The upcoming election for General Secretary of Unite, the second largest trade union in Britain, offers members no choice to significantly advance their interests. Bolshevik Caucus supporters have argued in our branches against nominating either of the two candidates on offer and will be voting for neither.

Both the incumbent, Sharon Graham, and the challenger, Simon Dubbins, are embedded in (and represent) different wings of the bureaucracy. Both aim to narrowly contain working-class struggle within the confines of capitalism, and not to fight for workers’ power. While Graham has focused on industrial disputes, she is a supporter of British capitalism, including the arms and fossil-fuel energy industries. Dubbins raises broader issues such as Palestine, immigration and climate change, but supports Unite members being tied to the Labour Party. Graham is more critical of Labour but advocates cutting funding to express displeasure, rather than calling for disaffiliation, despite widespread support for this amongst the membership. Neither candidate has a plan for defying and forcing the abolition of Britain’s restrictive trade union laws, which include onerous ballot and notice requirements, and a continuing ban on most forms of secondary action.

The organised left within Unite argues for one or the other with little enthusiasm, but seems unable to conceive of the idea that we don’t have to settle. The task of revolutionaries is not to support the least bad candidate, or to build lowest-common-denominator “left” rank-and-file movements as an alternative to the bureaucracy. Instead we should be working to build communist caucuses within the trade unions, based on a programme to fight not only for workers’ immediate interests in opposition to the bureaucracy and the bosses but for a strategy to smash capitalism, defeat the state and expropriate industry under workers’ control, leading to a rationally planned economy.

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A video of the full meeting is also available.

The popular front is defined as an alliance between workers’ parties and parties of the “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie. It differs from the united front, which is an alliance between workers’ organisations with different programmes but common interests around immediate demands. The united front is a key tool for the workers movement. The popular front is a dangerous trap.

I’m going to speak today mainly about its use by the Stalinists in the 1930s, when it was first called the popular front, but this type of cross-class coalition goes back further than that and has occurred many times since. Throughout this history, we see time after time that cross-class alliances tie the working class to capitalism and lead to defeat, often very bloody defeat. This is really important for us to understand today.

Russia

I’m going to start with a more positive story about the popular front—or rather how it was broken, which led to the most successful workers’ revolution in history, in Russia in October 1917. After the Tsar was overthrown in the February Revolution, the bourgeois Provisional Government was established, and was joined or supported by most of the workers’ organisations, not believing it was yet time to take power—even the Bolsheviks, at first. However, the country saw a situation of dual power with the government on the one hand and the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers on the other. Soviets are an expression of the united front in pre-revolutionary situations: alliances of workers’ organisations, competing for political leadership. But dual power is a contradictory and unstable situation—it must eventually resolve one way or the other.

A fight took place within the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin and culminating in the adoption of the slogan “Down with the ten capitalist ministers”—a call to break the popular-frontist Constituent Assembly, split it along class lines. This was world-changing, a decision that allowed the Bolsheviks to build an independent pole, win the majority in the workers’ soviets and take power in October. Without this, the most likely outcome was a victory for Kornilov and the White generals, a regime of terror and imperialist domination of Russia. Trotsky once claimed that, if this had happened, the word for fascism would be Russian, not Italian.

So it is clear that when the Stalinists adopted the policy of the popular front in the 1930s, this was in direct contradiction to Bolshevism, to the history they claimed to uphold. Their right-turn to popular frontism was in reaction to the ultra-left policies of the Third Period. The German Stalinists essentially handed over state power to Hitler by refusing to form a united front with the Social Democrats (who they called social-fascists). So that is also, I would add, a policy contrary to Bolshevism.

France

The name Front Populaire was first used by the Stalinists in France, to justify a bloc between the communist PCF, the Socialist Party and the bourgeois Radicals. The Communist and Socialist Parties had broken the stalemate of the Third Period to organise huge trade-union demonstrations and strikes in response to a fascist attack on parliament in February 1934—by a group called Cross of Fire. The Radicals joined them in July 1935 and the coalition took power the following March, with a cabinet of Socialists and Radicals, with the less respectable Communists supporting from the side.

