Supporting Palestine outside the Your Party conference
Your Party members met on Sunday to discuss the party’s strategy for the elections in May. And they debated the relationship the organisation would have with the trade unions and how it would be organised.
Members voted that the party would continue to be called Your Party. They heard from MPs Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan and Zarah Sultana.
Sultana used her speech to call for a Your Party that “belongs to its members, not to MPs, not to donors, not to nameless, faceless, unelected bureaucrats.” She said that Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York mayor shows what is possible.
She slammed the Labour Party’s racism, saying, “When Nigel Farage says, ‘Kick an immigrant’, Keir Starmer replies, ‘How hard?’”
Sultana called for the party to say refugees are welcome and to stand with migrants, with Muslims, with disabled people and trans+ people. “If you come for any of us you will have to fight all of us,” she said
Sultana also expressed her solidarity with members of the Socialist Workers Party who were expelled from Your Party.
She said, “We have to confront what happened yesterday. The expulsions, the bans, the censorship on conference floor are unacceptable. It’s undemocratic. It’s an attack on members and this movement.
“The shocking sight of a Muslim woman being manhandled and dragged out of conference is something that should shame any party that claims to stand for equality and justice.”
Your Party needs to get organised if it is to stand in local elections across England as well as elections for the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish parliament. All are set to take place in May of next year.
Your Party could be a radical, socialist force in the elections that builds and supports movements in the streets and the workplaces.
If it doesn’t stand, the Green Party will sweep up votes of those looking for a left wing alternative to Labour.
The Greens are already organising to win in May. Leader Zack Polanski recently posted in Whatsapp, “It’s my first Christmas as Leader of the Green Party, and I have one wish—for us to turn the momentum we’ve all felt in the last few months into wins in May’s local elections.”
Socialist Carol Williams stood as an independent candidate in a local by-election in Moseley in Birmingham last month and got 20 percent of the vote. This is a promising start that shows what is possible, even with no national organisation backing the campaign.
There is potential for activists to win more votes if they ran as Your Party candidates. This would be the preferable option. But if there is no national Your Party election campaign, it should support independent socialists to stand.
Independent councillor Noor Jahan Begum argued in favour of supporting such campaigns. She spoke about how many people have been abandoned by the Labour Party and how they feel politically homeless.
The conference discussed only the party’s stance in England. Its attitude in Scotland and Wales will be decided by members there.
There was a debate on an amendment to set up a “Workers’ Movement Commission, consisting in senior trade union movement figures”.
The party should build and champion workers’ struggles on the picket lines and be a home for trade unionists. But the leaders of the unions, the union bureaucracy, can be a conservative force pulling left wing organisations rightwards and holding back struggle.
Former Unite union leader Len McCluskey was prominent at the conference and is a key figure on the right of Your Party.
Jae Robinson, a member of Disabled People Against Cuts and Unite argued in favour. She began her speech by saluting striking Birmingham bin workers and called for breaking the link between the unions and the Labour Party.
But former Labour MP Hilton Dawson said that the party should be more focused on the grassroots union movement. He said, “Don’t put all your faith in the trade union leaders.”
Delegates debated whether the party should explicitly support trans+ rights. Unison union member Liz Wheatley spoke about how her union branch had been on every national trans+ pride demonstration since they started.
She said, “Women’s rights are not undermined by trans+ rights. If we all fight together we will all win more rights. We have to stand for the liberation of the oppressed.”
There were more rows on conference floor on day two of the conference. Several speakers argued that there should have been a vote on whether to require elected representatives to take the wage of a skilled worker.
A motion calling for this was popular with members of Your Party, but was not discussed at the conference. People took to the speakers’ podium to complain about it being kept off the agenda. But they were told to stop and had their microphones cut.
There were farcical moments at several points during the conference, when the leadership cut off the online live feed while telling people not to speak.
Many there were still hopeful about the possibilities for the organisation. During the lunch break local Palestine activists held a rally outside against the ongoing genocide, with loud chants of “we will rise from the rubble.”
Rana told Socialist Worker Your Party could “vocalise the movement for Palestine and bring attention to the cause.” She said, “it’s really important to have a different narrative from within parliament” when Zionism is so prominent.
Ritchie added that Your Party could amplify causes such as demanding freedom for the Filton 24, some of whom are on hunger strike in prison after taking action against arms sales to Israel.
Former Labour councillor Shehrezade Mamjan explained that she had been suspended from Labour for her support for the Palestinians. She said she was there to listen and find out more about Your Party, but that Jeremy Corbyn “has a lot of integrity”.
Spyridon, originally from Greece and based in Barnsley, south Yorkshire, told Socialist Worker, “I want to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes as we did in Greece with Alexis Tsipras.”
The left wing coalition Syriza was elected in Greece in 2015 with Tsipras as prime minister. But it demobilised the grassroots organisations that helped it get into office. And eventually it would capitulate to the European Union’s demands for austerity.
Spyridon said, “Tsipras destroyed the branches when he got into government. What we need is a mass movement to fight Keir Starmer’s Labour.”
He said, “I’m here to fight against racism, to fight the far right and transphobia. I’ll go back and start campaigning against Nigel Farage. And we need to keep supporting Palestine.”
Amu Gib is running in the local council election from their prison cell
Socialists stand in north London
Where next for the left?
