Galloway slams own Respect party as 'divided, moribund, facing oblivion'

06 September 2007

Galloway... slating his own party

By Ted Jeory

MP GEORGE Galloway has launched an astonishing attack on his own Respect party.

He says it is divided, disorganised, 'moribund'... and faces 'oblivion' unless it urgently reforms its bickering ways.

His outburst came in a letter to party chiefs, less than a month after Respect stormed to victory in the Tower Hamlets council by-election in Shadwell.

Its timing is thought to be a signal that Galloway, who is gearing up to fight Labour's Jim Fitzpatrick in Poplar & Limehouse at the next General Election, wants to exercise more control over the party.

He is believed to want to move Respect away from the Socialist Workers Party groupings that have been upsetting Muslim supporters who he needs in order to maintain his Westminster career.

The Bethnal Green & Bow MP says in his letter to Respect's national council members that they are at a 'crossroad'.

They could follow the success in Shadwell, or the disaster of the party's dismal west London showing in the Parliamentary contest at Ealing-Southall.

"Instead of three MPs and a presence on the Greater London Assembly, we could have no MPs and no one on the GLA by this time next year," he warns.

"A few honest moments thoughts should suffice to calibrate where that would leave us... oblivion."

Respect is not punching its weight in British politics, he says, nor fulfilling its potential, due to "internal problems of our own making ... which threaten to derail the whole project."

Galloway lambasts party organisers for a lack of discipline and focus.

He cites "dogmatic attitudes" which resulted in Muslim councillors being given "high-handed instruction" by Respect's national office to attend last month's Gay Pride festival in Brighton.

"Whole areas of the country are effectively moribund as far as Respect activity is concerned," he writes.

"Fundraising is all but non-existent. We have stumbled from one financial crisis to another.

"There is a deep-seated culture of amateurism and irresponsibility on the question of money."

There was also criticism of the way Respect was taking on its party staff.

"This is a mystery to me and others," Galloway wrote.

"People pop up as staff members in jobs which have not been advertised, for which there have been no interviews and whose job descriptions are unclear and certainly unpublished.

"It is bad management to allow such culture and practices to proliferate. Relations between leading figures in Respect are at an all-time low and this must be addressed."

He concluded that only by an urgent shake-up of party structures, with him at the centre of a powerful elections committee, could "deep and lasting divisions" be healed.