|
|
|
Respect victory – a new dawn for the
left?
JM Thorn
The
election of George Galloway as an MP for the Respect Coalition has been hailed
as a major breakthrough for the left in Britain. Contesting its first general
election, Respect overturned a Labour majority of ten thousand in the East End
constituency of Bethnal Green & Bow to take the seat from the sitting MP and
loyal Blairite Oona King. Respect also posted impressive results in a number of
other constituencies in London and Birmingham, with support for its candidates
ranging from sixteen to twenty seven percent. In electoral terms the Respect
intervention in the British general election can be judged a partial success.
The significance of Galloway’s victory, the first person since 1945 to be
elected to Westminster for a party that presents itself as being to the left of
Labour, should not be dismissed. However, neither should it exaggerated.
A closer
examination of Respect’s results show wide variations in support. When the votes
from the five constituencies where the party did best are deducted from its
total the average Respect vote falls from 6.97 percent to 2.7 percent. In 12 of
the 26 seats contested by Respect, the candidates received less than two percent
of the vote. This figure is closer to the low level of support won by various
far left formations that have contested elections in the recent past. So what is
the reason for the disparities in the Respect vote? The answer lies in the
religious composition of the constituencies where it stood. It was in the
constituencies with large Muslim populations, in the East End of London and
Birmingham, where Respect got its highest votes. For example, in Bethnal Green
and Bow, the site of Galloway’s victory, over forty per cent of the population
are Muslims of Bangladeshi descent. What the results demonstrate is that Respect
draws the bulk of its support from Muslim communities. In itself this is not a
negative development. Historically, left parties have drawn support from members
of ethnic minority groups who have had a disproportional representation among
the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class. So in the East End
of London during the 1930s, when the left was leading anti-fascist struggles, it
drew much of its support from the Jewish population that lived there. This could
be compared with the role of the left in today’s anti-war movement and the
support it has drawn from the Muslim population. However, there is a critical
difference in the basis on which that support has been won. For unlike the
1930s, when socialists appealed to Jews as members of the working class, Respect
is appealing to Muslims as members of a religious community.
Respect and Islam
This
accommodation to religion is reflected in both the politics and organisation of
Respect. In its accommodation of Islam and orientation towards imams and
“community leaders” the basic tenets of socialism have been abandoned. What
makes this particularly disturbing is that many of the groups in Britain that
claim to be upholders of the Marxist tradition, the most important being the
Socialist Workers’ Party, are centrally involved in constructing the Respect
programme.
An example
of the dangers of accommodating religious ideas is illustrated most clearly in
Respect’s position on women, and in particular the controversial issue of Muslim
women and the headscarf (hijab). Its spokespersons have glorified the wearing of
the hijab as being somehow progressive. At the founding conference of Respect,
an SWP leader spoke of her pride at addressing an audience where so many young
women were wearing the hijab. A recent edition of Respect Newsletter carried an
article claiming that: “Women are often judged by their looks or bodies. Hijab
forces society to judge women for their value as human beings. A woman in a
Hijab sends a message: ‘Deal with my brain, not my body!’ … For British Muslims
facing the fear of losing their identity, RESPECT is THE only party.” Although
these arguments have a progressive veneer, they are essentially a defence of the
oppression faced by Muslim women. The wearing of the hijab is not a symbol of
the independence of Muslim women but of their subordination to men. Taken to
their logical extreme the Respect arguments could be used to justify the
segregation of men and women and the wearing of the burqa. George Galloway has
endeared himself to Islamic groups by playing up his own religious views, making
it clear that he is a Catholic and “strongly against abortion”. The SWP has
refused to publicly challenge these views, on the grounds that they are
Galloway’s personal opinions. But with Respect so closely identified with him
they can only be seen as those of the party. In the absence of a clear
commitment to women’s equality and their rights to divorce, contraception and
abortion etc, this is the only inference that can be drawn. What were once seen
as fundamental socialist principles, such as women’s equality, have been
abandoned or completely distorted in order to accommodate religious prejudices.
Marxism and religion
The
Marxist position on religion has long been established. We support democratic
rights, which includes freedom of worship. We also defend those who are being
oppressed because of their religious background. Today we should defend the
right of Muslims to practice their religion, and oppose the whipping up of
prejudice against them that has been associated with the “war on terror”.
However, at the same time we shouldn’t accommodate to religious ideas in any
way, or feed the illusion that one religious group is uniquely oppressed. For
Marxists, the influence of religion on the working class acts as a brake on the
struggle against capitalism. It is both an expression of powerlessness of
workers, and an ideology used by the ruling class to justify the status quo. The
idea of a religious community is an attempt to mask the class structure of
society by creating an artificial bond between conflicting classes. If the
working class is to successfully struggle against capitalism then it will have
to reject the basic tenets of religion. This is why socialists have sought to
combat religion through promoting science and a materialist viewpoint. For
socialists to accommodate to religious ideas is a betrayal of the cause of the
working class.
