Two months ahead of Your Party’s founding conference at the end of November, it seems that the clique around Jeremy Corbyn has been able to sideline Zarah Sultana from decision-making at least for the present. Though his celebrity status has been tarnished by the fallout, it was Corbyn who registered the party with the Electoral Commission as leader on 1 October – there was no sign of Sultana as one-time co-leader. Should the Corbyn clique remain in control after the conference, it would seal Your Party as a reactionary organisation whose insipid radicalism rejects anti-imperialism.
This is the most likely outcome given the strength of Corbyn’s faction. Its politics are driven by former Labour Party members whose politics have not changed one iota since they were expelled from, or reluctantly left the party. They do not want to pose as an opposition to Labour, but as an ‘alternative’ which allows them to retain their alliance with the rump of the Labour left that refused to leave. Hence, they continue to share the reactionary position of the Labour Party on the question of Palestine alongside Corbyn who:
- Supports a two-state solution, which trashes Palestinian self-determination
- Opposes the right to armed resistance
- Defends the quisling Palestinian Authority
- Supports the pro-Zionist IHRA definition of anti-Semitism – in fact as leader he rammed through its adoption by the Labour Party
- Still refuses to say that he is anti-Zionist having written about an honourable tradition in Zionism as part of the Labour Party.
- Opposes any equation of Zionism with racism.
Yet Palestine is a litmus test for the future political character of Your Party. When Sultana proclaimed her anti-Zionism to a youthful audience in August, the Corbyn clique was horrified. There was no way it would accept any stance with anti-imperialist implications. Nor was it going to enter open political battle on the question as it knew it would lose; it is anyway made up of political cowards who habitually use bureaucratic methods to crush dissent. They are terrified that Sultana will win the support of the younger generation, whose energy will be crucial to Your Party’s survival.
In a telling display of its social and political position, virtually the entire British left has covered up for Corbyn and his reactionary position on Palestine. In relation to Your Party, its publications witter on about socialist programmes, parliamentarianism versus mass action, bureaucracy versus democracy, indeed about anything but Palestine. Wherever you look, it is the same: Socialist Worker, The Socialist, Socialist Alternative, The Communist, rs21, Counterfire, Morning Star. They praise and protect Corbyn; they dismiss the political significance of Palestine and imperialism to pretend that Your Party will be a progressive force with Corbyn as leader.
In a telling contribution to a Your Party meeting in Brixton on 1 October, erstwhile Sultana ally Andrew Feinstein declared that ‘we need to learn to live with our differences, and focus on the immediate crisis’. Sultana has kept silent: given the context, this means surrendering Your Party’s future position on Palestine to the Corbyn clique. Palestine is still the issue, as John Pilger said over 20 years ago and Sultana has to fight back. The stance Your Party adopts on the question will absolutely stamp its political character.
Zionism is racism!
