In the latest episode of the Labour Left Podcast Bryn Griffiths speaks to the prominent socialist feminist Lynne Segal.

Veteran socialists will remember the huge impact that Beyond the Fragments, published in 1979 and co-authored by Lynne Segal and her socialist sisters Hilary Wainright and Sheila Rowbotham, had upon us.  Many of us would count the book amongst those which politically formed us. So, what Lynne has to say on the current political situation is of huge interest.

Making Trouble, the title of the podcast, comes from Lynne’s book of the same title in 2007.  So, the podcast starts with a look back at the trouble Lynne was making back in the 1970s and 1980s.

Last year was the forty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Beyond the Fragments and as Lynne points out its ideas and the challenging problems it was grappling with are still as relevant today as the day it was written.

Ash Sarkar, of Novara Media, has recently published Minority Rule -  Adventures in the Culture War to grapple with the challenges of inter-sectionality, identity politics and the culture war.  The terms may have changed but a quick re-read of Beyond the Fragments confirms that she is re-treading the path of the socialist feminists who went before her. Lynne gives her views on the new publication.

Back in 1979 Lynne and the Beyond the Fragments authors cast a critical eye over the internal workings of the British left.   Today, we have a surplus of left projects: our own - the organisations of the labour left such as Momentum and Labour Hub; an emergent green left around Polanski’s leadership challenge; and, those embarking on the unenviable task of starting yet another new left party from scratch. All three of these projects in their different ways are trying to move ‘beyond the fragments’.   Lynne drawing upon the ideas of the seminal book asks: what  kind of left organisation do we need and how can we avoid our historic failures?

The interview moves on to tackle contemporary issues. Lynne certainly doesn’t duck the difficult ones as there’s a big focus on supporting trans-rights and consideration of her enthusiastic involvement in the pro-Palestinian Jewish Bloc.

On trans rights Lynne grapples with the relationship between today’s trans rights disputes within the feminist movement and the earlier debates between socialist feminists on the one side and the radical or cultural feminists on the other.  She also touches on sex positive feminism and seeks to answer the question – why does the trans rights’ debate differ so much between the United States and the United Kingdom?

The podcast looks at the formation and politics of Jews for Justice for Palestine.  Finally, we look at the need for boycott, divestment and sanctions as a means to secure a Palestine state. But are we aiming for a two state or single state solution? 

You can watch the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts here, Audible here and listen to it on Spotify here  If your favourite podcast site isn’t listed, just search for the Labour Left Podcast. 

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  You can find all the episodes of the podcast here  or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast

 In the latest episode of the Labour Left Podcast Bryn Griffiths speaks to Richard Burgon, the Secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, on the theme of the class struggle in Parliament and the historical role of the Labour Left. 

The podcast frames Richard Burgon’s politics with the title of the late Eric Heffer MP’s fine book The Class Struggle in Parliament written in 1973.

The interview starts with Bryn Griffiths, the podcast host, congratulating Richard on Leeds United’s recent promotion to the Premiership. A discussion that immediately segways into praise for football historian Anthony Clavane’s A Yorkshire Strategy  a football history book.  Clavane’s book is one of the best pieces of writing about how over thirty year’s Yorkshire’s Northern voters were left behind so it’s an excellent launch pad for a discussion about the future of the Labour Left. 

The first part of the podcast looks at the making of Richard Burgon’s political thinking and the huge debt he owes to Tony Benn. The podcast reflects on Westminster University’s recent seminar on the Benn legacy. It’s fitting that a key figure of Labour’s socialist wing should place himself in this historical context.

Before getting stuck into more contemporary material the podcast reflects on recent historical events surrounding the elections in 2017, 2019 and last year in 2014.

Each episode of the Labour Left Podcast ends with the class hero of the month feature. The idea is that the guest introduces the listener to a figure in their life that has had a big influence on their political thinking.  Richard chooses Dennis Skinner, the former MP for Bolsover 1970 to 2019.  A discussion ensues about Skinner’s role in the Clay Cross Council rent struggle in 1972 and the great miners’ strike of 1984-85.   

