Does The Left Need Identity Politics or Class, Or Both? | NM at #TWT23

Over recent years, debate about left wing political strategy has hinged on whether one is for or against identity politics. But is such a binary even helpful for those interested in addressing the climate crisis, threats to LGBTQ+ rights and a society marked by ever higher inequality? Those critical of identity politics often respond that a ‘class first’ approach is needed. But what does this imply? Does it mean a cross-class alliance is impossible, or not necessary, for the kinds of policies socialists want to implement?

Hosted by Aaron Bastani, with:
Dan Evans – a sociologist & author of A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petite Bourgeoisie.
Ash Sarkar – contributing editor at Novara Media
Liam Norton – an activist with Just Stop Oil

__________________________

Can you help fund people-powered media? To be ready for next year, we need 5,000 of you to join our regular supporters and back our work.

Donate one hour’s wage per month, or whatever you can afford at http://novara.media/support today.

Just quickly we started before um we were going Live on YouTube my apologies so for people watching we are talking about how to build a social majority how do you build a coalition for change which is what the left wants to do you said that the things that are up for no

No I’m going to Ash but you said the things that are up for grabs potentially are things that ultimately were one because there was a social majority in favor of them the weekend the modern welfare state Etc and I suppose the question makes you know makes that particular relevant right so therefore

To the kind of action we’re talking about can it be a minority driving it or do we need the mass of society Ash what do you make of uh justop PA tactics and do you think they’re appropriate to the scale of the challenge well I think there was one really key word missing

From what you were talking about and that’s media it seems to me that what justo has done very effectively within the context that we’ve got is that they’ve understood that media is where politics is contested in modern society we don’t have the kind of uh trade union membership or militancy that this

Country once had you’ve seen workingclass power broken down because you’ve got Mass Council house sell offs you’ve got de-industrialization so where is it people experience politics not in terms of you know where is politics done to them which is in your workplace which is in you know your schools and your

Universities and your day-to-day life where do you experience politics being fought out it’s the media it’s scrolling on your phone it’s the stuff which comes up in your personalized feed and what JSO have done very effectively is hijacked a very high ranked place in the attention economy and that’s why people

Hate you and that’s why I love the fact that people hate you because you’ve got them rattled you’ve got Lobby journalists who are shall not name but rest assur they’re all Pricks going Wimbledon they’ve disrupted Wimbledon is nothing sacred anymore because they feel like you’ve stolen something that was

Only in their gift to do and that’s attention and a sense of political urgency so I think that if you’re talking about jso’s theory of change thinking about the attention economy is right in there now I think that what what you guys have done is that you’ve taken what I’d like to call

A m warcom strategy nobody likes us we don’t care the point is is that you’re talking about us even if you don’t like us and time will tell whether that will work to shift the D whether you guys are that militant Edge that everybody says oh no very bad how

Could they do this thing and that allows this sort of mass membership Mass parti Mass participation element to come in I think right now we just don’t know I think in terms of the exr rebellions you did see that you saw XR going out and taking loads of flak and then you kind

Of had this like much bigger like moderate movement Sweeping in with JSO I just don’t know I think that may be the the state has had so much practice in in being punitive and cracking down and you know the sort of uh I think the Draconian responses of of the CPS may be

Having an effect on the ability to recruit activists but in terms of that that observation that media is where people see politics being contested and you’re going to take the fight to people’s personalized fees I mean I think I think that’s a a huge uh step forward in terms of his strategy in

Terms of in terms of it’s if it’s working I just I don’t know but I’m glad that someone’s trying so on on this point you’re saying about time will tell do you think that the left can be guilty of a cognitive error which is to say

These people 80 years ago 50 years ago 40 years ago they were unpopular therefore because this is unpopular it will be successful too because obviously if that was the case we would just do unpopular things and we’d always win you know be very simple recipe for Success do you think that’s something that

People do well I think we say that because we want to remind ourselves that you being on the left can be really hard you’ve got people yelling at you all the time and telling you that you’re scum and that is something which is done I think by Elites and Elite media to

Separate you from a long history of Victories right it’s to make you feel ashamed it’s to make you feel disempowered so people say but you know the suffragettes were hated Martin Luther King was hated you ever see that guy’s poll ratings they sucked um you know the gay rights movement was hated

You’re going to have to endure being hated in order to win so I think that that’s something which is is morale boosting but I think what’s what’s different here is that you know in in in a very big way lots of these movements that we’re talking about which were very

Very hated they had quite an elite theory of change and that’s not a bad thing I’m not saying that that that’s you know to look down on it but it’s an elite theory of change you go okay I’m from a minoritized group in some way so

What I’m going to do is I’m going to create a ground swell of action and public pressure which doesn’t move the majority of people but it’s able to move people in key institutions or we can get people into those key institutions which delivers social change like decriminalizing abortion like civil

Rights like gay marriage this is an elite theory of change with JSO once more it’s this thing which kind of goes unanswered I don’t know if it’s a mass participation theory of change we all do this thing we build this thing together and this kind of creates this new world

Or if it’s an elite theory of change where we go we actually just make it really hard for you to ignore us um and and there are going to be people in these institutions who are going to do the thing that we want them to do so I

When you’re appealing to the past and being unpopular again it’s does this apply to JSO there’s this really big question which for me I’m unclear on the answer to now it’s not jso’s job to answer that question right your job is to do stuff it’s it’s our job to kind of

Like wank around and talk but like I guess I guess I just in terms of that right side of History thing you were right all along morally yes strategically the the proof of the pudding is only ever in the eating Dan your big thesis is about the

Left neglects the petty Bourgeois at its Peril um and I would say it’s precisely that I know we’re talking a lot about JS at the moment but you know that’s just the the hook for the start of the conversation that to me seems to be the

Kind of persona who detests J so who hates protest on the left all together by the way it’s not just JSO it could be anything it could be it could be something far less disruptive than that your sort of big thing is that actually this is the precise category of people

We need to win in order to achieve really big change on a sort of transformational scale which we probably all agree is is what has to happen with climate change yeah so um if you haven’t read my book uh it’s about the petty B the low

Middle classes um which is which is my class you know that’s where I come from and I’ve sort of become I think like the spokesperson for the most reactionary uh segment of society but the the the the thesis of the book really is that you

Know they’re not all bad you know the P Bui can be a radical force and historically they’ve gone to the left as well as the right you know trosi said the petty bazzi Like a Man In Fever can turn to the left and turn to the right

Um and with things like just up o and with things like the ules protest and I don’t know if you um if you keep up with Welsh politics but the the 20 M hour um legislation that’s just come through in Wales I mean I could be like a

Consultant for you know the wel govern I I you know all my friends you know if I go on my Facebook I I said this is going to going to radicalize like my mat who you know Tradesmen and things like that they just going to lose their minds and

Then lo and behold they have you know they’ve just got it’s like the biggest ever protest biggest ever petition in like the Welsh government history um but I was like well I I knew that was going to wind people up did you not understand it was going to wind people up um and

There seems to be this void you know this disconnect um in the book I sort of the thing that got me thinking the most about the about the the low middle classes uh where I come from was brexit you know the the when I was working in

Cardiff University um when the PRX vote had happened and a lot of the people I was working with were just horrified you know that people would vote for brexit um and again if you if I clicked on my social media it was just like everyone

