Address to the Political Committee of The Workers Party of Britain |

On 11 November 2025 Steve Freeman spoke the Political Committee of the Workers Party of Britain about the current political situation. Below is the text from this address. 

I want to briefly tell you about the Republican Labour Education Forum (RLEF). Then I am going to make three main points. First, I will address the thesis that comrade George (Galloway) put forward in an interview with Crispin Flintoff back in December 2024. Second, I want to speak about the English Question. Third, there is the issue of building a Left Populist Party.

Republican Labour

The Education Forum was set up two years ago in the aftermath of the failure of the Corbyn movement. It arose from within the Left Labour Alliance because of the failure of Momentum and the witch-hunt against the Labour left over the false allegations of anti-Semitism. Chris (Williamson) was himself a victim of that campaign of lies and slanders. The aim of the RLEF was to develop republican ideas, which we thought would be needed for a rebirth of a new post Corbyn-Labour left. 

In particular, our key reference point was Tony Benn’s 1992 republican Commonwealth Bill that he first presented in the House of Commons. Tony Benn was a Minister of the Crown and Privy Councillor. He understood, from insider knowledge, how the system of power works in the UK. He concluded the socialist movement should take up the republican case in a serious way. This Bill was unloved and unrecognised by the left. It is full of insight and provides a radical new direction. It is time to rescue it from the dustbin of history.⁽¹⁾ 

I would like to add that some RLEF supporters have now joined Your Party. We believe that YP should become a republican party. The Workers Party must be included in the process of forming this new party from the start. I see no valid reason to exclude you. At the end of the day, it is about programme. This should decide who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ not preconceptions or prejudices. 

1.  GEORGE GALLOWAY’S CASE

George was interviewed by Crispin Flintoff in December 2024. I listened carefully to what he said and clipped it into a presentation on the question of left populism. He stated

Britain is in a very difficult situation. Both the mainstream parties are completely discredited. The rising tide is with Reform – the British equivalent of the AfD, Meloni, and Marine Le Pen. Right populism is looking unstoppable for this period. We have to develop a left populism that competes against it in a language that the mass of the people can understand and relate to. 

George argued that the left is based on the writings of long dead Germans and Russians, who don’t mean anything to 99.9% of the British population.

We have a left whose preoccupation, whose style of work, whose style of speaking, whose style of writing and style of thinking is so last century and even the century before that. It has nothing to do with the new generation

The parameters of the prevailing orthodoxy are far too rigid for the left to prosper. What comes through strongly here is the issue of culture, identity, language and voice. 

George concluded that our task is first to properly analyse the state we are in. Then to ask what is needed to affect it. Third, we have to find the words and the spirit to convey it to the maximum number of people. So when we go into battle we have an army behind us. This, says George, is what we in the Workers Party are trying to do, find the way to some kind of Left Populism. He added that there might be another way, still to be discovered. This is what the RLEF has been working on.

Degenerated Social Monarchy

George asks what state are we in? We describe the current epoch from 2007 as a ‘degenerated social monarchy’. Our society has been shaped by the Second World War and the 1945 social contract. Many people refer to this as the ‘Welfare State’. As republicans, we call this the “social monarchy” to describe the welfare state and mixed economy forged under the constitutional monarchy of George VI. 

The policies of Thatcher and Blair brought the decline and fall of the social monarchy. After the financial and banking crisis in 2007-8 and the austerity politics of the Tories, the country has proceeded on a downward path. It is not simply the welfare state that is broken. There is a ‘crisis of democracy’. The Westminster parliament is not trusted and our constitution and democratic rights are under attack.

The social monarchy is in a state of degeneration. It is dying. We are facing the morbid symptoms of death with the demoralising growth of racism and chauvinist (i.e. aggressive, violent) attitudes to women and other targeted minorities. Fear and hate stalks the land. The issue of racism, reduced over many years by campaigning and education, has risen again to new levels. This is the context of ‘degeneration’ that refers us back to George saying. “Britain is in a very difficult situation. Both the mainstream parties are completely discredited”. New parties are growing outside the traditional two-party system.

