Salma Yaqoob, in yet another unimaginative reply to the launch of the New Generation Network, seems to be just a liitle confused:

The New Generation Network manifesto argues that, “We need to foster a climate in which people can have private differences which include religion, language and culture, but also have a public space where such differences are bridged. The right to freedom of speech and expression of culture, faith and public debates must remain paramount.”

I agree. And the anti-war movement is one such example of such a public space. It is absurd for Yasmin to claim that “international issues of grave importance are being grabbed by separatist anti-democrats” because Stop the War links up with the MCB. On the contrary, organisations like MAB and the MCB played an important role in marginalising the appeal of those genuine extremists in the Muslim community who counter the peaceful and democratic methods of the anti-war movement their own distinctly sectarian and undemocratic alternatives.

Errmm. Salma. I think you might just find that, whatever Yasmin might be thinking, the epithet ‘separatist anti-democrats’ as applied to the likes of Respect, is used to refer not only to communalist Islamic organisations like MCB and MAB but also to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.

Just thought I’d mention it.

By the way, just out of pure curiosity. Can anyone explain why it is that none of the members of the Socialist Workers Party that I’ve ever run across actually looks like they’ve ever had a fucking job in their life?

Sorry but I do have to ask these kinds of thing when they spring to mind, but the simple fact is that the entire membership of the SWP, so far as one can see, looks like nothing more than the provisional wing of the ‘Big Issue’.