 yma. Felly, yma, y cwrdd yn fawr sy'n gweithio'r bwrdd yn cael ei ffayr. A ymddangos, rydym yn ymdweud, ond mae'n mynd yn ei ffasgfaeth i ddweud, ond mae'n ddweud ar ddweud o'r ffasgfaeth yn ymweld, ond mae'n ddweud o'r ffasgfaeth o'r ffasgfaeth yn unrhyw iawn, a dyma'n ceisio'n bod ymweld yn gweithio'n credu o'r ffasgfaeth, ac mae'n maen nhw'n gweithio'n ddweud o'r this fair town environment in other ways. So help me answer this question. Is this working? Oh, here we go. I've got Ash Sarkar, last anarchist left in London, and senior editor of our media. I have Ewa Yadavitch, a woman who puts us all to shame because you've organised on things ranging from anti-capitalism to unions, the environment and everything in between. I have Mika Minio, an energy-accompanied industrial strategy for the ownership. I've got Mary Griffin, writer and researcher working primarily on gender migration. And I'm Kirsty Major. So, first of all, I'd like us to answer the question, what is the left and what are our aims? And then secondly, how is the link, what are the emails to the point? But Ewa, would you like to start? I guess I have to. What is the left? Why is the left? No one can answer that question. As someone who has never really taken things in themselves. Actually, a big part of the left, you're not the only anarchist left in London. I am still part of it, but did you join the Labour Party? Okay, I did, so you are, you are. I guess the left is a bit of an assemblage of, at the moment, people who've been active and organising for many, many years, who maybe started out in the Labour Party, then left during the Tony Blair years and around the Iraq War and have now come back into it. And I'm not really going to speak for them. I guess I can speak a bit for the people who wouldn't really be in this room and who aren't going to join the Labour Party and are feeling quite critical of the whole project. And they would be people from anarchist movement, direct action, grassroots organising movement that have been doing anti-fascist work, who have been organising social centres, squatting properties for their own needs, but also around creating social centres, solidarity centres, doing work with refugees and grassroots trade union organising as well. I'm a member of United Voices of the World and I've been doing a bit of training work with them and I feel like this is the sort of orientation that is most important and that Labour can learn from and the main trade unions can learn from as well because it's a union that is organising around a community and workplace model and much of the work is focused on migrant workers, cleaners and it's about empowering them and enabling them to represent themselves rather than it usually as is the case in mainstream unions of being a white male bureaucrat, not necessarily a bad person or someone without experience from the shop floor, but not really a genuine representative of the people at a grassroots level. I think that Labour as a party is trying to rectify this, but still it's still quite an unrepresentative party in many ways of working class people in this country, both British citizens and migrant workers, migrants living here who are going to be severely impacted by Brexit and I've got to say Labour's policy on Brexit because I just wrote a chapter about this. It's shit! You mentioned the B word. I thought we'd maybe at least get five minutes before we got there. Just briefly, I think you have to be really strong on this, this whole, the whole elements around freedom of movement and the constraints on that through engaging in a way of classifying migrants and buying into this kind of migrant visa system. There's already over 30 different visas in this country that classify people, but the recommendations that are part of the Labour manifesto around having controlled migration and feeding into this system is actually a fragmentation, a fracturing of the working class in this country and will absolutely ferment more of a black market around employment and also a lot more racism. So I think it's very important to be clear about not buying into that. I know some of the big unions have talked about having quotas for migrant workers in workplaces only where there's a recognition agreement. This is a fantasy. Most workplaces aren't covered by a union recognition agreement but even if they were, that would turn unions into effectively border guards, checking workers' papers and visas. And this is important because this is how class is made. It's literally made through classification and subordination of different peoples through economic subordination and oppressive means and Brexit in particular is going to be like a turbo-charging of this process if we're not vigilant about it and if we're not standing and organizing with the most precarious workers, both British and migrant. So I think that's what needs to happen. That wasn't it. Ash, can you build on any of that, especially around freedom movement? I think we'll first have to take a special look at who are the elected people. Four years ago, five years ago, that was a really easy question to answer. There was some white, one-established organisation of four to have one in several union presence and we also had a very authoritarian bureaucratic but actually existing social and political communism. Do you have all these things to orient yourself or to disidentify on, but that's not going to be a solid answer? In the interviewing world, where the world is still a manifesto thinking about the absence of institutional identity is really important because obviously that's the question of where we're going now, particularly in this question of is the Labour Party a vehicle for the right for the left. Because the way I speak, you've got to come back to some of the quite basic definitions of what seems to be valuable. It doesn't just mean how you pitch together to this quote, how reasonable or unreasonable do you look when you're going up against Joe Rental or somewhere like that. By the way, it's exactly like Tim Westwood and I just can't get out of my head that I can just look at some pictures and say, I'm out of my colleagues. I've got to go to the man tomorrow. Tell me about that, I love what he's been thinking about. But what I'm going to be writing for isn't just a relational position, right? It's not just about how do you look when you go up against what people call results of moderate. To be radical means to grasp at the root. It means you're going really against the spaces where power shapes itself and reproduces itself. So the thinking about what there needs to be right for left is I think you have to go back to some of like, you know, Sheldon Llew. You can think about radical criticism as being characterised by desertion, by exodus and strategies of appeasable. But Westwood can do that in or with or alongside the Labour Party. I think that's certainly a space gap because the Labour Party in its current iteration is quite in itself. And I don't mean that in a kind of, I'm quite inspired in a way, but you've conducted a list of quite taggons because the first time in what's burnt in your cheese politics itself is back on the table and tagging isn't back on the table. Difference is back on the table. And then the thing to think about is strong structure and identification. I think that there is a danger because that's happening there. But instead of thinking about how we might transform the Labour Party by just putting against it, you know, by constructing ways, it's not looking at all the definition you start thinking about that passive ever-usable above as branching rules that will suit the democracy, right? Intent to be my last word. Intent to be reflected. I don't think that's what any of us wants. None of us who are in a business is going to be able to see what it has to mean. So that's the first thing that's going to be very useful to us. And I think this comes in a sort of secure way in the politics of what's happening in the middle of nature. Because, to paraphrase, Sartre, there were unfortunately nothing that consisted with our standard racism. When my grandmother and my mother were working with us when we were the first Saturday when we were going to get this policy agreement in this country, they were often visited. They were often visited when it was going out. So that's a lot of happy internationalism. Is there a process of being seen also in the 20th century? And I think, recognising that that antagonism in terms of freedom of movement in terms of racialised precarious classes of work and saying, well, that's something that's always been there leads us to, I think, a productive step of saying in histories of resistance and subversion of counter-power have also always been there. So I feel intensely optimistic for once. Maybe I'm just in a particularly happy you've spoken my hormonal cycle. But I think that there is room for a kind of constructive antagonism with the Labour Party on this question of whether or not it's a vehicle for radical leftism. Because I think that for the first time in my living memory there's a real chance and a kind of taste of a possibility of meaningful political change on the horizon. Thank you. Maya, you've been constructively antagonistic for the Labour Party of late. What are your thoughts? Cers of the mic? It's like one side of it that works, that side. This side? Yeah. OK. So I actually think thinking about this question, something that Stuart Hall would encourage us all to do would be to think about the particular moment we're living in and why we're having this conversation at this particular time. So I think recognising and this is something that I think we are continuing to do does at times get lost in the debate. Recognising exactly what has occurred over the past two years is incredibly important to think about how we engage with that as we move forward and what we've actually seen I don't think it was just the general election that was kind of the shift of the political landscape as we've kind of been told that it was. What we actually saw was two years of the Labour Party trying to plug away with Jeremy Corbyn as leader to shift the debate and what that achieved really was a sense that the withered I think Moribyn's status that we've been told was the only option was no longer the only option and that's what we all know and that's what we've all understood from the general election and unfortunately within the Labour Party and I think that we need to see we need to see these debates both within the Labour Party and then people who are outside the Labour Party but on the left within the Labour Party that's not a that's not a totally agreed upon point and I think that what we need to continue to do within those structures then is to push that argument and push the argument that actually continuing down this path that Jeremy Corbyn has begun to forge is really essential to achieving not only this electoral success that is so crucial to winning these arguments within those Labour circles but also achieving any kind of future that anyone of