Letters

Irish prisoners

In the December 14 Online Communist Forum Jack Conrad correctly raised solidarity and concerns for the pro-Palestine prisoners. He highlighted their detention without trial and the subsequent ongoing hunger strikes, which, for some, have now lasted more than 40 days. Legal representatives have said: “There is the real and increasingly likely potential that young British citizens will die in prison, having never even been convicted of an offence.”

I think it is important to emphasise that the systematic denial of freedom to activists is not only a historic phenomenon deployed by states and governments. A largely ignored case in point is that just across the Irish Sea, Republican prisoners have been held on remand for years, denied due process and subjected to conditions that clearly constitute political imprisonment. Others continue to live under the most extreme, punitive and politically restrictive conditions outside prison - designed to isolate, silence and criminalise activists.

It is right to stand in solidarity with the pro-Palestine prisoners. But I hope this letter also reminds readers of the largely ignored or silenced situation being endured by Irish comrades - and doubtless many others globally.

Carl Collins
email

YP OMOV

I am writing to respond to Patrick Ramsey’s letter last week that claimed that ‘one member, one vote’ (OMOV) would have positive effects for the organisation of Your Party - particularly as it may encourage more discussion and the inclusion of members who are not able to regularly attend meetings. Unfortunately, as someone who has interacted with online-based digital democracies before, I can say with some reasoning, that is quite probably not going to be the result.

Online political simulators (known as ‘polsims’ usually) tend to have significant difficulties when the ideal strategy for winning votes (elections, referendums, etc) often ends up being ‘mass DM campaigning’, where an individual (or group) message as many members who they expect to vote for them as possible. The people being canvassed are usually quite inactive, not participating within the polsim much at the time of the vote, and generally not being particularly aware of the debate around the vote.

This is known as the ‘zombie voter’ issue, where the vast majority of voters are essentially being whipped by specific groups or specific individuals. Debates gradually end up being performative, because the only people actively participating within the polsim already have their views and the majority of the voters are not going to actually observe the debates. Cliques of a few people able to contact voters end up being able to control the polsim, even when they are not the majority of active members. The problems with this are quite obviously that the active population declines, because why would someone participate if they cannot challenge the existing ‘majority’ of voters that don’t actually participate? It also means that campaigning is less and less about public debate and increasingly about backroom dealings of groupchats and cliques.

This applies just as much to a ‘digital democracy’ political party as it does to internet polsims. It applies more actually, because the ways of solving these problems that polsims have implemented are not applicable to a political party. There is not really going to be any way of counteracting the inevitable culture of campaigning that is going to be built around email lists, WhatsApp chats, discord servers and possibly social media followers. I, of course, cannot condemn those groups within Your Party that apply these campaigning strategies, and I recommend the socialist groups within Your Party to utilise these tactics for the purpose of victory, because whichever groups utilise these tactics are going to control Your Party.

The idea of packing a meeting to win a vote will seem much preferable after some time of this, I suspect: at least ‘meeting packers’ have to observe a debate and may have a chance to speak their own views. Perhaps, after going to a meeting to ‘pack’ it for one side, they realise the other side is actually correct. For the OMOV voter, however, they never really observe the debate, except perhaps a bit from the opinion of whichever group has them within their email list or group chat. It’s a great win for the representation of those who tend to have difficulty attending meetings regularly: they get to vote how some group tells them, while still not actually participating within any kind of debate, where they can observe a real explanation of the issues.

Really, we should be focussing on how to ensure a meeting is accessible - eg, ensuring all meetings are hybrid, and encouraging people to participate - rather than establishing a system which enables those with the infrastructure (email lists, group chats, group members, social media followers) to have much more of a say than active members.

Each amendment during the YP founding conference usually got about 10,000 votes total (some less than that, although usually not that much less). There were about 2,000 people within the conference hall and maybe 2,000 people were watching the YouTube stream. Quite possibly the majority of voters didn’t even observe the very limited debates that did occur (I have already noted some of the tactics and strategies occurring during the founding conference).

To improve debate and discussion within Your Party, to improve genuine representation, we should establish a system of delegates voting after genuine debates within branches and at conference. OMOV voting won’t produce anything more representative, except for ‘representing’ those that are able to utilise the tactics I have described.

