ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The WSWS site is run by one of the Trotskyist sects which have decided not to “enter” the new party — the Socialist Equality Party, one of the relics of the old WRP.
Went to a SPEW meeting yesterday evening in Brixton on “What next for Corbyn’s ‘Your Party’?” to find out first hand what their line was. There were about 3O there, probably all Spewers save 2 or 3.
One said that they were joining the new party not as individuals but as SPEW members (so it’s “entry” en masse as an organised group). They will be participating in the South London YPS members assembly in 2 November as a bloc which their model motion.
This proposes that the YP constitution should be a federation of local groups, trade unions and affiliated parties, including them.
Asked how they would get round the current YP ban on also being a member of another national party, the speaker replied that this point had not yet been clarified as membership of some registered local parties was being regarded membership of a YP pre-branch. So it looks as if they are going to stay in until such time as they are told they can’t be.
It looks like this might be a cynical raid on the YP to see how many of its members they can take with them when they have to go, as surely they will have to. There can’t be any prospect of the new party allowing groups like SPEW, SWP, RCP, etc affiliating to it.
On elections, it seems they want to see locally chosen candidates, hoping that some of their members will be able to stand for the new party. Unlike some of the other trot sects, they are not hostile on principle to working with the Greens and say they would be prepared to support Greens as candidates who stood on a “no cuts” platform.
There is also a Jack Fitzgerald Archive on the Spanish MIA:
https://www.marxists.org/espanol/fitzgerald/index.htm
This translation of his article from 1920 which criticises Lenin’s conception of democracy has just been added:
https://www.marxists.org/espanol/fitzgerald/1920/julio/dictadura.htm
At a rally in Liverpool on Thursday Zara Sultana declared:
“We’re not here for lowering a few bills here and there, and the sprinkling of a wealth tax. We are here for a fundamental transformation of society: the means of production controlled by workers”.
If the new party was really going to be a socialist party something like that would have to be its main aim. The trouble is that a “sprinkling” of reforms will be all that the new party will be campaigning for, reserving talk of the workers controlling the means of production to May Day rallies and other ceremonial occasions.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/corbyn-and-sultana-stand-united-liverpool-your-party-rally
Two London Branch members went to a meeting of a Lambeth pre-branch of the proposed new party. We were surprised to see that most of the 70 or so others there were of pension age. The main speaker was an ex-Trotskyist who had joined Labour when Corbyn became Labour leader only to be expelled in the purge of Corbyn supporters after he resigned.
In his speech two things were of interest. He said he hoped that the new party would be “anti-capitalist” but would still stay in if it was only a Left party. He also referred to a rival Lambeth pre-branch set up by the SWP. He hoped the two would eventually merge.
If this happens, it promises a struggle for offices between the SWP and Anti-Capitalist Resistance, the Trotsky group active in the pre-branch meeting we went to.
This needs to be entered into the black book of the current Labour government’s record — a change that will make life more worrisome and insecure for a section of the working class here, made just to garner some xenophobic votes:
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-guilty-being-reforms-handmaidens-says-polanski
It looks like the Greens have stolen the new party’s clothes even before it has been founded. The same policies and the same rhetoric.
Since Tuesday “Your Party” is a political party registered with the Electoral Commission under that name. It can change this later. Corbyn is the registered Leader. Some see this as a sinister plot to dish Sultana but there is no provision to register more than one Leader (nor, unfortunately, not to register one at all):
https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Registrations/PP18172
I have to confess that after listening to Hallam’s contribution here he wasn’t as bad — or as mad — as I expected. He is basically defending the idea of selecting by lot the delegates to the founding conference of the new party; which of course is precisely what the group behind the discussion (the Weekly Worker group who have decided to enter the new party) don’t want as it deprives them of the chance to manipulate things so as to get a delegate or two.
At one point Hallam said that “sortition equals socialism” on the grounds that it would increase “working class” representation in parliament to align with their proportion of the total population.
Actually, lot is one way of choosing decision-makers in socialism. After all, we use it to chose the “Leader” that the law says we must appoint to register with the Electoral Commission as a political party.
Apparently Roger Hallam has been let out of jail and is planning to join the new party. I wonder what havoc he will wreak there, given his undemocratic view that, expressed and put into practice when he was in XR and Just Stop Oil (and which got him jailed), that society could be changed by the actions of a mere 3.5% of the population. Or maybe he’s changed his mind on that.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/08/what-roger-hallam-learned-in-prison
Report of what Sultana said at a meeting in Sheffield yesterday:
“At a meeting in Sheffield on the evening of September 24, Zarah Sultana said: “Yes of course we must get rid of the monarchy, I am a republican.” Later she stressed that, “the main difference between us and the Greens is that we are a class-based party, we recognise the power of the working class. We identity as a socialist party and proudly so.”
The trouble is that she doesn’t define what she means by socialism. She seems to mean by “socialist” simply a party committed to improving conditions for workers under capitalism rather than one committed to replacing capitalism by socialism. In other words, a reformist party. Which we all know it will be.
You can now join the new party (again). It says you can’t be a member of another political party. So no SWP, SPEW or RCP members allowed in — as if that will stop them.
This is quite a good article about the left and leaders:
The New Party Fallout Shows That Hero-Worship Gets Us Nowhere
Actually that’s all conventional politics is these days and gets headline news as if we’re supposed to be interested.
