What’s in a name? The name of ‘your party’ a few historical perspectives
Those many hundreds of thousands who have signed up for Your Party led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn received an e-mail a few days asking for suggestions for a name for the organisation.
The world’s first working class party, the National Charter Association, was formed in Manchester in July 1840. The name was unproblematic. No one said, yeah, but which charter do you mean? It referred to the six points of the People’s Charter demanding the vote.
After the demise of the Chartists by the early 1860s there was a break before new working class parties appeared. The Reform League in the 1860s was not an earlier version of Faragism but trade unionists and middle class radicals determined to win the extension of the vote the Chartists had not. They, in part, succeeded in 1867. The use of the term ‘League’ is worth noting. It appeared again from around 1870 with the Land and Labour League, supported to an extent by Marx and Engels, that prefigured the Bolshevik link between peasants and workers (The LLL were not early Bolsheviks btw)
With the rise of new working class unions in the 1880s the Democratic Federation morphed into the Social Democratic Federation, a Marxist organisation, which did not meet with the approval of Engels. The name suggested two new ideas ‘social-democratic’ and ‘federation’.
In 1893 the Independent Labour Party was formed in Bradford. Its founding conference made deliberate choices. It was not a federation but a national party and it used the name ‘labour’ not socialist.
The Labour Party was the creation of the Webbs 1918 Constitution. Clause 4 is well known but in terms of name and organisation Clause 1 is key.
The First World War provoked a further reconfiguration of left politics not least on the key issue of imperialism. In 1920 the Communist Party of GB was formed, and following on a significant number of names for left-wing campaigns and structures.
Beyond this I note People’s Party has some popularity. Raymond Williams in Keywords notes a late nineteenth century US radical party of this name which had union links. The name however is widely used.
We are 185 years on from the formation of the NCA in Manchester (in a pub of course though temperance advocates complained) and its very unlikely that any name thought of hasn’t already been used, and often not always in the most positive way. A key point for organisers for Your Party given that one of the aims is to stand in elections is to find a name that the Electoral Commission will agree (i.e not already existing).
Personally I have a different criteria, one expressed by Tom Maguire a Leeds trade unionist who played a role in the founding of the ILP. He wrote to Edward Carpenter in November 1882: This new party lifts its head all over the North. It has caught the people as I imagine the Chartists did. And it is of the people-such will be the secret of its success
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