13.11.2025
Avoid the quota trap
Conference will be a pseudo-democratic stitch-up. A rally with star speakers, lots of clapping and the occasional Zoom vote. Carla Roberts reports on those who, no matter what their differences, want to do things differently
On November 8 the Democratic Unity initiative in Your Party met for a second time online to discuss tweaks to the Sheffield Demands (most of which were uncontentious). Hopefully, the next meeting will be able to ratify them as key joint amendments to the YP founding documents (increasing their chances of getting a hearing and being adopted).
They will, we hope, also form the basis for a joint fringe event at the November 29-30 launch conference in Liverpool itself. We are currently discussing a half-day event on Saturday November 29, where members and groups can properly discuss the various issues affecting Your Party - in stark contrast to the launch conference itself, where no real debate is going to take place (if your organisation or YP branch wants to get involved, email democraticunityyp@gmail.com).
Counterfire failed to come along on November 8, but there were two new representatives of the Revolutionary Communist Group, who are hoping that Zarah Sultana will split Your Party to set up their version of a “vanguard party” (which seems unlikely). There were also members from Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, the CPGB, the Democratic Socialists, Ken Loach’s Platform for a Democratic Party, the Democratic and Socialist Network, the Greater Manchester Left Caucus, Socialist Alternative, the Bolshevik Tendency, the Social Justice Party, the Campaign for Mass Workers Party, Prometheus, Republican Labour Education Forum, the Trans Liberation Group and members from a number of local Your Party branches. Andrew Hedges from the Democratic Bloc could only attend briefly and did not speak on the demands.
The Socialist Party in England and Wales, the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party have also been invited, but have as yet not come along. Interestingly though, the SWP did attend a public meeting with Zarah Sultana, organised by the Democratic Socialists on November 9. Charlie Kimber stated that they want to get involved, which is excellent. (As an aside, we would take serious issue with how that meeting was run - attendees were reduced to speaking for a measly 60 seconds, were only allowed to ask ‘questions’ and were often rudely cut off mid-sentence by the chair - while Sultana and three DS speakers on the ‘top table’ were given ample time to present their views. It looked very top-heavy and unnecessarily bureaucratic. If we are serious about fighting for unity, we have to make sure we treat other organisations seriously - and that includes in Zoom meetings.)
We suspect the SWP’s mind has been focused somewhat by a rather blunt statement by Corbyn’s right-hand woman, Karie Murphy, in a recent meeting organised by the Your Party Connections Network: she said that, “personally”, she does not want the SWP to be able to join Your Party - which Socialist Worker immediately picked up and objected to, and understandably so.1 Funnily enough, despite being reminded by the chair of the meeting of the excellent open culture (“If you don’t want to be quoted, don’t say it”), Murphy went on and on about not wanting to have whatever she said “leaked to the press”. That is rather amusing - there have been numerous briefings to the media against Sultana in particular. The full transcript of the meeting has been shared far and wide, and unsurprisingly so.2 After all, members have been kept in the dark about the entire founding process of Your Party, so comrades are lapping up every bit of information that they can get hold of.
Having said that, Murphy did not actually reveal very much, pleading ignorance on most things. Though we did pick up on this little gem: a few weeks ago, Artin Giles, her co-employee at Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, told a facilitators’ training session that all amendments coming from the regional assemblies would be read through and processed by “a group of volunteers in London”. When asked about that, Murphy quickly denied it - no, no, no, that would be unfair, because it would open HQ up to accusations of bias.
Instead, she explained, it is an “algorithm” developed by Yanis Varoufakis’s Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, which will go through them all: “Where we have 90% of agreement around whatever amendment on whatever paper, that will then go through kind of immediately.” Issues, however, that are “more contentious - repeatedly contentious up and down the country, and not just in one area, but repeated - then clearly, that leans towards an amendment that has to have further debate at conference”. She explicitly mentioned the proposed ban of parties in this context.
