RESPECT - the Unity Coalition regional convention

"The lesson is abundantly clear: without a relentless commitment to genuine democracy, accountability, and civilised debate, the project of winning a better world will remain grounded. The SWP shows no signs of understanding this."

 http://web.bham.ac.uk/sue_blackwell/politics/democracy.html

Can someone please try and convince me that this RESPECT thingy is going to be any different from all the other SWP fronts? Or actually explain its democratic constitution and structure, since I've been having trouble finding any info about it?

Anyone?

Ready mead perfect organisations don’t just fall from the sky.

Respect is a coalition which means that parties and organisations do not have to give up their independence. They are free to join or leave the coalition whenever they choose. What is undemocratic about that? All organisations and alliances are imperfect. They will only become what you want them to become if you actively intervene politically and struggle within them for your point of view. If you think they aren't democratic enough then fight to make them democratic as you would in a union. The SSP and Respect are attempting to offer an anti-racist/anti-imperialist alternative.

Labour is in the pocket of the corporations and Bush. The BNP are running riot in the region around Manchester and other places causing racial strife. Right now thousands of people in the North West are thinking of voting BNP. It is a horrifying prospect. What are YOU going to do about it? You cannot fight on your own and you don’t have to—there are many others from the anti-war movement who are just as appalled by Blair and the BNP.

If no attempt is made to challenge them, they may well get people elected in the Euro-elections in June this year--the PR electoral system makes this easier than the first past the post system used in General Elections. It also makes it easier for the left to get elected. Time is running out though if the left is going to challenge Labour and the BNP. Now is the time to act. Scottish Socialist Party (SSP)/Respect has tried to persuade the Greens to join the coalition, but so far no joy. But they are trying. It is not an easy task in the British left because of endemic organisational egoism.

Previous attempts to challenge Labour have suffered from shoe-string budgets and lack of finances. Some of the trades unions (RMT and others) are looking round for an alternative to Labour. The RMT has already given money to the SSP.

Respect is attempting to set up a streaming video page on its web-site in the run up to the election. It needs volunteers with expertise in this area. Anyone willing to help should contact the web admin e-mail address at the Respect web-site.

Many Asian people from the anti-war movement attended the North West RESPECT convention last Sunday.

The SWP have always been on the cutting edge of radical politics and voting for them would be ooooh so worthwhile. As an example here is the inspiring call to action by Globalise Resistance (one of the SWP’s many and wonderful faces) against the 2001 New Labour Conference:

‘The anti-capitalist movement has shown great imagination, building from its roots in a total rejection of traditional left wing politics. As part of this movement we at Globalise Resistance believe that the struggle must go on.

Thousands of anti-capitalists are to descend on Brighton on 30th September as Globalise Resistance leads the anger against New Labours privatisation and neo-liberal agenda. It is amazing that a party which when elected to power could have achieved so much, only to carry on where the Torries left off. We voted for them back in 1997, we got Tony Blair into power and now he has turned his back on us and the rest of the people of Britain.

The plan for the day itself is to have street theatre, free speech areas, chanting, paper selling, petition signing, recruiting and other direct actions. Some people may be worried by the anarchy which direct action creates. But direct action doesn’t mean anarchy, as GR s other leader Chris Banbury showed in Genoa, direct action can be well ordered and disciplined. Historically socialists have always favoured direct action, with the crushing of the Kronstand rebellion being the shining example. So the threat of direct action need not concern anyone. We are confident that elements looking to disrupt the days activities will be marginalized by the well ordered main demonstration.

Hopefully with time the more uncontrollable elements in the movement will realise that the best form of direct action is to march from Embankment to Trafalgar square, creating a proper left-wing alternative on our streets.

At your next union meeting you must pass this motion in support of the demonstration:
This meeting notes:
1. That New Labour plan to introduce large scale privatisation into our public services
2. That this is very bad
3. That New Labour aren’t very nice.
4. That the best thing to do about it is to go to Brighton, stand 2 miles away from their conference, hold a placard, sign a petition, chant, buy 3 socialist papers from people who keep pestering you, go home thoroughly bored and dejected
5. Abandon all hope of social change. Amen’

Disclaimer: For those who haven’t realised this is a spoof, stolen from our friends at afed.org.uk. Main moral of the story: if you think that the SWP has anything more to offer then any of the other lamo political parties than you’re beyond therapy!!!! And one more thing: THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE BOLSEVIZED

How about Respect showing some respect for the Indymedia guidelines. In particular:

Hierarchy : The newswire is designed to generate a news resource, not a notice-board for political parties or any other hierarchically structured organization.

