History
In September 2007, Galloway wrote a letter to Respect's national council members saying that the party was "too disorganised" and "faced oblivion" unless it reformed its internal party management. This was the beginning of a dispute within Respect between Galloway and his supporters and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) on the other side.
On 3 November 2007, Galloway's side announced plans to hold the Respect Renewal conference on 17 November, the same day as the planned national conference of Respect. The Respect Renewal conference was an open event and organisers claim 350 people attended, comparable with the Respect national conference, although the figure has been disputed. This split continued with both Respect Renewal and the SWP-led faction claiming to be the real Respect. Respect Renewal, through Linda Smith, had control over the use of the Respect name in elections, while the SWP-led faction used the electoral label Left List, but did control the original Respect website's URL. Both the Respect Renewal faction, as 'Respect (George Galloway)', and Left List stood in the 2008 London Assembly elections. Neither party won a seat or did as well as Respect did in the 2004 elections, but 'Respect (George Galloway)' outpolled Left List.
The split was finally resolved in October 2008, when the Left List ended its claim on the Respect name.
Read more about this topic: Respect Renewal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)