Letters

Robinson danger

It was with depressing familiarity that I witnessed the outnumbering, and even kettling, by rightwing forces of anti-racists in central London on Saturday September 13.

The far-right march numbered around 300,000 from drone footage. The Met police estimate of 110,000 is a gross understatement. It is telling that the police are deliberately downplaying rightwing numbers, as they used to with our left demos - the anti-racists present were outnumbered 30 to 1 at least.

In such circumstances, mere survival was probably the best option for our side and, thanks to the police (not a good thing for the left), we retreated to Green Park station after being ‘toyed with’ by the soccer-hooligan hard core for hours who had surrounded us. The essentially liberal anti-fascism of the SWP-controlled Stand Up to Racism group met its Waterloo. The ‘Don’t alienate the liberals and vicars’ strategy was found seriously wanting, with SUtR/SWP leader Lewis Nielsen blandly stating after the debacle, “We must become a movement of leaders!” and labelling Tommy Robinson (who has Sir Winston Churchill and Spitfire tattoos) a “fascist”.

For Nielsen (and many other SWP full-timers) wages and rent depends on keeping union funders sweet (SUtR even allows Zionists to join under union advice). No radical pro-worker strategic departure can be expected from Nielsen, as long as the money keeps flowing.

An interesting recent article was written by Dave Renton (anti-fascist activist, lawyer and former SWP member who left over the ‘Comrade Delta’ affair). He lambasted the entire current strategy of labelling the UK ‘right of the Tories’ movement as ‘Nazi’.

Also the painfully slow launch of the Corbyn/Sultana project has had an effect. Those 700,000 sign-ups would have made a real difference over the summer. Instead they are names languishing on a database.

While the old maxim of ‘The UK far right always mobilises at a time of Labour government betrayal’ holds true, whether this time they actual end up winning is open to question and may happen.

Pol O Caoimh
email

Robinson win

The first duty of revolutionaries is to tell the truth, no matter how bitter. And the truth is that in London on September 13 Tommy Robinson’s side won hands down. His rightwing demonstration, ‘Unite the Kingdom’, gathered hundreds of thousands of people (if not a million), while the counter-demonstration organised by Stand Up to Racism barely reached 10,000.

The right was emboldened, confident and ready for a showdown. The counter-demonstration was tiny, frail, wishy-washy and ended up being trapped. There is no point in sugarcoating it: this was a devastating defeat for our side, terrifying for all the oppressed in this country and a sinister warning of what is to come. This must be a wake-up call for all leftists! Whoever will try to hide the truth and minimise this defeat is simply doing a disservice to the cause of anti-racism and socialism. One point must be clear: whatever the left has been doing for years is simply not working.

And what is not working is the liberal politics of Stand Up to Racism, which have dominated the fight against the right and whose total impotence was on full display today. The whole demonstration was organised on the basis of liberal platitudes like “Refugees are welcome here”, “No borders”, “Love, not hate”, etc. And, correspondingly, the whole thing was a pathetic peace crawl, suitable for NGOs, Labourite feminists and peaceniks, which makes the left look hippy-dippy and unserious.

The demo barely had any stewards. As it got close to Trafalgar Square, and as rightwingers were staging one provocation after the other, there was no organised force to protect the demo. This is because it was built like a carnival, not a fighting force. And also because Stand Up to Racism entirely relies on the police to protect its demonstrations - another liberal illusion which is, in fact, an admission of bankruptcy. No wonder minority workers stayed away.

The demonstration was also not organised as a pole of working class struggle. Yes, the banners of every trade union in the country were there. But anyone who was there knows that it was retirees and leftists carrying them. One has to be wilfully blind to ignore the fact that most workers were on Tommy Robinson’s side. This is again the result of the complete bankruptcy of liberal politics. For years, the strategy of Stand Up to Racism has been to yell “racist” and “fascist” at any worker expressing concern about immigration and the refugee crisis. Such a strategy has only pushed workers into the arms of the right.

And the cherry on the cake was the line-up of speakers: Labour MPs Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, trade union bureaucrats from the NEU, PCS, Aslef and the TUC, who all support the Starmer government! These people are for the government and part of the establishment! Is it any surprise then that most working people associate the left with the defenders of the status quo?! Liberal platitudes and moralism, reliance on the police and an open alliance with supporters of the government. This is what is pushing millions of working people to Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage.

