800,000 (and counting) have already signed up to the yet-named and formed ‘Your Party’ currently fronted by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. The pair’s recent announcement of a new party has indisputably stirred a left-wing votership aching for a new political home.
However, there’s much to be done to establish and then build the party into a full-political force that can come out fighting by the next election.
Like any new political project, it’s bound to face a few teething issues. And local organisers have found themselves facing one significant stumbling block already. Notably, this is that they have no way to contact the potentially thousands of sign-ups in their area.
It’s obviously early days, but the issue they’ve identified is one with key ramifications for the future of the party. So, they’ve set up a petition to the ‘Your Party’ centralised founders. The response could be a vital signifier of whether the party will truly operate as a bastion of grassroots democracy.
Your Party: a petition for grassroots democracy
Supporters of Your Party have addressed the petition to Corbyn and Sultana. It reads:
We, the undersigned, have registered for the new party initiative that you have jointly announced, which already has more than 800,000 supporters.
We were especially inspired by your statement that this will be a “new type of political party” that “belongs” to its members, who will “decide the party’s direction, the model of leadership, and the policies that are needed to transform society.”
We believe this means the work must start now to build strong local branches in every town and city to discuss the party’s mission, share ideas on its structure, and consider its policies and campaigning priorities.
These branches could play a decisive role in organising an effective founding conference based on delegates from across the country.
So that the work can begin promptly, we ask the central team to help those organising local meetings, by forwarding email invitations to our local supporters.
Once local groups have established formal structures, all necessary steps should be taken to give them full access to local membership data.
We invite the current data holders to action this request without delay, so that momentum is maintained and the most democratic and engaging conference launch can take place in the autumn.
In short, the petition is asking that local groups can have access to sign-ups. This would enable them to reach out to prospective local activists, and keep supporters engaged.
Local organisers need the tools to reach out to their communities
Notably, the petition comes amid heated debate over the operation of the new party.
Local campaigners have been organising in their communities. Norwich-based journalist and activist Alan Story has highlighted this key problem that local activists are coming up against.
As he noted on the Left Lane, Collective – one of the groups setting up the new party – is stifling local groups’ ability to expand their membership. Its leader Karie Murphy has purportedly made two decisions – one of which is that:
All of the names and contact details of the 700,000 people who have said they want to join YOUR PARTY will continue to be held exclusively in a London office… at least until after the November convention. None will be passed on to any of the 100 or more local groups. (It is unknown who actually has control over the names.)
However, Story and local organisers he spoke to argued this impedes grassroots organising.
Of course there are understandable data protection considerations about handing out names to local groups of an as-yet established political party. However, there’s also no way for these local groups to promote their events to those who’ve signed up in their area via the current data controllers, as the petition points out.
Story told Byline Times that:
Word of mouth is fine, but we want to get the members involved, making videos, doing all the kinds of exciting things that can be done as an alternative to Labour and Reform.
But we’re hampered. We’re not allowed to do that. I think it’s completely the wrong way to build a party.
In other words, what the petition is highlighting is that right now, Collective and whoever holds the data, aren’t offering to forward on details of local groups’ upcoming events. And local organisers feel that this is evidently missing a trick.
A question of who gets to shape the new party
As the Canary’s Joe Glenton pointed out, among the myriad of problems with Corbynism that spelled its defeat was that the:
leadership also failed to direct the vast number of people who joined Labour at the time into grassroots class-oriented activity.
In this context, Story’s argument reads like a cautionary tale as well. He reminded readers that it was Karie Murphy who previously ran Corbyn’s office between 2016 and October 2019. And it’s the same Murphy and unelected group that has hampered local groups accessing information on the 800,000 sign-ups.
In that sense, the petition is therefore about a lot more than just the local data issue. It’s about who really gets to shape the party, it’s representative democratic structure, and the vibrant left-wing ecosystem it will seek to galvanise.
Murphy’s words to Byline Times weren’t exactly encouraging. She said:
I explained the data collated from those interested in joining a new political party would not be randomly shared at this time with ‘unknown individuals or groupings’ in geographical areas or in Scotland and Wales.
This was not a ‘decree’ but a sharing of information, and my intent was clear – encouraging those actually organising in their communities to build events and gatherings without relying on this data to build on the momentum.
I further added work was continuing to plan and make the best use at [a] local level of the data gathered.
Your Party is not, as yet, a political party.
Yet Murphy failed to recognise that the issue was also Your Party (and its data controlled, which the Canary understands to be the Peace and Justice Project) sharing events on local groups’ behalf.
Your Party – just not yet
The petition might speak to some important truths and conversations that need to be had at its inaugural conference in November. One that’s honest and faces up to the failures of a gatekeeping old-guard of Corbynism.
For a start, local organisers are calling on Corbyn and Sultana to back them in their community-building via the grassroots. To do so would be a clear signal that ‘Your Party’ really does belong to its members.
You can add your name to the petition here.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.