Amy Smith
Amy Smith
FightBack2021
FightBack2021 was held online January 2021. Thousands of Labour activists tuned in to be part of Arise Festival’s kickstart to a year of activism, ‘Fighting back in 2021: How Labour’s Left should respond to the current crisis’. Listeners heard from an impressive array of speakers, ranging from MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group, left journalists, trade unionists, and activists in the Labour Party and wider social movements. The message was loud and clear – the Labour left is here to stay, and will be at the forefront of both resisting the Tories’ reactionary agenda, and standing for socialist solutions to the crisis and democracy in the Labour Party.
In the first session, chaired by Laura McAlpine and entitled ‘Understanding the crisis – the Tory agenda and the alternative: for #ZeroCovid and a #PeoplesPlan’, speakers discussed the Government’s response to the crisis, and what the Left’s strategy should be. Diane Abbott, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jon Trickett, Ben Chacko from the Morning Star, Andrew Murray from Unite the Union, and Amy Smith from Arise Festival agreed that the public health crisis had to be understood in class terms – the Government response had most adversely affected working class people, especially Black communities.