Dovah
Oxfordshire

SUP meets

The Socialist Unity Platform met on Saturday December 13 to discuss if and how it should continue, seeing as the group very much came together to jointly fight for a set of democratic demands to the four founding documents ‘discussed’ at the launch conference of Your Party (I use the term ‘discussed’ very lightly).

It was perhaps no surprise that all of the 20 representatives from local YP branches and national organisations present argued that the SUP should continue, although, unlike in previous meetings, Counterfire and the Socialist Workers Party were not present. The Socialist Party in England and Wales has never participated.

We discussed the fact that many of the SUP’s minor demands had actually been implemented by HQ before conference, showing that the ‘Sheffield Demands’ have had a real impact: these include the fact that there is no longer a ‘confidentiality’ rule in the constitution; that it is up to branches to decide how they want to organise and if they want to establish ‘local assemblies’; and that all those living in Britain can now become members (not just those with residency rights). On the other hand, the expulsions of members of the SWP on the eve of conference and the stitch-ups and bureaucratic control of conference itself means that the left has its work cut out to organise within YP. A campaign to overturn expulsions and fight for real dual membership is an obvious area where the left could and should work together.

Collective leadership was, of course, the major win for the left and we have to work hard to make sure that the central executive committee (CEC) is as leftwing and politically principled as possible. It makes obvious sense for the left to coordinate on this issue, too. The steering committee of Sheffield YP has prepared a set of ‘pledges’ based on an extended version of the ‘Sheffield Demands’ that we hope might form the basis of an active approach towards leftwingers who are standing.

Ideally of course, the left should agree on a common leftwing slate on a solid, principled programme. However, this will not be easy. Not just because of the long-held sectarianism on the left (and its twin - anti-sectarian sectarianism against the organised left). There was also what I think was an ill-advised attempt by the Democratic Socialists (DSYP) to come to some sort of agreement with the rightwing Democratic Bloc of Mish Rahman, while ignoring much of the ‘organised left’. You see, any member of the SWP, SPEW, Counterfire or any other leftwing organisation which stands for the CEC will “probably be expelled by Karie Murphy”, so we shouldn’t touch them.

I find that attitude deeply problematic and, as a member of the DSYP, have consistently argued against it. For a start, it is not clever politics - between them, groups like Counterfire, SWP, SPEW and the rest of the organised left have thousands of votes in the CEC elections. It makes obvious sense to include these groups in your negotiations - without sanctifying whatever else they might be up to.

It is also a cowardly attitude in the face of yet another witch-hunt and it stinks of the same attitude that some in and around Momentum took - including, of course, former vice-chair Mish Rahman, who now poses as a ‘democrat’. He uncritically implemented the witch-hunting constitution of Jon Lansman and helped to turn what could have been a useful tool for the left into an empty, undemocratic career vessel for little Labour left bureaucrats like himself. He is now trying to do the same in Your Party. We should stay well clear of this outfit, in my view.

However, because Zarah Sultana is friendly with them - no doubt in order to push along her own career prospects - and had been hovering over the negotiations like some kind of benevolent queen, some of the leading lights in the DSYP were dead set on including the Democratic Bloc, when it comes to the CEC elections, and were powering on with ‘negotiations’ despite a serious level of unease in the wider organisation. Rahman and co have even managed to successfully implement a ‘veto’ in the discussions, meaning they can stop anything going forward they don’t like.

The Democratic Bloc has now walked out. It is unclear if they will continue by themselves, if they can convince Sultana to support them and/or if some of the other groups involved will follow them. The veto continues in any case!

However, apart from Ken Loach’s Platform for a Democratic Party, only insignificant groups are involved in the ‘negotiations’ - but, of course, they also hold a veto. Rahman had even convinced the other groups that the candidates on this joint slate should be chosen via US-style ‘open primaries’. The Democratic Bloc has initially argued for a short two-hour voting window after Zoom hustings, when literally anybody could cast a vote for their favourite candidates. The reason is obvious: The long-term careerists in the Democratic Bloc would have done much better at that type of event than any youngster, no matter how passionate, standing for the DSYP. Mish Rahman, Andrew Hedges and James Giles would, I’m afraid to say, would have wiped the floor with the other candidates. Rahman was by far the best speaker at Zarah Sultana’s pre-conference rally. He doesn’t mean a word of what he says, of course - his actions on the Labour Party NEC and in Momentum have more than proved that.

