levien said:
- no its a reality of the fact that Respect is a very young party with a deeply uneven national base (and requires regular reregistration to keep membership) - a result of chasing cash. Respect is also very bad at keeping up with members and following them up in a formal way - unlike an established party respect can't rely on a 100 year old profile and a passive base.
Don't get me wrong Levien, I quite accept that Respect is run incompetently as you suggest above. What I am saying is that being new(ish), needing money and failing to "follow up" members does not explain why Respect has only managed to get 4,000 paper members. This may come as a shock to you but almost no political parties other than the cadre groups of the far left actively "follow up" members. If Respect really was making a breakthrough it would have far, far more members than it does, a figure only slightly greater than the SWP's own claimed paper membership. Let me suggest some other factors you haven't taken into account:
1) The undemocratic way in which Respect has been set up and operated means that almost no experienced activists outside of the SWP have been willing to join it. This also covers the newer activists who happen to be involved in other left groups, groups led by people who are experienced activists. And when newer people do join, they soon find out that the only real input they have is in terms of leafletting etc because there is no democratic structure or in most places any structure at all.
2) It's entirely electoral focus has left people outside of a few areas where there is a significant Muslim population and some sympathetic local "community leaders", with little or nothing to do other than get bused around to hand out leaflets.
3) The narrowness (perceived or otherwise) of its focus on those same Muslim communities and its reliance on religious appeals has made the organisation less appealling to other sections of the working class, in particular other minority groups who seem almost entirely absent.
4) Even within those communities it hasn't experienced any major activist growth because its approach has been through established "community leaders" rather than through class appeals to workers who happen to be Muslim. What Respect has "gained" is a set of relationships with established local figures, including some Clerics and aspiring councillors, but not significant numbers of activists from a Muslim background thus far.
levien said:
The problem with your line is you assume a statement based on the reality of 2001 and the state of the left then can just be transplanted into today.
You are missing the point. What I am saying to you is that the exact same hysterical nonsense about the wonders of Respect, how important it is and how it has established itself, was being said by the same SWP leaders about the Socialist Alliance four years ago. The same people talking the same shit. I'm not saying that the Socialist Alliance was the same as Respect or that the political situation was the same - I'm saying that the SWP now as then have no ability to analyse a situation soberly and no ability to honest assess the significance of their campaigns.
levien said:
"Respect just doesn't matter that much." - i can't agree with you there at all. In terms of significance to the left Respect matters more the anything else.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. "Respect matters more than anything else", I mean what the fuck? Respect is a tiny organisation with 4,000 paper members, a national support which wouldn't figure on any opinion poll and which isn't even growing. It's sole significant achievement has been to win a parliamentary seat and do well in a couple of others. The Socialist Party in Ireland has done the same, it doesn't make us the most important thing in the country. You need to get a sense of perspective. I realise that for the SWP the current obsession is always the most important thing in the world, until the next obsession takes over. But you've been around the block for a few years now, there's little excuse for you being unable to take a step back and think.
levien said:
- It is an absentionist pose and an inflated sense of importance of your role in the TU's which lands you on this analysis.
What precisely are we "abstaining from"? An organisation with nobody in it? As for having an inflated sense of importance, we're all too aware of the limits to our own significance. We play a certain useful role in some trade unions certainly, but we are a small organisation in the greater scheme of things. The thing is though that we aren't putting forward "join the Socialist Party" or even "join some Socialist Party front" as our solution to the problems of working class political representation. What we are trying to encourage is a process of working class political organisation which is much bigger than ourselves.
levien said:
2) Constant reregistration coupled with lack of chasing people up, lack of organisation in to many areas.
You do realise that the first part of that amounts to a complaint that you can't count people who paid a membership fee once a couple of years ago as members? I hate to break it to you, but counting every last one of them wouldn't add a single real activist to your membership claim. It's a complaint that you aren't allowed to delude yourselves even further. The second part, chasing people up, is something which no political organisation outside of the cadre groups of the far left does anyway.
levien said:
3) Voting, campaigning, attending our events, sigining up for information, joining our student societies, accepting us as an important part of the debate about representation, following Galloway at he senate.
So let's get this straight, you've "engaged the generation brought up with the StW movement and involved that movement in the parliamentary arena" but yet for some unknown reason none of these people have joined you, even though the only thing which joining requires is signing a bit of paper. These people have been engaged and involved but they are also invisible. Kind of like the American Christian Right's "Moral Majority". Or as I pointed out before like the 18,000 members you used to tell us that the SWP had hidden somewhere.
levein said:
"This may come as a shock to you but the Socialist Party has been arguing for a new workers party for most of a decade now, long before Respect was even a twinkle in John Rees' eye" - As i said else where. i don' think a complete inability to progress in the face of some of the biggest social movements in recent history is a badge of honour.
1) My point was that the Socialist Party campaigning for a new workers party long predates the creation of Respect. You don't address that, presumably because it's too obviously true for you to deny. But it has something of a knock on effect on your other claims that the SWP would be open to "genuine" attempts at bringing about working class political representation outside Respect, as opposed to those nasty attempts which are really just about sectarian elements undermining Respect. Respect after all being the most important thing there is.
2) Even your criticism above manages to miss another basic point. The Socialist Party has never argued the we, the SP, will bring about a new workers party. We have never argued that it will be the Socialist Party which makes progress on that score. In fact central to our argument has been that the working class moving into struggle will create its own organisations and that the small left groups can't substitute themselves for that process. The SWP/Respect are trying to do exactly that, throw together a container and then force the working class movement to fill it. It's a deeply sectarian attitude, seeing the actions of your own tiny group as the centre of the universe.
That's quite a statement. The only sense in which I think that the formal membership of Respect is insignificant is that membership doesn't constitute a commitment to activism. The numbers of actual activists are much lower than the 4,000 formal members. I certainly wouldn't agree with you that Respects real membership "matters very little". For that matter the fact that Respect can only get 4,000 people to put their name on a bit of paper and commit to do nothing much is itself a telling statistic.
I'm nearly sure I saw him make reference to a job as an academic at some point??? 
Apparently so. 
