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Palestine 36 – Film Review

Annemarie Jacir’s new film is not just a history lesson. By explaining Palestinians’ fight against British colonialism, it helps us understand apartheid Israel


18/04/2026

We start with footage of Palestine in the 1930s. Jerusalem, Jaffa, and other towns and cities are teeming with life. We see market traders, and men herding goats and camels. But this is not some rural hinterland. We also see dockers working in the ports. The footage—some old sepia archive shots, some made for this film—helps disprove the myth that Palestine pre-1948 was either a desert or a land without a people. Anyone who claims otherwise is either mistaken or deploying mischievous propaganda.

Cut to a train arriving in Jerusalem station. News vendors call out familiar headlines: “Tensions in Nablus!”, “British crack down hard on protests!” A young man, Yusuf, arrives from the village of Al-Basam. Almost immediately, armed British troops demand to see his papers. Yusuf heads towards a large house where he, and we, first meet Kholoud—a bustling woman wearing a fez and a man’s suit, who is busy bashing the keys of an old typewriter.

Kholoud is an Oxford-educated journalist. She writes for the newspaper owned and edited by her husband Amir, but she has to use a man’s name: Ahmed Canaani. She asks Yusuf what people are saying in the villages. Unrest is brewing throughout Palestine, which is something that inspires Kholoud. Amir is wealthy, and seems less radical than his wife (later he will tell her: “I adore you even if we don’t agree on everything”). He gives Yusuf a job as his chauffeur and tells him to clean the car.

We move to Ramallah to an open air event for which Amir, Kholoud, and their circle have dressed up. This is the launch party for the Palestine Broadcasting Service, the second national radio station in the Arab world, after Cairo. High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope is particularly proud of the project, which he presumably sees as his way of bringing civilisation to the heathen natives. After announcing that “a new page in history is written today,” Wauchope invites an Orthodox rabbi and an imam to make speeches. 

The Brits do not come out of Palestine 36 looking well—and rightly so. Wauchope, as played by Jeremy Irons, is reminiscent of Peter Cook’s portrayal of Harold Macmillan in Beyond the Fringe. He is an aristocrat who is unable to come to terms with the decline of the British Empire. He patronises the locals, telling them that “together we can create a united and peaceful Holy Land.” It is not that Wauchope looks down on Palestinians. As they are not Englishmen, he is barely aware of their existence.

Captain Orde Wingate, in contrast, belongs to a new, rising class. He is a racist who despises Palestinians. He has learned enough words of Arabic to be able to give them orders, but is just as likely to simply shoot them dead. Wauchope may represent the old way of running things, but the region will be increasingly run by the ideas propagated by people like Wingate. Wingate’s troops order Palestinians to leave their villages, and then blow up their homes, whether they have left or not.

The third major British character is Thomas Hopkins, Wauchope’s private secretary. Hopkins is a liberal who, to Wingate’s consternation, has immersed himself in Arab culture. His closeness to the Palestinians means that he acts as the voice of dissent inside meetings. At one stage, he points out: “We’ve shut down every Arab printing press, we’ve banned newspapers, censored their mail, and intercepted their telephone calls, we’ve set up check posts and curfews, we’ve even taken away their bloody livestock.”

Yet while Hopkins is able to articulate dissent, he is unable to effect change. The repression that he describes in his outburst is not the result of bad decisions but is intrinsic to the British colonial project. By the end of the film, Hopkins has given up his post and is ready to return home, defeated. When he tells his friend Kholoud about his decision to quit Palestine, she understands, but tells him that as a Palestinian she does not have that option. Unlike him, she says: “I’m not a tourist.”

Palestine 36 is an indictment of the British occupation of Palestine and shows how so many of today’s problems are simply a continuation of what has been going on for 90 years and more. Following a “terrorist” attack, occupants of a neighbouring village face collective punishment, checkpoints are used to restrict movement and intimidate civilians, flags are banned, and walls are built to separate and imprison people. The Israelis may have intensified this sort of repression, but much of it was started by the Brits.

But this is not just a film about evil British occupiers. Primarily it is about the Palestinian population, how they resisted and how they were driven to resist. Early on, we meet dockers who are mainly interested in making enough money to survive. Then, promised overtime payments are not paid. A barrel which they are hauling onshore is dropped, and it opens to reveal guns to be used against the Palestinian population. Not everyone starts the film as a radical, but they are radicalised by their unbearable experiences.

