Is Your Party finished?

By Ray Goodspeed (Your Party member – Leyton and Wanstead)

On Sunday 12 April, members of Your Party (YP) and many in the wider labour movement were shocked to read the latest action of the majority faction of the Central Executive Committee (CEC), “The Many”, who presented a list of organised Marxist groups whose members are to be banned from being members of Your Party, and a detailed procedure for expelling them if they refuse to leave their groups.

The list included the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Socialist Party (SP), the Alliance for Workers ‘Liberty (AWL), and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP – formerly Socialist Appeal) plus a few other smaller groups. It was clearly stated in the CEC paper that the list was not “exhaustive” and that other groups may be added later. The proposal was opposed by nine CEC members – the Grassroots Left and two independents.

It is an extraordinary move for a party which has included thousands of people driven out of the Labour Party by bullying, victimisation and witch-hunts to spend its time in such a negative, divisive, and self-defeating way. Starmer famously told socialists in the Labour Party that “the door is open – you can leave.” Many did just that and saw Your Party as a potential mass alternative – yet now the faction around Corbyn, himself a victim of the Starmer clique, is saying the same.

This announcement will lead to more demoralisation and a further drift away from the party, not just of the members of the Marxist groups concerned, in reality a relatively small number, but also many of the approximately 40% of the members who voted for the Grassroots Left candidates for the CEC on the basis that they stood resolutely against such bans and proscriptions.

In the absence of any officially constituted branches – for over nine months -many local YP members have worked in a friendly and constructive way with members of Marxist groups to build what have been termed unofficial “proto-branches”. These have, in truth, been largely responsible for keeping the idea of the new party alive, with no access to party funds or membership lists or even emails from the centre to help put local member in touch with each other. Meanwhile, the central/national leadership has been characterised by drift, dithering, factional spite, and authoritarian control, resulting in the party being widely mocked.

Ignored and marginalised

The leadership around Corbyn plainly see the proto-branches as a threat and they have been deliberately ignored and marginalised. It is becoming obvious that they wanted to get the document on expulsions agreed before any official local branches are constituted, even though the founding conference explicitly made local branch foundation a top priority.

In Scotland, the party held its own official conference in Dundee in February organised by volunteers on its Interim Scottish Executive Committee (ISEC).  Since then, they had also been denied access to membership lists. Delays at the centre have prevented them from running any candidates in the upcoming Scottish Parliament election! Meanwhile membership has steadily fallen.

Such has been the anger at the disregard that the CEC has shown to the decisions of the Scottish conference and the views of members that the recently elected CEC rep from Scotland, Niall Christie, along with all twelve ISEC members, has resigned, abandoning Your Party altogether. Their statement read:

“No serious attempt to unite the left can be done through purges of socialists or by disregarding entire nations and their representatives. It is clear that these are fatal blows to the Your Party project from which it cannot recover.”

Left Horizons has tactical and political differences with the groups that have made it to the new banned list so far – and some of these differences are serious ones. One or two groups have indeed been known to act in an arrogant and sectarian manner. Nevertheless, we absolutely oppose the use of administrative measures to exclude socialists from the party.

Your Party should be open to all socialists, provided that they do not support candidates that stand against it, and that their views do not conflict with the political statement passed at the November conference. That statement (read it here), was explicitly socialist, anti-capitalist and based on the working class. Support for political positions within these limits should be won by open discussion and debate of ideas and tactics, where each member of Your Party has one vote, not by expulsions.

At the November conference, the largely anonymous and unaccountable organisers restricted the choices regarding the dual membership issue to just two motions. One was a complete ban on any dual membership, the other allowed it but inserted what some (mistakenly) took to be an uncontroversial power of the future CEC to decide what organisations would be allowed under the dual membership rules.

Conference opposed a complete ban

The mood of the conference was crystal clear; there was no appetite at all for bans and proscriptions of other socialist groups, and great anger at expulsions that had already taken place. Partly as a result of this anger, 70% of participants voted in favour of dual membership and against a full ban. Yet what we see now is a cynical attempt to smuggle in a total ban on Marxist groups by the back door.

This decision, we are told, is on the grounds that membership of the listed groups is not  compatible with the values of the party –  not because they disagree with any of its socialist principles, but on the grounds that they organise on the basis of so called “democratic centralism”. This is a form of organisation in some Marxist parties that, in essence, demands unity in action following a democratic decision of the party or of its elected leadership. It has long been debated on the left and many different versions of it have existed at different times.

But in reality, what these moves from the leadership represent is a smoke screen intended to hide their lack of confidence in winning support for their ideas and their preference for a largely passive internet-based membership rather than members being able to organise to promote ideas, or to hold the leadership to account.

It is all dressed up as “bottom up democracy” when it is actually the opposite. It is surreal for the YP leaders to pontificate about inner-party democracy while running an organisation tightly controlled from the top by officials loyal to one faction. They held a stage-managed conference before any branches had been formed or any local members even knew each other existed. Participants were either people selected at random (so-called “sortition”) or sitting at home voting via the internet, with no opportunity to discuss motions with other members. Expulsions were carried out the day before the founding conference even met!

The peak of absurdity so far has been an article by Corbyn ally and former Labour MP Claudia Webbe, in which she names none other than the famous revolutionaries, Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci in her support! With delicious irony she chooses to write her critique of democratic centralism for the Morning Star, notorious for decades for proudly supporting the excesses of Stalinist Communist parties – including their gross distortions of democratic centralism which abolished party democracy completely, imposed the leadership’s line and brutally suppressed dissent.

