In & Against: exploring strategies for Greens in local government

Announcing a new events and discussion series in the run-up to May elections. The title of our series takes inspiration from the famous socialist book ‘In And Against the State’. With the Green Party poised to take council seats and entire councils up and down the country in 2026 and beyond, we want to ask tough but productive questions about taking electoral power in Britain today. What do we do about inheriting council austerity budgets? How do we strategise for entrenched council bureaucracies that aren’t interested in change or accountability? What can we learn from movements abroad, like the Sewer Socialists in the Democratic Socialists of America? What is the history of local power being centralised in Westminster and what can we learn from it?

We will be addressing all of these questions and more, looking to draw out productive discussion and strategy for the Greens and the party’s anti-establishment candidates and campaigns.

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SESSION 1: The rise and fall of municipal socialism, with Owen Hatherley and Hau-Yu Tam
13th Jan, 6:30pm, Zoom

For our first event in our In and Against series, we are thrilled to be welcoming the author, cultural critic and historian Owen Hatherley. Owen will be joining councillor and GO Co-Chair Hau-Yu Tam to discuss municipal socialism, its rise and fall and what it can teach us about centralisation of power in Westminster. Owen has written one of the more definitive books on municipal socialism, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London.

Owen writes: ‘’London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London – a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism.’’

Join us to get a grounding in what went so wrong with the British system examined through the lens of its capital, and what inspiration and lessons modern eco-municipalists can draw out from this fascinating history.