On 14 June, independent socialists from across Merseyside will hold a rally in Liverpool. It will bring people together to challenge Labour. And ahead of the event, the Canary spoke to two of the people involved – councillors Alan Gibbons and Sean Halsall.

“The Labour Party needs sinking”

Gibbons explained that the rally will bring together independent groups from across Merseyside in a spirit of unity. And the hope is for the event to be “a stepping stone to the foundation of a new political party of the left to challenge… the ruinous hegemony of Starmer’s rightward-moving Labour Party”. There’ll be a range of speakers at the Liner hotel in central Liverpool, including Jeremy Corbyn, and “some really good musicians”. And as Halsall explained, it will be “open to anyone” because:

Politics should be about everyone. Everyone should engage. We should give them a reason to engage.

And in a rallying call, Halsall insisted:

the Labour Party needs sinking. Them and the Tories should never be in charge of this country again.

‘Starmer’s party isn’t in charge in Merseyside anymore’

The rally, Halsall argued, is “laying down a marker in Merseyside” that:

in Labour’s strongest stronghold, … they’re not in charge anymore. They’ve given up the right to represent the people of this region in this county. And we’re coming for them.

In Liverpool, Gibbons stressed, there’s:

a sense of palpable panic amongst many Labour councillors

Why? Because traditionally ultra-safe seats are now “marginal”. And in some places, it’s Reform UK that’s giving Labour a run for its money.

Challenging not just Labour, but also Reform

As Gibbons explained, part of bringing independent socialists together in the region with the 14 June event is to set the bloc up to be “a bulwark against the advance of Reform”. And he was clear that:

to stand against them, you actually need to take them on on class grounds

That means not just debating the issue of immigration with Reform-leaning voters, but reminding them that Reform’s leaders:

are people born with a silver spoon up their jacksies. These leadership public-school millionaires ascribed to the Thatcherite process, owning property development companies, … and commodity brokers. And their television, GB News, is funded by a hedge-fund millionaire. These are not your friends… They want to wreck your NHS, wreck your welfare state, and oppose workers’ rights.

You need to be in communities not just having those discussions respectfully with ordinary people, he said, but also actively and visibly participating in struggles on important local issues.

Halsall agreed, talking about the importance of local assemblies to give people a much-needed forum to:

talk about what matters to them, and then talk about how we’re going to fix that together through collective action

“Using human language” and “meeting people where they are is massive”, he stressed. That’s what can end isolation and division while helping to “rebuild community”.

“People distrust mainstream politics” but real alternatives can and do stop Reform capitalising on that

Halsall emphasised the role the right-wing leadership of Labour has had on empowering Reform, saying:

I don’t think we’d have Reform without Keir Starmer leading the Labour Party now.

But if Starmer keeps disastrously pandering to Reform, he said, the situation could get even worse, with “overt fascist parties” benefiting from the normalisation of Reform’s positions, which are likely to get more and more extreme.

In response to this situation, we need to understand how people are feeling. And Halsall asserted:

I don’t for a moment believe that everyone who votes Reform is a racist. I think that would be absolute lunacy to believe. I think the issue we’ve found ourselves in is people distrust mainstream politics. They distrust these parachuted-in, suited and booted idiots who haven’t got a clue, have never worked, never had sort of any prominent role in their communities, just appear out of nowhere, like my current MP, Patrick Hurley.

The hope, he stressed, lies in the fact that, “when there is… another option, people will take it”. For example:

in Preston, in the local elections there, three anti-welfare-cuts candidates won on a pro-Palestine platform in a… county council where Reform just swept the board.

Independent anti-establishment candidates Michael Lavalette, Yousuf Motala, and Almas Razakazi beat both Labour and Reform to become councillors in Preston. While Reform dominate the Lancashire council, independents now stand in third place. And they’ve now joined a Progressive Lancashire alliance with Green councillors to make their voices even louder.

What’s the story with the Greens?