2.  THE ENGLISH QUESTION

One of the results of the decline of the social monarchy since the 1990s has been the slow but steady rise of English nationalism. Recently it was boosted significantly by the ‘stop the boats’ protests, anti-asylum seeker riots and the ‘Raise the Colours’ flag campaign. We can contrast the national democratic movements in Ireland, Scotland and Wales as progressive in so far as they aim to advance democracy. They are proto-republican movements, except Sinn Fein as a mass republican party.

English nationalism is reactionary. It is Anglo-British not simply English. It flies two flags to represent its dual identity. It harks back to the ‘glory’ days of the British Empire. It is nostalgic for the mythical time when England was white. It is Unionist and Loyalist, claiming vassalage over Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is the spawn of Tories betrayed by the British ruling class who sold them out to Brussels. Little England is now ever more dependent on US imperialism and its billionaires.

 In order to combat this reactionary nationalism we have to go back to basics and throw off the abstract internationalism supposedly derived from dead Russians and Germans. The English left see themselves as a morally superior race, who have washed their hands of England and given it as a free gift to the far-Right. In this view, England is not a nation and must confine itself to the rivalry of English Regions.

Who are the English?

Like all good sense, the English are all fifty eight million of us who are settled in England, a recognisable territory between Wales, Scotland and France. It is everybody born here and everybody who has settled here. If we want to add feelings to this, it is where your home is or where you have built your home. This is about the facts of location. It has absolutely nothing to do with political, ethnic or religious identities. 

A person who settles in England from Jamaica or Pakistan becomes English in fact. It does not mean to give up or hide the identity of where you or your family came from. On the contrary it is something to be proud about. You are English and are free to self identify as English or English-Jamaican if you want. Our existing racist culture does not help that. It puts up barriers to people identifying as English. We need a new culture that does not connect English identity with being white.

Reactionary English ‘blood and soil’ nationalism defines the English as White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Apparently, groups of young white English men are turning up in Churches asking to find out about God. The vicars are happy but we should be suspicious. Tommy Robinson found ‘God’ when he was in prison. No longer a man of ‘peace’ he has gone full Christian Crusader.

England has never escaped from the twentieth century. There has been very little cultural criticism or rejection of the idea that English is White. Indeed in some rural parts of the country it is still a surprise to see black people. Of course the English can hide behind the imperial ideology of the British. It is significant that many immigrants who settle in England and thus become ‘English’ find that a difficult identity and are far more at ease as ‘British’ as a legacy of an Empire, which included them. As stated by Suella Baverman, former Prime Minister Richie Sunak can be ‘British’ but cannot be ‘English’. 

English Patriots

We must draw a sharp distinction between Anglo-British national chauvinists and English patriots. It is a distinction made by George Orwell. The term ‘patriot’ came from those rebels and revolutionaries who fought to establish the American republic against the British colonial Empire in the 1770s. 

Patriotism is about love and respect for all the people of the nation. In the republican idiom ‘the people’ does not include the ruling class. It does not preclude considering them the enemies of the people. Patriots can and should criticise our compatriots for stupidity, chauvinism and racism. All such ideas help those classes in power to divide us and make more profits. The people united will never be defeated.       

Patriotism is not about hating foreigners or fellow citizens. It is not about superiority or supremicism or my nation right or wrong. Of course, unscrupulous politicians, criminals, capitalists and exploiters will masquerade as patriots as the last refuge of a scoundrel. The task of republicans and socialists is not to deny our love for the people but to expose and unmask those under a false flag of patriotism. Tommy Robinson is a hatriot not a patriot.

Patriotism can be at peace with the status quo. Recently Gary Neville spoke out against the flagging campaign. On a drive down Littleton Road in Salford, he saw “probably 50-60” union jack flags, causing him to question why they are now being put up in such numbers. He said he felt the nation is “being turned on each other” by “angry, middle-aged white men who know what they’re doing”. Why are Anglo-British nationalists putting up flags?

