Khansaheb Civil Engineering: business backer of the SWP
Posted on Thursday 6 December, 2007
Filed Under Socialist Workers' Party
Respect’s 2007 financial statement – filed with the electoral commission – revealed that the ‘unity coalition’ returned a cheque for $10,000 from a Dubai construction company as an impermissible donation.
Little more was heard of the story since. But the new edition of the East London Advertiser takes up the tale. According to the local rag for Tower Hamlets, the donor company is owned by one of Britain’s biggest private finance initiative contractors, headed by Tory life peer who was a senior policy adviser to the John Major government.
I guess that rather points to an attempted set-up, and Galloway was savvy enough to rumble it. But look who took the bait:
Khansaheb Civil Engineering, a Dubai-based subsidiary of Interserve plc private finance experts, sent the cheque on January 7, according to the [Electoral Commission].
The Advertiser understands the cheque was sent with a covering letter from a Khansaheb executive saying he was a fan of the Bethnal Green & Bow MP and wanted to contribute to his political causes.
But Galloway, who was being investigated by the Parliamentary commissioner for standards for improper donations to the Mariam Appeal, feared the letter was a ‘sting’ by an undercover reporter.
The proposed foreign donation, he felt, would be unlawful. He told his staff to return it and suggested if the donor wanted to make a financial contribution, he should make a new cheque payable to the Stop the War Coalition.
Respect’s National Secretary, John Rees, has confirmed he returned the cheque on January 23. But in his letter, he suggested the funds could be resent to another Respect-backed project, OFFU, the Organising for Fighting Unions campaign, which had been set up to lobby for the Trade Union Freedom Bill. According to the campaign material, its headquarters was Respect’s national office in Club Row, Bethnal Green.
A large OFFU conference in Shoreditch last year ended up with a £5,000 deficit. When Khansaheb sent a new $10,000 cheque made out to the campaign in February, it was used to cover some of the conference debts.
Mr Galloway discovered this in August and says he then pushed for the Electoral Commission to be called in.
This contributed to the current split in Respect, he told the Advertiser.
“I wanted it referred to the commission earlier and that contributed to the split,” he said.
The Electoral Commission is not yet at the ‘investigation’ stage, but said it was “making preliminary enquiries.”
Mr Rees, who admits the donation was partially used to cover the conference deficit, insists he did nothing wrong.
“Galloway knew all along we had suggested an alternative destination for the cheque,” he said. “He said Stop the War Coalition, we said OFFU.
“Galloway is now raising this to discredit his opponents.
“The cheque may well have been drawn on a company account, but it was clear to me it was an individual donation by someone who clearly supported our political goals.”
Interserve currently manages a number of PFI-backed schools and hospitals in the UK. The boss is 55-year-old Lord Blackwell, head of Major’s policy unit from 1995 to 1997, who was made a life peer when the Tories lost office.
In a week when Socialist Worker – quite rightly – slates New Labour for accepting business donations via conduits, in order to conceal the real source of its financial support, the idea that an individual donation to a de facto SWP project can legitimately come in the shape of a corporate cheque does strike me as a bit rich.
[Hat tip: email informant]
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41 Responses to “Khansaheb Civil Engineering: business backer of the SWP”
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Slight problem, the SWP is not a registered political party, as it does not contest elections (figure that one out), therefore, it can, as any incoporated association accept money from wherever it wants. Effectively, the SWP is just a big club…
Bill is right, there are no legal problems here because the SWP isn’t a party in the eyes of the law. Neither for that matter are most left groups. But there is a question of morality here, and whether the SWP has acted improperly from our point of view rather than that of legal structures.
Btw Dave, I’ve forwarded your post to the UKLN. Hope you don’t mind.
For the record, there is no suggestion of illegality, or even impropriety, on the part of Mr Rees.
Hypocrisy, maybe. But not illegality or impropriety.
Yet the OFFU was an initiative of Respect was it not? And the debts incurred for the OFFU rally fell upon Respect.
The OFFU owed £5000 to Respect, and so for the national secretray of Respect to suggest a donation be made by a foreign company to OFFU enabling the £5000 to be repaid, hardly very subtle.
Nice to see Galloway using the bourgeois press to try and smear another group on the left.
Is this the direction the Respect Renewal project is going? Using spin doctors, media contacts et al to get across ‘their message’?
