WeeklyWorker

28.08.2025
Palestine movement takes party form

Political clarity vital

Engage in Your Party to fight for the type of organisation our class really needs. Farzad Kamangar reports on our discussion, disputes and factional differences

Debate at the August 24 CPGB members’ aggregate revolved around how to approach the new Jeremy Corbyn party (JCP or, for the moment, Your Party). The ‘Build Your Party now!’ motion adopted was proposed by the Provisional Central Committee, outlining our general position. There were, too, a series of amendments and a substantial additional ‘action’ proposal by a faction of four or five comrades.

Jack Conrad opened with an assessment of the significance of 800,000 people signing up to Corbyn’s new venture. He stressed that, even if only a fraction of them become members, it represents a force far larger than similar projects in the past, like Left Unity. For him, this moment is, effectively, the pro-Palestine movement “taking party form”: instead of people simply returning home after demonstrations, there will now be an organisational container to capture their energy.

However, comrade Conrad said he regarded the current leadership of the JCP as deeply uninspiring. He recalled the mass influx into Labour under Corbyn as a major step forward for the working class, but lamented that the Labour left squandered the opportunity. Momentum became hollow, groups like the Labour Representation Committee did little, and Corbyn himself presided over witch hunts rather than radical structural reforms and taking the war to the right and the Parliamentary Labour Party. Despite this history, Conrad argued that new opportunities to shift class forces should not be ignored: the task is to engage with the masses and to fight politically within the JCP.

Comrade Conrad criticised the conservatism of both Labour’s left wing and other socialist groups during Corbyn’s leadership. Organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party mocked working in committee meetings and mocked parliamentary activity. Politics, for them, is strikes and streets. The Socialist Party in England and Wales, with its Tusc project, was no better. They too refused to send members in. He saw this as emblematic of the left’s inability to seize transformative moments.

Next to nothing

The result, he noted, was that Corbynism changed next to nothing. Blair’s clause four remains unaltered, rule changes were minimal and Corbyn himself urged on the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch hunt to decimate the left. Thus, while the JCP should be viewed as a great opportunity, comrade Conrad warned against illusions: it is essentially a “Bonapartist movement” built around a single, rather weak, dithering and undynamic leader figure.

Comrade Conrad emphasised that the JCP is not the outcome of 800,000 people deliberating together, but of a “call by the great man”. Despite being uncharismatic, Corbyn occupies the role of the Bonapartist leader around whom atomised leftwingers rally. For Conrad, the correct orientation is to treat Corbyn’s or Sultana’s leadership as nominal - to comply with the legal requirement for a party to have a leader, while stripping the post of real authority. The main task is to politicise the JCP and transform it into a revolutionary party based on solid programmatic foundations.

A large part of the debate was devoted to amendments on how our intervention in the JCP should be organised. One point of contention was over whether we should refer to the new initiative as the JCP, the YP or something else. Carla Roberts argued that ‘JCP’ is confusing, since the party is not officially called that, suggesting that we should stick for now to ‘Your Party’ until its official name is decided. Andy Hannah warned that labelling it around Corbyn risks reinforcing a “cult of personality”. Others, the majority, including comrade Conrad, saw polemical value in calling it the ‘Jeremy Corbyn party’ precisely as a way of highlighting its Bonapartist character.

Jack Conrad urged comrades who had jointly supported amendments to declare themselves openly as a faction, with a clear platform, rather than hiding behind technical proposals. While factions are not inherently bad, he warned against trading programmatic clarity for vague unity with others. He described those moving various amendments as risking being viewed as a “rightwing and liquidationist” faction. Why? Not least because of the proposal that “the editorial team could consider cooption and providing structured access to pages for comrades outside our ranks, always ensuring we retain full control”. The “editorial team” is, in effect, the PCC, so this amounts to saying that the PCC should coopt non-CPGB members.

No potential cooptees were named. But that is clearly not a partyist way to proceed. Non-CPGB members are, by definition, not under our discipline. And the names we suspect the comrades have in mind are, in fact, far from being co-thinkers. Indeed they are centrists who seem quite happy to have a live-and-let-live relationship with socialist-imperialists who have actively backed the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt in the Labour Party and support our own ruling class with their ‘arm, arm, arm Ukraine’ line.

