People Power Sessions: Your Party - Whose Party? | PUBLIC MEETING & DISCUSSION

Join us at Camden's new Civic Action Lab for a series of training workshops and strategic discussions around the Your Party project ahead of its founding conference this Autumn. Your Party (a temporary title!) is a new political initiative launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, so called because it really is Your Party (Our Party) to shape through collective, thought, struggle and action - starting now.

"The decisive element in every situation is the permanently organized and long-prepared force which can be put into the field when it is judged that a situation is favorable (and it can be favorable only in so far as such a force exists, and is full of fighting spirit). Therefore the essential task is that of systematically and patiently ensuring that this force is formed, developed, and rendered ever more homogeneous, compact, and self aware."

Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Hello all! This event may seem like it's coming to you from way out of left field, but please do bear with us.

First of all - what's Your Party and why the hell is it called that? Announced a few months ago by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana as a left-wing alternative to Labour, Your Party is a mass-membership political organisation dedicated to community organising, socialist politics, and member-led, bottom-up democracy. Or at least that's what it's supposed to be - the official foundation congress has yet to be held, and the name hasn't yet been decided by the members.

So far, we don't know much about what this thing is supposed to be: all we know is that around 800,000 people across England, Scotland and Wales have signed up to be a part of it when it launches, and that some time in the Autumn there will be a conference held at which members - all of them - can decide on these big questions, like what the thing is going to be called, what its structure will be, and how to move forward with strategy.

Okay, sounds interesting, but what's that got to do with this little meetup group of ours? Well, the crux of the issue (as we see it) is this: if British politics can be defined in one word, it's theatre. What passes for political events in this country are song-and-dance routines put on by a small group of politicians, journalists and PR hacks to create the illusion of high-stakes political drama while, behind the scenes, everything remains the same. This has got to change, and if even half the people who've signed up for it wind up paying dues and taking part, Your Party could make a major contribution to that change.

In July, left-wing strategist and Corbyn advisor James Schneider published an interview in the New Left Review which speaks to these themes: for this party to succeed where Corbyn's Labour failed, it needs to draw the masses of people into politics (inside and outside election schedules) through participatory means. For us that means one thing: we need to start to organise events just like this one. If the Autumn conference is going to be a success, people need to start to get organised now, ahead of time.

A people's party needs to draw in, educate and organise the people in the most thorough, nation-wide way. With these People Power Sessions, we'll be aiming to bring in members of this group as well as members of the community in Kentish Town where the sessions will be based and from across London. Talk to your friends and family and invite them along! To make a success of this fragile, doubtful little project, we need to reach out and grab ordinary people and show them what political action can look like when they're in charge, not just the Westminster technocrats. Lifelong socialists are welcome, but we can't stop there.

We'll discuss topics such as:

1. The constitution and governance of the party and the rights and responsibilities of its members
2. The strategic relation of the party to different social forces such as working class, petty-bourgeoisie/middle class etc, i.e. the makeup of the party's "mass base"
3. The tactical relationship of the party to other political and social forces i.e. other parties, chiefly the Green Party of England and Wales, Aspire, sectarian parties, etc
4. The party's overall theory of change, i.e. how it will build and exercise power
5. The party's international outlook, especially with a view to building international alliances, not only our stance on international issues

Let's not mince words: Britain is a country on the brink. An economy and social fabric in ruins doesn't fully explain neoliberalism's fascist, far-right turn. But the record-low political participation which years of austerity and decline have enabled do provide an explanation as to why the British far-right is poised to enter the halls of power. Without an alternative, the thin layers of the working class which do remain politically active will continue to be drawn to the right, along with the other classes. Labour can't stop its own decline let alone save the rest of us; so let's not give Farage his chance. Let's build a fighting organisation of the people, and let's start as we mean to go on: by gathering together to think, learn, and strategise. The moment is ours to take!