We next hear that a general strike has been called. The angry dockers join the strike. In a largely flawless film, I think the general strike could have been handled better. It rumbles along in the background, and then, after several months, it is called off. We don’t really learn why, nor are we shown the nature of the strike. Is it a mass withdrawal of labour aimed at shutting down the occupation’s economy, or is it just business men not turning up to work? In reality it was a bit of both, but I’d have liked to see more here.

Class differences—and how they affect people’s relation to the resistance—are considered, though. While dockers lose their jobs and farmers their homes and land, well-heeled community leaders hold discussions about how they can collaborate with the Brits. Amir, the newspaper editor, opposes the general strike and starts running a column by a fictitious Palestinian writer. It turns out these articles are written by a Zionist group set up for this purpose. All Palestinians suffer from colonialism, but they do not suffer equally.

The story is told from many perspectives—maybe too many for the audience to remain on top of things. Father Broulos is an Orthodox priest who preaches stoicism instead of resistance. Broulos is one of the many characters who tries—and fails—to find a middle way out of the conflict. His very existence confuses the Brits, who are used to categorising and demonising the Palestinians as Muslim terrorists (little change here). When a Christian resistance group produces a flag with a cross on it, the confusion deepens.

Palestinian resistance does not just belong to the men. We are also told the stories of women and girls, not least Kholoud’s angry resistance. There is a scene on a bus where British soldiers spend so much time harassing the male passengers that the women are able to hide the weapons which someone had brought onto the bus. We also spend some time with the villager Rabab, who lives with her parents and daughter Afra. Both Afra and Rabab have obviously inherited grandmother Hanan’s resilience.

The film keeps coming back to Yusuf, as he moves between the country and the city. At first, Yusuf is not really interested in politics, but as things develop, and his family is directly affected, he feels himself drawn into the resistance. But Amir tries to win Yusuf for the Muslim Association, which has been set up by the Zionist Commission to undermine Palestinian resistance. The newspaper editor gives his poor dogsbody money to buy a suit. It looks like Yusuf will play a counter-revolutionary role until real life intervenes.

Yusuf’s trajectory is reflected by that of the docker Khalid, who was equally unpolitical until his lack of overtime payments prompted the workplace dispute at the beginning of the film. Khalid’s political development is quicker than Yusuf’s, and it is not long before he is a leading resistance fighter, boarding trains and collecting solidarity payments from passengers. What might sound like extortion is actually a display of how much support Palestinian guerillas had in the wider population.

As the film develops, Palestinians’ hopes of justice disappear. The Peel commission announces partition in which a Palestinian state is denied and over half of Palestinian land is taken away. Palestinian newspapers are closed down and their printing press destroyed. British officials like Hopkins, who had offered Palestinians at least verbal support, start to recognise their own impotence. The various characters who had attempted to look at both sides of the conflict are forced to make a choice. 

Some critics have complained that the Jewish settlers barely appear in this film, but this is not their story. Settlers attack villagers and burn down property, but they are not the main danger to the Palestinians—for the moment at least. This film is set in 1936 and 1937, when Palestinians had much more to fear from British colonialism than the not-yet-Israelis. There is a certain radicalism in this point of view, which sees that the main enemy of the Palestinians is not the Israeli leaders, but their Western imperialist backers.

Annemarie Jacir wrote a Director’s Statement in which she said: “Palestine 36 is a period film, but I never conceived it as something of the past. It has always been current, relevant and alive. Sometimes critical, never nostalgic, always searching. Set in a time I never lived, Palestine 36 is deeply personal. We do not choose the circumstances of our lives, we do not choose war or the million painful moments we learn to survive. Sometimes we choose how we react to them.”

There is a common recent statement: “it didn’t start on October 7th”. This is often taken to mean that the suppression of Palestinian rights started with the Nakba in 1948. Palestine 36 shows how it didn’t start in 1948 either. British interference in 1936 Palestine enabled the expulsion and murder which followed. While colonies in Africa and Asia were able to overthrow their imperial masters, British (and later US-American) imperialism were able to retain a subject state in this strategically important oil region.

Two dedications are hidden in the film’s end credits. The first says: “For our people in Gaza in the years the world failed you”; the second: “no olive oil was spilled in the making of this film”. This combination of statements is a telling sign of director Jacir’s ability to combine radical politics with good humour. Among the last voices that we hear are chants in Arabic: “Down with colonialism” and “Revolution.” As these chants become popular once more, they have found their expression in this superb film.

