What are the Tories up to?
The UK government at Westminster is dishing out attack after attack on our class with very little scrutiny, as opposition in England at least, is more likely to come from footballers than Starmer’s official opposition and where the mainstream media has become more and more supine to the Toxic Tories. The boosting of police powers and effective criminalisation of protest, the war against refugees and the increased obstacles to voting expose the utterly reactionary agenda of this government.
Sunak’s budget makes clear yet again that the Tories have a clear plan which they have pursued with ruthlessness since Johnson came to office – to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They attempt to mask those intentions with empty rhetoric about ‘levelling up’, Northern powerhouses, hard-working families and making Britain great again.
Brexit – always a combination of reactionary English nationalism and deeper deregulation – is wheeled out again as a supposedly uniform flag under which to make us all feel safe. The cut in the Universal Credit uplift is supposedly softened by a reduction in the taper (which of course shouldn’t exist) for those in work – leaving other claimants scapegoated further as scroungers.
A key battleground for workers over the coming years will be the cost of living. Several economists are now predicting soaring prices as inflation will begin to bite much more seriously. British manufacturers raised their prices by the largest amount since 1980 between July-October 2021. They expect costs to increase by the most since 1977 in the New Year (in 1977 inflation was running at 15.85%)
The squeeze on wages will mean that UK real wages will still be lower in 2026 than they were in 2008. That is almost two decades of falling wages for workers. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has concluded that the average worker in Britain will be £13,000 a year worse off than if wages had not been so brutally suppressed since 2008. The triple lock for pensioners has now been suspended leaving them with only a 3.1% increase instead of the 8% they need to keep pace with the cost of living.
This is not just a British phenomenon. The autumn strike wave in the US is largely being fuelled by wage claims due to increasing food and energy prices. This all means that cost of living will be a crucial battleground for the trade unions and workers over the coming period – bringing them into conflict with bosses and the anti-union laws.
The NHS in England is at an even more catastrophic point than in most winters as the effects of a second winter of dealing with the pandemic with an even more exhausted staff complement combines with the increasing impact of privatisation at all levels – and the feedback from the crisis in social care which increases the problem of bed blocking.
It is not enough to acknowledge Social Care is beyond breaking point. The current system is not only unfit for purpose it is also reinforcing paternalist and oppressive ideologies and practices. The existing crisis impacts staff morale and working conditions, denying service users choice and control, thus preventing independent living.
Education is stretched to breaking too with an exhausted, unprotected and unsafe workforce across schools, colleges and universities and young people who are being told by the government that their role is to learn how to be efficiently exploited through T levels – essentially a further attack on comprehensive education.
Housing continues to be a disaster area for millions of households with a completely insufficient supply of council housing and housing associations failing to provide for housing needs. We need a crash programme of council housing (not the vaguer social housing) which means a major increase in central government funding and the end of restrictions on what it can be spent on, an end to the selloff of council and housing association properties and to land banking by developers. New homes should be built to Passivhaus standards and existing properties retrofitted by local authorities through direct labour organisations, addressing both fuel poverty and climate change.
The aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy has left thousands of leaseholders, often young people, trapped in homes where the inadequacy of building regulations has left them in dangerous and unsaleable properties. Others are trapped in an unregulated private rented sector – we are in favour of rent controls and the end of ‘no fault’ evictions
The overall shortage of council housing is exacerbated by the extensive growth in second homes in some areas of Britain. In London properties owned by extremely rich people may be empty for most of the year; the houses and flats are essentially an investment based on the continuing rise in property prices. Streets such as The Bishop’s Avenue near Hampstead Heath have second homes estimated at £6 million on the lower level of prices. In Cornwall, the massive influx of second homeowners has driven local people away from the areas in which they grew up which in turn has had a knock-on effect on jobs and school places. Cornwall now has one of the highest levels of poverty in Britain existing alongside the wealth of the second homeowners.
This is, even more, the case in Wales where in Pembrokeshire, Gwynedd and one or two other areas, whole villages are now dominated by second homes. Not only does this have similar consequences as Cornwall for jobs and schools but it fundamentally changes the nature of communities as Welsh speakers become minorities in formerly strongly Welsh-speaking areas. Several councils have raised local taxes in an attempt to deter second homeowners and there is an ongoing campaign involving Plaid Cymru, Cymdeithas yr Iaith (the Welsh language organisation), Undod, YesCyrmu and Labour for an Independent Wales. This will remain a major issue for the foreseeable future.
