There was some coverage of Galloway and the Respect conference on last night's BBC news... far more than, say, UKIP, the SSP or the BNP would get. Having said that, the report was utterly bland and left the impression that it was a one-man band cos it was just George.
Respect's reported stance on Sheridan seems to support the view that the SWP believe the most recent Sheridan tape to be genuine. They've even convicted poor auld Tom of perjury before he's charged.
If Sheridan was charged, he'd have to devote all his time to defend himself. If the SWP jumped the Solidarity ship in the meantime to launch Respect in Scotland, it would leave a handful of non-aligneds and the CWI to fight it out over the carcass.
Let battle commence...
http://reclaimlabour.blogspot.com/
I think the piece about Respect standing against Sheridan is probably just untrue... although I'm willing to be corrected.
If they have recruited 10,000 students it would be absolutely monumental. 100 students in 100 universities would make Respect a force to be reckoned with...
But they definately don't have a presence at 100 universities... and are unlikely to have anything approaching 10,000 student email addresses this year let alone paid up members. My guess is this is also just rubbish.
According to the Respect website 60 people turned up to their student Respect conference a few months ago - let's see how many the next one gets...
Rumours of Respect's death have been greatly exaggerated - not least by this blog. Face reality people - Respect is the only serious left alternative to New Labour in England.
It is rather odd for a socialist blog to use an unnamed quote from a 'source close to GG' - quoted in Murdoch's Times ( no friend of the Left and of course currently at war with Sheridan) - and pass it off as 'news' that Galloway might want 'to knife' Sheridan in the back. I know you don't like Galloway, but try to stick to politics rather than pointless attacks on personalities.
I suspect the 10,000 student members is just a lie. It would make them the largest student group on campus at every university in the country and I doubt this is the case. It may be the number of people who signed a petition or contact list at freshers' fayres but not members.
The Sunday Times story seemed pretty dodgy to me, 'shit-stirring' might sum it up! But I'd be interested if someone like Snowball really thinks 10,000 students is realistic, and what it means. I read reports of huge success at places like Manchester and SOAS, but where I work I'd say Respect doesn't go much beyond the SWP and they're level-pegging with the Communist Students.
Meanwhile I was rather impressed that Galloway got prominence on Radio Four news yesterday on the back of the Respect conference, including an interview. And you know I was glad someone was on the news saying what he was saying!
When I was staffing a stall for Socialist Outlook at my fresher fair SWSS, the Socialist Worker Student Society, were signing people up on the basis of “do you hate Thatcher (or Tories) and Nazi’s” The vast majority that signed were never seen at a political meeting ever. I am sure they are now signing people up on the same basis only replacing Thatcher with Blair. I am sure doing that 10,000 but in reality that is one or two ate best in each university. Maybe you remember what they were like as you did one of the fresher fairs with me when I was at college promoting “socialist”.
What a quandary . . . Galloway claims something, so normally I'd discount it utterly. But Luke Akehurst has denied it - which would normally lead me to act like it was true. It's that old 'irresistable force meets immovable object' problem.
10,000 students recruited? In your dreams George. The annual report given to delegates at Respect's conference gave the following figures for student membership: Middlesex 138. Essex 68, SOAS 170, Manchester 300, Nottingham 97, Swansea 75, Cardiff 110, Bristol 90, Goldsmiths 160, Liverpool 106, UWE 160, UEL 88, Leeds 114. Total 1676 - and a fair number of them have probably already forgotten that they signed a list of some sort at the Freshers Fair.
Another example of the SWP school of mathematics is the difference between the membership figures circulated to the Respect leadership and those given to the infantry. The annual report originally contained a list of extant branches and their membership numbers (70 of them, ranging from Tower Hamlets with 174 members to Cumbria with 1) along with the number of delegates they sent to last year's conference and the numbers they were entitled to this year. This showed that membership is down to 2136 and that while there were 304 delegates to last year's conference there would be only 217 at this this year's.
However, ther version of the report that was given to delegates said that membership was continuing to grow and gave as evidence the 'fact' that at last year's conference there were 362 attendees this year there would be at least 416. It failed to mention that those figures were made up by 304 delegates and 58 observers in 2005 and by 217 delegates and 199 observers (mainly students I imagine) this year.
Such dishonesty just makes its perpetrators look silly and discredit Respect even more. I think that Respect is now clearly a busted flush and we have to start to discuss where we go from here rather than continuing to deceive ourselves - 'cos we sure as hell aint deceiving anyone else.
Snowball -
So is it your informed understanding is that Respect won't stand against Sheridan?
Blimey, that fresher's fair recruitment stuff is crap. We signed up 200 for the Oxford Anarchist Group in 1979 and ended up with about 50 turning up to a psiss-up and then 20 coming along to a meeting and getting involved. And that was with plentiful sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll, which Respect rather lacks. We were, incidentally, still bigger than the IMG, the SWP or the Communist Party, none of which recruited into double figures as I remember.
'Absolute Beginners' should have been one of the best pieces of musical film, but turned out to be toe-curlingly bad.
Shit, posted that comment on the wrong blog entry.
Janine,
yet, strangely appropriate...
I'd like to know where these supposed 300 members of Student Respect in Manchester are. During Labour Party conference the SWP (under the flag of the student union where one of their cdes is president as a result of a deal with the Islamic Student Society) organised a march against top-up fees. Total number of marchers somewhere around 200 to 250 - which isn't bad at all - including people from Liverpool, MU Labour Club and others I know as non-SWP leftists from the university and city.
So where has the 300 come from? And if they've come from anywhere other than SWPers imaginations where have they gone?