Film festivals after the Gaza Genocide

From Berlin to İstanbul, cinema faces new forms of oppression


17/04/2026

In the past, film festivals were more than just screenings; they were also political events. Today, we are talking about different things when discussing cinema or participating in a festival. At the 2026 Berlinale, jury president Wim Wenders drew criticism after saying ‘we have to stay out of politics’ when asked about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Two prize-winning Turkish films at this year’s Berlinale have also become flashpoints for political debates. İlker Çatak’s Yellow Letters and Emin Alper’s Salvation have entered ongoing discussions about the intensifying pressures of state repression, censorship, and nationalist politics shaping Germany’s and Türkiye’s cultural spheres.

The consequences of cutting political meaning out of festival spaces are now impossible to ignore. In 2024, Human Rights Watch announced it was closing its film festival after 35 years as part of a wider restructuring due to financial constraints. This was more than an institutional loss: it exposed the vulnerability of liberal human-rights culture under financial pressure. The 45th Istanbul Film Festival offers a similar case: the Nerdesin Aşkım? curated queer selection, previously excluded on technical grounds, with promises of reinstatement in 2026, was again absent from the program. Filmmakers and cultural workers described the omission as censorship and linked it to the broader climate of anti-LGBTQ+ repression in Türkiye.

This should compel us to ask what role these spaces actually play. Film screenings can bring people together as active participants in communal spaces. This makes cinema a counter-hegemonic political engagement for social change, and a means to share ideas and build solidarity. Many such festivals still exist. However, with the rise of neoliberal culture, they increasingly work within an environment shaped by stakeholders, non-governmental organization (NGO) agendas, and broader market logics; therefore, they function not only as sites of resistance but also as part of the expanding service economy. In this sense, the main question is not whether movies can be political, but how places that support film culture are evolving today.

What makes a film festival radical?

The phrase ‘radical film festival’ seems contradictory, since mainstream festivals often present themselves as impartial spaces rather than political entities. This is the reason why festival culture often mixes political aspiration with competition for legitimacy. Filmmakers, funding bodies, NGOs, critics, journalists, scholars, and audiences all compete for legitimacy and appearance, even when they share similar ideological stances. Consequently, it is often unclear what ‘radical’ refers to, and who gets to define it. This feeling often leads to destructive, futile debates. When the stakes feel high and the boundaries are blurry, people tend to defend their own position or just try to prove themselves right rather than seek real solutions.

Instead of just saying that festivals are less radical, we could find out how digital technologies affect their operational capacity to support resistance. In the age of platform capitalism, the question is what happens when access to cinema depends on corporate infrastructures. Online platforms do not simply reproduce inequality; they also shape visibility, restrict circulation, and shape who sees what, where, and when. The central question, then, is this: how do the meanings of resistance and the value of film exhibition change when radical film cultures spread through festival circuits and digital technologies?

A grassroots or radical festival is defined less by branding, like a mainstream one, than by structure: collective organization, volunteer-led, precarious resources, and explicit political commitments. These festivals focus on films and activities that resist dominant ideas, give space to oppressed voices, and encourage people to discuss and come together by making it possible to create a proletarian public sphere. Their programming and organizational practice are shaped around anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, decolonial, feminist, queer, ecological, labor, or anti-war politics. At the same time, another perspective suggests that being radical in the festival circuit should be understood not only as a matter of thematic programming but also as a question of infrastructural organisation or the politics of space.

From Third Cinema to NGO liberalism

To understand the political shift mentioned at the beginning, it is necessary to recall that film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, and the Berlinale already functioned as soft-power arenas within Cold War politics. At the same time, they were shaped by anti-imperialist struggles, the liberation of oppressed nations and women, and student protests/labor strikes. It is also important to remember that the institution of the film festival was not born as an ‘impartial’ cultural experience: the Venice Film Festival, the world’s oldest, was founded in 1932 under Mussolini’s fascist regime as a tool of nationalist sentiment, alongside the broader festivals that came after. These were largely a product of Eurocentric, colonial assumptions about which cinema deserved legitimacy.

