Letters

Union influence

I was quite pleasantly surprised to find no real disagreement with Jack Conrad’s comprehensive reviews of the lead-up to the 1926 General Strike and initial testing of the waters with calls for earlier political, overt class actions.

Notwithstanding ignorant and cynical comments about “syndicalist quackery” made by another contributor (March 19), and resisting the temptation to rise to the bait, I think we must remember certain things about the period. In the first place the ‘revolutionary movement’ was the trade union movement in all its contradictory and counterrevolutionary elements, as well as its strengths and potential. The influence of syndicalists and industrial unionists was profound. The Industrial Workers of the World and its Industrial Union Bulletin, and syndicalists as such, formed much of the strategy and proto-structures of the miners and the shop stewards movement, and this was reflected in the councils of action and to an extent in the trades councils and community networks.

The miners’ call for a general strike in support of revolutionary Russia, the blocking of armed intervention, earlier calls for the creation of a working class militia and much else were made to and through the union movement. Indeed, many of the forces which went on to form the Communist Party had their visions of a socialist country and world built on the ideas of democratic workers’ committees, trade union branches, shop stewards governing directly as workers and not through the later distortion of ‘the party’. In this they had preceded and then absorbed the ideas of the soviets. An idea such as one of their respective parties taking over and ruling on behalf of the workers would have been seen in these early years as quite perverse .

Incidentally the proletariat - ie, the industrial workers, the actual ‘manufacturers of things’, the nuts and bolts of industry and society - was seen as the crucial ingredient, along with class consciousness, for being able to take over and run society without capitalism. Obviously, workers in services and other associated roles were important, but, if you wanted to take over the restaurant, you first had to ensure the involvement and role of the chefs. Which is why Margaret Thatcher and every government since has been so determined to wipe us out and export those crucial roles abroad - largely to third-world, non-union or weak-union countries.

David Douglass
South Shields

Genuine debate

The CPGB’s Online Communist Forum is a weekly Sunday Zoom discussion that talks about the latest political events and other things of urgency - often with comments written in the chat by an endearing comrade, with slogans of “No war but the class war” and other similar veined vexations, but all with a communist perspective in mind.

Panelled comrades often engage in complicated and nuanced discussions that are multi-dimensional, such as how the working class in Islamic or supposed communist countries are supportable, but not the leaders in these autocratic or kleptocratic regimes. So nothing is ever black or white, but what is clear is the class question. It’s probably always tempting to use heuristics or short cuts to save time and no doubt sloganeering can be very useful on strikes and demonstrations, but they don’t really help understand the world from a dialectical Marxist point of view.

In the communist videos from 2020, ‘Our Socialism’, featured on YouTube, Mike Macnair explains that the CPGB’s Marxism is not repeated as “sacred texts”, but rather a more up-to-date version is preferable. So trapping yourself by repeating ad nauseum aphorisms, however desirable, isn’t really getting to the nub of today’s problems. Using such terminology may seem attractive to one or two comrades, but it isn’t communicating to the working class the responsibility of leadership and building strong roots for a future expansive Communist Party.

It probably goes without saying that capitalism is in decline, competition for the crumbiest jobs are fierce, students have severe debt problems and most people can’t really see much of a future for themselves. So what’s the solution? If the left doesn’t acknowledge that what is really needed is a programme that explains what has happened in the past and attempts to reorganise ourselves with a future active working class in mind (not shouting ‘get rich quick’ sayings that are rote-learnt and only patronise members of the class we want to join us), then we’ll be screaming till we’re blue in the face.

Frank Kavanagh
email

YP or Greens

What follows is a letter sent to Your Party’s central executive committee:

“Dear comrades in the CEC,

We write to you collectively as Your Party Youth Cambridge (YPYC). This letter is born out of frustration and exhaustion with the state of the party and the CEC’s conduct thus far.

As YPYC, we began in November 2025 with the goal of organising youth in the Cambridgeshire region to support their local communities and combat the rise of the far right. Since then, we’ve run a weekly food drive, now in its 16th iteration, ran an independent candidate for the CEC, supported strike action, and hosted numerous vibrant, politicised, cultural and educational events.

Over these past five months, our membership and impact in our community has greatly enriched our lives; we’ve become a steadfast and regular presence in our local streets. We were eagerly anticipating the formation of the CEC as a chance to concretise the promise of the party and formally establish the structures we’d built.

