WHILE THE World Transformed (TWT) has continued to exist in some localities, e.g. Bristol, it was mothballed on a national scale for five years. Its return this Autumn brought together 3,000 people in an event packed with lively and democratic discussions.
Politically TWT attracted an activist and academic audience to real workshops and open discussions of work done on topics as varied as the class composition in Britain today and the year in strikes, tenants’ struggles and socialist housing policy, the failure of the green new deals and future red-green alliances, Palestine solidarity and the threat posed by the far right. The addition of three political ‘assemblies’, based on discussion papers submitted in advance, added substance to the talkfests we have become used to.
The cultural side of the festival, while never the most important, displayed a thriving creativity, with live music and DJs, book stalls by Haymarket and various independent vendors and publishers, even a ‘pub quiz’. The event by artist Jeremy Deller drew a crowd that had to queue round the block to get in.
The audience was overwhelmingly young, the majority being in their 20s and early 30s, and diverse. There were fewer workers, particularly manual workers. Many were students or graduates. The prominent presence of the far left, particularly its more ‘horizontal’ groups, like rs21, Prometheus and Plan C, was another new development that helped generate a more open political space. This relaunch, therefore, marked a clear shift to the left, compared to the Corbyn days of 2016-19.
The Jeremy and Zarah Show
Inevitably, the provisionally named Your Party dominated many of the sessions, the assemblies and many of the conversations in between. Indeed, it kicked off with a 500-strong rally entitled ‘A world to win – what is a party for?’. Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana emerged on stage to great enthusiasm, and instantly put on a show of unity, tapping each other on the shoulder to share screenshots on their phones, whispering and smiling.
This contrasted starkly with their speeches which diverged quite noticeably. Sultana was first up. After summing up the political situation and background to the new party launch, she immediately attacked Reform and the far right for setting the agenda on migrants. ‘Where necessary, you fight fascism in the streets,’ she said to applause, calling out the unions for outsourcing their anti-racist work.
‘What are we fighting for?—socialism: workers’ control of the means of production and control of all of the wealth they produce,’ making references to both Labour’s old Clause IV and Karl Marx. Sultana continued, ‘We want class war everywhere—let’s embrace class war. It’s time we won!’ Later, she dismissed the goal of creating ‘Labour 2.0’ which she described as ‘reforms within capitalism’, exclaiming that ‘we don’t just want crumbs from the table—we want the whole fucking lot!’
The Coventry South MP finished off with her familiar ring of ‘Trans rights are human rights—migrant rights are human rights,’ but more clearly spelt out her anti-imperialist ambitions for the new party than before, saying, ‘we must withdraw from Nato, an imperialist alliance’, and in Palestine must support ‘a secular state with freedom for all’, a clear reference to a one-state solution.
Corbyn by contrast stuck quite closely to his usual script. Yes, he condemned Donald Trump’s ‘peace’ plan being imposed on the Palestinians, but in the next breath called for peace negotiations in Ukraine without any warning of the implications of a peace-for-land deal being foisted on long-suffering Ukrainians. Recognising that there was an inherent contradiction here, Corbyn added sheepishly, ‘I didn’t support Russia’s invasion.’ Maybe not, but he certainly downplays Putin’s imperialist motives.
A good deal of his speech was devoted to explaining how the founding conference of the new party would run. The ‘six MPs would be in charge’ while there would be ‘deliberative regional assemblies’ on a colossal scale, topped off with a national conference in Liverpool of participants chosen by sortition (lottery) and a final online vote of all members.
The Islington North MP assured us that this would enable ‘online commissions, direct democracy’ but avoid ‘endless internal discussions’. This is a bit rich coming from a man who has spent almost every day since 4 July, when Sultana bounced him into launching the party, in seemingly ‘endless internal discussions’ with his shadowy advisers and the decidedly non-socialist ‘Independent Alliance’ MPs.
The ‘deal’ that got the show back on the road (the Liverpool meeting preceded this one by a day) seems to be that Corbyn’s team will get to run the conference as already laid out, while Sultana and her sympathisers (Andrew Feinstein, Salma Yaqoob, etc.) will be allowed to speak freely so long as they do not openly criticise each other. The furthest Sultana went in relation to working class democracy was to say MPs should not have a job for life and the next conference will have branch delegates.
What the past month has revealed is that Sultana is standing significantly to the left of Corbyn, who is transposing his lifelong alliance with Labour’s right wing MPs to his newfound pro-Palestinian liberal MPs. While many on the left will welcome Sultana’s speeches as a breath of fresh air, even as declarations of socialism and workers’ democracy, they should also take a reality check.
First Sultana is an unreliable ally. So far she has combined bold assertions of her rights (e.g. against the ‘sexist boys’ club’) with periods of silence and retreat. While she has openly collaborated with the SWP, she has not placed herself at the services of the proto-branches that have sprung up across the country. She has never opened a communications channel to receive motions and proposals from organised groups of lay members.
