The announcement of Your Party and subsequent, often messy, developments have sparked a range of responses across the left. The responses of communists in particular have varied from mostly ignoring, to advocating dual membership, to even leaving one’s own communist organisation to join Your Party outright.
With the recent 58th Congress of the Communist Party and now 1st Conference of Your Party, we have a bit more clarity on what Your Party will look like and the communist response. We can asses what opportunities such a new left party presents, what limitations it has, and what the focus of communists should be.
Popularising left policies
Firstly, Your Party has the potential to coordinate a range of people on the wider left around shared policies. Many have become disillusioned with the Labour Party since Starmer’s leadership, especially since the party entered government, and while some of these have been won over to the Communist Party and Young Communist League, a great deal more have been left feeling politically homeless.
Our communist movement still has much work to do in demonstrating itself the viable alternative, and a
big part of creating this alternative is popularising a program of key left-wing policies in our workplaces,
communities, and campuses.
To the extent that Your Party is capable of rallying various left forces around such policies, it may help
to popularise and build workers’ unity on some of these positions (e.g. democratic public ownership,
expanding renewable energy, full employment).
However, the efforts of communists to popularise these key left-wing policies would be less effective
within Your Party, and should instead be made directly as Communist Party members within our workplaces, broad movement organisations, and communities. If the struggle were to be taken within Your Party, we could expect to get bogged down arguing against various groups and tendencies of the sectarian left, as well as any right wing tendency that may arise.
We saw at Your Party’s founding conference how much it got bogged down in fighting over the presence of existing left organisations – most notably the SWP – within the party, with co-leader Zarah Sultana boycotting the first day of conference over the expulsion of members. While Your Party’s conference did ultimately vote to allow dual membership, these issues are far from settled. The party may risk capture by various entryist groups, or if not, be left constantly fighting their ‘left opposition’.
The Communist Party made clear its position at its 58th Congress, rejecting a policy of pursuing dual membership. We certainly have the ability to build unity with co-workers, neighbours, and fellow students who are in Your Party, as we have always done with individuals who happen to be in Labour, the Greens, etc. But this is the unity of individuals who already agree, or have been won over, to the Communists’ existing position on a certain issue – not the kind of ‘unity’ that involves softening or changing our position, or wholly joining a new party, to align ourselves with them instead.
For the Young Communist League in particular, as a mass youth organisation focussed on a broader swathe of youth than those who are ready for membership of the vanguard Communist Party, we have no reason to use Your Party as a vehicle for popularising the Communist Party program. We are ourselves the vehicle to popularise this program amongst the next generation of Britain’s worker and progressive movement. To see Your Party as this vehicle is tantamount to giving up our role as the link between the Communist Party and the mass of Britain’s youth, when in fact we should be deepening our direct work as communists within every aspect of the political, economic, and ideological struggle. Where Your Party helps to popularise a certain left-wing policy, young Communists can work with that to show how our strategy and tactics are best suited to achieve this policy, and provide the context for how such a reform must be linked to a wider revolutionary struggle against imperialism. Where Your Party fails or capitulates on certain policies, we can again work with that, to demonstrate the importance of a unified, independent Communist Party in maintaining a consistent anti-imperialist strategy, winning support for this strategy across the worker and progressive movement itself rather than trying to do so within another party.
An anti-imperialist voice?
There is some potential in Your Party to differ from the likes of the Greens or even much of the Labour-left, by giving a mainstream voice to a genuinely anti-imperialist politics. Per it’s own policies, the party upholds “socialist, anti-imperialist and anti-oppression principles” – though we obviously cannot just take the party at its word. The independent MPs that played a role in the party’s founding were elected in large part on the issue of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – though two of these MPs have now distanced themselves from Your Party.
So Your Party will have to prove a genuine dedication to anti-imperialism. If it did bring this position into the mainstream, this could help reshape the political landscape to be more favourable to the communists’ work of popularising an anti-imperialist, anti-war stance across society.
However, there is the risk that Your Party will ultimately capitulate on controversial topics such as NATO and the European Union for electoral gain. Social democratic and ‘socialist’ parties have a long history of compromising on imperialism and war abroad in hopes of winning or keeping office. Take for example Greece’s SYRIZA (coalition of the radical left). A party incorporating left groups of various tendencies, that rose to prominence after the collapse of the country’s main social democratic party PASOK, SYRIZA won government in 2015 but failed to deliver the radical change some expected. In terms of international policy, it deepened relations with the US and Israel, continued work with NATO, overseeing the expansion of US military bases in Greece.
If Your Party were to capitulate to imperialism like this, an independent Communist Party would be capable of exposing this betrayal and distinguishing itself as a genuine anti-imperialist voice. The same could not be done by communists working within Your Party.
Yet, if Your Party were to embrace an anti-NATO and EU-critical position, it could find itself offering a real alternative to Labour with more broad appeal than the Greens. Such a situation could ensure Labour’s unpopularity does not lead to a Reform majority in parliament, but a left majority instead.
A left-wing government?
While the prospect of a broadly popular left-wing movement winning government and giving Reform a kicking is nice to think about, how would this actually happen? It would not be achieved simply by Your Party, or any electoral, reformist party. It would be achieved by a strong working class movement, which has rebuilt its institutions, rejuvenated its ties to our communities, and built unity around a shared left-wing program across the unions and progressive organisations.
If Your Party were to become the electoral/parliamentary voice of the workers’ movement, it would only be reflecting the demands and the policies of this movement. If it were to achieve government, it would only be on the back of mass support for left-wing policies already won across our workplaces, communities, and organisations. For this reason, Your Party isn’t necessarily going to be the electoral voice of such a movement. It could end up being a different party, or a much broader electoral alliance, by the time the movement has been won over to a shared left-wing program.
Therefore it is far more effective for communists to (1) organise independently as a Communist Party, and (2) fight for the left-wing program directly across all areas of the movement, not via an electoral party.
The extra-parliamentary movement is the decisive factor. If a left government is elected (Your Party or otherwise), it is this United Front of working class and progressive organisations that will ensure the left-wing program is implemented. It will be this mass movement that is also key in transforming popularity for the reforms themselves into support for a broader revolutionary transformation that secures and goes beyond these reforms.
Your Party may become the main parliamentary voice of the workers, or it may crash and burn. It may bring anti-imperialism to the mainstream, or it may capitulate for the sake of a hollow electoral victory. It may be taken over by Trotskyists, or it may become another milquetoast social democratic party like the one it is trying to replace.
Regardless of any of these outcomes, if Britain’s communists are organised independently in a Communist Party, with a strong and energised Young Communist League, we are well placed to rebuild the movement for socialism, and against imperialism, where it actually matters – in our workplaces, communities, and campuses.
Philip English, is the Editor of Challenge Magazine
