The emergence of Your Party reflects real desire for change. The question is: will it become a genuine force of working class struggle and socialism, or simply another electoral project disconnected from the real battles?
The emergence of Your Party reflects real desire for change. The question is: will it become a genuine force of working class struggle and socialism, or simply another electoral project disconnected from the real battles?
Your Party must not become a ‘broad left’ electoral brand or ‘movement’ that relies on charismatic leaders and vague ‘values’—a rickety coalition of interest groups. What’s needed instead is a fighting, democratic organisation rooted in the workplaces and communities, schools and colleges, where people can organise resistance.
Can’t pay, won’t pay
Millions are locked in a daily fight to pay rent, heat their homes and feed their families. This is no accident—it is the result of capitalism’s drive for profit. Corporations hike prices, freeze wages and governments defend the rich. The answer lies in collective power.
Your Party should stand with those organising strikes, tenants’ campaigns and community defence groups. It should demand a workers’ emergency programme: pay rises linked to inflation, price controls on rent and essential goods set by workers’ organisations, public ownership of energy, transport and housing, and properly funded public services, and the repeal of all the laws restricting our right to protest, organise at work, or take effective industrial action. These will only be won through struggle, not by petitions or parliaments.
When workers act, they unmask the real source of power in society—those who produce the wealth. A socialist party must link these fights together and direct them towards challenging capitalist control of the economy.
Break with Empire
The British state continues to back wars and alliances that serve big business—from the militarism of Nato to Starmer’s ‘unconditional’ support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. Billions of pounds go into arms and foreign bases, while schools and hospitals fall into ruin. Every bomb dropped abroad hits working people at home.
A new workers’ party must reject this imperial agenda altogether. End British support for Zionism. Cut all arms sales and political ties with Israel. Break from Nato. Stop sending troops and weapons to imperialist wars. Instead of defending the interests of our ruling class, we stand with workers and oppressed peoples everywhere fighting for liberation and justice.
International solidarity cannot be a slogan or afterthought. It must be central to building a socialist movement that attacks capitalism as it marauds across the globe.
A party of action
For Your Party to succeed, it must be more than campaign banners or social media clicks. It must be a democratic organisation led from below: genuine branches in workplaces and communities where members debate, decide and act together. Leaders must be accountable and recallable. The party’s direction must come from struggle, not a handful of figures at the top.
Every fight—over pay, housing, health or climate—should build working class power. The goal is to connect these struggles into a unified movement for socialism: workers’ control of production; nationalisation without compensation and under workers’ and community control; and a planned economy organised for need, not profit.
The new party needs a strategy, with a leadership directing the organisation on the basis of an agreed programme. It is not going to be built overnight. But every act of solidarity, every workplace committee, every tenants’ union counts. We must refuse to dilute our politics for short-term popularity. That road only leads back to reformism and class collaboration—back to Labour.
Seizing the future
Capitalism gives us nothing but crisis—economic breakdown, environmental ruin, imperial war and widening injustice. The methods of struggle we use for immediate change—higher wages, rent controls, better services—are shaped by our wider vision of a different society.
Socialism means taking the wealth and resources controlled by a tiny elite and placing them under collective, democratic control. With them we can stop living on the scraps and start living on what we produce. We need a party that embraces struggle, organises it and directs it toward this goal. A party that underlines class solidarity, exposes exploitation and affirms the need for workers to take power in their own hands.
Workers Powerwill campaign for this transformation—to a new, mass working class party capable of challenging the capitalist system itself. The potential exists. Let’s make Your Party a force for socialism; a weapon in the hands of the working class fighting for power.
A democratic party
Much of the heat generated in the run-up to conference has been directed at the interim leadership of Your Party. The imposition of the Independent Alliance MPs as guardians of a working class socialist party was never going to work. The resignations prove this.
The most frustrating part of this set up has been felt in the proto-branches that have sprung up across the country. Groups of activists, coming from different traditions, have launched Your Party branches, built hugely successful meetings and rallies, produced campaigning materials and been out on the streets.
The leadership has not only ignored these efforts but denied them resources, even the centrally held data which would have allowed them to contact other YP members in their area. Instead the leadership has twice posted a list of non-existent branches, mapping onto constituencies, on our party website.
Clearly we are being told, however you think makes sense to organise, we know better. And this ‘better’ way seems to be preparing for a general election. The goal of maximising parliamentary seats is their priority, not the struggle against war, racism or poverty.
Revolt
Opposition to this imposition has been widespread. The Socialist Unity Platform and the ‘Sheffield’ Amendments have been the most prominent, but there has been a grassroots revolt at almost every assembly. Workers Power has supported and been part of this.
Indeed some improvements have been made to the founding documents by the opaque ‘editing’ process, which itself reveals the level of discontent in the ranks.
The Central Executive Committee will be fully elected and recallable, and MPs will not have reserved places on it. Its election has also been brought forward by a month. The CEC will also now have the power to mandate MPs on how to vote.
These are all wins for the rank and file but we need to go much further if YP is to become a fighting democratic party. For the individual amendments, Workers Power supports most of the amendments put forward by Socialist Unity and Sheffield. But there are one or two exceptions, where they have got it wrong.
The proposal to delete reserved spaces for oppressed groups—women, LGBT+, Black and ethnic minorities, youth—is wrong. The oppression these comrades suffer under capitalism is inevitably reproduced in a mass party, consciously or not. Therefore it is our duty to counter the effect of these oppressions by actively promoting their involvement at every level, including the leadership.
Of the two proposals to democratise and speed up the election of the leadership, the SUP proposal for conference to elect seven returning officers seems the best. If we were to rush to elect a leadership today at Liverpool, it would be a ‘beauty contest’, where name recognition would count for more than political direction.
Towards a fighting party
Socialist parties evolve in struggle. They are not born fully formed. The primary foundation has to be its programme, which needs clear concrete commitments, not just vague values: not a penny for the war machine; abolish all anti-union laws; every migrant given citizenship, etc.
Its branches need to be centres of struggle. Therefore we need branches based on community boundaries, workplace, school and university branches. They should be linked directly to action and united by our programme.
Elections are only a barometer of the class struggle, therefore such campaigns need to be subordinate to our overall strategy. All elected representatives should be under party control, receive a worker’s wage and be instantly recallable.
The leadership and the party’s paid officers also need to be directly elected, recallable and paid only a worker’s wage: no careerists! Nor should there be any privileges for the party’s officers: members decide, officials serve.
A real member-led party does not need a separate leader with their own office. Even when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the opposition, this caused ructions with the rank and file. While it does need paid officers, these should not become a privileged layer of ‘special advisers’ overturning conference and CEC decisions.
Every member of a real workers’ party has to be equal, so together we can fight for and create a society that is truly equal: socialism.
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