Class Consciousness at The World Transformed
Although I’d joined the queue for the Assembly forty minutes early, by the time I entered the hall I soon found myself shuffling, single file, along the back of the hall where all the seats were taken, with too many people filing into a narrow dead-end made up of even more people. After apologising to those whose view I was blocking and some perfunctory humour from the chair, it became clear that the class consciousness of large sections of the room exceeds the movement’s leaders. Jeremy Corbyn is cited as a reason many people here were ever drawn to the left in the 2010s, but his own Bennite autodidactism that looks to concepts of peace and justice and to Percy Bysshe Shelley is a world away from the political experience of the British left today. The shared recognition of the hall was the necessity of building past the British left’s historical failures. Over forty proposals were submitted to be read and discussed across three assemblies at The World Transformed, each responding to the main challenges that face the left in Britain and globally, what were people’s vision for the new party, and what are its priorities and what is necessary to achieve them. Every speaker, whether speaking from the stage or from the floor, who at least openly declared their affiliation, was from a trade union like the British Medical Association, the National Education Union, or Equity, or RS21, Plan C, a faction of the new party itself, the Palestinian Youth Movement, from the Movement Research Unit, some students, people without any affiliation altogether, and a holistic mental health charity and members of the Greens. The established left-wing parties, the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, by contrast, dutifully held their stalls outside the box office and main hall to attract anyone who wasn’t already familiar with them.
The assemblies themselves moved from rightful indignation at parliament to something more reconciliatory. The latter mood was centred around the Greens; surety of electoral alliances were coupled with anxiety around choosing them or the new party, as a member of Plan C with an “EAT THE RICH” jumper wasn’t able to decide between the two. What criticism was directed at Parliament was explicitly aimed at Adnan Hussain, and at first only implicitly at Corbyn for having allowed him to be associated with the party at all and its keen contempt for democracy. Adnan Hussain’s property portfolio and rigid defence of his own transphobia – which he attempted to read into the history of socialism and defended as essential to the Muslim community – sparked indignation, and Kieran Glasssmith’s essay “MPs Don’t Make Good Leaders”1 soon found its audience on the British left as Corbyn’s commitment to the broadchurch politics of the Labour Party reasserted itself in its most meek form. In his first interview after Zarah Sultana’s impromptu announcement of the new party and her role in it, Corbyn told Owen Jones that he’d made a pact with the Independent Alliance MPs that, “Where we agree, we’ll work together. Where we don’t agree, we’ll say no more about it.”2 This form of politics was plainly unacceptable to the hall; a working class party socialist cannot give an inch to reaction or capital.
Numerous interventions from the floor confirmed this. One person stated that “We don’t want to take over power, we want to smash it”, with multiple people calling to explicitly draw on Marxist and revolutionary traditions together and affirmations that socialism means liberation for all oppressed people. Another person stated that there should be wealth redistribution within the party itself, through the sale of inherited assets and MPs and staff being given a worker’s wage with the rest being donated. The proposal from Organising for Popular Power began by describing how little alignment they felt with the leadership of the party, which was contrasted by the strength of solidarity in the hall. The lessons of 2019 needed to be learnt: leadership cannot be depended on, the people cannot be passive, and branches must be placed above the leadership.
The largest and most forceful applause of each assembly went to speakers from the stage and from the floor who told the simple truth that the leadership of the party were fucking this up, and this was not theirs to fuck up – this must be a party of the working class, a party committed to solidarity with trans people and against racism in all forms. The first of such necessary interventions described the “sham democracy” of the founding process, the forthcoming regional assemblies that don’t deserve to be called assemblies at all, and added, at the end, a thank you to Corbyn and Sultana for initiating the process, but that the party was ours. The chair sheepishly followed by stating that Sultana was in the room and would be an unscheduled speaker next taking the stage. With noticeably less applause than what had immediately preceded it, Sultana tried to match that energy and anger of the floor. “I’m not a Labour hand-me-down”, she started, recalling how she’d actually gained her start in Palestine solidarity movement, and that this new party must be one that is not ashamed of its class politics and must seize the means of production, but not before adding that the party must “fight elections for the working class.” According to her, any disagreements that had emerged at the top of the nascent party were not of personalities but principles, and that principle was maximum democracy for the membership. Reading the mood of the hall, she outlined how crucial transparency was, that conference must be sovereign, MPs accountable to the membership, and subject to mandatory reselection – but, essentially, these all still need to be fought for within the party; this was by no means settled.
