SPEAKERS from left parties that have achieved success across Europe shared experiences with the Your Party founding conference in Liverpool over the weekend.

Following a renewal conference in 2008, the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) has grown from 2,800 members to over 25,000 (in a country with roughly a sixth of Britain’s population) and 15 MPs in the Belgian parliament.

“In the last 12 months we have experienced at least 30 major union mobilisations and five large-scale actions in solidarity with Palestine,” PTB deputy general secretary Benjamin Pestieau told the conference.

He attributed the PTB’s success to a commitment to Marxism, unity in action and prioritising trade union struggles, urging Your Party members to get out into communities and workplaces and listen to people’s concerns, as well as to ensure the party is on picket lines and throws itself into support for striking workers.

Jean-Luc Melenchon’s France Insoumise (France Unbowed) has over half a million members and 71 seats in the French National Assembly. Its MP Nadege Abomangoli said the left should not allow right-wing parties and media to set the agenda and simply propose different solutions, but explain that social crises as driven by the capitalist profit drive and build “popular unity” with all forces fighting cuts and opposing militarism.

Germany’s Die Linke shot up to 64 Bundestag seats at the last election, after a campaign confronting the anti-immigration consensus of the big parties and the far right. For that party Erik Uden urged Your Party members to “live the world we want to create.

“Love is always part of the solution,” he argued.