11.01.2007

SWP puritanism

The Socialist Workers Party is fronting a Respect campaign to rid the East End of strip and lap-dancing clubs. Simon Wells reports

Labour and Respect councillors in Tower Hamlets have been vying with each other to be seen as the best defenders of the community's sexual morals. A council meeting in December ended in chaos when a vote to debate a motion on the licensing of sex clubs tabled by Respect councillor Rania Khan was defeated. Labour wanted to debate other questions and insisted its opposition to sex clubs was already quite hard-line enough.

The Respect motion, which has 'SWP' written all over it, notes the "almost total unity across Tower Hamlets people of all ages, ethnicities and faith groups in opposing the exploitation and degrading of women associated with sex and strip clubs" and calls for the possible use of "discretionary powers" to "safeguard the rights of women, and to protect children and communities".

The failure to have the motion debated prompted Respect to announce a campaign to 'clean up' the East End, featuring a poster (pictured) - to be handed out at mosques across the borough - which 'names and shames' the Labour councillors who have so recklessly jeopardised the innocence of local youth, exposing them to the "drug dealing, violence and other crime and anti-social behaviour" that such establishments inevitably bring in their wake, it seems. Respect members may 'picket' strip clubs, taking photographs of men who go in and posting them on the internet.

Meanwhile George Galloway is, according to his blog, "enthusiastically pursuing a campaign to rid Tower Hamlets of these dens of iniquity, especially in residential areas and areas close to places of worship" (www.georgegalloway.com/page.php?page=content/constituents.html). Whereas the SWP tries to conceal its opportunism behind left and feminist slogans, Galloway does not even attempt to hide his open appeal to religious puritanism.

Such a campaign will do nothing to "safeguard the rights of women", who become sex workers for all sorts of reasons - the last thing we should do is strike up a moralistic attitude on what choices women should make about how they lead their lives. As Ana Lopes of the International Union of Sex Workers has pointed out in these pages, criminalising these sorts of activities merely drives them underground, where women will be even more vulnerable (Weekly Worker January 4).

This stunt is nothing but an opportunistic ploy by the SWP to garner muslim votes by appealing over the heads of workers to their religious leaders.