Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana announced the formation of a new left party in Britian on July 24th. Within four days over 400,000 people had signed up to join the new party making it the largest party in Britain by a wide margin and probably the largest party in Europe. The long search for a new party of the working class in Britain is coming to fruition.
The launch statement, made by Corbyn and Sultana, had a positive and inclusive tone.
The statement reads –
“Our movement is made up of people of all faiths and none. The great dividers want you to think that the problems in our society are caused by migrants and refugees. They are caused by an economic system that protects the interests of the corporations and billionaires. It is ordinary people who create the wealth – and it is ordinary people who have the power to put it back where it belongs.
It is time for a new kind of political party. One that is rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements. One that builds power in all nations and regions. One that belongs to you.
Sign up at www.yourparty.uk to be part of the founding process leading to an inaugural conference. At this conference you will decide this party’s direction, the model of leadership and the policies that are needed to transform society. That is how we can build a democratic movement that can take on the rich and powerful – and win.
Real change is coming”.
The tone of the statement is really welcome. It appears open to the kind of mass consultation that could produce a radical and dynamic programme. When asked by the BBC whether the new party would be a re-hash of Labour, Corbyn replied, “The Labour Party is a very top-down highly centralised party that is full of control freaks who want to control whatever goes on within the party…this is going to be community led, community based, grassroot-led, this is going to be very different and you know what? It’s going to be fun.”
Corbyn said that 500 people a minute were signing up to the new party. He said that the party would have a federal structure, a core set of values and beliefs but also a lot of local autonomy.
One of the key questions in the formation of the new party will be its structure. If it has a federal structure as stated by Corbyn, this will allow various groups to have a platform within it. This could be a useful method of refining ideas, rather than canvassing the membership individually or the ideas simply coming from the top. It will also be a way of making the party inclusive of political differences. The federal structure will allow for more efficient and collective decision making whilst maintaining a core set of values and principles, rather like the structure adopted by the Trades Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). There will be those who argue for one member one vote of course and who see it as more democratic, but and ultimately it will be in the gift of the membership to determine the shared agenda and structure.
What is urgent for left groups, such as the Campaign for a Mass Worker’s Party CMWP, is for them to begin to refine their ideas and feed them into the discourse. A code of conduct, democratic processes and core principles needs to be forwarded to the party by the groups involved in this project at an early stage. These can then be shared and evaluated across the party. The process allowing for this will be complex, but it must begin soon in order for differences to be discussed and a programme agreed. Detailed policies can be discussed and argued over time, leading to a congress or a pre-congress before the end of 2025.
The next few months will be a time of intense debate and discussion. A set of core principles is already emerging, but the internal democratic structure of the new party must also emerge so that the party has a new and radical approach and doesn’t mirror in its structures the undemocratic structures of the Labour Party. This will not be a project that can succeed if it bases itself around the uncritical adoption of the ideas of an elite or any one group within the party. The ideas have to come from the movement itself. This will increase the opportunity for radicalism and innovation to come to the fore. We don’t want this project to derailed by reliance on pressure groups, prominent personalities or out-dated ideas from the powerful. It’s the ordinary people who will come forward around basic socialist principles, realising that they can see a better way. However, the forces of the elite and the corporations will come after this new party and therefore the best form of defence is to be open in our debates, open about our differences, and to act together to resist these forces.
The working class in unity can do this. We must approach the future with positivity. We must understand that we cannot win every argument but that we can continue to struggle for ideas and see those ideas emerge from open and comradely deliberation.