The above spoof is funny... tho just looked at the afed.org.uk site which is full of the usual testosterone-fuelled politics, even more than usual. Maybe the RESPECT coalition is as good as it gets for now.

Working people's "support" of the bnp stems from the organisation successfully dumbing down its politics (as in not admitting that they're fascists!). Voters want to be offered things that appeal to their (everyone's) selfish nature, it's called survival.

Yes, working class people are getting conned by the bnp mainly because it's appealing to their ignorance over the social and economical issues and they manipulate that situation - something that the left have failed to do (appealing to the masses) for years now. Why is this when our politics has a better informed perspective on things...Is it because we concentrate too much on international issues?? if so, when will we start getting our act together and start putting out the fires in our own back yard...

The bnp probably tap into the "charity begins at home" theory that a lot of poorer (educationally as well as economically) people subscribe to. Maybe if the respect party start agitating for 'school breakfasts' or some other "small" issue of a twee and reformist nature (things that often get overlooked by your usual well-cultured lefty), maybe then when we've finally stopped boring the populace with abstract calls for international revolution(!) then we'll finally be able to share our wealth of information and ideas with those who it's mean't to be for.

Until then, let's try and dump our ideologies and be more real instead. Sectarianism works on both sides - the swp and anarchists alike.

The SWP have never had a principle for or against standing in elections, however they really don't like it when they don't get many votes!

After they got hardly any votes in the 1979 general election they didn't stand candidates for a loooong time, rather they urged people to vote Labour to get the Tories out.

After Labour came to power they couldn't urge people to vote Labour (of course with no illusions ;-) because that was rather dull and not very rrrrevolutionary sounding...

So they thought that the Socialist Alliance might be a suitable organisation that could get a decent number of votes and be of use, after all Millitant (now the Socialist Party) had managed to get some councillors elected.

So they joined the SA, the Socialist Party (understandably) walked out because they didn't want to be told what to do by the SWP, the smaller sects stayed in since this allowed then to have bigger audiances for SWP slagging (again, fair enough really...).

The SA got really crap votes, though, of course, at the time the SWP declared that the votes they got were wonderful...

So, they have decided to move on, the SA had fairly week politics (worse than the politics of the members because the SWP didn't want it to threaten the SWP so they made sure it was liberal, wooley and reformist) and since that didn't work they have decided that they need a new front organisation with even worse politics...

I expect that Respect will get a crap number of votes (is it actually standing anywhere other than London?) and this will be declared a massive victory.... and then 6 months later it will be dropped for the latest recruitment fad that the SWP's central committee trips over...

Yawn... Time for something different I think...

How about a big DON'T VOTE! campaign, after all it donsn't seem to help much and also it's nice to be with the majority of the class...

VOTING ? WHAT'S THE POINT ? WHY ANARCHISTS OPPOSE ELECTIONS

Most anarchists refuse to participate in elections. Does this mean we are anti-democratic? No, far from it, but we oppose the electoral system because it is a fraud, and we oppose the thinking behind the system because it is false.

In Britain, we have a general election once every five years or so. If a person lives for 70 odd years and first votes at twenty, then they get to write ten crosses. X X X X X X X X X X . That is all the say you have got under British 'democracy'. It's pathetic....

REPRESENTATION ENTAILS BETRAYAL

The democratic swindle starts with the idea of 'representation', one person standing for many others. You vote for somebody twice a decade, John Major or Tony Blair, perhaps, and this person represents your interests and thousands of other people in Parliament. Our experience through many years shows MP's only represent themselves and the interests of Big Business; the people who paid for the electoral ad campaign to put them there.

