Re-read. “Starting nowhere and finishing sixth” was my take on what would have happened without RESPECT’s networking skillz. Point taken about the Rusholme candidate, but I don’t think removing ‘non-political’ changes my argument greatly; how about

short-cutting the grind of building up a critical mass of support by tapping into existing community networks?

Nahella Ashraf, the Respect candidate in Rusholme, came third – not sixth as you claim – winning 22% of the vote. She was selected because she was a well known housing activist in the area. To describe her or the network around her as “non-political” is at best ignorant and at worst patronising.

The comment policy here is simple – be civil. Debate is fine. Heated debate is fine. Disagreeing with anything posted here is positively welcome, as long as it’s backed up with reasoned argument and a few facts. Swearing is fine as well – we’re all grown-ups and aren’t going to be shocked by it (beyond thinking it shows a certain lack of verbal dexterity).

But if you want to lurch into agressive arguments by beginning comments with “you’re talking crap”, piss off to any other part of the internet – this is meant to be an oasis of calm amidst the shouty mass of inanity that seems to crop up in the comment sections of most other blogs.

If you insist on continuing to act all prissy and belligerent, I’ll take great pleasure in deleting your comments and blocking your IP address, because it simply isn’t very interesting. Understood?

Scratch a liberal and what do you get?!

If you’re working against that perception, what happened in Manchester? Why give up on the three wards where RESPECT stood a candidate last time out, in favour of a fourth ward, Rusholme (where a Lib Dem incumbent faced a reasonably sound old-Labour leftist)? The impression it gives is precisely of short-cutting the grind of building up a critical mass of support by tapping into existing, non-political, community networks. I’m not saying this is enough to win seats – it wasn’t enough in Rusholme, after all, or for that matter in every seat in Tower Hamlets. But I suspect it can make the difference between starting nowhere and finishing sixth, and starting fourth and finishing second.

Anyway… onto Phil E:

Ultimately I just want to say to Meaders: do you believe that RESPECT’s appeal is not, in any way, communal – that Bengali voters (say) are only hearing the same appeals as any other voter?

There’s a major problem, as pointed out in the piece, with trying to run a communalist campaign based on the “Bengali vote”: that vote is split, as the close results in TH show. So we can’t rely on networks within the Bengali community to deliver a solid vote – we have to go some way beyond them – hence door-to-door canvassing, stalls, leafet drops – the usual drill. (New Labour, interestingly, didn’t appear to bother canvassing in some central wards.) We’re necessarily having to make our appeal somewhat broader.

Do I think Bengalis are “hearing the same appeals” as everyone else? Yes, but for reasons relating partly to the war on terror and subsequent invasion of Iraq, but largely (at local council level) to the fact that working-class Bengalis have received a very raw deal from New Labour in TH it is heard more clearly. Their experience, of both the culture of graft at the council, and the failure of New Labour to deliver basic social services, has been far worse than that for others in Tower Hamlets – it’s not that the issues are different, and certainly Respect’s interpretation of them has been to argue for class-based politics.

What Respect has managed to do, that is different from the Socialist Alliance, is present itself as a credible alternative to New Labour. That has depended, nationally, on a deep disillusionment with Blairism – thanks to the war – and, locally, on our ability to attract serious ex-Labour members and supporters.

Of course, one of the reasons Respect does better in “Bengali” areas (though see above on demographics) is precisely because New Labour, aided here by Nick Cohen, have so diligently presented the argument that this is an “Islamist” party, or a “communalist” vote. We have cracked through that, to some extent, on council house privatisation, but we’re not there yet.

Nick Cohen has an article in today’s Observer (which can also be found at his blog and at Comment is Free; the Observer’s website is inaccessible to me at the moment) attempting to explain why the BNP won such a……

Donald, where Respect stands or doesn’t has a lot to do with, where people have stood before (camden for instance) and where activists think it they can pull off a campaign, because to reiterate my point, it is a small organisation with limited resources…ok?!