However, we’re running out of steam. We’ve felt incredibly disappointed with the lack of action, communication and comradeship from the CEC. When we read out the CEC reports in our weekly meetings, we find them increasingly uninspiring - a dead weight, hanging in the air. The pre-conference divisiveness has only worsened with the elections; we’ve seen no attempts to resolve this and move forward productively. Materially, we cannot keep asking our comrades to continue paying for meeting rooms, banners and flyers out of their pocket. Finally, we’ve been frustrated about the lack of progress towards branch formation - a topic which, while instrumental to the party’s success, does not seem to be prioritised whatsoever. We tell our peers that things will get better, but, as each month passes, feel increasingly ashamed to bear the party’s name.

The ideological commitments we hold in our hearts can only carry us so far. We write to you now in a time of failing hopes: your response to what we say here will determine whether we remain committed to Your Party. As experienced organisers, we will continue the struggle regardless: the only question is whether it’s under this party’s banner or that of the Greens.

We are not asking for anything new. In general, we want clarity, productivity and confidence in our leadership. Specifically, we want timelines for (1) branch formation, (2) branch accounting units (so that branches can be funded) and (3) youth section formation. Branch formation should have been the CEC’s first priority, not left last on the agenda. The uncertainty surrounding these developments has driven local conflict and sapped our spirits. Timelines are the bare minimum you can provide us with at this stage in the party’s development, and should not be beyond your capabilities.

But, ultimately, we need you to do better. We need to see you doing better - we need to feel it. The reports must not continue along their current trend: thinly-veiled factionalism that leads nowhere (that we’re bored of); rushed decisions; lack of real dialogue; deferral to the officer group over the collective leadership (that we voted for). We expect official minutes from here on out, as a matter of basic democratic practice and transparency.

We are not alone in this. We know that groups all across the nations feel similarly and are facing the same decision as us. Young people in particular are leaving the party in droves; without young people, the party has no future. It is only out of one last gasp of faith in the promise of the party that we even reach out to you today. Fundamentally, what happens now comes down to you.

For us. For the Party. For the people and the planet. Courage to you, comrades.”

Your Party Youth
Cambridge

Universalism

In his letter last week (March 19) David Rüper lays out how the “bureaucratic clique surrounding Jeremy Corbyn” outmanoeuvred all opposition to assert control of Your Party in England and Wales, which is now supposedly “done for good”.

He sees YP in Scotland in a very different light and advocates a complete split and name change. If done with speed, this could apparently still fulfil the niche for a “functional, pan-leftist, left-of-Labour party in Scotland”. This ignores the fact that the YPS conference decision to adopt a pro-independence position obviously makes for a left-of-SNP party and flushes any possibility of pan-leftism down the nationalist pan.

We now see the Corbyn clique aiming to outmanoeuvre the other fatal Scottish conference decision of creating a sibling relationship. CEC chair Jenn Forbes has just announced plans for ‘working parties’ in Wales and Scotland, chosen by sortition, apparently to “support developments in the devolved nations”. This appears to tie in with what Jim Monaghan raised in the debate on it at conference - the likelihood of two parties emerging from that decision. As a close ally of Corbyn and Karie Murphy, he was in a position to see just the sort of scenario that’s being put into play now.

Rüper fails to recognise that the left nationalism dominating YP Scotland is the major obstacle to the sort of party he claims YPS could have been. It has sown the divisions that kept comrades in Scotland aloof from the struggles against the Corbyn clique, claiming to be above such “factional squabbling”.

As I write, a further email from Forbes has just arrived with a ludicrous offer to vote on whether or not YPS should stand in the May Holyrood elections - a rerun of that conference vote. The deadline for this vote is March 27 and the deadline for standing candidates for Holyrood is April 1! Yes, YP HQ is treating the membership like fools, but the anger it has caused has ignited across WhatsApp groups and exacerbated the desire that Rüper has - to split now.

It appears to be a Murphy move like the one about the CEC formation over Christmas - get the passive, isolated membership voting and that negates the complaints of activists and lends legitimacy to the overturning of conference decisions - especially as it’s likely that there will be a greater percentage of the Scottish membership voting than at conference, when there was a 12.5% turnout in favour of standing by close to 70%.

All in all, another sorry stage in the YP disintegration process with little sign of anything but further left nationalist splintering across Scotland. It’s vital that those comrades in Scotland, who recognise the need for an internationalist party across these islands to fight the British state, unite and fight such nationalism. It can offer nothing of the universalism that the world’s working class so desperately needs.

Tam Dean Burn
Glasgow

Lab stocktake

Soon after I came across the Weekly Worker in 2014 (and then made sure I continued reading it on a regular basis, as part of freshly educating myself with ‘hard’ leftwing politics), Jeremy Corbyn appeared like a poltergeist from within the House of Commons in his bid to become the next ‘leader’ of the Labour Party.