The discussion has now moved on to holding ‘closed primaries’, with only ‘members’ of those organisations allowed to vote - which replicates the above problems of a ‘beauty contest’, while opening yet another can of worms: none of these groups have any ‘real’ members to speak of and will no doubt be arguing over how many of their ‘supporters’ and ‘sign ups’ might be allowed to cast a vote.

Another complication is that the CEC election will be held regionally. While we don’t know the electoral system to be used yet, and if there might be enforced quotas, one clash is already looking very likely: Both Rahman and the Socialist Party’s Dave Nellist live in the West Midlands. It would have been an utter travesty if the DSYP had ended up having to call for a vote in favour of Rahman, because he won a ‘primary’. Or, almost worse, if they now stand a DSYP no-name against Nellist, splitting the left vote.

There will likely be other clashes - especially if DSYP insists on continuing to ignore the “transphobic” Counterfire, which is supporting a number of good candidates, including Salma Yaqoob, Michael Lavalette and Andrew Feinstein. In Liverpool, we know Audrey White is keen on standing, and there will be other supportable candidates. It would be madness to continue organising ‘primaries’ as if none of that was happening - for a start, it would cost a lot of time and effort, for very litte results. The hole that the DSYP comrades are digging themselves into is getting deeper and deeper.

Hopefully, the Socialist Unity Platform can play a useful role in cutting through this nonsense and instead aid negotiations with the different left groups.

Tina Becker
Sheffield YP

YP nationalism

Your Party didn’t implode at the Liverpool conference, but the way things are going it might not survive much beyond the YP Scotland conference in Dundee on the weekend of February 7-8 2026.

This date has just been announced after the typical delays by YP HQ that appear like ineptitude, but are actually bureaucratic control methods. Just this ridiculous example speaks volumes - after three missed deadlines went by for HQ to send out the conference info to members in Scotland, the organising committee had to threaten on December 15 that they would send out a press release and social media posts at 2pm, whether the mailout happened or not. Miraculously the mailout to members was sent at 1.50pm!

Understandably this is exactly the type of behaviour that is riling comrades, but in Scotland it also leads further towards the call for complete autonomy for the party north of the border. So YP HQ are shooting themselves in both feet (and sawing a leg off into the bargain) because such frustration is leading to the possibility of UDI being voted for at conference as the means to overcome all such problems - even the solution to getting a better name!

The wrangling will continue over what the conference agenda will be and there’s even been talk of how to resist if HQ threatens not to finance the conference. Given what we saw at Liverpool, nothing can be discounted from HQ shenanigans.

But what has surprised me is the strength of argument towards UDI from within the ranks of the Democratic Socialists of Your Party Scotland. It really is being proposed as a quick fix in so many ways - such as the means to escape the HQ grip and concentrate instead on ‘external struggles’ around community building and election campaigning.

Such election campaigning is also being touted in DSYP Scotland as more than likely supporting independence, “given the strong class alignment on the issue”. I’m trying my best to kick back against all this disastrous nationalism and have found some opposition to UDI. It’s vital that such arguments are taken on, because otherwise implosion of the whole project could prove inevitable.

Tam Dean Burn
Glasgow

YP drift

So Jamie Driscoll will now be joining the Green Party. A canny operator, charming individual, smart quite probably, but self-admittedly not a socialist: he’s a liberal, wanting to ‘do good’, and very PC.

Team Corbyn clearly saw in him a potential leading light. This says much about Your Party and its leadership cabal - with Ayoub Khan MP being a bit shaky on private schools having to pay VAT, and others have been little better. Nice people, maybe, but class fighters? YP seems keen to distance itself from socialist working class politics more generally. Corbyn has to be made to say ‘socialism’ through gritted teeth and a minority actively dislike working class people. It has the feel of the Lib Dems in exile.

The criticism of independent YP MPs is framed as hostility on the basis of ethnicity or hostility to social conservatism. Criticising the MPs on the basis of a complete lack of class politics doesn’t seem to register. Adding to the general rightward drift, left champions/enablers, such as Novara Media, Counterfire and the SWP all have to answer about why they are privileging anti-socialist actors.

