How not to build a mass workers’ party in 2026

The Socialist Party kept secret the political affiliations of all the speakers at its recent online event calling for new party. No wonder says Alan Story, who attended the meeting earlier this week.

The Socialist Party (SP) is deliberately concealing who is directing a current effort to create a new left-wing party for workers, a detailed investigation by The Left Lane has revealed.

An online Zoom meeting held on Monday 8 June by the SP-controlled front group, Trade Unionists for a New Party (itself a group created by another SP-front, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition – TUSC), did not disclose to an audience of around 175 activists the political affiliations of the 13 speakers.

To those watching, the speakers could easily have appeared to be ordinary trade unionists, albeit ones with an above-average level of class consciousness. But that impression would have been misleading. Although it was never revealed by the chair, Dave Nellist, long-time Socialist Party member and former Labour MP for Coventry South East from 1983 to 1992, 12 of the 13 speakers were themselves his fellow members of the Socialist Party.

The political affiliation of the 13th speaker, who spoke for less than a minute, could not be established by our research. She may also be an SP member, but this could not be confirmed.

Evidence compiled in footnote proves our case

At the end of this article you will find evidence from the SP’s own newspaper, The Socialist, which proves that all 12 trade unionists who spoke at the meeting are SP members. Significantly, a 10 June article in that newspaper made no mention of the fact that SP speakers had monopolised in advance all of the speaking slots at the widely promoted event.

It is usually commonplace at left-wing events to reveal the political affiliations of all speakers. For a start, it shows respect for the audience. For example, at a side event at the recent 6 June Connections event in Sheffield, speakers were clearly billed along with their political affiliations.

The speakers’ affiliations were transparently stated in a report of the event which also made reference to a discussion on What kind of programme?, which was an attempt to clarify some disagreements – and misunderstandings – that arose during the Grassroots Left election campaign for the Your Party CEC ballot. Referring to the negative lessons learned from the YP experience, one speaker at the Sheffield session: “We need maximum transparency in building a new socialist party”.

Maximum transparency was certainly not the mantra on Monday evening at the SP/TUSC session. The most that attendees learned were the trade union affiliations of the 12 speakers and sometimes the cities or towns where they lived. With the Zoom chat disabled – except for a handful of SP posts – and with no discussion or comments permitted by TUSC chair Nellist from those watching, Monday’s meeting became a dull and tightly controlled affair.

No debate and no participation

There was no debate among the speakers. There was no participation from the audience. And the 12 Socialist Party speakers all delivered broadly the same SP party line in their four-to-six-minute contributions. Moreover, Nellist left the viewers in the dark about the fact that at least 92% (and perhaps 100%) of the assembled speakers were all members of the same organisation.

The UK’s largest Trotskyist organisation, the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) often uses the same cloak and dagger tactics. For example, Lewis Neilsen, who holds its top post as national secretary, is often referred to in meeting flyers as a member of Stand Up to Racism, an SWP front.

Especially in era when so many people are cynical about politics and politicians, the SWP’s and SP’s lack of transparency only reinforces this suspicion. It is equally important to remember from our own history that a genuinely mass workers’ party cannot be built through hidden control, closed discussion and lack of democratic participation.

Monday’s meeting format did leave one wondering exactly what would be the role of other socialists, non-SP trade unionists and the working class generally in building this new party?

Who knows? Perhaps the SPers who spoke were taking up the stance of Peter Taaffe, SP general secretary from 1997 to 2020. He once modestly said: “The future of the British Revolution rests on my shoulders,” as reported by Sam Gleaden in his recent and extremely interesting Prometheus piece on left wing sects. You can read more about Taaffe in his 2025 Guardian obituary.

A similar online session to Monday’s was held by the same group with the same format and with many of the same speakers on 21 July 2025. That was three days before Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana announced the creation of Your Party. You can watch a video of that event here. The two former Labour MPs spoke at last year’s online meeting and more than 1,000 activists attended. On Monday, Nellist said both Corbyn and Sultana had been invited again. Neither attended.

Nellist banned from being a candidate in YP elections

In February 2026, Nellist was banned from standing as a candidate in YP’s internal elections because of his SP membership. This decision, taken primarily by Corbyn and his political fixer, Karie Murphy, who has since become YP’s unofficial chief executive, was widely criticised by many socialists and communists on the left flank of YP.

Most genuine left wingers in YP disagreed with the banning of Nellist. But the secret manoeuvring by SP, in its July 2025 and at this week’s meeting, only make it easier for Corbyn’s The Many slate, which now controls YP, to expel members of left-of-Labour parties such as the SP and SWP. Their subtext: “You know how those Trots act, they plot and scheme” and a sizeable percentage of ex-Labour supporters in YP have lapped it up. Purges of socialists in Labour are of course commonplace.

With some justification, Nellist, Neilsen and other SP and SWP members may well feel double-crossed by Corbyn. During the first six months of 2025 as rumours of a new party in the offing spread, the long-time Islington North MP was an independent MP and lacked a national organisation to arrange speaking events for him across England and Wales. The SWP and SP, however, did (and still do) control national organisations of experienced militants and both parties organised numerous speaking events, such as this 29 March 2025 event in London, where Corbyn was the featured speaker on the theme of the need for a new socialist party.

By September 2025 – and in a much-quoted figure – an amazing 800,000 supporters had signed up to the new party. But since YP’s founding conference at the end of November, SWP, SP and members of other smaller socialist and communist groups have been expelled. In the case of Neilsen and a handful of SWPers, they were expelled from YP on the “say so” of Murphy and Corbyn on the day before the founding conference and obviously without any democratic mandate.

The Left Lane went to great lengths to interview Nellist about the conduct of Monday night’s meeting and the results of our investigation. An SP member on holiday even messaged him to speak with us, but we were unsuccessful.

On 29 April, The Left Lane published a news article which noted that the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition was fielding its largest contingent ever in the 7 May local elections in England. In the wake of the disastrous trajectory of Your Party, the Socialist Party is obviously trying to boost its own profile and that of its “Trade Unionists for a New Party” project.

As a helpfully AI-generated summary of this piece says: “The article argues that concealing control, blocking debate and running tightly managed ‘front’ events is not how you build trust, unity, or legitimacy for a mass workers’ party in 2026!”

Do you agree? Write to us at [email protected]

Footnote: The peek-a-boo policy of the Socialist Party

All 12 SP members who spoke at Monday’s TUSC/ SP session are open members of the SP. Indeed, the party’s own newspaper, The Socialist, has reported on all of them as being members. Yet none of the 175 or so people watching Monday’s widely advertised event were informed of this rather significant fact. It was a meeting open to anyone who clicked on an Eventbrite link.

Here is a list of the 12 speakers, their trade union affiliation and where they are mentioned as SP members, usually in The Socialist.

1. Matt Reid (Unite) Mentioned on the Birmingham Socialist Party Facebook page.

2. Sheila Caffrey (NEU) Mentioned in The Socialist.

3. John Williams (Unite) Mentioned in The Socialist.

4. Dave Semple (PCS) Mentioned in The Socialist.

5. Jared Wood (RMT) Mentioned in The Socialist.

6. Deji Olayinka (CWU) Mentioned in The Socialist.

7. Adam Harmsworth (NAPO) Mentioned in The Socialist.

8. Jane Nellist (Unite) Mentioned in The Socialist.

9. Jay Coward (Equity) Mentioned in Socialist Party Instagram.

10.Marco Tesei (UCU) Mentioned in The Socialist.

11. Zakk Brown (PCS) Mentioned in The Socialist.