The struggle to build a left party is not going to be easy, and anyone who thinks it should be handed to us on a plate probably underestimates the uphill struggle for socialism as well. 

Your Party reflects the left’s weaknesses in Britain. We have to factor in that decades of neoliberalism and austerity, and a concerted campaign of racist agitation by politicians and the press, shifted the landscape to the right. We have witnessed the defeat and destruction of entire vanguard unions since the 1980s.

Our unions struggle under the most reactionary anti-working-class laws in Western Europe, rendering them unable to mount sustained challenges to capitalist offensives. We should not glide over these realities with mere optimism.

These structural weaknesses have been obscured by our ability to build impressive protest movements, the anti-capitalist protests of the early 2000s, the mass anti Iraq war movement, the anti-austerity movement, and recently the mass Palestine solidarity movement. 

The Poll Tax non-payment campaign and protests that helped bring down Thatcher are still in living memory for older activists, as well. 

That is why Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was important; it represented a return to strategy for the left. Strategy cannot exist outside of a political party that can struggle for power – without such an instrument, we are reduced to propaganda for socialism and participation in social movements and trade unions. 

Without a party, the left can resist changes from the capitalist government (and occasionally win), but is usually only reacting to these attacks. As Mark Fisher warned in Capitalist Realism, in such a situation, the left ends up looking like the conservatives who only resist change (or modernisation, as the Blairites called it). 

The left leadership of Labour saw a return to strategy and a tantalising possibility of political power. But it also exposed for many activists the horror show of the Labour Party. What was revealed for a generation was a party entrenched in British capitalism, embedded in the status quo, and filled with people willing to do anything to crush the left – even one with a relatively modest social democratic programme like Corbyn’s.

The defeat of Corbynism in 2019 was no doubt inevitable given the powerful manipulations of people and political tendencies in Labour. The recent book The Fraud by Paul Holden gives an insight into how far these people would go to destroy the left and prevent them from ever being in power again in Labour. 

People like Morgan McSweeney and nearly all the MPs represent the interests of British capitalism in maintaining Labour as a soft party of social reform that can act as a pressure valve, allowing a modicum of choice at elections when the Tories get too shit. But everything Labour does is in the national interest, which is always ultimately the maintenance of capitalism and all its system of exploitation and oppression.

For years after Corbyn’s defeat, there were calls for a new left party, something to salvage the energy from Momentum and the fight against the Labour right’s neoliberalism into a new political force. But Corbyn was content to maintain the Peace and Justice coalition, a friendly NGO that does nice things. 

Even after Corbyn was expelled from Labour, he seemed to have little interest in party politics, despite the demands of many thousands of people. This dithering allowed the Greens to emerge as a left-wing party and attract many people who might otherwise have joined Your Party. 

Why the left needs a party

Despite the state of permanent crisis Your Party has been in since its launch and the clear hatred now between the Corbyn wing and the Sultana wing, if Your Party survives, it can still play a crucial role in fighting for the recomposition of working-class consciousness. This is more crucial than ever now that Corbyn’s “The Many” slate has won  14 of 24 central executive committee (CEC) slots. 

“The Many” won in terms of slate votes nationally by roughly 8,000 to about 6,000 for the left slate (that is, 37% to 28% of the first preferences).  The other 35% went to independent candidates. 

This is not the result ACR advocated, but now that it is the reality, we must all work towards a party that can be effective at advancing ecosocialist principles. This happens through being embedded in working-class communities, campaigns, and trade unions. It means being active and promoting working-class interests against austerity, racism, and division, against the drive to war by the European capitalists.

Some members feel that simply standing in elections and saying ‘socialism’ is the primary task, but electoral success will only come from the party’s ability to mobilise and organise around the issues that affect working people and the oppressed. 

Yes, it is true that the Greens have stolen a march on YP electorally, but the ‘space’ to the left of Labour is not an inert object that is just painted different party colours, it is made up of human beings with desires and fears and needs, people who are part of the collective struggle for human freedom. YP can still speak to those people, even if they continue to vote Green, by becoming a party of the movements. 

Neil Kinnock, in his war against the Labour left in the 1980s, scornfully used to say, “You can either be a party of protest or a party of power.” Kinnock was never in power and also rarely protested Thatcher’s war against the working class, but the point is that we have a period – barring no snap elections – until 2029, which offers us a chance to crystallise an electoral force as a product of the processes of political polarisation as the structural crisis of late capitalism continues its relentless logic. 

Until it can turn outwards and be a useful party of struggle, Your Party will reflect the weakness of the existing left: dogmatic, inward-looking, sectarian, elevating tactical disagreements to the level of principles, making excuses for the inexcusable, etc. 

The Fourth International (of which ACR is a member organisation) has a useful way of thinking about this: that the left should commit to “building parties that are useful in the class struggle. That is to say, parties that can assemble the forces and decide on actions that have an effect and advance the class struggle on the basis of a class struggle approach and programme, the ultimate goal of such a party being obviously to get rid of the existing capitalist system, in whatever general terms this may be expressed.”

