Party Time? The Workers’ Party of Belgium, with Peter Mertens MP
November 19th | Pelican House
Bar Opens at 6pm / Discussion from 7.15
We are delighted to welcome Peter Mertens — General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) — for a fourth edition of the Party Time? series exploring questions of Left strategy.
The PTB for has an interesting history and an exciting future. Originating in the 1960s student movement, the party has focused its organising amongst workers and built a base in the working class movement by supporting workers’ struggles and recruiting industrial militants to the party.
For decades the party remained on the fringes but — while remaining committed to a revolutionary, Marxist and socialist politics — in 2015 the party won 15 seats in Belgium’s Chamber of Representatives through their base in working class communities.
As the far right gains ground, the PTB is offering a clear alternative to those who feel alienated and disenfranchised by capitalism.
The PTB is an important case study for socialists in the UK who believe we need a new party: What can we learn from the PTB? What is the role of the party, how does it make decisions and what does it do on the ground? How have they built support amongst industrial and post-industrial communities who the left in the UK is increasingly disconnected from?
🚩Together, we will put these questions to Peter – before discussing what it all means for a new organisation or party in the UK..! 🚩
Introduciton to the Series
Pelican House is hosting a series of meetings on left electoral strategy and the prospects for a new party. Bringing together politicians, activists and intellectuals in a public forum, these discussions will seek to clarify the current aims of socialist organising. What institutional form should it take? How should it combat both the far right and the extreme centre? What are the main obstacles and opportunities in the present political landscape?
Join us and your fellow comrades for a series of three discussions of these strategic questions, followed by a bar and social! After introductions from our guest speakers, we will follow an assembly format with the intent of stimulating debate between the audience. Following our collective discussion, we invite you to stay for a drink and discuss these questions more socially with one another.
Why This & Why Now?
The Starmer government has set out its agenda in no uncertain terms: hardening authoritarianism, inaction on the climate crisis, austerity at home and militarism abroad. Its invincible majority represents a defeat for the left – but also an opportunity, because Labour’s rightward turn has created a political vacuum which the socialist movement is already starting to fill. Most militant workers and activists have torn up their membership cards. Nine MPs have been elected on left-of-Labour platforms. Comrades across the country are considering the possibility of forming our own electoral vehicle. Now, these forces must come together to discuss the most urgent strategic issues: the left’s current power bases, the pathway to a new party and how it could channel popular discontent. We must also place the present political moment in a broader theoretical and historical perspective, assessing the relationship between party and class, the practice of organising on a mass scale and the process of achieving social transformation.
These fundamental questions will form the basis of three panel discussions: on the condition of contemporary Britain, the dynamics of establishing a new party, and the threats and opportunities it will encounter over the coming years. The aim is to develop a coherent plan for building a radical electoral organisation and map the social terrain in which it will have to operate. Speakers will include socialist politicians and strategists, commentators and academics, organisers and activists, plus the public audience who will be encouraged to share their views. This will bring the conversations that are currently taking place in private, among small groups of comrades, into the public sphere – where a collective strategy can begin to take shape.