Like many socialists, when Zara Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn made the call for a new socialist party and 800 000 responded, my heart had a flutter. Here was hope and a vindication that socialism was still popular.
Of course, Socialists for Independence had long known that there was a wide constituency of support for a broad socialist party, but we anticipated that it would evolve from the movement and events in Scotland. This was in our DNA, and we wished to play a positive part in encouraging unity in action and in organisation.
We were of course conscious that this initiative which was being incubated in England may not fit the bill for what was needed for the socialist left in Scotland.
However, with the wave of enthusiasm shown by the tens of thousands who expressed an interest in Your Party in Scotland, we felt, after discussion, that we had, despite those reservations, to participate in shaping a grassroots member-led movement in Scotland.
The origins of Your Party lay in a broad-based coalition of socialists, many with a high profile in the movement and such was this diversity it looked promising that here was a vehicle to unite the left.
It was this group that first initiated contact with myself and given the support being registered I decided it would be useful to be involved in these discussions. I was consistent in stating that any iteration of the Party in Scotland must have structures for making decisions that would be based in Scotland.
What became clear however was that there were two contending visions of how the party would develop. On the one hand a model of grassroots democracy with autonomy for Scotland and on the other a top down, bureaucratic model controlled by a small group of six MP’s and a clique surrounding them.
This tension was manifested in disputes over access to data and finances. This perception of disunity and conflict tarnished the hope felt by many and this was reflected in far lower numbers becoming party members.
Despite this in Scotland it quickly became apparent that many people were still eager to develop a party at local and national level. This was reflected in a meeting I helped organise in Glasgow where 400 people signed to attend a meeting where Zara Sultana spoke and unequivocally committed Your Party to being a party where decisions in Scotland would be made by members in Scotland up to and including support for independence.
Still hamstrung by lack of access to data people still enthusiastically set about building locally, setting up local groups and establishing contact over social media. For many it was their first engagement with socialist politics and hundreds attended various events set up by Your party members in Scotland.
This created a clamour for a Scottish founding conference and the establishment of an elected Scottish leadership. Despite months of prompting for access to membership data to consolidate branch building and activity and for a Scottish Conference we were repeatedly stonewalled and ignored by an increasingly centralised clique of often anonymous individuals.
This process played out for months with eventual agreement being achieved over the organisation of a Scottish Conference. The central bureaucracy however insisted on having final veto over Conference documents and were unhappy with our inclusion of a vote for supporting Scotland becoming an independent party and whether to support independence. Positions that were carried at Conference by an all member vote.
In the absence of official structures, a Conference Organising Committee had developed with representation from what became known as ‘proto-branches’. Without this it was unlikely that Conference would have happened, given the lack of cooperation and support from the central party HQ. This committee organised the conference and was then charged by Conference with the task of setting up an election for a Scottish Executive and to facilitate the ability of regions to decide whether to contest the Scottish parliament elections this May.
Unfortunately, none of this happened because of the obstacles that were increasingly being placed on party activists by the central leadership. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the possibility of developing a grassroots, democratic party was being stifled and obstructed by a London based leadership that was not going to relinquish control to party members.
Parallel to this process, however, was the consolidation of a network of party members who despite their growing disillusionment with Your Party saw the need for the type of organisation that could build roots in working class communities and counter the poisonous politics of the right.
These contrary processes came to a head with the decision of the Interim Scottish Executive Committee to resign as they believed that their role in attempting to help set up democratic structures at branch and national level had run its course. Similarly the elected representative from Scotland to the UK Executive resigned for the same reasons. Such frustrations had seeped into the party at all levels as was highlighted when some 200 members attended a national meeting to consider the future of Your Party in Scotland.
Fortunately, far from being demoralised many Your Party members are now considering how best to advance the socialist case in Scotland. Socialists for Independence have willingly participated in many initiatives aimed at building a party of the left in Scotland. Despite the many negatives from our experiences of the last few months there has been the positives that come from joint working and the forging of a collective determination to create the genuinely grassroots based socialist party for change in Scotland.
Frances Curran
Frances Curran has been active in the socialist movement for over forty years. She is a former MSP and founding member of SFI.