Getting the party started

As I walk into the Sheffield And District African Caribbean Community Association on an autumnal Thursday evening, I’m immediately greeted with a plethora of red flags and placards. On them, in thick black capital letters are printed a series of slogans: “FIGHT FOR TRANS LIBERATION AND SOCIALISM”, “STARMER'S LABOUR MEANS WAR AND AUSTERITY” and “END ISRAELI STATE TERROR”. There are many, many more.

At the centre of the brightly-lit room is Hannah Sell, the general secretary of the Socialist Party. A slight woman with curly blonde hair and metal-rimmed glasses, her unassuming appearance makes her look a bit like a librarian. She doesn’t sound like one though. With a big booming voice, expressive movements and a little bit of spittle, she has the entire room — around 60 people, from a wide range of ages, genders and ethnicities — rapt with her oratory. It feels like she could speak for days. “If you want to see the socialist transformation of society it is necessary to overturn the existing capitalist structures,” she thunders.

Tonight’s meeting has been called by the Socialist Party to discuss Your Party, the as-yet-unnamed political party currently being willed into existence by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. After a fumbled launch in which neither of its two leaders could decide when or even if they were going to launch a party at all, a massive 800,000 people have now signed up to its email list.

At the moment we in the media spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the challenge posed to Labour by Reform, but quite a bit less contemplating the challenge posed by the left. As The Tribune wrote in July, many in the Sheffield Labour Party are worried about losing voters to Nigel Farage's ascendant party, but it’s equally possible that they may lose just as many to parties at the opposite side of the political spectrum. These include the Green Party, who already have 14 councillors in the city and whose new leader Zach Polanski is positioning them as a more progressive alternative to Labour. Now, with the launch of Your Party, a new player has entered the game.

In these early days, a wide variety of left wing organisations are keen to influence Your Party’s direction. These include the Socialist Party, which grew out of Militant, a faction within the Labour Party who were expelled in the 1980s. The Socialist Party is not to be confused with the Socialist Worker Party, who have never been part of the Labour Party. In Sheffield, the Socialist Worker Party has also shown interest in getting involved in Your Party, as have other left-wing organisations including Alliance for Workers' Liberty and RS21 (Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century). As anyone who knows anything about left wing politics will know, these organisations don’t necessarily always get on with each other.

At the meeting, the main thrust of Sell’s argument is that Your Party needs to be rooted in the socialist traditions of trade unionism and workers' democracy. “The Labour Party was founded by organised labour,” she says. “We can use that as a model for how to build this new party.” Although she doesn't mention the other left wing parties circling around Your Party by name, she does mention the Greens. While the solidly left wing Zack Polanski’s election as leader is to be welcomed, Sell warns of the dangers of putting too much hope on his party. “The Green Party is neither a worker’s party nor a socialist party,” she insists.

After Sell’s turn is over, chair Izzy France opens the debate to the floor, telling the audience that contributions will be limited to four minutes each. “Comrades” will be informed they are nearing the end of their allotted time by a series of taps on her laptop, which will become more rapid and insistent the closer they get. The system works remarkably well.

Most of the speakers are members of the Socialist Party who issue a list of policies they think should be part of Your Party’s programme, including “needs budgets”, nationalisation of the banks and credit controls. And they rail against other political parties who they see as complicit in a failed capitalist system. “If you fight you can win, but if you don't fight you can never win,” says one rapturously received man in a black baseball cap. But some also express worries. For one middle-aged man with an unruly white beard it feels like he’s had his hopes raised too many times to be entirely fired up by the prospect of a new party. “Please don’t blow this opportunity with all the factionalism,” he says. “We can’t allow that to happen.”

Disaffection among the left is widespread at the moment. One sitting Labour councillor in Sheffield who spoke to The Tribune on condition of anonymity says the actions of Labour in government have also led him to consider his place within the party. When I ask him why, he responds with a long list: the recent welfare cuts, the party’s stance on immigration, a failure to robustly tackle the climate crisis, repeated moves towards the right and placating rather than standing up to Reform. However, he tells me that while there is some sympathy within the party for what Your Party is trying to achieve, the launch has not yet led to large numbers leaving Labour. “Most of those who would have been interested have already left,” he says.

While there is sympathy for a group who he considers fellow travellers, the councillor believes that Your Party will be up against it. Firstly, there are worries about its potential to fracture. He has heard from friends that a WhatsApp group set up by Your Party organisers in Sheffield is just “wall to wall arguments”. Dealing with the various different left-wing parties all seeking to exert an influence will also be difficult. “They are not serious parties in an electoral sense,” he says of organisations like the Socialist Party and SWP. “They exist mainly to push ideas, which they have never done very successfully. If Zarah wants this to be a success, she will need to think carefully about how she deals with these people.”

But not all of those on the left share his pessimism about Your Party’s chances. Formerly a Labour councillor for Park and Arbourthorne, Sophie Wilson left to become an independent after Keir Starmer was elected Labour leader. Wilson believes her early concerns about the direction of the party under Starmer have been confirmed by its track record in government, with policies “targeting” poor and disabled people and asylum seekers, and a failure to oppose the war in Gaza. She tells me that trying to build a new party from the ground up is daunting, but also exciting. “This is the first thing I have been enthused by in a long time.”

One of the big worries expressed by some on the left is that any new party could split the vote and open the door for Reform and Farage. However, Wilson argues that the Labour government are doing that for themselves, and that arguments like these have done more harm than good over the past few decades. “Messages like that have effectively tied us into accepting austerity and the current system,” she says. “People believe that we can only tinker round the edges.”

Back at SADACCA, the four-minute speeches are almost up. One of those still left to speak is Lee Rock, a veteran left winger and co-founder of Sheffield Left, an organisation set up when Jeremy Corbyn was still leader of the Labour Party. Dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and a black leather jacket, he looks like an ageing rock star who has just signed up for a reunion tour.

When Your Party was first being talked about, Sheffield Left took it upon themselves to try to organise the new party in the city. They have since set up a Facebook page and a WhatsApp group, each with around 300 members, and have organised the first meeting of Your Party at the Showroom Workstation, which was attended by around 180 people (with another 50 joining online). Another meeting will be taking place next week, while Zarah Sultana is scheduled to speak at the Sheffield Trades Council the week after.

In Rock’s speech, he mentioned that the WhatsApp group they set up can sometimes be “toxic”. But when, after the meeting, I ask him about the potential for disagreements and splits, he doesn't want to go into more detail. Nevertheless, he accepts that division has been an unfortunate feature of left wing groups in the past. “Traditionally in the UK the left splits over things that it has no need to split over,” he says. “When I first got involved, the big arguments were about the nature of the Soviet Union.” You would hope that particular issue, at least, has now been put to bed.

While I’m there I keep my politics to myself, but I feel like a bit of a fraud — a boring old social democrat hiding among all the left-wing firebrands. I’m unlikely to get involved in Your Party, but then again I’m not sure they would want me.

Writing from his prison cell in 1929, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously coined the phrase “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”. It’s an invocation to see the world as it really is, warts and all, but also a belief that these challenges can be overcome as long as hope remains alive. There was some pessimism at SADACCA, sure. But there was also a whole lot of will.