The following two motions were passed at the AMM tonight:
Motion 1 – on ‘Your Party’
The Socialist Labour Network welcomes Zahra Sultana MP’s resignation from the Labour Party and initiative to co-found a new left-wing party along with Jeremy Corbyn, to challenge Starmer’s brutal, anti-democratic, pro-genocide, warmongering, anti-working-class austerity regime. The New Party has already signed up 750,000 members- compared with the current Labour Party diminishing membership of around 300,000
Since Thatcher’s strategic defeat of the miners in the mid-1980s, most Labour leaderships have been openly Thatcherite and neo-liberal, the exception being Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from 2015-2020, which did promise to begin rolling back the decades of austerity. Labour under Corbyn, which the bourgeois media slated as being ‘unelectable’, gained over 12 million votes in 2017 – more than any Labour campaign this century. Even in 2019 when it was defeated, Labour achieved more votes than in Starmer’s election victory in 2024. It was the internal collapse of the Tory party that gifted Starmer that election.
The real problem with Corbyn was that his left social democracy and ‘broad church’ Labour politics meant appeasing the neoliberal Right to keep them on board. In the face of ferocious attacks from Zionists and their supporters in the media, Corbyn ran up the white flag and actively expelled many good socialists on trumped-up ‘anti-Semitism’ charges. The adoption of the fake IHRA-definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ primed Labour under Starmer to support the current Zionist genocide.
Starmer, other Labour Zionists and treacherous neoliberals were put in pole position by the weakness of Corbyn and the left, to sabotage Labour and destroy Corbyn’s leadership. This was done with the avid cooperation of the BBC and the entire Zionist-supporting, neoliberal legacy media. The Starmer regime that came out of this is genocidal and anti-democratic. Its outrageous proscription of Palestine Action demonstrates that corporate Labour is now rolling out to the whole population its treatment of its own members.
Labour’s brutal attacks on the working class, migrants, pensioners, the disabled and sick, benefit claimants etc, flow really from the ruling class’s current aims. Starmer was put in place to deliver on the ongoing aims of the neoliberal regime- the concentration of power and resources in the hands of the few. Its current trajectory will place power in the hands of the openly far-right in the guise of the Reform Party.
The Zahra Sultana-Jeremy Corbyn party has great potential to squash the ruling class’s far right project. But we must learn the lessons of the previous Corbyn leadership. Left social democratic politics are fundamentally inadequate today, more than ever. We need a genuinely working-class party with a democratic internal structure and culture where strategic, programmatic questions can be fully debated and resolved. We need to move beyond reformism to allow for the development of revolutionary alternatives. We cannot allow the workers movement to be defeated by Zionists, fascists or the subversion of even bourgeois democracy by the bourgeois state, its armed forces and intelligence services. We need a party that has a consistently anti-imperialist policy, which opposes Western imperialism and all its proxy forces around the globe.
There can be no ‘friends of Israel’ in such a party – Zionism is a ferocious class enemy of the workers. We must be on our guard against other forms of right-wing infiltration. But we must be aware that if the ruling class is denied the chance to wreck the new party by subversion internally, they will seek other means – including military rebellion, fascism and potential coups. It is not accidental that during Jeremy’s leadership senior military officers openly threatened rebellion were he to be elected, and soldiers used his image as target practice on shooting ranges. The new party needs to take this on board – the working class cannot be merely pacifist in the face of ruling class violence. The labour movement needs its own means of resistance. We need a party that points the way to working class rule, and a break with notions of class collaboration and co-existence with a capitalism that threatens humanity with world war and environmental collapse.
The SLN stands with the new party, provisionally known as ‘Your Party’. It exhorts the party to be bold in its vision for progressive and revolutionary change, and develop beyond social democracy and its tradition of betrayal.
(Proposed: Ian Donovan)
Motion 2: Palestine Action is not a terrorist organisation:
The SLN condemns the decision to proscribe Palestine Action under Schedule 2 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and to define Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation similar to ISIL and Al Qaeda.
Terrorism involves actions designed to maim, kill or harm individuals or whole families. These would include:
- Shooting unarmed people queuing for aid who do not pose a threat
- Bombing a seafront café killing dozens, including children, elderly men and café workers
- Bombing hospitals to destroy the medical system
- Targeting journalists so that atrocities are not reported
- The torture of Palestinians in custody
- Committing war crimes and genocide.
This clearly describes the actions of the Israeli Defence Force
Direct action which does not target individuals, but the weapons used to carry out terrorist acts is not terrorism.
Palestine Action have stated that their activities were based on non-violent direct action. They never use explosive devices, letter bombs or attempted assassinations.
We condemn the government for continuing to send military cargo, fly spy planes over Gaza and refuel US and Israeli fighter jets.
Instead of taking the necessary steps, legally obligatory under the Genocide Convention, to prevent Israel continuing its genocide the UK government has decided to attack those who are exposing its complicity.
We condemn the actions by the government to associate Palestine Action with two white supremacist, neo-Nazi organisations. This was a disgraceful attempt to get the vote through parliament.
Successive UK governments, both Tory and Labour, have over more than twenty years passed legislation to undermine our civil liberties to protest injustice and, where involved, government policies.
We call for the reversal of the proscription of Palestine Action
