“What is very important is to hammer out some kind of common minimum program. People need to leave some of their old disputes and disagreements at the door – not to give up their individual points of view but to realise that the trouble with wanting a realignment of the left around everything that you agree with is that everybody else wants the same thing too! So there has to be some kind of element of cooperation and goodwill.” Interview with Keith Bennett on the Crispin Flintoff Show.

Interviewed on the Crispin Flintoff Show on 10 May 2025 following the Workers’ Party’s Commemoration of 80^th anniversary of victory over fascism , Keith Bennett, was asked about his opinion of the Green Party, and took the opportunity to make the following wider statement on the question of left unity:

 

You have heard from others that some Greens would like to turn the Green Party into a socialist party standing for working people. I wish them luck in that. I think they’ll need it. But anyway there are a lot of good people in the Green Party, and I was very pleased that, near to where I live in South London, there was recently a by-election in Lambeth Council in Loughborough Junction Ward, where the Green Party candidate, who stood on a left-wing platform, won and defeated Starmer‘s Labour Party.

We are in a situation of a slow recomposition of working class politics in this country, and I don’t think anyone can tell at the moment what final form it will take. But it will involve all sorts of apparently disparate forces coming together and there will be processes of splits and realignments. Unfortunately there still seem to be more splits than realignments, and I hope people can find a way to get through that. I’m sure there are many people in the Green Party who will play a positive role in that process.

What is very important is to hammer out some kind of common minimum program. People need to leave some of their old disputes and disagreements at the door – not to give up their individual points of view but to realise that the trouble with wanting a realignment of the left around everything that you agree with is that everybody else wants the same thing too! So there has to be some kind of element of cooperation and goodwill.

I don’t think you have to agree with all the policies of the Workers’ Party to see that, as leftwing forces in this country go, it is a serious political force. It has scored some achievements which other parties organisation organisations to the left of labour have not succeeded in doing.

And I think that the Workers’ Party and the left forces in the Green Party both have a role to play in rebuilding the left, but people have to be prepared to talk to each other – not necessarily to agree but to agree on the things that they can agree on.

All of us want desperately to see an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people, and we want to reverse the attacks which the Starmer government is making on working people, so those are the kind of issues we should focus on.