Attacks on migrants and asylum seekers continue at all levels, whether it’s the appalling rhetoric from the Home Office about those crossing the channel in desperation for what they believe will be a better life, backed up by so much of the media, or the further barbaric restrictions being introduced through the Nationality and Borders Bill going through the commons now. Ideologically of course for the Tories, these attacks on migrants ramp up the racism that was and remains at the centre of their Brexit project, with sideswipes at the Europeans – and French in particular – for added value.
This racist climate is combined with a ratcheting up of sexism generally, and violence against women, and there have been impressive mobilisations against police violence, around the Sarah Everard and Biba Henry and Nicole Smallman cases, as there were around the death of George Floyd by the Black Lives Matter movement. While less able to mount as visible street protests, sections of the LGBT+ and particularly the trans movement and of the disabled people’s movement are organising to defend and extend their rights, articulate their demands and oppose scapegoating. We have much to learn as revolutionary Marxists from these autonomous organisations of oppressed people.
The Pandemic
The Tories have not had to pay any political price for the fact that their deeply reactionary approach to the pandemic based on herd immunity and a eugenics undercurrent has resulted in many unnecessary deaths – effectively social murder – as well as the impact of Long Covid which we cannot yet really measure and an exhausted and demoralised workforce amongst key workers. The only major political opposition they have faced is from the even more reactionary anti-vax movement, whose demands they ignore (in order to protect their profits) but whose anti-scientific right-wing populism they embrace, albeit with less vitriol.
Their economic approach – the furlough scheme for example – was not at all motivated by compassion for workers or even small business owners – but by concern for the impact – economic and political – of doing nothing and allowing too many sectors to go to the wall. The same can be said for the £20 temporary uplift in Universal Credit – together with the need to force more claimants, particularly disabled people, off legacy benefits where there was no uplift.
Two other policies underline this approach. First, their failure to improve statutory sick pay – even for what they defined as the duration of the pandemic, meaning that a huge proportion of essential workers are unable to self isolate when they have the virus, resulting in many more deaths that could otherwise have been avoided. Second, the pathetically low levels of pay rise offered to public sector workers – not only in the NHS where there has been most public attention but also local government (1.75 per cent), higher education (1,5 per cent), further education (1 per cent) – often also combined with disputes on pensions and workload/conditions.
A small number of left Labour MPs, Carolyn Lucas and the SNP have criticised aspects of these policies but have not been able to get much coverage of their views. And while some trade unions, notably the NEU and to some extent the PCS (in the battle over conditions at the DVLA office in Swansea), have battled over their member’s conditions and the Zero Covid campaign has tried to organise throughout, it has been very difficult to make much of an impact.
The fact that the ‘official opposition; i.e. Labour at Westminster has largely adopted a bipartisan approach – and on some occasions e.g. over opening schools after the first wave – has been even more reckless of people’s lives than the Tories – has been a major obstacle. So too has the fact that the TUC as a whole including major unions such as UNISON and Unite have largely tail ended this as has the fact that the pandemic itself makes the use of public transport or participation in indoor in-person events very difficult for many activists.
Developments on the radical right
In the conditions of the pandemic, it’s difficult to precisely assess the relationship of forces given that the radical right with their anti-vax /anti-lockdown message is more likely to confidently take to the streets than large sections of the left struggling to cope with unsafe work conditions and organise mutual aid in their communities without spreading infection.
Nevertheless, we note that the biggest demonstrations against the Tories since the 2019 election come from the right. Whether these are local protests in cities or mobilisations in Westminster they include significant numbers of young (sometimes very young) people and of women and are overwhelmingly white. Some of their slogans seem very anti-establishment but are steeped in the politics of conspiracy theories.
The very professional looking newspaper The Light launched in September 2020 seems to play a significant role, focusing on the pandemic but also taking up broader questions e.g. the June 2021 issue has an attack on political trade unionism!
And for every person the conspiracy theorists mobilise on the street the spread of this poison on the web is even more pernicious – especially in the context that millions of people have felt abandoned during the pandemic and lockdown. So for example there are reasons why many members of Black communities in Britain are more likely to be vaccine-hesitant because of their experience of racist experimentation with medication in Britain and beyond. This is then manipulated by people who have no commitment to antiracism.
