Today is a good day for a "good news" story of resistance.

In his own modest way, Peter Mertens of the Workers Party of Belgium sketches out the upward tilt of his party to a London audience of activists and would-be activists.

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By Alan Story

Once in a while it is good to be able to write a “good news” story. Today, for instance…

In these very fraught times - whether in Gaza STILL!, in the trajectory of US- and UK-made long-range missiles being fired from Ukraine and with Russia responding in kind (and with Biden now adding anti-personnel landmines to the mix), in Trump’s America, in the midst of ongoing environmental crises, or, closer to home, inside the freezing homes of more and more pensioners -- it is a pleasure to tell you a story that shows that “ALL IS NOT ALSO BLEAK” in the world of anti-capitalist resistance.

It helps that the main actor in this story, Peter Mertens, general secretary of the Workers Party of Belgium (PVDA to use the Dutch-language acronym) is an optimistic kind of guy. He can show us a few things to learn “from small Belgium” said chairperson Erin at a Tuesday night discussion on 19 November in east London on the theme of party building. [See the cover photo of Pelican House chairperson Erin and Peter Mertens by Jack Witek ;  great job again, Jack; Mertens’ Wikipedia entry is HERE ]  

Looking out at the audience, Mertens said passionately that  “300 or 400 or 500 people can do a lot …what is small can become powerful if you’re united.”  He added that right now, in both fractured Europe and Trumpish America, “there is a political space for the left”. But, he also warned, that space may close and “Nethanyahuism” could spread even wider if socialists don’t “get organised” rapidly.  Hear hear!    

And it also helped that a large majority of the audience of nearly 200 activists (or want-to-be activists) were under the age of 35. They represent “Generation Rent”, they are fed up with the state of the world and want to change it, and know in their hearts and minds that “Change” is merely an election slogan for Keir Starmer.

This is “an opportunity to be doing”, said Ben Beach from the audience, near the end of the two-hour session organised by the Pelican Collective.

Afterwards I was reminded of the quotation from Indian writer Arundhati Roy that Mertens uses in his new book DESTINY: “Another world is not only possible, she is on the way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.”   

BIGGISH BREATHING FROM BELGIUM  

From the other side of the North Sea, there is definitely some very audible breathing coming from the socialist left; I underline that Mertens used the “s” word at least ten times in his talk.

Once a very small party of less than 800 members for a long time, the PVDA now has more than 25,000 members and over 400 branches in all geographic and linguistic regions of Belgium. Not bad in a country that is one/sixth the population of the UK. Just think what we could do in the UK with a well-organised socialist party of 150,000 members. Starmer would be scared shitless.

Mind you and with a slightly mischievous smile, Mertens said the PVDA is still “a small party.” A “small party”, we should add, that is also the third-wealthiest in Belgium, which is a switch compared to typical left wing formations almost anywhere else on the globe. 

In Brussels, the PVDA is the third largest electoral force and in industrial Antwerp, Belgium’s second city and Mertens’ birthplace, it is number two. In the Belgium Parliament, it the fourth largest party.

Last month across the country, the PVDA boosted its total number of elected local councillors to 258; 40 of these are young people under 30. (I am a member of a left wing discussion group in the UK of about 20 people; only two of us are below the age of 40.)     

Of the 50 PVDA MPs, 18 are “active workers”, Mertens said proudly, and one can be confident, I think, that they are not working class traitors and sell-outs like Starmer or Angela Rayner.

One way this is assured is that being a PVDA MP or party official does not mean a life of high living. Belgian MPs are paid a salary of 7,800 Euros (£6,485) per month. Party rules require they and party officials live on 2,300 Euros (£1912) per month and transfer the remainder into party coffers. This is one reason that the party’s balance sheet is so positive.  

As was explained in a May 2024 article about the party’s reasoning, “anyone who runs for office under the PTB should not be able to get rich off their position or enjoy a significantly higher standard of living than the average citizen. (Current PVDA) Chairman Raoul Hedebouw describes it as follows: “If you don’t live the way you think, then you start to think the way you live.”

Mertens, who is also a Belgian MP, comes across as a modest, good-humoured, determined and flexible political actor who would be repulsed (as I am) by the bluster and bravado coming from the leader of another UK party with a very similar name. He was refreshing.