We should also remember the concept of the three types of cinema and of ‘cine‐acción’ (film event), which flourished in the manifesto of Third Cinema by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. Rejecting Hollywood cinema (First Cinema) and European auteur cinema (Second Cinema), and instead promoting a militant cinema that supported anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist liberation movements, the Third Cinema was a true turning point in allowing spectators to become ‘actors’ in the political process. Attending a screening of militant cinema was a political act in itself, as it moved beyond borders to create new ways of anti-imperialist struggle.

The closure of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and the removal of queer cinema from the Istanbul Film Festival are not singular events but the endpoint of a longer shift. This change can be seen as shifting from creating ‘manageable politics’ to ‘disappearance of politics’ in mainstream film festivals. At the same time, it would be too simple to suggest that truly radical work is now entirely excluded or in collapse. There are notable examples in the life of radical film culture that we need to focus on more: many festival programs showcase movies that take hard stances against the ruling class, promote social justice, or foster dynamic interactions that can result in real social change.

Platforms, access, and justifiable politics

Of course, this kind of organization comes with structural and financial costs that cannot be ignored, especially when moving into online media environments brings new costs and compromises. However, festival screenings are embedded in collective intellectual exercise, with people watching films together and often discussing them afterward. Yet such settings (especially when digital and theatrical practices coexisted) were often socially constrained, shaping access to film festivals by economic precarity and class distinctions. Digital technologies do not mean a simple victory of streaming over cinema; instead, they mean that new/hybrid forms of settlement will replace the decline of routine moviegoing. Film festivals, long understood as privileged sites of classical cinephilia, are being restructured by smartphones, apps, social media, and other forms of connected viewing.

Digital technologies have also generated so-called alternative media. The slippery term ‘alternative’ deserves suspicion as much as celebration. We should remember that ‘alternative’ often functions as a softened substitute for ‘radical’ within the broader media ecosystem. It softens the political face of genuine dissent, making it more acceptable to institutional gatekeepers, corporate interests, and liberal discourse without threatening the system. To call something ‘alternative,’ therefore, is to justify and separate activism from radicalism, perpetuating ruling-class market ideology by offering society a myth rather than real resistance to capitalism.

What remains possible?

In an era of escalating capitalist exploitation and colonial oppression, a rising imperialist warfare machine, and the rapid spread of fascist, nationalist, and alt-right ideas through online media, even watching a radical film, whether on a laptop or in a physical venue, can feel politically isolating. This contemporary media experience is not the same as traditional censorship; radical themes in movies can still be produced, screened, and watched. What has changed is how people engage with them and how they perceive them.

Pressures are real, but they don’t exhaust the openings for a radical struggle. Even though problems exist, isn’t it still too early to say that film festivals can no longer be spaces of resistance? Foreclosing all possibilities and directly humiliating the festival experience can never be an option for a true radical film culture.

The film festival ecosystem is best understood as contradictory rather than fixed: it contains both fragile spaces of solidarity and the pressures of ruling class power. Film festivals are neither completely assimilated nor fully autonomous events. They organize within contradictions that reveal broader transformations in global capitalism, film circulation, and media culture. Their political effectiveness depends on how programmers, filmmakers, and audiences deal with tensions. In an era of collapsing liberal morality and post-Covid precarity, film cultures endure as fragile yet necessary laboratories where cinema can still serve as a catalyst for collective resistance and change.

“Bloody unacceptable is what it is”

A look at the international response to atrocities in Sudan ahead of the conference in Berlin on the third anniversary of the war


16/04/2026

Yesterday the war in Sudan entered its fourth year. While the satellite images of the blood spilled during the El-Fasher massacre, that saw up to 10,000 people killed by the RSF, caused a momentary flurry of media attention, the world’s most devastating war was quick to be re-hidden among the chaos of things.

It is often termed the forgotten war, as though one could simply forget the at least 150,000 killed, 14 million displaced, 11,000 missing and 33 million people in need of assistance. 

“Bloody unacceptable is what it is. Unacceptable that the world focuses on other crises and leans into it entirely to find solutions: why not here?” Denise Brown, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Sudan, decried the paltry international response to the deepening crisis.

Yesterday, on the anniversary of the start of the war, the Third International Sudan Conference, organised by Germany, France, the UK, the USA, the African Union and the European Union, took place in Berlin. So far the scale of the crisis has continued to be underrepresented in the media as well as in diplomatic efforts, while the inclusion of Sudanese voices in discussions has been largely neglected.

