Transformation of the Left?
The Transform Party should play to its strength and keep uniting with others on the left
Transform has the opportunity to build on the success of its founding conference, which is fusing together separate political forces into one organisation.
The launch of this new party is the result of separate but similar political tendencies within the working class movement recognising that unity is strength.
There is a lesson here for the broader left. So far, this process of unity has brought together a number of organisations into a single party “of and for the working class in all its diversity” to “offer voters a socialist alternative” and “build power in communities, workplaces and on the streets.”
Building the Party
People who met as members of the component parties which have founded Transform will bring their own perspectives and concerns.
But fusion does not have to lead to the creation of a monolithic party in which disagreements result in splits. Different traditions can be maintained and even retain a formal organised expression – the party’s constitution allows the existence of factions.
Transforming the political culture of the workers’ movement will involve adopting the same approach as that which prevails in our trade unions: accepting different tendencies, sticking with the union if a decision doesn’t go our way.
The first organisational challenge for Transform is to turn currently passive supporters into dues-paying members and to elect a leadership before the end of the year.
And the first ideological challenge for the party is to realise that its strength so far has come from the hope of unity in a multi-tendency organisation. Making progress involves pushing for broader unity on this basis, overcoming the distrust which exists across the left outside of Labour.
Failure to meet the organisational challenge appears unlikely – there will be a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of members of the component organisations who have backed this fusion – but the ideological challenge is tricky.
The temptation of members of a united party may be to say, “this far and no further!” To unify the diverse forces in opposition to others on the left.
A strategic choice for Transform
Members of the new party now have to decide between two electoral approaches:
A) building the party without coordinating with the broader left in the hope of reaching and recruiting the unaffiliated with Transform’s own resources, or
B) building the party by coordinating with the broader left in the hope of reaching and recruiting the unaffiliated to the left.
Transform should set its sights on the acceptance of ideological competition within what will become a mass membership workers’ party – bans and proscriptions of the kind introduced in Labour should not exist. But for Transform and the left as a whole to be most effective, organisational competition has to be reduced.
There are a number of potential alliances which Transform could enter into if option B becomes the majority opinion in the party.
The most obvious is with TUSC, which will hold a convention in February 2024 aimed at organising a common working class electoral challenge. It has invited thirty campaign organisations and socialist groups to participate.
Building a Coalition?
Since its founding for the 2010 general election, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition has been kept going by the Socialist Party: the RMT union was affiliated at the beginning but left in 2022, and the Socialist Workers Party left in 2017.
A leading figure in TUSC is former Labour MP Dave Nellist. He was purged from the party for supporting the Militant tendency in 1991 and he has been involved with left-of-Labour electoral efforts ever since.
The determination of TUSC to prepare for a new mass workers’ party is admirable. The political conditions in Britain have this option has not yet become available. In both the 2017 and 2019 general elections, TUSC did not stand candidates to avoid splitting the vote for a Left-led Labour government.
Since resuming its activities in 2020, in the wake of the Left losing control of the Labour Party, TUSC has coordinated with other external challengers to the Labour Right to minimise candidate clashes in local elections and by-elections.
In advance of the foundation of Transform, TUSC made overtures to its steering committee but it decided to wait until the party was established and had an elected leadership before proceeding further.
What TUSC is offering is the opportunity to put up the biggest left-of-Labour challenge at the general election by pooling resources.
Their offer puts everything on the table to the broader left outside of Labour – admirably they are not fixed on the name of the coalition and propose reaching a consensus between left groups on what it and the core platform for parliamentary candidates should be, beyond which parties would be free to publicise themselves and their broader policy agenda.
Rebuilding bridges?
A contentious option for alliance, and one which may hold back relations with TUSC, is the Workers Party of Britain. It was launched after the general election in 2019 by former Respect MP (and one-time Labour MP) George Galloway in alliance with the CPGB-ML.
