Plan C Brighton

On the proposed ownership of all Your Party data and money by ‘Our Party’ Comrades would do well to beware the now disclosed team behind the new so called 'Our Party' faction. Its declaration was drafted by an incredibly narrow faction of people who are all closely politically aligned and are not open about their common interlocks on the Our Party website. The names were given in an update to the website on 22 September at 9pm (after the original message was posted on the 19th) as follows: "This petition was initiated by activists from different left movements, co-authoring in a personal capacity. We are trade unionists, housing organisers, Palestine and trans activists, including". I give the names and the affiliations listed in the table below together with information about their affiliations which is missing: There is much to be said about this network, but I confine myself to remarking on its political narrowness and close interconnections of almost all of them. A group called “Your Party Connections” held a meeting on the evening of Monday 22 September in London (and online) with more than forty-five attendees. According to the minutes of the meeting Josh Virashami had recently resigned from his role on the Your Party “executive team” (and also his role in the technical support committee I would guess. He was one of only two people reportedly on both Committees.) The minutes state he resigned “as of two days prior” which would be Saturday 20th. We can note that this was a day after the Our Party statement that he co-authored was posted online. Here is what he said about why he left the executive team (from the minutes): *When asked why he was no longer on the executive, JV described a "complicated working environment". He claimed that he would do a lot of work, get things ready, and then a "catastrophe" would occur, setting everything back. This repeating dynamic was personally difficult, especially as he was working on a **voluntary basis** because the MPs "didn't want to pay anybody". *JV stated that delivering the scale of the assemblies (20 events, 20-45k attendees, 12k trained people) required a staff member or project manager, but this resource "wasn't available". He felt the situation was "increasingly untenable". *He noted that he and others were deeply hurt by events in the previous week, leading to the launch of the *Our Party* initiative as an intervention. Later in the meeting Josh Virashami and Jan Baykara, another co-author of the Our Party proposal, explained the basis for their activities. We should note that Baykara has a most interesting background, being *a leading member of the revolutionary socialist organisation RS21 in Glasgow; *a founder (in 2018) and director of Common Knowledge, based in London at Pelican House which works with a host of “left” groups including the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (which has funded Novara Media, MI6 agent Paul Mason, the Peace and Justice Project, The World Transformed and Progressive International of which James Schneider is comms chief), The World Transformed, London Renters Union and the Green New Deal Rising, all of which are based in Pelican House. They have also worked for Progressive International the groups which, as we have already noted, has James Schneider as its comms chief. *A member of Momentum’s digital team in the 2019 General Election; *A former reservist in British military intelligence (according to his own LinkedIn page) until March 2017 (Screengrabs below). Here is the section of the minutes setting out the purpose of the Our Party initiative: *Context/Need The proposal is a direct response to the frustration, the **"intractable conflict"** between key leaders (Corbyn and Sultana), and the lack of transparency, creating a "deadlock". *Nature of the Proposal: JV emphasized it is **not a coup**. It is an **"intervention"** and an **"invitation to accept some support"** to "lever" the party out of its current stuck position. After criticism from the meeting the minutes record that: “Jan Baykara clarified that the proposal aimed to establish anchor custodians/trustees who could gather information (money, data, logins) and be responsive and accountable to the movement.” The idea that this is not a coup is of course undermined by the misleading presentation of the co-authors of the statement about their own connections. In addition the narrative account suggesting that the Our Party initiative was something forced on the croup reluctantly is somewhat undermined by the information posted online by Crispin Flintoff that the website address (ourparty.org.uk) was registered on 21 August this year, a month prior to the supposedly rushed launch. The references to the difficulties of putting on assemblies for Your Party are worth noting again especially as there appears to be another key network involved. One of the Our Party network is Archie Woodrow, an RS21 member who has written a very detailed account of the various factions and committees in the Your Party story. He writes: "The network of activists around Roger Hallam and groups like Just Stop Oil/Assemble/Youth Demand/Umbrella/Humanity Project/Extinction Rebellion have been more or less plugged in to the national negotiations for some time." It's worth adding that Insulate Britain, and Robin Hood, are another two of the groups under this ‘Umbrella’ - the name adopted by Hallam for his family of projects. All have pioneered tactics which seem calculated to undermine the building of united and effective movements for change. It’s worth noting in passing here that James Schneider’s reported favourite name for Your Party is Robin Hood. People involved in this Our Party/Assemble network held a secretive 'Your Party' meeting last night (23 September) in Bethnal Green, London with over 80 attendees, at which Hallam spoke. Assemble were involved in the organisation as were a number of those associated with the Our Party initiative including RS21, which, as we have seen, is closely integrated into the Our Party network. Our Party is presenting itself as a grass roots initiative as proposing a new grouping: ‘not aligned with either of the current factions at the top of Your Party and selected from the bodies of grassroots organisations’. The difficulty with this position is that the people involved are in fact aligned with one part at least of one of the key factions. The connection is visible if one goes back to Just Stop Oil and looks at who was involved in their activities from the Corbyn Faction. And the answer is, James Schneider. Woodrow supports this view when he concludes that James Schneider has “apparently being a key liaison facilitating this relationship” with Hallam. Buyer beware!