The French workers saw this as a victory and responded with the general strike of May/June 1936. But the bourgeoisie panicked—that wasn’t at all what they had intended! They appealed to their bloc partners in the workers’ parties who obligingly negotiated an end to the strike. The Communist Party’s Maurice Thorez assured his masters that “there can be no question of taking power at this time” and lectured the workers that “one must know how to end a strike”.

Their job of demoralising the working class completed, the communists and socialists were ditched and the popular front was replaced by a Radical government under Edouard Daladier in 1938. Reforms were reversed—eg, the 40-hour week reverting back to 48 hours. The PCF called a one-day strike. Disgusted by this timidity, workers tore up their union cards. Daladier declared martial law, banned the PCF and the CGT (the communist-linked trade union). It was a quick descent from there to the establishment of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in 1940.

Spain

A similar process was taking place in Spain around the same time, against the background of the Spanish Civil War. A bourgeois republic was established in 1931 after the overthrow of the monarchy, but not a lot changed for the working class.

In October 1934 this boiled over into an insurrectionary movement in the mining region of Asturias, harshly repressed by the government, and the formation of workers’ committees. Just as in France, the bourgeoisie sought ways to contain working-class struggle by co-opting the leadership.

This led to the Popular Front government in February 1936, made up of socialist, republican and nationalist parties, the Communist Party and the POUM. The latter has an interesting history, being formed by a fusion between Trotskyists, led by Andreu Nin, and the syndicalist Workers and Peasants Bloc. Nin had been a personal friend of Trotsky, who put a lot of energy into persuading him not to join the popular front, to no avail. The popular front explicitly agreed not to advocate nationalisation of land, or of the banks, or for workers control.

The working class differed, and (as in France) responded to the election of what they perceived as “their” government with class struggle—factory and land occupations.

The Civil War began in response to this, with a rebellion of generals led by Francisco Franco, starting in Morocco and taking over about half the country in July 1936. Azana’s popular front government attempted to negotiate and refused to arm the workers, until forced to do so when the workers (led by the POUM and anarchists) formed militias and fought anyway. The militias took over Barcelona and established collective farms in surrounding areas. The Popular Front government was put under military footing under Caballero, and there was also a regional popular-frontist government established in Catalonia. Like Russia between February and October, it was a situation of dual power.

But here, there was no Lenin. Again, all the workers’ parties, including the POUM and even representatives of the anarchist CNT, joined the popular front. By doing so, these workers’ organisations participated in setting the conditions for defeat. Like their French cothinkers, the Stalinists deliberately limited their objectives, declaring: “the Spanish people are not striving for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but know only one aim: the defense of the republican order while respecting private property.”

Workers were disarmed, their press was censored, their organisations were banned. In a key incident of the war, the Stalinists attacked the telegraph exchange in Barcelona, held by the militias—a provocation then used to attack the workers. Despite the POUM accepting a truce, their leaders were arrested (and later shot). The collective farms and workers’ militias were dissolved.

Franco won the war against a now demoralised and disarmed working class. The Stalinist tactic of the popular front had once again handed power to the far-right wing of the bourgeoisie. There was a very small group of Trotskyists calling to organise outside the popular front, but the POUM, which could have been influential, chose to go along with the popular front, because it was popular.

World War II

Why were the Stalinists doing this? The answer lies in the period we are discussing, the build up to World War II: a period of capitalist crisis, in which politics polarises towards the far left and the far right, and class distinctions take on even more significance. Even the liberal bourgeoisie, fearful of working-class power and threats to its property, would rather the far right than the far left. The Stalinists in the Soviet Union, a bureaucratic caste presiding over a degenerated workers’ state, were also fearful of the working class, as were the trade-union leaders (Stalinist and social-democrat) in the liberal democracies. For the Stalinists to support working-class revolution abroad would run the risk of the same happening in the Soviet Union, but they needed allies to defend “socialism in one country”. Enter the liberal bourgeoisie in the west, the governments of Britain, France etc. The popular front represented the common interests of these groups.