Was going to vote leave um and then in the world I was sort of occupying sort of a more liberal world in the University people were just horrified at that um and I got a bit uncomfortable about uh the language it was being used you know sort of all these people are

Thick they’re stupid they shouldn’t be able to vote things like that um and so the book sort of starts proceed you know I I wrote the book well actually that people you know people don’t have faith in politics for very good reason um but yeah in terms of the theory of changing

In terms of just stop oil I think the left is in a very bad position at the moment you know well it’s in a good good place in in a way that we’ve the only way is up um but it’s in a bad place in terms of you know

If you think about it it’s it’s almost dead as a a coherent sort of political force um and I think that the we have to be nothing happens for me in society without a mass movement nothing happens without mass movement I mean people talk about the labor government 1945 you know

It’s almost fiz this thing you know the spirit of 45 like it wasn’t the labor party that did that change it was what was standing behind the labor party which was a mass organized uh working class which sort of forc concessions from the state and you know Liam is

Right time is running out you know climate change is going to affect everyone but for me nothing changes without the biggest possible Coalition of people um and so yeah I I firmly believe that the low middle classes people who yeah yeah yes they might have been the basis of theism yes they might

Have been the basis for the the Nazis um so it is a hard cell to say that you know they can’t be sort of uh uh radical but I I firmly believe that you know if if you speak to people and if you have these hard conversations with people you

Can get people involved in like the broadest possible Coalition I mean Aaron and I spoken about this a lot you know most people some of my friends who are not particularly fond of just start B uh they’re not particularly fond of like the you know uh it was mainly trades

People who were mobilizing against the the ulas restrictions in London is mainly you know my friends who are Tradesmen are uh Mobil say mobilizing against the sort of the 20 M hour um thing but if you speak to people most people have like very sort of complicated politics you know they can

Be you know people a lot of people just want really really radical change um but are just sick of the government what they believe is sort of government interference um but yeah I really think if we’re going to build a coalition we have to bring everyone everyone along

With us and I think that at the moment there’s a bit of a problem uh when it comes to to environmental policy and you see this you know I thought I I I I was worrying before I came on that it was going to be like a

Like a live cancellation you know like I was going to say something and it was going to be still um but they you the uh like there’s a a book called climate change is class for by Matt Huber and he talks about you know this idea of

Building a mass movement um and the worry I’ve got at the moment the worry I’ve got at the moment is that the the right well the art is happening already they’re going to turn climate change into a culture War and the left is going to lose because the left doesn’t

Understand why people would be opposed to things like you Le the things like the 20 mil hour and there’s going to be sort of an overreach and what’s going to happen is the left are going to be seen as sort of part of the state part of the

Establishment and the right are going to keep talking the language of class and keep saying oh the people like sadik Khan want to punish workingclass people and the culture War which has been going on for seems like years and years and years it’s just going to get seamlessly

Moved was it brexit then it was like the war in Ukraine then it was Co now it’s going to move to the environmental movement and I worry if we don’t uh take people seriously if we don’t have these conversation with people if we don’t respect uh people’s sort of anger and frustration

Um then we’re going to we’re not going to build that mass movement you know I think it’s really important that we do so quickly and by the way if you want to respond to anything just literally give me a tap on the shoulder yeah mean I

Actually want to cancel Dan but yeah do please yeah you know get get my attention we’ll keep the conversation running quite fluidly but quickly because some people watching at home or some people here they they might have heard the term Petty Bourgeois but they okay that’s like bouris what do it what

Does it mean so can you just quickly explain who the petty Bourgeois are you’ve described their role and the rise of fascism the support of thatcherism are there historic examples where they haven’t gone right but instead been a more Progressive force in society sure so um the petty bzi uh historically

Again it’s quite a niche Marxist concept the it’s kind of the short hand today is like I guess the low middle classes you know there’s all there’s all these different names for it like Mondo man Essex man you know swing voter stevenage woman was that was that woman there’s

All these sort of terms to describe like the average voter you know the average sort of voter the man in the street um and genuinely speaking people are talking about the low middle classes the pety Bui so um historically the paty bzi was the small self-employed Tradesman like The Artisan

I’m trying to think examples like I know like a carpenter or like a baker or things like that Marx obviously says in the Communist Manifesto that the the small self-employed worker is going to is going to fade away is going to disappear because with the transition to

Monopoly Capital you know it’s going to destroy the small trades and they’re going to sink into the ranks of the proletaria now I argue that that hasn’t actually happened and that self-employment has massively grown so before you know and Margaret Thatcher this was her these were her people you

Know she was the sort of the daughter of a green grosser she understood the paty buzi the low middle class intimately and you can’t really understand what’s happened in the UK and sort of British version of neoliberalism without understanding the values that thata personified which were associated with

This sort of small shopkeeper but it you know that before coid there was like over five 5 million self-employed people in the UK you know it’s nearly as much as the entire public sector so while Mark said they were going to sort of fade away they haven’t they’ve grown and

There’s a lot of people now who are working so you’ve probably seen it on you know people more and more people even are becoming self-employed and what’s different is that self-employment used to be like a calling you know I want to open my own shop or whatever I

Want to be a Tradesman to get more freedom but what we’re seeing now is is people have been forced into self-employment if you’ve ever been on the do if you’ve ever been on UC there’s all these incentives or try to become why didn’t you set up your own business

So more and more people are cycling from like low paid employment unemployment to self-employment and back again um so yeah you have to read the book to sort of uh um you know get all the detail about the class but yeah that’s that’s who I consider that is that the the

Modern paty J is a small self-employed person and and they played and they are they’re playing all across the world um if you look at the rise the right not just in the UK not just in the well in the UK you know the brexit party if you

Look at the self-employed uh a huge cons constituency for the brait party enormous constituency for ukip but right across Europe you know uh Leen I think they just an enormous amount bonaro the afd um the small self-employed are massively over represented in the far right um and I think that’s because we

Haven’t taken them seriously we haven’t um sort of there’s a tendency to write them all off um you know trosy said that in every Petty Bo see had like a a Hitler particle inside them which is like very harsh I think but um yeah I really think we can I really think we

Can win them wrong but we have to take people seriously first so Ash I’ll come to you about this order of Coalition you said these were thatches people and that gets the title of what we’re talking about this evening who are our people on the left what what kind of people do we

Need to build that social majority this was touching on a little bit with us Democrats off 2008 people were talking about Obama new Coalition people of color women graduates um the young and that’s enough to keep the Republicans out forever now of course what happens in 2016 Donald

Trump wins he doesn’t win the popular vote but he wins on a coalition which is nothing like that frankly um where do you sit on this ash so we we’ve heard about a little bit about Thatcher’s Coalition we’ve heard a little bit about the kind of Coalition that can push a

Liberal like Barack Obama over the you know over the top maybe something similar could happen in this country but I not because the complexion isn’t the same um so who are our people on the left and where does the the petty Bourgeois fit in Aaron Aaron Aron when I

First met you you were an anarchist you were running around masked up and you understood then that there was more to politics than electoralism because I think the kind of conversation we’re having is totally determined by electoral structures by what voting system you have in place because if