The Weekly Worker, in line with its ideological fountainhead, the CPGB, avidly encouraged critical, nonetheless the fullest, support for this development. Despite extensive reservations - based not least upon having experienced the dire trajectories of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan - I complied with this appeal to back Corbyn’s rise up the global ranks of social democracy.

As everyone now knows, a flaccid and vicar-like Jeremy ended up being manoeuvred out of Labour, so next proposed and floated Your Party, which - again with well-stated Leninist principles - the Weekly Worker/CPGB insisted was representative of a ‘not to be missed’ chance for political engagement with working people, as the most ideologically justified pathway to achieving traction from the current starting point for Marxist revolutionary politics of invisibility (otherwise either being regarded by the vast majority of population as a laughing stock or held with vitriolic contempt).

Given the outcome of the WW/CPGB’s policies in this specific arena - as it were, in a ‘real’ world, as things actually have panned out (and notwithstanding the often not only highly amusing, but also helpfully factual commentary on all these matters from Carla Roberts) - maybe a deep stocktake is required of those Leninist ideas: ie, here, in these very different times, with their very different forces and vastly changed sub-forces and associated socio-political and psycho-cultural settings in operation.

Some comrades will no doubt accuse such a response of being not firmly rooted in class politics, as not dialectical and, most pointedly, as not seemingly ‘Leninist’. In fact it’s an iteration of all those attributes in nigh-on pristine condition - although in updated and modernistic formulation. It’s dealing with historical development, with objectively observable substantial change, with a ‘whole’ view rather than myopically outdated comprehensions as part of subjective staleness and consequently a terrible sterility.

By considering there’s a need for entirely independent organisation by Marxists to the sly treacherousness of Labourite Corbyns and US Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, those perspectives of mine represent not revisionism or indeed a pigeonholed ‘Trotskyist’ position, but instead are ideas around the only valuable futurism: ideas for the building in all practical, tactical and strategic terms an authentically communist future. That’s to say, categorically not one with even the slightest whiff of Stalinist mentality - that searingly destructive historical tragedy from which we all continue to suffer profoundly.

All in all, surely the adage, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men’, comes flooding back to mind - along with the somewhat celestial harmonics cascading down, plus how, ‘if you find yourself in a hole, it’s best to stop digging’; how ‘banging your head on brick walls’ is not an ideal example of dialecticism. Most obviously, of course, it’s just not that clever.

Bruno Kretzschmar
email

Biblical Kippers

We had assumed that Ukip had dishonourably disappeared after the nicotine-stained frog, Nigel Farage, had abandoned that project and created Reform UK Ltd. But no, a smattering of the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers are hanging around like a fart in a lift.

Like much of the far right globally, they have now adopted Christian nationalism in an attempt to stay relevant and give them moral cover for their repugnant rhetoric. They’ve swapped the swastika for a cross, Mein Kampf for the Bible (although we can safely assume that neither gets read apart from the bits that can be typed in CAPS on social media). Worth remembering that when someone tried to pin down Donald Trump to specify his favourite part of the Bible, he replied after a long pause, “All of it!”

One thing remains the same about the ‘Kippers’: their modus operandi involves evoking false memories of a United Kingdom that never really existed - the ‘back in my day’ brigade, when everything was apparently better, happier … and whiter.

Take the so-called ‘Walk for Jesus’ they helped organise in Liverpool. This is actually a rehash of an actual event held in the past, where Christians would take part in a genuine liturgical procession known as ‘kenosis’. This was supposed to be an “emptying of self” to lift up Christ, seeking the “peace of the city” (according to Jeremiah xxix:7). Ukip instead turned it into a white supremacist demo. A fascinating exercise in interpretive theology - less Sermon on the Mount, more a GB News comments section (hymns interspersed with complaints about dinghies).

The ‘greatest hits’ of Christian teachings are still preached, but now they come with clauses. Love thy neighbour - unless they are from another country. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you - but keep in mind that white people are superior and so are entitled to hold certain powers and privileges. ‘Turning the other cheek’ is rebranded as ‘weakness’. Welcoming the stranger is completely edited out - somewhere between Leviticus and the OpEd of the Daily Mail. You get the idea.

Under no circumstances should you highlight that the Jesus they’re supposed to be marching for was a Middle Eastern refugee who preached kindness and acceptance and had a bit of a soft spot for outsiders. Woke nonsense!

Carl Collins
email