In reply, comrade Roberts defended the comrades’ work in drafting common amendments, adding that there is no political faction: “We can say there is a ‘faction for action’”, but it was not at all opposed to the politics of the current PCC of the CPGB.

Fundamental

Other comrades claimed that differences between the PCC and the group proposing the amendments are not fundamental. Comrade Anne McShane, a close CPGB supporter in Ireland, noted that the main difference seems to be timing - whether to act quickly to intervene in the JCP or wait for a fuller discussion. In my opinion, she is mistaken. The differences are more fundamental, even if the supporters of the “action faction” do not realise it. Personally I think the comrades’ intention is to recruit a larger number of comrades.

A comment by comrade Roberts expressed frustration with the slow pace of the PCC and the failure of the party to become a much larger organisation: “there are people who are saying they have become politicised” by reading Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary strategy. Some are “treating it like a bloody Bible ... It is a bit sad, and a bit pathetic, that they won’t join the CPGB.”

The comrade and her co-thinkers believe that a less aggressive tone in the Weekly Worker and a more “movementist” approach will resolve the issue and bring significant numbers into the CPGB. Unfortunately, she is mistaken. Being inspired by a book is very different from joining and becoming a militant activist of an organisation that requires discipline, where members and supporters must follow the principles of democratic centralism, and where the weekly publication owes its reputation to presenting a coherent political line - even if many disagree with that line. The time and effort it demands are very different from contributing occasionally to some online publication with no timetable, no restrictions on content beyond a broad political direction, and no responsibility for the articles published.

The author, Mike Macnair, is, of course, a member of the PCC and supports its current line, along with the very policies some of these comrades disagree with. On the paper’s style, Mike Macnair expressed himself very clearly in the aggregate:

The Weekly Worker because of its style choices sounds weird to the majority of the far left ... do we capitulate on this? Obviously not ... this is the common package, the common views of the far left and, going along with that, you have the difference between what is said in public and what is said in private.

So you have internal discussion bulletins, which are fully separate from any public discussion, and it is for that reason that the majority of the far left - some of our co-thinkers and other comrades in the Marxist Unity Caucus in RS21 - think that the Weekly Worker has a bad culture: because it publishes internal discussions of other left organisations, because it is ‘rude’ about people we want to work with, people we want to be friends with. Because it insists on putting forward the CPGB’s programme, and not some cut-down version adapted to particular circumstances.

In the proposed amendments, the attempt to make only a very brief reference to our programme … and replace it with a sub-minimum programme is part of the same concept.

Here there is a fundamental difference between comrades who have been persuaded by pressure from people who are in some respects close to the CPGB, but who cling to the dominant culture of the left, saying we should water down aspects of the paper’s language and culture to grow in numbers, and those who believe that would mean a denial of our politics.

During the debate Jack Conrad touched on “halfway house” parties like Podemos, Die Linke, Syriza and Rifondazione Comunista. They are, he argued, not simply left reformist, but ex-‘official communist’ projects that failed to deliver fundamental change. He predicted the JCP would likewise fail unless transformed into a genuine Communist Party.

Ultimate goal

Many comrades argued that Corbyn must be criticised, not shielded. Stan Keable, for example, insisted that people must be reminded of “Corbynism first time”. Hopes were raised, then dashed. He urged the left to expose illusions in Corbyn’s leadership, particularly around concessions on false accusations of anti-Semitism and the subsequent witch-hunt, which weakened the movement. For comrade Keable, rebuilding the workers’ movement and unions is essential, rather than chasing electoral quick wins.

The meeting voted on the proposed amendments, and the slightly amended PCC motion was passed unanimously. It was agreed we need more frequent meetings/aggregates at present, to discuss our interventions in the JCP/YP. The PCC is currently considering our approach and comrades will be kept informed.

Across the debate, certain themes recurred:

Our ultimate goal is, of course, a Communist Party that can genuinely challenge capitalism, not another electoral halfway house.