You’ve got a voting system like hours where basically if you live in London most Bristol constituencies Liverpool Manchester you may as well be dead like electorally you just don’t matter you’re just another labor vote piling up I live in Tottenham it’s the third safest labor seat in the country it has been royally

Screwed over by labor councils and labor MPS that’s where the riots kicked off in 2011 and let me tell you the policing has not gotten any better since then but we don’t matter there we literally don’t matter because of the voting system that we’ve got got similarly you know we

Talking about Obama’s Coalition it was screwed over by a voting system which could disenfranchise effectively 3 million people right so these aren’t necessarily majoritarian voting systems they’re not voting systems which encourage Coalition building what these voting systems do is encourage a winner takes all mentality so in this country

If you’re a young voter if you live in a place where lots of young people do in a city and you know cities they often get maligned as as you know Metropolitan like effect Elites also places of the Working Poor right that’s that’s where you go it’s also where downwardly mobile

You know graduates all go what you end up with is is these like Geographic concentrations of of progressive and leftwing people and where elections are won and lost are you know this is a very crude stereotype there like 50 homeowners in the Midlands right so then you ask yourself this question not who

Are our people but actually if you want purchase on the electoral system these are the people you have to win and this is why I was calling back to a season one throwback of anarco bani which is he’s still there somewhere he’s still in there he’s still in there like if if if

We go yes how we want to affect change is electoral we shouldn’t be here actually none of us should be here we’re talking to each other we’re in Liverpool it’s a very leftwing City like you know there’s that all saying go back to your constituencies and prepare for

Government I’d be like go go back to peniston and prepare for canvasing because that’s where it’s one or lost but if we’re thinking about building power working class power outside of electoral systems I think the answer of who are our people becomes both more interesting and more challenging a hell

Of a lot more challenging because I mean just to go in a little tangent in 2016 I was really bummed out I imagine lots of people here were bummed out and I felt like I’d woken up in this country which hated me on the basis of race on the basis of of being

Descended from immigrants this to a country that wanted to take away rights from immigrants and I felt like everybody like I don’t I I don’t want to build anything with anybody like you think I won’t be 52% of you I’ll be 52% of this country right now and I think

That anger was legitimate it came from a very real place and it came from a place of having experienced racism all my life and feeling it get worse but it’s not a winning starting point at all and I’ve now come to a place where I’ve gone

There’s not enough I mean you know God knows demographically we’re working on it but like there’s not enough brown people in this country to to carry an election there’s not enough brown people in this country to win if I’m going to win I’m going to have to work with

People who who don’t like people like me and and I’ve got to work out how to do that and that can be painful and that can be Pro profoundly confronting and it’s not about me going oh racism doesn’t matter of course it matters but you know the Black Panther Party when

They won over the poor whites of Appalachia the young Patriots organization they didn’t say here’s the language you have to use and if you don’t use it we’re going to be in these endless accountability meetings sorting out our internal culture whilst Fred Hampton gets shot by the FBI and we do

Nothing about it right they worked with these people they built with these people on the basis of anti- capitalism anti-racism anti-imperialism and what the young Patriots did their symbol was the Confederate flag the flag of slavery out of respect for the Panthers they willingly gave it up because through

Organizing together and fighting for the same things there was a recognition of mutual humanity and respect and that’s the place where I think identity Politics as it plays out today doesn’t get to and that’s the thing which I’ve had to learn the hard way over the past

You know five seven years that this is the place we have to get to it was interesting you said about electoralism that wasn’t really what I meant to say but I because I added Obama on there I can see where you’re coming from with that but it does point to something

Really interesting which is on a bunch of issues the left’s already won right so on public ownership of water rail um energy there are massive polling leads even among conservative voters in support of this stuff but the point is and the right are very aware of this by

The way people like farage Jacob re they’re very aware of this which is why they Le sort of lean ever further into migration civil rights issues it’s not just trans rights LGBT rights it will go further and further get worse and worse actually the more that their base

Supports you know Center left economic policies frankly which is what public ownership is and so I suppose that then gets the point of the Coalition you need to build because you might have somebody who’s a conservative voter social conservative who says I agree on policy

1 two 3 four and five but I want zero net immigration and I think these people stopping the roads they should go to prison they should be shot because some of these people talk like that right so do you think you can persuade them by just blocking their eyes blocking their

Eyes blocking their eyes because they’ve been persuaded about some things they’re not persuaded about others and that that could perhaps make their position more entrenched yeah I will answer that I think what I also want to say right now which I think is an appropriate time is

I watched your podcast on on uh on your book and I and I loved it it was really um so without going too much into it and boring you all so my grandmother was uh a seamstress in a factory in leads my granddad was a coach builder in leads

And they moved to scabra had four daughters when my mom was born in scarra um I grew up there going for my summer holidays um I was born on uh in a big council state in rampton my mom was a caterer we moved further out to like Cen

And then we ended up moving out to like rygate in Su um and and you know scarra as as I later found out was what I felt cuz my my grandmother was a lifetime labor voter because that was her side yeah that was what she was that was her

Side the Tories were terrible and that’s what I grew up with and I suppose that and my mom was the same it rubbed off on me but scaras similar to Y it’s a conservative safe seat right so there’s all these like different conflicts I felt like I had work workingclass

Culture you know you can hear it a bit in my voice but I ended up in sort of quite a middle class school in in Su um ended up being a Tradesman electrician um working for I have had a bit of a mad life to be honest with you which is why

I ended up probably um getting involved with insulate Britain and just up oil um in a way I want to read your book now yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s coming you help me write it Ash um and you know and and it had always been confused and I

Had these exact same things around brexit um even like the coid the lockdowns do you know what I mean it was a big thing like people that I grew up with that I’m not having everybody tell me what to do like telling me like what to inject into my body like this is

And this is what I grew up with people but on like in the um the the discourse on on the left and in the media they were scumbags right and and even like people that I used to meet it was like um cuz I went on some of the

Anti-lockdown rallies just to see what was going on right have an open mind talk to people um and I interestingly spoke to them about citizens assemblies and a lot of them were up for that idea they were like interested in that as an idea which I think it goes back to like

What you’re saying about this is vitally important right which not enough people are aware of that we need to talk to people that we might not disagree with and I actually think and I’ve pitched it I probably shouldn’t say but it is that I think just op oil or another

Environmental organization should help the antiz protest because I think it is an attack on a certain section um of society that are being um that are being ripped off I think the rich should be paying for a lot of these um the environmental shift that needs to happen

But what the government are doing and I believe they know full well what they’re doing is divide and conquer it’s like get people arguing get people know get people in communities having arguments or or or in the media and stuff like that um and you know maybe that would be

A bad idea but I just think it’s an interesting proposition that we could actually oppose what um you might think are policies that certain environmentalists should should follow like youz and actually say no we we believe that there we we should we should be talking to the Tradesmen and

To the people in all these communities all around Britain because if they’re saying that they don’t like these policies then I think we risk really um yeah like Po you know polarizing them and putting them off um you know this this massive issue um so yeah I can’t remember what your

Your question was no you’ve know it you’ve given us a scoop though you know JSO may go into anti- AC well I don’t think they will but I think it’s an interesting idea and I think it’s you know in future it’s and and actually with insulate Britain um at the time