Speaking about the Greens and their role in resisting the pro-war, pro-austerity establishment, Gibbons said a new party of the left would definitely need to have “discussions” and “non-aggression pacts” with the Greens. However, while the Green Party has its own internal struggle now with many seeking a broad shift to the left, the fact remains that:

You virtually never see a Green councillor on the picket line… there’s lots of Green activists who I just couldn’t see carrying credibility in most working-class areas… [and] the natural gravitation in crisis for the Greens is still to look towards Liberals, not towards Socialists.

Halsall agreed, saying:

They’re also never going to form a government. Their sort of ceiling’s probably 70 seats. They’ll be kingmakers at best at some point.

“Powering up class politics unites 99% of us” – that must be the focus

Bringing together a broad alliance to have success nationally, Halsall stressed, requires us to “make it about class” because:

Powering up class politics unites 99% of us in this country. Why would we want to divide ourselves?

Gibbons added that connected issues include workers’ rights, council-house building, a Green New Deal, reducing inequalities, having a “mass trade-union-recruitment process”, and standing in solidarity with workers from other countries (whose loss in Britain “would cause a catastrophe in the care home sector”).

As Halsall said, however, Labour is very much a part of the problem – especially as it gifts arms industry profiteers billions of pounds while taking billions away from chronically ill and disabled people:

we’ve seen decades upon decades of people being taken for granted… I’d struggle to find more than… 10 to 15 people in that Labour group in parliament who do the right thing – and local councils even less. They are whipped beyond belief, where they will actively vote against their residents’ interests.

Both Halsall and Gibbons refused to follow the whip under Starmer and became independent. And both have seen a positive response because they’ve stuck by their principles. Halsall stressed that:

when you do take a principled stance, people recognise it and respect that… That says to me how little of it there is in politics now that that’s such a massive thing—that I would resign over a genocide. That tells me how far we’ve gone off the deep end.

Community action and organisation has already begun

Halsall predicts that, amid Labour’s NHS cuts:

we’re going to see NHS strikes, and rightly so. I will stand with those workers until I drop over the next year or so

And the government’s attacks on disabled people will only add to the pressure, he said:

People are going to get sicker, not be able to keep their head above water. Nutrition is going to go down – kids driven into poverty, then given lifelong medical conditions.

Gibbons added that “Starmer’s attack on the most vulnerable people in society” is a key issue that has come up when he’s spoken to people locally. The winter fuel payment, disability cuts, two-child benefit cap, the lack of council and social housing, and the “ticking time bomb” of the NHS. “Real working-class campaigning politics”, he insisted, means standing with working-class communities like Garston where a site originally destined for social housing was turned into a source of corporate pollution, defending the important Marie Curie hospice, and attending dozens of protests against the genocide in Gaza.

Halsall echoed those sentiments, saying:

Support workers at Livv Housing. Support workers in the NHS when they find themselves in struggle. Any worker on a picket line deserves your support.

“Internationalism always”

Regarding Starmer’s ongoing attempts to pander to the far-right diversion tactics of attacking people who’ve come to Britain from other countries, Gibbons insisted “internationalism always!” And he emphasised that:

the asylum seekers up the road from me… I’ve got more in common with them than I have with the likes of [Nigel] Farage and Dubai Dicky Tice and all these bloody spivs that were born with millions in their pockets.

Referring to Starmer’s embrace of Enoch Powell’s divisive “strangers’ rhetoric, meanwhile, Halsall asserted:

my grandmother would have been one of those “strangers” who came over to work in the NHS back in the 1940s

He added:

I would much rather have a refugee fleeing a war zone living next to me — and probably much easier to get along with and understand and see eye-to-eye with than some guy who’s playing at being working class, banging on about his dad being a toolmaker, who’s never experienced a day of struggle in his life, who gets gifts from all over the place. Lord Alli’s never offered me £20,000 or a stay in his gaff. These people do not represent us. And we’ve got to stop letting them speak for us.

To hear more about what’s going on in Merseyside to resist both Labour and Reform wings of establishment politics, you can register for the 14 June event at the Liner Hotel.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.