Personally if this story is true, I can’t see much hypocrisy – let alone any illegality or impropriety – between getting money from one rich individual to fund a non-party campaign to increase the militancy of trade unions. No this is about Galloway and his spin doctors attacking the left – and indeed the Organising for Fighting Unions campaign in general – and surely Galloway’s strategy should be challenged and not cheered on by left wing bloggers?
“Hypocrisy, maybe.”
And stupidity, definitely.
You have to love the SWP supporters who never see any wrong or misjudgment on their part. It must be exhausting and on one level you kind of have to admire their relentless defence of the party line.
But really, seriously, if Respect had gone as far as sending the cheque back because they (or Galloway at least) thought it was dodgy, it really is clueless to then try and take the money via another route.
From electoral Commission Guidance
3.6 Parties can only accept a donation or loan (as defined in Chapter 2, ‘Defining
parties, donations and regulated transactions’) with a value of more than £200 if the donor or lender is in the following categories:
• an individual registered in a UK electoral register (including bequests)
• a UK registered company which is incorporated within the EU and carries on
business in the UK
• a Great Britain registered political party
• a UK registered trade union
• a UK registered building society
• a UK registered limited liability partnership that carries on business in the UK
• a UK registered friendly society
• a UK based unincorporated association that carries on business or other
activities in the UK (Section 54(2))
This will hang around the status of the OFFU.
Lots of cheques were floating around Club Row.
Galloway was running one of his Media Businesses out of there as well.
So, a Tory researcher unearths suspect donations on Tyneside.
A Gulf-based company headed by a Tory Cuckoo tries to give money to Respect.
A Tory offshore crackhead in blue twin-set, fright-wig and Imperial bounces his bow.
Onshore Tories demand reform of the party funding system and the “collectivist” unions’ links to Labour.
But there’s nothing about international banking, or offshore tax havens.
That’s just “libertarian”, so it’s OK.
The word “TORY” should now ring inside your head. But not forever.
As a member (indeed the sole one) of the Refounded Friends of the SWP can I rebut the foul tenor of the charges made vis a vis this fine organisation regarding finance. The very idea that leading cadres of the vanguard of the working class, including prominent members of Respect (Renewal), would ever do anything dodgy with cheques is beyond belief. Ask Liz Davis.
Showball wrote “I can’t see much hypocrisy… between getting money from one rich individual to fund a non-party campaign to increase the militancy of trade unions.”
Sometimes funds have to be taken from wherever they can be got. But in general it is unwise to build campaigns and institutions of the working class using monies not raised directly from the workers themselves. The reason for this may need sme explanation for those not able to grasp the principle of socialism from below.
Basically if a group or campaign cannot raise the monies it needs for a given purpose, a conference or a publcation, it ought to be clear to those cncerned that the group or campaign lacks adequate support within the class to carry out its aims.
Now let is imagine that funds are raised from a source other than the class. In the first instance it should be obvious that there is a risk that the donor might have opportunity to influence the group or campaign by virtue of his/her hold on the purse strings. In the second instance there is a risk that the fulltime apparatus of the group or campaign may begin to function autonomusly from the group or campaign based on their access to monies raised from sources external to the movement.
I note in relation to my remarks above that they go a long way to explaining why revolutionaries have historically been opposed to the unions taking monies from the state. It also goes some way to explaining how and why the self selected leadership of the SWP are not answerable to the members of that group.
I agree with Andrew Coates – these are foul tenners.
I’m still in shock that Galloway refused a cheque!
“Interserve currently manages a number of PFI-backed schools and hospitals in the UK. The boss is 55-year-old Lord Blackwell, head of Major’s policy unit from 1995 to 1997, who was made a life peer when the Tories lost office.”
And “socialists” thought it OK to accept money from this source?
All together: “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.
Wasn’t there a Russian industrialist who funded the actual Bolsheviks before the revolution? I can’t find the name, but I’m half-sure Eric Hobsbawm mentions such a character in the Age of Empire. Not that it’s okay if Lenin did it, although I’m sure bits of the SWP might think so.
Respect Renewal and the SWP Respect formally split in Manchester last night.
Report here: http://action-without-theory.blogspot.com/2007/12/respect-renewal-set-up-in-manchester.html
Rees made a mistake over the donation. I do not think that it exhibits sleeze but Rees was less than clever.Since OFFU is an off shoot of Respect, the receipt of the money could put Respect into difficulties with the Electoral Commission – a point that Galloway would have grasped and that Rees did not.Sending the cheque on to the STWC, whatever you think of the morality and I am not hyper exercised by this, would have avoided that trap. Rees jumped into it. The SWP comrades should exercise greater control over him.