The Greens, despite Polanski’s surge, remain an electoralist party that has activists involved in campaigns because they are good people who want to do good things, but the Green Party is not a party that has a concept of radical change from below based on a mass popular movement that shatters the power of the capitalist class in the process of reorganising society in the interests of everyone. 

The ACR Council issued a statement around the Gorton and Denton by-election, which explicitly called for a vote for the Greens and also for a Red Green Alliance at the next General election. 

This is based on an assessment of the balance of class forces and the reality that the Greens exist in the popular imagination as a (or even the) left party. Despite our criticisms of their electoralism (and their austerity programmes in local government), we are happy to work with the Greens on key issues where they have progressive social democratic politics. 

We also promote ecosocialist politics within the Greens to help shape more consistent class-based politics. Simple denunciations of the Greens as ‘a middle-class party’ or ‘pro-capitalist’ are largely meaningless insults from tiny socialist groups and don’t connect with why people are joining them and attracted to that party. 

Below is an excerpt from one of our congress documents that outlines the kind of ‘useful’ party we envisage and want to promote. We support democratic discussions within YP and the wider movement over these ideas and want to work with other YP members to realise them. If you agree, then get in touch, and we can discuss how to make it happen.

• participation in the social movements and struggles of the oppressed and exploited, not as a political elite intervening from the outside but as an organic part of those movements and struggles in developing political analyses and demands, continuing the fight for those demands to the end. In this process we also learn from these movements to deepen and enrich our own programme–as we have on feminism, ecology, LGBTIQ questions;
• building active, radical and class-struggle trade-unions, either through activity in existing unions or where necessary and appropriate building new workers’ unions. In the unions, act with autonomy and independence in relation to employers, governments and parties and ensure democracy in union structures and processes. Challenge the limits of the bureaucratic machine and the legislation that binds the unions to the state. Participate in and strengthen trade unions where possible, in the direction of democracy and unity, but fight against bureaucratism, getting too close to governments and class collaboration. Understand that the struggle goes beyond the unions and their structures.
• Create spaces that take into account the diversity of the working class, organize with popular social movements, of informal, cooperative, precarious, outsourced, unemployed, homeless, and artisan workers, as well as with native and traditional peoples, and with fighters against racism, LGBTophobia, machismo, and in defence of ecology;
• the attitude to the state, institutions; to elections as a support to the activity in the mass movement, which must remain the centre of gravity of our activity; the role and relationship to the party of elected representatives who are often the most visible representatives of the party, whose actions (through votes) may be seen to have the most effect, and who are often the most under pressure to be “useful” in the short term. It is the party’s responsibility to determine the political framework for its action;
• the importance of an international and internationalist understanding of the world political situation leading to activity in international campaigns and active and practical solidarity, as well as participation in the FI (see below);
• the necessity for democratic and transparent functioning with broad democracy including tendency rights, against verticalist functioning, based on the rank and file membership’s participation in the activity and decision-making of the party, with the necessary organizational structures to ensure this; understanding the oppression that continues to exist even within parties that are against all forms of women’s and other specific oppression and developing structures, functioning and procedures appropriately;
• the importance of addressing the questions thrown up in the struggles and fightbacks of the oppressed and exploited (notably feminism, ecology, LGBTQI, and others);
• The party is committed to a policy of activity on demands and campaigns combating women’s oppression, in the context of participation in the class-struggle oriented groups, campaigns, and movements, with an understanding of the strategic goal of building an autonomous women’s movement. The party’s preoccupation with both education and activity on these questions is permanent, not to be set aside in moments of lower mass activity.
• The party seeks to build a feminist profile both externally and internally to not only encourage women to join but also to internally build a positive vision of women in the leadership.
• In addition to ensuring that the democratic functioning of the party enables all members to fully participate as outlined above, the party understands that social dynamics tend to exclude women from political participation, therefore it accepts the need for specific mechanisms (women only meetings, priority for women in speakers lists etc) that encourage women’s participation, and the recognition of further problems to be overcome.
• The party does not tolerate any form of sexist (or transphobic or homo/lesbophobic) behaviour. The implementation of this political position is the responsibility of the party, which ensures not only political education on these questions but also that the structures, functioning and procedures put in place work to ensure that the parties we are building, although they cannot be “islands of socialism” in a capitalist world, strive to prefigure the society we want.
• an unremitting fight against all forms of racism – including against indigenous populations, antisemitism, islamophobia and for free movement of migrants, on the basis of solidarity and unity;
• the importance of renewal of organisations through an open and dynamic attitude to recruiting radicalizing youth and integrating them into the party through autonomous youth sectors where young radicalized activists can gather their own experience, develop their own political work and programme, gather around questions related to the questions of the youth.
• the need for continuing educational programmes, including on strategic questions such as the state or the question of power, and international questions.

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