Already, the fault with this is obvious. One person stands for many - a whole swathe of disparate interests. All of these compete and there always will be some losers. The grosser the representation, the more losers there are, as a simple fact of electoral geometry. Before we start getting indignant about MP's, we can see similar tendencies is all political organizations, Parish Councils, even including radical groups using the method of representation. Outside mythology, there are no saints - just people. It is a simple fact of human nature that whenever you put one person in authority over others, that person will 'abuse' their position.

ALL POWER IS ABUSE


Indeed, there can be no such thing as 'right' use of power, for all power corrupts. Yet, the electoral system is the means by which political power is granted 'legitimacy' within mainstream society. We have to think long and hard before we go anywhere near elections. If, after placing that cross, the government declares war on some group of people ( eg the unemployed, travellers, ravers, etc) then all of those who voted, regardless of party, had something to do with the making of that situation and are to some extent implicated in it. Do you really want to grant it that legitimacy?

All power corrupts. This corruption spreads through all levels, wherever power is being exercised. Everybody who once had a job has walked off with pencils, taken stuff home from work. That's a trivial example but how much more so the politician? I'm not saying there is no such thing as altruism but everybody has their own hierarchy of concerns, starting with those closest to the individual and moving outwards; family, relatives, friends, people they were at school or college together with, colleagues, members of the same political party or boardroom - these will be more important than abstractions such as constituents or 'the people'.


REPRESENTATION DEPENDS ON EXCLUSION


The whole idea of political representation assumes 'the people' are not there to plead for their own interests. Representation depends on exclusion. We wouldn't need representatives if we all had the right to defend our own interests within the political system. In a debate, the MP, councillor, committee representative or whatever stands up to make his or her speech and is then faced with the choice 'do I represent the people, or do I defend my own interests?' - The point here is that it isn't rational for that 'representative' to adopt the first choice. Given the necessity of a decision between more hospital beds or my own company getting defence contracts to make Saddam's electric torture batons, which do you think will win out? Representation entails betrayal.

POWER BRINGS PASSIVITY

Power takes away another person's ability to decide something. Rightly, anarchists will have nothing to do with this. Loss of power is the logical and psychological consequence of representation; one result of the power grasping politician is the passive powerless despairing mass of people outside the halls of power. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to canvass during an election as part of their political education will have probably experienced this disheartening lack of political awareness in people. I remember talking to a woman who I knew had voted Tory in the 1987 General Election, saying 'Well, you'll get your bloody poll tax now!' She hadn't got a clue what I was talking about, didn't know what was in the Tory manifesto. This kind of story leads to the question: Should we trust the judgement of the 20 Million Sun readers?


SHOULD WE TRUST THE JUDGEMENT OF THE 20 MILLION SUN READERS ?


Democracy is the right of the majority to oppress the majority. Just because some piss pot political party was voted into power doesn't mean we have to go along with it. Two wrongs don't make a right and 13 million seven hundred and sixty thousand, five hundred and twenty five wrong opinions are still wrong. part of the problem with electoralism is that it is an abdication of responsibility. After placing his/her cross, the voter walks away and participation goes no further. This is wrong, and attitude to be exposed and opposed.

The danger of discussing the passivity problem is that you are apt to sound elitist, arrogant, dismissive of people. If you have got this impression, I am sorry. Often businessmen say 'You'll never get poor under-estimating the intelligence of people, and the politicians' arrogance is something of the same attitude. Unfortunately, things like the post poll tax 1992 election and the National Lottery seem to bear this out. If anarchists really were elitist, arrogant etc, then we would jack the whole political thing in and think up some sort of rip-off to make ourselves rich, buy an island in the Caribbean, take up other activities more rewarding to our overblown egos...

Against the anarchist arrogance charge, I say it is not wrong to hope. The answer to it starts with the declaration that this corrupt and nepotistic system of representation is not the best form of society that people can hope for. Do the passive mass of people really want to stay like that? If so then there really is no hope, but we can't believe that. Surely they have a right to be told about the possibilities, to be shown that other ways of living are possible? They have a right to be made aware that they could be free of it; and again, we ourselves have every right to try to break free of this electoral tyranny - we don't need anyone else's permission to fight it.



ELECTORAL CONTRACT EQUALS ELECTORAL CON TRICK



Ten crosses a life time is all the say you've got. The problem is that by voting you lend credibility to the system, in putting your cross on the piece of paper you are taken as giving your consent to be governed. The supporters of the state take heart from the fact that 30 million people vote in a general election. On the other hand, what would happen if nobody voted? The whole illegitimacy of the state would be exposed. From this we see that voting only encourages them.

