Morning Star stall at the Cardiff Transformed event

Cardiff Transformed: The New World Disorder

One of the inspirations of Corbyn’s tenor as LP leader was the enthusiasm generated for organising political education. The World Transformed (TWT) held annual festivals that ran in parallel with Labour Party conference, providing a forum for dynamic debates that attracted a new generation of activists hungry to define a political future for themselves that offered hope after decades of austerity and neo-liberalism. Like TWT (Festival this year will be held in Manchester on 10-12 October), local “Transformed” committees survived the end of Corbyn’s LP leadership, and have kept the political education flag flying. Cardiff Transformed (CT) has been one such group, and sees its 4^th annual day-long festival this weekend on Saturday 27 September, at Chapter Arts, Canton, Cardiff. CT 2025 is themed “The New World Disorder”. Participants will grapple with what is happening economically and politically, and how it is impacting the day to day lives of every one of us. The dysfunction and disorder of our politics is negatively impacting our health, housing, culture and environment, but there is evidence of people fighting back and organising. All this is in scope for CT 2025.

The CT group has diligently maintained broad appeal across left opinion, by including speakers from traditional Labour/Plaid/Green backgrounds to those from communist/trotskyist/anarchist traditions; and, by including debates on relevant areas of controversy. As well as offering a day to foster hope (the CT 2023 event was themed along the Raymond Williams vision: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”), CT has created a space where activists can shed their party-political clothing and search out the ideas that could unite the left. Whilst emphasising attendee participation in panel sessions in order to foster cross party dialogue, CT stops short of organising those activists. That’s a task for others in the room.

Topically, with the launch of Corbyn and Sultana’s “Your Party” this year, CT 2025 will provoke the audience of the final plenary to consider: “When next you vote, will it be for the new radical leader of the Green Party, Plaid Cymru – leading the polls to beat Labour and Reform in the next by-election, or maybe Corbyn’s “Your Party”? Or perhaps we need a different centre of popular power in People’s Assemblies.” Helping them find the answer will be leaders of the different protagonist groups, including Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Greens, and Beth Winter for “Your Party” (a regular at Cardiff Transformed).

Elsewhere in the programme, CT 2025 will focus on the fulcrum of The New World Disorder – Gaza. A thought provoking panel debate on how ”Has Palestine Changed Politics” will examine politics from Washington to Beijing, and across the global South – considering how the masses of every city across the globe have been moved to take political action (sometimes for the first time) by the struggle against Zionism. Surely, the defining battle of a generation. But, what will it mean for communities dealing with racism at home? Will there be a long-lasting impact as a new generation, horrified by an ongoing genocide, recommit to the slogan “never again”?

A late joiner to the programme is Mike Master, a Birmingham bin striker shop steward for Unite, who will join the general secretary of the Bakers union, Sarah Wooley, and Wales TUC’s Sîan Gale. They will lead a discussion on building collective power. Bread and butter working class struggles exemplified by the 6 month heroic bin workers fight against a rogue (Labour) council must be central to the agenda of any political alliance capable of overthrowing right-wing Labour’s doubling down on austerity. It is only through organising labour that we can resist the repeated cutting of workers wages. Union penetration in Britain is dramatically lower than the 1970s – the last time TUs brought down a reactionary government, however. How do we rebuild and what does collective power look like; and, how do we use this power to hold to account those in elected office over us?

There will be much more than mentioned here, of course – a film, 9 panel sessions, a plenary, a host of stalls and even a harpist to round off the day. Let’s hope Corbyn’s first rise to leadership that led to the “Transformed” initiative was just a precursor to a new rallying of forces. Let CT 2025 be a spark that helps fire a new activism that uses the disorder to take down and defeat Reform, and the Zionists.