Outline details have been agreed for a broad Convention of campaign groups and socialist organisations considering standing candidates in the general election – to organise a common working class challenge for the contest that will take place at some point in 2024.
The Convention date has been set for Saturday 3rd February, in Birmingham at a venue to be announced.
The TUSC all-Britain steering committee had invited around thirty campaign groups and socialist organisations to co-host a gathering to discuss an election challenge (see https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Invite-to-organise-convention-October-2023.pdf) and had received replies from organisations representing 14 of them by the time of its meeting on November 22nd.
Five organisations so far have agreed to be Convention co-hosts – the Socialist Party, System Change (formerly Resist), the Campaign for a Mass Workers Party, Socialist Students, and the TUSC Independent Socialists section – with the Social Justice Party and Just Stop Oil still consulting, and the interim committee of the new Transform Party not in a position to make a decision before their now-completed inaugural conference on November 25th.
A Convention Arrangements Committee (CAC) has been agreed, composed of the five organisations and the TUSC officers – which, however, is still open to those who subsequently decide that they wish to co-host the event.
Convention representation
The proposed representation at the Convention hopefully strikes a balance between making it an open, inclusive event but also ensuring its ‘working character’ as a body able to reach concrete conclusions.
● Every campaign group or socialist organisation that is considering supporting or standing candidates in the general election, whether they formally co-host the Convention or not, can appoint up to ten delegates to represent their organisation at the event.
● Any individual member of a trade union national executive committee (in a personal capacity), section or group executive committee member, or elected union branch officeror workplace rep, can also attend with voice.
● Every resigned-from-Labour or independent socialist councillor can attend on the same basis.
● All individual members of TUSC – who are not members of a TUSC component organisation or otherwise represented at the Convention – will also be able to attend with voice.
There will also be Zoom available for visitors.
Get organised
Even since the appeal for a Convention made by the TUSC steering committee in October it is clearer that the vacuum of working class political representation created by the defeat of Corbynism within the Labour Party is becoming ever more substantial.
In the absence of leadership from the left-led trade unions or Jeremy Corbyn himself, however, it is also true that there is still no sufficiently authoritative force able to pull together a coherent electoral alternative at the next general election. An alternative that could encompass the new forces mobilised in the mass protests against the slaughter in Gaza; the workers who have participated in the biggest strike wave for thirty years; the councillors resigning from Labour; the growing number of ex-Labour MPs who are signalling that they will stand independently; and the already existing socialist organisations and individual socialists outside the Labour Party.
TUSC is not, and does not see itself to be, that ‘sufficiently authoritative force’ – although we are part of the equation. So a Convention to debate out the details of a working class challenge at the general election can play an important role in this situation, helping to move things forward from broad discussion about the election to practical organisation. Get involved – get organised!
Further Convention information will be posted here as it becomes available. ■