If you are enjoying the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of more people by sharing, following, liking, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

If you’re new to the Labour Left Podcast, please take a look at our back catalogue as there are lots of episodes to interest students of modern history.  The last episode looked at Ireland since the 1970s with historian Geoff Bell; Previous episodes have included Prof Harvey J Kaye on the legacy of the Communist Historians; Prof Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Andrew Fisher telling the story behind For the Many Not the Few Labour’s 2017 manifesto; Jeremy Gilbert, a Prof of Cultural and Political Theory, a champion of Gramsci, talking about Thatcherism;  Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the Great 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within Blair’s New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for democracy in the British Labour Party; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing, a local Bennite magazine in the 1980s.

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  You can find all the episodes of the podcast on You Tube or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.

Geoff Bell Labour for Irish Unity on the Labour Left Podcast

The Fight For a United Ireland

Geoff Bell is an outstanding historian of the troubles; but more than that he has many decades of experience as an Irish activist in Britain fighting for a united Ireland.  His most famous book, published in 1976, and reprinted five times is the Protestants of Ulster.  More recently he has published Hesitant Comrades and The Twilight of Unionism. He is an organic intellectual in the truly Gramscian sense of the term.

The podcast will give socialists an excellent grounding in modern Irish history and along the way you’ll hear stories of minding Vanessa Redgrave, fighting in the Bogside alongside Bernadette Devlin, carrying Eamon McCann’s megaphone, Kinnock trying to torpedo Geoff’s Channel Four Documentary and being followed by police spies whilst driving Gerry Adams.

Geoff explained in Michael Farrell’s Twenty Years On, published in 1988, that during the events in Derry of the late sixties and early seventies he “gained a political education the like of which few contemporary European Socialists have had the privilege of receiving”.  In this episode of the Labour Left Podcast, you find out why.

Towards the end of the podcast Geoff talks about what could be the final stages of the struggle for Irish Unity.  Geoff ends by setting British socialists some important tasks to help make sure that both Geoff and myself get to see a United Ireland in our lifetimes.

If you’re new to the Labour Left Podcast, please take a look at our back catalogue.  Previous episodes have included Rachel Shabi talking about her book The Truth About Antisemitism;  Bernard Regan author of The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine;  Prof Harvey J Kaye on the legacy of the Communist Historians; Prof Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Andrew Fisher telling the story behind For the Many Not the Few Labour’s 2017 manifesto; Jeremy Gilbert, a Prof of Cultural and Political Theory, a champion of Gramsci, talking about Thatcherism; Mike Phipps, author of Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, taking a long term look at the Labour Left;  Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the Great 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within Blair’s New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for democracy in the British Labour Party; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing, a local Bennite magazine of the 1980s.

If you enjoy the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of more people by sharing, following, liking, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  You can find all the episodes on YouTube or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.

#Ireland #GeoffBell #UnitedIreland #TroopsOut #SinnFein #Republican #IrishUnity #Palestine #BernadetteDevlin #GerryAdams #LabourLeftPodcast #LabourCommitteeonIreland #Unionism #UnitedIreland #Loyalism #Bloody Sunday

Since the 1980s, the Labour left has been divided by a split between its hard and soft wings.  In the light of the Labour right’s new and brutal ascendancy, is it time for the two sides to think the unthinkable and at least have a conversation?  Bryn Griffiths, the presenter of the Labour Left Podcast sits down with Neal Lawson, of Compass, to ask: has the time come to try and heal some of the old wounds and work together?

In 1981 the Labour left split asunder when Neil Kinnock abstained during Tony Benn’s bid for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party and delivered a wafer-thin victory to Dennis Healey, an Atlanticist of the Labour right.  As a result, the Tribune Group split between the Bennite Socialist Campaign Group and leadership loyalists.  The fighting got worse when the local government left split over the need for councillors to join the miners, at the time of their historic, year-long strike, and open up a second front over ratecapping to defeat Margaret Thatcher, the neoliberal Conservative Prime Minister.