Gary gave his answer in patriotic terms. “Funnily enough on one of my development sites last week there was a union jack flag put up and I took it down instantly. Some people might be watching this and thinking: ‘Gary you’re not really patriotic.’ I’ve played for my country 85 times, I love my country, I love Manchester and I love England”. This is patriotism confronting reactionary Anglo-British nationalism.⁽²⁾ 

Republicanism is a form of popular revolutionary patriotism. It says, as the original American patriots declared, we want to liberate ourselves, the people, from those who occupy the state and oppress the nation. This has to be borne in mind. Some claims to patriotism are fraudulent; others are genuine expressions of humanity and love for compatriots and still others it is a call for the people to unite for liberation and democratic revolution. 

Two Englands

The England of 1914 is not the same as that of 1945 or 2025. England has changed and is changing. Our slogan “Another England is possible” and necessary reminds us that we can reshape the present and the future. It does not have to be the way it is and change is not caused by individuals but by whole political movements of people struggling for a better future.      

Today there are two versions of England on the streets. On 13 September 150,000 Anglo-British nationalists marched under the slogan “Unite the Kingdom”. It was the largest far right demonstration in our history with Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage and Elon Musk. The alternative England marched in solidarity with Palestine and the right of nations to self-determination on 6 September. 

These two movements represent opposed views about politics and the future. The first is fighting against democracy and human rights and is getting ready to fight a civil war. The second is fighting for democracy and for human rights. The latter can be described as ‘republican’ in the sense of mobilizing citizens’ different ethnic, religious and political identities in support of a democratic Palestinian republic. 

3.  LEFT POPULISM

Right populism as represented by Reform UK may be seen as a mirror image of Left populism and indeed it is. The former is hostile to the liberal elites and the latter to the Establishment, or the Crown. These similarities are superficial. Right populism in England is Anglo-British nationalist, loyalist and unionist. It is more than that. It is bought and paid for by big money and promoted by powerful press barons. It earns its money by winning the votes of the people away from the left. It has no principles except the opportunity to attract more votes.   

Left populism is a polite name for left republicanism. It has principles, which it strives for including, liberty, equality, solidarity and secularism. Its fundamental politics are popular sovereignty, democracy ‘from below’. All of this is part of popular culture and widely understood and does not depend on reading the collected works of dead Germans and Russians. This is not to disparage the massive contributions of these pioneers made to republican and communist ideas, not least Karl Marx, England’s greatest political scientist!   

We can conclude with a successful example of Left populism in ‘France Insoumise’, a major party in the French Assembly. It is a republican and patriotic party demanding a Sixth Republic. An England Unbowed would demand a second republic! Raquel Garrido, national spokesperson for France Insoumise says that patriotism should not be confused with nationalism.

We are patriotic, not nationalist. Patriotism is love for ones own, whilst nationalism involves hatred for others. She continues, The far right is nationalist. We are patriotic. And patriotism is an empathy, an affect towards ones compatriots. We really think that in so far as our nation has been a civic nation since the French revolution, it is not defined by any religion or skin color or even language, it is universal. Our homeland (patrie) is republican.⁽³⁾ 

In conclusion, comrade Galloway’s observations about the state of the left and the need for a radical rethink is basically correct. Whether the left can make a radical break from its deeply embedded conservative ‘Labourism’ remains to be seen. We have come to radical conclusions about the need for the left in England to think specifically about politics in England. We hope there can be further discussions with the Workers Party on this matter. 

Notes

(1) Benn and Hood, Common Sense – A new constitution for Britain, Hutchinson 1993

(2) Michael Jones, Independent, 7 October 2025

(3) Garrido (2017 speech) quoted in Oscar Garcia Agust in ‘Left Wing Populism – the politics of the people’,  Emerald Publishing Limited,  January 2020. p74