Editorials of the Socialist issue 1334
The case for a socialist name
On 26 August, over 700,000 people got an email asking “What should your party be called?” The first email to the huge mailing list made up of those who responded to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s call for “a new kind of political party. One that belongs to you”.
The name alone will not determine the character of the party, any more than Keir Starmer’s Labour Party having ‘labour’ in its name makes it is a party of the working class. But the question has been asked to three quarters of a million people, starting a very big conversation!
At the moment, the parliamentary group of six MPs which includes Jeremy and Zarah calls itself the Independent Alliance. This is aimed to distance itself from the capitalist establishment parties. However, to stand in May’s council elections as an ‘independent’ would not be sufficient. It would not effectively identify the candidate with the call for a new party, nor with the need for the working class to have a party of its own. Neither would it distinguish a candidate from the whole plethora of politicians describing themselves as ‘independent’, including disaffected Tories, for example. In fact, there are already over 1,600 ‘independent’ councillors in England alone, around 10% of all local councillors. Dozens of councils have an ‘independent’ leader.
The original ‘Your Party’ statement begins with the sentence: “The system is rigged”. Which is absolutely correct. Capitalism systematically exploits the working class to generate profits for the capitalist bosses, to assist it in doing so it breeds and perpetuates other forms of oppression: sexism, racism, islamophobia, LGBTQ+ phobia, for example.
The Socialist Party thinks the name should present what the alternative is to the ‘rigged system’ – socialism! A system where the vast wealth and resources, as well as the levers of power, are wrested from the hands of the capitalist class, where big business and the banks are brought into democratic public ownership so that the economy can be planned to meet the needs of all while protecting the environment, and the working class can have a democratic say over all aspects of our lives.
Labour’s 2017 election manifesto, calling for socialist policies like free education, nationalisation of the utilities and building council homes, was hugely popular. A government carrying out those policies and others, mounting a serious struggle to reverse the decades-long transfer of wealth from the working class to the capitalist bosses, would have to mobilise working-class struggle to support it. In the course of its struggle, to be successful, it would have to adopt a socialist programme. The new party should fight for socialism and should call itself socialist.
There are those who will raise concerns about how the word ‘socialist’ is misunderstood or is smeared by the capitalist media. Whatever the name, there will be no avoiding attempts by the capitalist establishment to try to prevent the working class having its own mass party that fights for socialist change.
In fact, at the beginning of Jeremy’s time as Labour leader, him being described as a ‘socialist’ actually provoked a renewed interest in socialist ideas, particularly among young people. Thoughts of: ‘Well if Corbyn is a socialist, then that’s what I am too”. A similar process took place around Bernie Sanders in the US.
What can best cut across establishment attempts to smear and undermine support for a new party, is for it to organise working-class struggle. The May 2026 council elections offer an opportunity to kick-start that struggle. In London where all council seats are up for election, for example, it would be entirely possible for a new party to win the leadership of councils. It would be an opportunity to organise mass resistance to Starmer’s austerity by building council homes, re-opening services and demanding the money needed from central government – demonstrating in practice what the new party’s ideas mean for working-class people and their communities.
For a party to appear on the ballot paper, Britain’s electoral law requires registration with the Electoral Commission. There are restrictions on what can be used, for example if it overlaps with the name of an existing party. To help overcome that, the Socialist Party would offer to hand over its registration of ‘Socialist Alternative’ for use by ‘Your Party’, as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition has done with its registered names. There are no technical reasons therefore, for Your Party not to say clearly it is socialist. If the will is there.
Join in making the case for a socialist name, submit your response online: yourparty.uk/ourname
Your Party: How can democracy be organised?
Since the launch of the ‘Your Party’ mailing list, there has been huge enthusiasm and excitement for the potential of a political alternative. At the same time, many feel a sense of urgency and even frustration that the party has yet to take shape.
The need for a new workers’ party has been growing for years. When the campaign Enough is Enough was launched during the strike wave in 2022, led by the general secretaries of the RMT transport workers union, Mick Lynch, and the Communication Workers Union, Dave Ward, half a million signed up looking for a new party.
The hundreds of thousands who have signed up so far to ‘Your Party’, rightly want to play a role in building and democratically directing what this new party should stand for.
The Socialist Party agrees that any new working-class political voice must have democratic structures and, importantly, political accountability over elected representatives and other elected positions.
There are many different ways which organisations, particularly ones as large as this potential new party, can be structured. We would advocate for a structure of representative democracy over the system of direct democracy, which has been referred to as one member one vote (OMOV).
While OMOV can superficially feel very democratic, it actually allows those who set the questions to control the discussion. For example, over the years councils have surveyed their constituents about local government cuts, posing questions such as “what is more important to you, saving service X or service Y?” Councils have then insinuated that local people support cuts to whichever services had the least votes. But there was never an option in these surveys to say: “We want to save all our services, we want you to fight the national government for the money needed to stop all local authority cuts”.
A federal structure could allow for both individual members of a new party, via local branches, as well as pre-existing workers’ organisations and democratically organised community organisations, to have ongoing oversight over policy and the elected representatives of a new party.
In general though, we would also say that these issues, while important, can be developed and built upon over time. First a new party needs to get ‘off the ground’.
At the moment, however well meaning, just six people, including Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in the Independent Alliance of MPs, are the only democratic structure ‘Your Party’ has. The lack of involvement from authoritative mass workers’ organisations has been a stumbling block to getting the party off the ground.
Therefore, a founding conference, primarily made up of delegated trade union representatives, themselves already democratically elected by thousands of members of their trade union branch or region, would be an important first step. Alongside them should be delegates from existing socialist and representative community organisations.
The trade unions are the largest voluntary democratic organisations of the working class and don’t just represent the interests of their members in the workplace but the general interests of working-class people. For example, Unite the Union has been at the forefront of opposing attacks on pensioners, not because they directly represent most pensioners but because their members are sickened by the Starmer government’s blatant attack on the elderly. Similarly, Enough is Enough garnered huge support because it was seen as leading a working-class fightback against all the attacks being faced by working-class people, not just the issues faced by members of individual unions.
A founding conference made up of trade union delegates, alongside other democratic organisations, could set the framework for what would quickly become the biggest working-class party in Europe, inspiring not just people here but internationally to organise against the establishment politicians and the rigged capitalist system.
