The severing of the link between the GL CEC members and the GLAC is not necessarily a bad thing. The minority CEC members do need support, they do need a member body in their regions to report to. So let's create them region by region, both as support groups for the committee members and nodes in a national member led network. It will be hard for the CEC majority to challenge such an apparatus and claim they are building, in the latest formulation I've seen, "a really inclusive organisation, with a hybrid structure, between a top down and bottom up."
The proposal for Grassroots Left to create a regional structure for Your Party members has merit, but it needs to be reworked. Bodies whose primary purpose is holding CEC members accountable will face exactly the problem the Advisory Committee faces: the members being held accountable will find reasons not to engage. Accountability works when the body holding it has independent weight. That means regional structures need their own programme of work: branch coordination, political education, solidarity with strikes and campaigns, and building the actual political life of YP in each region, which the central apparatus is conspicuously failing to develop. CEC accountability becomes a byproduct of that activity rather than its purpose. A CEC member who won't show up to a regional structure with active branches and a packed calendar has a different kind of problem than one who won't attend an accountability meeting convened specifically to scrutinise them.
But the more urgent question is what the CEC is about to do. The CEC meeting next weekend is apparently considering a proposal to expel members of the SWP, the AWL, the Socialist Party, TUSC, the CPGB-PCC, the SSP, the Socialist Equality Party, and the Revolutionary Communist Party. This is a ban that the conference already defeated. The membership voted. The CEC is proposing to ignore that vote and proceed anyway.
This is not a new tactic. It is the standard Labour right playbook: lose the conference vote, wait, then implement the policy through the executive as an administrative measure. Corbyn spent years on the receiving end of exactly this manoeuvre. He is now deploying it from the other side. Whatever one thinks of the politics of the organisations on that list, and they vary considerably, the principle is the same one the founding documents insisted on: members decide, not the apparatus.
The expulsion proposal also reveals what the central leadership actually means by building an inclusive organisation. Inclusive, it turns out, means inclusive of everyone who accepts the leadership's authority. The revolutionary left, which provided much of the early organising energy for YP and which the 800,000 sign-ups vastly outnumber, is to be excluded. Not because these organisations stand against YP at elections. Because they represent an organised political presence the leadership cannot control.
Regional structures that exist only to manage the factional fallout from this will not survive it. They need to be the thing the centre is refusing to build: a genuinely plural, politically active left inside YP, with branches that do things, with members who have reasons to stay beyond loyalty to their CEC representative. That is both the answer to the consolidation and the only structure worth defending when the expulsions come.
I didn't mean GL to set up a regional network, and I'd focus more on support for the minority CEC members than be concerned about their acountability. The issue is how to make the the whole CEC accountable to the party members, not the individual CEC members. The individuals need an organic connection and dialogue with members in their region. Accountability can be developed by dialogue.
The likely expulsions will only further clarify the kind of party which is being built, but I'd say it renders your last para little short sighted. We've got to build as you say but in a way that means active co-operation with the banned groups is a part of the way local branches work. The aim must remain a mass movement with socialism at its core. Even if as looks likely YP fails to be more than a parliament focused node in the network. An SP member the other day said to me "we know we're not it" and neither is YP going to be it, so we keep on working towards it by all means available.
What puts them in such a vital position? In my part of the country there are plenty of local groups who have no particular attachment to GL, and have been networking since last summer. Remember indy candidates received the most endorsements in the first stage of the election.
Grassroots Left can take the initiative to organise regional networks because it is a cross-regional organisation of YP members that can communicate independently of the party's structures. Official structures can be suppressed by the national office. Take, for example, the legal and disciplinary threats which last week forced the Interim Scottish Executive Committee to remove email sign-ups and that direct line of communication with members.
The severing of the link between the GL CEC members and the GLAC is not necessarily a bad thing. The minority CEC members do need support, they do need a member body in their regions to report to. So let's create them region by region, both as support groups for the committee members and nodes in a national member led network. It will be hard for the CEC majority to challenge such an apparatus and claim they are building, in the latest formulation I've seen, "a really inclusive organisation, with a hybrid structure, between a top down and bottom up."
The proposal for Grassroots Left to create a regional structure for Your Party members has merit, but it needs to be reworked. Bodies whose primary purpose is holding CEC members accountable will face exactly the problem the Advisory Committee faces: the members being held accountable will find reasons not to engage. Accountability works when the body holding it has independent weight. That means regional structures need their own programme of work: branch coordination, political education, solidarity with strikes and campaigns, and building the actual political life of YP in each region, which the central apparatus is conspicuously failing to develop. CEC accountability becomes a byproduct of that activity rather than its purpose. A CEC member who won't show up to a regional structure with active branches and a packed calendar has a different kind of problem than one who won't attend an accountability meeting convened specifically to scrutinise them.
But the more urgent question is what the CEC is about to do. The CEC meeting next weekend is apparently considering a proposal to expel members of the SWP, the AWL, the Socialist Party, TUSC, the CPGB-PCC, the SSP, the Socialist Equality Party, and the Revolutionary Communist Party. This is a ban that the conference already defeated. The membership voted. The CEC is proposing to ignore that vote and proceed anyway.
This is not a new tactic. It is the standard Labour right playbook: lose the conference vote, wait, then implement the policy through the executive as an administrative measure. Corbyn spent years on the receiving end of exactly this manoeuvre. He is now deploying it from the other side. Whatever one thinks of the politics of the organisations on that list, and they vary considerably, the principle is the same one the founding documents insisted on: members decide, not the apparatus.
The expulsion proposal also reveals what the central leadership actually means by building an inclusive organisation. Inclusive, it turns out, means inclusive of everyone who accepts the leadership's authority. The revolutionary left, which provided much of the early organising energy for YP and which the 800,000 sign-ups vastly outnumber, is to be excluded. Not because these organisations stand against YP at elections. Because they represent an organised political presence the leadership cannot control.
Regional structures that exist only to manage the factional fallout from this will not survive it. They need to be the thing the centre is refusing to build: a genuinely plural, politically active left inside YP, with branches that do things, with members who have reasons to stay beyond loyalty to their CEC representative. That is both the answer to the consolidation and the only structure worth defending when the expulsions come.
I didn't mean GL to set up a regional network, and I'd focus more on support for the minority CEC members than be concerned about their acountability. The issue is how to make the the whole CEC accountable to the party members, not the individual CEC members. The individuals need an organic connection and dialogue with members in their region. Accountability can be developed by dialogue.
The likely expulsions will only further clarify the kind of party which is being built, but I'd say it renders your last para little short sighted. We've got to build as you say but in a way that means active co-operation with the banned groups is a part of the way local branches work. The aim must remain a mass movement with socialism at its core. Even if as looks likely YP fails to be more than a parliament focused node in the network. An SP member the other day said to me "we know we're not it" and neither is YP going to be it, so we keep on working towards it by all means available.
If GL doesn't create this network, then who will?
What puts them in such a vital position? In my part of the country there are plenty of local groups who have no particular attachment to GL, and have been networking since last summer. Remember indy candidates received the most endorsements in the first stage of the election.
Grassroots Left can take the initiative to organise regional networks because it is a cross-regional organisation of YP members that can communicate independently of the party's structures. Official structures can be suppressed by the national office. Take, for example, the legal and disciplinary threats which last week forced the Interim Scottish Executive Committee to remove email sign-ups and that direct line of communication with members.
not clear which GL members are withdrawing from the GL committee
I don't think any are withdrawing from the committee. Were they to do so, the remainders could call a meeting.