Independent Alliance “stewardship” of Your Party must end
By Socialist Alternative reporters
Last night, Zarah Sultana participated in BBC Question Time, and wiped the floor with a panel full of our political and class enemies. This was an incredibly rare opportunity for Your Party, and the left in general, to get a mass platform on the mainstream media and project its pro-working class programme at a crucial time for the party.
However, instead of supporting Zarah and using this opportunity to create new momentum for YP, the Independent Alliance MPs were busy smearing and undermining her. Only a few hours before the programme began, they released a shameful statement on social media, which indirectly accuses Zarah of withholding large sums of money donated to the party. This does nothing to help Your Party or the working class, only aiding the bosses and the establishment parties.
This statement is a continuation of a smear campaign which has been waged against Zarah and other figures within Your Party over the past weeks. It is based on a dishonest narrative which has clearly been debunked. And yet, it continues to be peddled. This is simply unacceptable.
Dishonest smears debunked
It is patently true that there is a financial aspect to the mess caused by the crisis surrounding Your Party’s launch process, and in particular related to a significant amount of funds held by “MOU Ltd”. But this is a mess which is largely of Your Party HQ’s making.
MOU was an entity set up, not by or for Zarah Sultana, but as an agreed step by all of those involved in launching Your Party, including Jeremy Corbyn, in order to hold funds for the project.
The problem arose when, in September, the same Independent Alliance MPs who issued yesterday’s statement, threatened legal action against MOU and called on YP supporters to demand refunds from it. This placed the then-trustees of the fund in significant legal and financial jeopardy, and for no good reason whatsoever. Inevitably, MOU then became a hot potato which nobody wanted to handle.
The truth is that the Independent Alliance MPs who accuse others of withholding the funds, themselves repeatedly refused to take ownership of them, when asked to do so by its former trustees. Only Zarah Sultana was prepared to take responsibility in the situation and become sole director of the entity. She has since then sought immediately to transfer its funds to Your Party, but was met with the same obstacles from the Independent Alliance MPs.
For these same MPs to then turn around and accuse Zarah or others of withholding these funds is extremely dishonest and unfair. The methods on display here – smearing, hostile briefings given to the establishment press, legal intimidation etc – are not new in British politics. But they are not the methods of working-class democracy or socialism.
Enough is enough! Put working-class people first and deliver a democratic founding conference
This episode, the latest in a long string of debacles, will be deeply frustrating to the thousands of working-class activists fighting to build YP – not to mention the hundreds of thousands who had placed hope in this project to create a mass socialist alternative to mainstream pro-austerity, pro-war capitalist politics. The first duty of YP’s ‘stewards’ (as the Independent Alliance MPs call themselves) is to lay the foundations for a party that can offer this. But their actions over recent weeks are instead putting this project in great jeopardy. Urgent action is needed to stop this.
It may be the case that some of those who are currently in control of Your Party HQ feel these smears against Zarah are a useful distraction from the shambolic process which is underway in the runup to the launch conference under their leadership. But make no mistake, the inadequacy of this process has nothing to do with MOU, or the money it holds, or Zarah Sultana. It has everything to do with the bureaucratic and undemocratic approach which has been taken from the top.
Regional assemblies have been organised shambolically. More than 150 fledgling branches organising thousands of people which have been established without any assistance whatsoever form HQ, have been completely excluded from the pre-conference process.
More than 50,000 members are awaiting the results of a sortition process which is being conducted with zero transparency. Those who are selected will be expected to make their way to Liverpool, organise and pay for accommodation and rearrange their lives with, at most, a couple of weeks notice. This will serve to actively exclude thousands of disabled people, carers, parents and those on low incomes.
All of this is simply not good enough. Independent MPs should spend less time baselessly attacking Zarah Sultana and more time cleaning up this mess.
Independent Alliance “stewardship” of Your Party must end
To put it politely, the ‘stewardship’ of Your Party by the Independent Alliance has not gone particularly well. Yet the draft documents (prepared by an unnamed leading group) submitted for conference propose that this stewardship should continue even afterwards. This is despite the MPs previously saying they would ‘step aside’ after the conference and allow the members to run YP democratically.
This proposal must be opposed. It is urgent that confidence is restored in the integrity of the running of Your Party. This will be impossible if the ‘stewardship’ of the Independent Alliance continues. The conference must elect a new team to organise the party’s coming leadership elections in a democratic and transparent way. This team should be made up of activists with real roots in trade union, anti-war, tenants, feminist, anti-racist, LGBTQ+ and climate organising.
Organise for Zarah Sultana’s demands
Socialist Alternative fully supports the democratic demands put forward by Zarah Sultana for the conference (which can be seen here). These issues must be put to a vote at conference, and all socialists should organise to make sure this happens and ensure they win.
It is now beyond doubt that when Zarah told us that she had been marginalised and poorly treated by the Independent Alliance, she was telling the truth. Part of our job as socialists and members of Your Party is to defend her against this unacceptable treatment. While no blank cheques should be given to any leader in the movement, Zarah has so far shown excellent socialist leadership in the face of a challenging situation in Your Party.
Defending her against these attacks, and fighting for genuine working-class, member-led democracy within Your Party, should therefore go hand-in-hand. We must fight for real, democratic structures which put the membership of Your Party in the driving seat nationally, and which will make all elected leaders properly accountable. This would also end the shadowy anonymity of the many ‘volunteers’ who are currently making big decisions about the founding process and drafting major documents without any meaningful democratic oversight.