Our conversation got off to a wobbly start when we discovered that we both played prominent roles in Labour Students in the early 1980s where the left in-fighting was at its bloodiest. But, surprisingly, what comes over throughout the podcast is a clear-headed determination to get over our old wounds and focus on the struggle today to save the very essence of the Labour Party.

We discussed how the ‘playground bullies’ in Labour HQ had tried to expel Neal. It certainly felt at this point of the discussion that our enemies’ enemy might possibly become a nice new friend. Have a listen and see what you think. 

During the course of the podcast, we discuss the political culture which Keir Starmer and his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney have established within Labour and ask is it a culture fit for Government?  We are both enthusiastic advocates of proportional representation so we had a robust debate about how we secure the prize and what role Liberal Democrats might play. Looking in our rear-view mirror, we discussed what Labour should learn from Corbynism and the 2017 General Election campaign.  We of course discuss Gaza and the Labour Right’s Atlanticism.

As the interview unfolded, we found lots to agree about so we discussed what organisational form a pluralist Labour Left might take and what we need to do to get there.

Regardless of whether you’re reading this article as someone who comes from the soft left or the hard left of the Labour Party, I think you might be pleasantly surprised about how the discussion unfolds. If you feel delighted or provoked from either side of the historic divide, the pages of Labour Hub are open to you to explain why.

If you’re on the right of the Labour Party the podcast might make you uncomfortable.  Your behaviour over Gaza, the capping of third child benefits, the winter fuel allowance and now disability benefits cuts are breaking up your internal Labour Party alliances and we’re beginning to see new ones form.  The podcast demonstrates the opportunities before us and we’re serious.

We trust that you will find the latest Labour Left Podcast an invaluable resource.  If you do, please help us get the episode to more people by sharing, following, liking, rating and commenting on it wherever you see it.

You can get the podcast on YouTube, Substack, Apple Podcasts and Audible. In fact, you can listen to it on all good podcast sites just search for the Labour Left Podcast. 

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast. 

It is more important than ever, for the Labour Left, to have a route map to navigate the issue of antisemitism.  Bryn Griffiths, the presenter of the Labour Left Podcast sat down with Rachel Shabi to consider the truth about antisemitism. 

Some readers might be desperate to move on from antisemitism, the issue that bedevilled the Labour Left during the Corbyn period, but they would be very wrong.  It can never be right to back away from antisemitism and abandon our Jewish siblings, and Israel’s actions in Gaza make it more important than ever for us to get this issue right. So, discuss the matter of antisemitism we must, and Rachel Shabi is the ideal person to explain what antisemitism is and how the left should go about fighting it.

Rachel Shabi has just published a new book - Off White the Truth About Antisemitism.  She’s a journalist, broadcaster and pundit who appears in papers such as the Guardian, the New York Times, Independent and the New York Review of Books. During the Left’s ascendancy in the Labour Party, she was an important ally. In her book, which is more than anything a guide to action, she offers an urgent analysis of one of the most divisive issues of our time.

In the podcast, Rachel Shabi, addresses the truth about antisemitism.  She considers an Arab Jewish perspective; the contingency of whiteness; how the extreme right has managed to camp out on our anti-racist territory; how antisemitism so often derails the left; and, finally considers what a socialist antiracist approach to fighting antisemitism must look like.

Rachel rises to the challenge set by +972 Magazine, a publication run by a group of Israeli 

and Palestinian journalists, that:

“We need a serious, honest commitment to fighting antisemitism, in a leftist fashion, from a left perspective, both internally when we find it in our own ranks and also doubling down in fighting it on the right and not allowing the Israeli laundry machine to whitewash antisemitism on the right”.