Two years ago, dialogue between the component parts of Transform and TUSC was affected by issues of social conservatism within the Workers Party. The decision of TUSC to deal with the Workers Party was a source of concern because the CPGB-ML had adopted a reactionary line in opposition to what it – like the Right – calls “LGBT ideology”.
The CPGB-ML is no longer involved with the Workers Party, but Galloway has a willingness to follow the lead of conservative forces. He initiated an anti-independence list of candidates for the Scottish Parliament elections with former conservatives.
And just recently, the Workers Party took up the demand of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party for a “referendum on Net Zero”. The issue of Brexit was another difference which created tensions between left groups – Galloway was a supporter of Brexit and the Workers Party has a “Lexit” position on the European Union.
The Party is not just Galloway, of course. Despite the exit of one force within it, it shows no sign of going away.
In fact, it has grown…
Resistance is futile?
Another attempt at a new party which has sought to work with TUSC is Resist. Former Labour MP Chris Williamson has now joined the Workers Party and brings with him members of the Resist Movement which he founded.
But this was not before an attempt to fuse with and revive the Socialist Labour Party, founded by former National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill in 1995. The obstacle in that instance appears to have been a clash between Williamson and Scargill. The working relationship between Williamson and Galloway appears to be more constructive.
Williamson has actively engaged with TUSC and is not as strongly associated with the positions which Galloway and the Workers Party has taken on LGBT rights and the environment. That said, he too is a combative and controversial public figure whose career in the Labour Party was brought to an end by comments over the scale of antisemitism in the party, for which he was accused of bringing Labour into disrepute.
This may not lead him or his organisation to be viewed as critically as Galloway and the Workers Party has been within Transform’s component parts, of course. But there is a sense in which Transform is trying to avoid a party centred on a high-profile leader, opting at the founding conference for a collective leadership.
This consolidation of support within the Workers Party means that the TUSC is not going to treat it in the same way as the component parts of Transform did two years ago.
What about the Greens?
Prior to the influx of members into the Labour Party in 2015 onwards, the Green Party experienced a significant boost in support. Its membership swelled significantly, and its vote share and total doubled between 2010 and 2015.
This growth in support for the Greens was not just down to the salience of its focus on the climate and ecological emergency. It was also on the basis of its anti-austerity politics. Support for the Greens collapsed in 2017 and 2019 when Labour took an anti-austerity line, promising public investment and public ownership.
A question that many of those outside Transform will ask is “why don’t you just join the Greens like others who have left Labour?”
The Green Party of England and Wales is not currently socialist party, it does not have a party programme or constitution which orients them to the organised working class as the main agent of social change and it does allow formal trade union affiliation.
But many of the kind of people who might join Transform may opt for the Greens in the short term. Certainly, this will be the case for the bulk of the voters that Transform might try to win from Labour.
From the perspective of maximising the “left bloc” of MPs in the next parliament, the Greens holding onto their seat and increasing their parliamentary representation is perhaps something that Transform members may like to see happen. But it is unlikely Green politicians would want the party to enter into formal electoral agreements with forces to its left.
A Rebel Alliance
A key figure in drawing together the component parts of Transform is the former Labour MP Thelma Walker who launched the People’s Alliance of the Left at the start of 2022. This brought together the Left Unity Party and the Breakthrough Party with a memorandum of understanding.
This practice of formal alliances, and the process which has created Transform, is worth continuing. The best option for the party is to engage with the TUSC convention, accepting the offer of co-hosting the event in February, and mobilising to make it a success.
A common minimum programme and shared electoral status with other socialist organisations will give Transform a higher profile than if it goes it alone.
Going directly to the masses with a message of working class unity against both the Tories and Labour’s right-wing leadership immediately prompts the question “why isn’t the left more united?”
Between now and the end of the year, Transform members can consider these strategic options as they choose their party’s first leadership team: does the party now stop uniting with others, or keep building alliances?