Your Party “Left” appeal to their executioner

A member of the Democrat Socialists of Your Party (DSYP) asked the Bolshevik Tendency to sign this statement: Your Party – No to Bans! No to Expulsions!. But we did not sign it, despite our contempt for this cowardly attempt by the Corbyn clique to preemptively purge any potential left critics. We certainly agree that “A confident, democratic socialist party does not fear organised ideas but tests them openly and democratically,” but Your Party (YP) is not such a party – it’s now effectively a political corpse. Its leadership are reformist cynics who eagerly offer electoral support to the Green Party, which appears to be in the process of upgrading its status from a minor to a major capitalist party. This is unfortunately due to its recent success in winning over many of the disenchanted former Labour supporters who once (briefly) showed interest in YP. Collaboration with the Greens, who are already implementing cuts up and down the country, is happening widely on a local level as well.

Appealing to the same CEC that imposed this bureaucratic measure in the first place struck us as slightly ridiculous.

Similarly, the Members Charter currently proposed by some members of YP appeals to the Corbynites to recognise the branches and act transparently and democratically – begging these crooked bureaucrats to reform themselves can only disorient honest militants remaining within YP. We need to build a working class party, which is completely politically independent from the bourgeoisie and which recognises that it was wrong for Zarah Sultana and her Grassroots Left (GL) faction to call for voting Green in the Gorton and Denton February by-election, as well as to have endorsed Michael Lavalette, who was already in an electoral alliance with the Greens in ‘Progressive Lancashire’. The essential problem with YP is not its democratic deficit but rather the class-collaborationism manifested in “critical” support for candidates of a capitalist party. If we are to salvage anything from this whole experience we must unambiguously repudiate this approach.

See our recent article on YP: “Your Party: A Stillbirth“