Trade unions urged “to take the lead in forming a new working-class party”

Dozens of trade unionists, including several serving and former trade union leaders, have called for the formation of a working-class party with the labour movement at its heart.

Trade unions and a new, working-class party

The trade unionists have signed a petition with the title Time for trade unions to take the lead in forming a new working class party. This reflects on Reform’s successes in the May 2025 local election. The results of the vote, they say, “show the need for a new party that the working class can trust”.

The signatories include BFAWU leaders Ian Hodson and Sarah Wooley, former ASLEF and USDAW leaders Tosh McDonald and Amy Murphy, and numerous prominent figures from the NEU, PCS, UCU, and Unison. And they slam the current Labour government’s positions, saying:

Stagnant wages, underfunded public services, the scandal of the housing crisis, Labour councils pursuing fire and rehire, cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, reductions in disability benefits, and continued government support for Israel’s murderous campaign in Gaza – and all under a Labour government.  Labour isn’t Labour anymore, and Reform UK is becoming a significant beneficiary of working people’s anger.

They add that they:

believe it’s time for the trade union movement to seriously discuss founding a new anti-austerity, anti-war party. Our movement will be weakened if workers see us as a voice for pro-austerity Labour. We call for urgent discussions within our union and across unions to organise a conference to establish a political voice for working people.

They conclude that:

The Establishment has four parties – it’s time the working class had one of its own.

Where’s the difference?

Petition starter Dave Nellist has been working with Collective, which is aiming to “drive the formation of a new, mass-membership political party of the left”. And he previously told the Canary that:

We’re roughly where we were a century and a quarter ago when the trade union movement at the back end of the 19^th century was looking at the Tories and Liberals and saying ‘I can’t really see a difference there, we need a Labour Party’.

We’re now looking at the Labour Party and the Tories and the Liberal Democrats and saying ‘well I can’t see much difference in that overlapping agenda, we need a new political voice for the working class’.

The aim now is to build up the number of signatories of trade unionists from every level of the movement to add weight to the campaigns already under way in different trade unions for independent working class political action.

The petition for this can be signed online here. There is a template to print out paper versions to use at meetings, demonstrations, and so on. It is available here.

Featured image via the Canary