We must insist therefore on democratic accountability, a culture of sharp, open exchange and working class political independence - all essential if Your Party is not to go the way of previous attempts at unity on the left. Everything remains to be played for - for now.

Paul Cooper
email

Comrade Delta

I have just read on David Renton’s substack a quite stunning report on proposed seismic changes to the Socialist Workers Party’s central committee via its latest Pre-Conference Bulletin (No3). Renton is an ex-member of the SWP, who left over the infamous ‘Comrade Delta’ affair in 2013, and is now a leading activist in Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century.

The SWP proposes that long-standing, senior members Alex Callinicos, Weyman Bennett, Mark Thomas and Charlie Kimber, having ‘resigned’ from the CC, be replaced by younger activists. This was not mentioned in bulletins 1 and 2 and is something of a bolt from the blue. The reason cited in PCB3 was their direct involvement in the 2013 ‘Comrade Delta’ affair and its aftermath. It should be noted in passing that a retained CC member, Julie Sherry, wrote defences of the party in The Guardian ‘Opinion’ in 2013, so she obviously escaped the ‘guillotine’.

This is very much a palace coup, with the younger ‘new bloods’ like Sophia Beach, Lewis Nielsen and Tomas Tengely-Evans turfing out the old guard. It seems the final direct link with SWP founders Tony Cliff and Duncan Hallas has been broken. Although I do note that a member of the influential Cox family is on the proposed CC. I say ‘proposed’ knowing that this CC slate will be voted through (they always are in the SWP’s curious version of internal ‘democracy’).

I am guessing that the outgoing comrades didn’t have the heart for a fight. Factional struggle sessions may be fun in your 30s and 40s - less so in your 60s and 70s (combined with rumoured health issues with some of those older comrades - we obviously wish them well with that, regardless of politics). I would guess that the old guard will not be ‘un-personed’ and their publications plus speaking at SWP events will not be curtailed.

So what prompted this? The recent expulsions from Your Party has shaken the SWP to the core and was a bolt from the blue for them. They were pinning all their hopes on their recent 180° pivot towards electoralism (after ignoring elections since the Respect debacle) and getting heavily involved in YP. The faction around Karie Murphy (who some wag online has nicknamed “the Murphia”) obviously had other ideas and expelled SWP national organiser Lewis Nielsen while he was on his way up to Liverpool by train. Nielsen has always used the ‘Stand Up To Racism activist’ cover title while on YP duties, but dropped that pretence after the expulsions and referred to himself under his true SWP title.

The still shocking ‘Comrade Delta’ affair was repeatedly used heavily by the Murphy faction as justification, and even the influential Novara Media brought it up in an interview with Nielsen. He defensively replied: “That’s not the story ... the 800,000 initial sign-ups to YP is the story.” Owen Jones in a Guardian piece also mentioned the scandal. The SWP are obviously close to Zarah Sultana, but have resisted too openly attacking Jeremy Corbyn and reserved their fire for Karie Murphy and Jeremy’s wife, Laura Alvarez.

The inability to ‘shake’ Delta has obviously concentrated young minds. There may be a plan by the young guard to reunite with RS21 and even Counterfire and this was the price: indeed RS21 leading activist David Renton has titled his substack article ‘Is it time to forgive the SWP ?’

What is certain is that the usually boring SWP conference in January 2026 will not be this time. Interesting times on the left.

Paul O’Keeffe
email

Rival strikes

The last months of 2025 in Italy have been marked by both industrial militancy and trade union disunity. There were two general strikes - one on November 28 and another on December 12. Both were protests against the fourth budget of Giorgia Meloni’s government, which has now been in office for over three years.

The demands raised by the trade union leaders on each occasion were broadly similar: eg, the need to increase wages, which have fallen by 8.8% in real terms over the last four years; a more progressive taxation system; and a reduction rather than increase in the retirement age. Both sets of union leaders also attacked the increased austerity needed to reduce Italy’s budget deficit below the 3% limit imposed by the EU’s so-called ‘growth and stability pact’ - a pact that was considerably tightened up after the brief Keynesian breathing space that had resulted from the major economic crisis caused by the Covid pandemic of 2020-21.

