Comments on: Opinion: Not so happy birthday

By: Darrell

Darrell — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:43:10 +0000

While I wouldnt dispute that Respect may have done this in some areas the problem is, as you rightly say, that due to it’s fragmentation where are those people now to go??

I don’t think the problem was just the SWP, though undoubtedly that would have been a factor, but also the somewhat difficult personality of George Galloway…he rather encapsulated a problem with the left which often finds itself in very very dodgy alliances of conveinence with people whose politics have frankly nothing to do with progressive politics….

By: Geoffrey Payne

Geoffrey Payne — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:16:40 +0000

Respect did do a useful job in parts of the country in providing young muslims with a political alternative to Al Qaeda.
Not only that, although Liberals like to accuse Respect of being homophobic, it would probably be more accurate to point out that Respect may have influenced many muslims not to be homophobic.
However Respect was doomed, like any other movement of the left – including some like the anti-war movement who are worth supporting – by the involvement of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and other far left parties.
Now that Respect are fragmenting, the danger is that Hizb ut-Tahrir will benefit.
I also think that our troops should leave soon. There are no realistic objectives for our troops that can justify the cost of having them there. We are dammed either way, whether they stay or leave, but that is the inescapable consequence of being defeated, which like or not we certainly are.

By: Darrell

Darrell — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:44:49 +0000

Well if you watched Peter Oburne’s program on C4 the other nite then there was plenty of anecdotal evidence there of young Muslim’s who felt totally alienated and ignored…Respect was not really an attempt by Muslim’s to find a political voice it was a leftist coalition of various interests….

By: Hywel Morgan

Hywel Morgan — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:40:43 +0000

“One of the bitterest legacies of the Iraq conflict is that it is not just Muslims who have been alienated from the political process,”

How do you come to this conclusion? One of the outcomes of the Iraq war was the formation of Respect which in part was a move by (some) Muslims to engage with the political process by forming their own party to represent particular viewpoints (that it was an alliance with the SWP which was fundamentally flawed from the start is a different point!)

I’ve not seen a drop off in turnout in predominantly Muslim areas either since 2003 – if anything the opposite may be the case.