In Britain, the trade-union leaders (Labour and Communist) agreed to no-strike policies during the war, committed to “defence of the fatherland”. Winston Churchill brought the Labour Party into his wartime cabinet in order to better control the trade unions. Both are forms of the popular front or could more broadly be described as class collaboration.

The task of revolutionaries during inter-imperialist war is working for the defeat of our own ruling class. Strikes are exactly what is needed, plus blockage of arms, and rebellion within the conscripted armed forces. Class-struggle tactics, not popular fronts, were needed in WWII and are needed today, against the inter-imperialist war between Russia and NATO-backed Ukraine, and in defence of Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinians against our government’s US and Israeli allies. The liberal bourgeoisie (Lib Dems, Greens, CND etc) should not be turned away from anti-war protests, but an anti-war movement designed to be comfortable for the capitalist class is not the kind of anti-war movement we need.

Other Examples of the Popular Front

Spain and France in the 1930s are not the only examples where the popular front has been literally fatal to the working class and has sidelined potential revolutionary movements.

The decade before, in China, Stalin instructed the Communist Party to enter the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang, rather than separately organising growing class-struggle. They were rewarded for their loyalty by being slaughtered by Chiang Kai-Shek in Shanghai and elsewhere.

In Chile in the early 1970s, Salvador Allende insisted on sharing power with a small bourgeois party, using it as an excuse not to provide arms to the workers who were desperately calling for them in the face of right-wing threats, culminating in Pinochet’s bloody victory. The same policies are being carried out in Chile today by Gabriel Boric.

In South Africa under apartheid, the Communist Party joined the bourgeois nationalist ANC to ensure that the working-class resistance to apartheid led to a bourgeois government with apartheid removed de jure but not de facto. Huge racial inequalities remain, alongside other problems that capitalism cannot solve. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) today argue to return to the Freedom Charter and the old days of the ANC, but again are not a working-class party.

Recently in France we saw the explicit revival of the 1930s popular front in the Nouveau Front Populaire (Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, the PCF, the decimated Socialist Party and the Greens). They were very successful in the first round of the election in 2024, yet in the second round stood down in many seats to support the candidate of Macron against that of Le Pen. Macron rewarded them by forming alliances with the right, denying the NFP the chance to form a government, despite being the largest party in parliament. We may not be seeing mass murder of communists, but the French far-right are openly carrying out attacks on immigrants, without the inconvenience of a clear independent working-class opposition.

And here in Britain, we are experiencing a monumental failure to build an independent working-class party, even one with a social-democratic programme. Disillusioned former members of Your Party are joining the Greens, as are many others—deceptively led by Polanski’s left rhetoric on social issues into a party that supports British imperialism, local budget cuts and overall the interests of capitalism, with a green gloss. Within Your Party, the national leadership (and both Corbyn and Sultana) promote alliances with the Greens, and there is often collaboration at the local level.

Reform are top of the polls, and the SWP are out campaigning under the slogan “use your vote to Stop Reform”, in many places an explicit call to vote Green. Meanwhile they present the Together Alliance’s class-free mantras of Love, Hope and Unity as the solution to the far right. This is the popular front in non-governmental form.

Historical parallels are never perfect, but there is a distinct pattern in all the examples I’ve cited today. The far-right is fed by capitalism in crisis—we do not fight it by opting for a nicer kind of capitalism or endorsing those who advocate that. That leads to a disarmed working class—literally and ideologically—and an even more emboldened far right.

There is much to discuss about what we need to do next, but this discussion must take place alongside united-front action against threats to the working class, based on independent working-class organisation and class-struggle methods. Only on this basis will we move towards the revolutionary party that is so badly needed.

