Socialists could bask in the rarity of a sunny October day in Manchester last weekend.
As summer made way for autumn, the trees shed their tangerine leaves; a changing of the seasons.
Festival venues sprawled across Hulme and Moss Side, places renowned for their activism. There were panels, quizzes, gigs and even a beer garden, a rich mixture of joy and organising.
The World Transformed this year took place against what should have been one of the most exciting developments in British politics of late.
In early August, six independent MPs announced they would form a new political party. It would provisionally be called ‘Your Party’ until members chose a name, as well as its policies and leadership structure, at a “founding conference” scheduled for 29 and 30 November in Liverpool.
However, the new Left party has already descended into bitter infighting. There have been two public spats between Zarah Sultana and her five co-founders. I won’t relate the ins and outs of these disputes, suffice to say that it left many socialists with a sense of wry disillusionment.
Meanwhile, in early September Zack Polanski, a member of the London Assembly, was elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales on an “eco-populist” platform. Polanski pledged, among other things, to “tax extreme wealth”.
The World Transformed thus occurred at a political conjuncture characterised by a sense of both excitement and foreboding.
A common theme of the conference was what a socialist vision for Britain should be, how Your Party would be directed strategically and structured organisationally, and whether it and the Green Party could co-operate during an election campaign.
The GND Media team attended one of the three assemblies, sat in on several panel events and hosted our own radio show (featuring, among others, Polanski himself). We found cautious optimism among socialists about Your Party and the Green Party’s new leadership but big questions remain. Can Polanski really turn the Greens into a socialist party? Will Your Party’s members really be allowed to shape its agenda? Can the two parties work together at the next election?
‘You shouldn’t waste this opportunity’
Good vibes notwithstanding, the conference had its fair share of pessimists. “It feels very 2019 to me, with a similar energy and euphoria,” a delegate said. “But I'm still quite wary and seeing how it all goes before jumping into anything.”
One volunteer GND Media interviewed said they were leaning towards Your Party. “I was shocked when the spat between Zarah and Jeremy happened. It seems the MPs have power over the direction of Your Party and as an anarchist that’s something I’m very uncomfortable with.
“But equally I still see the Greens as a liberal-capitalist party, even if they have a leader who says that he is socialist,” he added. “If the procedures within Your Party are fixed and democratised so that each member has the same amount of power as an MP, then I would be invested.”
Another volunteer questioned whether Leftists needed to pick one party or the other. “I don’t think I’m leaning towards either. The idea that people go with the ‘hot hand’ or whoever’s most popular in the media smacks of a lack of strategic thinking and reactiveness.
“I don’t think Your Party’s very good and I don’t think the leader is very inspiring or very good at politics,” he added. “But you shouldn’t waste this opportunity to found a new party. If you’ve got the patience, it’s something you should be involved in.”
‘We now require a direct confrontation with Capital’
Judging by Saturday’s assembly, aimed at setting out a vision for a socialist project in Britain, it seemed the British Left understood that the Green New Deal was dead – and that something more radical was now needed.
“Climate change and the political crisis are an urgent threat to our basic conditions of life and therefore the possibility of building future socialism,” one of the speakers said. “Climate change needs to be a key lens for all strategic and political decisions within the work of the new Left party.”
Previously, they added, many had approached this “through the lens of the Green New Deal”, saying: “However, this relied on an accommodation with Capital. Our analysis of the current conditions shows that we now require a direct confrontation with Capital.”
They therefore proposed “a strategic program for the new Left party” that combined “the urgent need to avert climate and ecological crisis, and a long-term need to resolve the fundamental contradiction between the endless capitalist accumulation and planetary needs”.
Polanski the ‘peacemaker’?
It seemed Sultana and Polanski were on the same page as delegates when it came to the climate crisis – at least rhetorically.
“The question I've been asked probably over a thousand times,” Polanski said during a panel, “and I'm not exaggerating, is whether the Green Party is not an environmentalist party anymore, whether we are just social justice warriors? And the argument I make every single time is you cannot be an environmentalist without caring about inequality. You can't be an environmentalist without being a socialist.”
Sultana’s climate pledges, meanwhile, were enthused with criticism of the Green Party’s stance on NATO. “On the Green Party's website, it says it ‘recognises that NATO has an important role ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats to their security’. I'm sorry, you cannot greenwash NATO. The socialist position is clear. We must leave NATO immediately.”
During the debate, Polanski pushed back. “I want a world without nuclear weapons, so I definitely do not support Nato, who are an organisation around a nuclear alliance. I just want to be really clear about that.”
Sultana’s critique of the Greens clearly resonated with some of the delegates. “Zarah is spot on,” one said. “NATO and the EU are two of the biggest polluters in the world. You can't be pro both and call yourself eco-socialists.”
But others were less sympathetic. “It’s a valid point but it was cheap from Zarah,” a volunteer told GND Media. “Zack has raised faults with Your Party constructively, he’s seen as a peacemaker. I don’t think Zarah is very tactful.”
One delegate said a “red-green alliance” could stave off the possibility of Your Party losing sight of climate change. “I would class myself as an eco-anarchist, so I believe the preservation of the Earth is a core part of socialism,” he said. "That’s why I’m interested in a red-green alliance. The Green Party could act as an ‘anchoring point’ for the centering of green politics within a hegemonic socialist bloc.”
‘I would be more invested if it was fully transparent’
Delegates were equally concerned about the power of the six co-founding MPs.
One volunteer told GND Media: “I’m very concerned that there’s a select group of MPs that have an undescribed amount of power in Your Party. It’s not clear what exactly happened during those spats. If this is going to be a party for everyone, everyone needs to know what’s going on. I would be more invested if it was fully transparent.”
During the assembly, speakers pressed for policies that would genuinely democratise the party and allow Your Party’s members to be its guiding hand, including mandatory reselection of candidates and the forced institution of Your Party MPs taking a worker’s wage.
All eyes will be on the party’s conference in Liverpool to see if they are enacted.
‘ I will not forgive you if you stand against each other’
So will the Greens and Your Party co-operate at the next general election? The signs seem positive, for now.
During a panel event, Sultana said she saw the Green Party as “an ally”, adding: “Going into the next election, there will have to be co-operation between Your Party and the Green Party done democratically through our membership,” she said.
Polanski also signalled that he was open to “talking” while seemingly keeping his options open. “It [the general election] is just too far away to say. I don’t know what Your Party is going to stand for. I don’t know what its policies will be … I can't imagine a scenario personally where we won't at least be talking … Let's keep talking.”
A defining theme of the conference, however, was that electoral cooperation between the two parties was a necessity for fending off the prospect of a Reform government.
“ I will not forgive you if you stand against each other at the next election,” Abubaker Nanawaba, a spokesman for Muslim Vote UK, told co-panellists Sultana and Polanski, to rapturous applause. “ We will hold you accountable. I have told some of the independent MPs if they don't deliver in 2029, I will be canvassing against them. I say the same to both of you.”
You can’t say Sultana and Polanski haven’t been warned.
Alex King co-founded GND Media and is a reporter at Planning Magazine.
