1. I didn’t post the comment about Mark Perryman. But given the offensive, condescending rubbish that Mark Perryman has posted elsewhere aimed at the ‘trotskyists’ he seems to despise so much, I’m not surprised that some people are working on the principle that you shouldn’t dish it out unless you can take it yourself.

2. Your sense of outrage is rather disingenuous as far as I’m concerned, given some of the personal abuse posted on your own blog.

3. As for ‘driving people out of Respect’, nothing could be further from the truth. I wrote this above:

“On the other hand, we’re all members of Respect and share the aim of building the organisation, which can and should be big enough to hold a diversity of viewpoints and to have members engage in open, vigorous debate.”

Is that clear enough for you?

You have failed to actually adress what i actualy arguied, but have also reduced the level of the debate to personal insult. The remark above about mark p is disgraceful. Are yu acually interested in building Respect, or do you want to drive people who disagree with you out?

Why did Napolean retreat from moscow? it wasn’t a lifestyle choice, it was because the Csar didn’t surrender, and Kutzov defeated The Grande Armée at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets, giving Bonaparte few choices.

the weakness of posturing as if Respect is a national organisation is that we are unable to act as one, and the weakness of a perspective that we need to build a national organisation through the traditonal methods of the left 0f branches, papers and programmes is that whatever we decide at conference, we don’t have the resources to deliver it.

The weakness of Alan’s argument is that he doesn’t take as his starting point the specific nature of the crisis of social democracy, or the specific strengths and weaknesses of our current position in Respect.

Our unique advantage is the real base we have built in Brum and East London, but the circumstances and particularity of those bases simply are not transposable to Manchester or Bristol, let alone Oxford or Dorset.

What is more, essentially propagandist policy positions inspired by activists outside our key areas do not have the nuance or depth required for the real life issues experienced by our councillors.

That is why we should be centring our discussions about about the areas where our party has real world implantation.

My thesis is that while we cannot easily grow in terms of numbers nor geographic spread, we can grow in terms of prestige and influence by leveraging off our current strongholds - and that joint work with others on the left - and yes including Compass and Plaid Cymru - is an important route towards that.

It is also worth saying that the utterly abstract nature of Alan’s argument is revealled by the way he alks about getting the CPB and the unions on board. My approach is much closer to the view of the CPB’s than Alans’s is - and he siomply doesn’t understand that the trde unions are motovated by the desire for an electable and credible social democratic party - there is no way that Respect can counterpose itself to the uniosn as an alternative to the labour party.

When you grow up and address these argument, instead of trading cheap insults, then perhaps we can debate.

Here is the false polarisation that is occurring as this is not what Andy is arguing as far as I can see. But the question of resources is important. Let’s be honest in Manchester and Bristol we have no hope of being elected. in birmingham we do. Where should we concentrate our finacial resources. I would say in Birmingham. Where can that money come from - outside and well as inside Birmingham.

The argument about the conference is also instructive. A non-policy making conference sounds terrible when put in those words. The trouble is we need a strategy - and broad swathes of new policy won’t make up for this. It’s about prioritisation in a small organisation.

My argument is for policy to be made in more detailed form over a longer period of time, over several conferences - rather than the broad brush strokes of simple motions and amendments.

I agree that we need vigourous debate. But that debate is all the more productive if it actively engages in what people are saying rather than knocking down straw men - that muddies the water rather than clarifies. Sadly I think Alan’s article is too full of this type of argument and so doesn’t clarify a ‘difference of approach’ but confuses the issues. It reminds me too much of the style of argument from certain leaders in the old Respect.

Is there a false polarisation going on? I don’t think so. I think that the argument is about what type of organisation we want to build. One example of this is that the core group of people arguing for Respect’s resources to be directed into its two strongest areas have also argued for a non-policy making annual conference (at least for this year) and for closer links with groups like Compass. I think that represents an important difference of approach.

On the other hand, we’re all members of Respect and share the aim of building the organisation, which can and should be big enough to hold a diversity of viewpoints and to have members engage in open, vigorous debate. It’s good that this particular one has come out into the open.

Despite agreeing with a lot of what Alan says I think he spends a lot of time knocking down ’straw men’ that don’t actually exist in Andy’s article. The result is not to get to fully get to grips with the tactical considerations that we all need to address in the next 18 months.

The reality is that Respect already has policy on a range of issues. Policy is not our weakness. We are not short of things to say. What we are short of is members, resources and active supporters.

We will not win these by pretending we are bigger or more important than we are. We will not win new members by having an even more detailed policy on climate change or high speed trains.

We can win more members and supporters but this wil primarily be through what we do in our localities. But to do this effectively we need honesty about where we are and what we can achieve, then a clear strategy for each and every area, and then absolute attention to detail.

We need to agree national priorities and then each area needs to devise a strategy that most effectively builds towards both their local AND the national priorities. We shouldn’t pretend we can build a national organisation in the next two years.

But we can build local bases of support that can help us in our key target seats/areas come the next General Election.

Pretending that this debate is some kind of fight for the soul of Respect is a mistake that will not help us in the coming months. Tactical questions can sometimes be an arena where more fundamental questions of principal are expressed - but this this is not Iskra, 1903.

Sometimes tactical questions are really just questions of tactics.