Related articles

It’s All About Class: Not Green eco-populism but working-class socialism (speech at an earlier meeting in the series, 16 March 2026)
Popular-Front Betrayal in France: The Nouveau Front Populaire & the far left (1917 No.48)
Pink Tides & Popular Fronts: Revolutionary Strategy in Latin America (1917 No.47)

Last Saturday I attended a 50-100 strong demo at the Cuban Embassy in London. Like the other groups and individuals in attendance, I was determined to show solidarity with Cuba and oppose the cruel imperialist blockade of food, fuel and medicines. Passionate speeches were backed up by music and loud cries of “¡Viva Cuba socialista!”, which created a lively and defiant atmosphere, but fails to convey the situation Cuba faces today.

Cuba is not socialist. After the 1959 revolution it became what Marxists call a deformed workers’ state, a country where property and the means of production have been collectivised but a parasitic bureaucracy rules. In the absence of democratic control by the masses, the workers’ state issuing from the revolution was deformed from its inception. The Stalinists running the island are no friend of the working class.

This means it is important to defend Cuba both from external imperialist attack and from internal capitalist counter-revolution.

Protests like this one outside the Cuban Embassy show solidarity, but demonstrations should also take place outside the Foreign Office, Downing Street and Labour Party headquarters because our rulers back every move Trump makes – they too are part of the problem.

We applaud the official Cuban Solidarity Campaign organising containers of medical and education aid from British trade unions to Cuba, but their main focus of petitions and writing to MPs is a dead end. What is needed is action by the organised working class, here in Britain, but particularly in the Americas, to demand the fuel blockade on Cuba is broken.

I lived in Cuba in 1999 and I have visited every year since. I campaigned there for the release of former Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal, wrongfully imprisoned in Pennsylvania since 1981. It wasn’t hard to build support because Mumia had a high profile in Cuba, especially with young people who saw the need for international solidarity against their common enemy, US imperialism. For similar reasons, Mumia’s struggle has been supported in the US by trade unionists who have walked out on strike demanding his freedom.

That is the kind of action we should look to at this dangerous time for the Cuban revolution. Unfortunately there was no visible Your Party presence outside the Cuban Embassy, but this is an issue that we should address. We should speak out in defence of Cuba, and our members and branches should organise and build within the trade unions, not to parrot the rulers in Havana but to build organisations of solidarity with the Cuban working class. Only by taking the revolution further and establishing real workers’ power and international collaboration will we ever get “Cuba socialista”.

Finally, Your Party is getting close to electing a leadership. The second round of the elections for the Central Executive Committee (CEC) opens today, with all candidates who received over 75 nominations on the ballot. The highest totals were dominated by two slates: The Many, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn, and the Grassroots Left, backed by Zarah Sultana. In some regions, significant numbers of independents also reached the threshold.

Although exact figures have not been released for those who didn’t get through, we believe that Bolshevik Caucus candidate Barbara Duke received about 50 nominations and was the highest polling unsuccessful candidate in the South East region (13 out of 46). She was supported by comrades in her local Oxford branch (where she is on the temporary organising committee) and by others who read and liked our Bolshevik Caucus Platform, including supporters of the Grassroots Left (GL), who stood only one candidate for the two places in the South East.

Pros & Cons of Grassroots Left

In the nominations round we also called for a critical vote to the Grassroots Left. Unlike many other candidates with little in the way of programme, the GL platform spoke out against capitalism, imperialism and Zionism, although it failed to call for the defeat of British imperialism abroad and the participation of British workers in that defeat through blocking arms manufacture and transportation. The GL platform declared opposition to holding governmental power except on a socialist programme, but (as we noted in a letter to the Weekly Worker, 22 January 2026) “does not explain that the capitalist state cannot be used to bring about socialism, which requires replacing parliament, the police and the military with democratic organs of working-class rule”.

Our letter also cautioned that the criteria for this “socialist programme” are unclear: “We would hope it excludes an electoral deal or power-sharing with the Greens, but, given that GL endorses Michael Lavalette, who is in a coalition with the Greens in the official opposition on Lancashire County Council, this is far from certain.”

