Jeremy Corbyn speaks at Marxism Festival, hosted by the Socialist Workers Party. The previous day Zarah Sultana announced that the pair were founding what would become Your Party
The leadership of Your Party has voted to ban “dual membership” for several socialist organisations.
The central executive committee voted on Sunday to bar Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members from being in Your Party.
A statement said the CEC has “reaffirmed that members of other national political parties that do not align with these core values of openness are ineligible for membership”. “This includes parties that maintain strict internal discipline and binding lines that are incompatible with transparency and accountability within Your Party,” it said.
A list circulating ahead of the CEC meeting listed the SWP, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Socialist Party, Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), Scottish Socialist Party, Socialist Equality Party and Revolutionary Communist Party.
There was never much democracy inside Your Party. But, when members were given an opportunity to vote, they backed dual membership at the founding conference in Liverpool and the Scottish conference in Dundee.
The founding conference voted for a policy that allowed dual membership against the wishes of the leadership. “Members shall be permitted to hold membership in other national political parties where they have been approved by the CEC as aligning with the party’s values,” the policy said.
The leadership did not put the option of allowing dual membership without the need for approval—and preemptively expelled leading members of the SWP on the eve of the debate.
The wording of the policy has allowed the leadership to roundly trample on the spirit of the votes.
The witch-hunt of the left stands in the worst traditions of the Labour Party—and comes after a campaign of sabotage by the clique that runs Your Party.
The SWP will not pursue a strategy of “deep entryism”, where we secretly maintain our own organisation inside Your Party. The key battles are outside the structures of Your Party.
SWP members have built Your Party on the ground alongside others for two key reasons. First, there was and remains an objective need for a socialist alternative at the ballot box to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Second, over 800,000 people signing up to Your Party was a historic opportunity to build an alternative to the left of Labour.
But Socialist Worker always said revolutionary socialists had to maintain our political and organisational independence while building Your Party.
This wasn’t for dogmatic reasons, but because of the nature of the project.
Hundreds of thousands of people had broken with Labour, crucially because of the Palestine solidarity movement. The Independent Alliance of MPs, which was formed after the general election in 2024, was united by opposition to Israel’s genocide.
But the majority did not have a broader set of socialist or class politics. And the vast majority of people who had left Labour had not broken with “Labourism”, which sees parliamentary and electoral politics as most important to winning social change.
Important arguments took place inside Your Party that reflected the pulls of electoralism and Labourism. Should it welcome landlords into its ranks? Would it take a position on trans+ liberation? Was it against Zionism or not?
Some forces wanted to focus on “bread and butter” issues and downplay welcoming refugees or trans+ rights in order to win votes.
Others sought to talk about “community” and play down overt class politics that goes after landlords and the rich.
Two rival visions emerged at the top of Your Party—one coalesced around Jeremy Corbyn, the other around Zarah Sultana.
Socialist Worker supported Sultana’s more radical and insurgent vision, while arguing that unity was necessary to get the show on the road.
The factional warfare reflected the varied forces that led to the birth of Your Party—and the deeper structural logic of Labourism.
SWP members had to have the freedom to organise and argue for a radical vision. And we needed to take initiatives independent of Your Party structures—such as working alongside broader forces in united fronts over anti-fascism and anti-racism.
A mass left reformist party to the left of Labour would have shaken up British politics. It could have popularised socialist arguments to millions of people and given working class people confidence to strike, protest and organise.
And we wanted to be part of it on the basis of dual membership. But we understood the limits of left reformist projects through experiences such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in the Spanish state and Corbynism inside Labour.
The catastrophes we face from imperialist war and climate chaos to economic crisis and the rise of fascism require revolutionary solutions. This will involve a strategic confrontation with the state, not seeking the impossible task of “democratising” it and implementing a socialist transformation from above.
And the building of a revolutionary organisation, which seeks to build and shape the movements, is vital for deepening and spreading resistance.
We want to keep working with those we have built Your Party alongside. This will involve some campaigns in the elections next month (see below), but that is not the key battlefield to throw ourselves onto.
It is welcome that the Your Party statement said, “This is not a condemnation of other socialist parties, many of which do vital campaigning work… Your Party looks forward to standing alongside them on the many issues where we agree. Facing the threat of the far right, we must and will work together.”
We too want to work with Your Party in movements and united fronts, such as Stand Up To Racism (SUTR)
The half a million-strong Together demonstration last month showed that there is an anti-racist majority in Britain—and building on its success is crucial.
