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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
A new movement emerging: where next for the left?
What we need to consider in our continued struggle for working people is the relationship between industrial and community action and political change, says VINCE MILLS
NOT ENOUGH: Picket by transport and energy workers from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) outside Bute House in Edinburgh on January 31 2022

INEVITABLY, following the defeat of the Corbyn project and the sense of loss of a coherent left, there is much analysis of the period we are in and how we can build a socialist project in what are very difficult circumstances for the left. 

There is a similarity between the period we are going through and the early ’70s and arguably mid-80s that the left, Marxist and non-Marxist alike, should consider when trying to develop a successful strategy and tactics, not just to defeat this Tory government, but lay the foundations for a movement for real change in the nations and regions of the UK.

The contours of the similarities of those periods are clear enough — an economic crisis, an increasingly unpopular but aggressive Tory government, in a context of international tension and conflict.

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