Letters

Muslim voices

I subscribe to this paper, which I see has been inundated by articles and postbag items on YP. However, expression of attitudes towards Muslims are few and far between - except to condemn Corbyn’s former allies at Westminster who withdrew from YP.

I refer to Noor Jahan Begum’s and Ismail Uddin’s online article for Middle East Eye, ‘Your Party can be a political home for Muslims’ (February 20). They remain upbeat about YP, but say that significant Muslim figures like Leanne Mohamad and Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman have stayed aloof. Why? They write that for “Zarah Sultana’s group” it has been “crystal-clear where they stand: ‘There is no room for socially conservative views in a socialist, leftwing party, period’  ... Her comments came as a deep affront to the many people in our communities who identify with that label.”

Note the writers of the Middle East Eye article are standing for Corbyn’s The Many group in the leadership elections. They have confidence in him, but not in the crass ideas pushed by Sultana. As for the Weekly Worker, attitudes displayed towards Muslims in this paper invariably display the superior position of sneering at the Socialist Workers Party’s historic concessions toward Muslim views in Respect.

Can the left afford to be so choosey? Has YP really got to be purified for the reasons given? Will GL persist in this?

Geoff Nash
Durham

Lavalette’s muddle

Michael Lavalette is a several times elected Preston councillor and much respected figure who stood for the Your Party CEC elections as an independent. Whilst his reasoning for not supporting the Grassroots Left slate is not clear, he presents himself as a man of the left (probably a Marxist on a good day - he does, after all, support the Counterfire outfit).

Hedging his bets, his recent ‘plague on both your houses’ approach towards Your Party represents serious misjudgement. Suggesting an equivalence between Grassroots Left and The Many, councillor Lavalette is effectively letting the bureaucratic dead hand of Team Corbyn off the hook.

The privileging of non-socialists in the formation process; witch-hunts and non-inclusion of the left (from the outset); Ayoub Khan’s call for the army to sort out the Birmingham bin strike - it’s not been pretty. Team Corbyn’s red-baiting and bureaucratic manipulation has bequeathed us panto-Kinnockism - a clear example of how not to build a socialist party.

As The Many plans to expel potentially thousands who voted for Grassroots Left through their promise to crush ‘the sects’, the ‘factionalism’ won’t magically stop. Seeking a place at the post-election dinner table or reflecting popular front impulses - the motivation isn’t clear. Political differences in practice between Lavalette’s international socialism and Corbyn’s Labourite liberalism don’t seem to be that great.

Our struggle continues to help rally comrades to our politics. Grassroots Left has unified a diverse layer of comrades towards partyism, anti-imperialism and Marxism. The post-CEC election situation will require a sober analysis of what’s possible from a partisan viewpoint. Lavalette’s muddle isn’t therefore particularly helpful.

Paul Cooper
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Arm, arm, arm UK!

Jack Conrad has commented often on the cries of “Arm, arm, arm Ukraine!” coming from assorted ‘left’ groups, but I’ve noticed in the last two or three weeks a chorus for “Arm, arm, arm UK!”

This has come from mainstream politicians (especially the government), reporters, commentators and a few generals. The problem, apparently, is that we in Europe can no longer rely on the US to ‘defend’ us. We have to buck up, arm up (buying US weapons, of course) and be ready to defend ourselves against a pretty certain attack from Russia! Nattering with friends over the last year or two, I’ve often asked which is the greater risk to our lives - the defunding of the NHS or an attack from Russia? Not much in the way of reply.

We have in the February 20 edition of the Weekly Worker the front page, leading to the page 4 article, on climate change. I found it quite frightening - not because it’s new, not because we can’t read this story elsewhere, but because we know that the ruling class has no current plans to miss the tipping points outlined. They may be forced to act some time in the future - almost certainly too late - but for now we have, for instance, Rachel Reeves and her “growth, growth, growth”, which we can read as ‘Fuck the climate!’

