In October, Your Party’s Zarah Sultana led a powerful march through Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. In a speech, she called for the party to be:

rooted in our working-class communities, proudly socialist, radically democratic. A party that builds power from below

And as she revealed a lot about her own positions, voices from local communities boomed with precisely the “power from below” that she spoke of. In particular, they united around the need to defend humanity from the obscene greed of the ruling billionaire class:

The diverse group of speakers included community organisers, trade unionists, and anti-war, disabled, LGBT+, and anti-racist campaigners. Independent councillor Tanisha Bramwell and independent MP Iqbal Mohamed also gave speeches. Most of the above have participated in, collaborated with, or received the support of the People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE), which has brought people together across the metropolitan borough of Kirklees in opposition to war, cuts, and racism.

The speakers represented the energy and compassion of ordinary working-class communities, embodying the spirit of resistance. For example, attendees heard from the local campaign struggling against the privatisation of dementia care homes.

They also heard from people raising the alarm about a public health scandal resulting from the local council backing a private housing project that has exposed people to asbestos and other toxic substances.

As one speaker insisted:

we will make it so we cannot be ignored

Zarah Sultana — Uniting to resist a system of greed and destruction

A key uniting factor was opposition to the racist distraction tactics of Reform UK and others on the far right. And there was a clear effort to name the real cause of people’s struggles:

It isn’t refugees closing hospitals. It isn’t migrants cutting wages. It’s a system that’s built on profit and greed.

The call for unity among a group with diverse identities has come from the fact that:

The same system attacking your wages is bombing Gaza. The same government gutting our public services is giving tax breaks to millionaires.

And the need to defend humanity from the billionaire-led onslaught on people’s wellbeing requires a clear insistence that:

Health, housing, and support are rights. They are not privileges.

Because establishment politics has let communities down for so long, there was an obvious distrust in the current way of doing things. This led one speaker to stress:

let’s make sure we do not rely on politicians for change

Another added to this by insisting:

Justice isn’t achieved by talking about people — it’s achieved by walking with them.

And that was the overall atmosphere of the event. It wasn’t just a call for active democratic participation in the struggle for humanity. It was a call for everyone – from all walks of life – to stand together to resist the far right and build an alternative future of mutual respect and community empowerment.

Featured image via Instagram

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.