The majority of Your Party’s inaugural Central Executive Committee were elected for the task of successfully establishing YP. Instead, they are digging the party’s grave.
In response, the patience of the thousands of working-class people, who have dedicated endless efforts to keep the crisis-ridden show on the road, is fast running out. And correctly so.
- To ensure that all is not lost, the proto-branches must take the initiative
- All out for the ‘Connections’ conference on 6 June!
A Failing Leadership
Almost two months into its mandate, the CEC has failed to advance a single inch in the direction of recognising local branches. This is an utter scandal in of itself.
Its intervention into the 7 May elections has also been a shambles. The Scottish party, which has half as much representation on the CEC as the North East of England, was blocked from mounting a viable campaign, despite a clear conference decision in February.
Meanwhile in England, councillors who sat as Tories until this year in Walsall and Birmingham, as well as a slumlord in Oldham were endorsed by Corbyn. Meanwhile, strong socialist campaigns run by Your Party proto-branches were not even dignified with a response from HQ, despite jumping through the hurdles of the last-minute application process in March.
In the meantime, the biggest anti-racist demonstration in decades on 28 March passed by with the CEC majority barely lifting a finger. It was again left up to proto-branch activists to organise a successful YP bloc on the march, with no assistance from the leadership.
Rule or Ruin
However, YP HQ has found abundant time in its short tenure for another priority: the establishment of a bureaucratic regime, unchallenged by a pesky mass membership through democratic structures. The tired old adage of ‘rule or ruin’ is tragically apt.
To this end, the ruling bureaucracy’s critics on the CEC were immediately marginalised following their election, effectively disenfranchising thousands of the party’s most committed members. All meaningful decision-making has been usurped by an ‘officers group’ in which ‘The Many’ slate’s 60% of the CEC has been handed 100% of the power.
Now, they have turned their energies against the real source of their anxiety: the party’s socialist rank-and-file. On 12 April, the CEC rubber-stamped a witch-hunt which would make the Labour machine blush. The proposed paper, made publicly available in advance of their meeting, presented a list of proscribed organisations. On the most spurious of grounds, they are to be judged incompatible with Your Party’s strategy and principles, even going so far as to suggest that socialist groups were ineligible because of a different “ideology”!
Even this list, we are assured, is “not exhaustive”. The ban is also to apply to any organisation which possesses a “national membership” or maintains its own structures! This draconian policy goes beyond even that of Starmer’s Labour, which allows groups like Momentum, Labour Together, Tribune etc to operate in the party despite having their own political ideas, national membership and structures. It is also a flagrant violation of the most emphatic decision of YP’s founding conference, at which almost 70% voted against such bans.
For our part, Socialist Alternative is clearly not a national political party. That being said, we are of course aware that our members and supporters are also among those who this witch-hunt is intended to target.
Political Roots
In reality, these formal justifications are little more than hot air. What this ban is really about is ensuring that a weak leadership, which has presided over an unmitigated shambles, is insulated from any organised challenge from the left or from below. The bureaucracy, led by Karie Murphy on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn (a bureaucracy which has never stood for election), wants to ensure that this party is not made up of active socialists who can make their voices heard and put them under pressure.
The fundamental reason for this is political. Zarah Sultana MP, the most prominent target of their mistreatment, was so unacceptable a figure to them, not because of any ‘unauthorised’ launch or membership portal. It was because she expressed the socialist opposition of the majority of active members to the politics and methods of Labour 2.0. Opposition to parliamentary maneuvering, concessions to landlords, transphobes and other non-socialist elements. The bureaucracy wants its hands free to deepen this failed political approach to building YP. It will only lead to continued failure.
Socialist Alternative has consistently explained our view that the crisis at the top of this project is political: a crisis of failed reformist politics and methods. The fundamental division within Your Party has been not between personalities, but between those who have learned at least some of the necessary lessons from the defeat of Corbynism, and those who wish to double down on past failures. In the current political situation in Britain, where the Greens are already offering a high-profile reformist, electoralist agenda, Corbyn’s approach will prove even less fruitful.
What Is to Be Done Now?
The disappointment, anger and frustration felt by members around the country – many of whom are resigning in disgust – must be acknowledged. The blame lies not with them, but squarely with the misleadership which has taken us to this point. However, as difficult as it may be, the task for socialists and committed proto-branch activists now is not to mourn, but to organise.
The way out of this crisis starts with the proto-branches. They represent, in many ways, the most significant concrete gain which has been made during the painful birth of YP. They have been faced not only with zero assistance, but with open contempt from HQ. But still, thousands of trade unionists, campaigners against genocide, housing activists and socialists have spearheaded the most important new process of working-class political self-organisation in many years.
If clear leadership is given to prevent the disintegration of these invaluable local organisations, then a powerful basis can still exist for future steps forward, despite the omnishambles at the top. Indeed, right this moment, while HQ is bent on self-destruction, many branches are turning outwards in elections and other campaigns, sinking deeper roots in our communities.
The national convention being organised by ‘Connections’, a democratic network with the support of over 100 YP proto-branches and local independent socialist groups, in Sheffield on 6 June is a crucial opportunity for these forces to begin to discuss a way forward.
As a contribution to the necessary discussion about the way forward, Socialist Alternative says:
- Keep the proto-branches together! Maintain meetings and activities. It should be stressed that whatever happens at the top of YP, the energy and power of these local initiatives should not be allowed to dissipate.
- Defy this decision! In all YP branches and groups, it should be made clear that all socialists remain welcome as valued members, in defiance of attempted witch-hunts. We will not rubber stamp bans or expulsions!
- All branches should mobilise for the Connections convention on 6 June. This important gathering should debate and adopt a brief political and organisational statement in opposition to YP CEC’s destructive course and charting out a path for continued and deepened coordination and unity in action.
