Galloway criticises Respect office - Respect Split

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George Galloway retains Respect - Press release

The Bethnal Green and Bow MP George Galloway has won the fight to retain the name Respect for his party. The Electoral Commission has ruled that the organisation's national chair Linda Smith, who is a close ally of Galloway, is to remain the leader and nominating officer for Respect.

This ruling has effectively put paid to the attempts by the revolutionary Socialist Workers Party to hijack the Respect name for their own uses. It also makes absurd and irrelevant a meeting to be held this evening in the Conway Hall to reselect an SWP GLA list and mayoral candidate.

The Socialist Workers Party split from Respect last November after George Galloway and other leading members of Respect, including Birmingham councillor Salma Yaqoob and film director Ken Loach, criticised the party's national secretary John Rees's control over the organisation. Rees is a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party.

Subsequently the national chair of Respect, Smith, its vice chair, its only MP and most of its councillors exposed the unconstitutional nature of an SWP-organised conference around which there had been serious irregularities regarding the nominations of delegations.

The SWP meeting this evening, which is also unconstitutional, is intended to replace Respect members of the GLA list selected last year who they claim to have "expelled" from the organisation. These include national chair Smith and Newham Councillor Abdil Karim Sheikh. However, because of the Electoral Commission ruling the SWP will not be allowed to stand their new list as Respect.

George Galloway and other main figures in Respect have also expressed their strong opposition to other left candidates standing against Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. It is believed that the SWP's Lindsey German intends to stand.

Galloway is to stand for the London Assembly as part of a list of progressive Londoners who want to see the city working for the people of London. Respect's GLA list will be launched in the middle of February.

For further comment and information, phone Rob Hoveman on 07507 600561
Notes to editors:

1) Only the Nominating Officer registered with the Electoral Commission has the power to allow candidates to stand using the party's name. Therefore only candidates authorised by George Galloway ally Linda Smith will be standing as Respect candidates in forthcoming elections,

2) Not only is George Galloway not quitting Respect as erroneous news reports claimed last week, he intends to stand as the Respect candidate for Poplar and Limehouse against incumbent government minister Jim Fitzpatrick. Respect has the strong possibility of taking both Tower Hamlets seats at the next general election, as well as the Birmingham seat of Hall Green. Councillor Abjol Miah, leader of the Respect group on Tower Hamlets Council is standing for Bethnal Green and Bow against New Labour's Rushanara Ali, while Councillor Salma Yaqoob, who came close to winning a seat in parliament in 2005, will be contesting Hall Green for Respect.

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that's good to hear - now maybe the SWP will let it lie? Yeah right... haha

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Respect councillor defects to Tories
13 February 2008
EXCLUSIVE By Ted Jeory
ted.jeory@archant.co.uk

A RESPECT councillor, former ally of George Galloway and member of the Socialist Workers Party has dramatically defected to the Tories in what is being seen a major milestone in Tower Hamlets politics. Ahmed Hussain, who represents Mile End East at the Town Hall, met the Tories' shadow London minister, Bob Neill, and Tower Hamlets group leader Peter Golds to seal the move this morning (Wednesday). He becomes the local party's first ever Bengali councillor and in doing so he has made the Tories, who less than two years ago boasted just one councillor in Tower Hamlets, the authority's official opposition with eight members.

Mr Neill welcomed the defection as "momentous" and predicted that Tower Hamlets could soon become 'a Tory borough.' "It's a real step forward for the party and the area," he added.

Cllr Hussain, who was also being courted by Labour recently, said he had been interested by Tory Leader David Cameron's approach. He added: "I really believe Tower Hamlets Conservatives will continue to make a difference in this borough."

But political rivals will be dismayed and think Cllr Hussain's reputation will now lie in tatters. The former Labour supporter was one of MP George Galloway's '12 Bengali tigers' elected as a Respect councillor in 2006, and has voted against Conservative motions at the Town Hall since. He was one of four councillors to split from Galloway's Respect faction in October and remained a prominent member of the MP's bitter enemies, the SWP.

Soon after that split, he instigated exploratory talks with the Lib Dems about forming a coalition with the Respect rebels. But since the failure of those discussions, all four councillors have been weighing up their futures as all parties tried to tempt them to their sides. Cllr Hussain is the first to jump and his move comes as a bitter blow to council leader Denise Jones and Poplar & Canning Town MP Jim Fitzpatrick, both of whom are understood to have written glowing references to London party chief Ken Clark.

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From SWP to Tory in a matter of months - outstanding turncoatery!