our age wants to be signed on to but when we're doing that I think what's really really important for us when we're thinking about how we engage within Labour spaces and outside of them particularly for people who aren't engaging within those Labour spaces is recognising the history of the Labour Party and I think that history shows us the real limitations so this idea about race and migration being two key planks the left, the left the party political left has always historically been bad on and what I think we need to be really really careful of doing is there is a there is a retelling of that history that is incredibly false even within those radical left Labour circles this idea that the Labour Party was the party for equality races party that it was an internationalist party when you actually dig down into the roots of what that internationalism means it's incredibly vague it's incredibly split the Labour Party was not an anti-empire pro it didn't support the anti-colonial movements throughout the 50s and 60s and that actually the reason why that is important is because that does continue to underpin the politics that we see today as well as being some kind of it's used the false retelling of that history is used in a defensive way by the left within the Labour Party in a way that means they don't have to engage with that history themselves they don't have to engage with the failures the failures of the trade union movement historically and in contemporary times and the failures within those same left of circles we have individuals who may be doing very well on stuff like anti-racism we have really important figures like Diane Aber who I think need to be really supported and really cheered in these moments like the general election they do really good work right but they are people they are individuals within a much broader structure so I think that when we when we're talking about what is the left and where does the left go from here we have to be incredibly critical of that history and we have to be honest about that history because to forge a new Labour Party but also a left that can engage with that Labour Party there needs to be a really really honest recognition of what the issues are and the issues are predominantly race and migration the left is not good on this the manifesto not only did it say let's abandon freedom of movement it also said no recourse to public funds for migrants there was nothing about closing immigration detention centres which is arguably a relatively easy policy to kind of to include in the manifesto so knowing that history I think is really important for all of us to begin to push the Labour Party and the left in conjunction with one another forward from where we are now So Mika you've been working within the Labour Party the belly of the beast what do you think the issues are that the left needs to take to Labour I guess for context I'm the chair of my local branch and I've also been doing various advice for Corbyn's team and for Labour's centre I think though before directly answering that bit the left isn't static at all the left is constantly shifting having this many people in the room for this topic would not have happened two years and three months ago and probably lots of you here two years and three months ago were not part of a mobilised left maybe everybody was for the lots of faces I don't know there weren't that many of us three years ago so I think we should recognise that stuff is constantly now the institutions lots of them are pretty you know they take longer to adapt but even so I mean you know Navarro came out of nowhere like lots of things like spring up momentum and movements are also constantly adapting it's messy within that and we shouldn't think of Labour as too static in that context that Labour carries masses of baggage masses of like being front and centre in imperialism over a lot of last 60 years and that needs to be unpacked and especially in the context of like this big argument in Labour at the moment about how to talk about Englishness and that's like clearly lots of that is not they're not doing anything towards recognising Labour's role in a violent oppressive Englishness at the same time it's quite easy for people in London to go whatever let's not think about Englishness I'm fine being British because actually most people lots of people in London I mean there's lots of us who don't like thinking about Britishness or Englishness recognise both of them Some of us wrote for Palmer's Green okay but there are lots of people who think of themselves and are on the hard left who are happy of Britishness not happy of Englishness and don't bother thinking don't bother engaging with what are the arguments outside London so I think we do need to challenge ourselves as the radical left to go okay what does that mean in Leeds what does that mean in Hull what does that mean in Yarmouth because being radical I totally agree obviously radical is about ultimately the roots it's about dismantling the roots but it's quite the conception of what is radical here can look quite different to the conception of what's radical in Yarmouth I think also in terms of what needs to be fed into the heart of Labour at this point and coming from a background very much being like anarchist who's on the street like mostly on the streets like that's not that's the whether it's in the Egyptian Revolution or in other places like that was for me where struggle was we were going to win like the last time I felt this close to our seizing power was because the Ministry of the Interior and Egypt was 50 metres down the road only two more lines of cops in between us and it and we'd already got through five so it's like okay we're going to take it but ultimately the thing that beat the movements I don't want to say us because I could leave wasn't the cops and it wasn't the tanks it was that we didn't have they didn't have the movements didn't have enough of vision of what we wanted lots of strong arguments on resistance lots of strong argument lots of it was very clear that Mubarak was gone that that had to end that the corruption had to end but what we want what people wanted was much harder and I think that's we need to keep pushing ourselves not to just say no and to go okay what are those things that we are going to fight for and that's a lot harder some of it yeah obviously we need to shut the detention centres but the practical stuff like on councils we could theoretically have seized as the left we could have seized most of London next next May, June like the hard left in Labour if we'd been better organised we could have won lots of the councillor selections got through it would have been tricky but we could have won more but we actually have to have a plan for what we want to do because otherwise we'll just end up like the ship progress ones you know we might be a little bit better we might stop sending social workers to harass sex workers don't say that name on this stage, thank you stop that and so we've spoken a lot about the limitations of Labour but I want to pose a question are these problems particular to the Labour Party as an institution or are these problems inherent to the idea of staycraft the idea that all electoral politics are essentially about compromise and that's where these issues are coming from Ewa, do you want to start I'm sorry it would be good to see where else people have managed to legislate for the best kind of conditions that allow for social movements to make gains and to breathe and to evolve I don't know of that many examples to be quite honest maybe Barcelona but I'm not informed enough to talk about that but if we're looking at some of the legislative changes that we want to see with Labour winning they're not going to be able to be pushed on this we have a majority in Parliament so there is a necessity for candidates to come forward and standard councillors and then councillors not necessarily has to happen this way but we need more radical MPs to make those decisions and changes and represent our interests in a forum which is going to create that structural obviously not going to create like structural change in terms of social reproduction because there's so much cultural work to be done to dismantle already such a racist and repressive culture that we have some of the changes that are going to lessen the economic damage that people are suffering on a daily basis so repeal of the trade union anti union laws should enable workers and unions to fight for more within the workplace but because of neoliberal culture most people don't know what trade union is and are still thinking quite individualised ways so that work at the top needs to be matched by a lot of organising from below at a grass roots level at a workplace level at a community level to actually really educate and skill people up in how to organise at work you know if we get rid of these laws okay we're free to strike easier we're going to be free to you know we're not going to have zero hours contracts we're going to get rid of unscrupulous all of them employment agencies we're going to have you know more of an open field to organise in but if we don't know how to organise and we're still working in a context where a lot of our co-workers are speaking and you need organisations good unions that are going to put time and money and effort into having meetings where you've got all the translators present and you've got you know a way of organising and also an orientation which is explicitly anti-capitalist that's got to happen so I mean repealing the trade union laws is one example but also creating the conditions for community owned renewable energy and getting rid of the big six and reforming the whole energy system and speak very clearly about also repealing some of the most you know how do we how do we abolish prisons how do we get rid of you know indefinite detention detention centres but also the public protection indefinite sentencing like there's a whole architecture of repression that has been created to contain some of the responses to the repressive impoverishing racist misogynist kind of anti-working class environment that we have in this country that's developed over you know forever but intensely over the last 30 years those need to be dismantled and the Tory press and the establishment are going to have a fit about that but these are some of the structures that are going to that need to be undone you know because we can't just have more decent kind of legislative conditions that are plattable to mainstream society we need to support people who are in prisons who are in detention centres who are in precarious work who are you know are needing refuge fleeing domestic violence you know we need we need to really focus in these areas and you know all kind of structural changes through legislation should be orientated around that and explicitly culturally explaining why it's important to change the laws around that and put massive funding into these these areas and these services are much healing that needs to happen in this country