20.11.2025
Splitting over unity
Despite its own Labourite name, Steve Freeman, of the Republican Labour Education Forum, says there can be no unity with those whom he calls social monarchists … or even those who are committed to Socialist Unity as a label of convenience
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.
“’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve many a curious thing to show when you are there.”
“Oh no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”(Mary Howitt ‘The spider and the fly’ 1829)
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is facing the deepest crisis any of us has known in our lifetime. The British social monarchy has reached a state of degeneration beyond all hope and expectation. According to Tim Stanley, “Britain is lurching towards civil war, and nobody knows how to stop it” (The Daily Telegraph April 3). The warning signs are flashing red for danger, when 150,000 people take to the streets of London with Union Jacks, flags of St George and Israel.
The largest ever Orange demonstration in England marched under the slogan, ‘Unite the Kingdom’. Elon Musk addressed the marchers and warned them that, “whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or die” (The Guardian September 15). It should be no surprise to hear, for example, the Royal College of Nursing reporting an increase of 55% in complaints of racism and abuse of its members.1
Racism is one indicator of the growing ‘crisis of UK democracy’. People have lost trust and confidence in Westminster and the two major loyalist-unionist parties, Conservative and Labour. People and politics are breaking out of the constitutional limits of the two-party system in England. Politics in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is already on a different trajectory through the struggles between unionists and anti-unionist parties.
How can we understand the war in Gaza if we limit ourselves to events from October 7 2023? We have to go back deep into history to 1967, 1948 or 1936 and the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Balfour was an anti-Semite and a strong supporter of the ‘Orange Union’ and opponent of Irish home rule. His misnamed ‘Declaration’ was, of course, issued under the name of King George V, committing the imperial crown to Zionism.
The tragedy of Palestine is directly linked to the imperial history of the ‘Orange Kingdom’. The present crisis goes back to the Thatcher government and the defeat of the NUM and the trade union movement in the 1980s. It was a break with the post-war settlement, which established the 1945 social monarchy and the state of Israel in 1948. All of this can be traced to the revolutionary 17th century and the defeat of the ‘Sea Green revolution’ in 1649 and the triumph of the Orange Revolution (1688-1707).
The United Kingdom is breaking down, unable to contain social forces becoming unchained from the Orange constitution. In England there is growing support for ‘outsider’ parties like Reform UK, mirrored on the left by the rise of the Green Party and the forthcoming founding conference of Your Party in Liverpool. The crisis of UK ‘democracy’ is beginning to polarise politics. Yet in England there is no mass party from the right or the left which rejects the constitution of the kingdom.
Your Party
Your Party is the vanguard, the politically conscious and active part, of the English working class movement trying to work out ‘what is to be done’. I say ‘English’ here because this is an initiative coming from England and not Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. It arises out of the pro-Palestine movement in England and the election of five English independent MPs who are now the provisional leadership of Your Party. The first ‘branches’ of this party were in constituencies such as Camden, Liverpool, Harrow, Islington and other localities that elected these MPs. Of course, this initiative did not confine itself to England, not least because the English left are mostly British unionists.
The launch of Your Party is a magnet, drawing all the contradictions of British Labourism and British Marxism into its ranks. The constitutional fault lines in UK politics run between the unionist monarchy and the anti-unionist republic. These centuries-old divisions run through the working class of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from the defeat of the Sea Green revolution and the triumph of the Orange revolution.
Your Party is like a new house built across the fault lines of British politics. Scientific advice warns us that structures built on or near fault lines are highly vulnerable to earthquakes. The best advice is to choose the ground carefully before laying the foundations.
This leads us to consider the crucial question facing the YP conference - the programme. A party is nothing without a programme - the strategic plan that members sign up for, the contract between them, which forms the basis for common action and holding the elected leadership to account. It is the programme that decides who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’, not bureaucratic rules and proscriptions.
Without the foundations of programme we are in danger, because organisation is not an independent entity, but the means to put the party programme into action. The programme needs a defined role and rules in order to execute effectively. Yet the current focus on organisational structures and rules looks like a ‘dead cat’ distraction thrown on the table: ‘Don’t look over there at the programme. Look here at the rules.’
The YP Political Statement is the most important document of all. It is the programme, because there is nothing else. As such it is totally inadequate. Of course, it is not a programme. As it says in the very opening statement, “It is not a programme or manifesto”. This is not to educate us nor tell us the obvious: it is to disarm the critics.
This ‘non-programme’ reveals something about the provisional leadership of YP. They are either clueless or have a programme in their back pockets. It is a reasonable working hypothesis, not an established fact, that the programme is based on the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos. In which case we would all learn more from rereading those manifestos than from the YP Political Statement. There are many policies in the 2019 Labour manifesto that people might agree with. Yet it was built on the fundamentally flawed view of ‘democracy’. Some highlights include:
- Second referendum on Brexit with option to vote ‘remain’.