And while the ranting against so-called ‘gender ideology’ in Britain doesn’t have as strong organisational connections with the radical right as that in the USA, those who demonise and silence trans people use very similar tactics to the rest of the radical right – painting themselves as the victims (and instrumentalising women’s oppression in a particularly pernicious way) while dismissing the reality of trans oppression – which together with women’s oppression – has deepened during the pandemic, For the ACR organisations like the LGB Alliance and Woman’s Place UK are reactionary organisations which organise to falsely counterpose fighting one group’s oppression to that of another.
One of the most dangerous aspects of the current situation, globally and in Britain, is the sinister pervasive influence of far-right ideas across wider layers. The demand to deport ‘foreign criminals’ after their prison sentences are completed which used to be a demand of fascist fringe elements, today is regarded as ‘common sense’. The public attacks on Insulate Britain protestors and the hatred shown towards vulnerable refugees crossing the channel, in particular fisherman blocking RNLI boats to allow refugees to die, all point to a deeper sickness, a reactionary violent and increasingly confident mood in backward layers.
Disunited Kingdom
The fragmentation of the United Kingdom post-Brexit referendum has accelerated and continues with the consequences of the Tories’ Hard Brexit. It is no longer ridiculous to ask how long the UK will last as a unified state.
The potential of a border poll across the island of Ireland has been strengthened by the shenanigans (sic) over the Northern Ireland protocol with both the United Kingdom government and loyalist forces vying to be most reactionary in their actions and rhetoric around this, This has been further compounded by the proposal by the UK government to introduce an amnesty over crimes committed during the Troubles with proposals which studies show are more reactionary than those introduced in Pinochet’s Chile. This has been met with major opposition both in Ireland and in the Irish communities elsewhere
The ACR supports the right of Irish self-determination as a matter of principle. We oppose the amnesty proposals. This does not mean that we do not assert the necessity to criticise Sinn Fein when appropriate.
The political situation in Scotland is very different from that in England and in Wales, both in terms of the government at Holyrood – currently an arrangement between the SNP and the Scottish Greens – and because the Edinburgh government has devolved powers over many aspects of governance in that country.
The map of politics is also very different; e.g. the Labour Party in Scotland is much weaker than elsewhere in Britain as the SNP has taken up much of the social democratic space over recent years, The STUC has much more power than the Welsh TUC or regional TUCs in England and many single-issue campaigns organise separately in Scotland
The fight for independence is a dominant political issue supported by the majority of radical political forces in that country. The ACR supports the right of the people of Scotland to self-determination and will oppose the UK government blocking the right to a referendum.
It has also become increasingly clear over recent months of the extent to which Welsh politics are different from those in England. Again this operates at different levels. Labour is in government in Wales and given that a number of matters, albeit less than in Scotland is devolved to the Senedd in Cardiff, Welsh Labour leader Mark Drakeford has had the political capacity to put forward more radical measures not only than the Tories at Westminster but than Labour under Starmer; in particular, a less profit-led approach to the pandemic and a more serious attitude to climate change stand out.
While support for independence in Wales is lower than in Scotland, it has steadily increased over recent years and equally importantly is supported not only by a majority of Welsh Labour voters but by a visible campaign amongst Labour members, Labour for an independent Wales. We have seen the development of significant organisations on the Welsh Radical left – Undod and Welsh Underground with which our comrades are getting involved. There are increasing direct relationships between the radical left in Wales and that in Scotland.
The agreement between the Welsh Labour Government and Plaid Cymru to work collaboratively on a wide range of issues is already strengthening a desire for greater collaboration and unity on the left, including from some leading members of Plaid Cymru. There is now an opening for the development of a Radical Independence Campaign, hopefully working with (and within) Yes Cymru.
The total silence from Keir Starmer and other leading figures in the Labour Party (including the overwhelming majority of MPs for Welsh constituencies) about the Labour-Plaid agreement, in contrast to the attitude of Labour Members of the Senedd, opens up the possibility of the Labour Party in Wales breaking away from the British party and establishing an independent Welsh Labour Party.
The trade unions in Britain today
The world of work has changed dramatically over recent decades. Very few young people entering the labour market today in Britain have the expectation that they will be continuously employed at all, let alone be in a single line of work as was common in previous generations in post-war Britain. Two major changes have taken place in terms of the level of exploitation that people face – on the one hand, the growth of sectors of entirely casualised workers on zero-hours contracts in particular (one million by the end of 2019) and on the other the attacks on conditions in parts of the public sector where previously worker’s had relatively comfortable situations through privatisation and outsourcing. The recent story of the lecturer living in a tent sums this up graphically.