Clearly, somebody somewhere has to make a decision on what counts as “repeatedly contentious”, and, crucially, what alternative formulations (if any) will make it into the documents at conference. We could well imagine that HQ will go for a formulation that allows members of entirely ineffective organisations like Transform to join (Murphy even welcomed them by name) - but would still keep out members of the SWP and other organised left groups. Perhaps by establishing some sort of list of ‘approved organisations’, as advocated by the awful Democratic Bloc of former Labour NEC member and Momentum vice-chair Mish Rahman. Quite a few of his ‘team’ used to be members of the secret YP Organising Group - and it is rather telling that they only discovered their love for “democracy” after Murphy closed the OG and they lost their privileged positions.
The Democratic Bloc proposes that members may only hold dual membership of an “approved democratic party” and that the leadership “should agree a list of political parties which are deemed acceptable”. The groups have to “open and share their books, so that we can understand the size of their membership, their finances, their GDPR compliance and their disciplinary procedures.” This kind of bureaucratic control freakery should be roundly rejected.
Mark Serwotka, former general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, seems to have joined up with the Democratic Bloc too. He has been speaking at their meetings and, in a rather nasty article in the Morning Star, calls out against no-platforming - but he only means for those “campaigning for their sex-based rights, away from the existing left”. Those, however, who are not “away from the existing left” (ie, groups like the SWP, SPEW, CPGB, etc) should be driven out or at least marginalised in Your Party: “The priorities of small sectarian groups, who themselves bear much responsibility for the alienation of the wider working class from the left, and whose size and records speak for themselves, cannot be allowed to dominate Your Party. If so, we will fail.”3
As if the organised left is the problem of what’s wrong with Your Party! In his time as leader of the PCS, Serwotka very much relied on “small sectarian groups” like SPEW, the SWP and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to back him. This goes to show that union bureaucrats suffer from amnesia when it suits. Serwotka and former MP Beth Winter (also a speaker at events by the Democratic Bloc) have been tasked with setting up YP in Wales - and are doing their utmost to do it as undemocratically and top-down as in the rest of the country.
Needless to say, members of the organised left have joined Your Party - but they will forced to operate in a clandestine manner. Not a good thing. We want a party of the whole left, where members can organise openly in platforms and tendencies, temporarily or permanently, without needing permission from the likes of Murphy, Rahman, Serwotka and co.
Differences
This issue of political platforms was also discussed during the Democratic Unity meeting last Saturday. A comrade from the Chesterfield YP branch had proposed to delete “permanent or temporary” from point 1 of the Sheffield Demands. But a majority of reps agreed that it is necessary to spell this point out, particularly as some organisations ban factions or allow them only for a couple of months.
The meeting also discussed the previous proposal by Michael Lavalette of Counterfire to delete the demand that “MPs and all public officeholders should receive no more than the average wage of a skilled worker, with the rest being donated to the party.” He argued that it would be off-putting to MPs who might want to defect to Your Party. The small working group appointed the week before recommended opposing this proposed tweak, on the basis that we do not want the kind of representative who sees being an MP as a career. In fact, nobody supported the proposal to delete this long-standing principle of the workers’ movement (implemented by the 1871 Paris Commune).
The meeting also agreed on an extended preamble, which is not without its problems. While it is positive that it clarifies that our initiative is based on “anti-imperialism” and “anti-Zionism”, it has more than a whiff of intersectionality about it (“recognising the overlapping and interrelated struggles”). The preamble is just about acceptable, because it contains the important clarification that we fight for a “culture of open debate and free speech”, rather than the no-platforming of dissenting views that is often associated with intersectional groups.
More seriously though, there is a proposal by the Trans Liberation Group and the Democratic Socialists in Your Party to add this further amendment:
The CEC should seek to maximise the political involvement of oppressed peoples. To achieve this, it is temporarily necessary to implement a quota system to the CEC operating under the STV + Best Loser method, with restrictions on the number of cis men (no more than half the CEC) and a minimum of 25% of seats filled from members of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds.
That is a deeply problematic proposal, in our view. All other issues discussed are relatively minor, but this is a matter of principle.
Of course, we recognise that women, ethnic minorities and other oppressed groups are too often absent from the organised left, including leadership positions. This reflects their ‘double oppression’ in wider society and the fact that their oppression is not only as part of the working class. But we do not believe that this issue can be solved by technical means, which in reality hands more power to an incumbent bureaucracy (which is able to promote the ‘right’ sort of individuals).
