A Your Party event with Zarah in Wigan showed that the movement can succeed

In the echo of Winstanley and his historic calls for the people to organise around a common cause, the old mining town of Wigan shows us yet again what it is to come together, in all our diversity, to take on the ruling class – this time, under the banner of Your Party.

Your Party in Wigan: packed out

Once again, we find ourselves in a class war, where the rich are trying to take us for all we are worth, and then some. Zarah Sultana, Ian Hodson, President of the Bakers Union, Toni Smith, Wigan LGBT+ Group and Danielle Alderson, campaigner for SUTR, led an inspiring and energising evening in Wigan on Friday 21 November, reminding local Your Party members about the real priority of the moment; uniting in the fight against fascism, fueled and financed by the super rich.

When they come for one, no one is safe. Like there is no limit to the greed of billionaires, and now a trillionaire, there is no limit or red line for the blind anger incited by the far-right, to distract us from the enemy that we all must finally confront. Seen last weekend when the far-right attacked a climate march led by children and their families in Manchester.

When we come together, the people win. Winstanley proved that, like the Suffragettes, and countless other civil rights movements in our democratic history.

Your Party is the next step in that democratic progress; devolving power into the hands of our communities. Who, like Zarah Sultana said on the night, live and understand the issues they face every day, and already know how to address them.

Passion

The positive energy in the room for what was possible was buzzing, captured perfectly by Ian Hodson, previously a director of Sunshine Community House, stating:

There’s one thing about the left, if we can make it difficult, then we will, you can count on us to make it as hard as possible to get involved, in something we’re passionate about. But the thing about it is, we need to be involved in it, that’s the reality. We’ve got all these people at the top who think they can tell us how to organise, how to decide how we’re going to be in our branches, in our community.

The problem is, on the left, we’ve got a message for those people. We don’t need their permission, we never have, we never will. We are the working class.. And when we decide to work together, we work together. And when we recognise that our power and strength comes from us showing unity with one another, and standing together. That’s when we realise the changes we can make, as a class, and as a people.

So if Your Party wants to be part of that, and the leadership want to be part of that, then they’re going to have to seek our permission to be able to be involved with that…. We recognise too, that if fascism can make a comeback, so can the politics that delivered full employment, that built council houses, that gave us the NHS, that built the welfare state…and made sure everybody had an opportunity to prosper…. That’s our right, to organise, in a politics of dignity, a politics of respect for one another.

Adding about the hope brought by the Your Party announcement, and the union of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana:

We’re sick to death of a politics that’s failed us. But what it has done is put fascists on the doorsteps of power. We’ve got a Labour Home Secretary telling us we’ve got a divided country, and its being caused by these immigrants. We’re a divided country because they’ve sucked the wealth out of our community and give it to the people at the top.

And that’s why Your Party has to be about us. It can’t be led by anybody in Westminster. Its got to be about us, and we’ve got to make the decisions.

What inspired me to get involved in Your Party, was the recognition that Jeremy Corbyn, was actually stopped from becoming a prime minister, by a Labour Party more intent on making sure that they could put someone in charge to preserve the status quo, and I believe, offers us hope. But what inspired me, in July, was when Zarah Sultana announced that she was going to join Jeremy Corbyn to build a party that served our interests. That’s the past and the future, coming together, right? That’s the reason why 800,000 people decided to join Your Party.

Zarah Sultana speaks

Zarah, in her usual energising spirit, reminded us of some of the corruption we are uniting against, saying:

In case you guys don’t know, whenever an MP comes to another constituency, we actually have to warn them, give them a heads up we’re coming, and so I had to send Lisa Nandy an email. And something tells me she’s not a big fan of mine. In fact, very recently she tried to smear a whole load of us as antisemites because we said racist Israeli football fans shouldn’t be allowed to come to Birmingham and wreak havoc.

Not just that, I said we should boycott all Israeli teams until Israel stops the genocide. We should treat Israel just as we did apartheid South Africa. She didn’t like it. But this is also the same woman who has also taken donations from David Cogan, who is also interestingly now appointed Independent Football regulator, so all the cronyism that we used to talk about with the tories, the Labour Party is just the same.

Your Party can succeed

As Toni Smith said in their warming speech:

You know what, we’re not all born equal. Far from it. Some of us are born into poverty, some are born into wealth. Some are born with disabilities, some are gay, some are trans. Some are just downright weird, like me.

But one thing we all deserve, is the same level of respect. No matter who we are.

That is the heart of Your Party, respect and inclusion, allowing our communities to heal, focus and unite to properly defeat the rise of the far-right in our hometowns.

Featured image via the Canary