Manchester shows potential but also the problems

The first meeting to be organised in central Manchester in support of the call for the new YourParty was held at Friends Meeting House, a traditional place for left wing events, on Tuesday 20 August 2025.

Although it was not stated on the promotional material the meeting was organised and controlled by Counterfire.

The room was laid out with chairs for 100 people and every one was taken. The mood of the meeting reflected the enthusiasm that has motivated 800,000 to sign up to YourParty in just a few weeks. Every speaker who spoke about the indignities of austerity, the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, or the need to build movements for change in the community was applauded.

It was a good first gathering. But it left a lot unsaid and there is a lot that will need to be clarified through discussion, disagreement and debate. The issue of the party democracy needs a lot of attention.

There were four speakers from the top table. The first was Almas Razakazi, a new independent councillor on the Lancashire County Council. She is part of the relatively new political grouping called the Progressive Lancashire Group along with Michael Lavalette who was the fourth speaker. Almas spoke about her journey into politics, saying that the new party gave her hope. She said that the new party had to be a grassroots party and that there has to be accountability.

A statement was then read out from Adnan Hussain, the independent MP for Blackburn. He is part of the Independent Alliance of MPs, along with former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. His statement spoke against war, injustice and austerity; that the new party should aim to improve and transform; and that it should put ‘people before profit’. That was the most explicit statement of political aims from the top table.

The second top table speaker was another councillor, Abdul Wahid, who sits as an a member of the Oldham Group on Oldham council. He explained how he had been suspended from his party for speaking out in support of the Palestinians following the Israeli assault after 7 October 2023. In the following year their independent group went from three councillors to nine. They sit as an independent group. He said that their group could become the first ever YourParty group to administer a local council. He went on to address what kind of party should YourParty be. It should be democratic, grassroots, built from the bottom up. It can’t be Labour in new clothes. It has to be principled, he said. There is no room for opportunists. It can’t be about careers but about a cause.

All this was rousing stuff and went down very well, with much applause and cheering. However, what Councillor Wahid did not say was that he had first been elected as a Tory councillor. It was the Conservative Party that had suspended him for his pro-Palestinian views.

Now, I am a great believer in people being able to change their political outlook. If that were not possible, there would be no prospect of winning people to socialist ideas and the need for a fundamental break with capitalism. No doubt the events in Palestine have had a profound effect on Councillor Wahid and his fellow independent councillors, and I hope the trajectory that they have begun continues and leads them to adopt socialist ideas based on the emancipation of the working class from exploitation. But it would have been more open and transparent if his background had been fully explained to the audience. What are his politics now? What will his group do if they do become the leading group on the council? Will they refuse to implement cuts? Will they mobilise the community to defy central government?

In my view, Councillor Wahid should not have been one of the top-table speakers and promoted as some sort of role model for the representatives of the new party. It is quite shocking that Counterfire thought it a good idea to put him on the platform, and not to explain his Tory origins. We need to know who we are being asked to support. We need to know more about the politics of people who were once Tories.

In March 2025, the Oldham Group welcomed into its ranks the former leader of the Conservative group on the council, taking its number to nine. The Oldham Group Kamran Ghafoor said: “I have known Cllr Sheldon for quite a number of years, and I am proud to welcome him into our group. “He is a man of vision and integrity, and with his help, we look forward to expanding our group into all areas of Oldham. We want to open up The Oldham Group to the wider community so that we can encompass different perspectives on how best to make Oldham prosperous again.”

This is not the approach that YourParty can take. We cannot put any trust in Tories. Are these councillors motivated by principle and a cause, or by careers, position and prestige? We will only be able to judge with full transparency.

The third speaker was someone called Aroma Hassan who was described as the founder of the “i narrative campaign”. She said this was “an apolitical campaign”.  Apparently, she had been a candidate for the Workers Party of Britain in the 2024 General Election in Ashton-Under-Lyne. She was political then, but not now, she said. She quoted capitalist US President and Cold-War warrior Dwight Eisenhower. I switched off. Why was someone who was running an apolitical campaign on the platform for the launching of a political party? More than that, a left-wing, working-class, hopefully anti-capitalist and socialist party. Only Counterfire can explain.

The fourth and final speaker was Michael Lavalette a Lancashire County Councillor from Preston. Michael has a long history of standing as a socialist councillor, standing in local elections dating back over more than two decades to the Socialist Alliance, Respect and the Left List. He is also a member of Counterfire, although this was not mentioned.

Michael spoke well about the need to build the party by involving itself in social movements but was vague about what this actually meant. He was vague about the form of democracy he advocated. Apart from mentioning the word “socialist” in mentioning the Socialist Alliance I don’t think he used the words socialist or socialism again.

The platform speakers did not really give any content, even in outline, to what they meant by ‘movements’, ‘grassroots’, ‘from below’ etc. These are all very amorphous words, to which the listener gives their own meaning. However, unless we have well organised local branches, with the means democratically agreeing policy and activity, of selecting and de-selecting our representatives and keeping them accountable, of sending delegates to national conferences, all these terms will have no content.