The voter entered into a one sided 'contract' with the state - a Mephistophelian pact. At best the X can only be a coarse, very coarse approximation, for nobody completely agrees with everything in the manifesto or with every policy decision taken in the next five years of rule. In exchange for that cross on that piece of paper, the aspirations of the individual are quenched. This is a natural result of that effect of electoral dilution implied by the process of representation. Even within a single party, debate becomes channelled inside set limits, subject to the hidden or not so hidden agenda. Remember the row when Claire Short tried to initiate a Labour party discussion about drugs? Yet another person who had their aspirations quenched. Party constitutions, party whips, the electoral system, the way constituencies are gerrymandered (change the boundaries and you change the result) all of these stem from that initial principle that representation entails betrayal. 'Democracy' is the means by which the wishes of the people are prevented.

The electoral contract is one-sided because on the one hand it offers the delusion that all count equally, on the other hand electoral arithmetic means the individual counts for nothing. 10 ticks a life time. Wow. Fair votes for all? It takes an average of 36,597 votes to elect one Tory MP, 43,799 votes to elect a Labour and a staggering 333,688 votes to elect one Liberal Democrat. The reality is that it is a completely bent system.

PRAGMATISM

One argument (advanced even by anarchists) is that voting is a positive thing to do, a step towards liberation. We live in the real world, the electoral system exists and is there to be used. With hospital closures and the like, which party governs us is literally a matter of life and death. In this, Labour is assumed to be a better state of affairs than a Conservative government. Therefore we have a civic duty to cast our vote in the hope of bringing down the Tory. This argument is not claiming that Labour is any good, just that it is less worse. I used to think like this, but now the argument no longer works because Labour are no different from the Tories.

ANARCHIST ELECTORAL ALTERNATIVES

In the old days (the 1920's) people like my Grandfather wanted to vote Labour but there were no Labour candidates, so they used to write Socialist slogans on the ballot paper, or stick red stickers on them. This would be a positive alternative to simply staying at home and not voting. One thing is sure though - you never get 'NO GOVERNMENT' as an option on the ballot paper.

Other people suggest putting up anarchist candidates in elections, perhaps as serious contenders or maybe satirically and subversively along the lines of Screaming Lord Sutch. Often these would give a Sinn Fein style promise not to take up the seat if elected. Any gain from this would be miniscule, as against the waste of effort and resources. The way the system is set up, this would be seen as just another candidate.


UNDER ELECTORALISM ONCE EVERY FIVE YEARS YOU HAVE A MINUSCULE SAY

JUST TEN TICKS A LIFE TIME WITH ANARCHISM YOU GET YOUR SAY EVERY DAY


Anarchists have even stood in elections and won! In Holland, July 1970, the Kabouters polled 11% of the vote and took 5 seats on the 45 member Amsterdam council. People in favour of this say it gives a chance to put anarchist ideas across to the wider public, exposes the anarchist movement to scrutiny and invites people to take us seriously as a political force. All of these are good reasons, of course, but it has to be said that we do not need to stand in elections to put our ideas across to people. The object of elections is for politicians to gain power and create the illusion that people have a say in what goes on when they do not. Were we to stand in elections, then our motives and objectives would be different, but how would they be interpreted? To participate also implies consent in the same way that voting does. Anarchist election candidates would not be part of the power game at all, but they would join themselves with the deception and lend whatever radical credibility they might have to a flawed process. Perhaps they would be drawn into the power structure itself and swallowed whole. Is that a risk worth taking?

The reasons the Kabouters did so well was Proportional Representation. (PR) If you get 3% of the vote you get 3% of the seats. With the British First Past The Post (FPP) system, even if you get 20% of the vote like the Liberals, you still only get 3% of the seats. This is a big reason why participating in elections involves so much effort for so little gain.

SO YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A SECRET BALLOT?

