For a conference to stop the downward spiral

Since the defeat of the Grassroots Left in the CEC elections, the Corbyn clique has tightened its grip on the party. They control the apparatus, the membership list and the money, while the left has been frozen out. Any decision that the leadership doesn’t agree with—like the decision by Your Party Scotland to stand in the Holyrood elections—is rejected, not by open argument but by leaden bureaucratic inaction. The left has been gagged and reduced to irrelevance, not through an open purge (at least not yet) but by attrition.

The left is reeling from this defeat and beginning to disintegrate. The SWP has declared Your Party a failure and thrown in the towel. Many leftists are either quitting, or getting bogged down in destructive fights with no clear political basis. Unclear splits among the left are the last thing we need. Demoralisation is already setting in, especially among the hundreds of young activists who worked tirelessly to make Your Party succeed—who built the proto-branches, organised meetings and did the essential work of party-building. We must not allow this generation of fighters to be dispersed. And to prevent that from happening we must answer the difficult questions, starting with how we got here, and what to do next.

The fundamental problem we face is that there is no political force that workers can look to in order to advance their interests. More and more are looking to Reform or falling into apathy. The situation for the left in Your Party is tough, but we urge comrades not to leave the party. Quitting will not solve anything but in fact will play into the hands of Corbyn and his clique who will be gleeful at the sight of the left tearing itself apart or giving up. Instead, we should take a step back, assess the situation we find ourselves in, and decide collectively where to go from here.

The Greens have now occupied the space that Your Party failed to fill. Of course, the Greens have no solutions to the fundamental problems of this country and all Corbyn can offer is a pale version of the Greens. And while the opening for building a mass socialist party has closed for the moment, we must remember that one positive development came out of Your Party—it brought together leftists from different horizons and forced us to discuss the way forward and argue about our differences. This in itself was a step forward. As of now, the immediate priority for the left is to focus on what we may call the “three Rs”: regroup, rethink and rearm.

To do this, we need to come together and address the problem. We propose holding a conference of the left in Your Party, for the purpose of holding a real, open and democratic debate among the various tendencies and groups about how to go forward. The conference should bring together all of the different perspectives and shades of opinion that exist on the left about where to go from here, have a genuine debate on the proposals raised and decide on the next steps. We think it ought to be held as soon as possible to stop the haemorrhaging of members. Obviously, we cannot do this on our own. We encourage comrades to raise it in proto-branches and Grassroots Left CEC members to take up this proposal and set up an organising committee whose sole purpose should be to organise a democratic and clarifying conference.

Obviously, a conference will not solve all our problems. But doing nothing is not an option. It will mean the left tearing itself apart, or calling it quits, or both. We have a responsibility to try to prevent that from happening.