The pandemic has seen further attacks on workers with people being compelled to work in unsafe workplaces and with the chronically low level of statutory sick pay making it impossible for many workers to be able to isolate. We have also seen the growth of Fire and Rehire tactics particularly aimed at workers with relatively comfortable pay and conditions.
At the same time, less than 25 per cent of employees are members of trade unions (May 2021 statistics). Three-quarters of those who are union members are over 35 years of age. Rates of unionisation are higher in the public sector but continue to fall in the private sector. The number of union activists is obviously much lower than the total membership – and, with the exception of the NEU who ran a very strong campaign of not only of recruitment of members but of workplace and health and safety reps during the first phase of the pandemic, there are few places where there is an active, let alone a militant layer of shop stewards.
Significant changes have taken place at the top of two of Britain’s largest unions over recent months – Unison and Unite.
The Time for Real Change slate in Unison won an overall majority of seats on the union’s executive in June this year however it is locked in a bitter legal battle with the union’s General Secretary (elected in January 2021) and full-time officers at the time of writing which is absorbing a great deal of energy and diverting this new leadership from the tasks of building at branch level and turning the union outwards.
In Unite, Sharon Graham won the General Secretary election in August 2021. She is strongly committed to workplace organising and has a particular reputation for organising unionisation drives in unorganised sectors and opposing Fire and Rehire. While her election campaign indicated some opposition to ‘political trade unionism’ she has since clarified that in terms of the Labour Party she is not in favour of disaffiliation and the union has been active around a range of broader issues from opposition to the Health and Care Bill and the cut in Universal Credit. It was also notable that she sent a message of support to the care workers at Sage organised by United Voices of the World – and that in general, we seem to see less sectarianism across unions from left activists than previously.
After Labour’s conference
Despite a huge amount of gerrymandering by the Labour machine with the support of the current leadership, there was still a significant left presence on the conference floor, The left won radical resolutions on Palestine, the £15 minimum wage and a Green New Deal. On the other hand, Starmer and the right still got their way with reactionary rule changes over the election of the leader and reselection of MPs – generally closing down party democracy. They feted figures who had been at the forefront of the weaponisation of charges of antisemitism and made it clear that they will ignore conference decisions. This went alongside Starmer pinning his flag to Blairism and Unionism, and embracing the union jack. Mandelson said he was pleased that the party was clearly back on the right tracks, safe again for capital.
It will be difficult but not impossible for Starmer’s Labour to win an election. Polls currently show Labour level pegging or even edging ahead of the Tories but still below what they need for an overall majority.
Some recent electoral analysis shows that Tory support is more fragile than it was. It is a mistake for people on the left to say that purging left activists makes it inevitable that Labour will lose. Elections are not just won with the number of canvassers you have. Moderate Labour programmes have won elections before and could well do so again. Especially if the Tories implode through their internal contradictions and declining support due to attacks on people’s living standards.
However, we should be ready for the Labour leadership to come to an arrangement if not a formal coalition with the Lib Dems, Greens or SNP but this is more likely after an election than before. One key element behind the push in Labour for PR is the right and centre’s openness to a coalition.
However, PR is correctly supported by many activists inside and outside Labour as a democratic advance and something that could eventually facilitate the development of a radical left alternative. We should publicly support and campaign for PR.
Labour can only restore its fortunes if it embraces popular reforms that make a difference “For the Many – Not the Few”, such as public ownership, a real green new deal, £15 minimum wage, etc, and builds mass mobilisations against the Tories. But Starmer’s project is to deepen the transformation of Labour into a fully “social-liberal” party and erase any vestiges of social-democracy and reformism.
The right is creating a hostile environment for the left. Their “transformation” of the Labour Party is being done ruthlessly, cynically and at a breakneck speed. Starmer’s ditching of his policy pledges and the promise to unify the party when standing for leader has accelerated the demoralisation. Starmer and the right have now taken the steps towards a long slow split through individual resignations, auto-exclusions, expulsions and suspensions of CLPs.
