The Summit of Resistance conference on Saturday 29 March comes at a critical time for the left. Pete Webster argues why activists should attend 

This week has seen a monumental attack on disabled people from the Labour Party. Add to this their betrayal of the Waspi women, the two-child benefit cap and the removal of the winter fuel payment to millions of the elderly. 

Starmer’s jingoistic militarism, advocacy for creating a pan-European armed force, hiking-up of defence spending and being on a permanent war-footing is the opposite side of the same coin. 

Take into account Trump’s tearing up of the post-1945 consensus between the US and Europe on both trade and military expenditure, his support for the ongoing genocide by the Israeli regime and it is clear that we are in a very different political situation from a couple of years ago. Also, levels of repression against progressive organisations have significantly increased in recent months in both the UK and US. 

Opportunities 

This produces major challenges for the left in the UK. But it provides huge opportunities too. 

The conference will consist of a broad range of talks and workshops and these sessions will be interactive, engaging, and rooted in participation. A key aim of the conference is to establish ‘a network that can deliver solidarity to those who are taking action to protect their living standards and with those who are building the movements to free Palestine, end the drive to a war economy, stop the far right and prevent the further deterioration of our planet.’ For that reason alone, as many activists and socialists as possible should register to attend. 

If Trump and Starmer aren’t enough, far-right and openly fascist organisations are gaining ground across Europe and elsewhere as tens of millions have lost any faith in capitalism’s neoliberal political elites who have offered absolutely nothing for working people other than to increase prices, poverty, climate chaos and misery. 

This is the recipe that can lead people to look for alternatives to the mainstream and it is crucial that we develop a movement that can act as a pole of attraction to draw people away from supporting the odious Farage and Reform with their knee-jerk popularism and scapegoating those least able to defend themselves. 

Organise for resistance 

Due to the climate crisis caused by capitalism, it is difficult to predict the weather but we need to take this opportunity to work towards making it a ‘hot’ summer. We won’t know the exact details of the amount of cruelty in Rachel Reeves’ Spring Budget statement later this week but it will offer nothing but further cuts in public spending and public services.  

Saturday can provide a springboard to organise resistance to both austerity at home and wars abroad. For this to happen, it is important to concentrate all the struggles against the system into a focussed powerful movement bringing together all the anger that is building up in order to develop a united front that has the fight against austerity at its heart that can act as a lightning rod pole of attraction in order to build a combative and inclusive movement that can give a clear political lead in the multiple struggles ahead. 

Welfare not Warfare 

An important focus for this will be the national demonstration on Saturday 7 June in London and called by The People’s Assembly against Starmer’s Austerity 2.0.  

The current economic and political situation demands that we must give a clear lead on the way forward. 

Socialists should start campaigning around this now by raising it in union branches and Trades’ Councils, arranging transport and widely publicising with leafleting and postering sessions.  

It is for socialists to help make the links between all these struggles and turn 7 June into a massive show of resistance.