What is remarkable is that even the possiblility that 10,000 students might have signed up to Respect seems to fill you with horror. I just hope it is half true and not a typo or a misunderstanding.
And then you have the uncritical repeating of Murdochian lies again, trying to create splits between Sheridan and Galloway - the two most successful and well known socialists outside the Labour party in the country. Why would you do that?
This site is in hot competition with the Socialist 'Unity' Network as the Harry's Place of the left.
Nice furtniture, Sean.
Yep the 10,000 is undoubtedly bollocks.
I mean the Socialist Standard MySpace page has 12,107 friends but don't expect the abolition of the wages system anytime this week . . . or a quorate branch meeting for that matter.
Having sat on a few society stalls at various Freshers Fayres over the years (I've done a BA, an MA and I'm currently two-thirds of the way through a Bachelor of Nursing) I can honestly say that if a quarter of the people who sign up to your society ever turn up to a meeting, then you're bloody lucky.
Not to mention the many students who go to SWP/Respect meetings, think "Oh my God, what a bunch of unutterable wankers" and never turn up again. I know a few students who have done this. One friend of mine spent a month in the SWP during his first year, and left when he discovered that he was expected to infiltrate the other campaigning societies he was involved with (the Greens, People and Planet) and "convert them to the socialist agenda." He wasn't prepared to do this, so he walked straight out.
Even if the 10,000 figure is true, they'd be lucky if 1000 of those were still involved with Stoodent Wespeck by the end of the academic year.
Worraller - if the story was baseless, one would rather expect Respect to have issued a denial by now. I'm not aware that it has done so ...
I don't understand your point. My point is that people here seem to want fellow socialists to fail - they enjoy criticising other socialists and their organisations in a fashion indistiguishable from right-wingers.
I merely wonder what sort of socialist wishes to do that?
Woraller,
I think Respect is a disaster for the left. Should I want it to be a successful disaster?
You are engaging in a sort of moral blackjacking whereby anyone who disagrees with the latest SWP idea (and they change with some rapidity) ceases to be part of the left.
This is exactly how the Stalinist CPs dealt with Trotskyists and others on the left who were critical of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Stalinists vs Trotskyists - history repeating itself as farce!
As I have said elsewhere, this story is almost certinaly untrue, or simply Ron McKay mouthing off.
BUt were Resect to stand, at least as Resect is a unionist party, there would be some political difference with the SSP that voters could understand.
Anyone in Respect able to count past 5 knows that there has been a drop in the membership. The peculiar thing is that those of us who suggest that this is a setback and a problem are called "whingers". Every successful working class or socialist organisation (and I'll admit my experience of the latter is limited) takes seriously recruitment, retention and education of members. As a political method I find this refusal to count properly bewildering. However an influx of trade unionists from next month's conference would turn things around.
As for the Scottish business it sounds like bar room gossip spun into a story but it's the first admission that Tommy may not have been telling the truth.
Ice-picks at dawn!
And ...
Are the comrades wishing Tommy would fall on his pork sword?
Are the comrades wishing Tommy would fall on his pork sword?
If my spies are telling me the truth, he'd just bounce back up again. If you catch my drift.
God, is it just my pre-destined role in life to lower the tone or what?
Kit
You spend to much time over at stroppyblog, you have been corrupted 
The abiding image of the British Stalinist tendency may be a boot in the face. But for the other side, it's now some poor woman being spit-roasted by a hairy-arsed leader and his brother-in-law.
And that's my entry for the "Respect" logo, BTW. I may submit twice and make it a double entry.
With a cat.
Surrounded by used fivers.
Bruce,
Thanks for outlining my thoughts for me! I wasn't asking that you agree with everything that Respect does, merely that 'socialists' stop repeating right wing lies about the organisation.
As for what socialists should do: they should support each other's endeavours and stop giving practical support to our enemies.
I said nothing about people outside the SWP's sphere not being part of the left so your thoughts about Stalinists and Trotskyists reveal little except your own animus.
Liam,
Respect's position on organisation building has been to build on our successes - 'bridgeheads' - and to gain some electoral success from them. Now that there is no major electoral campaign in the offing the organisation is going to turn attention to recruitment and structure.
You may not agree with this but a small organisation, from its inception under attack from fellow socialists who refuse to offer support, can only do so much at any given time.
Of course, one of the main 'problems' people have is the influence of the SWP - which they then refuse to counteract by joining and making the SWP a minority. It is a self-fulfiling failure, but it makes some 'socialists' feel good, I suppose...
Anna,
The cat story. Ho, ho, comrade.
worraller
But I thought Respect was supposed to be a bid for mass appeal, votes, picking up disaffected members of the Labour Party... not a small organisation concentrating on structure and education. If that's all it is, surely it's cancelled out its own raison d'etre.
And to demand of other people they join something simply in order to make the SWP a minority... Well, 1) we already did that, with the SA (ie, joined somehting despite the SWP being the majority), only to have it closed down when the SWP decided it wanted to play a new game, and 2) surely the politics of the thing you're asking us to join should play *some* role in our decision whether to join it!
I wasn't asking that you agree with everything that Respect does, merely that 'socialists' stop repeating right-wing lies about the organisation.
Bullshit. For one thing, we don't know that the Galloway/Sheridan story is a lie - or is it our socialist duty to believe the opposite of everything that appears in the right-wing media? For another, you clearly are critical of other socialists' opposition to RESPECT (e.g. What is remarkable is that even the possiblility that 10,000 students might have signed up to Respect seems to fill you with horror.) Which is fine, as long as you realise that criticism is a two-way street: you criticise us, we'll criticise you. It's called debate.
"Sometimes a thing is true even if the Daily Telegraph says it is true."
Orwell
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