Evasion over Gorton & Denton

Then the Gorton and Denton by-election entered the scene to put this to the test. A demographically mixed parliamentary seat on the edge of Manchester won by Labour in 2024, it is facing a strong challenge from both Reform and the Greens, leaving results difficult to predict. George Galloway’s Workers Party (10% in 2024) has stood down in favour of the Greens. With polls closing on 26 February, the contest is running parallel to the Your Party CEC election.

Your Party has failed to put up a candidate in Gorton and Denton, which raises two key issues.

First, it could have been different. Greater Manchester comrades have expressed understandably mixed feelings about whether it was possible to stand. If branches had been established months ago, with proper technical support, funding and access to full membership lists, and if the party had carried out democratic discussion of electoral platforms and policy, we are sure that local members would have been a lot more confident about flying the Your Party flag. It would have been a prime opportunity to put ourselves on the map with an independent, socialist, working-class voice.

Second, given the absence of a candidate, what stance should Your Party take?

A statement released by the official Your Party account (x.com, 2 February 2026) announcing the lack of a candidate also stated: “It is imperative that Reform is defeated in Gorton & Denton and the far-right tide is beaten back.” Defeating Reform in this particular electoral contest requires a vote for either Labour or the Greens but which of those it should be, the statement doesn’t say. Jeremy Corbyn somewhat clarified the matter by tweeting to Green candidate Hannah Spencer the following day: “Well done Hannah, the only way to defeat the far-right is by bringing people of all backgrounds and communities together with a message of hope!”

When we were asked to debate and vote at the founding conference on whether Your Party should stand for socialism and have the working class at its heart, our first reaction was incredulity. Why would we not? Both motions thankfully passed, although around a fifth of votes were cast against each.

Now we see the leadership acting against the spirit of these propositions. This support for the Greens leads Your Party not towards socialism and the working class but in the direction of “progressive” coalitions, pleading with other parties to assign us a few seats where we can stand without so-called “left” opposition. It is short-term thinking, lacking ambition, driving away from rather than towards our objective of redistributing “power and wealth to all”. This is not what we, and many other members, signed up for.

Take a Stand for Working-Class Independence!

Grassroots Left (x.com, 3 February 2026) also released an ambiguous statement, declaring that: “Grassroots Left will not lend unconditional support to the Green Party candidate, because the Greens are a pro-capitalist, pro-Nato party and have been enforcing cuts in councils all over the country.”

Why rule out only “unconditional” support, which we are not aware anyone in Your Party is advocating? What conditions are acceptable? We understand this statement was composed at a meeting where not all GL candidates were present and it seems from the compromise wording that those who were there did not all agree. Grassroots Left is not a faction built around a shared political programme, but an electoral alliance, and it is wrong to pretend unity on the basis of a majority vote.

Zarah Sultana did not hesitate to express her personal view, quickly announcing her “critical support” to Hannah Spencer. Other GL supporters agree with her and have criticised the GL statement, not for evading the question but for being too harsh on the Greens and therefore tactically inept. Prominent GL candidate Max Shanly said in an interview on the TurnLeft podcast (8 February 2026): “I think we should give conditional support to the Greens in certain situations, like the by-election that’s taking place in Manchester.” He went on to express concern that the more conservative wing of Your Party isn’t much different from the Greens and concluded: “We have to be bolder…. The time for timidity is over.”

The bold (and necessary) move in this situation is to sharply distinguish ourselves from the Greens. We believe that some Grassroots Left candidates and supporters disagree with Sultana and Shanly’s conditional or critical support. They should say so. No vote to the Greens! This is not a line that should be papered over with ambiguous words.

If the Greens are “a pro-capitalist, pro-Nato party and have been enforcing cuts in councils all over the country” (all true, of course), why would a fledgling workers’ party see value in giving them any support? Why would a party that has made it clear elections are not its only area of work throw out its commitment to having “the working class at its heart” for one by-election?

We put this question to all CEC candidates, not just the Grassroots Left – will you stand up for the independent political organisation of the working class and oppose votes to or electoral alliances with the Greens?

