Who squandered Your Party potential?

My previous article on here – Back to the drawing board – appeared first on my Facebook page. In response I received quite a few comments, including one from Simon Midgley.

I reproduce his comment here, followed by my response, which I also posted to my Facebook page.

Nick Wrack Has your FB account been hacked?

Or has loosing the Your Party CEC elections led you to lose your marbles?

It was obvious to me that the Grassroots Left either 1. were not actually interested in building a mass working class party in today’s UK, or 2. were just utterly clueless as to how this could be done.

Now you have spelled it out.

It was both.

You say:

“Let’s stop trying to build a broad party based on the impossibility of reforming capitalism in the interests of the working class. It can’t be done.”

Having managed to put off some 800,000 potential members, and seen well over 100,000 of those join the Green Party as an actual viable alternative. You now declare that building such a mass party can’t be done.

“Instead, let’s build a party that helps to put the working class in power, laying the basis for a classless, stateless society that cares for all.”

So you say. How the f*ck are you going to involve the mass of ordinary working class people in doing that when you can’t even convince them to join Your Party?

“At the start, such a project would not attract large numbers. But from small acorns, great oak trees grow.”

So, it’s back to the building by ones-and-twos again is it?

Having squandered the best opportunity to build a mass working class party since the 2nd World War?

If you no longer think that Your Party is worth building, the sooner you leave, the better.

This was my reply.

Who, exactly, is responsible for ‘squandering’ the potential support of 800,000?

I don’t speak for Grassroots Left.

I voted for its candidates in the North West, but I was not involved in setting it up, formulating its programme or any of its statements, nor was I involved in any aspect of its organisation. I have criticisms about the way it was set up and the programme that it agreed on.

However, I have long argued against Corbynism (left reformism; social democracy; liberalism) and I’m not about to change my politics now.

Corbyn dithered and prevaricated. It is he who has ‘squandered’ the potential for YP.

He did not want to form a new party.

He stepped down as LP leader in 2020, and waited until 2025 to do anything in respect of a new party and, then, only because he was pushed.

He did not act decisively when he was leader of the Labour Party.

He made massive concessions to the right-wing and sanctioned the Lansman coup in Momentum and acted with Len McClskey of Unite to defeat the call for open selection, otherwise known as mandatory re-selection, at the 2018 LP conference.

He has continued with his approach in the formation of You Party.

I also have criticisms of Zarah Sultana. I think she made a massive blunder in launching her own membership portal.

However, Sultana and the GRL offered a different and better way forward (despite some misgivings) to the dead-hand of the bureaucracy around Jeremy Corbyn and appeared to favour a more socialist approach than the liberal social democratic programme of The Many.

Most importantly, GRL was in favour of allowing the branches to be formed and function as key units of the party, something that is essential if we want to build a thriving, working class, socialist party.

The clique around Corbyn promised nothing but vague political platitudes and more obstruction of the grassroots democracy we need.

For me, it was not about a battle between rival individuals but about the questions of socialism or something less; democratic structures or something less.

On your specific points:

I wrote, “Let’s stop trying to build a broad party based on the impossibility of reforming capitalism in the interests of the working class.”

Do you think that it is possible to reform capitalism in the interest of the working class? This is the fundamental question. I don’t think it is possible.

That is what I was referring to when I wrote: “It can’t be done.” I meant that capitalism can’t be reformed in the interest of the working class. I realise now that it could be read that I don’t think that a broad left reformist party can be built. That’s not what I meant.

In fact, I do believe that such a party could be built. But it is not what is needed and it’s not what Marxists should be building.

We saw a mass left-leaning social democratic party, under Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party 2015-2019. Your Party could have become one very quickly, without the baggage of the Labour right, if those in charge of its formation were not so incompetent and inept.

But, as you acknowledge, 800,000 potential members of YP have lost their enthusiasm. That potential has been squandered. Not by the Marxist left in YP, but by Corbyn and his clique.

As you say, 100,000 have joined the Green Party. This also is linked to the failure of YP to capitalise on the initial enthusiasm it generated – the fault of Corbyn and his clique.

It has been reinforced by the Green Party victory in Gorton & Denton and its surge under Polanski. YP didn’t stand a candidate. Again, a failure of Corbyn and his clique, not of the Marxist left who have no control over the policy and organisational steps of YP.

You ask how can it be possible to win working-class people to a party that stands for a fundamental break with capitalism. With patience and hard work. No short cuts. We have to persuade them. By words and deeds. We cannot pretend that a tinkering around with the exploitative capitalist profit system can alter the nature of society and the class division that exists.

So, the question for you, again. Do you think capitalism can be reformed? Or do we need a fundamental break with it – its abolition?