Now, it is easy to throw rocks at Stand Up to Racism. They and the SWP do deserve a sharp condemnation for having led the fight against the right into the blind alley of liberal politics. But what have the other left groups been doing? How have they tried to fight this orientation? The RCP, SAlt, FRFI, the CPB, the CPGB, the SP, etc. This is a defeat for all of us. But the truth is that these groups refuse to confront the liberalism of the left - the source of today’s disaster. This must stop.

The country has shifted to the right and the whole left is in denial about it. It is time to wake up! To have a fight about the causes of this and what to do about it. At a minimum, all left groups must work together for the next counter-protest, with the aim of forming a militant and solid bloc to stand up to the right - in the best tradition of the united front. Above all else, we need to win back the working class to our side.

On September 13, the Spartacist League formed a modest, but real, pole of militancy in the demonstration. We marched under the banner, “Smash racist thugs, reject Farage, break with Starmer”, together with one reading “Ditch the liberals, win the workers”. We chanted “Peace and love won’t stop the fascists - mobilise the working masses”, together with slogans against Starmer. (Unsurprisingly, some rightwing demonstrators were disarmed by our slogans against Starmer. Turns out, when you frontally oppose the government, you actually can undercut Robinson’s support.)

Because the truth is that most people on Robinson’s side were not fascists. You can only imagine when, in a few months, actual Nazis get organised to smash our side. We must not wait to find out. Time is running out for socialists. Either we change course or we sink with the liberals. September 13 must be a brutal wake-up call.

Eibhlin McColgan
Workers Hammer

Productive YP

Last week’s meeting of Your Party: Swansea and the Neath Valley - one of the two groups established in and around the city - was quite small in numbers, but useful and productive.

What struck me, and as I argued in the meeting, was the acceptance of the importance relating to delegate-based representation and voting, as opposed to ‘one member, one vote’ (OMOV) as a principal method of voting. People generally agree - by consensus at least - that OMOV ‘atomises’ individuals and is not a democratic form of internal organisational or party democracy.

I also argued that the eventual name of YP doesn’t really matter. What does matter is what it stands for - its demands and its programme. I said in the meeting that power in 21st-century capitalist Britain does not simply lie in parliament, but in boardrooms of multinationals and in the corridors of the British state. With this in mind, I proposed that the future organisation, whatever its name, must have republican demands in its programme: abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, openness and transparency of state dealings, the accountability of elected representatives, to name but a few.

There was some discussion about how useful it would be in this initial period of development if we could also meet with other local groups in order to share ideas of how best to organise and to discuss political perspectives on the way forward. I, of course, supported this.

With the national YP founding conference now likely to take place late this year, this is important, given that Wales is hosting its own Wales-wide conference at the end of October. An important initiative. But a problem potentially exists. The conference will undoubtedly discuss the role YP will have in Wales and perhaps a first test of this will come in next year’s elections to the Senedd. Can YP stand? Without a UK founding conference, what would it stand on? What would be its politics?

Anyway, overall the meeting was useful. The branch agreed to meet fortnightly.

Bob Davies
email

Basic YP tasks

This is the proposal we are discussing for Your Party in Norfolk. I think this is worthy of considering in overcoming many of the structural problems and bottlenecks. Or simply the best of a bad set of proposals:

“We the undersigned call for a founding conference to be limited to the following:

1. Conduct all the formalities necessary to get the party registered.

2. Elect a temporary committee to conduct business until the follow-up meeting.

3. To only agree on:

(a) the name of the party;

(b) the definition of a member;

(d) allow for the election of regional officers of the branch via local mass meetings and majority votes to make it possible to provide the list of members to that branch;

(e) the number of delegates from each branch to the follow-up meeting, with the suggestion that the number of delegates be three;

(f) agree a binding date for the follow-up, multi-day, delegate-based meeting that alone can decide issues, such as the structure of the party, policies, as well as elect a democratically endorsed leadership.

In between the conferences, policy papers can be circulated for amending and voting on.”

Brian Green
Norfolk

YP democracy?

