He also said voters were no longer ‘chained like mental slavery’
Your Party members are gathering in Liverpool this weekend for the party’s founding conference. Alongside debating and agreeing various constitutional and democratic processes, attendees heard from the four MPs who are also members of the party.
Shockat Adam is one of those MPs, and he addressed the main hall on Sunday morning. In his speech, he accused ‘mainstream parties’ of ‘colonising’ people’s minds and that and voters were no longer ‘chained to mainstream parties’ like ‘mental slavery’.
In referring to the small number of independent MPs elected to parliament at the last general election, he told the conference: “In a few pockets in a few constituencies people that were chained to mainstream parties, that were addicted to mainstream parties – you could be whoever or whatever they would have voted for that mainstream party – they were chained like mental slavery, suddenly said: ‘no, we no longer allow to be colonised in our minds by you, will no longer will colonised [in] our bodies by you. You have taken our support, our commitment, and even our love for too long and we will take this no longer.
“Because people got together, people organised, people began to believe that we can make the change. And you know what? In some constituencies, we overturned 22-23,000 majorities because that’s what people can do when they get together.”
Later in his speech, Adam echoed Jeremy Corbyn’s earlier call for ‘unity’ in Your Party, against the backdrop of significant public divisions.
Adam said: “We have this opportunity with Your Party to make that change. We have to make this change. We have to make this happen. We must unite. We must not allow small differences to disunite us. We will not succeed – we have to stay united to make that change, our country, our future depends on it.
“The hungry, the cold, the homeless, the children in Gaza, the mother in Sudan need this too work. As long as we can work together on principles of mutual respect, non-discrimination, and tolerance of all people of religion, belief or no religions.
“Otherwise we will fail. And we cannot afford to fail. We must unite this country. We must unite our differences. And we will not let our differences consume us. [Otherwise], we will fail, we will have let down our young and our future and they will not forgive us. We have the power to change. We have the power to rise. We must use it, and we need to do so now.”
Earlier in the conference, in an interview with Left Foot Forward, Adam said that he doesn’t “believe in expulsions”, following the news that senior members of the Socialist Workers Party had been expelled from Your Party on the eve of the conference.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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