I'm proud to have written this only using AI for spell check and punctuation (Dyslexia). and I wanted to share to lemmy for input.
Hello friends, comrades, and working-class heroes,
I am here with the Socialist Party, we for many years, have been putting a demand for a new political party, a party that will tear the unions from Labour, build a solid program for working class people. And over the years we have seen glimpses and wipers of what might be that political party, but none seemed as tangible as ‘Your Party’. ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’ we are from what it seems, in those weeks of decades.
The working class – once the backbone of the Labour Party and the greater labour movement – has been let down countless times. We were repressed by the Tories, and then kicked into the gutter and left to rot by Labour, our so-called “progressive” party.
Winter fuel payments that help our elderly? Slashed. The two-child benefit cap, forcing families to choose between food and heating? Upheld. Palestine Action, smeared as a terrorist organization – it’s now a prisonable crime to speak out against genocide. This is all just from this year. And just like the Tories did before, the burden is laid upon our backs. The working class will pay, not the rich.
So this year, under our current government and its absolute failure, many of us saw a bleak future under a Reform UK government – a party that deflects from the billionaires to attack our poorest and most vulnerable: refugees, the disabled, people on welfare. The issue isn't that our billionaire class doesn't pay taxes; it's that they've made sure our poorest do. If you're in this room, you know this is true. The rich have been picking our pockets for years, and a party for the billionaires will never change that.
A few years back, I donated money to the Labour Party. It wasn’t much, but for someone living hand-to-mouth, that money could have been a meal, or heating. I genuinely believed my donation would make a difference. If I did it, maybe others would too. I saw the system as dire, and I thought it was up to us to change it.
Looking at Labour now. I could have bought a nice meal had I known better. A single energy company put my donation to shame with a cheque for one and a half million pounds. Unision, gave the largest donation from any union, and it was far less than that energy company. So who does Labour speak for? For us and the unions? No. For the ones who write the biggest cheques.
And that brings me to why we are here. The new party led by Corbyn and Sultana isn’t yet built. It doesn’t even have a name. It’s an embryo – fragile and still finding its shape. But that is exactly why this matters. For the first time in a long time, we, the working class, have the opportunity to write history, and we can write it in our favour.
But here is the most critical question: how do we make sure this new party stays our party? It will be under immediate attack from big business lobbyists and careerists, all trying to steer it for their own class interests.
This will be our battle.
The Labour Party of old, before it became the manager of capital, was federalized. The unions took a leading role in guiding the party down a road that fought for the working class. Then Thatcher came – the “Iron Lady” to some, I prefer Maggie – and New Labour adopted a ‘One Member, One Vote’ structure.
On its face, it sounds democratic. But unless every single one of the 800,000 people who've signed up to this new party lives and breathes politics, voting on every motion and item, it won't be a real democracy. We have lives! We have work, families, households to run. This low participation creates a vacuum. And into that vacuum step the press barons, the lobbyists, the big money donors who can afford to shape policy and select candidates behind closed doors. It becomes a democracy for the wealthy few, not the working many.
So we need a structure built for the working class. We need federalism.
It’s not just jargon. Or a throw away word. It means the party isn’t just a list of individual members. It’s a federation of members and affiliated organizations – trade unions, anti-war groups, welfare groups, the list is endless! And the votes these groups get are proportional to their membership.
What does this mean in practice?
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It gives permanent, institutional power to the working class. A union votes on behalf of its hundreds of thousands of members. This is how our collective voice remains loud and clear. It's collective bargaining on the political level.
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It politicalises the unions and unionises our politics. It forces our unions to take an active, political stance on workers' issues. We, the members, elect our delegates, discuss the party's agenda, and then those delegates argue and vote on our behalf. They are accountable to us. This brings the shop floor right into the heart of Westminster.
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Federalism is a bottom-up democracy. It doesn’t depend on every single member being a full-time activist. It allows us to organize where we already are: in our workplaces, in our tenant unions, in our community groups.
I hope this has cleared it up. Federalism isn’t about exclusion; it’s about inclusion. It ensures we all have a seat at the table, no matter how busy our lives are. It’s about the working class finally wielding its collective power. And we believe the way to get there is through federalism. It is the guarantee that this new party won’t drift, like Labour did, into the arms of the capitalists.
So let’s be clear: this new party will only be our party if we play an active role in shaping it. We must first fight for this party, before this party can ever fight for us.
To elaborate on the Socialist Party’s involvement in this new party, we see the trade union movement as one of the leading tools in bettering our lives, the lives of working people: fair wages, cheap housing, healthcare, childcare. All these things have been deeply rooted in trade union activism and the greater working masses. Ever since Labour’s seismic shift rightward and the defanging of trade unions through one member, one vote, we have lost that edge. So we are taking a principled position on how this new party needs to structure itself. Again, we must first fight for this party before this party can ever fight for us.
Many of our members are in the trade unions. We stood with the GMB outside job centres last year; we stood with Unison outside Plymouth Hospital and the RMT. We report on their actions in our paper, as well as their victories and defeats. And while our battle had been for the new party, our new battle is now the shape of the new party and the program of the new party, all of which can build a party that will fight for us.
Thank you for your time, comrades. I want this to be an open and healthy discussion. What will this party mean to you? How will we shape it? And let’s hear potential negatives too—this is an open discussion.
And if you agree with what’s been said here today, then get involved. Think about joining the Socialist Party, buy a paper, and if you aren’t already—join a union!
Let’s get to work.