Michael was much better when he responded to some of the points raised from the floor. He argued for the accountability of elected representatives and that the party must have control and accountability of MPs, expressly pointing to the lack of accountability of the current ‘independent’ MPs who won in 2024, that is, those who are in the Independent Alliance with Jeremy Corbyn and who are involved with him in organising this new party. Michael argued, absolutely correctly, that we can never have an MP who calls for the army to break a strike. He didn’t mention any name but he was clearly referring to independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr  Ayoub Khan, who called for the Army to be used during the Birmingham bin strike.

This one example shows that we cannot be carried away by the election of independent MPs or councillors who have no history or understanding of working-class, socialist politics. ‘Independent’ means indepence from any sort of accountabilty, which we must have. However, Michael did not mention the need for the right of recall of all elected representatives or for them to only receive a workers’ wage, which TAS advocates.

A small number of people who spoke from the floor called for the party to be clearly socialist, anti-capitalist and say what we are for. The calls for socialism received enthusiastic applause. Soraya Lawrence, of Talking About Socialsm, was able to speak from the floor (the lack of women wanting to speak meant that the chair had no option but to call her in), welcoming the initiation of the new party and the idea that it should be involved in all types of campaign. But, she emphasised, we must be against the cause of all the problems we face – the profit system. “We must fight to change the system completely. Because you can’t tweak capitalism. You can’t make it more kinder; you can’t make it more gentle…If we don’t get rid of this system, we will always be clawing and fighting for the little bits and the scraps…We are not for this system that makes people die, starve, creates the situation in Gaza. All the things that unite us are a fight against this ruthless system.”

Seemingly answering these points Michael said that everyone knows what we’re for: we are against privatisation, against war and for a wealth tax. But this limited programme, even if it is added to, is no different from the mild social democratic programme of the Corbyn Labour manifestos of 2017 and 2019. We need YourParty to be much bolder and clearer and more coherent than this. He did not pose the fundamental systemic change that is required.

The interests of the capitalist class are irreconcilable with those of the working class. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class by those who own industry and make a profit from the work of those it employs. We need a society based on the democratic common ownership of the economy, with production planned democratically to meet the needs of all, not to make a profit for a few. We need a society where no-one profits from the labour of others; we all work for the common good. That is what our party shoud clearly be for: Anti-capitalist and Socialist.

Michael said we need to build movements for change. Yes, we do. But we need to explain that we need to build a party and an organised movement for socialist change. The change we want can’t come about with the continuation of the capitalist profit system.

It was obvious to those who have been around the socialist left for any length of time that the meeting had been organised by the Counterfire group. Although the meeting chair Penny Hicks declared her membership of Counterfire she did not tell the audience that the meeting had also been organised by Counterfire.

I wanted to speak and wanted to argue that we must aim to abolish capitalism, not to manage it. It is not enough to put people before profit; we need to get rid of the profit system completely.

Soraya and I (both supporters of Talking About Socialism…from a Marxist point of view) arrived well before the meeting began and were distributing the TAS leaflet calling for YourParty to be Democratic & Socialist.

We sat on the third row from the front. I put my hand up to speak before the final speaker (Michael Lavalette) finished speaking. The chair Penny Hicks (Counterfire) clearly saw me. I had my hand up throughout the meeting. She was well aware of this. As the meeting progressed, I saw her looking desperately for people to call in instead of me. She sent someone to persuade the person sitting behind me to speak, even though I could hear her say that she didn’t want to.

The four top table speakers were invited to respond in the middle of the discussion – something I have never come across in 50 years of attending such meetings – rather than give more time to speakers from the floor like me.

The discussion continued again, me with my hand up throughout. I was not called in. The four top table were called in for a last response.

I challenged Penny after the meeting: Why had she deliberately excluded me from speaking? She tried to suggest that I had been rude during the meeting (I called for someone to give their name and organisation when they spoke). I pointed out that can’t have been the reason as that happened well towards the end of the discussion. She then said, “Yes, I excluded you.” She couldn’t have been clearer. To be fair to Michael Lavalette, who I have known since the days of the Socialist Alliance, when I raised it with him, he said he would have called me in.

I suspect it was because she knew who I was (from past engagements) and she did not want to give time for TAS’s argument for the party to be avowedly anti-capitalist and stand for the abolition of capitalism, rather than aiming to manage it; that the party must be clearly socialist.

The question of party democracy needs a lot more discussion than the vague calls for it to be grassroots or built from below, or to reflect movements – all of which are broadly true. But without democratic branches and accountable delegates and a delegate based national conference the Party will be controlled from above.

All in all, it was good that we had the meeting. It was good that over a hundred were enthusiastic about the party and want to build it. The way that Counterfire organised it was not a way to be emulated. There needs to be full openness and transparency. No one group should hold the contact information. The party we build has to be fully democratic, with well-organised local branches, committed to open debate, discussion and decision making, with accountable officers. We need the founding conference to be based on branch delegates, accountable to the membership.

There is a lot to discuss. What sort of party should it be? We in Talking About Socialism say it should be a working-class, democratic, socialist party. What does socialism mean? It means the antithesis of capitalism. It means the overthrow of the capitalist profit system and the establishment of a new society based on the democratic common ownership of the resources of society, planned to meet the needs of all.

YourParty must be democratic and socialist.