Socialist Party on Respect

The working class in Britain is effectively disenfranchised. We have three establishment parties which all act in the interests of the super-rich. For this reason a central campaign of the Socialist Party is for the building of a new mass party of the working class.

We have argued for over a decade that the trade unions should break the link with New Labour and together with anti-privatisation, environmental and anti-war activists, begin to build a party that stands in the interests of working class people. It was in order to speed up the development of such a party that we launched the Campaign for a New Workers' Party in 2005.

Some have argued that Respect the Unity Coalition – the political initiative launched by George Galloway MP and the Socialist Workers' Party in 2004 – could be a positive step towards a new mass workers' party. We would support any positive step on the road to a new party and for this reason discussed with the leadership of Respect at the time of its launch, and again in 2006.

However, while we welcomed the election of George Galloway as a Respect MP in 2005, we concluded that we could not join Respect because we believed that Respect's mistaken organisational and political approach meant it would not develop as a positive step towards a new mass workers' party but, on the contrary, could form an obstacle to the development of such a party.

Over the last few weeks a debate has broken out within Respect on many of the issues we raised. For this reason we are republishing some of our key articles and letters to Respect.