This was the assemblies at their most productive: in articulating the frustration with the leadership and formalising the base against them, to express clear demands that surpassed the class consciousness of the leadership. But they were by no means seamless, punctuated by tangent after tangent that fell beneath the level of politics necessary to recognise the British left’s immediate task. One such intervention from John Talbot who opened by saying that there was too much agreement in the hall, and that the problem was with democracy – neither elaborating whether this was bourgeois or capitalist democracy, or democracy at all – which left the hall puzzled. Class analysis disappeared and reappeared, at times deferring to discussions of establishment and anti-establishment and the popular slogans of Occupy Wall Street were repeated – though in one instance this was extended to a global context with the centre of imperialism being the one percent. While their presence had been entirely overlooked through the discussion of the new party’s practical politics and the impasse of British left, discussions of the Greens re-emerged as one member stated that their MP was Carla Denyer which was met with a solitary woo followed by silence. Another member soon added that their commitment was not to a party but to socialism, again putting forward the idea of an electoral pact between the Greens and the new party. One point that was met with cheers was a refugee asking how many others were in the hall, which fell into silence as people looked around them to see who was holding up their hands. He then proposed that future TWT tickets be reserved for refugees, which garnered more applause that continued as he began to decry “Eastern imperialism”, the imperialism of Russia, of China and the Uyghurs, and Iran. The discussion of fascism centred around its footsoldiers as misguided members of the working class, rather than expanding that class analysis to recognise the role played by the lumpenproletariat and petit-bourgeoisie – with the exception of one member of RS21 stating that the fascists he had spoken to were landlords, and another likewise pushed back to say that speaking to fascists directly won’t bring people over.
Nevertheless, there was broad acknowledgement that Palestine had brought the British left together, but it still lagged behind the militancy and organisation of European solidarity movements; speakers noted that the British left struggled with long-term offence through its lack of formal structures that a party would solve – together with the fact that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance, even if it was still not recognised by British parties. Where prior to the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th support for Palestine had been uncontroversial it had since, one rep from the BMA told the room, it was now met with repression and people found themselves afraid to speak out. Someone from the Palestinian Youth Movement stated that what had destroyed British socialism in 2019 had been Zionism itself, as a centre of reaction, and that the smears of anti-Semitism against Corbyn would not work again. There was one moment that was only met with cautious sympathy, until the crowd came together in applause: a speaker from the floor condemned the selective anti-imperialism of the British left: those who condemned intervention by the British, American, and Israeli state but were seemingly at peace with attacks against Iran. Others stressed that climate change is already here, and that it is not an immediate cataclysm but one that makes itself felt economically first – through the increase of prices of commodities with complications of production and the intensification of the “superexploitation” of the Global South, a burden that must be borne by the fossil fuel companies themselves. Someone from the floor added that fossil fuel companies must be nationalised, without compensation.
In the final assembly, Archie Woodrow was the first speaker and immediately reopened the question of the party: the organisation of the party is a farce, and people were already far more organised than those who were still creating the party through closed doors; people should turn up to the founding conference whether they were selected by sortition or not. The party itself likely won’t be dead on arrival, but it will fail to achieve what is historically necessary, which is to resolve the sectarianism that past generations have clung to: “So we’re likely to see socialists divided in different local areas between Your Party, the Greens, and independent local groups. Based on local circumstances, not principled political divisions.”3 The base of the party are the members of the organisations in that hall, and the assemblies at the World Transformed themselves have already demonstrated points of unity: a deep commitment to anti-chauvinism in all its forms, against racism and Islamophobia and transphobia; Palestine is the vanguard of international class struggle, and as socialists in Britain our main enemy is at home; a resolutely working-class party that wages class war at levels of society.
Over the three days of the festival, seven factions and tendencies4 that had already been created by supporters and members of the new party met together to discuss the prospect of working together. With the largest of the faction having approximately 500 members, this in itself represented something of a different magnitude to the pre-existing formations of the British; a faction already surpassing the number of members of RS21 and multiple British communist parties combined. Submitting one final proposal on the last day, they came out to announce a provisional minimum programme and constitutional demands that built on the points already discussed in the assemblies:
Minimum political programme
- Anti-capitalism & socialist horizon – Power to the people: Socialism is only possible through the struggle of the working classes to own and democratically control the means of production and the organisation of society for people, not profit.
- Leave no-one behind: Solidarity with all oppressed groups, including but not limited to anti-racism and migrant solidarity, queer and trans liberation, resisting islamophobia and disability justice.
- Anti-imperialism: Freedom for all peoples dominated by empire. We deserve a world where all people are able to determine their own lives free from the scourge of imperialism, whether through war, finance or trade. Socialists in Britain have a responsibility to fight for a free Palestine, weaken British militarism, NATO, Zionism, and all cogs of the British imperialist machine.