I thought, until a few years ago that, although climate change is a terrible prospect and its causes (capital) need to be fought, I was too old to be badly affected by the impending damage. I’m not so sure now. Around the world we have, and have had for some time, wildfires, droughts, the heat and/or cold, wrecking agriculture (so famine for many). In the UK the biggest problem and danger that we see already is flooding.

We have had the, by now almost annual, picture of Tewkesbury cathedral on a little island in the midst, apparently, of a massive lake. There have been many articles, interviews of people who have had their homes and/or their small businesses wrecked by flooding. They ask why flood defences were not put in place and why they are not being introduced for next time.

The reasons why I think we know: they are the same reasons for the sluggish rate of compensating sub-post office folk, the slow rate of compensating the Windrush generation, the slow rate of compensating any victims of government crimes - there’s ‘no money’! However, there is money for ‘our’ (totally dependent) nuclear deterrent. There is money for new aircraft, for army recruitment ads - for anything to prepare us for the ‘imminent attack’ from Russia.

A mass communist party of the working class is incredibly urgent. Otherwise, which will be first - climate ruin or war ruin?

Jim Nelson
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Welcome

This week has marked a welcome development in the protests we are witnessing in Iran’s Islamic Republic. Since February 22 the student movement has been involved in demonstrations and sit-ins that are explicitly “anti-shah”.

The dominant slogans on campuses like Tehran, Amirkabir and Tabriz universities now focus on a vision for a democratic future:

• “No to the shah, no to the leader [Khamenei]!” This central chant signals that students are not looking to return to the Pahlavi monarchy, nor are they willing to tolerate the current clerical rule.
• “No to the reactionary Mojahedin!” - a clear rejection of the MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq), showing that students do not see the established exiled opposition as a legitimate alternative.
• “Freedom, equality, a republic!” This slogan has become the foundational demand of the 2026 movement, shifting the focus from specific social grievances (like the enforced wearing of the hijab) to a total structural transformation of the state into a secular, egalitarian republic.

This current phase marks a significant shift: the student body is no longer just the “conscience of the nation”, reacting to state overreach: leading figures are actively drafting the blueprint for a post-theocratic, post-monarchical Iran.

Yassamine Mather
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Political science

Ted Reese’s illuminating letter in last week’s Weekly Worker (February 19) succinctly explains class and economics in a few paragraphs.

Ted explains capitalism’s trajectory to zero profits and that we need a type of Marxist neuroscience as an antidote to our illiteracy. He also explains how Your Party’s economic policy is bound to fail. Ascribed to Lenin, he said how “politics is the most concentrated form of economics” and, as bourgeois politics rules our lives, it controls the state and its subsidiaries, the police and army, etc. So it doesn’t help that the working class have become disenfranchised and that Marxist politics generally is defensive following the past disaster of Stalinism.

To cap things off, we have a looming ecological catastrophe, where some leaders around the world choose a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach to things.

With Marx’s work on political economy being substantial and on appearance seeming to be a daunting task, the lexicon of his language is far superior to the evasive double-speak of economics writers we read today. I have no problem with Marxist politics of a Lenin type (polemical) as the trigger to organise the working class as future leaders to solve our economic and ecological woes.

Wherever Your Party ends up, the lack of seriousness in regard to Marxism as a political science will be its undoing - and Marxists that put ‘movements’ instead of ‘party’ first will either end in prison or - who knows? - maybe dead.

Frank Kavanagh
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Republican ticks

1. Republic YP urged all members to vote for Niall Christie (Scotland) and Rob Rooney (South West) in the CEC elections.

2. RYP stood five candidates in the first round of the CEC election - alongside the Democratic Bloc with 14 candidates, and the two main platforms, The Many (TM) and Grassroots Left (GL), with full slates. It is unclear if Democratic Bloc continues. Hence there were three active platforms (TM, GL and RYP) and non-platform slate(s) of independents.

3. One RYP candidate was barred from standing and the remaining four did not receive sufficient endorsements to proceed to the second round of the election. RYP resolved to continue our campaign without candidates.