Something else which is often ignored is that radical candidates in elections compromise all their supporters. It would be an act of gross stupidity for anarchists to participate in elections. You see, the ballot is not secret at all. Elections provide the state with the perfect way of tracking dissidents. When you go to vote, your number on the electoral roll (therefore your name and address) is written on the stub in the book of ballot papers, and then the paper itself is torn out (rather like a cheque book) and stamped with an embossed code identifying the polling station, and so your electoral roll. Each paper is also numbered, as are the cheque stubs. After the election is over and the votes counted, the papers, electoral rolls and ballot stub books are sent off to the Home Office, supposedly for 'safe keeping'. Teams of men from MI5 will no doubt trawl through the whole lot, doubtless looking at all the interesting candidates first. Unless anything goes wrong, they've got five whole years to work out the rest. They'll have computer scanners and electoral databases to speed it up. So any anarchist voters in a future election would very quickly find themselves on the black list. I expect the same sort of thing was going on (at a much slower pace) with regard to Grandfather's socialist stickers back in the 1920's...

POSITIVE ALTERNATIVES

The idea of representation is the main problem with elections. Representational democracy is grounded in the principle of exclusion. Ordinary people don't get a look in, you don't get members of the public making speeches in the House of Commons, nor are we allowed to vote in those division lobbies. Because there is this representation principle, the whole thing is utterly disconnected from outside.

Not voting in elections is just one (small) thing. What we need to do instead is build up positive alternatives of empowerment. We need to initiate hundreds of small, inclusive, participatory democracies, where people are involved in all decisions. One fault with representation is that it makes people passive. Tick the box and be absolved of responsibility. To some extent it is all our own fault, because if people kept active the parliamentary, representational processes would be by-passed. The system is predicated on people staying passive, but the tendency of the last decade and more is for greater and greater activism and this is starting to pay off. Voting, however, is a kind of abdication - we are too lazy to take charge of our own lives, so we place that cross and walk away. This is how and why the sleazy politicians have wormed their way in there.

We need to break out of that passive mental attitude; as wide a selection of the population as possible needs to change their way of thinking. Participating, whether by standing or voting in elections, only enhances their power at our expense. We need to create small but active political structures, completely outside that representational political culture. It cannot be done from inside. We can see how this process is already happening, effectively too, in the present. You never get a mainstream political party voluntarily disbanding itself - this clinging to power has much too hard a grip on them for that. Yet with the road protests or the CJA model - the sort of patterns to aim at, people come together to do a particular political task, and when it is over they disband the group, going on to other things. If we put our energy into this it would be a million times more productive and rewarding than wasting our time with electoral politics.

Will the Respect candidates stand against BNP candidates, or will they not risk the BNP getting elected by a split Left vote similiar to Le Pen.

Is a front who are a loose coalition of anarchists communist nilelist we are for the destruction of civilisation and for the defence of wildness. We exist to help strengthen the strictly anti-authoritarian anarchist movement and work with all other like-minded organisations. To expose The authoritarian anarchist movement and likewise The authoritarian left.. We do not see capitlism as the problem.. But civilisation.. The often sectarian left and the often sectarian anrchist (diy culture) are also a part of the probelm..

"The president is laughing cause i voted for Nader" NOFX

03.03.2004 15:55

Will the Respect candidates stand against BNP candidates, or will they not risk the BNP getting elected by a split Left vote similiar to Le Pen.

John Anderson
e-mail:  hucjs@yahoo.co.uk

What are you saying here.. Of course The dum working class are to fucking bliam for all there ills.. Not the Middle class who are The authoritarian anarchist movement / The Authoritarian left.. Not the middle class who are are often our teachers.. Not the middle class who are the media.. Not the Middle class and so forth..

parasite n 1. an organism living in or on another organism for its own benefit 2. something or somebody depending on something or somebody else for existence or support without making a useful or adequate return will that be the middle class?

1. The middle class's involvement in politics, its contradictions, and the damage done by wevolutionaries and wadicals, their insincerity...

2. How come the anarchist (?) groups who profess to have right lines, have everything but members? Are people thick or is their method of working wrong? (How come very little anarchist propaganda strikes a chord in people?)

"The revolutionary and social goals of anarchism are suffering and far-reaching to a point where the word anarchy will become part of the chic bourgeois vocabulary of the coming century - naughty, rebellious, but deliciously safe."
- Murray Bookchin, "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism"

The fucking SWP are not the only problem our class the working class face..