Second, while Sultana has made many points way to the left of Corbyn, she remains a left reformist. Indeed she resembles Tony Benn when he returned to the back benches in the 1980s. Benn made dozens of Town Hall type speeches, extolling the virtues of Wat Tyler and even calling for a revolution, by which he really meant far-reaching—and peaceful—democratic reforms. We should of course place demands on Sultana (and on Corbyn’s team), but we should organise independently and, when necessary, take action independently.
Democracy…
A number of sessions dealt with the question of establishing a democratic framework inside the new party. One of the most interesting sesssions heard former Labour NEC member Mish Rahman (Democratic Bloc), Alan Gibbons (Liverpool Independent Socialists), Fiona Lali (Revolutionary Communist Party) and Max Shanly (Democratic Socialists of Your Party).
Gibbons had the unenviable, but self-appointed task of defending sortition, unwieldy mass regional assemblies, unelected and undisclosed conference arrangements teams, and the fast-fading illusion that, if it’s mass, it must be democratic. He was unable to answer any of the criticisms. He ended up lamely trying to downplay the conference saying, we can build democratic structures afterwards.
Gibbons also propagated the stale idea that representative democracy, i.e. branches electing delegates they can trust and mandating them how to vote, only ever produced ‘the same old tired faces’. This is demagogy and should be called out as such. Isn’t it funny that it is always the same tired old faces that warn us about… the same old tired faces? Take a look in the mirror!a
Max Shanly and Archie Woodrow (Prometheus, rs21) exposed how deep the rot is within the Corbyn wing, where it was claimed that ‘jobs are already being dished out’ before there’s been a single vote. Shanly in particular called for a ‘radical break with Labourism’ and for ‘all power’ to be devolved to the local branches, which should enjoy a ‘high degree of autonomy’.
The problem with this is that it simply reverses the signs above each component part of the party: a minus sign above leadership and a plus sign over branches. Politics and parties do not run like that. While here the emphasis must be on empowering the local groups, having a strong central leadership democratically mandated to pursue the party’s strategic line is ultimately at least as important, in fact even more so. Without that, the MPs and councillors will be free to do whatever they want.
… programme…
In a meeting to discuss what the new part should do, we heard two speakers from rs21, Taisie Tsikas and Vik Chechi-Ribeiro, among others. This was something of missed opportunity to try and engage in how revolutionaries (the whole panel were Marxists of one variety or another) could turn a mass party into a real party of class struggle based on a socialist programme.
Much was said about involving members in activity from the get-go, of subordinating electoral politics to the class struggle, of holding leaders and elected representatives to account. All agreed on the need to be inclusive and to take up the liberation struggles of the marginalised and oppressed. But this was about as far as it went.
Workers Power from the floor pointed out that revolutionaries need to adopt an attitude of fearless criticism of the leadership when they leant towards bureaucracy and class collaboration, combined with calls to action on agreed goals, always emphasising that real change comes from mass action, not manoeuvres in Parliament or council chambers. The goal is to win workers away from their reformist misleaders, not to strengthen the MPs and councillors.
… and the party
The assemblies at the event were impressive, both in scale (around 300 per session) and in spirit, by which we mean the optimism, enthusiasm and confidence of the participants, lots of whooping and applause. It was closer to a European Social Forum style event (minus the left union leaders), rather than the old TWT, and that’s not a bad thing.
At the final assembly on the Sunday, a proposal from the DSYP, the Democratic Bloc, Eco-Socialist Horizon, Greater Manchester Left Caucus, the Trans Liberation Group, the People’s Front and Organising for Popular Power. The latter is a coalition of various individuals, including members of Plan C and rs21.
Their document was politically underdeveloped and vague: for a ‘socialist horizon’ (don’t horizons famously never get closer?); solidarity with all the oppressed; anti-imperialism. The ‘constitutional demands’ were more concrete, calling for elected representatives and officials to be placed on the average wage, a sovereign conference binding MPs, mandatory reselection of MPs and councillors and a ‘genuinely democratic conference’ within 12 months.
This, including the proposal to set up a ‘network’, was passed by about 300 to five. As an agreement to cover deeper ongoing collaboration over the next six weeks, it is a step forward. Beyond that, however, it fails to outline how a bridge can be built between the left reformist, or left populist party envisaged by Corbyn, Karie Murphy, Schneider & Co. and the revolutionary party that we need to overthrow capitalism.
Here the coalition of the tendencies’ focus on building active branches provides an opportunity. If we can involve a mass membership in campaigning and direct actions for reforms, organise them in their workplaces as well as their communities, take part with them in education meetings and in real democratic branch discussions leading to motions, which can be passed on to regions and the leadership, then we can start to build a real socialist party.
But it will take more than militant reformism to really engineer a mass break from Labourism. It will take revolutionaries fighting for a programme of immediate and transitional demands to combat the real difficulties facing workers, and linking those struggles, logically and through experience, to the struggle for power. Workers Power looks forward to working together and continuing to debate these questions with the left groups within Your Party and beyond.