There were um the anti- fuel the the fuel costs and there was the ghost lows and and we had similar ideas what the media want us to do they want us to be in battle with those people people right and what the jiujitsu move is is to say

Yeah no we’ll support you we’ll go out and like we’ll support you in your campaign because there’s obviously a huge section of society that are not into this and we need to find other ways and and and the rich and the powerful should be stumping up they’ve got the

Money the money’s there but they’re they’re charged that that they’re dividing Society I believe and it isn’t the right way to go about it um um I’m So Into jiujitsu but I’ve I’ve really got a question for both of you and it’s and it’s sort of like H taking a step back

From the kind of discussion that we’ve been having I mean I think the Jiu-Jitsu move of the right since thater has been to take the lower middle class who are property owning in some way and to say you’re the working class and you’ve had actually this massive expansion of like

A tenant class right it’s like you literally don’t own your home like probably don’t own a car um and they’ve just been completely disappeared from the conversation so they don’t even get the Dignity of being recognized as working class they’re just invisible I’m thinking about this when it comes to

When it comes to the ulas I live in a in a burra where car ownership is very very dependent on your income so the lowest income families and these are families which in my area are disproportionately black Asian Latin American recent immigrants uh they don’t

Own a car like like they just they just don’t and these are also the families which are often most disproportionately impacted by air pollution because of where they live like is there a problem when we try and talk about this kind of Coalition building that we’ve is there a

Risk that we’ve bought into the rights framing of class so much that we’re actually invisibilized a massive portion of the working class who are a lot more diverse uh racially in terms of you know national origin um and don’t own stuff they have even less of a stake in

Society yeah I I’ll pass it to Dan he could probably answer this better than me but just to be clear I’m not saying that we should not bring pollution down in in central London because I know all them you know uh we’ve got the case of

The the young girl that that died of asthma you know the horrendous pollution levels that exist in London and I’m not saying that we should be saying everybody should drive their car I I think there’s more work to be done but I think um yeah the policies that um and

And I suppose what is interesting is it’s not necessarily the central London people right the people that live in Tottenham it’s the home counties and this is the Oxbridge effect isn’t it it’s like I’ve build a wall around a long time no one list yeah yeah so it’s

The you know and these are all the the the people um the petty bouris that that Dan talks about this is so it’s it’s really compli at isn’t it it’s really there’s so much complexity involved in this discussion that it can feel like overwhelming um so yeah I’m not saying

That yeah don’t bring pollution down I’m just saying that yeah there’s there’s potentially other ways to do it um so my take on the class structure is you know the low middle class of grown um and I also think uh Ash is totally right that the group that would traditionally be

Called you know the lump and proletaria has grown so what I mean by that is uh a almost like a super exploited a super uh oppressed group that as people will um all know is tends to be you know ethnic minority uh concentrated in cities a lot

Of uh no no recourse to public funds people you know you see a lot of the lads driving for delivery people who are at risk of homelessness things like that um and that section of the population like that really really uh extremely marginal start of the population has also grown and what we

Used to think of as like the traditional working class you know like cpf photos terorist houses you know people working in factories down the mines things like that that idea of the working glass sort of no longer holds um this might be where I get like cancelled in a way but

Um so I actually think risk sniper in the G so so so I actually think um that there’s a we we’re focusing when we thinking about people will say what about uh you know the this ultr marginalized uh population we saw it a lot with the ulz protest when people

Were talking about car ownership and they were like well you the mo they were saying workingclass people don’t own cars or like Ultra poor yeah like obviously you know it costs a lot to run a car you know cars a money pit they always break you know massive source of

Frustration like I I just hate my car and like um I’m going at the moment um but yeah and that and that is true that is true you know and so people were saying oh well I don’t know what working-class people you know who who

Sort of own cars cuz they don’t but it was like well know what we’re doing there we’re sort of we’re falling into this trap focusing on like dispropor people who are disproportionately sort of uh this Ultra marginalized TR one like actually people who are within car if we look at the car

Owners there’s a lot of people who drive 4x4s from their home counties um and a lot of people who drive an EV of EV Vehicles you know um or is just e e vehicles um from the home counties but there are a lot of people who are

Scraping by the people who I’m writing about my book Tradesman people who are sort of the self-employed they need their van and so I worry that with what we need to be doing is actually saying yeah everyone’s got an interest in sort of lowering pollution you know the low

Middle classes the traditional working classes and the sort of very marginalized St of the population that can’t afford can’t afford cars but I worried like well you I hate talking about Twitter all the time because obviously it’s like a sess pit and it’s not necessarily like a gauge of where

The left is but when this ulz thing was coming out you had people like oh if you drive a if you drive a car then you must want kids to die of like air pollution this this moralizing argument and then there was this thing of people were focusing on well workingclass people

Don’t you know Working Class People don’t drive and I was like well no we need to be building a biggest possible Coalition so you are absolutely right I agree but we also need to be bringing everyone bringing everyone into that and recognizing that yeah the class

Structure is complex but we we can build like a lower middle class block you know those people who are just above that sort of ultra marginalized stter tend to be the people who are like kicking off about it because obviously if your car is crap and old is likely to be a sort

Of pollutant vehicle and then the the subsidy that was being offered isn’t enough to buy a new car so those people those are the people are going to kick off the people just above but we need to bring everyone together so just saying it’s not you know it’s this group of

People that I I just don’t think it I’ve got a question for you then I’m going to ask the same question to all of you quickly and then we’re going to go to q&as okay okay so what’s really interesting for me as well in the book you talked about this I’ve never thought

About this before but the petty Bourgeois at the start of the 20th century are this incredibly radical class we know about the anarchist that killed King Alberto in Italy or I think McKinley in the United States you know they were throwing bombs at people you know Joseph bani there we go we’re back

You know Joseph Conrad wrote a book about this right um the rise of these kind of anarchist individualists and what’s fascinating is they came from the petty bouris the CNT was a trade Union which had massive involvement in in in Catalonia with the petty Bourgeois so

There is you know a clear radicalism to them as a class which we see inverted at the moment in terms of that anti- leftism like you know I’m going to you know smash up some you know ules camera or something but and and that’s an outgrowth as you so you know brilliantly

Bring out in your book that’s an outgrowth of their socialization because of their class status right if you’re a soul Trader you have your own business you’re more likely to go you know what I’m going do that whereas people who were socialized in you know a factory

150 years ago were more prone to colle forms of collective action here’s the question on the on the 20 miles an hour stuff which frankly I don’t understand caveat I support it but the amount of political Capital you’re about to lose over something like that and how

It’s been presented I don’t I don’t personally get um do you think that some of these changes it’s almost like politician I think Mark Dr drf’s a very clever man I think Welsh labor a brilliant political party but it’s almost like they’re looking for policies with the minimal upside and the maximal

Like cost to their political Capital with precis the people you’re talking about that’s how the 20 M hour limit seems to me even though I think it’s a very worthy policy is that a is that the right read on it um there’s a pattern here isn’t it it repeatedly happens so

At the core of you traditionally at the core of like um low middle class protest has been anti-authoritarianism or anti-statism you know it’s idea don’t tell me what to do um and I think if we’re on the left and we sort of we we like the welfare state you know we want

