THERE’S no doubt that Jeremy and Zarah’s “Your Party” initiative with its 700,000 (and counting) followers has already provided a massive step forward for the whole of our movement in breaking the mould of the system’s parliamentary politics — what Lenin referred to as “the best possible political shell for capitalism“ — and opening up new possibilities. Our whole movement has to be engaged in what happens next.

If it really is to aim to become “a party of working-class power,” as Sultana said last week in answer to a question at an over-capacity People’s Assembly onliner, it must be led by working-class organisations — principally, but not only, the unions — not just by individual parliamentary politicians, no matter how left they are. How that working-class organisational leadership could be manifested and made real and effective must come high and early on the agenda.

On the other hand if it is to be “a party of the left” — which may sound similar, but is of course something very different — it will have to have processes (not just good intentions) that will prevent or minimise the destructive factional infighting for control by some left groupings that has characterised previous attempts at “left unity,” which will only assist the state in its inevitable bid to destroy it.

Either way, what of the mass movement of unions, campaigns, parties and communities of which a new political party will be just one — very important — part? It is this mass movement — active every day, week and month of the year in workplaces and across towns and cities, villages and rural areas — that is our real strength. It is the unity and action of this movement — when achieved — that can, in the words of the slogan, “never be defeated.”

That movement is really, in all its internal diversity of organisational forms and specific aims, the only potentially successful defence against the offensive, the onslaught from the ruling class and its state that has already begun and which will grow daily against any perceived threat to their system.

The only way to develop and build a party of a new type that in any way threatens capitalism is at the same time to develop and build the mass movement around it. They are not alternatives. One is not more important than the other.

Absolute unity of purpose and action is the significance and vital nature of a united front — whether it be manifested in a mega picket for the bin workers’ strike, in direct action against genocide, in stopping evictions, in defence of the environment, in fighting poverty ... or on the green benches of the House of Commons.

This movement must set the course for the new party, not vice versa. We must make sure our extraparliamentary movement that we are rebuilding is not “hollowed out” by the excitement, enthusiasm and extreme hard work of building a new party from scratch.

The 700,000 adherents of the new party need to throw themselves into activity in all our communities in a great united front against austerity, poverty, fascism and war — and certainly not just wait and hope that the party will do it for them.