates, billing themselves as leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, only serves to underline the public identification of the StWC with the SWP's new electoral initiative.
The electoral policy of StWC, adopted at the instigation of the SWP and its allies, was outlined in a statement issued by its steering committee in February. It was a characteristically dishonest document, which in practice advocated a vote for Respect whilst simultaneously denying that this was what it was doing.
In a nod to Labour Party and CND members in the StWC, the statement begins with the correct argument that opposition to the Iraq war "embraces people from a very wide variety of political organisations and views" and that "the ability to mobilise people across political, religious and other boundaries in support of peace has been one of the foundations of the strength of the anti-war movement". It offers the assurance that the StWC "has never advocated electoral support for any particular Party or political movement, and does not associate itself with any one candidate or list in elections".
This is elementary common sense. A moments consideration would reveal the absurdity of asking people to back candidates on the basis of the stand they took on the Iraq war. By that criterion, faced with a choice between a Conservative who opposed the war (such as Kenneth Clark) and a Labour candidate who supported it, the StWC would be committed to argue in favour of a vote for the Tory, thus alienating the overwhelming majority of Labour supporters. Given the above quotations, therefore, you might assume that the StWC would avoid making any recommendation on who to vote for in elections.
Not so. The statement continues: "Nevertheless, the Coalition recognises the strong and growing desire to hold the Blair government to account at the ballot box for its war policy, particularly in the elections taking place on June 10 this year. We believe that voters should take this opportunity to vote for peace by supporting any candidates or parties that opposed the war in Iraq, are urging an end to the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, and are against British support for George Bush’s programme of endless war, providing only that such candidates or parties share the Coalitions founding values of support for civil liberties and opposition to racism."
Who exactly are these "candidates and parties" who support such a programme? Well, of course, there are many Labour candidates who would sign up to it, plus most Greens and the odd Lib Dem. Even though the policy of advocating a vote for particular candidates is clearly wrong, for the reasons the StWC outlined earlier in the steering committee’s statement, this would at least imply some sort of tactical approach, whereby the StWC would back those anti-war candidates, of whatever party, who stood the best chance of defeating pro-war candidates.
But such is the depth of Respects sectarianism that its leaders cannot even bring themselves to apply that tactic. Their line is that they alone represent genuine opposition to the war, and that they should therefore be the exclusive beneficiaries of an anti-war vote. As Respect chair Nick Wrack wrote in a letter to the Guardian: "Respect is the only party which unequivocally calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. We believe only the Iraqi people have the right to determine their future. The convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, Lindsey German, is Respect candidate for London mayor. Anti-war MP George Galloway heads our list for the European elections in London. Leading anti-war campaigners are heading our lists in the other constituencies." So the practical conclusion drawn from the StWC electoral policy by Respect is to stand candidates almost everywhere, irrespective of the position other candidates took on the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Quite aside from all this, there is the question of whether the anti-war movement can indeed be successfully harnessed to Respect’s electoral intervention in the way the SWP leadership imagines. Like most of the far left, the SWP holds a permanently exaggerated view of the level of political consciousness among the general population. In their own minds, the SWP leaders face a situation in which people who opposed the Iraq war are crying out for a left-wing alternative to the Labour Party. Yet, in reality, far from uniting a majority of people around a leftist agenda, the anti-war protests brought together people who had little in common politically other than their rejection of war on Iraq. <SNIP> http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/whatnext