A big welfare state and and if we think about our heroic history then the welfare state and the state itself features quite uh prominently and we see the state as intervening as a good thing whereas you know place I grew up the people I grew up around with just don’t

Like the state they don’t want to pay tax you know um don’t like being sort of told what to do and that was at the core of a lot of the anti-lockdown stuff as Liam rightly pointed out um but I and I keep saying this and I know everyone

Here sort of when I say the left it’s obviously not us in this room or people watching it’s everyone else but um um but is to understand that people people are quite rational yeah people people aren’t stupid people often have politics who might seem uh contradictory or sometimes even incoherent but it’s not

You know people can see for example that the Welsh government the British government they’re not doing anything about B polluters they’re not do you know they’re not taxing uh fossil fuel uh Capital they’re passing the cost down and they’re trying to just focus on and it’s that for me is a fundamentally

Neoliberal thing is to basically try to focus on individual consumer behavior and go actually and and you see it people online saying oh yeah guess what you’re not going to have um is is people going to banador on their holidays and things like that and you can see the

Discussion going and it’s sort of blaming these individual people for for going on these low lowcost holidays or it’s not you know we know it’s polluting but it’s people people people know that they’re not taking action against these big um the the real vest interest in society people understand that really

Really really well and so when and also let’s face it people have again absolutely slaughtered with the cost of living um and these things these these these these initiatives that are coming out in like ules like the 20 miles now a lot of it I think my reading of it is

It’s it’s the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of people do you know what I mean it’s like they’ve had State they’ve had they’ve just come out with lockdown I mean lockdown is I think people need to understand the effect that lockdown had on a lot of people in

Terms of turning them against sort of State Authority you know the idea of U vac vaccine mandates um people were really really we didn’t we didn’t have those no no but um but like in Wales they were talking about it and like in Wales they actually did use uh

Legislation to try to criminalize people going for like drugs and things like that and a lot of the hostility people had the state I people call them conspiracy theorists it’s legitimate why like people the state is out to get us you know the state is unfair we know

This if we’re if we’re you know that so people realize that and that’s where a lot of this sort of protest stems from but sometimes I do think yeah they it’s a lot a lot of it’s just a lack of understanding you know I I I said I knew

I knew what was I knew it was going to happen bring the 20 M hour limit in see what happens bring the ules in see what happens but I just worry that it’s going to everything’s people are going to go over to the right you know you both made

Some notes so do you want to say anything quickly before we go to Q&A I mean yeah very quickly on on the back of what you said I think that that uh lack of trust and mistrust of the state is very very double-sided I think that what

We’ve seen is the emergence of something which you might call negative solidarity so you don’t trust the state to do good things for you but you want to see it do nasty things to other people and I think that that’s what a lot of the anti small

Boat stuff is about I think that’s what a lot of this you know kind of quite naked hatred for the Youth and Young people doing anything in public is about and this what I think a lot of the transphobic moral Panic is about it’s about wanting to see the most coercive

Punitive nasty hateful arms of the state and Powerful institutions round on other powerless individuals cohorts demographics and what do you do about that I don’t think that what you can do is abandon what you might call minoritarian causes because these are people who are in need of Defending and

It’s our job to do that but you’ve got to do it in a way which is I think always out to build trust it’s always out to build trust and encourage some kind of human empathetic and loving attachment I’ll give you an example of someone who I think did like the most

Amazing 180 and they did it because they were just never on the internet so like 15 years ago spoke SP to my mom about trans people and my mom was a bit like oh I don’t know I don’t know about that feel instinctively uncomfortable worried about the impact on children there I’m a

Bit o now if that had happened online one is that she’d have had a a wave of criticism but then the other thing would she’d have a wave of all these very extreme transposes going yes come to us like come to us see you’re being criticized when you just come to us

Because she was never online that didn’t happen totally independent of any conversation that I had with her she was like 10 years later oh actually I work with a lot of like trans and non-binary youth and it turns out what they need is like healthcare and like affirming and

Loving parents and like a nicer society and she did that just through cultivating like real life empathetic attachments and I think that we can do that in our work as leftists we have to build trust and that’s not just about identity groups meeting each other and accepting each other it’s also at the

Heart of our project because I think one of the reasons why Corbin ISM in the end failed is no one trusted the state to do the things that they’re promising no one trusted the state to deliver you know billions and billions of pounds worth of green jobs or free education or Railway

Everywhere what they see is the state taking away so that thing building trust building trust for our project and our politics and our vision but building trust amongst each other I think that is the thing that we’ve got to focus on and I think that that’s also where the

Climate movement comes in lots of people don’t trust that the climate movement’s not just going to take things away from them I think about what a green future is and I think about it being very abundant but I realized no one has trust in that so we’ve got to put that leg

Working Li yeah just quickly um yeah I think you you you said earlier that that we’re restricted through the voting system Ash you were you were mentioning that and um yeah just listen you know just getting to know like uh Dan’s work um you know and the work that you do on

On thear and stuff like that is that well we need to get on with it we need we need to get on with it because and and that’s what I don’t hear enough in these discussions and I’m I am going to repeat myself is that um

Some what I think is also happening and it’s happening globally it’s happening when we see coups when we see what’s happening right today uh you know in the Middle East when you see all these different events happening around the world and and in the UK I think we’re witnessing the

Collapse of our political institutions um in an incredibly deep and profound way and so it’s all well and good saying we can wank off about just off oil right but what we also need to do is if we want a progressive Society then we need to go out and fight

For it right and and revolutions is a big term and and they’re not always a good idea but I think we’re really reaching the point now where we have to have some imagination and some belief and some faith that that the majority like what you said the majority of people that I

Remember you saying that majority of people that you meet in your day-to-day life uh life are generally quite good there are a lot of um you know it’s not all good but but generally and we have to have that belief because if we don’t manage to turn this whole thing round incredibly

Quickly then then then this is about physics it’s about it’s about that the last month in September it was 1.8 de average temperature right that’s what it was in September there was a paper that was released recently that said if we hit 2° global average temperatures

Then it will be be mainly rich people who will be killing 1 billion mainly poor people right and we can argue whether they’re off by 500 million here or there either side but it’s absolutely disgusting what’s about to take place and what we’re allowing to take place

And so this is not just about the climate movement this is about the left absolutely having to go to every single Community all over the country and and come up with something that is imaginative that is caring and that people can believe in um and one of the

Things I’ve got to say is one thing we can start to do is more people sign up to take part in just St Oil we’re starting as I said in the 29th of October we can go to justop oil.org and there’s also a big March happening in

London on the 18th of November um and and and and if not we we need to organize other kinds of movements that are not relying on this voting system that you say isn’t helping any of us quickly you will be able to say your final remarks by the way so if you want

To follow stuff no no I just want you know no no you want to get it in there I’m just saying you anything else you will have the opportunity don’t worry um we are going to take questions from the floor quickly before we do I was going

To say it was interesting because I was doing an event uh recently with somebody from Google quite senior lady and you know she was they just they’re openly talking about the collapse of our system yeah very openly you know I did a TED Talk get the names out a TED Talk a

Couple years ago very senior people from Silicon Valley openly talk about the possibility of American Civil War yeah psychop or not even like Civil War they say civil Warfare so low intensity you know CER Insurgency basically by people who oppose the state um and I think it’s

