The New Party Podcast

In the first of a short series of episodes exploring the topic of community organising, Sonali Bhattacharyya joins Tom to discuss anti-raids organising in Waltham Forest. How does a group form? What else in the wider ecosystem needs to be considered and engaged with? What works? What makes it sustainable and effective? Sonali talks generously and honestly about what she has learned and what we can...

In this episode we revisit Your Party via two previous guests who were involved in organising within the party to learn about what has happened and what we might want to do next. Max Shanly wrote some of the most influential arguments ahead of the founding conference and produced actual working documents that added a level of development much less often reached. These things and further organising...

This is the final episode of this series with Tom Gann exploring how Marx understood class, and how we can understand class. There is a lot covered in this interesting and useful discussion, including thinking about the complexities of working class groups interests or needs in relation to those of groups in the global south; the role of cheap food in the British class system; what happens with pe...

It's not simply humanity that is dominant in shaping the world and the climate, it's Capitalism. This might seem like an obvious statement to our listeners, but in this episode Jason W. Moore shows how deep ideas counter to this go and have been absorbed by many of us concerned with acting on the climate crisis. Even the term 'climate crisis' can be understood so much better, and t...

Palestine, in fundamental ways, is not exceptional. And by understanding why this is the case we can organise and act in the best ways to liberate Palestine. In this episode we are very grateful to be joined by Rafeef Ziadah, Adam Hanieh and Robert Knox to talk about how to understand the situation of Palestine within the larger structures that shape the world today. Global capitalism, imperialism...

In this episode we are joined by Jen Forbes of The Many, the Corbynite slate standing for the Your Party co-leadership. As the leadership elections are happening this week, we learn about a significant section of the party, and potentially a significant section of the UK left, in this open and enlightening conversation. What kind of 'socialist' could Your Party be with The Many facilitatin...

In the second part of this mini-series, Tom Gann takes us through the Marxist analysis that says the working class is not actually a majority. What are the ways of understanding class that lead to this common assumption and how might activists think about building a mass party? How else might people and different struggles in society be understood and what are the relationships when you throw a pa...

How do we act to respond to the climate crisis in the context of a climate movement that has long-lasting organisations with limited impact and others that have had more immediate mass impact but burnt out quickly—is a party the way forward? Chris Saltmarsh has been thinking about and studying this for a long time, and was at the centre of a key recent attempt to organise climate activism with par...

This deep dive episode gets theoretical about class. In this first part of three, writer and editor at the New Socialist Tom Gann takes us through what Marx meant by class and what the working class is in Marxist terms. With statements about Your Party 'being a working class party', and saying that the Green Party is not, we have to engage with what this might actually mean. This is an epi...

'Tis the season for seeing friends and family and thinking about the year gone by—so this episode does both of these things. Friend of the pod Tom Greenwood joins Tom and Kallum to guide us through the sect groups of the left that many of us will have come across but not have really understood. The Your Party founding process brought some of these groups to more prominence this year than many will...

Thinker, teacher and professor, and Labour Party member Jeremy Gilbert talks through the UK electoral landscape and where coalitions could be built. Why is Progressive Alliance of the left including centrist parties necessary and what would it take to build one? What is the actual history of the left in coalition with centrists and what made liberals support the left in the past? What will happen...

Housing is fundamental to society and will be key to anything a new party of the left could achieve. So we need to understand how we got to the current situation of the housing crisis and the ways that the dynamics and causes can be undone, and which parties are in which positions to do anything about it. Council housing, class and a fair amount of well aimed cursing—Owen Hatherley guides us throu...

For this episode we are joined by two activists who have been involved with groups organising at Your Party's founding conference to talk about what happened on the conference floor, and beyond. Thanks to Chloe Braddock of the Democratic Socialists and Andrew Hedges of Democratic Bloc we have some deep and engaged analysis of what happened, what we've now got and what happens next. From tw...

Hau-Yu Tam and Robert Magowan talk us through the history and conditions which led to Greens Organise and what the aims and activities of the group are now. We get a generous insight into the kinds of work taking place and the thinking behind it all. What was happening in the Greens during the time of Labour being led by Milliband and Corbyn? What is the vision for the UK Green Party and how to ge...

Everything you need to know for helping to shape a new left party in the UK: for the uninitiated to the experienced activist, and potentially for those who can be won over. Juliet Jaques, Rosa from the Trans Liberation Group and Josie from New Socialist take us from the essentials to the dynamics that make the UK political landscape what it is, and to the Trans Liberation Group that offers a direc...

What was it like writing the economic policy for the 2017 and 2019 Labour Party manifestos? And what must people thinking about a new party think about? In this episode a rare type of insight provides a somewhat novel understanding of party politics in discussions happening at the moment. And about how we should be thinking about economics in the context of our current situation. Mary Robertson, d...

Ideas, debate, history and what it's like to be involved. Andrew explains more about the Democratic Bloc group and their ideas, working on shaping the new left party, but also more broadly why open debate with factions is important for the democratic health of organisations. He talks about what it's been like with factions working together recently and what it's like to get involved wi...

[Apologies for the edit pasting error at around 1:14:11.] Archie has done a lot of work trying to understand what's going on with Your Party, and sought to report this for others to understand. With other writers at Prometheus, he has also provided a platform for ideas and writing about what a new party could be—some pieces are linked below. This ranging discussion starts with a timeline of Yo...

A rich deep-dive into imperialism and internationalism, and the history of how the British state and the Labour Party have related to global power, and how they do so today. How socialism must be truly internationalist. David provides useful context and complexity to the kind of policy a New Party could have and what it could do in power. And how the form of the party also plays a role in ensuring...

Vik Chechi-Ribeiro talks about unions and their relationships to parties, movements and the state; including how they could relate to a new left party.

[Apologies for the less than perfect sound on this one. It's OK to listen to and the content is really good.] Max Shanly explains how a new party can be democratically controlled by its members. There is often a lot of talk about things being democratic and member-led, but how do you actually do it? Max has done a lot of important work writing about how this could actually be done and talks th...