- Two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
- Support for reform of the constitutional monarchy and the union of nations.
These constitutional reforms include the reform of House of Lords, for a constitutional convention, support for the Good Friday agreement, more devolution for English regions and opposition to Scottish independence.
Opposition
The question is, should we oppose the YP Political Statement? It uses the term, “democratic socialism”, to paper over the cracks between the social republicans and social monarchists. Opposition to the statement comes mainly from republicans of various kinds, because it ignores the question of political democracy internally or externally. The republican opposition includes the Democratic Socialist YP, Republican Labour Education Forum, RS21 (MUC), the Communist Party of Great Britain and Republic YP.
Supporters of the statement wonder how can we oppose something so general. What about words and phrases about ‘peace’, ‘justice’, and ‘freedom’? How could anybody possibly vote against these words? Of course, it is not individual ‘words’ we are opposing, but the construction, the totality, the implications and the deceit.
The Democratic Socialists YP are the largest group of republicans in YP who oppose the Political Statement and have introduced a ‘Delete all and substitute a republican programme’. A supporter of the RLEF has drafted republican amendments to the original without having to delete all. This is a disagreement of tactics, not programme, between whether we should boycott or amend.
A republican boycott is a call for all republicans in YP to take a stand against the general drift into social monarchism. Boycott is the most extreme form of opposition. It says, ‘Do not go down the rabbit hole of trying to amend it’. A republican boycott highlights three objections to the YP Political Statement.
First, as already stated, there is no programme. Second, there is no republican programme - one necessary to found a republican or republican socialist party. Third, there is no democratic process in place for developing a YP programme. The only option on offer is to see where we are next year and meanwhile be saddled with the Political Statement.
It is not totally clear if the CPGB are part of the republican opposition rather than simply a communist opposition for YP to become a Communist Party of Great Britain. The CPGB appears to deny they support a republican boycott and seem to call for ‘ripping it up and starting again’ without providing any political criteria or basis for this position. It is very hard to resist the charm offensive of the greatest democratic exercise in the history of the British left.
Now back to the spider and the fly. It is a poem about how the cunning spider entraps and eats the fly through seduction and manipulation. It is a cautionary tale against the use of flattery and charm to disguise true intentions. The ‘Orange spider’ tries to draw the fly into its web. At first the fly says no to all the promises and inducements, but eventually, after a few hours of arguments and amendments, the ‘Sea-Green fly’ is drawn into the web and consumed for supper.
Socialist unity
In the last three weeks the Republican Labour Education Forum has been working with many socialist groups around the issue of YP democracy. Our standpoint is summarised as:
- For a democratic secular republic;
- Opposition to the British union;
- For a social republican programme;
- For a ‘party republic’.
The basis for this united front was in cooperation around the idea of a ‘party-republic’ promoted by the DSYP and the amendments proposed by Sheffield YP, known as the ‘Sheffield Demands’. Some very important dialogue took place in a comradely spirit. However, with reluctance last Monday the RLEF decided to withdraw from this united front because of two decisions.
First, a preamble was introduced into the agreed democratic constitutional amendments along the lines of the YP Political Statement. The RLEF majority had already agreed to boycott the YP statement. This preamble was inconsistent with the stance we had already taken. It was agreed, with both RLEF representatives voting against it.
Second, at the last meeting it was decided to choose a name for the Platform between ‘Platform for a Democratic YP’ and ‘Socialist Unity Platform’. We backed ‘Platform for a Democratic YP’ because it accurately described our position on organisation and what we wanted to convey to YP members. The ‘Socialist Unity Platform’ is not our message, but was chosen by a majority.
The RLEF reviewed the situation at its meeting on November 17 and decided we would not continue. The RLEF is in favour of a united front between social monarchists and social republicans on the basis solely of the fight for a ‘party republic’. However, at this present time during the founding of a new party, the RLEF is opposed to any programmatic unity between social monarchists and social republicans as false and misleading. The opposite is necessary in the sharpest polarisation between the Orange and the Sea Green. We are not in favour of founding this new party around a false unity of ‘democratic socialism’ or ‘socialist unity’, which simply gives a free pass to the social monarchism of the 2019 Labour manifesto.
In order to unite Your Party we must first draw clear, sharp lines of political demarcation between the social monarchists and the social republicans, and between the unionists and the anti-unionists. Without this, we are in grave danger of repeating the path trodden by the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, Respect, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and Left Unity.
Our answer to the orange spider is ‘No, no and no’ l