If you’re new to the Labour Left Podcast, please take a look at our back catalogue.  Previous episodes have included Bernard Regan from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Executive; Prof Harvey J Kaye on the legacy of the Communist Historians; Prof Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Andrew Fisher telling the story behind For the Many Not the Few Labour’s 2017 manifesto; Jeremy Gilbert, a Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, a champion of Gramsci, talking about Thatcherism; episodes with Mish Rahman, Rachel Godfrey Wood and Hilary Schan on the contemporary Labour Left; Mike Phipps, author of Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, taking a longer term look at the Labour Left;  Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the Great 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within Blair’s New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for democracy in the British Labour Party; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing, a local Bennite magazine of the 1980s.

If you are enjoying the show please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of as many people as possible by sharing, following, liking, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

You can get the podcast on YouTube, Substack, Apple Podcasts and Audible. In fact, you can listen to it on all good podcast sites just search for the ‘Labour Left Podcast’. 

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  

The first episode of the Labour Left Podcast, in 2025, takes a deep dive into the subject of Gaza with Bernard Regan of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.   We ask the big question: how do we build the broadest possible solidarity with the Palestinian people in 2025? We could not be asking the question at a better time as the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign AGM takes place on Saturday 1st February.

As we publish this episode it is good news to learn that, at last, we have a ceasefire in Gaza.  Donald Trump is seeking to make the ceasefire about himself and is claiming all the credit. However, Trump is already telling us that he’s not confident that the ceasefire will hold! We will find out the truth in the coming weeks.  What is absolutely certain is that in 2025 we must continue our support for the Palestinian people and to do that we need to deepen our understanding of their struggle.  We must also redouble our solidarity activities in 2025.  That is the subject matter of this podcast. Listen to it and use it.  

Our guest on the Labour Hub podcast spin off, to consider the tasks ahead, is Bernard Regan a leading member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.  Bernard served for twenty-five years on the National Executive Committee of the National Education Union (NEU) where he received the Steve Sinnott Award in recognition of his contribution to international solidarity.  In 2006 he was instrumental in a teachers’ union pro-Palestinian motion which carried the TUC.

Since the last episode the Labour Left Podcast has had some generous coverage in the Morning Star.  The newspaper published a feature on the show by the journalist Solomon Hughes under the hilarious title In a sea of centrist dross, try the Labour Left Podcast. Solomon went on to say “… it’s a podcast which manages to combine the grit of the grassroots with the surprising, entertaining and informative”. Thanks to Solomon.

If you’re new to the Labour Left Podcast, please take a look at our back catalogue.  Previous episodes have included Prof Harvey J Kaye on the legacy of the Communist Historians; Prof Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Andrew Fisher telling the story behind For the Many Not the Few Labour’s 2017 manifesto; Jeremy Gilbert, a Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, a champion of Gramsci, talking about Thatcherism; episodes with Mish Rahman, Rachel Godfrey Wood and Hilary Schan on the contemporary Labour Left; Mike Phipps, author of Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, taking a long term look at the Labour Left;  Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the Great 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within Blair’s New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for democracy in the British Labour Party; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing, a local Bennite magazine of the 1980s.

If you are enjoying the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of more people by sharing, following, liking, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

You can watch the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts here, Audible here and listen to it on Spotify here  If your favourite podcast site isn’t listed, just search for the Labour Left Podcast. 

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

In a treat for socialist historians the latest Labour Left Podcast explores why we need a bottom-up history with Prof Harvey J Kaye - who wrote the important book The British Marxist Historians. 

Harvey J Kaye is an important socialist figure, Christopher Hill described him as “easily the world’s greatest authority on the British Marxist historians” the group that actually coined the important phrase – a history from below.  The British Marxist historians included Rodney Hilton who wrote about the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 and introduced us to the likes of Watt Tyler and Colchester’s John Ball; Christopher Hill himself who wrote about the English Revolution of the 17th Century and introduced us to the Levellers and the Diggers; Eric Hobsbawm whose best-known works spanned the long 19th Century; and, EP Thompson who wrote the seminal Making of the English Working Class.

The podcast considers why the ruling classes fear history which takes us straight back to a podcast in which Corinne Fowler, who was inspired by EP Thompson, and helped us consider how our colonial and labour histories are very much two sides of the same coin.

