Your Party successfully launches in town

Supporters of Your Party, which is being formed by leftwingers disillusioned with the Labour government, and perhaps with party politics in general, enjoyed a successful inaugural meeting in St Leonards last week. Next up is a rally to be held at Horntye sports centre on 18 October when the party’s co-founder Jeremy Corbyn will be in attendance. Nick Terdre reports.

Clearly there are plenty of local people disillusioned with Keir Starmer’s Labour government judging by the numbers – 130-140 or so – who crowded into St John the Evangelist church on 30 September, and by the range of organisations which arranged the meeting:  Hastings Independent group of local councillors, Hastings People’s Party, Hastings and District Trades Union Council and Hastings Socialist Workers Party.

Addressing the meeting by video link, Andrew Feinstein, former MP in Nelson Mandela’s government in South Africa and now active in organising the new party, remarked how impressed he was to see the breadth of groups which had come together to arrange the meeting.

Testifying to the enthusiasm with which the party (co-founded by MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana following her resignation from Labour) has been greeted, Feinstein said he had been speaking at some three or four meetings a week around the country in recent months. A figure of 750,000 for those who have shown interest in joining the party was quoted by Corbyn in September, while 137 ‘proto-branches’ are claimed across the UK; down our way a meeting was held recently in Rye and one is planned in Eastbourne next week.

The speaker noted “how many people are turning up who have not been involved politically before,” which was “ . . . the crux of our party – it’s about creating a totally new type of politics in Britain – for the very long term, because the reality is that our politics are broken”.

Many of his comments were directed at the prime minister. The government solution for the ongoing cost-of-living crisis was to “make us pay more for everything so that [Starmer’s] billionaire donors and corporate mates can continue to make record profits, receive record bonuses and increases to their indefensible salaries”.

Genocide

Linked to this was “our active participation” in the “world’s first live-stream genocide in Gaza”. Feinstein said that the real-time intelligence gathered by RAF spy flights over Gaza was used by the Israeli military “for what they ironically describe as targeting, the obliteration of entire cities, of entire towns, of entire neighbourhoods. That’s not targeting, that’s just brutal genocidal carpet bombing. But when targeting does take place, it is to kill key health workers, key journalists, and their entire families, and Keir Starmer is as responsible for that as Benjamin Netanyahu”.

After discussing the problems that had arisen with managing data on those who had expressed an interest in joining the party and the donations paid in, he moved on to the nature of the party, stressing that it had to be rooted in and controlled by the grassroots. Parliament was not the centre of the universe:  “The centre of the myriad universes are our communities, and unless the corridors of power, be they our councils or national parliament, are reflecting the needs and wishes of our local communities across this country, they are not serving their purpose . . .

“ . . . This party, as much as I respect them, is not about Jeremy and/or Zarah, or any of the leadership figures, but about each and every one of us . . . We have to ensure that at every stage of the process we have a democratic process that is transparent and accountable.”

After fielding questions from the audience, Feinstein returned to his political analysis. “The late neoliberal capitalist era has effectively captured our state and our politicians and our political parties to further the profits of capital,” he said. “Those who are not themselves obscenely rich believe that they should be, people like Keir Starmer, and therefore they do the bidding of the super wealthy.”

“We have been told that . . . to support the Palestinian struggle, to oppose the genocidal action of the Israeli state, is terrorism and anti-semitic . . . The days of the anti-semitism smear are over. When anyone of us is attacked as a terrorist or an anti-semite, the only way we win these battles is for all of us to stand together. We will not allow this pathetic name-calling to have any role in our politics any more.”

Engaging

Moving on to Nigel Farage and Reform UK, solidarity and unity were the way to see off fascism, he said — solidarity with every person who comes to this country in need of security and refuge. “The advancing fascism” had to be pushed back, not just by standing together in solidarity, but also by engaging. “I do not believe that everybody who supports Reform is necessarily racist — I believe that a lot of people are desperate, for the same reasons that a lot of us are desperate, and they believe erroneously that Farage and his fellow millionaires and billionaires are somehow part of the solution . . .

“We need to talk to people who have different views to ourselves. We have to use the power of our arguments to persuade them why this new movement party is a legitimate home for them as well.”

“History is changed by the actions of groups of committed individuals working together,” he concluded, quoting anthropologist Margaret Mead. “We triumphed [against apartheid] as we will today because we are the many, they are the few.”

Breakout groups

Following Feinstein’s contribution, breakout groups were organised to give everyone a chance to have their say. “The mood of the 10 groups was serious but positive, with a lot of discussion about all the things in society that need changing, and how to achieve that,” said Hastings Independent councillor Nigel Sinden, who chaired one of the groups. “Not everyone there has joined Your Party yet, but I expect most now will.”

Buoyed by the success of the meeting, the next step for Your Party’s local branch will be a rally at Horntye sports centre on Saturday 18 October, which will be attended by Jeremy Corbyn. This will be followed by regional conferences to discuss the new party’s constitution, before the founding conference takes place in Liverpool at the end of November, Cllr Paul Barnett, the Hastings Independents group leader, told HOT.

They will also start contesting elections. “I expect Your Party candidates to be standing in the local elections next May to provide a real alternative to the other, increasingly right-wing parties,” he said.

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