Jane Ashworth examines Respect in the East End and elsewhere

The election of George Galloway is a disaster for politics as a whole, for the East End in particular and last, and certainly least, for the SWP, according to Jane Ashworth, who gives her personal eye-witness view of the famous Bethnal Gren and Bow election fight.

In Cable St on election day, infant school-age pupils were racing around on their bikes and tearing after each other on foot shouting, 'Respect' and brandishing the oblong post cards which visually communicated Respect's driving message: Bush plus Blair equals torture in Iraq

These kids were very happy. A carnival had come to town and it was their carnival. They were supporting their big brothers and sometimes their dads who were engaged in the real business of the day, bringing voters to the polling stations. On other stations, groups of Sylheti-speaking men greeted those who turned up to vote.

They too were good-natured and shared their stash of coca cola with the lone Labour Party number-taker. One guy was very interested in the technicalities of electioneering. It was his first time and wanted to know why the Labour Party took numbers. Respect missed out that phase and knocked-up straight from their canvas returns. Of course, their way duplicates effort as they knock up those who have voted.

But our way human-time was wasted – chained to a polling station for hours. Their people contributed to the street presence which was Respect's primary election strategy – to have the biggest and best presence on the streets on polling day itself and during the whole campaign: to symbolically declare the areas as theirs.

Respect candidate Oliur Rahman was elected to Tower Hamlets council last year. His Respect message resonated within his neighbourhood and maybe in other areas too where other Tower Hamlet Bengali speakers live.

George Galloway promised the next step for Respect is to win more council seats and then in 4 years time for him to be replaced by a local candidate – or in his speak 'a Bengali candidate'.

This concedes ground to communalism – that a seat should be allocated according to ethnic considerations. No wonder the BNP praised the Respect victory: they cheered their more benign mirror image.

And it casts a different light on the Jeremy Paxman interview on election night. Paxman repeatedly asked Galloway if he felt proud of unseating one of just two black women in Parliament. On that occasion Galloway stormed off, claiming that skin colour has nothing to do with an MP’s record.

George Galloway is tapping into the alienation of not just the youth but of many older Muslims too and he is using it well. Although Labour's vote in Respect's target wards did not disappear, it was eclipsed by the increased turn out motivated by Respect. Labour's vote dropped by 5k while Respect harvested 15k.

Some very ugly politics indeed were unleashed during the campaign. There were anti-Semitic insults and Oona's mixed heritage was targeted. There was an egg-throwing incident while Jewish mourners remembered their WW2 dead. Oona's tyres were slashed. Galloway was himself threatened by Muslim extremists who argue that voting is against Islam.

Election day was calm because the campaign had been so rough. To calm things down, Oona proposed peace talks and George Galloway, either willingly or because he was snookered, publicly endorsed Oona's call for calm. A deal was stuck between the parties and the police that limited party presence on polling stations. Galloway also agreed to a further agreement proposed by King, that would have kept party supporters 500 meters away from polling stations, and prohibited inflammatory language or behaviour – an attempt to ensure that no one was intimidated out of voting. But a week before polling day, Galloway unilaterally withdrew from the deal, with a Respect spokesman describing the plan as ‘ludicrous’

In the end, the basic (and compulsory) police agreement was all that Galloway ‘signed up’ to. There was to be a larger than usual police presence and everyone knew that stepping out of line would lead to problems. Respect was able to control its supporters and make sure the Labour Party's fears were not realised.

It was vital for the Labour Party vote and vital for democracy that Respect was not able to repeat the tactics they used in previous elections that made life very unpleasant for their opponents and for Labour voters.

In the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections of last summer Respect wanted control of the streets. In the white working class wards of Leicester South the turnout was down to 12% but up to 3% in Respect's target wards. The local party says this was partly due to the systematic harassment of Labour's campaign team. On polling day itself Labour had 300 volunteers out and about. By late afternoon when Respect had finished with them, (following them around in cars, using the battle bus to broadcast, 'murderers' at any party worker and throwing eggs from the bus) there were only 40.

In that Leicester South by-election Labour lost to a Liberal Democrat. We won it back on May 5th. The Respect bandwagon and battle bus had moved on down to London and the protest voters returned home to Labour. There was no carnival in Leicester South this time around. Respect had gone and left behind no basic organisation to capitalise on their 12% vote last summer.

Respect is a curious amalgam of the SWP, homeless leftists and various Muslim-defined organisations. Key players from the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), whose Palestinian sister organisation is Hamas, sit on the leading Committees as did the PCS union General Secretary Mark Serwotka before his recent resignation.

These organisations make uneasy bedfellows and already the SWP's politics are giving way under the pressure. Besides the rank communalism of Respect's strategy there are policy shifts, which surely must rock old time SWPers. They are now in bed with homophobes, they have declared calls for secular education 'Islamophobic' They are aligned with people who are not in favour of redistribution of wealth and who, simply put, are not socialists: they are reactionary by whatever standards one wishes to measure them.

The SWP and Respect deny their appeal is communal. However, even though they canvassed the white middle class patches of BGB where Guardian readers might be found, their vote was negligible.. To cover accusations of communalism they lean towards denying that the war was the only issue of concern, telling themselves they have already begun to reach out beyond Muslim-identifying voters and in a quick sleight of hand condemn Labour for having a narrow social base!

According to SW on May 14, their plan for the next twelve months is to reproduce the housing campaigns of the 70's where whole streets refused to cooperate with housing management and demand control themselves – a kind of radical-sounding tenant self-management. If this is the plan for BGB then let's hope they fail because they can only deliver in their target wards – if there- and the last thing Tower Hamlets needs is politics that present as communal, which are communal and which might lead to a kick back in the white working class estates.

Of course this is not to say that there should not be campaigning led by members of the Bengali community as there has been in Tower Hamlets Labour Party for years - , nor that there are not issues that disproportionately impact upon them. It is to say that the communal wedge the SWP, in their foolhardy, opportunist chase for votes is stirring up will divide working people.

Many Tower Hamlets voters were motivated by the war and that was Respect's way in. But it was not the only story. As in Leicester nearly 12 months ago there was a protest vote. People were not happy with their lot and one assumes that is a mixed bag of issues from low pay though to political alienation.