With Labour facing its biggest splits and turmoil for two decades, around 200 people took part in the No Ceasefire, No Vote conference in London on Saturday. 

　　The conference aimed to support those who have broken from Labour over its refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The repeated refrain was no vote for those who support genocide, no vote for those who are complicit in the murders in Gaza.

　　At the centre of the day were councillors who had left Labour. Councillors from Stroud, Liverpool, Sheffield, Blackburn, Pendle, Bolton, Burnley, Haringey, Newham, Kensington and Chelsea, Oxford, Bristol, Hastings, Norwich, Nottingham, Worthing, Merton, Newcastle, Kirklees and Gedling backed the event.

　　Former Labour members spoke powerfully about their anger at Keir Starmer, their anguish over leaving Labour and their sense of hope now.

　　Solma Ahmed from Essex is a former leading member of the Labour left group Momentum and a former Labour Party Women’s Committee member. She spoke about how she “got her freedom back” by leaving Labour.

　　Jo Lawson, a Kirklees Community Independent councillor from West Yorkshire, said, “Gaza was the final straw. For a long time, I have had to justify the unjustifiable.”

　　Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini, an independent councillor from Oxford, said she had been a Labour councillor since 2018 but left at the end of October last year.

　　Mary Mason, a Haringey Independent Socialist councillor from north London, spoke about campaigning for British troops out of Ireland and over many other issues in the 1970s. She later joined Labour and became a councillor in 2022.

　　But she faced systematic pressure from the right wing and had left the party over its support for genocide. The conference came immediately after George Galloway’s triumph in the Rochdale by-election, a political earthquake. 

　　Many of those present agreed with Andrew Burgin who opened the day. He said there were “many controversies” with Galloway but the Rochdale result was “a vote for Gaza and a rebuke to the mainstream parties and their support for genocide”. 

　　Rochdale has shaken Starmer and Sunak. But the politics of Galloway and his party can’t lead the movement forward. 

　　For a significant section of Labour members, the support for Israel has been as devastating as Labour’s war on Iraq in 2003 was for an earlier generation. And some at the conference had left over Iraq, rejoined when Corbyn was leader, and had now left again.

　　The gathering was seen as the beginning, with many issues to be debated. Some want a new Labour-type party with a manifesto similar to Corbyn’s in 2017. Others are debating new forms of organisation.

　　One former Labour councillor, who did not want to be named, told Socialist Worker, I’m rethinking whether councils and parliament is the way forward. I am inspired much more by the Palestine marches, Just Stop Oil and women standing up to police violence. 

　　“Perhaps we need to ask what our definition of success looks like. If you think we’re going to get 20 MPs we might be disappointed. If we say we will build a new movement, that’s more possible.”

　　It’s very welcome these discussions are taking place. They show the potential for a much more serious challenge to Labour. Socialist Worker will support credible left candidates. 

　　The source of a genuine political break is the great movement for Palestine, and mobilisation in the streets remains crucial. 

　　As Sean Vernell, a UCU union member said, “We need to keep building for the workplace day of action on 8 March and the national demonstration the next day. That will provide the basis for political alternatives to Labour, and help to build our networks.”

　　Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, are revolted by Starmer and looking for an alternative. People on the streets have transformed British politics since 7 October. 

　　Lindsey German, Stop The War Coalition convenor, said she would personally support the sort of people represented in the room in elections. But rightly she had said earlier, “We must not say we’ve done the movement, now we can move on to elections. We can only talk about elections because of the movement.” 

　　This is a tipping point politically. There is repression, racism and capitalist class war from the Tories—much of it supported by Labour. But there are also many defiant and determined people who are fighting back and asking big political questions, including about anti-imperialism and socialism.

　　Nostalgia for Corbyn is not enough. We need a political break from Labourism, a politics centred on parliament, looking to change within the system and giving priority to electoral calculation. 

　　Several speakers at the conference spoke about doing both elections and the movement. But which will discipline the other? Under Corbyn, for example, the Labour left prioritised manoeuvres inside parliament and elections over the fightback on the streets, workplaces and campuses. 

　　The resistance on the streets and the workplaces must be the priority. The most exciting and inspiring part of the conference was people moving beyond mainstream politics and being inspired by action.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  Wei Xiaoxue

　　From:https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/no-ceasefire-no-vote-conference-debates-left-alternatives-to-Labour/2024-3-2）