by
Ian Jasper
I returned from the Your Party (YP) founding conference after attending only one day, due to the onset of a heavy cold, the sort which addles your cognitive abilities for a week or so. In trying to evaluate what actually happened I have to separate the overall sense of hope and positivity from the less than inspiring bureaucratic failings, sectarian manoeuvres and counter moves, and virus induced fog.
There is a wonderful line in the film ‘Clockwise’ starring John Cleese which expresses an emotional state familiar to so many on the left. Cleese plays a pompous headteacher trying to make the journey to a conference. Everything that could goes wrong, yet the possibility of actually getting to the conference never entirely disappears. As his desperation increases the psychologically disintegrating headteacher says to one of his pupils, who he has kidnapped to drive him to the conference: ‘It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand’. I imagine this feeling to be familiar to most people on the political left.
Despite everything that is being said in the mainstream, and even in parts of the left media, the YP project to build a mass socialist party remains very much alive, with at least fifty thousand plus people still committed. We live in strange times. Since the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 there has probably never been a more desperate need for a party of the type which YP might yet be. People reading this will know both the hope and despair.
Sortition
Any member of YP who wanted to go to the founding conference could enter the process of ‘sortition’. Sortition is in principle very similar to a lottery. A member enters the ‘sort’: if you are sortitioned you can attend the conference. This method has important strengths and problems. It randomises people attending the conference and thereby offers a chance to the less forceful members who do not want to push themselves forward in a selection process: indeed it prevents the selection falling under the control of those exercising influence and power in branches. In the case of YP many of us turning up in Liverpool had not attended a conference remotely similar to this and had little knowledge of the intrigues we were about to witness.
Jeremy Corbyn is widely recognised as a decent person, honest, principled and generous, even towards his opponents. This is why so many people want him to be a successful political leader. It is an open question as to what extent his personal qualities lead him to overestimate their presence in people around him. It is clear that Corbyn’s merits mean that he refuses to fight without reserve against opponents all too willing to be unscrupulous. This leads to his supporters confronting a paradox.
The same qualities which inspire Corbyn’s supporters are also those creating problems with his leadership. How does a person so imbued with the quality of loyalty to colleagues and steadfast principles navigate in the super-treacherous waters of party politics? It is evident that today in Britain this same dilemma exists at least to some degree for most people politically active at even a local level. How are we to balance truthfulness with the need to promote YP? How do you square realism against optimism?
Several thousand people can gather together in Liverpool and all agree that what unites them is far more important than their differences. But this can, and indeed has, been obscured by the mainstream media as it trivialises and sneers.
With the rise of Reform in British politics there is an imperative need for a new party of the left. In the estimate of many The Labour Party – at least in parliament, and probably nationally – has lost all meaningful capacity to oppose the politics of Farage and those to his right. Its leadership is a byword for insincerity. The Green Party – for all its merits and the inspiring leadership of Zack Polanski – is not a socialist party, and does not seek to be one. For all sincere social democrats this leaves a political gap where traditional anti-fascist activity has always been centred. Given the need for a party to oppose the right and the extreme right there is a temptation to applaud the formation of YP whilst playing down the problems.
The mainstream media, in its normal lazy way, concentrates on the differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana, especially on what is supposed to be the battle for who will lead the Party. It is perfectly possible to see the differences between Corbyn and Sultana in a very different way without being extravagantly indulgent toward either of them. There is a personal dimension to their differences, but they are also political, and quite explicable.
Decay
Corbyn has for decades worked within the decay of the Labour Party; he has even led it through a period when its decay accelerated as the fixers and bosses within the party worked untiringly, and often secretly, to destroy his leadership. The policies the Corbyn leadership tried to put forward within Labour were in large part those which for decades most leading Labour figures had professed to support. Corbyn is, in party terms, cautious but always principled. Some people around him want to form a new party which they can control and steer in the hope that they can achieve their political ambitions without a profound and radical break with Labour Party traditions, keeping real power away from a party membership they fear. Against this most of the membership of the nascent YP believe that the right to ‘agency’ is the core of a democratic party.
Zara Sultana has always argued for democracy from the ‘bottom up’ and has utilised this to promote her claim to be a leader. This is what any politician wishing to lead would do. It does not follow from this alone that her motives for seeking power are unhealthy. From both the Corbyn and Sultana camps the problems arise when legitimate principles are not only argued for but are supplemented by political shenanigans. Briefing the press against Zara Sultana by members of the Corbyn team (this seems to have happened though it cannot be proven) or ostentatiously boycotting the first day of the conference as Zara did, does not help to build trust or consensus.
The first day was not an unqualified success. Outside the hall there was a protest in support of those who had been summarily ‘banned’ from attending, many on dubious grounds. This demonstration itself received ardent support from some small left groups denouncing the conference organisers for the bans and calling on those entering the hall to boycott, or overturn the proceedings, whilst simultaneously professing support for the YP project itself. Zara personified this strange way of thinking by boycotting the first day.
As I walked into the enormous conference hall on the first morning the Sinead O’Connor’s rendering of ‘Foggy Dew’ was playing on the sound system. One by one I met up with old friends I trust and admire and a feeling grew that we can make a success of this venture not least because we must. I looked over the programme for the two days and saw that there would be addresses from other parties in Europe who had overcome problems no less difficult than those we would need to deal with here. Speaker after speaker condemned the genocide in Gaza. Effectively everyone present agreed on the need for a profound renewal of Britain based on policies to support ‘the many’. There was, above all, a feeling that if YP could only get into the light of day there could be a political springtime in Britain.
John Cleese’s headmaster does eventually reach the Headmasters’ conference and gives his speech, but this too goes horribly wrong. Coming away from Liverpool it was signally clear that we must always preserve our hopes and do what we can to work for their realisation. Without hope there is very little indeed.
About
Ian Jasper has lived in Canterbury for some thirty years. He retired from Canterbury Christ Church University over a year ago. He has been a socialist for longer than he can remember.
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