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Your Party MPs tackle the right’s ‘divide-and-rule tactics’ head on at Muslim Network launch

A lot of Your Party debate has often centred around how broad the alliance should be, and how religious left-wingers fit in. Party members tackled this head on at the Muslim Network launch last weekend, calling out the right’s divide-and-rule tactics. And MPs Zarah Sultana, Shockat Adam, and Ayoub Khan surprised them by turning up in support.

The event took place on the fringes of Your Party’s first conference. And facilitator Khalid Sadur, whose Enfield Community Independents are now the main challenger to the Labour-Tory axis locally, insisted:

This network is not about factions. It’s not about supporting one particular faction over another… It’s about members. Members are going to make this happen.

Members are the ones that are organising this party. So we have to have the focus on members, hear their voices.

The panel speakers were all independent challengers in the 2024 general election. And in their speeches and answers, they focused on the importance of having internal democracy in Your Party and giving members a real say in what happens. They also described the obstacles they faced when running against Labour’s genocide-backing neoliberal elitism.

From the panel members to the attendees, there was an emphasis on the need for respectful spaces where ordinary people can speak freely without self-censorship, and how to organise effectively on a grassroots level to ensure disengaged voters register and lifelong Labour voters finally break the chains tying them to the party.

When the MPs spoke, meanwhile, they stressed the urgent need to make Your Party work.

Your Party: ‘When one minority attacks another minority, the establishment gets what it wants’

Shockat Adam stood up first and asserted that:

regardless of our small differences, as long as we have mutual respect, anti-discrimination, and understanding for each other, we must make this work. We have no choice, for our children’s sake… Because when one minority attacks another minority, there’s somebody rubbing their hands in the background going ‘great, they’re doing the work for us’.

We must not be the pawns in that game. We must make sure that we care for our neighbours regardless of who they are, regardless of their sexuality, regardless of whether they belong to a faith, regardless of their gender.

He insisted that all people should “be able to express our views as long as we’re not discriminating or harming anybody else”.

Ayoub Khan followed on from Adam, arguing that:

as long as our key objectives are in line, then I think we can make this work

He added that:

as long as we can respect each other, as long as we can have that space to have discussion, I genuinely believe that we can make this work

Next up was Zarah Sultana.

‘An attack on one is an attack on all’

Sultana said:

I see [fighting] injustice as crucial to my Muslim faith… and it is my faith that allows me to call injustice out every single week in parliament, every time I’m on the TV, in my day-to-day life

A white man then stood up and started heckling her. But people of all genders stepped in to challenge his behaviour firmly. And Sultana continued by pointing out that:

As a Muslim woman in politics, I have endured Islamophobia for the past six years and it has come in every single space I have been in. And sadly, I have become completely normalised and numb to it.

This party is not about me, it is not about any other MP, it is about you the membership, and we have seen tactics used by the right-wing in this country, the media and political parties, to divide us. It is an old tactic, divide and rule, find a culture war, stoke it up and divide people to stop us focusing on where the threat comes from.

She stressed:

We are an inclusive party. We are seeking to represent the entire country. What we cannot accept is people who seek to destroy our movement by stoking up culture wars. We have to fight for everyone because an attack on one is an attack on all, and we have to make this work!

A Your Party member for whom Sultana has been an inspiration told us after the event that:

what we’ve seen over decades… [is] community has died somewhere. People don’t talk to each other. People can’t understand each other… And it just creates so much alienation and distrust.

She added:

I have to work harder because I am Brown, I have to work harder because I am unashamedly Muslim, I have to work harder because I am a woman, I have to work harder in our community because I’m a woman surrounded by misogyny, sometimes from our Muslim brothers, and then I also have to prove them wrong because I’ve got to be perfect, have a career, and then come home and also have a perfect home. And it is tiring, it is exhausting.

But she also insisted:

it takes a lot of time and understanding, but once people see the different types of faces that socialism has, the different types of faces that progressive left people have, I think it would make it a lot more of a welcoming environment.

‘We need spaces where people can talk through their views’

Reflecting on the event, Sadur told us:

It was a really great event. To have Zarah, Shockat and Ayoub speak just showed how important this space really is in terms of being able to give the Muslim community a real chance to express their views, whether you’re more progressive, whether you’re more conservative. It was really good to hear different views, and the feedback and interaction was great.

We need spaces where people can talk through their views, talk through their differences, but come together and say, ‘ultimately, we all feel that we can stand together against the opposing forces that we see in Farage and Reform’.

The comments of the panel members, meanwhile, gave a clear message about the importance of unity and organisers with strong roots in their communities. They expressed a need for government action to ensure human wellbeing, but greater freedom in terms of people’s private lives. And they shared their campaign challenges, including voter apathy and fear, ID barriers, and smear tactics. But they got a lot of votes too by building hope through meaningful community interactions. Indeed, Michael Lavalette even became the main opposition to Labour in Preston.

The panellists learnt that most voters aren’t hostile to people from different backgrounds, but that mass education, registration, and empowerment are vital to actually boost participation. They also emphasised that everyone essentially has the same problems — crumbling services and the rising cost of living — and that came through on the doorsteps and at local assemblies. For them, the key to unifying people is focusing on the 80% of things most people across diverse communities have in common, rather than focusing on the 20% we don’t.

If Your Party is going to hold together a broad left-wing alliance that can stop neoliberalism and the rise of fascism, this is exactly the kind of event it needs more of. Because the more we understand each other and work together with mutual respect, the harder it is to divide us or defeat us.

Feature image via Twitter

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.