Really important to say I don’t you don’t want to scare people but those are the stakes and is not conspiratorial or unhinged or batshit to say that very serious smart people say that all the time it’s just generally not broadcast on the BBC right um let’s give this mic

Out if there’s anybody set the mic to give it round Ian I’m to do it great so we’ll take questions in threes how about that I think the question is uh simple as what will unite the left I think that’s a very very important question is there a social divide between the Young

And the old and I say that being old and uh I’ll give over oh thank you and and that that is one of the things anyway the the question is what what will unit say is there any any any value out of getting to try to get older people and younger people

Together thank you um do you think it’s important that just the PO engage with trade unions and if so how any more hands this person here the Flor um do you think there’s potential to unite a mass of people behind the idea that we are not being heard because

Our democracy is inadequate and that actually what’s needed is an upgrade to our democracy through for example Extinction rebellion’s demand for a citizen assembly or the stici foundation’s suggestion of a house of citizens but um what can unite all different types of marginalized groups regardless of their sort of level of

Marginalization is the fact that actually none of us really have a voice none of us are able to be active citizens and participate uh in the world we want to create and and that is potentially where we can unite and bring in like people that we haven’t yet

Spoken to great I’ll just quickly go over those questions again what would you not the left and then an appendage to that is there a divide between the old and the young uh should JSO just a all engage with trade unions um and basically I suppose constitutional

Reform in a way is there a way of bridging these divides through um certain demands about democracy voice um so yeah not too long and we can do another round or two of questions who wants to start Ash um okay so I’m going to take uh two in one and it’s going to

Be the old and young question this is going to be about the like are we being heard question in terms of is there a divide between the old and young of course there is there’s always a divide between old and young the question is well how do you bridge it what are the

Differences and how do you bridge them I think that one of the things I’m definitely seeing with a lot of people younger than me is the total loss of faith in politics at all right not just leftwing politics not just rightwing politics but because you’ve been so

Abandoned by politics for so long you’ve ended up with a mindset which is well I just want to look after me and maybe people who are like me and that’s all I can all I can hope for and I think that being connected to successful political movements is really important CU it

Opens up the realm of possibility I mean to hear the way my mom talked about the end of Apartheid she talks about it like she could not believe it happened she never thought it would happen in her lifetime she called it a miracle she lived through a miracle happening tell

Any young person that change is possible they’d be like what and no she lived it so yeah that kind of intergenerational contact Mutual learning oh my God so important as we like being heard I think that actually we’ve got a lot of ways to feel visible in this Society got endless

Ways to communicate Tik Tok Twitter Instagram whatever but it’s actually about power so I think feeling unheard isn’t isn’t the core of it it’s about feeling disempowered um so I know that i’ I’ve I’ve made a big defense of like sitting around and and talking like this and I

Think it is important it’s important to use this to strategize to do something to name the problem to do something it’s about getting a grip on power I think rather than finding more forums for for conversation you want to go um I I was going to say I’ll try to answer them all

In one but I haven’t got the ability to do I think but um in terms of how do we you know unite the left or I think we’re in quite a paradoxical situation in that as Aon mentioned earlier the vast majority of people in the UK support redistributive economic policies the

Vast majority of people in the UK are pissed off at the complete collapse of all Democratic systems as as Liam uh said earlier um but yet the left is sort of a drift you know and and obviously and and to go back to the the trade you

Know the Trade union movement and the environmental movement aren’t linking up and that’s the big one of the biggest challenges if not the biggest challenge the left sort faces um I think if we look at what’s happened you know like class Consciousness or coherent politics if you read Mike Davis

He’s he’s amazing on this it never just emerged like out of The Ether do you know I mean when we had these like Revolution movs when we had like the mass Trade union movement it didn’t just happen like because people worked in like factories you know it just takes

Really long like boring uh unglamorous work Often by like Trade union reps to to sort of uh talking to people in work sort of having these conversations Le saying having having conversations um and the problem is because and this is my personal take because we’ve sort of thrown our lot in with

Electoralism um we’ve sort of that for me electoralism through the you know the labor party is a shortcut to power it’s always been a shortcut to cut to power um and I think I mean I I don’t even know if this is answering any of the

Questions but I think that you know the way forward now we have to just rebuild the the Trade union movement we have to rebuild the Trade union we have to build rebuild um the workingclass movement and we have to build the institutions that created sort of collectivism um and Ash

Was saying earlier about um you know about how you know how you win people over it’s through having these conversations like you said you have to you have to win people over um and when you do workplace activism if you’ve ever been done any Trade union organizing you

Realize like you have to speak to people who you don’t have much in common with who probably don’t have a lot in common with politically even um but but through having those conversations you sort of start changing people’s minds and and and unfortunately it’s going to be a

Long well say it’s a long process but yeah we’re in this awful situation where it’s going to be a sort of a long boring process um where there are no shortcuts but it also needs to happen in a quite a short short period of time um for Forest

Worth I think there is a focus on intergenerational conflict um in the UK I see a lot of people slagging off like Boomer things like that I think it’s a total dead end um and I think it’s a symptom sometimes of you know a tendency

On the left to seek you know to look for like enemies you know when we should be looking for converts I think that’s the that’s the phase I mean I’ve been doing research with postal workers for a year most of the posts like late 50s 60s sort of hardened Trade union militants and

They said to me like the reason we’re on strike is for younger people you know because we want younger people to have the life that we had so I think intergenerational stuff is a total dead end cheers yeah um I really loved Ashley’s

Point um on a on a par side and I think that’s really important and the things that seemed imposs like people don’t the Berlin Wall it’s like completely Unthinkable a year or two before it happened you know like the there’s so many examples um and that’s I suppose

What it boils down to like imagination we can imagine like unbelievably amazing things and make them happen we have to have some faith and what is it faith without works is dead it it takes graft hard work um graft that’s a great word I think you know it’s like real a real

Slug It Feels sometimes I’ve had that experience um working on on various campaigns JSO and the unions yeah I mean there has been a lot of work I think it’s really um maybe not enough and I and I don’t think there’s enough people working on it I was um yeah I’ve been a

Bit of time off to be honest the last few months I’ve been working doing various things and I’ve had other things come up but I know there was a lot of work going on I think it is really tricky I think there is I think there’s I think there’s

Move I always felt my difficulty with the Trade union movement was that they were they were confined within laws and I thought you need to start breaking them I’m thought that was my position and it’s really great Mick Lynch is is saying that if you if you change the

Laws even further we’re going to ignore them right and I think think that’s I think that needs to happen right on I think they they’ve got a part to play in this in terms of saying that that that whether the whatever the law says we

Need to unite and and and and and play our part in this struggle because as I’ve said is ‘s running out um and there’s loads of similarities I I one thing that really annoyed me the guy that edits the Tribune right we I’m not allowed to talk he a competitor of naras

Maybe but he was said like slated just oo and insulate Britain right ated them all the way through and then but then when they were when there was train strikes it was like great you know because it was disrupting the public right but I thought well what train strikes doing they’re disrupting they’re

Exact there’s so many similarities you know between what they between the idea of what we’re what we’re saying we want to do in Octo at the end of this month and what the you know the the the trade unions are doing is we disrupt and we’ve