Although stronger than before Corbyn was leader, the left has been defeated and around 150,000 activists have left as a result of demoralisation and lack of leadership Many of the major left organisations in the LP – notably national Momentum and CLPD believe that a ‘cycle of politics ‘will bring about the chance to elect a new left leader in the future. Starmer will not last, and then the left will have its chance again, with someone maybe not as left as Corbyn but with whom you could work with such as Burnham or even Rayner. They downplay the defeats the left have suffered – and in so doing seed further demoralisation.
Our comrades inside Labour need to argue differently – that the left in the party should not abandon the terrain to the right and it should fight as hard as possible, wherever possible and necessary in particular to link up with struggles whether in solidarity with workers in struggle or over issues such as climate. We do not ignore internal battles over democracy, the witch hunt, etc. but our emphasis is to turn outwards. The reshuffle by Starmer in late November further consolidated the party towards its centre-right with promotions for notorious anti-socialist MPs like Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper. The post of shadow minister for employment rights, established under Corbyn, was abolished.
When Corbyn et al had the leadership of the party they should have been as ruthless as Starmer is to undermine the ability of the PLP and the bureaucracy to sabotage their “transformation” Had Corbyn et al. been more radical and determined, refused to make concessions to the right, turned the party into a campaigning organisation, and based themselves on the new radical members, they could have set in motion a popular mobilisation that could have changed the whole situation. That would have meant a break with most of the PLP, but put the Corbyn-led party in a better position to win elections and introduce some reforms “For the Many – Not the Few”.
It would have been wrong to argue that Corbynism was bound to fail. It was important for those of us in the Labour Party during that period to see ourselves in and act as part of the Corbyn project. We tried to explain what a radical left government breaking from neo-liberalism should do and how to get there, stressing this could only be achieved if Labour left breaks with Labourism, that is putting above all else the unity of the party and “parliamentary socialism”. The struggle for a radical left government under a (relatively) democratic bourgeois parliamentary system has to promote and base itself on the mass struggle of the working class and the oppressed.
What does this mean for the ACR?
Today, the real dividing line in left politics today is not whether you are in or out of the Labour Party, but whether you clearly oppose Starmer’s road to Blairism in the party and the unions, and build mass campaigns against the Tories. We explain that a repeat of the Corbyn project is extremely unlikely and that Labour is not a vehicle for socialism. The key task is to develop a class struggle network or movement with activists that are either inside or outside Labour. But the key to the beginning of this political recomposition is to bring in the activists from BLM, the climate movement, the renters, the youth, etc.
In England and Wales, in general, we call for a vote for LP candidates (with exceptions such as Caroline Lucas), and we want a Labour-led government to replace the Tories. There is no other party today that can provide an alternative for government. At the moment, especially with the First Past the Post electoral system, there is little space for a general electoral strategy to vote anything but Labour in England or in Wales.
Preparing for a new political alliance or network or coalition should be the perspective of ACR. That is a line that all of us can argue for, wherever we are active. We do not impose on ACR members whether they should stay or leave the LP. We are at a turning point in politics, and at such moments not everybody will be doing the same thing as there are different developments in different parts of England and different comrades have different possibilities given their own work and contact
The straws are in the wind. The discussion about a new left alliance or network is happening and we cannot abstain from it. The BAFWU has disaffiliated. Ken Loach calls for one. New organizations have popped up: The Breakthrough Party, Labour Transformed, Newham Socialist Labour, the Northern Independence Party, etc. Existing organisations such as Left Unity will hopefully play a role. The ground for a new alliance or network has to be prepared otherwise fragmentation, disillusionment and demoralisation will continue.
We do not have a formula today for what concrete organisational form that this alliance could take and ACR is too small to take that initiative on its own. The new alliance cannot just be the old Labour and trade-union left, but must crucially bring in the younger Corbynistas, the activists from BLM, KTB and especially from the climate justice movement, who are not attracted to the old traditional – and discredited – party type structures. It also cannot be a block of factions for a top-down bureaucratic formation. ACR should promote the idea for a new alliance through discussions in local broad forums, getting the left to work together in campaigns, and holding meetings in its own name debating with others. But it will be the impact of external events that will precipitate the creation of a new left formation.