At the recent Cambridge YP meeting I became very disillusioned and demoralised. There was a vote to give an unelected leadership increased power, albeit supposedly temporary until September 24, but it could easily be extended.

This motion dismissed having an elected leadership and called for “short practical steps” (in reality, impractical) “to bring people back into the conversation”. (“Conversation” was a key word, as opposed to full debate and open discussion of anything controversial. Shock, horror - the kids might disagree with each other!).

The motion declared “the community assembly on September 20 to be a ‘listening only’ session”. Listening to who? The unelected leadership? It will be an “open invite”. To who? Liberals, experts, the chosen sect? Who decides on the “open invite” and for what purpose? There’s no sign that this apolitical “listening only” session will lead to anyone learning anything, since there won’t be any debate - just listening to your ‘betters’.

Although apparently there will be a “weekly engagement dashboard (transparency means trust)”, I suspect this will be anything but engaging or transparent. There’s also a paragraph stating that the current unelected team will publish the number attending for the last four weeks and “If attendance at the start of meeting is below the four-week average, the moderator should defer motions to the next meeting.” A bureaucratic clause to block democracy.

The last part says it will “publish a Community Assembly Pack … by September 23” and that “All interim measures [will] end September 24 2025 and feed into a new successor structure”. So this will outline what gets discussed and what does not.

I obviously voted against this, but sadly, in a spirit of Bonapartism the majority voted in favour - in favour of abolishing democracy in Your Party Cambridge. I think 34 voted for and about 15 of us voted against (six of these were SWP comrades).

Whilst I was ignored most of the time by the chair, lots of speakers complained by raising the red herring of how old the trade union way of working is and the approach we need is different. Yes, unions are bureaucratic and economistic (which is the real issue), but the approach of these speakers was just as bureaucratic and less democratic, with no mention of class relations. I also got the general impression that the supporters of the motion were rather anti-trade unionist for all the wrong reasons.

Justin Constantinou
Cambridge

YP resolution

I suggest that Your Party comrades propose something like the following motion to their local meetings. I did in Sheffield and our 200-strong branch meeting on September 17 overwhelmingly voted for it. A powerful statement of rank and file sentiment. Here it is in full:

1. This meeting of Your Party supporters notes:

(a) It has been announced that participants at the launch conference taking place in November 2025 will be chosen randomly by a lottery system (sortition). Only they will be able to move amendments to the four documents produced by the current leadership (policy statement, constitution, rules, strategy document). The proposed regional assemblies are “deliberative” and non-voting. The final documents are to be voted on via online polling.

(b) In the absence of a membership structure, numerous proto-branches of Your Party have emerged across the country, mobilising thousands of signatories.

(c) A formal membership scheme will be launched “in September”, allowing for the quick establishment of branches everywhere.

2. This meeting believes:

(a) It is essential to establish Your Party on a foundation of democratic practice, ensuring the maximum participation of local supporters and branches.

(b) Sortition is not democratic.

(c) We favour a system where delegates are elected by the branches, utilising the ‘single transferable vote’ system with the Droop quota (Scottish STV). This would ensure pluralistic representation proportional to the diversity of opinion within each branch, thereby providing the most democratic means of organising participation and ensuring delegates’ direct accountability to their local branches.

(d) Branches and a designated threshold of members (eg, 100) should be empowered to submit motions and amendments to the regional meetings and the launch conference in order to guarantee their active participation.

(e) The regional meetings should be able to vote on amendments, which would then have to be heard at the launch conference.

3. This meeting therefore urges the national leadership of Your Party to:

(a) Recognise all existing proto-branches as having been established in good faith and to list them on the Your Party website with contact details and dates of forthcoming meetings, in order to enable the widest possible supporter participation.

(b) Assist in the establishment of new branches in areas where none currently exist.

(c) Distribute to all local signatories information about forthcoming branch meetings, including emailing supporters in each branch’s defined geographic area.

(d) Facilitate the forthcoming regional meetings voting on amendments, which would be binding and go to the launch conference.

(e) Organise all future conferences on the basis of delegates elected from local branches using the single transferable vote under the Droop quota (Scottish STV).

Please play your part in ensuring Your Party will be based on genuine democracy.

Tina Becker
email