It was inevitable that Your Party’s dull conference would cement the grip of the social democratic trend represented by Jeremy Corbyn and his allies. These forces had organised ruthlessly to stitch up the entire agenda, control contributions and pre-empt any discussion. They saw off with ease the limited challenge to their control posed by left-wing organisations. Far from representing ‘a new kind of politics’, the entire programme reflected the boring, bureaucratic and politically backward tropes of the trade union and old Labour left structures from which the majority of those attending the conference clearly hailed. What little political dissent there was was stifled.
The rallies that Corbyn and Sultana held separately on the Friday evening before the conference were harbingers of what was to come. FRFI supporters attended both events. At the Corbyn rally, Karie Murphy – Corbyn’s chief of staff when he was leader of the Labour Party – and Len McCluskey, former general secretary of Unite, launched a vitriolic attack on the RCG, starting with a young comrade distributing our special conference bulletin in the auditorium. Murphy demanded to see the flyer, claiming that someone had pointed us out as potential disrupters. Others gathered around to echo these claims, including Andrew Jordan, chair of the conference Standing Orders Committee, and Jim Monaghan, a former Labour Party organiser. Private security was then summoned to evict the comrade, and others who protested against their treatment.
When the Sultana rally took place an hour later, Corbyn’s allies had already announced the expulsion from Your Party of Lewis Nielsen, the SWP National Organiser, who was due to speak as a representative of Stand Up To Racism, and other SWP members. There was fighting talk from the many platform speakers in response, and then a suggestion that the SWP would organise a march into the conference in defiance of the ruling. On the day itself, this did not materialise, and Nielsen did not break the ruling – simply issuing a statement pleading to be allowed back into Your Party.
Controlling the message
The following day, some 1,600 delegates assembled – well down from the 13,000 initially hoped for. Predominantly elderly and white, there was no expectation that they would mount a challenge to the authority of the Corbyn clique – on the contrary, they are Corbyn and his allies’ political base. Your Party’s head of security personally oversaw the eviction of the RCG comrade previously marched out of the Corbyn rally, who found herself subsequently expelled from the party.
The conference itself was carefully choreographed. Attempts to raise points of order over the expulsions were swatted away: an attendee who challenged Standing Orders was removed by security while the live feed of the event was cut – as it was any time even the mildest challenge to the Conference stitch-up took place. Several other left activists were also barred from even entering the conference. When it came to a debate about dual membership with other organisations, the motivator suggested that this might be considered for members of the Green Party. This was a concession to a widespread mood that ruling it out altogether was not acceptable. No one pointed out that the claimed reason for the ban on the SWP was that it was registered as a party with the Electoral Commission – apparently it is not, but the Green Party certainly is.
Later that evening RCG comrades attended a meeting organised by leftist organisations under the umbrella of the Socialist Unity Platform. For all its talk of democracy, the meeting was highly controlled, with little opportunity for contributions from the floor. All six official speakers recognised their utter defeat at the hands of the Corbyn clique, yet remained determined to continue in their new-found unity, building branches of Your Party with the aim of changing the leadership in the future! Nielsen even reaffirmed the SWP’s view that Corbyn had to be part of the Your Party leadership alongside Sultana.
Sultana in retreat
Over the previous months, every time the RCG challenged Sultana on the irreconcilable differences between her political stance and that of Corbyn, her response has been that these are positions that would be fought for and determined at the conference. Well, the conference has been and gone and she fought for nothing. Recognising, perhaps, that the more radical forces she had sought to rally were simply not there, Sultana’s address to conference on the Sunday was notable only in the toning down of her political stances, now omitting any question of class struggle or state power. Having repeatedly stressed in the past that ‘Your Party will be anti-Zionist’, she now conceded it was a position they would have to go on fighting for. This was an admission of defeat.
On the Saturday she had boycotted the first day of conference as a gesture of support for those expelled. However, she continued covering for Corbyn by trying to distinguish him from his gang, telling The Guardian on 29 November that ‘I think there are people who are around Jeremy – not Jeremy himself – who have learned the wrong lessons from their time in the Labour Party, where they have been on the wrong end of smears, of sabotage, attacks in the rightwing press’. She added ‘I think we have to work with the Greens and other parties so we can stop Nigel Farage getting into Number 10. That has to be the guiding principle for all of us who want to stop fascism.’
Conference did in the end throw the bones necessary to obtain continued support for Your Party from the left organisations by agreeing to dual membership for ‘approved’ groups (69.2%) which allowed the re-admission of Nielsen and other SWP supporters into Your Party; narrowly supporting a collective leadership (51.6%), and funding for local branches (66.4%). This was sufficient for Sultana to proclaim a partial victory and bury the hatchet.
Sultana’s final call to conference to accept the constitution has confirmed what we forewarned in October: that if she didn’t fight for her positions and split from the social democrats, then her statements would be nothing more than rhetoric. She has now resigned herself to being a radical face within a reactionary party.
