In the run up to the founding conference of Your Party, several groupings and campaigns have developed and emerged. At The World Transformed, seven of these groupings came together to present a minimum unity declaration. At Prometheus we have interviewed these groups to provide a guide for people to understand them and their political differences more.
These groups are The Democratic Bloc, Democratic Socialists, Eco-Socialist Horizon, Greater Manchester Left Caucus, Organising for Popular Power, Trans Liberation Group and People’s Front.
In this interview, we talk to Stephen Owen from the Greater Manchester Left Caucus. This interview was conducted on the 19th of October.
HH – Could you briefly summarise what the Greater Manchester Left Caucus is and what it argues for?
SO – At the moment, it is basically a broad collection of people from various anti-capitalist organisations, and those who are unaffiliated but share that politics, in Greater Manchester. We’ve launched publicly at The World Transformed, pretty much. There has been, I think, two meetings that we’ve held, one of which was really an organising meeting to bring people in. There are really four broad points that we’re arguing for.
The first of those is in relation to internal party democracy. What we’re arguing for is quite broad at the moment, and hopefully will be developed further. But we’re arguing that we do not want your party to be dominated by career politicians or unaccountable individuals. We say we want a party that is radically democratic, that is member led, that comes from the grassroots, etc.
The second principle would be on anti-oppression. We do not want to compromise on questions of the rights of individuals or issues like Palestine, trans liberation, sexism, racism, etc. That is something that Your Party has to be staunchly solid on.
In our view, the third relates to building class power without limiting ourselves purely to electoralism. We want to build power across our communities using the full power of the class in every area. There are a variety of different examples. One could talk about trade unions, tenants unions, anti-raid groups, things like this. In that sense, we want to be for class and community power.
And then finally, and I think this is probably the point that distinguishes us more from other caucuses at the moment, at least in terms of positions that have been developed and put out publicly, is our approach to the state. I think we’re very clear in saying that we do not want to be minor partners in a capitalist state. We don’t want to administer capitalism. We don’t administer in the interest of the British capitalist class, or administer the role of British imperialism across the world. In that sense, we’re fighting for a party that is anti capitalist, that only aims to take power on an anti capitalist programme, is thoroughly anti-imperialist and seeks to transform the world as part of a global system change.
HH – How did you end up coming together?
SO – This has its roots in essentially, a proposal that was made within Greater Manchester rs21, to publicly organise locally to form a caucus around these principles. A public meeting was held in late September, which was designed to draw together people outside that organisation, such as myself, to create a caucus that was not a front of Greater Manchester rs21 or something that was dominated by them. Instead it’s something that is trying to bring together a broad spectrum of anti capitalist groups within Manchester. I think so far, that’s been reasonably successful, and there’s people from a whole variety of different backgrounds that were at the initial meeting, and are active now.
HH – How would you summarise, first you approach to the regional assemblies (I imagine there’s a Manchester one), and then also the founding conference?
SO – The first thing I would say is that this is still something that is being worked out. There are a lot of details that we’re starting to iron out, but what was agreed at our latest meeting was essentially that we would use the unity statement that was agreed at The World Transformed as a baseline.
As on really, pretty much every question over kind of the fundamental principles that we’ve agreed, bar I would say the approach to the state, I think the unity statement is fairly clear, in at the very least, expressing broad support for those principles.
And then along with that, we’re going to have to consider questions which the statement, due to the very short timescale in which it was written, couldn’t or didn’t address.
I think questions of party democracy, of how we respond specifically to the founding documents that have just been released raises, that question of approach to the state and how that factors into this. I mean, first of all, look at the documents themselves, which I think, and this is a personal opinion rather than a faction or caucus opinion, they seem to be geared towards trying to get Your Party ready for the 2026 local elections. And also, in general, towards making sure the party is in a position to pick up as many seats as possible in 2029. We would question the basis on which that’s done, and what the party does in order to try and gain that power. I don’t think every approach to that is necessarily a positive thing.
In terms of the regional assemblies, specifically, we’re quite fortunate in that the Greater Manchester one was due to happen this weekend, but due to the very short timescale in which individuals are asked to try and sort out a venue that has been postponed. So we’ve got a little bit more time than we were perhaps expecting we might have.
We’re also looking at holding a public meeting which will invite members from other caucuses, as well as our own members, to try and develop, first of all, our own political positions, but also a strategic approach to this preconference period.
HH – You’ve come together on this quite regional basis as a sort of left of a project. Could you explain a bit more about why there’s maybe some use to that? Why come together on a regional basis?
SO – I think that there are a variety of reasons that you could point to. I think one of the major ones is whilst there are massive strengths to all the kinds of national caucuses that exist because of their basis as national caucuses, there are also certain challenges. The first is that, as is inevitable in the short space of time that we’ve had to develop, kind of organised groupings in Your Party, a lot of groups are either quite dominant in certain areas of the country, particularly London, or it’s built out of organising networks that exist in a certain place. This is perfectly understandable, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate very well to building a strategy for, say, Manchester, both in terms of bringing in the plurality of anti capitalist groups in our case, within Greater Manchester, but also, being able to consider the kind of tactical specifics of what is required to push our politics within Manchester.