Got a demand and and we and we win concessions um so there’s loads of similarities between the movements and I think but yeah there’s loads more work to do constitutional reform uh yeah this is I suppose what it comes down to like imagination we need to sort of start um

Offering people ideas I don’t know whether it’s civil resistance campaigns around proportional representation um you know I don’t know what I haven’t got the ideas of what they are but I think we I think we need to start seeing that in within within the left I think we

Need to see start seeing huge campaigns on the streets um and saying that we’re not prepared to put up with this um depressing State of Affairs politically when we’re just not as a society prepared these people don’t represent it’s like you say these people don’t represent us in any like hardly at all

You know so um yeah I think that’s a big challenge so we go to one more round of questions the thing you said about the future is really interesting um this was a sort of a conversation I had with John Gray who’s a small C conservative thinker but really interesting man and

He said when you have feudalism the sort of horizon is of course the afterlife you know people believed there was Heaven and if you did good works on Earth you were rewarded and then you have capitalism industrial capitalism and the The Horizon is the future we’re all temporarily embarrassed millionaires

Your life will get better if it doesn’t your kids lives will be better your grandchildren’s lives and he said now we’ve reached this third stage where we have late capitalism or techn feudalism but we don’t have that future and he has this great line where he says you know

Mark said that religion was the Opium of the masses now the American underclass has just opium they have fence inel they don’t have religion they have just you know the real deal 50 to 100 times more powerful than opium actually so this is an interesting one for me because you’re

Saying people need that inspiration and I think that’s right we need wins on the left really quickly I think in the next five to 10 years otherwise we’re in big trouble will lose a generation by not infusing them and capturing their imagination but I think the the historical moment we’re in suggests

That’s also just quite hard like people too downhearted because people work their out of feudalism so I’m sure we can do something um three more questions please hands up one there sitting down just over there um you say that we experience politics in the media and I think that

That’s true but how do we like create these empathetic conversations that we have in real life on like the sesp that his daughter great question any more one over there that that one um I really like the idea of the uh Jiu-Jitsu move it’s what my questions about really is hearts and

Minds is one thing I suppose Twitter conversations right-wing press um the conservative party you’re really good at is capitalizing on things like culture wars um the migrant crisis convincing people that the problems workingclass people and um suppose lower middle class that the problems in their life are trans people in toilets etc

Etc um and things like um the climate crisis are a sort of an elite problem that’s distant so how do you change first of all go about changing that now artive um to win people over and there’s a chap over here who’s getting upset with me I’m not wearing my

Glasses that’s why I didn’t see you just one over here it’s okay I’m not getting upset um so just a very quick uh preface I was in a radical Housing Network meeting like you like the monthly ones uh and I brought up a very similar point about the the ules like maybe they

Should try and capitalize on it and and make some ties because of similar policies around the area suffice it to say um there are policies like pedestrianization which we’ have seen in places like Spain where the at the start the local population doesn’t really like

It and then it gets put through and then they’re like oh actually we don’t want to go back to the other one we’re going to defend it now um and so when we think about ules is to get rid of the uh the bad air quality right um there are more radical

Uh policies that can be and pedestrianization for what it’s worth isn’t even that radical right it’s just no more cars uh and then of course uh what shouldn’t be considered radical is better public uh transport you know actual public transport not owned by private company right and so I guess my

Question to you is you know how how where is that bridge being built to between the the activism side just I I’m I’ve been a hardcore activist environmental activists with XR for years so you know from one activist to another where’s the bridge the bridge between I think I understand you but

Just for people watching the bridge between um the the the policy side I think that like what affects people’s everyday lives to get to the to what you want right you know we want better um air quality but the ulas thing doesn’t go far enough so it gets a bit on the

Dodgy territory you know right so just to go over those again uh the first one about how do we cultivate more empathetic uh conversations on the left sadly obviously lots of that happens through social media often not in productive ways how do we capitalize and

I think a nice word is pseudo events the right’s very good at doing this they create pseudo events and get everybody angry and you have to respond to them um how do we insert ourselves in that and then how how do you translate policies to action and how do you overcome I

Suppose this issue of um an insufficient policy which doesn’t really want to get where you want to go anyway and I suppose that has problems with regards to losing political capital and whatnot um first Ash let me start from raise Yeah I think I it’s a really difficult conversation of the cesspit on Twitter um so but I think um some of my friends I think they’re doing a panel Monday um the it’s the the Cooper Hall so they they they’ve gone up they’re living in the community up there

Um they’re doing people’s assemblies all around the city um and they’re doing evenings with food and and and trying to talk to people and I think we can there’s loads of examples to be be learned from this we should be replicating this all over the country um

In those places that Dan talks about where it’s you know you only can have a car to to or it’s really difficult to exist without a car all these kinds of different communities all over the country I think we’ve all got a job to do to get off Twitter and try and um

Create people’s assemblies where we’re trying to um investigate what the issues are that are troubling people um the problems with polarization I I honestly think about this a lot and I think it’s really complicated um I think again we all have I think that that that can be brought up

In these kinds of spaces where we’re having people’s assemblies in all these kinds of different communities um I think the great example is the citizens assemblies around gay marriage was it in Ireland um and some beautiful stories of like elderly people that were potentially went into that citizens assembly quite bigoted but through

Conversation through these um you know examples of um gay people and and gay experiences that they left that citizens assembly completely doing the 180 I think that you spoke about and this is is what happens right when you get in a room and when you talk to people and

When you connect and and social media for all its benefits it doesn’t quite achieve that in in the same way um and and as far as the the UL I I I don’t have an answer for that I don’t know the top of my head I don’t know really how

To answer that one to be honest right now um yeah I think it’s complic and I think I think people’s assemblies are the way through that it’s the same it’s the same idea we need to get people we need to get people involved in politics and it’s really difficult in the society

When you’re you’re working 15 hour days or whatever is just to survive and you’re grafting and the last thing you want to do when you’ve done a day’s work is Waffle on about politics you know what I mean you want to eat and go to

Bed so It’s Tricky I don’t know what you know it is tricky I’m not saying it’s simple um Twitter is obv I mean I I don’t like Twitter um I go on there just do self- promotion um which I’m quite good at um if you go on Twitter a lot you’d

Think the world is a horrible place I think you’d think you know you think it’s it’s people arguing that the tone people take with each other the way people speak to each other you’re thinking pleas don’t speak like that like in person you know that people don’t speak to like you know people

Don’t speak to each other like that generally in person but on Twitter they they do but I think what stands behind a lot of this stuff is you know when you actually do workplace organizing when you actually speak to people when if you canvas and and have short conversations

With people on the doorstep you will find as Liam says said as Ash said most people are really good and genuine and kind and most people uh even if they occasionally like vote the wrong way uh have good values like and and if you look statistically at the UK the UK is

Actually a very tolerant Place comes to culture War issues I don’t think there’s a massive constient I mean the Tories are obviously relying on cultural issues cuz they got nowhere else to go now yeah they’re desperately trying to Dr copy the the Yanks and try Dr Drum up some

Support it’s like the the last gasp attempt but the statistics and like the BSA that came out the other day most people in the UK very tolerant and supportive of trans rights you know and and and they’re just as they’re supportive um for other you know rights

