disRESPECT - the disunity coalition
I have read in various places that RESPECT is having problems. It seems that George Galloway and the SWP have fallen out and now there are letters flying around. I suspect that some poor sods are having frequent ‘emergency meetings’, or whatever the correct term is, at unsociable hours.
I had the misfortune to come across the SWP through the Stop the War Coalition at LSE and learnt what should have been an obvious lesson - the only aims that the SWP and SWSS have in participating in things like RESPECT and the StWC are to increase the membership of the SWP. I’m sure that the motivation behind it is actually honest, founded on a belief that only the SWP way will save us all. Unfortunately, it knackers anyone else’s attempts to do anything. The ‘we are all Hezbollah now’ posters are a case in point - they are pretty crap PR unless you’re trying to show just how militant you really are and attract people who are already half-converted.
There is a point to this post - rather, a couple of questions. Firstly; why don’t the SWP contest elections as the SWP and secondly; why is the SWSS kept so separate from the workers of the SWP-proper? I’d genuinely like some enlightenment.
xD.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
They don’t contest elections under their own colours because that would only serve to highlight their derisory levels of support among the “masses”.
SWSS is not seperate in the sense of enjoying any genuine political autonomy. The party tries to assign full time organisers to each major HEI to provide direction. Because students are even more prone however to drop out than other cadres I guess it makes some sense to organise seperately so that splits and controversy does not damage the mainstream party. SWSS organisers also aim to talent spot and develop particularly receptive people into committed revolutionaries. The SWP is a ‘vanguardist’ party that sees itself as the praetorian guard of the workers. Such elitist mentality is part of the reason why they focus such effort on recruiting middle class students by organising in HEI’s rather than on the shopfloor (the ‘workers’ it transpires have depressingly little interest in proletarian revolution vis a vis basic bread and butter improvements).
October 25th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Thankyou - I genuinely appreciate the answer and you’ve enlightened me.
Can I ask how they justify both these things? If they see themselves as the vanguard needed to educate the masses, why would they care about elections? The CP did well in the interwar period by having a single LCC councillor - Bob Darke - and using him to shout about things a lot, at least drawing (bourgeois) attention to problems.