There’s also the point about building class and community power which is something that is much more challenging for a national caucus to do. They have to take an approach which generalises their strategy to some extent to the whole country. We do want to be able to utilise every point of point of resistance against the capitalist system, and some of that requires a more local focus which can have people who are more focused on the issues happening directly in our area, asking how we can build that into a broader political assault.
HH – Would you like to see other places doing the same, across the country, having these kinds of events and setting up sort of left caucuses, where they’re bringing together the principal left around their area? Do you see that as something that you’d like to see others doing?
SO – Yeah, I think that that’s something that all of us have said that we would like to see replicated across the country. Admittedly, at the moment, there are still so many things that needs to be kind of hashed out as a group, including the name, which is something which we’re probably looking at changing that, but we’re perhaps looking at doing that at a later date, given we’ve just launched publicly under this name. But, cautiously, I would say yes. I think there are already sort of specifics to our approach that I think would be useful in other areas of the country.
HH – To tease a little more about this, you went from this period before Your Party to now, where before you might have had a quite fragmented left. Have you noticed that the culture has changed by this kind of project?
SO – I think so. In terms of the specifics of this project, I would say it’s a little bit soon to say what effect it will have, but I think that in speaking generally about my own experience of Your Party in particular, trying to organise an opposition that is more democratic than what the leadership have put forward so far, I think that has been very valuable.
There are lots and lots of people I’ve worked with who I just would not have had any connection with prior. It has forced a lot of people out of the small circles of revolutionary groups or community groups and the like. Unsurprisingly that is often how it works, because we’re dealing with a very long period where the left is failing to unite even in disagreement and not fragment further. In that sense, there has been a really galvanising effect. You end up working with people very closely who, in some cases, are the people who you’ve argued with constantly over social media, or you’ve avoided, at a protest, or you’ve told them to go away when they’re selling their paper at you or whatever.
In that sense, I think there’s already a lot of potential for that, and if we can have that as a focus and do it on a principal basis around a clear programme and strategy, I think that’s very possible and would be hugely beneficial.
HH – Returning to the four principles of GMLC. The one that stands out to me is the fourth one that you mentioned, a slightly niche one, and it’s not in the unity document from TWT. It’s basically around what we would call a strategy of patience, right? I wondered if you could explain a bit more about that because for people having come from Corbynism, where you were contesting government, that might feel like a slightly different way of approaching something like electoral work. Why? Why approach it in this way? What do you see as the importance of it?
SO – In a sense, this ties in a lot with the particular approach we have to other questions. We are very explicitly for an end to capitalism and all that comes with that, a society in which there is collective control of all production and in which both the political side of democracy is massively expanded and democracy is extended to every other area of society
Given that, it’s very fair of people who have perhaps voted for us on that transformative vision, when seeing limited attempts to ‘govern’ to conclude ‘well, okay, these people do not stand for what they’ve suggested’. We see that historically when revolutionary groupings, or even actually quite broad left groupings, have entered government on the basis of a programme that isn’t theirs to implement, you know, either a light reformist programme, or even actually, you know, a programme of austerity cuts and other such things, that is incredibly damaging, that can set back any transformative project back for years, or, in some cases, just entirely destroys them.
So there’s that aspect. There’s also the aspect of learning lessons from Corbynism. Even if Jeremy Corbyn got into power on his programme and attempted to implement it in full, I personally suspect that the broad base of support required to fight back against what would have faced a huge onslaught from the capitalist class just wouldn’t have been there.
You do need time to build up a very vibrant and very organised movement around your political demands, around your programme, and also a movement that understands what it takes to achieve those demands, what it takes to achieve a different society. So in that sense, you do need a degree of patience, and you do need to not rush into things.
There’s also very particular questions to ask in relation to Your Party. There is a certain degree of enthusiasm for some sort of unity with the Greens, as well as people who want a left government in power as soon as possible. They say it doesn’t really entirely matter what basis, we just need different people in. I think our response is to recognise it potentially ties Your Party into a whole set of other problems, and actually potentially leads towards being in power, but not having real political power. By not having any power to implement our own programme, the real risk is killing Your Party dead.
HH – Are there any other things from what you’re doing or what you’re advocating as the GMLC that you’d like to highlight?
SO – I think the main thing I would just reiterate is that we are looking at organising a public meeting very soon once we’ve got a proper sort of public presence going. This will be advertised pretty widely and generally.
I think one of the benefits of our group is we don’t really organise in a way that’s antagonistic to a lot of the other caucuses. Personally, I’m a member of Democratic Socialists in Your Party, a fairly active one. I’ve also recently joined Organising for Popular Power. That’s true of a lot of other people in the caucus at the moment. So it’s a very particular sort of approach to the area that we’re in which can potentially be complementary to the work that the national caucuses are doing.