LGBT rights that the sort of you know racism has actually gone down in in the UK um and that but that might seem hard to believe but it’s true and I think the starting point for all of this uh if we’re going to start again and rebuild like the left Rebuilder movement is

Abandon this idea of Purity politics and abandon this idea which for me is seeped in to the left in particular there’s this idea that like you know we’re good you know we’re the good people and out there are like baddies or that these people are reactionary and if the Tories

Win it’s because there’s loads of bad people out there it’s just not that’s not true at all like if you speak to people um I said before I think I went off in a tangent but a lot of people have you politics which might be described as chaotic or incoherent you

Know some aspects which are possibly conservative some aspects which are very radical the the key is to not not give up on political education but is to actually have these conversations and to win people around you know because we’re expecting people sometimes I think to have just emerge with perfect politics

Or the perfect views on everything just like you know just like we have you know like I had I didn’t used to have good politics you know I I used to have problematic views when I was younger you know it takes it takes political education it takes time people can

Change you know you can change people’s mind Ricky Tomlinson you know famous senat Liverpool Ricky Tomlinson used to be in the National front you know and and because he said when he was young and he was pissed off and he was gr up in a council state it was a national

Front they were having these conversation conversations with people rather than the left he’s now obviously a socialist but he shows you people people can change there’s another um if you f to Phil pattin Phil pattin was one of the first communist MPS in the UK um and again people talk about the Battle

Of cable Street like the battle cable Street was just this thing spontaneous resistance to the buf it wasn’t Phil pattin realized that the the fascists were getting a uh a foothold in East London and there’s this famous story in his book where they help uh a family

That are being uh are facing eviction and they go and help this family and they stop the eviction and they’re looking around the house and they realize this family are in the British Union of fascist um and obviously there was extremely uncomfortable you know sort of discussion but obviously the

Family come over to the left then and he realized the communist movement the left the Socialist part had to have these really difficult messy conversations and you have to be rooted in work class communities and win people around and to do that you sort of have to abandon any

Idea of this sort of Purity politics I don’t know if that was necessarily what the questions were but I think that the that’s the sort of Baseline that we have to start from because if you think that people are bad you can’t be one round

Then we may as well give up now you know what I mean but like if we’re going to move forward and build up a mass movement that’s that’s how we have to start um and it’s not about I mean jiannis verak has had this good thing

The other day we talk about culture War issues it’s not about pandering to you know reactionary intins it’s not about saying oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I agree you know you don’t have to have those conversations you can you can challenge people you can challenge people but you

Can you have to be um you have to be respectful and understand where people are you know where people are then you meet them and then you have those conversations um yeah I don’t know if I answer any of the questions but um that’s what I

Think I’m about to beef you now because some of the things that you’ve talked about are going backwards if you want to look at support for Trans rights the don’t knows are being increasingly won over to the against trans rights because of the media climate and if you don’t

Contest that media space you will lose it and I I completely understand where a lot of trans and non-binary people who do the kind of work that I do say I don’t want to do these shows right it’s horrible I’m set up as a hate figure I

Am delegitimized I’m dead named I’m just held up for the world’s scorn why should I do that I have an awful lot of empathy with it right it is it is a horrible thing to do to yourself and to put your mind through but I guess I think you got to

Do it I I think you’ve got to do it I think you’ve got to contest those spaces because I think we’re seeing in real time what can happen when you don’t um you know as for racism racism isn’t just one thing racism isn’t just how would I

Feel if a black person moved next St racism is how’s my kid getting treated by the police racism is uh you know am I going to be denied a place to live by a landlord or an estate agent who doesn’t like my name racism is saying okay well

We can have a border policy which leaves people to drown because not our kids different names you know oh they’re only from Afghanistan so when racism is all of those things yes you can track some real improvements when it comes to how people interact socially of course those improvements have happened and I’m

Really glad that they have but there there’s all sorts of ways in which racism is becoming even more deeply entrenched in how the state functions and that’s getting Buy in from significant portions of the population and I don’t think that we get anywhere to solving the problem if we can’t name

The problem now I don’t think you do that by writing people off and this is what I mean by sometimes doing this can be really painful and I’m coming at this very obviously from the position of someone who has skin in the game of being marginalized right um you know

Grew up dur you know grew up during the war on terror as Muslim that wasn’t fun you know been been Bing goly all my life not always having a great time so this isn’t about saying okay well everyone’s going to be nice to you if you go and do

This work no sometimes it will suck it will really suck you know I remember when in 2019 I was uh door knocking in scarra guy opens the door and he says oh sorry I couldn’t couldn’t vote for Jeremy cor and he wants those Muslims to come here and take over and I

Was like well I can see I’m the wrong message carrier in this case but also I was annoyed I was pissed off and I was like you know what I’ve looked at your census data we’re not coming here like and and then I didn’t know what to do

About it and I felt really really um angry and I felt just annoyed that I was you know going round to people’s houses just to hear racism and I was like why am I doing this with my time and I rang um my partner that night and I was like

Why am I doing this tell me why I’m doing this he’s like well you’re doing this to build socialism and is that worth it or not and that’s not that big a sacrifice to be honest like when you when you go to see where trosky lived out his last

Days with boarded up Windows and bullet holes still in the walls you go actually maybe the microaggression isn’t too bad a sacrifice to make but I think we’ve got to be honest about it and say that if you are from a marginalized background and you’re doing this work of

Trying to build working-class power if you’re doing this work of trying to build socialism you will be disrespected on the basis of your identity and we’ve got to suck it up we absolutely do and we’ve got to be able to fight and to love each other with equal intensity and

That’s not always easy but nothing that’s worth having in this life comes easy and that’s what my mom said so you can write that down it’s a very good place to end on actually you should go into politics still time maybe London Mar in a few

Years now I sent too many nudes man I cannot go into politics that’s my that’s my dream Tom Harwood versus Ash Saker I think the 2030s it’s going to happen U MO will be hosting a panel tomorrow evening at 7:30 about moral panics uh so tune in for that if you’re watching on

YouTube as well thank you to my esteemed and accomplished guest this evening Liam Dan and Ash quickly if people want to know more about you where can they follow you just uh cheers justop oil.org uh yeah 29th of October uh we’ll be slow marching uh in definitely until we get a

Statement from the government they’re going to get end new oil and gas is totally possible we just have to believe it if you haven’t signed up please go on to the website just.org Liam’s trying to change world I’m just going to ask people to buy my book it’s

It’s part of it uh no yeah I’m I’m on Twitter at dialectic um and yeah I I don’t do anything like the stuff that that Liam does but um yeah like by the book I guess but um um yeah that I I don’t know else to say that’s that’s it

Good good call to action by my book di D aore um you can find me on Twitter I know we’re all slagging it off but you know I love my crack pipe and I’m never letting it go um you can also of course find us at Navara media um nvar media

Will be at or transformed a bit more and you’ll find us here every year so keep coming back and my thanks to the audience this evening I want you to give a round of applause to yourselves please and to our amazing check come [Applause] on six six really six really good

Questions and I have to say there was some substantial stuff there in terms of how do we begin to build a social majority like moving beyond Purity politics um and being open about uncomfortable conversations like I say Moy is back tomorrow at 7:30 I guess

We’re going to have a few drinks um we will see you tomorrow night the rest of us here will carry on this conversation good night oh