When the Your Party initiative was launched on July 24th, it was widely assumed that it would be a broad and inclusive formation, with room for all trends on the Left. The initiative had been preceded by “Collective”, which brought together 60 local, regional and national groups and organisations in discussions on the way forward. Unfortunately, the development of genuine democratic structures is now profoundly threatened by two recent developments. The first is that a “sortition” (or lottery) arrangement will be used for the selection of 15 thousand delegates to the inaugural conference. The second is that it has been announced that members of other national parties will not be allowed to join Your Party, and presumably participate at the conference in any meaningful manner.
According to The Morning Star newspaper, one Your Party organiser, referring to the revolutionary left, said “such groups are often seen as the source of divisive disputes, something the new party clearly has no need for help with.” The recent row between Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn illustrates that ex-Labour comrades are masters of dispute and acrimony. Leading up to the formation of the new party a mere handful of people were tasked with coordinating the first steps along the way of this great journey and their relationship was seriously threatened almost before the process had begun when Sultana complained that Corbyn had shut her out of the process, surely something a simple phone call could have resolved.
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Sultana and Corbyn have been raised in the negative and undemocratic culture which has characterised the Labour Party. Labour has a top-down bureaucratic structure where the opinions and desires of ordinary members are ignored, meetings are conducted to achieve the desired outcomes of the bureaucracy, and real discussion is stifled. Their experience of leading change in organisations is therefore severely limited. This was characterised by Corbyn’s disastrous failure to take on the right-wing in the Labour Party and to introduce genuine democracy when he was leader between 2015 – 2020. The Corbyn-supporting group Momentum was used to police the left and any real discussion in its meetings was martialled via a question-and -answer protocol redolent of neo-liberal business. Questions containing a challenge were not heard and members of revolutionary groups were not allowed to speak.
The fear of the revolutionary left is perhaps understandable. Groups of this tradition have not covered themselves in glory in recent years. The tensions between the different groups and their undemocratic internal cultures are not a model to carry forward. When Corbyn and Sultana talk about a grass-roots organisation, they should appreciate the fact that no-such organisation exists within the British political mainstream. What they are attempting to do is to go into new territory. The concern is that neither Sultana, Corbyn or the rest of the self-appointed team has the background or humility to genuinely equip them for this task.
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Putative branches of Your Party have been developing all over the country. Many are being built around exhaustive discussion and democracy. They are looking for a new way to do politics and a new approach to democracy is at the heart of this. Many of the people involved in these meetings are members of or have been members of revolutionary left parties and/or the Labour Party. Their experiences in these organisations are not a template they can use going forward, but the modesty and resolve to get things right this time hopefully is leading them to recognise this and be open to new ideas and methods.
These discussions are taking place all over the country. Groups are forming, regional and national associations are emerging, and ideas are clarifying. My own recent experience illustrates this. The discussions we have been having in Calderdale have extended to nearby towns across Yorkshire as well as to a further group of over 40 constituencies, across England, Wales and Scotland. A recent on-line meeting called by the Campaign for a Mass Worker’s Party had 300 attendees and speaker after speaker stressed the need for democracy. Currently, there is an emphasis on real politics: canvassing people’s homes, running stalls, engaging in community events coming out of this movement, as well as a serious look at policies.
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People are perhaps not aware enough of the serious errors made by previous new-left formations across Europe. The proposals being made by Corbyn and Sultana currently, cannot be allowed to be rubber-stamped at a conference where the policy documents and constitution will come as a pre-determined package drafted by a small clique of the “well connected”.
My local group rejected sortition as a means of holding a conference and favoured a delegate system, where policies and a constitution can be looked at prior to the conference by branches and that branches can feed-into those documents. It is impossible for any kind of democracy to emerge from a two-day event unless the event is built up to by a serious open approach to content. Corbyn’s announcement that members of other national parties could not join Your Party is therefore extremely concerning because it’s undemocratic and certainly will not be welcomed in the meetings where those people have, up till now, been playing a purposeful and comradely role.
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The national conference has been announced to take place at the Arena and Conference Centre (ACC) Liverpool on the weekend of 29th to 30th November. Before this happens, there is a lot of work to do. Presumably there will be pre-conference documents to discuss and amend, a constitution to agree, and fundamental issues, such as the membership of other national parties to vote on. There does not, in my view, need to be detailed, costed positions on policy. General agreement should be found on key areas: reversing austerity, the full socialisation and democratisation of all essential services and industries under worker’s and community control, a sustainable climate policy, and opposition to imperialist wars are base lines that can be built upon.
However, if the constitution is not democratic and does not allow for the flow of ideas across the organisation, then the process is doomed to reproduce the same old bureaucracy that the current activists are trying to guard against. It is not in the gift of Corbyn to announce the rules for membership. The conference had to be got under way, a venue booked etc. One can accept that the urgency of the situation mitigated against full discussion, but there has been no discussion at all involving the rank and file.
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The matter of a constitution is gravely concerning. The constitution is the heartbeat of the organisation – its litmus test. This needs the fullest possible consideration. If a draft constitution is being prepared, then the members need to know. We were asked for ideas, and the Campaign for a Mass Workers’ Party sent a draft constitution, based on the Social Justice Party’s constitution two weeks ago. Its receipt has not been acknowledged.
The fear is that some kind of watered-down version of the Labour Party Constitution be adopted. This will not do. The following should be the minimum features of any constitution: that democracy inside Your Party is of utmost importance; without a very open and a very democratic internal regime no correct political positions can be developed and no political understanding can be developed amongst the membership; discussion should be open, democratic and comradely; there should be a flow of ideas across Your Party with full rights to minority views as well as open communication channels.
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There is a lot of anxiety across the movement that the tensions between Sultana and Corbyn are a pre-curser to problems further down the line. All forces that understand the crucial character of establishing a more open and democratic structure should come together (local Your Party groups, left organisations, unionists and not affiliated people). They should put forward concrete proposals to be discussed at local meetings and the Conference, outlining how an inclusive democratic party could work, where all strands of the movement can have their voices heard. Corbyn and Sultana have so far been shown to be quite limited in terms of vision. Corbyn in particular seems to have listened to many of the same advisors that were responsible for the failure to establish a democratic internal regime when he was the Labour Party leader.
When I speak to people all over Britian, people who I have never spoken to before, I realise that there are a lot of people with political ability in the movement as well as people who have experience of creating democratic organisations outside of the political sphere. These people and groups should seize the moment, to create a template for change and make their voices heard.