4. RYP came to focus not simply on our programmatic demands but on issues thrown up during the campaign (eg, dual membership). These can be summarised:

• For a democratic secular republic.
• End to the union of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
• For an English parliament.
• For autonomous parties for England, Scotland and Wales.
• For dual membership.
• Opposition to the exclusion of any YP CEC candidates.

5. RYP has made programme our first demand and essential requirement. Without it there is no united party, but a coalition of rival tendencies. At present Your Party is no more than a political space where the struggle for programme is taking place and remains unresolved.

6. The central programmatic question revolves around the struggle between social monarchism and democratic republicanism. The Labour Party and the 1945 Labour government established the social and constitutional monarchy on the foundations of the Orange revolution and constitutional settlement of 1688-1707 with the union and the sovereignty of the crown-in-parliament and the various oaths of allegiance.

7. Social monarchism is the reformist ideology of the Labour Party whose right wing is Orange liberalism and whose left is Orange socialism. No socialist directly defends hereditary monarchy. Left social monarchism, therefore, generally ignores the monarchy as irrelevant, whilst adopting an anti-monarchy stance when necessary. Left anti-monarchism is not a step to democratic republicanism, but the last line of defence against it.

8. The three Platforms and three programmes are as follows:

• The Many (TM) - social monarchism: TM is a platform and programme of social monarchism. It has its roots in Labourism or constitutionally conservative ‘socialism’. The programme of social monarchism is to restore the post-war social contract with its welfare state, mixed economy and trade union involvement in the economy. TM puts the old Labour case on new populist foundations.
• Grassroots Left (GL) - left social monarchism: The GL is the main alternative to TM. It is a coalition of various groups on the basis of a minimum left social-monarchist programme - a united front from the Democratic Socialists YP (DSYP) through to various Marxist groups - Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Alternative, CPGB, Workers Power, RS21, Anti-Capitalist Resistance, Social Justice Party, etc. The Marxist groups are anti-monarchist with a long history of opposing a republican programme. Hence GL is opposed to the monarchy and House of Lords, but supports the union.
• Republic Your Party: RYP is an independent, anti-unionist, republican YP platform, developing from Tony Benn’s Commonwealth Bill. We are opposed to all forms of social monarchism, including left social monarchism, which conceals its avoidance of the republican programme through anti-monarchist rhetoric. We oppose both TM and GL platforms. The constitutional conservatism of The Many should be obvious. It is, therefore, important to expose, criticise and oppose the halfway-house politics of GL - stuck in a quagmire between the loyalist unionism of TM and the anti-unionist, democratic republican demands of Republic YP.

9. With the barring of Chris Williamson, Dave Nellist, April Ashley et al, RYP sent an Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in defence of democratic rights. We set up a petition to demand the co-leaders reply to our concerns as rank-and-file members. We have had no reply. We cannot trust them.

Should RYP have an alliance to support GL on the grounds of their more leftwing anti-monarchism? No, on both programme and tactical grounds. If there is no dialogue, then there can be no electoral alliance. We have always been prepared to talk to either TM or GL and explore cooperation (as shown by the open letter). As an independent platform we do not compromise except through dialogue and due consideration.

10. Republic YP - who to vote for: RYP endorses two CEC candidates in stage two of the CEC lections. It calls on all members to vote for Niall Christie (Scotland) and Rob Rooney (South West) - Rob has been unjustly expelled, but if you can still vote for him you should.

Our second list is ‘green’ candidates who signed our petition. These are Niall Christie and Ian Drummond in Scotland, Ian Spencer for the North East, Pete McLaren for the South East, Kadira Pethiyagoda in London, Alex Fox for the West Midlands and Rob Rooney for the South West. These comrades may or may not have endorsed the RYP platform, but we recognise they have been prepared, in a principled way, to support our defence of democratic rights for all members, particularly excluded dual members. If you are voting in their regions, they are worthy of your trust and due consideration.

We note that in Scotland, Niall Christie and Ian Drummond are ‘green’, but rival, candidates. We fully support Niall as the republican anti-unionist candidate to represent Scotland on the CEC.

Republic YP
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