so I think we should yeah And Aywa, do you feel like you can dismantle these structures from within the state or outside of it because it's almost like you know you inherit all of these things like some sort of ugly couch from your nan when you get into state like prisons and detention centres and actually it's the civil service and other various structures super protective of them and do you have to be outside of it to make that happen I think you need you know there are people who are organising and campaigning and doing this work at a community level I think you know the discourse from the top in like PMQs and in the kind of you know the kind of statements that are going to be made from the front bench of the Labour Party need to need to sound more more radical perhaps and if they can't they need to be more open from the grass roots so when I think about what the Labour Party can do in a structural kind of representative legislative sense that's that's quite technical and the social movement aspect is going to be as good as the councillors and the MPs at a local level and the organising that goes on to put pressure to hold them to account if people are going to follow that line and have faith because you know I've done community organising in Newham and I'm doing some union organising in Newham and Labour council it's like an anti-council they're doing they're like a model for neoliberalism in this country in terms of social cleansing you know new housing developments unaffordable housing and academisation of schools you know there are people in Newham who will never trust the Labour Party who just spit on the Labour Party and with good reason so where you know work needs to be done there people need to regain the faith there but I think at all stages and at all times we can't we can't give away our power to representatives they can represent us they can support us but I think you have to keep pushing and organising and your strength is in the community and in your union I mean I think that there's a problem in assuming that statecraft as a technology hasn't changed I think that it has changed drastically in the last few decades we've moved from structures of discipline to structures of control these big disciplinary institutions that we associate with the oppressive state have largely been scaled back or privatised and what we have is a kind of I'm so pretentious and I'm so sorry for doing this we have the kind of like permeation of governmentality right a kind of logic for control that we've internalised and carry with us everywhere which suits the kind the demands of atomised existences under neoliberalism so I think that when we're talking about a critique of statecraft if we're not you know coupling with that a critique of how we have our own neoliberal subjectivities then it's a debate that's stuck somewhere in the you know 60s or 70s as for shit as for the limitations of statecraft like this is why I love white people because you lot think that you have invented political dilemmas right the black panthers were dealing with what is the nature of non reformist reform way back when right when you want to look at how do you use a takeover of a municipal government to start implementing abolitionist aims or they've done been doing that already and these are just histories that we choose not to listen to or engage with and I think that looking at that kind of neighbourhood organising and I think looking to that kind of neighbourhood organising as a counterpoint to that kind of progressive patriotism nationalistic model that's being floating some corners of the Labour Party and I think is really quite fertile ground to building a people versus power block that can encompass everyone from like Rago and Arcos to you know self identifying moderates or even the odds like you know socially liberal Tory you know because we have to think about because yeah I think you rightly identified you know false histories in the Labour Party but we also need to think about how storytelling is a really powerful tool for shaping that can build a counter hegemony and make power stick it's not just about winning an election it's about changing the culture and I think that one of the ways in which we can do that is rather than I think opposing statecraft electoralism to social movement so I do think we need to think really deeply about what a social movement independent of the Labour Party looks like I think we need something about political terrains and I think really fertile political terrain is in space because I'm thinking when I was listening to you talk of those de-territorial support group posters a beauty is in the street I love those posters and it chimes with that feeling of possibility and affection and love that you get when you're just like pouring into a line of cups with like 20 of your mates right there's nothing like it but that's not sustainable right you get burnt out you get bruised you get nicked you get disheartened and it's no substitute for the kinds of ownership of the streets when you have when you can say I don't know a full to live in a neighbourhood and so I think we need to make that kind of municipal demand that comes from turning on the faucet right so Clay Davis turned on the faucet in a while you're looking at me blank you know turned on the money faucet which means that we can kind of transform the kind of funding available for social housing those insurrectionist demands of what does it look like to have ownership of the streets right not just to think about a kind of top-down bureaucratic project of there's more housing there you go now living it but thinking about shaping that urban terrain and I think that there are some wonderful thinkers who write really well on this I think David Harvey is you know premiss into parties in that regard and I think that these are thinkers that we should all be looking to because as great as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonald and Diane Abbott all are and I rate them all in so many ways on political thinking for us Navara isn't going to do your political thinking for you either and that's probably for the best I think all of us have a responsibility to get out and recover these counter histories of counter hegemonic strategy and start thinking about how we can implement that in our day-to-day lives because Diane Abbott she's sick but she can't institute a counter hegemony she can't build a counter hegemony she can't make a culture right we can and I think that that's got to be the direction of conversation so statecraft for our gains yeah I mean I agree with what Ash was saying so I'm going to maybe look at this in a slightly different way and I think that's something that we need to be if we just to momentarily think about it in terms of the Labour Party just thinking about the Labour Party if you get a Labour Government right there are limitations in terms of what I've spoken about already in terms of internal feuding the kind of the things that Jeremy Corbyn has had to give ground on because of the nature of the Labour Party's history but also the nature of where power lies within the PLP that is shifting but I think that when we get a Labour Government if we get a Labour Government with Jeremy Corbyn is leading the Labour Party we will see the arms of the state kicking to gear we will see attempts at every turn to curb to reduce what the Labour Party do the options available to them we already know the fear within what is called the establishment about what a Corbyn-led Labour Government would look like and I think what's really important in all of this is we've seen over the past two years a whole movement build around Corbyn people have been really really invigorated by what he's offered by just what I would think is not even radical politics what is a change to the status quo within the UK it's not a huge shift away from it it's something of a challenge to it those people have been energised by Corbyn but the reality of a Labour Government is something quite different and I think that readying those people readying ourselves for what is to come and to realise that the pressure is going to have to be put on them that is when the fight is going to begin over some of these issues and one of the key things that I think we need to be doing now which I think ashes in part touched upon is some of these big issues like migration for instance I don't think and please correct me if I'm wrong in the Q&A but I don't think having work working in this area right now and speaking to people across the left and in the sector I don't think the work has been done in terms of the intellectual ground work when thinking about migration if we want to have open borders we're probably not going to have that tomorrow we're probably not going to see a Labour Government stand on that kind of platform right what policies can we even begin to implement or to suggest that can even make that a thinkable idea like you're talking about the abolition of prisons as well like what are we what are we doing on the left and this is a question to you all because I'm sure people are doing this work what are we doing in terms of laying that intellectual ground work even laying those practical policy and possibilities because the left has for so long been kind of on the offensive and trying to trying to battle itself or trying to attack the right I think that we haven't always had the space to then build what would be termed radical policies and that's where I think we have this moment and we have this space and that's how we should be using it as we go forward you stole all my best lines always happens it's interesting because I lived in Oakland for a couple years and I did while I was there I was quite involved in lots of prison abolitionist movements and like our posters were designed by the same person who designed the Black Panther posters like there's a continuity in terms of the people who are doing a lot of that organizing and there's a continuity in terms of the communities who are having these debates and even there the argument on why we need prison abolition and what to do instead wasn't fully won like everybody agreed cops can fuck off they're not in your neighbourhood but how we actually run stuff without them was super contentious and super difficult and pretty violent and I think that's partly where we as a radical left we want prison abolition and we want open borders but that's why I said the thing about and we need to know what we want like what that looks like like how do we because having prison abolition is really difficult like it's not easy it's not just about opening the prisons it's how you deal with hard shit and I'm sure lots of people here will have been involved in groups where you're as a political group having to go how do we deal with people being aggressive to each other with violence within our movements without engaging the police how do we create justice and it's hard and those same issues apply for things like open borders apply for stuff like energy and like the default stuff that comes