While the magnitude of the devastation in Sudan is unquestionable, the search for solutions for ending the war remain elusive. “How about focusing on finding a solution to end the war?” asks Denise Brown.

Following the international failure to seek and pursue concrete solutions to ending the war, Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair and founding director of Confluence Advisory Hend Kheiralla were sceptical of the conference. Unless the war is reframed as an attack on civilians aimed at rolling back gains made during the 2019 revolution, rather than a war between two generals, the conference ‘will remain an exercise in optics and will not be a genuine pathway to peace.’

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Hemedti aim to erase all hope of a civilian led government. Yet the Sudan conferences held in London and Paris in the last two years appeared to miss the point when they excluded all Sudanese representatives from the conference, from both the SAF and RSF, as well as civilian representatives. This resulted, unsurprisingly, in uninspiring diplomatic outcomes following disagreements between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; all of whom stake a claim in the region.

Frequently misrepresented as a civil war, the war in Sudan is rooted in colonialism and hinges on the expropriation of its natural resources by government elites and international actors. Sudan’s main exports amounted to $5.09bn in 2023 and include crude oil, gold, animal products, oilseeds and gum arabic. 

Despite Sudan’s wealth in natural resources, the extreme inequality caused by the ousted Omar Al-Bashir, alongside crony capitalism and systemic corruption, kept entire regions in poverty, eventually leading to the 2019 revolution and Al-Bashir’s downfall. The subsequent international inaction failed to secure the civilian government Sudan so desperately needs.

Meanwhile, three years into the war that has cost millions of Sudanese civilians their lives and loved-ones, including many in the Mediterranean Sea or Greek prisons, inaction and hypocrisy has continued to dominate the international response to Sudan’s worsening prospects.

“The true scandal is not a failure of international peacemaking, but the sustaining and escalation of this war by outside interests,” writes the Guardian. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the SAF’s key supporters, while it is widely claimed the UAE is funding the RSF, allegations the UAE denies. The Guardian further alleges indirect EU involvement through the supply of weapons, as well as funding meant to curb migration which ended up in the hands of the RSF.

Writing for The German Institute for International and Security affairs, Dr. Gerrit Kurtz bluntly dashes any hopes of any immediate sustainable steps towards peace: “It is important to note that this is not a peace conference. No one should raise their expectations too high. Even a humanitarian truce, which the United States wants to broker with its partners Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, is not currently in sight.”

Unlike the previous Sudan conferences in Paris and London, 40 Sudanese civilian representatives were invited to the conference with the aim of building a new civilian-led political order. This is much to the dismay of the Sudanese government who, along with the leaders of the RSF, were excluded from the talks.

Although a diplomatic breakthrough is unrealistic at this stage, it is hoped that the conference will mobilise awareness and aid for the nation devastated by war and substantially decreased aid pledges in recent years. Aid budget cuts by countries including the USA, the UK and Germany, led to only 40% of the humanitarian aid plan for Sudan being funded in 2025, a shortfall of €2.2 billion.

Humanitarian aid is desperately needed to fund the life-saving work of community kitchens, emergency response rooms and mutual aid groups. But humanitarian efforts are no substitute for holding those responsible for the atrocities accountable and pushing for a lasting peace.

Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch, Mohamed Osman warned: “The conference in Berlin should not be another box-ticking exercise, but instead finally galvanize international momentum to deter further atrocities, advance justice, and protect civilians, including local aid workers. This conference should not have to be remembered as the first day of yet another year of atrocities against civilians in Sudan.”

While the €1.5bn in aid pledged at yesterday’s conference will go some way to fill the gap left by previous cuts, what stands out is the lacklustre approach to accountability, the abandonment of civil society, greed, and the self-serving role of international powers.

Suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement

Call for support of the European Citizens Initiative


15/04/2026

Appeal to organisations and inititiatives

On 21st April 2026, there will be a real possibility for the EU Foreign Affairs Council to suspend the EU-Israel Association agreement. Based on Israel’s continuing violations of international law and human rights—particularly in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon—the EU must suspend the Agreement, if it is to comply with its fundamental values. As organisations and initiatives in civil society, we call on everyone to come together, take a united stand, and support the European Citizens’ Initiative to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement!

Why this moment is decisive

The EU-Israel Association Agreement contains a human rights clause in Article 2, which states that the observance of human rights and democratic principles is an “essential component” of the Agreement.

