As you say "(t)he main bulk of campaigners for George and other Respect candidates has always been supplied by the SWP, and they will not be so now". What I wanted to point out was that the same was the case with old Labour where, come elections, the mainly Trotskyist left, including the SWP, were the most active campaigners for every leader from Callaghan through Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock to John Smith. Their presence in and ultimate departure from the Labour fold, voluntary or otherwise, however meant little in the end for the electoral success (or not) of Labour. The left's 'critical support' strategy did however waste a great deal of it resources and ultimately demoralised its members and a quite substantial left periphery (certainly numbering in the tens of thousands) without significantly increasing its organised membership.
The similarity lies in an opportunistic orientation towards labourism in both cases in the vain expectation of rapid growth.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Lenin's Tomb Sent: 04 November 2007 01:43 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Respect Split Complete
On 11/4/07, Russell Grinker <grinker at mweb.co.za> wrote:
>
> The new model Labour Party seems to have managed just fine after the
> expulsion of various left entrist organisations and the loss of assorted
> election-time LP campaigners (including the 'Leninist' SWP) - why not
> Galloway?
You can't really have thought this through.
1) The SWP was never in the Labour Party to my knowledge - its IS predecessors may have been, but were never expelled and never campaigned for the Labour Party.
2) The main difference is that the Labour Party was a mass party with decades of existence and years in office behind it, and with hundreds of thousands of members who could knock doors and put up posters and so on. The Labour Party could expel Militant members without a great loss. Respect has slightly over 2,100 members, almost half of whom have signed the SWP's appeal, and - far from expelling anyone - is being split by a faction around George Galloway.
3) There are no entrist organisations in Respect - Respect was always an open alliance between reformists and revolutionaries. The main bulk of campaigners for George and other Respect candidates has always been supplied by the SWP, and they will not be so now. George's skilled media networking and fame will not be enough to beat either Fitzpatrick or Livingstone, and so it seems unlikely that he can win another term.
Your comparison is frankly so ludicrous, so oddball, so estranged from reality, that I can only hope it is an effort at satire. ___________________________________