out there like on community energy the default stuff on community energy is neoliberal and useless and there's just investors and people making lots of money and that's what's actually happening at the moment with almost all the community energy now that's not what we want as a radical left we want energy that people control democratically and I think that the stuff a lot of it is about democracy that we like you were saying obviously we can't rely on Labour from the top down to give us democracy like real true radical democracy is about going well working out some different ideas on what it looks like but more than that it's about actually winning the arguments and building commitment and winning the mandate that it's not just us that want it but actually generally people want prison abolition and that's much much harder and that's also our responsibility because we can't hey Corbyn's not going to do that and yeah I'll say it may I come in on this point really briefly is that I think taking open borders as an example is that I think there's a really like reasonable framing for this and I think it's one that we've been quite cautious about deploying and that is the kind of integration of the internal border into our everyday life so landlords checking immigration status doctors checking immigration status because of visa surcharges and so on and so forth I was chatting to a friend of mine who's a teacher because obviously schools are now collecting assistantship data even Tories will agree teachers shouldn't be doing that shit and you can make that case about it is a gross violation of the rights of pupils or you can make this argument on the basis of efficiency like you know teachers should be teaching your kid like you know two plus two is four minus one is three quick maths etc like you know and you can make that case I think in multiple ways you should be building on some things that are already there and I'm thinking about this more in terms of political narrative rather than structures and I think that this is why we really need to go back to reading some histories of the birth of neoliberalism and the success of neoliberalism because that was really the last big paradigm shift and I mean everyone should read Stuart Hall anyway because he's fucking sick but you really should read Stuart Hall on the neoliberal revolution because one of the things that he talks about is how Thatcher very effectively built on tropes that already existed within the political imagination tweaked them right redefined them gave you know more prominence to certain aspects over others but there's no reason why we shouldn't do that too and I think that getting rid of the internal border is a winnable demand it's a winnable demand and it's one that we can you know I think use quite strategically to try and build that consensus for open borders because you know there's a war of manoeuvre the war of position the war of manoeuvre has nothing without the war of position and thinking about how you can bring new blocks new cohorts new demographics into genuinely radical politics I think is the challenge we should all be meeting because and believe me I love slagging of the Labour Party not a one of them can dress I could do it all day but that's not actually going to make our brand of radical politics get anywhere and this is my beef with anarchos is that we have evaded for so long the questions of scaling up we've evaded for so long the question of changing people's minds and what we filled that vacuum with was slagging off the Labour Party which even for me gets boring after a while I've got this one thank you no God the left in technology we've got so many problems so you partly answer my question that I was going to ask to everyone else which is so clearly you you're all aiming towards the point of we need to change the hegemy right we need to make it ours and I mean how do we begin to do that storytelling is one part but I mean how do we even find a voice for that storytelling a platform for it yeah I mean it's not going to be here it's going to be in meetings in places and encounters with people who are not like us or don't agree with us I'm going to give an example I joined my tenants and residents association in Bethnal Green kind of didn't work out in my mind I was like this is it we're going to organise around housing I'm going to be working with people from the local community I've been here like few years now yeah I want to support people when really repressive housing legislation comes into force and people are going to start getting evicted I'll do the groundwork now and it was just really difficult I was the only woman in the organisation and nobody really wanted to do any work I like leafleted my whole estate there was a sort of quite kind of there was a sort of housing support officer who really had her own agenda and she didn't want us to have our first meeting about housing she wanted it to be about anti-social behaviour because this was the big thing and she really kind of dominated it having this meeting about ASB when really the actual kind of nub of it was the lack of youth service provision in the area that like 20 youth centres have been shut down but instead we had people come along middle class guys white guys kind of complaining about Asian youth hanging around it was really it was really difficult the point I'm trying to make is that it was important to be part of that it was important to see like how you could be part of an organisation that is not part of the organised left but you know you've got access you are part of a whole community and group of people that don't know each other and we're all quite isolated and we're trying to organise around our community essentially and just recognising all these different power dynamics and rank dynamics and how yeah it's hard work maybe I should try and give a positive story union organising but yeah I think that the work is going to be done in places where we are coming into contact with a lot of people who are not sharing our opinions basically and I know that's kind of we all say that all the time but you know maybe trying to organise community forums but then again if it's coming from kind of middle class people who have the time and energy and the confidence to do that will that create a kind of domination unconscious domination of how the discourse develops I have to say that working around the general election was pretty transformative I think for a lot of people because I went around Croydon and Battersea and but we were knocking on doors and talking to people who were convincing people to vote for Labour but it was more than that it was the fact that we were going into housing estates and we were just having conversations with people on the doorstep and really having to respond and react and listen and it was you know multiple conversations like that all around the country where you know maybe people were talking about politics for the first time or were talking about politics in a way that they weren't able to in other contexts and I know it has to go way beyond just the door knock and the election cycle and momentum you know has been doing a lot of good work around this but a kind of parallel to this is community organising and one really positive story I will say is a group called the people's empowerment custom house peach I used to work for peach oh do you know a hero yeah so anyway this this is an organisation that's been going for about four years it's in the ward of custom house which is facing crossrail construction project finishing you know next year most of the neighbourhood is going to be bulldozed it's going to be knock down and the plan from newham council is to engage a property developer to build basically one bedroom unaffordable it's in the sky the community will be moved on to Dover to Birmingham they'll be pushed out of newham because as the mayor of newham said if you can't afford to live in newham you can't afford to live in newham we'll get rid of him next year but so peach has been working with architects to develop an alternative regeneration programme and everything that goes into that so housing use of space local economy you know parks, community centres literally redesigning the neighbourhood with the community through door knocking through meetings through genuinely collaborative consultation and an alternative regeneration plan and model has been developed and that's come from the community that's come from grassroots organising and it's a positive alternative whether newham council will accept it or not is another story but it's that kind of it's exactly that kind of work that I think should be happening and can be happening because it's concrete it's real it's dealing with you know immediate threat of being booted out of the neighbourhood it's like 75, 80% social housing it's a very poor neighbourhood so this is this is the kind of work I think peach is an excellent model for the sort of work that can be done and I guess the renters union that's just set up is going to be trying to do that Could you tell us a little bit about the renters unions I think that's a huge issue which could radicalise potentially swathes the people who aren't currently interested in labour or even politics full stop Yeah The renters union is made up of various organisations Peach is part of it Unite hotel workers branch is part of it Help me out someone There are some other organisations that are part of it I don't know if St Anne's start is part of it but anyway it's a union it's trying to be a union for people who are are renting and who want to see the rent come down who want to see affordable housing in their area who want to challenge landlords and housing associations and councils that are socially cleansing areas and the model area for the renters union at the moment the focal point will be Newham which is a hotspot and they've got their first open organising meeting next Saturday so you should all go along to it just on Twitter it's at LDN renters union someone here who's here is from the renters union next time next time I'll meet you all of you Mika and Maya creating a fair-tile environment for radical leffing ideas how do we do it I think one of the things I guess from a practical point of view that can be done I know quite a few people who live in Sheffield which is a labour I mean it's a good yeah it's a labour city but there are obviously as there are many towns and cities across the country there are these pockets of real, real deprivation and what you have in some of those spaces is as the same story is across the country is you have food banks you have libraries closing down or being run by volunteers and I know a lot of people who are doing work in those spaces but who are not doing work in those spaces on behalf of the Labour Party so if you're thinking about trying to reach people and talk to people who you know they hear a lot for the past 20 years about how a Labour Government is maybe going to make their lives better but we had a Labour Government it made their lives worse what