It was standing-room-only
A Holiday Inn might seem an odd location for the beginning of the revolution. But the entrance to the Liverpool Lime Street branch on the evening of November 28 was adorned with an assortment of revolutionary socialists, Trotskyists and communists. Clutching fistfuls of paper – briefings, newspapers and leaflets – they sought to engage the people filing into the building in their particular persuasion of far-left politics.
The occasion that brought them here? Zarah Sultana’s standing-room-only rally on the eve of the founding conference of Your Party. Inside, hundreds of people gathered to hear a long list of speakers giving their views on the direction of Your Party.
Those who addressed the audience were very much on one ‘camp’ of the internal divisions within Your Party. As members of the party meet over the weekend, this group of people are advocating for what they argue is democracy, grassroots empowerment and accountability within the new outfit – as well as for Your Party to be explicit in its advocacy of a socialist political platform.
The rally was held against the backdrop, not only of the imminent founding conference, but also the news that senior members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had been expelled from Your Party. Among those expelled is the SWP national secretary Lewis Nielsen, who spoke at the rally.
Nielsen told the rally: “It’s been a bumpy ride. And today’s news makes it a bit bumpier to be honest.” Later, he added: “Today, myself and some of my comrades received a letter – an email – saying that we were expelled from Your Party. It’s a record to be expelled from an organisation which hasn’t been fully formed, before the conference has even started. I was expelled because I’m a member of the Socialist Workers Party.”
When Nielsen said that he had been expelled, he was met with shouts of ‘shame’ from the floor. Later, he said “there is a group in Your Party that is trying to take it over, that has an agenda, that is undemocratic and it’s the clique of the people running it at the top.”
Nielsen wasn’t alone in criticising his expulsion from the party. Many of the other speakers on the platform raised this issue too. Mish Rahman, a former member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, said: “Today, some unnamed, unelected, faceless bureaucrats have on the eve of conference – taking lessons seemingly from Labour and the right – have conducted a witch-hunt.
Much of the audience appeared to agree, with various moments seeing interjections from the floor of ‘no expulsions’. Speakers argued that the alleged purging of senior figures within the SWP was emblematic of a failure of democracy within Your Party.
That word – democracy – was recurring throughout the event. Sultana and her allies see this as the crux of the potential problems facing Your Party going forward. Not the petty infighting, or the statements and counter-statements made over social media, or the legal threats flying in different directions, but instead what they see as an unwillingness of others in the party hierarchy to trust members with the power to steer the party’s future.
Those speaking from the platform made the case that this is foundational to the kind of party that will emerge out of the founding conference and put itself forward as an electoral alternative in the future.
Long time left-wing activist Max Shanly made this very case. “Without building a democratic party, you can’t build a democratic society,” he told the rally. Rahman, meanwhile, said: “The answer always must be that you the members are bringing decision making as close to everybody as possible”.
In pursuit of this vision, the rally sought to generate support amongst those Your Party members who will be able to attend and debate the party’s new constitution over the weekend (see our explainer here for how they were selected), for a series of changes to the party’s founding documents. Amongst the rules that Sultana and her supporters are advocating for are a ‘collective’ leadership model rather than a single leader and increased autonomy for local party branches, and ‘dual membership’ where people could be both a member of Your Party and another, separate but ‘aligned’ party.
The rally’s headline act – Sultana herself – made the case for these positions, and carried forward the tone of the other speakers. At one point she told the rally: “I did not leave the Labour Party to create a new Labour Party”, and at another that she wanted to see Your Party led by you – the members – and not MPs”.
But in addressing the audience, she also gave a clear indication as to the kind of politics that she wants Your Party to be explicit in advocating. Railing against what she at various points termed the ‘billionaires’, ‘profiteers’ and ‘parasites’ in society, Sultana put forward a vision that Your Party should be unashamedly on the radical left of British politics, calling for the economy to be nationalised and the monarchy to be abolished.
She also made clear the strength of the position she wanted the party to take on international issues, telling attendees: “I am a proud anti-Zionist and if we fight for it, Your Party will be an anti-Zionist party” and calling for: “A single democratic state from the river to the sea with equal rights for all”.
Like the questions around party structures, some of this is likely to spill into the debates about what the party is and what it is for over the course of the conference. At the event, members will have the chance to vote for a ‘political statement’ – a foundational document which summarises the broad ideological basis on which the party will be established.
Much of the text is what you would expect from a party to the left of Labour. It talks about opposing inequality, economic injustice, privatisation, discrimination, imperialism, poverty and war.
But at the founding conference, there will be a debate about whether to include the word ‘socialist’ in the text, and whether this should be an explicit ideological badge that Your Party should wear. Sultana and the other speakers at the rally have made it clear where they stand on that debate. This weekend – like on the questions around party governance, structures and democracy – we will learn where the membership stands too.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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