The podcast includes some fascinating insights into the history of the British Left.  Harvey describes the pivotal moment of 1956 when Soviet tanks destroyed a workers’ uprising and the British Marxists broke from the Stalinist Communist Party. The British Marxists went on to play an important role in the creation of a New Left and later the introduction of Antonio Gramsci to our country.  The leaders of what we might call a humanitarian Marxism or New Left went on to play a decisive role in the formation of a mass movement against the siting of American nuclear weapons in the 1980s.  It is impossible to understand the story of the British Left without grasping the intellectual contribution made by the subjects of this podcast.  

To accompany our deep dive into our history from below we’ve created a Spotify playlist with songs from the likes of Norma Waterson, the Young Uns, Chumbawamba, Leon Rosselson and of course Billy Bragg.  Just go to Spotify and search for ‘history from below’.

If you’re new to the Labour Left Podcast and want to find more about Britain’s history, please have a look at our back catalogue.  Previous episodes have included historian Prof Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Jeremy Gilbert, a Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, a champion of Gramsci talking about Thatcherism; Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the Great 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within Blair’s New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for democracy in the British Labour Party; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing, a local Bennite magazine in the early 1980s.

If you are enjoying the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of more people by sharing, following, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

You can watch the podcast on YouTube and listen on just about every podcast platform you can think of.  Just go to your podcast provider and search for the Labour Left Podcast. 

Credits:

Cartoons: Letterhack on Twitter @TheLetterhack and Bluesky as @theletterhack.bsky.social

Singers; Emma and Tom Hardy

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is a member of both Momentum’s National Coordinating Group and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn is the host of Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.

Our latest guest on Labour Hub’s Labour Left Podcast is Mish Rahman and you can watch it https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6OoOmRsNNbCsHy_vtJ-Dl4KuHLIoOpI1 . Mish is a Momentum supporter,  a working-class socialist of Bangladeshi heritage and he was elected to Labour’s National Executive back in 2020. Unfortunately, he lost his seat to the right wing of the Labour Party at this year’s Conference but now he has a big story to tell. 

We’ve heard from Liz Davies, the dissenter within Blair’s National Executive, and Andrew Fisher from the heart of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership group. Now it’s time to hear Mish Rahman’s fascinating story from the inside of Labour’s top governance team.  Mish doesn’t pull any punches as he describes how he was well and truly stitched up by the Labour Right when he stood to be selected as the Labour parliamentary candidate in Wolverhampton West. 

Feedback has suggested that some of you find the long form of  the Labour Left Podcast a little hard to digest all in one go.  So, the  latest podcast is a show of two parts.  In the first half we discuss Mish’s political formation and his fight within the Labour Party.  After the break (28 minutes in) the podcast well and truly warms up as it comes right up to date and we discuss Labour’s torrid record on racism.  

The most important passage of the interview is where Mish talks about Labour and Palestine. He tells us all about how our motions on behalf of the Gazan people are often disregarded by the National Executive Committee.  But his view, as an insider, is that the way to move our Labour Government’s stance is to campaign hard as we are already seeing a slow shift in Starmer and Lammy’s position.  The Palestinian solidarity movement must step up the pressure in all countries within the NATO alliance.  

So, take a deep breath and prepare yourself for the Forde Report, Islamophobia and Labour’s terrible record on Gaza which will shame our party for generations to come!  Finally, Mish comes up with a truly inspirational anti racist figure to join our class hero hall of fame..

If you are enjoying the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is doing, please help us to get the podcast in front of  more people by sharing, following, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

You can watch the podcast on YouTube , Apple podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/labour-left-podcast/id1710229282 ,  Audible https://www.audible.co.uk/podcast/Labour-Left-Podcast/B0CK2NFT65?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp  and listen to it on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5RvCZlxhoYh45PUJjavAEY?si=c3b6a39e4ef84094  If your favourite podcast site isn’t listed, just search for the Labour Left Podcast as it’s on every podcast site we know about.  