can you do to reach them I think a really, really easy thing you can do and that is taking lessons from these histories something the Black Panthers did is providing free breakfast for children like that's a really practical thing you can do as a community to look after one another but also to show people what radical politics can do and I think getting in those spaces as I think is being done in some places but in a really cohesive way having a strategy whereby those services you have people from the left telling people making what is already political these spaces are already inherently political but they're not overtly political to everyone who's visiting them and I think making that clear is part of the way that you can say to people we're not just going to say we're going to make your lives better this is what we can do on a really small scale here it would be think about what we can do if we got in government I think that's a really practical thing that can be done initially to reach some of those people who right now maybe don't think the Labour Party is going to actually change their lives at all Yep but some branches in London like I think in Chingford they're trying to do stuff with food banks we're talking to people but I think one of the challenges that they found there is how to do it in a way which isn't doing the Hamas model like Hamas's model is something that Labour branches have to do if they're going to be actively campaigning because if you're like me involved in your local branch it's so easy to get stuck in the bureaucracy and it's so easy to get stuck on fighting off the right wing like we're going to phone bank next week and we're sending lots of messages this week so we're going to have to pick a new secretary and the right wing going to try and get secretary instead of us and that can easily become the focus and if that's what Labour branches end up getting stuck on then we're not building that movement then we're not growing we might be keeping power within the party but we're not looking at it however Labour branches do have massive potential to look outwardly and I think anyone who's engaged in community organising in the past if you think okay so my local my branch well in my ward actually because we're so in my ward we've got 400 members and there's 12,000 residents so one in 30 residents is a Labour party member so that's a pretty good base to be organising and bear in mind almost all of those members 80-90% of those members joined for Corbyn now our meetings have like 30 people in them but lots of those seeing so many other people want to do they don't want to come to meetings especially if they think that it's just you know fighting the right but they are they see themselves as part of the left they see themselves as wanting a big transformation and finding ways to go how do we organise locally in a way where me as the chair telling people what to do but it's about us sharing that power growing that power building that power that's what we're going to need if we're going to have a radical left council taking over a radical left-lead party taking over in my case Waltham Forest and pushing through radical stuff otherwise we can't do that but the other question you asked before was about stories and how we how do we smashed a current neoliberal hegemony how do we put something else in that and we shouldn't forget that we're not the only ones trying to do that at the moment like there's clearly a whole right-wing narrative on like okay how do we move beyond that but also there's a whole liberal soft left neoliberalism like approach to neoliberalism as dying something else will have to take its place I was at a conference today organised by a funder from one of my day jobs and it's like I know 70 people I think 69 white people very like very proper and and they were all talking about how we're going to build a future beyond neoliberalism they thought they were planning out how to do it and like the keynote speaker was Matthew Taylor who runs the RSA in 2005 his job was to keep new labour in control of labour and to defend Tony Blair's reputation I was the keynote speaker in that context We were into it before it was cool I'm sure they know that But we've got to win that I think that's also the thing that if we want that post neoliberal thing to not be fascist not be liberal and shit So I've saved the best topic till last which is Brexit didn't say I don't treat you all good Obviously that's the topic that we definitely need to change the narrative on right and in many ways it's a really big space that the radical left needs to enter into and especially if it's going to push labour in the right direction especially on freedom of movement How do we even begin to do that What is the narrative we need to be spinning around that topic I know Ewa you have done loads of really amazing work around workers rights and what will happen to that after Brexit I don't know if you could start off on that I could I also think Brexit offers us a really major opportunity because it's clearly exposed a lot of conflict I would argue quite intense class conflict that was framed in terms of an anti-establishment narrative and in quite a racist insider-outsider narrative which never spoke of British identity as being diverse multicultural the genuine sort of identity that it is it spoke of it in very nationalistic right and Christian values terms and on the establishments terms the Brexit referendum happened on the establishments terms and people were sold a vote of power in a binary question yes or no to a massive question that played into all kinds of fantasies of empowerment and I think what it opened up was the possibility for a mass participation it was a bigger turn out than general elections it went beyond party political orientation and it also enabled a lot of people to speak about it with each other and speak to each other in the street and I don't know how you all dealt with it but when I was going out to pubs I was like how did you vote you know to complete strangers to try and open up conversation in a way that kind of breakthrough moment where everyone's talking about what they think and what they believe and what they want to see has passed and the establishment has very much kind of claimed that narrative I don't think Labour's necessarily reclaimed it enough towards a I guess a sort of maybe they have towards a kind of workers' rights and social democratic agenda but I think what's missing and what we could do as a radical left and people who know how to put on meetings and organize socials is to basically have like community forums and forums where people are able to really discuss what Brexit is going to mean for them and talk about how they voted and why and listen to people who absolutely do not feel we share any common ground with but I think there's a lot of processing to be done around that vote and that choice and what it delved into so I think it's that that Labour could possibly facilitate through Labour party meetings but then again that's going to have an association with the political party basically how do you get UKIP voters to not just vote Labour and I know that happened for a large number in the last election but how do we support each other to end the reproduction of a white supremacist racism that is every day and how do we have the conversations around no borders I don't think it's going to be through Twitter or question time or any of the mainstream newspapers and sadly probably not through Navara but it's the work on the ground I don't think I'm saying anything new particularly but that's where I feel like I have my faith because I did a lot of research around this topic for this chapter that I wrote for the many it's a new book that's coming out and I just found that everything about Brexit was so highly mediated through people who already had political platforms cultural platforms there was so little qualitative response and opinion or access to really a very complex issue and how people were feeling about it and I think maybe it's our job to probe around that and use it use this our going out of the European Union to get out there and get people talking and have thousands of local meetings more meetings radical anarchism more meetings we don't have enough endless conflictual meetings but I'm serious that's what it needs to be I am and no platforms like this sorry guys I love you but proper everyone talking having serious arguments conflict let's go into it let's learn from it there'll be a Q&A so save your conflict for about five minutes if the solution is more meetings I will say you will never take me alive you will never take me alive I spent age 18 to 21 doing that and realised that there is only so much humus a bitch can eat I ain't doing it anymore you've been at the wrong meeting but I will say on Brexit is that you said that was an opportunity where people were talking to each other on the streets and that was true I was out on the streets the day after the referendum result came in and for the first time in my life in London I had people racially abusing me in the street in like Islington and like Whitechapel all right if you are racist to someone in those ends usually it means you want to die so a mood changed a mood changed and I felt it so reading that as an opportunity I'm a bit torn because on the one hand it's awful it's jarring it's shit and on the other I always think about something that my mum said like mama Sarka is getting enough shout outs tonight hold tight and I'm sure that if you're a person of colour maybe your parents have said this a lot as well which is listen at least without an out racists I know where I stand because the Liberals are all thinking it anyway but they won't even give me the dignity of a conflict and so I think that's the moment where we are now right so that you've got the dignity of the conflict which means that we have to not just revive politics around Brexit I think that we really have to revive an anti-racist politics which is tied tightly to the politics of wealth redistribution because I wanted to talk a little bit about the corrosive effects that neoliberalism has had on social movements one of the things was I think after the Scarman report after the rights in the 1980s was the institutionalisation of anti-racism it became about representation it became about brown faces and high places which meant that when the race relations act comes through in 2000 you've got immigration officers being made exempt initially the whole public sector was meant to be exempt until the McPherson report came out so I think that that shows us the dangers of not having a social movement and thinking about what a leftist response to Brexit will be without that rowdy rambunctious on confrontational anti-racist social movement really does scare the living bejesus out of me because Britain is hella racist that is one white person being like I'm with you sister call me later boo I think that one of the things that we can do as well as renew that confrontational anti-racism which makes white people uncomfortable white people don't vote to make themselves uncomfortable is combine it I think with using this opportunity to pivot what Brexit might mean because right now Lexit has to be the only game in town whether or not you want a referendum on the terms of the deal or whatever I think that's actually a good idea Lexit has to be the only game in town to use this as an opportunity to constitute a people versus power bloc where you make it about working conditions you make it about human rights you also think about yes changes to immigration policy like you know get rid of tier one and actually make it more equitable for all people actually yeah changes to immigration policy you're right you know my racist like Donnie from Brock Spawn you're right changes to immigration policy like let's bring Donnie you migrants up to parity like you know I think that you have to start playing a game of sight of hand and I think that the reason why there's an opportunity for this right now this is why we're talking about the politics of you know the immediacy we're not talking about the lingerie anymore it's because while the Tories are in charge you've got a perfect slogan which is you have flopped it mate you've completely shagged it right you had one job which was to negotiate this deal well and you fucked it up and in that gap I think you're right is an opportunity but that opportunity should be approached with I think a great deal of weariness we should be a bit circumspect or I think you know all five people of colour in this room is that we've got a bit too comfortable on Twitter and we need to get more comfortable taking back the streets because that's what our parents did and their parents before them and that actually got shit done yeah I mean I think firstly I mean everyone's sick of Brexit right like everyone is sick of hearing about it is it just me? My favourite topic I think people are like it was to some extent the dog that didn't really bark at the election I think but I do think that the arguable opportunity it provides for the left is specifically on this migration issue but the problem right now and I'm going to be complaining about the Labour Party again sorry is that to have a workers rights Brexit or workers first Brexit whether the slogan is about having putting workers first with Brexit is if you're going to get rid of freedom of movement what are your policies are going to go in place for that because if it is just about bringing EU migrants into the same system that non-EU migrants are in I actually know what all the academic evidence shows is that the visa system having to be tied to your employer having to be sponsored by your employer is really bad for workers rights it's really bad because you don't you're far less likely to want to challenge your employer if you know that they're also the person that is allowing you to stay in the country to some extent there is tons of work on this that shows that so I think the question my big question for the left and for the Labour Party is what are we going to do about that if we're leaving the EU if freedom of movement is ending what does that mean in policy terms because we can talk about it rhetorically we can try to build narratives which I think is also crucial and I think we haven't seen that enough from Labour we haven't seen them shifting the rhetorical ground trying to build some of these stories about migration we saw it to some extent in the leaked version of the manifesto there were some quite nice lines in there about contributions of migrants to the country because none of the getting rid of freedom of movement stuff but that did shift with the manifesto that had the official Labour Party stamp on it and I assume that is because of the tensions within the shadow cabinet over this very issue but the question remains is if we're going to have a workers rights Brexit if we're going to put workers first if it's just British workers people who have British passports you can count me out because I'm not in for that I think a lot of people on the left are not going to be in for that so we have to start having that conversation and when I was talking earlier about pushing the Labour Party it's on these very issues this is really tricky political ground for them we know that we know how deeply entrenched anti-migrant sentiment is in the country but coming alongside shifting the narrative has to be shifting the policy because those policies have tangible effects on people's lives people's lives right now are being shaped by those policies people are not able to have their children in the same country as them they're not able to live with the person that they love they're having to show their passports to get medical treatment in A&E like that's not a life anyone should have to live and thinking about the effect of those policies when people are in their jobs I think is really really important for the Labour Party to address that if we're going to have a Brexit that actually cares about all workers obviously I agree I think we need to not get stuck on talking about it as Brexit I don't think the argument we need to win is about Brexit I mean the argument we need to win is about migration because we have to win the argument within Labour in terms of what would go into a manifesto but that's just like the Labour leadership and the union leadership we've also got to win it within Labour as a whole we have that argument well not in my branch we want it in the branch but we have it within momentum in Walthamstow and we need to win it there and we need to win it in Labour cross-country and we need to win it in the country because while we're stuck on Brexit just as Brexit then we don't actually get to win the argument on migration and that's the fundamental thing because it's still going to be an issue after Brexit or like say whatever comes and so we need to have that mobilisation interestingly the thing you said about having local meetings the thing you ever said about having local meetings so Labour in Walthamstow did have lots of meetings they were run by Stella Creasy who has that as shit like she's our MP but she did have lots of MPs where people came sorry she had lots of meetings where people came along and talked about and lots of EU migrants especially came along talked about how it was what Brexit meant for them and about how they were now experiencing racism as Polish people which they hadn't experienced before interesting in terms of going okay here's a generally shit rightish, softish, soft leftish MP who is doing some of the useful community organising stuff but her public narratives on Brexit are quite unhelpful because even those who are saying some good stuff on migration she's tacking it on to a she's not actually focusing on winning that argument she's focusing on winning a Brexit argument Thank you everyone so we're going to open it out to the audience now for some questions can you have a question put your hand up Women as well please have men and women questions can I start with this gentleman here on the front this gentleman here with the he's like making hand gestures at you I think we're going to have some wireless mics next time Here you are now to fix the mics where have you been Hi thank you for the great panel discussion you talked a little bit about building a more radical vision on migration policy and on prison abolition I just wondered if any of the panel had any thoughts on building a more radical economic policy and what could be replacing neoliberalism because at the moment it seems to be kind of a redireged kinesism in a way John McDonald's plan for labour Britain under labour would be to borrow money to grow the economy and I just wondered if you had any thoughts of what that might mean in terms of the climate in terms of just kind of the approach that growth economics might have to kind of our broader bio system science tells us that to prevent two degrees of warming we need to be reducing emissions by 10% every year since 2015 that's not possible in a growth economy so I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that Mika would you like to start I can do but is it just one question Let's do one and then we'll let's do one and then we can I think labour is trying to grapple I mean specifically John McDonald Cabinet are trying to work out how to combine shifting our economy largely by borrowing money and by driving investment with rapid climate targets I agree it's a challenge I think we're unlikely to hit pretty much without just basically slashing consumption and driving the most effective way to hit 10% every year would be to force country through something similar to what happened in the Soviet Union in 1990 like that is the only comparative place that I've seen where emissions have gone at that speed I don't think that's on the agenda for anyone including the radical left They went there However just last week John McDonald was talking about putting climate stuff into the OBR's assessments and the work that we're doing for them which is primarily on energy does build in pretty dramatic shifts in terms of our emissions I don't think we'll hit 10% every year What we're working on does still include growth One issue that we're not resolving is the fact that people are still going to including me is still going to keep buying stuff that's made in China and that's still going to lead that like that's a largely unresolvable thing with our economy with Labour's cone visions for a different economy If anyone has any solutions on how we you know I guess local autarky and separating ourselves off more from the global economy I mean here's where I think the Labour Party is a vehicle for pushing a more radical narrative is very limited and I think that this is where more insurrectionist forms of politics we say come in handy It's kind of funny that you mentioned like global supply chains I'm taking my students on a trip to Port of Rotterdam in a couple of weeks because it's just this immense like sprawl for like dozens and dozens of kilometres and it's largely automated so it's kind of this giant game of Tetris along the Netherlands coast and the reason why I'm taking them there is to start thinking about how the way in which global capital works is not the way that we imagine it So we've been talking a lot about containing our discussions of the death of neoliberalism to one country and that's not how sovereignty works anymore because global capital done been happened and with that comes a great sense of powerlessness sure when the face of global capital doesn't have a face it's corporate power and you don't necessarily have a government to leverage yourself against then what do you do but then there is a great deal of vulnerability at these strategic points in global supply chains and you've seen it in places where workers' struggles in Bangladesh or indeed in China there was a strike at distribution centre November before last in which a striker was killed by a car like going through the picket line on the anniversary of his death there were further strikes