Stop Reform – Build a Workers’ Party

One argument we hear is that there is an overwhelming necessity to “stop Reform”. Depending whose electoral mathematics you believe, there is a compelling argument that, if this is the only objective, it would be necessary to vote Labour – something most Your Party members would recoil from in horror. The choice of the Greens is not just opting for a lesser evil, but is at some level a belief in Zack Polanski’s rhetoric that his party stands for socialism.

Clearly we do want to stop Reform, but how? Although they do have some links to outright fascists, Reform are not a fascist party. They have positioned themselves on the far right of the electoral arena, pulling in dissatisfied voters from Labour and the Tories. Their policies on turning back asylum seekers and opposing trans rights, their hatred of trade unions and their openly expressed racism and misogyny mean they pose a danger to the British working class, yet they claim, entirely falsely, to represent the working class. They are currently polling top nationwide in a context where a “Labour” party is abjectly failing to address working class needs. The Greens, as they have demonstrated in local councils, will be the same.

The only way to defeat Reform is the building of a real working-class party, based in our communities and the trade unions, fighting for working-class needs and organising independently of “progressive” capitalist parties. Obviously we need to build broader alliances to campaign for immediate needs and to stop mobilisations of the far right on the streets, but sacrificing our political independence every time an electoral contest is posed will only make our task more difficult.

We call on Your Party members to vote for CEC candidates who understand this and are willing to openly state “No vote to the Greens!”.

We call on CEC candidates to stand up for this important principle – it will be key to the future of Your Party.

The endorsement period for the CEC election in Your Party has now started. In the South East please endorse our Bolshevik Caucus candidate Barbara Duke.

We also recommend in the South East endorsing Max Shanly of Grassroots Left and in other regions and the public office holder section please endorse the candidates who have signed up to the Grassroots Left platform (grassrootsleft.org).

We have some criticism of the Grassroots Left programme, which is a compromise document, inadequate in several respects (see Barbara’s letter to the Weekly Worker today). But unlike many others, the Grassroots Left platform stresses the need for agency to the branches, no exclusions, for the defence of the oppressed, including trans rights, opposition to state repression and calls to “bring an end to capitalism”.

Too much time has been wasted already. We hope the incoming CEC will empower the membership and the branches to take action and discuss the wide range of different ideas contained within Your Party. We look forward to debate with the comrades of Grassroots Left, among many others.

We are a revolutionary tendency within Your Party. We argue that “power and wealth to all” cannot be achieved until capitalism is overthrown and replaced with a system of collective ownership run by the working class that prioritises human need, not private profit. This is not just a “maximum programme” to be implemented in the future but the goal that informs revolutionary strategy and tactics today.

Meeting Working-Class Needs

Capitalism is devoted to the pursuit of profit and tramples on the needs of people and the planet we live on. Only a system of collective planning can safeguard humanity and the environment. To move towards this, Your Party should be running campaigns nationally and in our local communities and trade unions to fight for better living standards, housing for all and collective use of resources. We do this not by begging for crumbs from the ruling class, but by taking what we need, eg, by striking for higher wages or occupying empty buildings to house the homeless. Elected representatives of Your Party at local and national level must reject the constraints of capitalist budgets and instead aim to provide what the working class needs.

Elections and Elected Representatives

We should stand in elections under the party name to raise our profile and show that we are serious about what we fight for. The campaign is more important than the result. Elected MPs and councillors should be under the discipline of the party and required to stand down if they lose the confidence of the members that selected them. We must have no illusions that we can achieve our objectives through parliament and local government.

Building the Party

Local branches are the lifeblood of the party. They should decide the most appropriate local units in which to organise and manage their own activities. Branches should be adequately funded with full access to membership lists. The formation of the party has been plagued by the action and inaction of secretive unelected leaders manipulating voting options and making up rules as they go along. This has to stop.

Debate among all Socialists

Your Party must be a real break from the Labour Party, both organisationally and politically. It should seek to unite the many different viewpoints within the left and workers’ movement to debate the way forward. This means no restrictions on dual membership of other workers’ organisations. Bans and expulsions create a poisonous atmosphere of distrust and political dishonesty. We must defend the rights of members to form tendencies and factions. We need clarity on political views and open debate at all levels of the party alongside unity in action.

