Fisher_Gate said:
I wrote this before I had read this:
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1343
which takes the story a stage further.
'Dubaigate' is truly an amazing development.
The SWP Central Committee have *** APOLOGISED *** to SWP members for not telling them they took money from an illegal foreign source to fund Respect. Although not quite ... they've told the SWP membership that the money is tainted with being linked to tory privatisers, not that it was probably illegal.
Four SWP Central Committee members discussed this donation in detail in a meeting with George Galloway on 4th September - Galloway argued that the fact that Rees had put the money into an account, the ultimate recipient of which was Respect, had put the organisation at risk of legal action.
The SWP CC then proceeded to tell the SWP membershp that Galloway witch-hunted them over some "obscure cheque"; they also denied the whole thing in the form of a statement from John Rees, co-signed by Elaine Graham-Leigh, issued and published to the SWP membership, through its submission by the Central Committee to the Pre Conference Discussion Bulletin number 1 in October (page 22 section 3 for those SWP members who want to check what was said for themselves).
Galloway explains:
"I did not include this issue in my letter to the Respect National Council in late August as I wanted to resolve matters concerning this donation as quickly as possible and without any possibility of it embarrassing either Respect or OFFU. It was however part of the my opening remarks at a meeting with SWP Central Committee members John Rees, Lindsey German, Chris Bambery and Alex Callinicos on 4 September. These remarks were made in the context of my accusation against John Rees of his lack of accountability and his recklessness on this and another matter. However, they were dismissed by John Rees as being a cover for a right wing attack on the left in Respect. At a meeting of 250 London SWP members later that week, Alex Callinicos referred to my having spent 25 minutes going on about an obscure cheque."
Come on nwnm, mutley et al - I bet you know people who were there - is it true what Callinicos is reported to have said at the SWP meeting?
The SWP CC cynically used the claim (now known to be accurate) by Galloway that OFFU had lost money and that this was due to incompetence, by denying it was true and whipping up the SWP membership into a belief there was a left/right witch-hunt.
Galloway continued to refer to the cheque in e-mails to the SWP during September, and eventuallyl decided to refer the matter to the Electoral Commission in order to protect his own position as Respect's sole MP.
In December, over three months after Galloway raised it and 10 months after the cheque arrived, the East London Advertiser picked up the story, including a quote from Rees defending the receipt of the money.
The SWP CC have now (and only now) cooked up a story to pretend that they have only just discovered (10 months after the cheque was received) that it
might just be dodgy.
However they are claiming that it is because it might be considered anti-union. Andy Newman on the SU blog is probably right when he says that the SWP CC have probably taken legal advice about the donation, and have been advised that as a foreign donation it was illegal for Respect to have received this donation, and that John Rees and Elaine Graham-Leigh as the officers of Respect who handled the Dubai money (no-one else in Respect or OFFU knew where the money went) could be in deep trouble. Therefore they have used the link with tory privatisers to try to find a way out by giving the money back and the SWP paying over the same amount.
At least when the Labour Party was caught taking foreign donations the General Secretary had the guts to resign. No such principles from John Rees.
But the amazing thing is that at last the doctrine of CC infalibility is blown apart in the SWP. The four members of the SWP CC who met with Galloway in September are now shown to be liars and charlatans. How many other things in the split inside Respect have they misled the SWP membership about? If they could hide the Dubai cheque what else are they hiding? If they could be so stupid as to think that a foreign donation was going to be okay, after both the Labour Party and Tory Party have been caught out by it, how can anyone trust their political judgement about anything?
If the SWP membership do not take steps to remove the people responsible for this farago of lies and deceit at their conference in January, no SWP member will ever be able to hold their head up inside the Labour movement with any integrity again. Every right wing real witch-hunter in the labour movement will respond to every initiative raised by an SWP member saying "How do we know this isn't funded by capitalist companies with a link to Tory privatisers?".
So come on nwnm, mutley et al, let's hear what you think about this one?
here is Galloway's letter to Michael Gavan:
