The event was the brainchild of Transform’s Anwarul Khan, who took the lead in organising it with the full backing of the Transform Party. In keeping with the event’s aim of building new left networks, several non-Transform people were co-opted into the organising team. The event itself was attended by over 150 delegates from dozens of Your Party proto-groups. After brief speeches by Ayoub Khan, Salma Yaqoob and Zarah Sultana, delegates spent the rest of the day in workshops, and discussions with fellow delegates.
Zarah Sultana speech
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi:
“This was what a new party of the left has needed all along – a space for grassroots activists from widely diverse groups all over the country to meet and learn from each. Delighted to have the opportunity to help run workshops on dealing with antisemitism and its weaponisation.”
Eric Jarvis:
Whilst not perfect in every way, the event was definitely a great success. We first heard short platform speeches from Salma Yaqoob, Ayoub Khan, and Zarah Sultana, which all focused on the party being based around democratic decision making from the ground up. Paul Silver’s support dog seemed particularly enthusiastic about Zarah’s speech. Everyone then broke up into workshops for the rest of the morning.
As facilitator for the election organiser workshops I have no idea how the others went but I came out of the morning workshop enthused and invigorated after an excellent discussion with some intelligent, thoughtful, and committed activists from some very different areas. The general consensus was that we need to have a lot of local autonomy in the party structure in order to organise and campaign in ways that suit local conditions. Attempting to run things in a homogenous fashion across the whole country won’t work for us and will lose us the advantage we have over all other parties.
Lunch was good and plentiful and once I was again suitably re-caffeinated I managed to chat with a few people and got the impression that most of the other morning workshop sessions had been excellent too. The social and emotional aspect of this event should not be underestimated. It felt really good to be around a lot of people with very different ideas all working towards a common goal. Whatever the “difficulties” at the national level there is something very positive building from the grass roots.
The afternoon workshops went similarly to the first. We clearly have a lot of campaigning and organisational experience available around the country. We discussed the need to carefully focus resources, how to work against social media algorithms, how best to reach potential voters especially the uncommitted or politically apathetic, and the need to be seen to stand with our communities on local issues before asking for their support at elections.
Having now discussed how we move towards becoming an electoral force with activists from Glasgow to Devon I have come away from this convinced we can do something amazing if we can concentrate on looking for solidarity from here on rather than worrying about potential points of division.
“It was wonderful to meet in 3D a lot of friends who up to now had just been words or pictures on a screen. We mustn’t overlook how essential it is to interact as human beings together in the same space and not just focus on ideas, ideologies, plans and policies. We have to build this as a movement that we all have a part in and in which we all value each other as people.”
Transform National Organiser Anwarul Khan talked to the Newsletter about how the Convention had come about.
During the general election of 2024, we did something truly radical in politics, we not only endorsed independent candidates that shared our values, but we provided support in terms of training, and access to socialist news media. This was a hit, and built relationships that are still going strong today. Importantly the Transform leadership supported this idea that I was pushing of radical solidarity. We did not need to care about our name or our brand being in lights: what we needed was a mass left party, and the creation of a real grassroots movement that everyone could be a part of.
At that time I was attending meetings of Collective as a delegate from Transform. Much effort was going on trying to convince people like Jeremy Corbyn and other leading lights that a mass left party was both needed and viable. This work was incredibly important, but what concerned me was that nothing was being done towards getting the ground ready. Local established groups were thin on the ground and often with little experience of what was needed. So I hatched a plan to bring together comrades that were really interested in developing local groups. Not just talking about it, but actually wanting to do it. I met with Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi from For the Many and Yaz Ashmawi from Assemble and pitched the idea of us seeding and supporting the development of local groups.
In January we launched the Community Action Group project with a few other groups now involved, Majority, Ron Todd Foundation and OCISA. Not everyone was as enthused about it as we were, but Eric Jarvis did show the project to Jeremy Corbyn whom he has known for decades, and the response was “this is exactly what I am looking for”, so we carried on. It was not easy to sell this at first but as few of our contacts started to engage with this, we learned. All the while I was also pitching to Transform’s Exec the idea of inviting allies to a networking and training day. I argued that everything we did would strengthen any new party, and if that party did not come to fruition we would have still benefited the wider socialist network. So the strategy was to plan for a convention, and to set up a peer to peer network that was for local groups only.
Not everyone got it, and I had some doubts myself. I tried getting a few groups to a meeting to pitch it before Ramadan, but only two groups turned up. Exhausted and honestly a little discouraged, I waited a little until we built more relationships. What was interesting and unexpected was that as frustration grew at the pace of national negotiations, more groups began showing interest in the idea of connecting. So I used those connections with allies that I had built to restart the project, and this time people were ready and willing.
In the space of just two months, dozens of Your Party proto-groups have joined “Your Party Connections”. The network that I set up now represents approximately 20-25% of the UK’s constituencies.
The Build Your Party convention in Birmingham gave these organisers and activists an opportunity to physically connect. The workshops were a huge hit, in particular with the newest groups that needed the most support. Even the established groups found the networking opportunity and importantly the emphasis on peer to peer empowerment really useful.
As I said in my short speech opening the day; we cannot pay lip service to grassroots involvement. We have to show it practically. I am so proud to have been supported by Transform to help this party get off the ground and more importantly to catalyse the empowerment of the grassroots. We have started something that can not be stopped. Thanks to all our members who have stuck by us through the storm. The work is not finished but the energy that Transform has provided will have significant impact for a very long time.
Below Charles talking about analysing electoral registers and marked registers
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