Working-Class Political Independence

We should not, however, aim to unite across class lines. Any alliance with capitalist parties such as the Greens will threaten our working-class foundation. Regardless of any “progressive” talk, the Greens in power default to administering capitalism and make our socialist objectives impossible. We must be absolutely clear on our identity as an independent working-class party.

Trade Unions

Your Party members should form caucuses within the trade unions, arguing for party policy and leading union branches to take action, not passively follow bureaucratic leaders. We should fight to organise the whole class, with a focus on young people and the gig economy. Trade unions need militant class-struggle tactics like strikes and blockades to fight for economic needs, international solidarity, stopping racist/fascist threats and to defend the oppressed.

Fight All Oppression

Your Party has declared our opposition to sexism, racism, ableism, transphobia and all forms of oppression, while also affirming that the party has “the working class at its heart”. This means we need to use class-struggle methods to fight oppression. Issues of particular importance today are the defence of asylum hotels, fighting against detention and deportation and for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. We answer fear of immigrants taking supposedly scarce resources with a collective fight for more resources for all. We must fight for equal pay, abortion on demand and free quality childcare, oppose all attacks on trans rights such as the recent Supreme Court ruling and fight for bodily autonomy for all.

Fight State Repression

The right to protest is being eroded with anti-protest laws, anti-union laws, the ban on Palestine Action and false accusations of antisemitism against the Palestine solidarity movement and the left as a whole. Police violence increases, the state spies on our organisations and political prisoners are held for years without trial. Police and prison guards are part of the repressive force of the capitalist state and have no place in the trade-union movement. We know that any gains we make are always under threat and therefore we must defy this repression and organise to defend our rights. We call to abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords and seek to build a workers’ republic, a new state based on workers’ control and genuine workers’ democracy.

Imperialism

The British state is an imperialist power, co-operating and competing with other imperialists to plunder the world. We stand against all imperialist occupation and war, including that carried out by Western imperialism’s Zionist allies in Israel. Inter-imperialist rivalries and the threat of world war are intensifying and must be challenged with global working-class fraternisation. The war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist conflict between NATO and Russia and we are for the defeat of both at the hands of their own workers. China is an unusual non-capitalist state form established by the 1949 revolution. It works within, but is not completely a part of, global capitalism, and it is therefore seen as a threat by the imperialist powers. We must defend China against growing imperialist aggression, while supporting Chinese workers in overthrowing the bureaucratic ruling caste to establish genuine democratic working-class power.

International Class Struggle

Our main enemy is the British state, at home and abroad. Your Party should work within the unions to block manufacture and transportation of weapons to Israel, Ukraine or anywhere else and for British troops out of all current and former colonies, including the North of Ireland. Our allies are the oppressed of the world and we should build alliances with workers in struggle, not their social-democratic or nationalist leadership. We have a world to win!

If you agree with the points above or would like to discuss, please do get in touch, here or at bolshevikcaucus@gmail.com.

IBT supporters will be attending the founding conference of “Your Party” in Liverpool this weekend. Launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, the embryo party has brought together many and varied sections of the left and workers’ movement, with much public wrangling and what has been politely described as “teething problems” yet remaining an extremely significant movement to the left of Labour. We intervene with the objective of focusing debate on the issues that really matter, primarily what kind of programme a working-class party needs (see also First Steps for a New Workers’ Party).

Of the four documents to be discussed at the conference, the Political Statement comes closest to a programme for the party, albeit with the disclaimer that it is limited to “broad principles and purposes”. Unfortunately, the current draft is insufficient, even in that respect. It is a heartfelt wish for a nicer world but does not cover what we need to do to get us there. In particular, it avoids the fact that the state designed to defend the “billionaires and corporations” will mobilise everything it has to prevent us building this better world. Without this, all that remain are reforms to create a slightly nicer kind of capitalism. Worse, it was announced with four days’ notice that the conference will debate whether to remove mention of “socialism” and “working class” from the statement entirely.