Mass anti-racist campaigning against Reform UK is vital. Let’s support SUTR’s “Stop Reform” campaign in the English local and Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections on 7 May.
On 16 May, Nazi Tommy Robinson is marching in London on the same day as the Nakba march. Let’s build the biggest possible turnout with coaches from across Britain to show that the streets belong to us.
The US and Israel’s imperialist war on Iran has put us on the road to “stagflation”—high inflation and low growth. Starmer’s Labour government, which caves to the slightest bit of pressure from big business, will double down on making working class people pay.
So let’s popularise the slogan, “We won’t pay for Trump’s war,” in the labour movement. The only way to make sure we don’t pay is through a much higher level of strikes against the Labour government and bosses.
Struggles can develop into a broader challenge to the system, but what’s not inevitable is that they win.
In every movement, strike, campaign and struggle there’s a battle between reformist forces that limit changes within the system and those who want revolutionary change. A revolutionary organisation is vital to have a better chance of success.
The SWP is not the finished article. But it is a useful and necessary political instrument if you want to build resistance in the here and now—and deepen it into a bigger confrontation to get rid of capitalism and all its horrors.
We hope to convince some of you of revolutionary socialist politics—and that you will join us. Let’s get organised together to stop barbarism and fight for socialism.
England
The opportunities for standing a socialist challenge to Labour have sharply narrowed.
The rise of the Green Party as the dominant left of Labour force—aided by the crisis of Your Party—is the decisive factor.
Your Party has supported a list of “community independent” groupings in the local elections in England next month. They include the Ealing Community Independents in west London and Haringey Socialist Alliance in north London.
Over 70 people joined the launch of the Haringey Socialist Alliance on Friday night.
SWP members are standing as part of these two groupings, putting forward a socialist, anti-racist vision on the doorstep.
They aim to build working class fightbacks through the process. As one of our comrades, Mica, told Socialist Worker that she’s using the election as an opportunity to build two campaigns against closures in Ealing.
“Building these two big campaigns against closures, that can continue even after the elections, is one of my key aims,” she says.
Of course, winning elections does matter. But, for revolutionary socialists, elections are a terrain of struggle always subordinated to the aim of building up working class organisation and confidence to confront the bosses’ system.
In Hackney, east London, an SWP member is running in the Cazenove ward on a ticket that hasn’t been endorsed by Your Party.
In Islington, north London, we support Palestine hunger striker Amu Gib’s campaign.
However, we’re not giving blank cheques—and, in some cases, any cheques—to the “community independent” groups as a whole.
Many have degenerated into a mixture of pothole politics, landlordism and downplaying anything to do with building a socialist alternative. One grouping in Walsall in the West Midlands includes three former Tory councillors.
So, Your Party will win seats in the council elections, but what those victories represent will vary widely across the board.
The Gorton and Denton by election last month confirmed that Zack Polanski’s Green Party is the main force to the left of Labour in England.
There will be times that Socialist Worker calls for a critical vote for a left wing Green—for example, Hannah Spencer. But we’re not going to call for a blanket vote for the Greens. It is not a socialist party with an orientation on struggles of working class people, but has a thoroughly electoralist approach.
The most important intervention in the elections will be supporting SUTR’s Stop Reform campaign.
Scotland
The Scottish Greens were tested in office when they were junior partners in a coalition with the Scottish National Party (SNP).
This saw several Greens come over to Your Party, and means there is more of a space on the left than in England.
But Your Party has behaved as if it learned nothing from Scottish Labour’s crisis and trampled on members’ democracy.
A socialist challenge in Scotland is most likely if it breaks free from the shackles of the Your Party leadership.
Such moves would be welcome and the SWP would want to be part of it.
Wales
The rage at Welsh Labour has been channelled by Plaid Cymru—and, to a lesser extent, the Green Party. Polls indicate that the likely outcome of the Welsh Senedd (parliament) elections will be a coalition government led by the Welsh nationalists.
But former Labour MP Beth Winter, who left Your Party, is standing as a community independent in Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr.
She is a principled socialist. In 2020, she resigned from a very junior position as Rachel Reeves’ bag carrier after rebelling over the Overseas Operations Bill. This gave immunity to British troops for war crimes in the north of Ireland.
She was one of 11 Labour MPs who voted against the Section 35 order to the Scottish parliament’s gender recognition reforms. And she was the only Welsh Labour MP to support a ceasefire in Gaza in 2024.
Socialist Worker supports Winter’s campaign.
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