There was a rumour that a rich bloke from Salford used to fund Karl Marx.
No doubt it was a Tory lie.
“Wasn’t there a Russian industrialist who funded the actual Bolsheviks before the revolution? I can’t find the name, but I’m half-sure Eric Hobsbawm mentions such a character in the Age of Empire. Not that it’s okay if Lenin did it, although I’m sure bits of the SWP might think so.”
Could you be thinking of the American industrialist, Joseph Fels?
“There was a rumour that a rich bloke from Salford used to fund Karl Marx.
No doubt it was a Tory lie.”
Are you thinking of Tony Wilson?
Wasn’t there a Russian industrialist who funded the actual Bolsheviks before the revolution?
Was it Alexander Parvus?
By the way.
The use of the Socialist Media by a bourgeois politician is also an issue.
Charlie Kimber
Simon Assaf
Chris Bambery
Why do you think Galloway let you write the “Forgery” story.He’d had the documents examined two years before,and couldn’t use the word forgery himself.
Why didn’t he tell you that?
whoever the Bolsheviks took money from, is not really relevant here, is it?
the question is:
should the Left take money from dodgy characters in the Middle East, and in particular, anti-union firms with a record of funding the Tory party?
after all this type of problem is not new, the issue of the WRP and money from Gadaffi is still remembered by many on the Left
Can you update the link to my blog. I’ve just changed my blog address, it’s now http://www.therightarewrong.blogspot.com.
Cheers.
Miles wrote “There was a rumour that a rich bloke from Salford used to fund Karl Marx.”
Fred Engels funded his personal friend and co-worker Chas Marx. He did not provide the funds for the socialist groups and parties he was later associated with.
Engels didn’t contribute anything to the First International?
shocking as Engels funding of one K Marx was, may be we should be focussing on the continuing story of the bank rolling of New Labour by various new property developers and new capitalists
Maria
Why not?
Let’s face it, the Dubai home of the donor is hardly conducive to socialism (at least in the short term … gravediggers and all that). Trade unions banned, deportation used as a political weapon (see http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1172); it sits uneasily with the usual SWP moralising about conspicuous consumption in the UAE.
The thread is being sidetracked by the argument about the left accepting money from wealthy donors.
But that’s not the key issue here.
It’s not uncommon for people who have inherited wealth to rebel against their background and donate money to left wing causes. National rivalries and foreign occupation can also mean that wealthy donors may back left-wing political organisations that oppose their enemy’s own government.
As long as there are no strings attached, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making use of sources like this.
But the story points to something different; the likelihood that the right is deliberately using the funding question to embarrass its left-wing opponents and create scandals in order to advance its own position.
Anyone who watched Kenneth Clarke on question time earlier this week should have noticed that the main thrust of his argument on reforming political funding was an attack on the Union link with Labour.
Yes Alex.
And almost everything else he said could have come from new Labour politicians (he was occaisionally too left-wing).
But that shows how keen the establishment are to break the union link.
Organised workers with politics are the biggest threat to capitalism.
Which is why both Respect and Respect Renewal and others need to have a strategy for winning trade union affiliations.
Miles “…both Respect and Respect Renewal and others need to have a strategy for winning trade union affiliations.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV_NUPLuxFA
Linked to this story also. My reading of this was that George was after exposing a possible sting operation more than trapping Reespect. I had thought that OFFU was a distinct org albeit set up by SWP/Respect. What Rees has done is petulant, George’s suggestion was probably better, but doesn’t look illegal.
PS Do StWC also owe Respect money by any chance?
PS The Organisation For Fighting Unions is such a double edged brand name isn’t it? Only the SWP …
Well OFFU shares/shared the same address, phone numbers and office staff with Respect, was set up by Respect, and JOhn Rees argued in print that the purpose of OFFU was to get deeper implaantaion for Respect in the workers movement, so it wasn’t the most convincing legal seperation in the world.
BTW STWC doesn’t owe Respect any money according to its accounts agreed at conferecne. I don’t see whay it should.
OFFU is a fuuny acronym, I prefer FOTFOTLOU
Many organisations were being run out of Club Row Andy.
And as you well know Galloway has had to move his private businesses out which were being run by his Parliamentary Staff.
Do you want to open the whole can of worms.
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