Below is our alternative outline of “broad principles and purposes”. We do not expect the majority of Your Party members to agree with it now, but it represents the ideas we will be arguing for at local and national level as the party is formed.

Your Party is a democratic working-class party that stands for the liberation of humanity from the shackles placed upon us by the system of global capitalism.

With the working class at its heart, the party will oppose all prejudice, discrimination and scapegoating, including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia, which are weaponised by the ruling class to divide us.

Our goal is the transfer of wealth and power, now concentrated in the hands of a small minority, to the control of the working-class majority, managed collectively for the good of all. Our planet is being destroyed and can only be saved by ending the relentless search for ever-increasing profit.

Your Party will campaign for this at every level of society, in every part of the country, in communities and workplaces, from elections to picket lines to community resistance. To even the smallest fight, we will bring the understanding that capitalism restricts our rights and freedom, as well as failing to meet basic human needs.

We will not share power with those who do not unambiguously stand for working-class rule. Once in power, such forces will defend the capitalist status quo, no matter how progressive they claim to be. We will co-operate with others who share immediate goals, but we cannot fight fascism or other reactionary faces of capitalism by relying on a gentler version of the same system that maintains oppression, imperialism and war.

History has shown that the working class will not come to power by gaining a majority of seats in parliament. We will stand for election and seek to win as many votes as possible, but we know that the armed capitalist state (military, police, courts and prisons) will always defend the property of the rich and prevent a peaceful transfer of power to a workers’ government.

We must therefore build our own organisations of working-class self-defence, in the trade unions and in our communities. In a revolutionary situation when a majority of the working class has chosen the path of socialism, these will transition to become workers’ militia, replacing the capitalist army and enabling the transfer of political power to a new state built on elected councils of workers’ representatives

We understand that Britain and other imperialist powers maintain wealth, power and privilege on the back of the oppression of the majority of the world’s population, enforced by violence and war. We demand the withdrawal of all British troops from non-imperialist countries. We stand in solidarity with oppressed people everywhere and advocate for the defeat of our “own” ruling class, including working with and within the trade unions to block all British military resources and arms.

We will collaborate internationally with those who share our aims, with the ultimate goal of an end to capitalism and the creation of a rationally planned economy based on the equitable allocation of resources worldwide.

The call by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn for a new left party in Britain under the working title of “Your Party” has sparked a wave of enthusiasm across the country and many are already organising, despite little guidance or central leadership. The IBT is participating in this process because we believe there is potential for political movement within the left—an opportunity to debate socialist strategy and link it to current fights for the interests of the working class.

It is far too early to tell what kind of party will be formed. The central groupings are clearly not unified, and the hundreds of thousands responding to the Corbyn/Sultana call come from a range of political backgrounds with many different political views and interests. We believe that for a party to truly serve the interests of the working class and other oppressed in society, we need to strike at the root of capitalism, not tinker with the system.

As a starting point for discussion within the party, we offer the following key principles that we believe are urgent and necessary for revolutionary social change:

Build in the Trade Unions

• No waiting for elected politicians—fight for what we need ourselves—the organised workers’ movement is our greatest strength

• Organise the whole class—unionise the gig economy

• Strikes and demonstrations for economic needs, to stop racist/fascist threats and to defend the oppressed

Class Struggle against all Oppression

• Defend asylum hotels, fight detention and deportation—full citizenship rights for all immigrants

• Occupy empty buildings—house the homeless—rent controls now

• Overturn the Supreme Court ruling—roll back all anti-trans measures—bodily autonomy for all

• Fight the ban on Palestine Action and all the anti-protest laws

Oppose British Imperialism

• Blockades and strikes to stop arms going to Israel and Ukraine

• Britain out of Ireland—troops out of all current and former colonies

Working-Class Independence

• No cops/screws in the party or the trade unions

• Clean break from Labour—no dithering

• No electoral alliance with the Greens or any other capitalist party

• Abolish the monarchy—for a workers’ republic