Until then, let's try and dump our ideologies and be more real instead. Sectarianism works on both sides - the swp and anarchists alike.

Too damm true..

As was writeen on the

27.02.2004 19:06 the whole post is here

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2004/02/286063.html

What is the point of telling me the list of your supporters? Is it suppose to impress me?
Maybe it is suppose to remind me of my pre-existing loyalties to these 'community leaders'? Fascism thrives on people without pre-existing loyalties, those that have been left out in the rain by the current political establishment. So *if* i was a prospect BNP supporter i would not have any pre-exsisting loyalties for you to remind me of. For the record i detest nationalism, and i do not think there is such a thing as 'britishness' and i do not like multiculturalism because it presumes that ethnicity is the largest factor in someones life and i happen to believe that the single largest factor affecting someones chances in life is social class.

Personally i do not agree with their tactics for opposing the BNP either, sending a leaflet to every household in sheffield before the european elections is a pius and optimistic tactic for trying to persuade people in sheffield to not vote BNP. I hope you succeed - but i doubt you will. By not addressing peoples ligitimate concerns over the
general situation in sheffield you are not dealling with the core problem. When the BNP come around with their leaflets which will probably mention the local problems they will be seen as the "radical alternative", the BNP will claim that the cause of everyones problems are the assylum seekers and non-brits - which is clearly false. The cause of many of the problems are the local and national governments, that are either are not motivated to doing anything for their constituences or are so removed from these commmunities that they do not know of the problems that they have been put in a position to solve or (as david blunket has recently done) often they actually exasserbate the situation by dividing the community along race lines (through on one hand visiting an asian community centre and on the other passing the anti-terror laws that have led to asains being locked up).
In my opinion the cause of fascism is clear, the constant division within communities along 'race' lines is the fundamental reason.

Unfortunatly it seems that these divisions are constantly reinforced by the the anti-racist propaganda, although it is dressed up as
'multiculturalism' but it has the same effect - it divides people along race lines. For the record i will go to the unite against fascism conference and if given an opportunity i will argue that dividing people along race lines is not the way forward - no matter what the reasons. As far as i am concerned dividing people along race lines is a means of
preventing people joining together along class lines.
enough, for now...

cuthbert
e-mail:  machineVman@hotmail.com

There is no wonder our class the working class are turning to scum like The BNP..

Oragnise NOW or STAY THE SAME..

For the abalition of civilisation
mozaz

stopped masturbating to politics a while ago now, but why is it that insular things like the swp are just the thing to get everyone's juices flowing in the same direction.

seems no other issue arouses radical politicos so much... i can see why tho.

Attacking the left is an enjoyable (and easy) tast but it is a diversion from the very real (and difficult) actions that need to happen closer to home. At the end of the day who cares about the SWP, for me it is not the SWP who are the problem - the problem is the elitist vanguardism in the far left (anarchism and trotskyism alike). I have no problem with the RESPECT unity coalition (except for the fact that the initials, RUC are very inscensitive to our irish brother and sisters).
The problem for me comes when these organisations start messing about within our communities and through their incompetence and ignorance allow more reactionary forces to move in (as they are doing with the unite agianst fascism thing). Or when these organisations hijack a movement (e.g. the anti-war movement) and through their actions turn the movement into one that is in a perverse way assisting the very people that are it should be opposing. With regard to the anti-war movement the SWP have turned it into an organisation that has forgotten about the afghan, iraqi and palestian people (not to mention the new imperialist war in Haiti).
As FB rightly says it is ironic that so many people are prepared to comment on an article about the SWP but if i put one up about woodside or child poverty somehow i bet there would be total silence - but that is the reality of radical politics at the moment. The sheffield StWC cam be reclaimed, there is a simple three step solution to it 1)think about what you would like the sheffield StWC to do. 2)write it down in the form of a statement, resolution or letter 3)turn up on wednesday 10th and try to get it voted through.
In summary - the SWP have alot of problems and no doubt about it they are counter revolutionairy (yes i do realise how corny that sounds) but the ceasless attack on them is actually a symptom of the illness that radical politics has. Who is to blame for the lack of movement in the radical politics scene? surely it is the radical politicans?