COLOMBIA’S first left-wing government is battling to deliver reforms and peace in the teeth of entrenched opposition from the ruling class, Labour delegates heard on Tuesday evening.

Visiting Colombian Congressman Alirio Uribe described the ambitious social projects of the Gustavo Petro administration, including redistribution of land to poor farmers, lifting 1.6 million people out if extreme poverty and rolling out public healthcare.

Above all it was committed to a complex peace process, not just involving rehabilitating former guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which disarmed in 2017, but ongoing talks with left-wing militias which are still fighting (like the ELN) and right-wing paramilitary and mafia groups such as the Gulf Clan.

In all, nine different sets of negotiations are ongoing, Mr Uribe said, but he cautioned that “peace has many enemies” and powerful vested interests were constantly working to undermine the government.

“The government is against the Establishment, and real power still lies with the Establishment,” he said, citing opposition to President Petro organised in the Congress, in the courts and through a mass media churning out disinformation on a daily basis.

Another key concern was climate change, he said, with the Petro government determined to reduce Amazon deforestation.

Speakers including MPs Kate Osborne and Fabian Hamilton and TUC general secretary Paul Nowak praised Justice for Colombia’s work bringing delegations of trade unionists to Colombia to meet their counterparts in what remains the most dangerous country on Earth to be a trade unionist, with paramilitary groups still killing workers’ representatives and social activists.