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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1203 .... December 30, 2015
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Hilary Wainwright and Leo Panitch in conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the UK Labour Party. They talk about the meaning of ‘new politics’, Tony Benn's legacy, and opening up Labour's policymaking to the people.
Hilary Wainwright is a member of Red Pepper's editorial collective and a fellow of the Transnational Institute. Leo Panitch is distinguished research professor at York University, Canada. This interview was conducted on a train ride from Birmingham to London, 12 November 2015.
Leo Panitch (LP): Your remarkable campaign for the leadership not only doubled the party membership but galvanized some 400,000 people overall to associate with the party. This is frankly unheard of anywhere in terms of party mobilization on the left in recent decades. What do you think this reflects about the possibilities for a new politics, not only in Britain but more broadly -- especially in Europe?
Jeremy Corbyn (JC): I think our campaign excited people who were very depressed by the election result and very depressed by the analysis that was being offered at the end of it, which was essentially that Labour wasn't managerial enough and we had to be better managers in order to do better in the future. I only really got on the ballot paper because of a combination of people -- from those who just absolutely wanted an alternative to be put, to those who thought that there ought to be a democratic debate in the party. This kicked off the social media campaign that encouraged others to get involved.
We finally made it into the ballot -- which required 35 MPs to sign on to a nomination -- with one vote to spare and one minute to go. Then at the hustings where the party leadership debates were held, the point of view I put got quite a good reception. And as we started organizing fringe meetings around them, the campaign suddenly took off. The first one was Nottingham, where we organized a meeting in a room for 100, and 300 turned up. From then on they just grew and so by the end of July, beginning of August, we were getting 1,000 people at every rally we organized. Most of them were filled up with one day's notice. One place, we filled a hall for 1,500 with only four hours of notice on Facebook.
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