Quotas rest on the mistaken idea that black people will fight against the oppression of black people. Women will fight for women’s rights. Etc, etc. But this is simply not the case. Just look at a politician like home secretary Shabana Mahmoud. Her ethnic background does not stop her scapegoating illegal migrants. Or just look at the ‘Blair babes’ - unprincipled careerists all, shooed in via women-only short lists. In other words, the fact that you are a woman does not necessarily make you the best fighter for women’s rights.
More importantly, we know that the fight against the oppression of women, trans people, gays, the disabled, the elderly, the young, etc cannot be won within capitalism. And we can only hope to overthrow capitalism if we have a strong, united working class. What that posits is correct politics and an ongoing struggle against opportunism embodied in a trusted and proven leadership. That cannot be arrived at through quotas and electing people on the basis of this or that non-political criteria. Politics should be front, back and centre. Quite conceivably, middle class or even bourgeois comrades whose social origins lie in the intelligentsia, but who have come to identify with the cause of the working class, may be far better working class leaders than those from the working class itself. Who was the better working class leader, Vladimir Illich Lenin or Ramsay MacDonald? Clearly the former, not the latter.
We should view such comrades as assets, not as a problem. Such people are rare. Not two a penny. Note, the Bolshevik leadership in 1917 counted just two workers in terms of social origins (Alexander Shlyapnikov and Mykola Skrypnyk). Others had fathers who were members of the nobility, big landlords, shop keepers, lawyers, priests and merchants. Would the politics of the Bolshevik leadership be improved by imposing a quota system? After all, not only were women ‘underrepresented’, so were Great Russians - an undoubted problem that would be progressively overcome with the consolidation of working class power, socialist revolution, beginning in Europe, and steady progress towards communism.
Crucially, we need to win the working class, not least ‘white cis men’, to fight for human liberation. Without that, trans people, women and black people - none of us, including said ‘white cis men’, have any hope of ever being free.
We recognise that the Trans Liberation Group and Democratic Socialists in theory agree with a class perspective. They also argue for quotas to be only a “temporary” measure. But just as with sortition-plus, quotas will be used against the fight for correct politics. Quotas entirely suit the interests of reformists, career politicians, opportunists and separatists.
It certainly looks as if the comrades have clearly internalised the bureaucratic practices of trade unions, student unions and the Labour Party. What the Democratic Socialists and TLG are proposing is certainly in line with the ‘Organised Sections’ in the federal Labour Party. Each approved section enjoys an automatic seat on the national executive committee (which the Sheffield Demands, DSYP and TLG quite rightly reject). Counting votes for candidates differently, depending on accidental physical or sexual characteristics, really is not that far off. Quotas divide us along lines of race, gender, sexual orientation.
Quotas also lead us down the rabbit hole of the hierarchy of oppression. Should not disabled people be given their quota? And what is really a disability? What about those caring for those disabled people? What about single mothers? And what about people who suffer not just one set of oppressions, but a number of them (the black, gay, disabled, single mum) - should votes for them not be weighted four times as much as those cast for a white cis man? The list is endless.
No, politics should always decide. And politics really is the only solution, when it comes to liberating women, trans people, ethnic minorities, etc. We need a strong and clear minimum programme that fights against the oppression of women, trans people, ethnic minorities, etc. And we also have to explain that, unless we fight for the maximum programme (communism), this discrimination can only be ameliorated, but never overcome. Needless to say, oppressed sections, just like political shades and tendencies, should be free to organise in caucuses to cohere their demands and, if they wish, agree on a particular set of candidates that they mobilise for, increasing their chances of being voted onto the leadership.
And, of course, there are some technical things that can be part of the way forward. We need to make our meetings and conferences more accessible to people who are usually left out: we need creches, hearing loops, fully accessible venues, etc.
Clearly, the CPGB is not the only organisation in the unity initiative that rejects quotas as the entirely wrong way forward. We could not in all good conscience fight for a set of key amendments that, in effect, would establish more bureaucracy and lead to less unity in our already badly divided class. Hopefully, Democratic Unity will not fall into the quota trap - that would be more than regrettable.