COULD RAYNER / DENYER LIVE ON £33,000 A YEAR?

A final point on £££. MPs here in the UK are paid £91,346 per year, plus expenses. Would Angie Rayner or the Green’s Carla Denyer be willing to live on annual salary of say £30,000 or £35,000?  Ask them.     

As the London session was Part 4 of a Pelican Collective series called “PARTY TIME” and as the audience was focused on what type of party or left organisation we need in the UK, Mertens was helpful on a number of issues faced by left wingers in Britain and Belgium.  (Here is THE LEFT LANE’s coverage of Part 2 of “PARTY TIME” back in early October.)

Photo displayed on the PVDA website.

+ First, he was very forceful on the need for a country-wide socialist party as opposed to merely some type of loose “left organisation.”  It should be noted here that the PVDA is Belgium’s only national party; all of the others focus on only one linguistic group or geographic area.

Being a party means PVDA can launch nationally co-ordinated campaigns … and not just at election time. In 2014, PVDA’s two national campaigns are focusing on Palestine and preparing a general strike. When such a call goes out, 400 PVDA branches take it up. Some branches can’t just say that they don’t feel like it, Mertens explained, though branches can also wage local campaigns.

OTHER PARTIES JEALOUS OF PVDA CAMPAIGNING “ARMY”  

“Our local sections give their all,” Mertens wrote in late October 2024. A Belgian political science professor says that the neighbourhood work of PVDA is “far more advanced than the other parties” and “in this way they can pick up society’s signals directly.” Adds a Belgian journalist, “it’s an army the other parties are probably jealous of.”

Mertens mentioned two grass roots projects of the PVDA “army” ; one is long-term, the other is recent. For more than 20 years, the party has operated free medical clinics in working class areas across Belgium. “ We have no NHS,” he said. After the recent floods in southern Spain, the party sent out a team to assist. Fighting the climate crisis and promoting ecosocialism are key PVDA priorities.

On a week in, week out basis, could a mere left organisation in the UK send out a equally effective “army” in the UK here to campaign? The burden of proof it would definitely happen is on those who think a new socialist party is unnecessary.

+ Second, he stressed the importance of internal party democracy. Promoting it is one of the party’s cardinal goals. Parties need “a democratic space” and the leadership need to be listening to alternative views of members, Mertens said.

I would like to have heard more on the PVDA’s internal disciplinary procedures and be assured they do NOT mirror the gulag-style systems operated in the UK by the Labour Party and the Green Party. In recent months, THE LEFT LANE has printed a number of articles on the Green’s gulag, such as this ONE and this ONE.

Still Mertens’ comments on democracy hit home to me. The previous evening I had attended, as an observer, a Zoom meeting of a UK coalition of left groups. The top-downism on display, the silencing of dissent, and the humiliation of a working class woman was one of the worst examples of control freakery I have witnessed in some years.

+ Third, while the electoral strength of PVDA continues to grow as recently as last month, getting elected is not an end in itself for the party which was set up in 1979.

In a 2017 interview with the US magazine JACOBIN, Mertens explained the PVDA’s approach to work in the various Belgian legislatures; there are a number of legislatures, he told us.  

Mertens wrote:   

… in the parliament, our motto is “street-council-street.” For us, the parliament is not an end in itself. It is not the final stage of our political struggle. It is extremely important for us that our local sections on the ground, in towns and inside enterprises, put forward their problems and proposals so that we can bring their voice to political institutions….

Generally speaking, we are opposed to a “parliamentarist” vision of politics according to which all the work and the social movement depends upon what happens inside parliament. For us, extra-parliamentary initiatives and work on the ground remain the priority and the bulk of our struggle.”

From the Wikipedia entry of the Workers’ Party of Belgium

+ Fourth, we are a “working class party”, Mertens mentioned a number of times on Tuesday evening.

A great deal of emphasis is placed on the active political participation of workers and their advancement up the ranks within the PVDA. There is, for example, a quota system that ensures a significant percentage of workers must get the opportunity to stand for political office and they go at the head of PVDA’s electoral lists in Belgium’s proportional representation voting system.  