Shocked by Jeremy Corbyn

Many people are shocked that Jeremy Corbyn would put his name these measures, as he has previously been a firm opponent of expulsions of Marxists tendencies from the Labour Party. He has also been keen in the past to be the figurehead president or chair of several campaigns founded and run by the SWP, among others, and has been a regular speaker at their annual “Marxism” festival.

However, there is a pattern.  After Momentum was formed, explicitly to support him while he was Labour leader, attracting 40,000 members, he colluded with his close ally, Jon Lansman, to shut down its regional and local structures, all in the name of democratic participation, of course, converting it into a loose organisation of isolated and passive members, occasionally consulted by email plebiscites as it gradually withered away.

So what does the future hold for Your Party? In a recent Left Horizons article after the CEC elections (read it here) we stressed the urgency of both sides of the factional dispute looking outward, campaigning on clear, class-based socialist demands and putting the acrimonious controversies behind them. We said that, because of its roots in the labour movement and in other campaigns, YP still had the potential to become an important force on the left, a focal point for left activity in many localities.

However, we warned that:

“It would be insanity, and could be the death knell of the party, if they now launch into a process of suspensions and expulsions of members from the broadly Marxist left.”

This would:

“turn the attention of members inwards, and make us look ridiculous – yet again. That could be the final blow to the viability of the party.”

Tragically, that is exactly the path that the Corbyn leadership has chosen. It represents a tragic and scandalous waste of hope and idealism that will not be easy to forgive.

Should we now support trade union picket lines but exclude any staff reps that may be in Marxist groups? Should we expel socialists that often play a leading role in a range of other wider campaigns? Come election time, would Your Party expect their support but deny them any role in the choice of candidate or policies?

Purge is final straw

At the time of the CEC elections, Your Party claimed 41,000 “verified members”, but the feeling on the ground since then is of despondency and, frankly, embarrassment, as support and membership has ebbed away. Some see this purge as the final straw, and they have cancelled their payments to the party.

Incredibly, all this is happening right the middle of the local election campaigns. YP has endorsed 250 candidates, the bulk of whom are standing as candidates for pre-existing groups of independents, with only very few standing under the Your Party brand. My own large and active proto-branch asked the national party for permission for two members to stand as YP candidates but did not even get a reply.

Many of the independent groups that are being endorsed emerged from the movement against the horrors of the Gaza genocide, and are mostly based on the Muslim community. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that as such. Plenty of parties and campaigns are almost entirely comprised of white people, after all. But solidarity with the Palestinians is not enough on its own to form a new socialist party. Some of the local independent groups seem to be based not on members of the Muslim community with consistent, socialist principles, but on local figures with rather dubious, opportunist politics and personal ambitions.

The Respect Party led by George Galloway similarly grew out of the movement against the Iraq War and was rooted in the Muslim community. It also included some of the Marxist groups that are now being expelled from Your party. It never achieved electoral success outside areas of large Muslim populations and  Galloway moved on to his mis-named “Workers’ Party”, based on the same opportunist strategy. Corbyn, having already excluded the Marxist left, risks ending up a as a competitor to Galloway on the same terrain – albeit more genteel!

Unlikely scenario

Supporters of The Many faction have claimed that after the expulsions thousands of people will flock into the party. That seems a very unlikely scenario. It is absurd to suggest that the presence of the banned groups has been the reason for the party’s declining fortunes. At this stage, YP has lost too much ground to the Green Party. Given the similarities in their policies, and the Greens’ 220,000 members, why would people join a party so dramatically smaller?

There will certainly be localised electoral success in May for some of the groups of independents that YP has endorsed, such is the disgust of many workers with Starmer’s Labour Party. It will be difficult to forge them into a unified party. The constitution allows them two years before they need to merge with YP but a longer term, loose umbrella organisation of local independents seems a more likely outcome. There is a strong suspicion that Corbyn himself has favoured this all along.

As far as the existing proto-branches are concerned, some may stay inside Your Party, waiting patiently for official branches to finally be established, though it is still not certain when that will be. Others may continue to exist as groups of local activists with no formal link with Your Party and refusing to implement the bans, based on the desire to preserve the hope and idealism of the original project and the bonds formed by working together.

A group called Connections is planning a national conference in Sheffield on 6 June to bring local socialist groups together in a network. Whether idealism is enough to do this on a permanent national basis without any formal party structure remains to be seen. It is doubtful that there is any appetite for starting yet another left party in the near future, at least on any electoral basis. The jokes would write themselves. Those who resigned in Scotland say they intend to build a left party there, but that will be a difficult task.

We are entering a period of enormous economic crises, with the prospect of victories for Reform UK at local level in May and the real threat of a Reform UK government at the next general election. At the same time, the labour movement has rarely been so weak and divided, with the betrayals of Starmerism and the chaos, division and near collapse of Your Party. Many socialists have understandably transferred their hopes to Zack Polanski’s Green Party instead. But electoral success will put that party’s radicalism to the test.

It is possible that, under the pressure of these stormy events, all kinds of splits and realignments will occur, involving the Green Party, the remnants of Your Party, and even the Labour party, especially via its affiliated trade unions, after the predicted huge electoral losses and a leadership crisis.

The job of socialists, in whatever party they find themselves, is to agitate, educate and organise – to offer clarity, perspective and Marxist understanding to activists with which we have contact and to build support for the ideas of socialism.

[Featured photo – London Your Party members’ banner at the Together march in London – 28 March – photo Left Horizons]