and disruptions of these strategic points I don't think you can have an electoral vehicle that can harness that energy but you can have an electoral vehicle with a well-placed leadership to respond to that energy right but again this comes from you know this is the great development of autonomous politics that if we don't do it no one will and that's the shit that needs to be done Yeah I'm agreeing with what people have been saying I think there needs to as I was saying before the repeal of the anti-union laws having legislation passed by labour which enables organised workers and communities to push for much more from below and it's going to be necessary to create an alternative economic model from below stopping certain dynamics from progressing such as academisation, privatisation all kinds of privatisation and putting a cap on well preventing fracking from happening and stopping major energy companies from extracting and actually as Miko was saying but also kind of holding them liable for their emissions for all corporations for their emissions within the entire supply chain needs to happen but these are in a way there's going to have to be quite a lot of punitive measures and repressive measures in terms of the growth of capital instituted by the Labour Party when they get into power and the kind of model that I think could emerge and every time I think about this it does kind of come back to quite a national or kind of UK based locally based way of organising I mentioned Peach and the organising that they're doing to become a community to enable custom house to become a community land trust for the housing to belong to the community and for that accountability to be there for that to happen you kind of need communities and custom house might be rare now in the sense of it being you know having been a kind of sinker state where you have people living homeless like homeless tenants and social tenants in one place for a long period of time where in so many other areas of London you've just got so much and around the country you've got quite a lot of circulation and movement of people so it's quite hard to even organise in your locality and I know that economic change maybe it doesn't have to happen between people in one fixed geographical locality when we're talking about taking about the city etc but I also don't know how else it can happen if we really believe in it coming from below people have to have those relationships and collective responsibility backed and supported by a radical council to make that happen I feel like the home and housing and local organising is so important to have to build on having an alternative economy but yeah I don't know how the macro aspects are going to basically be kind of social democratic aren't they like banning tuition fees stopping privatisation of the NHS stopping academisation sequestering land subsidising farmers subsidising community controlled energy nationalising the energy grid and companies I mean just the sheer compensation that is going to have to be paid to all these companies because their contracts will be broken it's going to be massive yeah oh Mika no we've given them so much over the years I don't think they deserve anything but structurally it's probably isn't it going to be like that in terms of treaties and trade deals for the nationalising I think we'll have to pay some it doesn't matter pay it fuck it it's going to be ours that's exactly what we want in this matter I mean the main reason the main reason we'll actually have to pay a significant chunk for them the main reason we'll have to pay a significant chunk for buying them is that if we don't do that then a lot of people's pensions will get fucked actually probably less than international trade like centrica British gas if we nationalise them at least nationalise the bit of them that sells us all electricity and gas 1% of centrica is owned by the greater Manchester pension fund those are council workers in Manchester who don't earn very much whose pension is in it so probably it wouldn't actually impact their pensions probably it would mean greater Manchester combined authority would have to put in more money to cover their pensions but that's probably ultimately going to be the those things are going to be what force us to pay more rather than less for the companies as long as we keep paying off the loans that they had on the specifics we nationalise shit and then we'll buy we'll pay the shareholders a certain amount but those companies have got lots and lots of debt now if we don't keep paying that debt then the UK's credit rating goes to the fuck and we can't borrow money so that's where we're going to have to keep paying you've made pensions sound very scarless pensions are Christian pensions are never been so excited yeah just really quickly on this issue of climate change I think it kind of brings together what we've been talking about in relation to migration as well because what we're going to see regardless of what happens with climate change in terms of countries meeting their targets we are going to see more people have to move like that is just going to happen and we as a country are in no way significantly prepared in terms of our rhetoric but also in terms of our policies for what that means if you think now the borders of Europe are violent and bloody and racist get ready for what's going to happen when the effects of climate change they're beginning to hit they already are but when it intensifies and actually what's really interesting for this for thinking about the Labour Party and this is where I agree with Ash that we need to think outside of the Labour Party for this because I think it's too politically difficult for them it's something they're not going to do but what Rhys Jones talks about in his book Violent Borders is the fact that the privilege in the nation state is our problem here but in thinking about migration Gary Young's talked about how migration is age old but the nation state is a relatively new concept that's not something we're very plugged into the way we talk in our contemporary politics even the way we talk I think in some of our activist circles and I think remembering that remembering what Rhys Jones talks about in this book is that because the nation state is privileged it means it's incredibly difficult to force any country to meet their targets that's not happening because the UN is a vehicle for trying to achieve some kind of change I mean it privileges the nation state that's what the UN is built to do that's how the UN works so actually I think we should be having some really dynamic conversations using some of this work that's already out there to begin to think okay if we actually want to have a life on this planet if we actually want to take climate change seriously we've got a whole different conversation to be having outside of the conversation we're having about our national politics and that should be happening alongside I think it's crucial that it does because if we get so bugged down in what is going on within our own country that's never going to happen sorry two more questions can you see hand someone over here looks like a grey sweatshirt pink sorry it's pink yeah so ever mentioned housing earlier and I think well genuinely housing I think is one of the main antagonisms at the moment not just in London across the country but it's got like a bit of fraught relationship with labour because at least in London a lot of the struggles that are happening are against Labour councils so like for example the HDV like up in Haringey that's a Labour council pushing that through which is probably going to be I think it's like 5000 homes are going to be sold off so yeah I think like how do you like you know so housing movement forever going to be organising outside of the Labour Party like I'm just curious like what people think like whether you can actually like influence this policy from within it because you know I don't know if Labour is going so you know I'm involved with the London Renters Union for example like I don't know if Labour is going to support that I think it will have support within communities in the area for example Newham but you know it's difficult to see the Labour Party supporting something like rent strikes which is one of the only ways that we can really leverage power over landlords at the moment so yeah and also like in the Labour Manifesto this year there was very little to offer on housing which makes me wonder like who's interest is it in like are they on the side of tenants or I don't know so yeah I guess my question like do you think any of that can be in Labour and then one more question this gentleman over here like the middle of the road do you want to put your hands up again it's like a blue guy with a blue t-shirt you had your hands up on the second you put your hands down you don't want to ask your question anymore this guy over here hi this one here yeah just over there the really smart guy smarter than everyone else in the room I just wanted to build on the ladies point who just spoke a minute ago I was so passionate about this issue that I was up at 4am talking to a family member about it and I was late for work but I think this is precisely where the extra parliamentary left have to stay as the extra parliamentary left as well as doing what they're doing in the Labour Party because one of the things that's really concerning me at the moment is this plucking figures out of the air as to how many houses we need to build 600,000, 400,000 whatever it is and I think one of the most important things that the extra parliamentary left can do is to use the freedom we have to make our demands very very clear and I think the point I wanted to make specifically was about Grenfell I don't think we're going to the legacy that Labour have to leave is something that 50 years later or 50 years from now people can look back and say this is the settlement that the Labour government achieved and what we don't need is more council houses granite council houses with sprinklers and saying we built more houses we need to build social housing and the extra parliamentary left need to demand this we need to build social housing of such a standard that people who come to Britain say this is how a Labour government treats its people and 50 years later from now people look back and say do you know in this period of time social housing was such a standard that it was comparable even to private housing were even better and that's the kind of thing that the extra parliamentary left house it at the renters union other housing organisations who are outside the Labour party need to demand it needs to be very clear about it it's not a shameful demand people who lived in Grenfell should have been housed in much better conditions than that not concrete monoliths with extra sprinklers it should be proper five-star luxury hotel style housing that's what we need and we can afford it and we should do it I agree completely I think I mean this is why we love throwing this phrase around nothing's too