Zarah Sultana Boycotts Your Party Conference Over Member Expulsions

Your Party’s founding conference began in Liverpool today, with Jeremy Corbyn calling for unity among warring factions in the party – shortly before co-founder Zarah Sultana announced she would be boycotting all of the day’s events. 

Sultana’s refusal to set foot inside the conference hall was to protest a wave of last minute expulsions, with Socialist Workers party national secretary Lewis Nielsen claiming that he and several other members had received letters cancelling their memberships on Friday. He was already on a train to Liverpool at the time, he said.

A spokesperson for Sultana told the Guardian: “Zarah met members outside conference and condemned the recent expulsions. This witch-hunt is indefensible. We must build a party that welcomes all socialists.”

There were further expulsions at a pre-conference rally organised by Corbyn on Friday night. Billed as a night of music and poetry, it was a relaxed affair, with Unite the Union general secretary Len McCluskey reading poetry from the stage. That peace was disrupted by several hecklers who said they wanted to ask Corbyn to denounce Zionism. Security was called to remove them, with key Corbyn aide Karie Murphy seen walking behind the audience, directing guards towards those to be ejected.

A Your Party spokesperson defended the removals, saying: “The Revolutionary Communist Group have been aggressively confronting Jeremy for months, falsely accusing him of being a Zionist. Just as the chair of Zarah Sultana’s rally approved the expulsion of disruptors, organisers at Jeremy’s event took a similar view faced with significant disruption.”

An hour later, a separate event organised by Sultana was packed out. It featured a panel of a dozen speakers including Nielsen, as well as Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union general secretary Ian Hodson, Audrey White of the Merseyside Pensioners Association and former Labour national executive committee member Mish Rahman. There, the call was for maximum member control of the party, with speakers mentioning “faceless bureaucrats” able to distort democracy “at the flick of a pen”. 

A major issue of contention during this conference, at which the name, leadership structure and constitution of the party will be decided, is that orchestrations alleged to have been carried out by advisors surrounding Corbyn undermine its purported democratic purpose. There is also a sense among some members that too much decided by the party’s steering committee has remained fixed and immune to member amendment. Until recently, that committee comprised Corbyn, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Iqbal Mohammed and Adnan Hussain, though the latter two have recently left the party.

A central such decision is the constitutional mandate that bans dual membership, meaning Your Party members cannot be members of other parties. That is up for debate during this conference, leading participants to ask how anyone could have been expelled before it was either ratified or rejected by the membership. 

That rule is an issue for those who want to join a broad left movement, but who also belong to more radical left parties like the SWP, the Socialist party and the Revolutionary Communist party. Questions have been raised over how that was decided, and who is authorised to make expulsions. Some have named Murphy as involved. Asked about her role, a source close to the matter said that Murphy is one of the organisers working under the Independent Alliance, so it is natural she would be involved in these decisions.

Arriving at the conference today before her boycott, Sultana was asked who she thought was behind the expulsions. “We don’t know,” she said, “and that’s what makes it completely undemocratic.

“The movement and the members won’t accept that,” she added.

Criticism from Sultana’s camp of undemocratic processes increased following the release of the final shortlist of Your Party names on Friday. At the top of the billing is “Your Party”, confirmed by Corbyn as his favoured choice to the New Statesman today. Other options are “Our Party”, “Popular Alliance” and “For the Many”. Sultana, who has said she was excluded by the party’s steering committee, though they say she resigned, had preferred “The Left Party” as a name. That was not included on the ballot.

At her rally last night, Novara Media asked Sultana to name the three top policies she would put to the country ahead of an election. She gave two, calling for a wealth tax and to “nationalise the entire economy”. She listed utilities, transport, and energy, but also said, “we need to look at the banks, […] construction, […] the entire economy.” In an interview with Novara Media today, Sultana gave a more focussed top three: Childcare, free public transport and a £20 minimum wage.

Corbyn also made policy pitches in his conference speech, focussing on the failure of privatisation. He called for democratic public ownership of that industry, as well as others, and for Your Party to break the Westminster “triopoly” of Labour, the Lib Dems and Tories. On member democracy, Corbyn noted that “They don’t want the party to belong to MPs”, adding, “I agree!”. 

But there were further disruptions in the hall, with one stall holder for Stand Up To Racism, who is believed to be a member of the SWP, forcibly ejected from the conference centre. Asked by Novara Media who had ordered the removal, a security staff member said, “the conference organiser, Karie”. Neither Murphy nor a Your Party spokesperson responded to request for comment on this matter.