Bryn Griffiths is the host of https://labourhub.org.uk/  spin off the https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6OoOmRsNNbCsHy_vtJ-Dl4KuHLIoOpI1&si=YVuALqyBwhfBz2Hn  He is an activist in the labour movement, Momentum and he World Transformed in North Essex. He also sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s National Committee. You can find all the episodes of the Labour left Podcast here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6OoOmRsNNbCsHy_vtJ-Dl4KuHLIoOpI1  or if you prefer audio platforms (e.g. Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple etc,) just search for Labour Left Podcast.

On it’s first birthday the Labour Left Podcast, produced in association with Labour Hub, interviewed Andrew Fisher the man behind the iconic 2017 Labour Manifesto.

The interview began by exploring the inside story behind For the Many Not the Few - the manifesto that Keir Starmer called our ‘foundational document.’ Andrew reveals to us how he ended up writing the manifesto, what was in his mind when he wrote it and the moment when the Labour right leaked it.

In the second half of the interview, we moved onto Starmer for some fascinating insights into what makes the man tick. Find out why Starmer popped into Jeremy Corbyn’s leader’s office whilst Owen Smith’s Leadership coup was still in full swing. What did he want? Andrew sat alongside Starmer during the Brexit negotiations with Prime Minister May. What was Starmer like as a lead negotiator?

Later we discuss the Oliver Eagleton thesis that there was always a Project Starmer. We explored to what extent was Eagleton right about the project with the recollections of an insider who saw it all.

Moving on we looked at Reevonomics. Having drawn upon Andrew’s excellent book, The Failed Experiment, to help us define neo-liberalism we considered to what extent Rachel Reeves is planning to depart from the economic orthodoxy. Is the Macro Dose, left economics podcaster, James Meadway on the right track when he says Labour Will End Neoliberalism. Just Not in a Good Way?

As we approached the latter stages of the interview, we dissected the prospects for a Labour Left revival, the future of the Campaign Groups Magnificent Seven and the role of the soft left. Andrew had some thoughts and advice for Left MPs and Trade Union leaders on how they might help hasten the arrival of a much-needed comeback.

Finally, Andrew revealed who he wanted to put in the Labour Left Podcast Class Hero Hall of Fame. I think the readers of Labour Hub will approve of his choice.

If you enjoy the Labour Left Podcast 2024 conference special, please have a look at the whole year back catalogue. Previous episodes have included historian, Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, talking about Thatcherism; Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for labour democracy; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing a local labour left magazine in the early 1980s.

If you are enjoying the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode . If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of more people by sharing, following, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

Our guest Corinne Fowler, Professor of Colonialism and Heritage at the University of Leicester,  specialises in colonial history, decolonisation and the British countryside’s relationship with the Empire.

It’s fair to say that her most recent books Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to

The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph historians

So, why did Professor Corrine Fowler boil their blood?  Back in 2019, Corinne was seconded to the National Trust to lay the foundations for a new training and interpretation programme about country houses’ colonial connections. As part of her secondment, she co-authored an academic report for the National Trust which brought together much of the existing academic and peer appraised writing on

To say that the populist right weren’t quite ready to embrace the filling of gaps in our history doesn’t quite capture the moment.  The ‘war on woke’ warriors

Nigel Farage talked of the ‘trashing of our nation’ and the Daily Telegraph responded to the, peer appraised, academic report  by announcing that the National Trust was ‘at war with the past’.  As if that wasn’t enough the unfortunately named Tory Common Sense Group declared the ‘Battle of Britain’.

Corinne Fowler’s patient telling of

Our Island Stories has ten carefully curated walks and

You can watch the podcast on

YouTube here ,

Bryn Griffiths is the host of Labour Hub's spin off the Labour Left Podcast.  He is an activist in the labour

Bryn Griffiths is standing for the National Policy Forum CLP Representatives  Eastern Region Division 1.  He is standing as part of the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance team and you can find all your left candidates across the