This does
not mean that socialist organisations refuse to recruit people who hold
religious ideas or work with religious groups. The essential point is that this
should not influence the politics of those organisations. It is quite legitimate
for socialists to work with Muslims in struggles against racism or war, but we
should not dilute our political programme to win their support or conceal our
political differences. The problem with Respect is that it does both these. It
emerged from the British anti-war movement in which socialists, particularly the
SWP, diluted their politics to accommodate the widest possible platform. This
was a platform that extended from revolutionary socialists to the CND to the
Muslim Association of Britain. It even included the Liberal Democratic Party
which, despite its anti-war rhetoric, subsequently supported the invasion of
Iraq. The opportunity was there to build an anti-war movement based on the
working class, but this was consciously rejected by the socialist organisations
involved in favour of building the broadest possible movement. The formation of
Respect has taken this a stage further, moving from a tactical alliance between
socialists and Muslims on one issue to a political fusion between them. The
result of such a fusion can only be the import of bourgeois and reactionary
ideas into the left.
Old Labour
A second
element of the Respect programme has been an appeal to disillusioned Labour
Party supporters. However, this appeal has been based not on breaking people
from the politics of Labourism but on presenting itself as the custodian of
traditional Labour values. Respect is portrayed as “Old Labour” as opposed to
Blair’s “New Labour”. George Galloway made this explicit when described the
party as the “ghost of Labour past—we are what Labour supporters want it to be.”
This perpetuates that myth that Labour was essentially a socialist party before
the rise of Blair. Yet even a glance at the history of the British Labour Party
would dispel this. It has always been pro-imperialist, supporting every colonial
war fought by Britain. It has always supported capitalism. The Keynesian
economic strategy and welfare state policies that marked what is hailed as the
heyday of Labourism was actually the broadly agreed programme of the ruling
class for reviving the British economy in the post war period. These policies
did not represent socialism or even a step towards it. The Labour Party has also
had an appalling record on race, introducing some of the most restrictive
immigration laws on the statute book.
The
consequence of building up this myth about Old Labour is to actually blunt the
challenge to the current Labour leadership. Respect appeals to people who are
opposed to Blair on the basis that support for it won’t damage the Labour Party.
By pledging not to “break the unity of the labour movement” Respect is actually
binding a potential opposition to the current Labour Party and trade union
leaderships. It is claimed that the result of supporting Respect will be to
“make it easier for the left inside the Labour Party.” In the event of a
significant vote for Respect, “The whole political spectrum will be forced to
move to the left.” Respect is therefore not presenting itself as an alternative
to the Labour Party but as a vehicle to reform it. This is just a retread of the
old strategy of capturing the Labour Party for socialism, and supporting left
wing figures within it like Bevan or Benn. However we don’t have to look at the
50’s or 80’s to demonstrate the fallacy of this. Within the last five years we
have had a similar phenomenon with the rise of the trade union “awkward squad”
and the expulsion of Ken Livingstone from the Labour Party. The left latched on
to these developments as evidence of opposition to Blair. But what happened?
From the beginning Livingstone explicitly rejected any attempts to build an
alternative to Labour. This killed off the Socialist Alliance project, which was
based on the belief that his expulsion would herald an exodus from the Labour
Party. After serving as an independent, Livingstone gladly accepted an
invitation to rejoin the Labour Party, with Blair praising his responsible
leadership as the mayor of London. The so-called trade union “awkward squad”,
with the notable exceptions of the RMT and FBU, pledged their support to the
Labour leadership and signed up to an election manifesto that promised an
assault on public services, including the dismissal of 100,000 fellow unionists
from the civil service. In peddling the myth of Old Labour Respect is leading
the opposition to Blair into a dead end. It also diverts socialists from the
urgent task of building a working class party. If the socialists involved in
Respect had the building of such a party as their goal, then splits within the
Labour Party’s ranks and the disaffiliation of trade unions from the party,
would be welcomed not feared.
Conclusion
As it is
currently constituted Respect does not represent a socialist alternative to the
Labour Party. It is a mixture of “Old Labour” and community politics. However,
of these, the pull of community politics is the greater. The election results
show that Respect’s successes were based on support from Muslims. Where it
appealed for support on the basis of “Old Labour” values it failed. As the
objective of Respect is to build itself to as an electoral force, the likelihood
is that it will accommodate even more to Islamic sentiment and the conservatism
of Muslim “leaders”. Such a trajectory will take it further away from any
concept of socialism. Worst of all, it risks creating further divisions in the
working class, as a party for Muslims would have no appeal to workers from a
different religious background. There is a very real danger that Respect and the
socialists within it will end up in a political ghetto.
June 2005
|
|
|
JM Thorn is a supporter of
Socialist Democracy in Ireland. Socialist
democracy is the Irish section of the USFI, and it is the sister organisation to
the International Socialist Group.
|