Moreover, in both instances the union leaders made it clear that the Italian government was seeking to escape from the EU’s infraction procedure - not just to balance the books in a rigorously neoliberal manner, but also (and primarily) in order to access the EU’s new fund that grants loans to member countries for military expenditure. In other words, Italy is now experiencing deliberate cuts in health, education and welfare in order to participate in the EU’s re-armament drive - what Ursula von der Leyen’s programmatic document originally called ‘Rearm Europe’, before she realised this was too blatant an expression of bellicose intent, and invented various euphemisms.

It should be stressed that the union leaders involved in the strike have shown a courage that the centre-left political leaders - especially those of the Partito Democratico - completely lack, in making no bones about the shift to a permanent arms economy. Of course, Elly Schlein and most prominent figures in the PD-backed trade union complains about cuts in expenditure on Italy’s health service and so forth, but, given their pro-Ukraine and pro-Nato position, they either refuse to make any link with rearmament or often resort to counterposing the creation of a hypothetical European army to each EU state building up its own armed forces.

Having explained what was positive about both general strikes, I cannot avoid pointing out that it was utterly ridiculous to have two rival strikes - the first called by the Unione Sindicale di Base (USB) and other small unions of a broadly anarcho-syndicalist complexion, and the second called by the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), Italy’s largest trade union confederation - the one that used to be close to the Communist Party and still represents the mainstream trade union left.

I might add that I have some reservations about the USB’s tactics, which hardly encourage sympathy from wider layers. They seem to think that road blocks are a wonderful thing in themselves, rather than a way of persuading waverers to join a strike rather than scab. In Livorno, their posters informed supporters where the 6am roadblock would take place, and added that further ones would be organised by mobile phone. This created massive traffic jams.

In Italy, transport workers are legally obliged to run services during certain limited periods of the day. I went into Livorno on a legally guaranteed bus service that left the village where I live at 8am. By 8.20, we approached the edge of Livorno rather belatedly because of a USB-created traffic jam and, instead of continuing to the terminus, or even the city centre, where the vast majority of passengers would get off anyway, the USB driver, who was continually talking to his comrades on his mobile phone, suddenly announced that the strike had started and told us all to get off the bus. Whilst I can still walk a fair distance to get to the city centre to buy newspapers, and could see the funny side of it, I am not sure that other passengers felt the same.

Incidentally, as an illustration of the absurdity of two rival strikes, I will point out that the same bus service ran all day on December 12 during the CGIL strike - I soon realised that this was because the drivers were all in the USB, but I suspect that many less political people assumed they were just scabbing.

Toby Abse
Italy

Salisbury con

We have recently had the report into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who died on July 8 2018 from chemical poisoning - probably related to the earlier ‘Salisbury incident’ of March 4 that year. Yet another excuse for a slew of Russophobic comments and narratives and yet more sanctions imposed. (You might have thought that, nearly four years after February 2022, the UK state would have already used all possible sanctions - if, of course, it was serious.)

Let us examine just some of the ‘facts’, which make no real sense in the context of the official explanation of what happened in Salisbury.

The Novichok nerve agent is meant to be so deadly that a small spot on the skin can kill within seconds and a perfume bottle of the stuff could potentially kill thousands. Yet it is claimed it was sprayed liberally all over Skripal’s door handles in the morning. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter then managed to cover themselves in it through their normal morning routines and spread it all over the house. At midday, they left the house, had lunch at a restaurant in town, and only in the afternoon did they become ill. I don’t doubt that both Skripals and the attending police officer were made seriously ill, but note that not only did they not die, but neither did hundreds or thousands of others.

So, was this really Novichok? Was it a seriously defective batch of Novichok, which had deteriorated so badly that it was essentially ineffective? Would a state intent on using Novichok to assassinate a top target really not have checked the chemical first?

Coincidentally (or not), the one place on Earth known for certain to have real Novichok is the top-secret chemical and biological warfare establishment at Porton Down, just eight miles from Salisbury. Who better to manufacture and calibrate a compound which could make people genuinely unwell (ideally, not fatally)?

Andrew Northall
Kettering