DESPITE Labour’s sharp swing to the right, thousands of socialists flocked to Brighton at the weekend. But it’s not the Labour Party conference that has brought many of them to the coastal city but The World Transformed (TWT): a four-day festival of politics and culture. 

Emerging from the momentum around Jeremy Corbyn in 2016, TWT welcomes a diverse range of people from political and social movements, trade unions and justice campaigns. As such, it’s been described by some as the “real” Labour conference.

But with the new leadership heading the party away from the radical policies that drew tens of thousands of people to Labour under Corbyn, is TWT still relevant and how has it adapted to the Starmer era? 

“While the TWT was born out of support for Jeremy Corbyn back in 2016, I think we’ve really seen the weight and the relevance of our movement in the last 18 months,” TWT organiser Zara Sehr Ashraf told the Morning Star. 

Instead of the change in Labour’s direction signalling a blow to the left, TWT organisers say that the recent mobilisation of communities behind the Black Lives Matter movement and Kill the Bill  shows the movement to be stronger than ever. 

“We’ve really seen over the last 18 months how much power and weight is held through grassroots movements,” she explained. “We’ve seen how parliamentary structures have had to catch up with the public’s mood and perception on topics that really impact them today.”

But the left’s role within the Labour Party and Parliament is also important, she stressed. “What we’re really trying to embody at The World Transformed is building power across our communities and generations in and outside of parliamentary structure.”

Ashraf says the leadership’s decision to back down on changes to the rules for electing a new leader, proposed to prevent a socialist ever heading Labour again, shows that the left does still wield power within the party. 

While TWT is independent of the party, it’s affiliated with groups within Labour, including the Socialist Campaign Group and Young Labour. 

Asked what TWT’s message would be to those disillusioned with the party, she said: “Don’t be disempowered — [the message is] that there is even more of an appetite for progressive politics across the UK.”

Ashraf said this can be seen in the level of interest that TWT has attracted, with more than 2,000 people attending the four-day festival and thousands more tuning in to see talks online. 

Topics include the climate crisis, Palestine, vaccine apartheid, the housing crisis, the scourge of insecure work and the future of the left in Labour.

The event, which runs alongside the Labour conference, also offers a much-needed safe haven for socialists. The past two years have seen left members become increasingly alienated by Sir Keir’s leadership — or subjected to outright hostility, as seen by the barring of a number of members from the conference at the weekend. 

 The open and diverse nature of the festival means that when people come, “they know they will be celebrated, and it’s an open place for discussion,” Ashraf explained. “We try to make sure everyone has a voice in our movement.” 

The celebratory atmosphere can be most keenly felt in TWT’s site in  Old Steine Gardens, which has been transformed into a mini-festival complete with beer stands, multicoloured marquees and book stalls. 

Here socialism is front of stage and celebrated, not forced to the fringes. This contrasts heavily with the far more formal official conference taking place down the road. 

To those who feel disillusioned with the state of the Labour Party, Ashrafs says: “Don’t lose sight of the power that socialists wield.

“We do have ‘people power,’ and we do have the radical ideas that match up to what that moment calls of us to not lose hope. And I think this weekend shows a small snippet of what we’re able to achieve if we keep pushing on.”