In a 2021 interview titled “A Party Fighting for Socialism Has to Put Workers Front and Centre” and also with JACOBIN, Raoul Hedebouw, who succeeded Mertens as PVDA president that same year, explained that “the question of how to organize workers in a Marxist party isn’t easy to answer.”

Hedebouw continued:  

“The final important element in all this is working-class participation in the democratic process. In all organizations, certainly under capitalism, there are powerful selection mechanisms that discourage working-class people from really being involved in democratic debates; for instance, the domination of the written form of discussion. Yes, us Marxists like to write. But in an internal debate, oral communication is also very important, and provides a much easier way for people to express themselves.

So, in the (recent PVDA) congress preparations (where almost 900 delegates participated in 83 party commissions), we also attributed a lot of importance to in-person commissions with spoken contributions, allowing working-class members to participate fully. Under a capitalist system, workers have a hard time rising through economic, political, and trade union structures, so we devote a lot of attention to this problem.” (Memo to British leftie colleagues: remember this issue when we have the founding conference – in 2026? – of a new UK socialist party. ]

It is attention to practical organisation details such as this which make the PVDA stand out among left wing political formations in Europe.

Wanting to speak at Tuesday’s meeting at Pelican House.

WE AIM TO BE “A LIVELY PARTY”

+ FIFTH.  PVDA is an upbeat, up-to-date, energetic and professional party.

“People have to feel that we are a lively party, “Martens explained to the meeting. Belgium’s top Tik Toker is a PVDA member. When Belgians think of Tik Tok, “they think of China and us,” he joked.

Its fully trilingual Dutch/ French and English website, which is HERE, is up-to- date, sleek and informative with excellent graphic material. Its programme, found HERE, is actually interesting to read. (I had some questions about it, but those will have to wait for another day.) The PVDA spends a lot of time and effort on preparing accessible party literature. “No eight-page flyers from us,” he said.

As Mertens explained in a 2018 interview:

“We saw how the right-wing parties succeed in storytelling; they take concrete stories and go from there to more general ideas or imperialist agendas. They start, though, from problems like people falsely receiving benefits for the disabled — the kind of story that can make front-page news, and everyone says they know someone that’s misusing social security…

Then there is a kind of left — in Belgium, but I think it’s broader — that responds with statistics and charts of income distribution, which is all correct but very abstract and unemotive, engaging only the brain and not the heart. We as a left also have to find our own storytelling in real life, and then go to the abstract level.

We need our own stories, for instance pensioners who only receive €800 a month pension and have to spend €500 on rent, leaving them only €10 a day to live on. Then we say, it’s not only Mrs X who lives in this situation, but one million people, because of Belgian and indeed European politics. So we link emotive stories to the more abstract, political level.”  

A FEW FINAL NOTES

1. Peter Mertens’ talk received a very warm response from the enthusiastic audience. No one minimised the difficulties involved in building a new socialist party and this crowd at least seemed “up for the struggle” ahead.

2) I had only a few minutes to chat with Peter right after the formal part of the meeting was over. And I forgot to ask him one question I had: “is it possible for non-Belgians who live in England to join?” I will email PVDA HQ today with my query.

3. A memo to the “PARTY TIME” organising team: Congrats on the four “PARTY TIME” sessions you’ve held so far. I know a fifth session is planned for the evening of 4 December on the theme of the French Noveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) that united the left.

In January or February 2025, can I suggest you hold a few further “PARTY TIME” sessions on the practical problems involved in setting up a new socialist party? That is, don’t let these sessions become merely energetic talking shops. Instead, turn them into a launch pad for action and call in socialists from outside London to work collaboratively with you on this project.  

4. Located at 144 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green London E1 5QJ, Pelican House “is a countercultural space for worker organising, movement building and experimental arts in London.” Check out its website HERE to get a better sense of what it is all about. Pelican House organisers have recently been expressing some concerns about the financial future of this special space. They’ve told THE LEFT LANE would most appreciate any financial contributions you might be able to offer. HERE is a link to the donation page.

CHECK THIS OUT

Listen to Alice Walker’s advice:

A phrase to never forget:

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Edited by Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber:  http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe

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