Your Party is experiencing fractured progress
Ian Spark
International Socialist League
Leadership infighting, the grassroots respond strongly
In the last issue of Socialist Voice (SV), two articles reported developments on Your Party (YP) including the restrictive actions of the reformist leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Included in this discussion were initial programmatic points from the ISL. (give link). In October, The World Transformed activists assembled, calling for the full democratic functioning of YP and discussion began on a programme with the aim of winning the working class.
One SV article looked specifically at experiences within Stockport Socialists For Your Party (SSFYP), looking at their democratic functioning as an example of how the leadership of the YP should operate. However, developments so far are proving disappointing.
Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn had a very public falling out over the launch of the membership system, with both threatening legal action but have since reconciled. The overwhelming message coming from the grassroots is to call on both sides to focus on the larger task at hand.
At the time SSFYP swiftly issued a statement correctly identifying that a root cause was that important decisions were being made behind closed doors. The SSFYP statement and motion focuses on the importance of building genuine grassroots democracy.
Our Party (OP), a group of activists, leaders from trade unions and social movements, issued a call to action. Their intervention is for power over the founding process to be handed to a group of leaders or former leaders of unions/social movements.
This OP group contains some people who were part of Collective, an organisation shepherding the process of founding a new party, before being sidelined by the group of 6 MPs.
Whilst OP’s proposed way forward appears more democratic than that of the current leadership propose, handing power to yet another unelected group remains undemocratic and just imposes a pseudo-technocratic temporary leadership.
The ISL support SSFYP’s statement and motion.
This fracturing of tenuous alliances between different leadership factions will have an impact on YPs prospects. The number of membership signups has yet to be published but is believed to fall short of the initial 850,000 expressions of interest. The election of the populist left wing Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, has led to a surge in membership, which is likely to include people previously who demonstrated interest in YP.
Delays in transferring memberships signed through Sultana’s initial portal to the official membership portal is causing further confusion and frustration.
Leadership response
Questions and demands from below about democracy and transparency in the founding process have not been addressed by Sultana or Corbyn, whilst apologising for the ‘confusion’ caused, they continue to proceed with the previously announced plan for the founding conference in November.
Factional infighting will raise its head again and next time could prove fatal to YP.
These developments highlight the danger that YP leadership will ignore future demands from the grassroots.
Political differences in the leadership
The two factions of the leadership have some notable political differences.
Corbyn and his allies are pushing for policies similar to those adopted under his leadership of the Labour party. For instance, never mentioning the need to break with capitalism entirely, instead they seek social democratic reforms, that is a looser form of party that is more ‘federal coalition style party’, not a social transformation with the working class in power. Corbyn continues to surround himself with people who have been criticised for undemocratic actions in the Labour party and Momentum.
Corbyn surrounds himself with people who have been criticised for their undemocratic actions in organisations like Labour and Momentum.
Sultana and her allies push for policies more to the left of Corbyn as she openly calls for the end of capitalism, advocating a more traditional party with a membership who democratically control the party and to whom the leadership answers. But there is a level of scepticism from many over whether these statements are genuine, or if they are populist appeals for a leadership position.
Some of the independent MPs who were elected because of their support for Palestine and Gaza, have been criticised as being socially conservative and having gender critical views.
Positive developments
Well over a hundred local YP groups have been formed, there is a discussion group in Liverpool, and a group of trans, non-binary, intersex or questioning people called Trans Liberation Group who launched and issued a powerful set of initial demands. https://transliberationgroup.org.uk/
SSFYP and other proto branches in Greater Manchester (GM) are beginning discussions about working towards the creation of a network of GM YP branches. A well-attended meeting in GM, led by RS21, discussed uniting anti-capitalists in collective action inside YP, leading to the formation of GM anti-capitalist activists with a similar meeting held in London.
A less positive development in GM is the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) trying to launch themselves as ‘the’ GM YP group. Typical of the SWP, they made no attempt to work or discuss with other groups, instead organised an SWP public meeting with Sultana to speak. The SWP motivation is to enter and grow their own power and influence with no interest in building and working with others.
An atomising founding conference process
The run up to the conference will see public regional assemblies across the country, with hundreds attending, to present and comment on the founding documents.
The leadership have announced the founding conference will be held in Liverpool over Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November, 6,500 attendees will be chosen to attend on day 1, and then another 6,500 will attend on day 2. Attendees will be chosen via lottery from YP membership, as the leadership state they will guarantee representation from every area of Britain and from various oppressed groups of people.The conference will be live streamed to members and an online vote available for the wider membership not attending the conference.
Only members invited to the conference will be allowed to propose amendments beforehand, which will only be presented to the conference if they garner enough votes from other attendees online. Attendees at conference will vote on various multiple-choice options from each document. Some will be proposed by the leadership, some by conference attendees.
The process, by design, is extremely atomising and thus organising a collective response to the founding of the party, is very difficult. The leadership and those surrounding them, who have a lot of experience being in and in some cases leading undemocratic organisations, as stated earlier, have created an atmosphere of distrust and scepticism as they have shown themselves perfectly happy to make a whole host of important decisions behind closed doors.
The leadership say they are attempting to incorporate many different ways of working into one. However, with a very large public following the leadership are able to bear their influence over the memberships’ choices at the conference. With over 13,000 randomly chosen attendees, half on one day and half the next, meaningful decision-making and deliberation will be non-existent.
There is no reason whatsoever why grassroot democratic YP branches could not be set up first, with the centre creating a reasonable initial structure. These branches can discuss, debate and decide their positions on the founding documents, then agree delegates to the founding conference for participation, debate and to vote.
The actions of the leadership show they are not committed to a new type of party but a replica of a reformist party with the membership being shown how the leadership want YP to function. United grassroots efforts are needed to take control away from a top-down leadership and to build strong, local parties functioning democratically.