[Mandy]

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[Mandy]

Note the comment :

"Once again the local paper has used the event to have dig at Respect (”New blow for Galloway as four more Respect members defect”) knowing full well that three of the Councillors left Respect to join the SWP-Left List months ago."

I regard "MP GEORGE Galloway’s Respect project" as http://www.respectrenewal.org of which these councillors were not affiliated to.

[Mandy]

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2541

Statement from Respect on defection of Councillor Shahed Ali

“I would not underestimate George Galloway and the organisation of his party.” – Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick to the East London Advertiser Thursday 26th June

It was announced on Wednesday that the three Tower Hamlets Left List councillors and one Respect councillor were defecting to New Labour. The defection of the three Left List councillors ought to sound the death knell of the Left List fiasco and finally lays to rest the lie that the split in Tower Hamlets Respect was between left and right.

Of the four councillors who defected eight months ago to what became the Left List, one has now gone to the Tories and three to New Labour. Oli Rahman was the registered leader and nominating officer of the Left List and its national chair.

As far as Shahed Ali, the one Respect councillor to defect is concerned, he has been alienated for a long time from the core group of councillors and might have joined the four who left last October, had he not hated the way the SWP had operated in Respect.

Sincere efforts were made by a number of councillors and others including the national secretary Nick Wrack to try to persuade him to play a positive role in Respect, but they were trying to undo damage that has been caused to the group over a period of two years by the approach taken SWP’s leaders nationally and locally. That proved impossible to overcome once the three Left List councillors concluded that their electoral interests would now be served by New Labour.

Jim Fitzpatrick, MP for Poplar, has been wooing these councillors for a long time as he is petrified at the prospect of facing George Galloway in 2010 and wants to do everything possible to damage Respect and George between now and then. He played on the councillors’ vanity and on the very poor Left List election results.

He also leant on regional officers of the Labour Party to let them in, against the wishes of many Labour Party members who rightly think these renegades are carpetbaggers. But the comment he made to the Advertiser (see top of page) in welcoming the defectors is very revealing.

Tower Hamlets Respect chair Azmal Hussain is also quoted in the East London Advertiser, describing the councillors’ actions as childish and stupid in joining New Labour’s sinking ship: the day after they were accepted into Gordon Brown’s party it came fifth in a parliamentary byelection.

Azmal’s statement is reproduced below. The Advertiser initially ran an article sympathetic to the defectors on Tuesday evening but the print edition on Thursday was much more critical citing electoral opportunism as their motivation.

These councillors and New Labour will probably both come to regret them joining the sinking ship. But they have been allowed to join because of an ongoing faction fight in the Labour Party and because Fitzpatrick is so scared of losing to George Galloway.

Respect’s councillors held their heads up high and did very well at the full council meeting on Wednesday night. Whilst no one can be happy at the fact that our original complement of twelve councillors has been reduced to six, the six who remain have the principles and the resilience to withstand the struggles ahead.

They are determined to be more coherent and effective following what we are sure will be the last defection.

Early soundings of our supporters shows there is still considerable confidence that we have a very good chance of taking not one but two parliamentary seats in Tower Hamlets, which would be a quite incredible breakthrough, and that we can elect a majority of councillors in just under two years time. With New Labour plumbing new depths of unpopularity, in Birmingham, Salma Yaqoob continues to gather the support she needs to become Britain’s first Muslim woman MP.

In Manchester, Bristol and other areas where Respect has developed a base we are continuing to deepen our support.

The split away from Respect by the SWP is now well and truly behind us. We look forward to playing our part in furthering the left as a whole, not simply our part of it.

Statement from Tower Hamlets Respect chair Azmal Hussain

“It’s a shame that these councillors have decided to join New Labour’s sinking ship. They are clearly motivated by a miscalculation as to where their prospects of re-election lie. We have no place for this kind of unprincipled opportunism in Respect.

“One minute these people say they are against war and privatisation and the next minute they are joining the party of war and privatisation. It really is extraordinarily childish and stupid. I think New Labour will find they will regret the decision to take these councillors and I know many Labour members in Tower Hamlets are very unhappy about it.

“Unfortunately, when we came to select our candidates last time round we were very new and we were not able to vet all our candidates as well as we would have wished in order to find out who had the principles and the resilience to deal with the political jungle in Tower Hamlets. We will not be making the same mistake again.

“Respect’s election results in May and the ever-growing unpopularity of New Labour show we still stand a very good chance of getting New Labour out in 2010 and taking both parliamentary seats. When we do that, we will at last have a council which will represent the majority of people from all communities in Tower Hamlets and fight for decent housing, education and rights for all.”

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This donation had been part of the reason for the whole split as far as I remember.