Revolutionary Platform of Respect
Website: www.revolutionaryplatformofrespect.org
Discussion
forum: groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionaryplatformofrespect
Initiated by
Steve Wallis (www.socialiststeve.me.uk,
07739 904924)
I have just set up a new website – the Revolutionary Platform Network, complete with a web-based forum with many bulletin boards. You can also find the first edition of my new newsletter Revolutionary Platform News on the website.
Respect:
the Unity Coalition is a broad, vaguely socialist,
political party in England and Wales. It was set up by the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP, which has an unofficial discussion group) in conjunction
with George Galloway (when he was expelled from New Labour for his anti-war
stance) and other people, primarily Muslims and those involved in the
now-disbanded Socialist Alliance.
Galloway was elected as Respect MP for Bethnal Green and
Bow (in the East End of London) on the 5th of May 2005.
What really put Respect (and Galloway himself) on the map
was his barnstorming performance in front of the Senate committee in the USA
when he was accused of profiteering from the oil-for-food programme which was
part of the vicious sanctions regime imposed by the West on the Iraqi people
(which I would say stopped them from rising up against Saddam Hussein due to
the difficulties getting by from day to day). Galloway not only proved these
documents fabricated and showed that the US knew and turned a blind eye to
sanctions-busting by countries like Turkey (which oppresses the Kurds within
its borders and is in NATO), but revealed
live on TV that US Secretary of State for “Defense”, Donald Rumsfeld, met Saddam
to sell him arms and maps to target the arms (which obviously came from the CIA).
The contrast between the profile and significance of
Respect and other socialist organisations in this country (such as the Socialist Party, formerly known
as the Militant
Tendency, which I joined during the 18 million-strong mass non-payment
campaign that defeated the poll tax and brought down Margaret Thatcher, and the
remnants of the Socialist Alliance of which the tiny but most promising is
known as the Democratic Socialist
Alliance) became so vast after Galloway’s performance that I decided to set
up the Revolutionary Platform of Respect, initially as a one-person organisation.
I have so far produced, and distributed copies of, two
leaflets in the name of this Revolutionary Platform. The first was during the
activities in Scotland in opposition to the G8 summit, at the time of which I
had called for a worldwide
general strike. This leaflet (which you can read by clicking here)
was also in the name of the Revolutionary Platform of
the Scottish Socialist Party, also currently a one-person organisation.
My second leaflet (which you can read by clicking here) was for the 2005 conference of Respect, which was held in London on the weekend of the 19th and 20th of November.
There is a conference discussing the crisis of working class representation in London on Saturday the 21st of January, organised by the RMT union. For details, click here, and to read a leaflet I wrote for that conference, click here.
Click here to view the Revolutionary Platform of Respect leaflet about
the 2005 conference.
Click
here to access the Revolutionary Platform of Respect discussion group.