Struggles and campaigns
Climate Change/Environmental disaster
We have rightly made a major priority of campaigning around COP – through direct involvement in the structures of the COP26 coalition, through our trade union work, through work in organisations like Red Green Labour and through our key role in the Ecosocialist Alliance as well as in many local campaigns. The movement for climate justice is a key and sharp aspect of the class struggle and one that involves many young people. We will continue to build on the hugely successful mobilisations against COP, including in many locations in England and Wales and through the trade union network. We argue to keep together local hubs where this is viable, deepening trade unions links and mobilising around local campaigns whether against incineration or for retrofitting. We favour the continuation of the UK wide structures if there is broad support for this.
Trade unions
Wherever possible, ACR members will be active in their trade unions. We fight for grassroots organising in workplace and union branches both to extend and defend people’s conditions at work and to link up with broader political struggles (be they in defence of migrant rights, over climate change, around violence against women, in defence of public services etc
We seek to build solidarity with workers in struggle through solidarity action by other trade unionists, including trades councils and through building community support.
In the context of significant and growing inflation (the highest since April 1991) a huge number of public sector workers in Higher Education, Local Government and Health are taking strike action or balloting over pay claims. It is the largest number of workers voting on and organising strike action since the failed 2014 pay strike. Unlike the 2014 strike, workers will have to take control of their disputes to ensure they are not sold out. In order to be able to fight for the interests of workers, the left operated unions will keep on coming up against the barriers of the anti-union laws which much be challenged and dismantled.
Act4inclusion
Because the Social Care system needs replacing not simply fixed, ACR needs to actively support the radical vision promoted by Act 4 Inclusion which calls for a new eco-social system capable of delivering sustainable community based holistic services. Our members and supporters within A4I are pushing a radical vision to develop a new service at a national and local level requiring coproduction between government departments, local authorities, NHS, alongside the representatives of disabled and older people’s organisations, sector workers, and community groups involved in service delivery.
CASWO
The work we have done around organising care workers in CASWO has been exemplary and needs to be an ongoing commitment both directly through the campaign structures and indirectly through our propaganda and through building links between the campaign and other places we are active.
Zero Covid
We have played a significant role in the Zero Covid campaign and are committed to continuing to do so both directly through the involvement of comrades in the campaign structures (which we should seek to modestly increase) but to also increase the support for the campaign and its activities through our other work.
Police Bill
The campaign was difficult to maintain because of the overall relationship of forces but we will continue to support its initiatives and particularly to develop and maintain relationships with the main organisations of Sisters Uncut, BLM UK and the GRT community.
Free our unions
We should give greater publicity to the initiatives of this campaign and tie it in more closely with our trade union work.
International Solidarity
As internationalists, we are always looking for opportunities to demonstrate international solidarity. In particular, we should promote solidarity with the people of Hong Kong and opposition to the repression against the Uyghurs. China is the key to the international situation and the Chinese working class is a force that will change the future. The ACR is working with Chinese socialists on a series of monthly forums to discuss the political and economic situation in China and elaborate a political strategy for revolution and international solidarity with Chinese workers, the democracy movement and the nationally oppressed.
Organisations of the oppressed
Solidarity with the oppressed is a cornerstone of our politics and as an organisation, we should look for ways of supporting comrades involved in organisations of the oppressed whether it’s campaigning on violence against women, solidarity with the demands of trans people or supporting the demands of disabled people for independent living.
Wales
In Wales, the most important task is developing a Radical Independence Campaign. Given the very small number of comrades in Wales and their geographical distribution, this is best done by all comrades joining Undod and participating in their campaigns. Part of building the RIC and working within Undod will involve taking up many of the issues above. Comrades in Wales should participate in ACR discussions, meetings and schools organised by the ACR in England so that we maintain a link with ACR.
We also note that in the volatile political situation we live in both in Britain and internationally campaigns will arise to which we need to relate that we can’t currently predict and that the steering committee together with our other structures should develop work around these as they become evident.
Tasks
In 2022 as well as the campaign work ACR will focus on the following to improve the internal culture within ACR.
- Prioritise an educational series for members and contacts. All new members and serious contacts will be invited to a short course educational series on the basics of our politics.
- Our website will carry a series of articles on essential arguments for socialism, aimed at younger people and those coming into politics for the first time.
- We will launch and maintain a regular bulletin for members featuring a mix of reports, major articles, notes on controversial debates and so on.
- Separate branch meetings will be deprioritised to focus on well-resourced national members meetings which happen monthly. We will ensure proper debates on historical and theoretical issues that are inclusive for new people. The national meetings will have break out rooms at the end for people to organise locally.