The Campaign for a Mass Workers Party (CMWP) held its first public meeting of 2025 on 3rd June. The meeting was held via Zoom and more than 200 people attended on-line. There was a range of speakers from across the working-class movement including: Ian Hodson, President of the bakers’ union BFAWU, Eric Barnes from The Social Justice Party, Audrey White, Merseyside Pensioners Association and Ken Loach, the UK’s foremost left film-maker and one of the initiators of Left Unity.
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The speakers were allowed 5 minutes to outline their ideas with Ken Loach being given slightly longer. The purpose of the meeting was to find a way to discuss and articulate the next steps that need to be taken in order to build a new party of the working class. The speakers were all enthusiastic about the project and their contributions spanned across national but principally local community projects. One of the central concerns of the meeting was that the CMWP doesn’t want to hand down a programme or set of principles to the working class but wants to bring together all those on the left who see a crisis of the Left and the urgent need for a new party of the working class to replace the Labour Party.
Loach stressed the fact that we are at a critical moment and that it is time to explode once and for all the myth of Labour who have betrayed the British working class in every decade since they were established. He gave a salutary warning that the state will attack us as they did Corbyn but that we must take the attack to them, calling out Labour as racist for example. Ian Hodson condemned many trade union leaders as being tied to Labour and privilege and called for unions to organise to disaffiliate from Labour and build the fight to do so. He said that there was a risk of the public bracketing Labour with the trade unions and this was a danger. He said that 26% of trade unionists say they now support Reform and the only way to challenge this is to break with Labour and fight for worker’s rights, pay and conditions. Eric Barnes outlined steps towards a new party from the experience of setting up the Social Justice Party in North Yorkshire. Phil Pope from the floor made an interesting point about local organisations holding onto their autonomy and being rooted in work places and working-class neighbourhoods. Joe Gill said that CMWP needed to be brave and radical and find effective communicators to speak to power. There were many other excellent contributions and the desire for a decisive step was clear.
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The meeting was held in the context of a range of initiatives talking about the need for such a party. The most important of these is Collective, which involves ex-Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, ex-Unite union General Secretary Len McCluskey, Andrew Feinstein and others. The direction of this grouping remains unclear but there are some positive signs that it may declare a new party in the coming weeks (for example Feinstein in a meeting in Camden, London suggested that an announcement of such an initiative could be between four and six weeks away). If Collective were to take this step it would be hugely important given Corbyn’s profile and authority.
What CMWP does not want however, is a top-down approach where we are talked at by ex-Labour Party high-ups or other prominent left figures. What CMWP is looking for is for groups to organise across the country and link-up. A pre-conference meeting or meetings could be held in order to discuss in the first instance a set of principles and then to formulate a programme.
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Unfortunately, there are some on the left who have not learnt lessons from previous initiatives. We Demand Change (WDC) for example is replicating the mistaken approach of The People’s Assembly and Enough is Enough by allowing prominent Labour Party figures to address meetings as if they still have authority over the movement. People like MP Richard Burdon have lost such authority if they ever indeed held it, because of the crimes of the Starmer government but also other historic betrayals. Burdon addressed the first meeting of Enough is Enough in Halifax three years ago and spoke of taxing the rich, as a way out of austerity. It was obvious then and has become crystal clear today that any Starmer government would never enact such an approach and it was disingenuous for Burgon to speak as though it could ever be a possibility under the current Labour regime. The People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE) held a successful meeting in Huddersfield recently, but its programme steers away from calling for a new party.
The splits and divisions on the left and the stubborn refusal to unite from many, takes the energy out of the movement. Those who become involved in activist groups which have no real political objective and incorporate Labour Party members in large numbers have their energies sapped and disillusionment often follows.
Although there are obvious differences, it is important that activists who agree with the idea of establishing a new workers party work together locally to organise public meetings.
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The meeting of June 3rd was a promising start for the CMWP. Ken Loach spoke well and sent an encouraging email to CMWP following the meeting, in which he captured the essence of the meeting and the current situation:
“I thought it was a very good meeting. The call for a real democracy in establishing a new party was overwhelming wasn’t it. I hope this message must get through to those that are planning something different. We have all experienced an oppressive leadership trying to control the members that any whiff of that repeating itself would be fatal. I do think the call for political representation is all we need at the start, and then for a genuinely representative delegate meeting to take us forward on the constitution and the leadership process is essential. Then it really will be a party of the people. The tantalising prospect is that there are so many experienced activists waiting for an organisation in which they can believe and give their full commitment. It would be a winner. Let’s hope we can make it happen.”