The reality in Palestine shows a clear violation

  • Israel has killed at least 65,000 people in Gaza since October 2023, including 20,000 children. Israel has consistently violated the ceasefire.
  • Systematic destruction of hospitals, schools and civil infrastructure.
  • Blockade of humanitarian help and the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
  • The expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Destruction of houses, the forced displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population of East Jerusalem, and advancing annexation plans.
  • Passing of a law introducing the death penalty exclusively for Palestinians.
  • Countless violations of international and humanitarian law.

Now Israel is threatening to make Beirut a second Gaza (“Dahiyeh will look like Khan Younis (Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich on 5th March 2026). Carpet bombing of civil infrastructure, expulsion of 1 million Lebanese people so far, and the systematic bombing of South Lebanese villages show that the Israeli state is serious about this threat.

The European Union has the obligation to observe its treaties and to act on violations. The suspension of the Association Agreement is not a radical step, but simply a necessary measure against Israel’s continued violations of human rights.

The European Citizens’ Initiative—Our collective voice

We support the European Citizens’ Initiative Justice for Palestine EU, which calls on the EU Commission to submit a proposal for the full suspension of the Association Agreement of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

With over one million signatures throughout Europe, we have already showed that civil society demands a clear position. To become even stronger, we need the support of more organisations in Germany.

Why Germany plays a special role

Despite serious violations of international law, Germany continues to support Israel. Germany is the second largest provider of weapons to Israel (just between 7th October 2023 and 13th May 2025, Germany sent Israel armaments worth €485,103,796). This continued partnership provides Israel with international legitimation. Wide support for the Initiative from Germany increases the pressure on the decision makers—but so far there have been too few signatures from Germany.

Germany intensifies military and political cooperation with Israel

Germany is an important purchaser of Israeli armaments and security technologies. These are being tested on a population whose country Israel has been brutally and illegally occupying for decades. In January 2026, the German government agreed on a new cyber- and security package with Israel in the area of cyber defence, police and secret services. These areas of the Israeli state are responsible for violations of international law and civil rights.

Germany could stop the suspension of the Association Agreement in the Council

Germany already opposed the suspension of the Agreement and further sanctions on Israel in 2025 and could block suspensions once again, despite its obligation to international law, EU law, and the constitutional requirement to prosecute international crimes.

Other EU countries are already acting decisively

Spain, in particular, is showing a clear commitment to international law and is demanding a suspension of the Association Agreement. Slovenia has also announced support and has already called for a weapons embargo against Israel.

Why this Citizens’ Initiative is important

Legal obligation: The EU must react to violations of Article 2 of the agreement. This is not a political option. It is a legal necessity.

Moral obligation: As organisations from civil society, we have the responsibility to stand up for compliance with international law, even if it is uncomfortable. We also have the duty of political responsibility to insist on the compliance with international law.

Strategic impact: A suspension of the Agreement would noticeably hit Israel’s economy (the EU is the largest trade partner with Israel, with €42.6 billion trade volume in 2025) and could change the behaviour of the government.

Credibility of the EU: the EU cannot claim to uphold human rights while maintaining an Association Agreement with a country which systematically violates them.

Call to Action

  • Share the ECI on your websites, social media and Newsletters, pointing out the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council on 21st April 2026 (Note: we have collected 1 million signatures, but we will carry on collecting until we have 1½ million, as some signatures may be disqualified).
  • Ask your members and networks to sign
  • Follow and repost Justice for Palestine on Instagram: @justiceforpalestineeu
  • Organise panels, protests, and actions
  • Write to German parliamentarians

Further Information

Translated from the original German by Phil Butland

Socialists expelled 

A tragedy for the UK Left


14/04/2026

The crisis engulfing Your Party has moved beyond the level of internal disagreement. What is now unfolding is the effective collapse of a political project that once appeared to carry the hopes of a recomposed left. We can see this with the resignation of the entire interim Scottish executive committee, coming after the wholesale expulsion of organised socialists from the party. That collapse represents a deeper political failure, and one whose consequences are sharpened by the big picture of British politics. At a time when the Far Right is gaining ground, becoming more confident on the streets and more embedded in political discourse, the disintegration of even a partial left alternative is a blow.

When Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana launched Your Party, the conditions appeared favourable. The Labour Party under Keir Starmer had completed its turn away from even limited reformism, leaving a political vacuum to its left. At the same time, the residue of the Corbyn movement still existed in the form of politicised activists, trade union militants and campaigners shaped by years of struggle. There were, and still remain, massive movements against racism and imperialism. There was a real appetite for an organisation that could link parliamentary presence with movements on the ground, providing a political voice. In fact 800,000 people expressed an interest in the new formation.

But from the beginning, the project was shaped less by a clear strategic break from Labour and more by hesitation at the top. Corbyn’s approach was marked by a reluctance to decisively enter the fray and launch the organisation. That hesitation created space for a layer within the organisation—a tight-knit clique oriented toward “respectability” and control—to assert itself. Their perspective was not to build something qualitatively different, but to reconstruct a version of Labour in miniature: a controlled, top-down electoral machine, wary of independent socialist organisation and suspicious of rank-and-file initiative.

Observers in Germany will recognise elements of this dynamic from the long-running tensions inside Die Linke, where leadership manoeuvres have often substituted for political clarity. In both cases, the absence of a decisive break with old organisational habits has fed instability rather than cohesion.

The recent move by the Your Party leadership to ban dual membership with other socialist organisations represents a decisive moment in this trajectory. It is entirely consistent with the outlook of those who sought to shape the party as a Labour Party Mark 2.

This has taken place in the context of intensifying internal conflict. Disputes over leadership authority, organisational control and the basic functioning of the party have increasingly dominated its internal life. What should have been spaces for political discussion and strategic orientation have instead become arenas of procedural struggle. Activists who entered the organisation with the intention of engaging in outward-facing political work have found themselves drawn into internal disputes. The energy that might have been directed toward organising in workplaces, communities and movements has been dissipated in factional battles. Despite this, many activists formed proto branches looking outwards and to forthcoming local elections—few of these were recognised by the central leadership.

These conflicts are not accidental. They flow from the attempt to impose a controlled, quasi-parliamentary model onto a membership that expected something more open and movement-oriented. The party has reproduced many of Labour’s worst features in compressed form.

The effective collapse of Your Party leaves a significant vacuum on the left. The social conditions that produced interest in the project have however not disappeared. Anger at inequality, frustration with mainstream politics and a desire for radical change remain widespread. But without a coherent political form through which these sentiments can be organised, they exist in a fragmented and unstable state. The contrast with Germany is instructive. Despite its problems, and there are many, Die Linke still provides a national political reference point for parts of the left, whereas in Britain fragmentation now runs deeper.

This vacuum is not politically neutral. In the current context, it creates space for the Far Right to advance. Across Britain, far-right forces have been testing their strength with increasing confidence. Street mobilisations have become more frequent, networks more coordinated and narratives more sharply defined. While this differs in form from the electoral rise of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the underlying dynamic is comparable. In both cases, disillusionment with mainstream politics is being reorganised along reactionary lines.

The timing of Your Party’s collapse therefore gives it a tragic character. It is not that the project was never capable of attracting support. It clearly was. But its leadership failed to consolidate that support into a durable and politically coherent organisation. Instead, hesitation at the top and control from within combined to hollow it out.

This collapse highlights the centrality of democracy in socialist organisation, not as an abstract principle but as a practical necessity. An organisation that excludes organised socialists undermines its own capacity to develop, debate and act. Most importantly, it demonstrates the need for a firm orientation toward struggle. Without roots in real movements, organisations become inward-looking and brittle, prone to fragmentation under pressure.

It would be mistaken, however, to conclude that the underlying forces that gave rise to the project have dissipated. Activists continue to organise in workplaces, to mobilise against racism and to build campaigns in their communities. These activities are not dependent on any single party structure. They reflect deeper social processes and a continuing willingness to resist. Similar questions are being posed across Europe about how such activity can be connected to political organisation without being subordinated to it.

The question that now emerges is how these dispersed forms of activity can find political expression. The answer will not come from simply reconstructing the same organisational model under a different name. It will require a more grounded approach, one that connects political organisation directly to ongoing struggles and that builds from those foundations outward.

Your Party, as a project capable of shaping events, is finished, but the conditions that produced it remain, and in some respects have intensified.

In a period marked by crisis, instability and the advance of reactionary forces, the absence of a coherent, left alternative is not simply a disappointment. It is a problem with real consequences.

The need for a socialist alternative has not diminished. If anything, it has become more urgent.