good for the working class one of the reasons why I'm not a liberal is because I think it's appalling that to live a good life is pinned to something so arbitrary and meaningless as money that's why I'm a leftist and on this issue of housing and thinking about what it can look like what it can be like I know you spoke against concrete monoliths but I do love a little bit of a concrete monolith I was in Marse to watch the football nothing political to see Marse Sanatien and on my way to the stadium I stopped off at a city of radios which is the estate built by a local busier and it was a beautiful kind of late spring day and the concrete was kind of warmed up and you just your eye got drawn to these beautiful details like a bit of wood panelling like in the windows or the way in which that they'd painted the kind of inner walls and the balconies different colours so it looked like a giant Mondrian and so you think that the architectural history that we have in this country is very particular and that has always smalti conservative is always kind of upheld a norm of kind of you know an Englishman wants like a little cottage even if it's like in Hackney Wick and whereas actually there's some quite beautiful models of mass housing that are out there on this issue of Grenfell it disgusts me to see a politician like Philip Hammond even let the name Grenfell leave his lips during the budget when we know that he's pursuing policies that reduce the conditions that could let a tragedy like Grenfell happen and I think that it is a stain on us as the extra parliamentary left or indeed the parliamentary left that we didn't bring down a government over it and I think we need to think about why that was and I think that one of the major reasons is because we looked at the form of organising that was going on which was about taking to the streets was also about going to like meeting after meeting after meeting and we chased the media cycle anticipated with it and I think that that shows us just how much we've lost our way on what it means to create a antagonistic activist culture that is also sustainable I think what the extra parliamentary left and how the parliamentary left can I think dovetail on this issue of housing and to move beyond what you identified as a literary kind of numbers which get so big that they become meaningless to the rest of us like what's the difference to 100,000, 200,000 I'm an English literature student so I've got no fucking idea one of the things that I think we should look to is get rid of the repressive anti squatting legislation which means that you can't have a housing movement the way you've seen it in Barcelona or the way in which you've seen it in Madrid you've got vast housing stocks particularly in London I think the other thing that we need to make it easier to do or sorry more difficult to do is to turn houses which were meant for multiple occupancy like multiple flats make it more difficult to turn it back in single houses that's what landlords are doing because it's a kind of unsexy change in planning legislation which meant that housing which should be providing homes for multiple families is just a shell for capital we need to think about what the demand for decommodify housing actually is and thinking about how we perceive that from both a antagonistic extra parliamentary perspective and also what legislative wins would look like because I think you're right I think Grenfell should be the symbol that we lift up as a never again on the left and it frustrates me that we're not doing that Anybody else like to take on the issue of does Labour have housing in its sites and its interests I mean lot of us being covered the one thing that I just going back to the original first question that I do want to just touch upon is I live in Newham you walk down Stratford High Street and you still see the campaigners right who were the council was trying to turf and working class people out of council houses to basically flatten the area and bring in a load of they said this bring in more middle more middle class people to get rid of the working class people out of the borough on the High Street campaigning on this issue and they explicitly have sign saying if you are anything to do the Labour Party do not come anywhere near us their experience has been so atrocious with the Labour Council with Robin Wales as mayor that they want nothing to do with the Labour Party and I think that really needs to be respected in spaces up and down the country where this has happened and I think the Labour Party when those councils you know when those people are turfed out if the left manages to win power in spaces always keeping my fingers crossed for Newham to get rid of Robin Wales let's hope that does happen next year Newham Spring baby we can only hope but when that does happen I think the people who come into those positions need to realise and need to be really plugged in to the local politics and recognise that those people are not suddenly going to just change their minds because there is a different person in that senior position because they've heard false promises made and I think it is incumbent upon those Labour councils to then learn and just listen to those organisations because they're going to continue doing their campaigning they're going to continue making their demands and I think that there needs to be a level of response from a Labour council when we win power back in those spaces specifically on the thing about HDV and Tottenham I think we always have to ask ourselves who is the Labour Party who are we talking about when we say Labour can mean Jeremy Corbyn it can mean Labour HQ which is largely still the same people that were working there before Jeremy Corbyn it could mean your local council in Tottenham it could mean local council it could mean the people who are under CLP who are all on the hard left or it could mean the thousands and thousands and thousands of local members most of them have never gone to a meeting and for me that's really important because it could have been stopped and I think the main thing that has meant that we might not stop it although I'm not sure exactly what's happening with the council of selections is that we not quite enough left members showed up to council of selection meetings like that's fundamentally the thing that could have stopped it if a couple more of those thousand people has it turned okay okay well then we're fine by one great perfect well there we go so that's why it comes down to those couple people showing up to those meetings and they did and does that mean that HEV will be stopped the new leftists in there so you can always rely on time and show up by that yay I mean Labour has also committed to ballots on housing estates at the last conference and I interviewed David Blunkett about ballots because it's something that radical councils used to do they'd have ballots on like do you want your kids to wear school uniforms and what he said was the lesson he learned from doing them back in the day was you can't just be like yes or no you have to have months of meetings and consultation and education where you say hey we might need to regenerate this estate this is a choice for you this is how much it costs to redo it this is how much it costs to get a refurb this is how much it costs to get a new one these are all the various moving parts of it we respect you enough to make a decision with all of this information so I think it goes back to what you were saying about you've got to have meetings and you've got to include people that can't just be sort of referendum style voting because yeah and also it's not that I'm opposed to like radical direct action and direct action in the streets and shutting shit down that has to happen but it's a question of who's doing it and how do we get people confident enough who are not the usual suspects or you know people who it's threatening maybe they're undocumented you know maybe you know the suffering at the hands of the police already and it's really risky to come into contact with that but maybe not like just on Grenfell I went down there like a few days after the massacre and there was quite a few activists that got together through radical housing network to meet to talk about how to support the local community and what really transpired from that process was just how the people from the Grenfell action group were in severe mourning and they didn't want anyone to speak for them and they didn't want anyone to represent them they really just wanted some time and they'd lost a lot of loved ones they'd lost people they'd lost members of the group and it kind of felt like what we had to do was just kind of wait in fact I mean I know some people went like community did go out and protest and they did it in quite a spontaneous and organic and local way it was amazing and that was necessary but then there were there was also like SWP coming in and trying to kind of get involved and even like Movement for Justice did their march and their demo and that wasn't well received by people in the community they didn't want that they didn't want people speaking for them and co-opting their grief even though the grief was felt by so many people and even now and even within the community itself there were people coming and speaking who who were not really the you know not really like authorised by the local community and people you know had been there for a very long time and so this entire kind of struggle around co-optation of voice and you know trying to mine this experience and this horror for a political purpose when really it was so important for the community and the people most directly affected to lead but it was just there was so much trauma and it's something that we should think about and learn from and I felt like the thing we did learn was like I just went around people shut my mouth didn't write anything didn't really say very much because it's not I just really felt like it wasn't necessary it was important to literally give the mic to people who needed it and to be ready to be ready like and be of service when the people are asking you to do that and to know what you can offer that's not substituting what people are going to want to offer themselves so just to sort of comment on like responses to that So maybe a little bit now we've got maybe time for one more question or if you're all really knackered of listening we could just go to the bar how do people feel question or bar okay bar yeah yeah head it loud and clear thank you so much so there's merch stand outside as well if you want to get some wavy Navara merch so not tomorrow but Friday after Friday the 8th Navara media having a Christmas party come get wavy tickets wear your crispy garms get a bit drunk do a bit of chirpsing sold me I'm there but details on Navara media Facebook tickets are excessively a reasonably priced off I may say so myself and yeah come turn up like we're trying to institute the people's republic of banter here and we can't do it without you done right see you in the bar thank you