Well done Zarah Sultana, well done Jeremy Corbyn!

Pic credit: Morning Star

Following Zarah Sultana MP’s resignation from the Labour Party and her appeal to people to join her and Jeremy Corbyn in founding a new left party, Left Unity Co-National Secretary, Felicity Dowling, made the following statement of support for the new project.

“Well done Zarah Sultana, well done Jeremy Corbyn. We indeed need a mass party of the working class.

Building such a party is a huge enterprise. The network of councillors, independent MPs, community independent organisations, all demonstrate how deep this party could go into our communities. The opinion polls show the possibility of the far right winning massively in a general election because there is no active alternative in so many places.

We must indeed seize the time, the time is now and we should go into this project with a clear understanding that it will take hard work.

As the chorus from Asikatali, the song from the South African Freedom solidarity movement says:

“A heavy load, a heavy load,
It’s gonna take some real strength
A heavy load, a heavy load,
It’s gonna take some real strength.”

But this looks like a good team to launch the attempt to build this new party, with Jeremy representing the long tradition of struggle and Zarah representing the younger generations in struggle, with both steeped in internationalism, trade unionism and community politics.

Felicity Dowling speaking on May Day in Liverpool

The ideas of socialism, the demand for a better world for all, can build a mass movement like those that built the British and Irish labour movements in the first place. The talent for organisation that many people in the whole movement have can be put to great use. The traditions of democracy within the movement must be reflected in this new movement, the work of agitation, education and organisation must be reignited, and the leadership must heed the grassroots and learn from them.

As I write this, the press report that the Labour government may attack the already inadequate funding for Special Educational Needs, an unthinkable assault on the next generation, from a government already noted for attacking the most vulnerable. Again, this is an assault on the traditional supporters of Labour, on our class.

And if this assault goes unchallenged, it will feed the creepy “protect our children” rhetoric of the far right.

The children of the poor truly carry the burden of austerity in their bodies. The children of the poor are shorter, more likely to get ill, and will live shorter lives than before austerity, and in comparison to other European nations.

Any decent socialist or even social democratic party would be up in arms already. But in the absence of organised resistance, the establishment thinks it can attack our people with impunity.

Resistance is powerful. The brilliant opposition to the attacks on PIP showed some of that power, and some of the protestors were once the children who needed Special Educational provision. The relentless mass support for Gaza shows another aspect of it. The strike wave of 2022-23 saw the movement come to life, but this government’s failure to improve wages and working conditions has damped some workplace resistance for a while (with the exception of the Birmingham Bin strike!) But we need more, we need a party that organises and unites people across the different communities, workplaces, and campaigns, that harks back to the slogan on the old Labour party membership card:

“to secure for the workers by hand and by brain the full fruits of their industry based on the common ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange.”

We live in a time of multiple, intertwined and multinational crises.

• International and national economic crisis
• Fundamental attacks on democracy
• Obscene inequality
• Poverty
• Deep and cruel attacks on the NHS
• Attacks on education, from nursery to university and adult education
• War, existing wars like Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, unofficial wars in Africa and threatened war, and the increased likelihood of nuclear conflict
• Climate and environmental catastrophe
• Misogyny, attacks on women’s rights, violence against women, attacks on wages and welfare, and the right to control our fertility
• Forced mass migration and anti-migrant rhetoric and policies
• Every increasing power of huge corporations
• Crises in housing
• Attacks on the gains of LGBTQ+ people across the world
• Oppression and attacks on freedom of speech, and criminalisation of direct action
• Racism
• Reactionary ideas spreading in the working class

Each one of these crises delivers a sucker punch to people across the country and across the world. We must fight back or see still worse times to come.

“The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!”
(Hamlet, Act I, Scene V)

There is food enough to feed everyone, humanity has the scientific knowledge to mitigate the climate and environmental crises.

A socialist world would not need war as does capitalism, could eradicate structural racism and sexism, and our children could all be treasured. Still a better world is possible, only capitalism stands in our way. The first step to winning a better world is organising within our class.

This is in no way a statement of intent to close down Left Unity – it is a hope that our members will use their talents to build this new movement effectively in their areas. The detail of how we go forward will be worked out democratically within Left Unity in the months to come.

There is much to do.”

Sign Zarah’s appeal here