JimPage said:
An appalling decison by Galloways mob to try to prevent a Socialist candidate standing- a trick they also tried in a council by election in Leyton on the same day.
Why exactly should Respect by required to communicate with ex-respect members like George Galloway or Linda Smith on where Socialists decide to stand for election?
No-one has attempted to stop
anyone standing Jim, so get of your high horse!
The issue is purely about whether the SWP candidates are allowed to call themselves "Respect".
[Which is a bit different to the previous situation in Manchester when the SWP nationally did actually favour preventing an ex-member's nomination whose Respect branch wanted them to stand in the local elections - the SWP agreed to the standing of an SWP member only in just one ward in Manchester for two years running. ]
And Linda Smith and George Galloway are not "ex-members" of Respect - they refuse to recognise the legitimacy of the conference on 17th November.
The description of candidates is a matter of electoral law - something the SWP have been perfectly aware of over the last 5 months. If the 17th November conference had been legitimate, then the SWP could have gone to the electoral commission within two weeks of the conference and requested a change of the nominating officer. They did not, because they know that the Electoral Commission would not have accepted their version of events.
The reality is the SWP are too
scared to go to the Electoral Commission because they know their account of the events leading up to the 17th November will be rejected and come crashing down around them.
Throughout all this the SWP have not had a leg to stand on about the Respect name- and worse, have known it all along and have been stringing along their members with the pretence that they represent the continuity of Respect, when everyone knows that in reality there has been a split.
The point is that Respect had procedures for agreeing and selecting candidates, conveniently forgotten now, and that ultimately ended with a discussion and Linda Smith's assent to the nomination being in the name of Respect.
The SWP could have secured this if they had simply requested the recommencement of the negotiations, that they initiated in October, to amicably split Respect. These negotiations included, at the insistence of Galloway and Smith et al an electoral pact to cover future elections. It is the SWP who walked away from the negotiations not Galloway and Smith. It was the SWP who supported their councillors' public resignation from the Respect group in Tower Hamlets and formed an 'independent' group with their own Leader and Deputy Leader, negotiated with the LibDems on a coalition, and denounced the elected leader of the Respect group (who was elected by the whole membership not the councillors by the way), without taking any of the alleged differences up in Respect.
Once the SWP restart the negotiations there is no reason why agreement cannot be reached for candidates to be legally endorsed under the 'Respect' label - there is still time for the May elections if the SWP want to do it.
However they seem intent on a scorched earth policy and their candidates continuing to have no description on the ballot paper. How mindless is that?
They have other options - the SWP were previously registered with the Electoral Commission - they can resurrect that registration if they wish and stand their candidates under their true description. They have the absolute right to do that and no-one can do anything to stop or delay that. If they are so keen on getting their description as socialists onto the ballot paper, why do they not do that, Jim?
=)
This is a ward formerly represented by a Respect cllr (defection from Labour). It suggests that, certainly in mainly white w/c areas, support has even gone backwards since the Parliamentary by-election result of the Socialist Alliance in Preston. 