Constitutional demands
- Workers’ wage: Elected officials and party staff should take a salary no higher than the median wage in the area they live. The remaining money should go either to Your Party or to local class struggle organising.
- Sovereign conference: Decisions made at conference are binding, the parliamentary or council whip should be used to ensure MPs and councillors vote in line with conference decisions.
- Mandatory reselection: Before an election there must be an open vote of Your Party members in the relevant constituency on who the candidate will be – MPs do not automatically get to run for their seat again.
- A genuinely democratic and sovereign conference to be held no more than 12 months after the founding conference.
Branch demands
- Branches are well funded: receiving a significant portion of members’ subs and any MP salary shares, with autonomy over branch spending.
- Data access: After the founding conference, the party must own all membership data. Elected branch committees must have access to full membership data for the area covered by their branch.
- Base-building (meaning bringing new people into class struggle and movements) should be a core part of Your Party strategy.5
The factions then asked that the hall vote then and there on that provisional programme, to be taken and pushed for in members’ proto-branches and the regional assemblies, and the chairs duly obliged. The hall voted in favour, with some amendments but with abstentions centering on the legitimacy of the assembly, with one person voting against also repeating that sentiment.6 Amendments were then taken to the floor: there should be an explicit mention of Islamophobia in the programme, why was there no mention of climate?, and the necessity of dual memberships. When more questions were opened up to the floor, the first person said that it was clear that the “adults in the room” weren’t organising the party but were instead at this assembly, and that their informal group of party members would soon be in touch with the factions to work together.
The normal course of an assembly soon resumed, however: points about topics which weren’t quite relevant were raised, and as the event dragged on the chairs attempted to tease out practical solutions against people’s inclination to read an essay from their phones that they’d written earlier.
The recognition of the missed opportunity of a seamless launch was widespread, with calls for the pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will repeated throughout the assemblies. But what the debacle has immediately revealed are the limits of the processes and the politics that are being built into the party. Any analysis must not remain at the level of personality – between a split or reconciliation of Corbyn and Sultana – but instead one of democracy and class-struggle; of the necessity of waging class against sections of society, against chauvinism in all of its forms, against landlords, the petit-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself together with its parliament and parliamentary politics. And so it was necessary that Corbyn was the one to mount such a failure, as each failure radicalises the left further and further and clarifies the contradictions between the necessities of bourgeois parliament and the working class. Much of the British left had looked to him for guidance since his election to Labour leader in 2015 and, without him, remained demoralised and siloed in local organisations before coming together around Palestine but, with the prospect of a new socialist party, people are ready to extend the fight for Palestine to all levels of British society and see in him only caution and lessons that weren’t learnt. Corbyn stood for peace and hope, against the threat of the right-wing of the Labour Party – repeating the simple and ahistorical concepts that Marx critiqued first in Proudhon and then in the First International. But in a party where some of the most class conscious socialists and communists in the country constitute its base, that abstraction is laid bare and he is instead part of its right wing: a political wing that looks to alliances with the landlords and petit-bourgeoisie, that substitutes any Marxist analysis of class for a politics that is only capable of thinking in the dichotomies of establishment and anti-establishment – and willing to renege hard-won truths around the oppression of those who constitute the working class itself.
References
1. Kieran Glasssmith, “MPs Don’t Make Good Leaders”, Bristol Transformed, 26 July 2025, https://bristoltransformed.co.uk/blog/post/mps-don't-make-good-leaders/ [Accessed 11/10/2025]
2. “Exclusive Jeremy Corbyn Interview: Why We Launched Your Party”, Owen Jones, YouTube, July 30 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49jppx61YhY [Accessed 12/10/2025]
3. Archie Woodrow, “Democratic Socialists Organiser, Archie Woodrow, Opens TWT Assembly Calling For Marxist Unity”, Democratic Socialists, https://dsyp.org/2025/10/12/democratic-socialists-organiser-archie-woodrow-opens-twt-assembly-calling-for-marxist-unity/ [Accessed 14/10/25]
4. This includes: The Democratic Bloc, Democratic Socialists, Eco-Socialist Horizon, Greater Manchester Left Caucus, Organising for Popular Power,the Trans Liberation Group and The People’s Front.
5. “For a Member Led, Socialist Party”, Prometheus, 13 October 2025, https://prometheusjournal.org/2025/10/13/for-a-member-led-socialist-party/ [Accessed 13/10/25]
6. When this was raised explicitly, the chairs reassured the hall that this was non-binding but is nevertheless the “popular will of the people.”