Editorial of the Socialist issue 1386
It was minutes after the polls closed in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on 8 November, well before results were announced, that the capitalist establishment’s assault on Green Party leader Zack Polanski took a step up. Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas – who in summer 2019 when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, was calling for a cross-party, all-woman cabinet of Tories, Lib Dems and Blairites to replace the Boris Johnson government – led the charge.
Lucas refused to say whether or not Polanski should keep his position as Green leader and criticised his lack of leadership. From there, the assault continued.
The capitalist class would have loved for this by-election to be proof of a real and sustained ‘Burnham bounce’. Proof of concept that in fact Burnham can shore up a stable base of support for Labour, from which it can govern in big-business interests – including by continuing with the austerity status quo of crumbling underfunded services, and cutting billions from future spending on the state pension.
At this stage there are faint hopes that Burnham might, at least, be ‘better than Starmer’. But this by-election revealed how limited those hopes are. Labour won with just 12,292 votes – a loss of 70% of the votes it received in the same constituency with Jeremy Corbyn as leader in 2017. Polanski was second with 8,928.
When Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election in June, he did so by cynically posing as standing against Labour prime minister Keir Starmer. In the May local elections six weeks earlier, in the wards which make up the Makerfield constituency, the Greens received around 3,000 votes; by the time of the by-election it was 300. Many who had sought to vote to reject Starmer’s Labour in May did so by voting Green then, but did so by backing Burnham in June.
That did not happen this time. In May’s local elections, in the seats that make up the Holborn and St Pancras constituency, Labour got about 10,800 votes. So, for all the hype about Burnham’s appeal, Labour gained just 1,500 votes. More like a ‘hop’ than a ‘bounce’. Only another 28,000 to go to get to Corbyn levels!
And not just in Holborn and St Pancras, in council by-elections since Burnham became Labour leader, the Greens and Reform have both made net gains.
And so the capitalist establishment is doing its best to assist Burnham by spinning his ‘hop’ as a ‘bounce’. But also by attacking his rivals. Correctly pointing to Reform’s sleaze, big-business backing and rule breaking. And by incorrectly painting Polanski and the Greens as antisemitic.
Zionism is Racism motion
The Zionism is Racism motion passed at Green Party conference has been seized on as an opportunity to attack Polanski by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
After the debate got under way at the Green conference in March, the Socialist’s sister publication Socialism Today published an article looking at the historic roots of Zionism, and examining the limitations of arguments from forces on either side of the debate. (See ‘Behind the Green’s debate on anti-Zionism’ at socialismtoday.org)
Rightly, many will be angry at the capitalist media’s frenzied attacks on the Green motion and will contrast it to the little or no criticism for politicians that support the Israeli capitalist state’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza.
Nonetheless, it is not by chance that the capitalist class are using this motion in order to go on the attack, yet again cynically and falsely trying to equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The capitalist class will always seize on the weakness of its opponents, and this motion gave them an opening. Many workers and young people who want to see the strongest possible movement in defence of the Palestinians will have opposed the motion from a correct instinct to reject issues that can cause unnecessary divisions, and therefore a desire not to alienate those who want to build the struggle against the Israeli state’s war, but interpret the term Zionism as meaning the right of Jewish people to live in safety and security.
The strongest possible answer to the capitalists and their representatives, who try to use the contending rights of different nationalities to divide the working class internationally, is to point to mass working-class struggle and its role – something that the motion, and Zack Polanski in answering questions about it, fails to do.
It is essential the Palestinians’ fight for national self-determination is on the basis of mass struggles, building mass organisations of the working class independent of the capitalists and elites, and fighting to take control out of the hands of the capitalist class. Those struggles would be compelled to appeal to the masses in the region to join them in taking on their own elites, including in Israel. Those mass struggles would pose the question of the working classes in the region taking power and beginning the socialist transformation of society, and of a socialist confederation of states in the Middle East – the only route to end the decades-long conflict.
Historically, our forebears opposed the establishment of the Zionist state of Israel in 1948. It was based from the start on the mass expulsion and oppression of the Palestine people. However, whatever motions are passed at the Green Party conference, it will not change the fact that the Israeli state has existed for almost 80 years, with around 80% of its Jewish population having been born there, with a strong national consciousness.
Over the last three years, the Israeli ruling class has been able to draw the majority of the Israeli population behind its slaughter. Nonetheless, the deep class divisions in Israeli society will come to the fore at a certain stage. The potential power of the working class was partially displayed in the 2024 one-day general strike action against the Netanyahu government. The Israeli capitalist class will never allow a genuine Palestinian state to develop. A workers’ government in Israel, however, which broke with capitalism, instead based on a democratic and socialist planned economy, would be an entirely different prospect.
Weakening the reactionary Israeli state, with the most powerful military in the region, by splitting it on class lines would enormously strengthen the struggle for socialism in the Middle East. To do so successfully, however, will mean recognising the right of the Israeli working class to live in peace and security. This is ruled out, of course, on the basis of the continued oppression of the Palestinians.
Tasks in Britain
For socialists, the anti-war and workers’ movements in Britain, the central task assisting the struggles of the Palestinian masses is to develop and strengthen the struggle against our own capitalist class and its political representatives. Including, as part of that, the developing of a new mass party of the working class, fighting for socialist change.
The Green Party as currently constituted, however, does not represent a step in that direction. The fact that the motion was passed with the votes of 1,022 self-selected in-person and online conference ‘attendees’ – less than 0.5% of the Green Party’s total membership of 220,000 – is being used by establishment Greens to raise a ludicrous bogeyman of ‘entrism’ by extremists. It does, however, point to the relatively limited involvement in the party’s structures, by new members who can join for as little as £6 a year.
The conference also neglected the opportunity to discuss a motion calling for the party to be ‘eco-socialist’. It was on the agenda, but dropped, apparently without protest from attendees.
And there was no motion to conference dealing with how Green-led councils could use their positions to help mobilise struggles against austerity. So far, despite local authorities being in deep financial crisis, and many Green councils winning power on the basis of attracting support from those expecting to see a change from Labour austerity, no group of Green councillors has acted in defiance.
Had the Green-led Hackney council near the Holborn and St Pancras constituency used its first months in office to begin to implement the policy of the main local government trade unions – mobilising residents in a fight against austerity by preparing a no-cuts needs-based budget – the result of the by-election could have been entirely different.
Instead, so far, Polanski and others have accepted the lies from the capitalist establishment that their hands are tied and there is nothing that can be done.
The latest attack on Polanski, including from the capitalist establishment’s figures inside the Greens, will provoke sympathies for the Green leader from many who see the establishment’s attack for what it is. Tensions are clear for all to see between establishment Greens and a layer of young people and others, who have joined or are looking to the Greens under Polanski.
A central priority for the Socialist Party until 20 November, is to help to organise young people walking out to fight for their futures in the international youth strike, pointing to the need for socialist change and the role a new mass workers’ party can play in the struggle for it.
