This session will set out the history of how neoliberalism as a distinctive form of capitalism emerged and displaced the ‘post-war consensus’ as the dominant economic order across the world. It will explain how privatisation and austerity along with deregulation are its core features, and the impacts of these policies firstly on the global south before ‘coming home’ to the core capitalist nations. The post-2010 acceleration in the UK has created countless examples of neoliberalism’s impact on the lives of current Young Greens that will be drawn on. Finally, it will explore Mark Fisher’s concept of ‘capitalist realism’ or the situation where the status quo has become so embedded that people don’t notice it, or can even imagine an alternative system.

It will briefly cover how neoliberalism has shifted attitudes on how people relate to government and social change - the shift from citizens to consumers, to be revisited in session 2.

Case studies to be drawn on: Chile, UK (post 1979 and 2010), Greece

This session will encourage participants to think about how democracy in the UK obscures the realities of where power lies (‘if everyone can vote, why does the government seem to always benefit the rich?’). It will show how many of the issues of modern democracy in the UK are rooted in the history of how it developed from an imperial nation state.

It will then explore the essential role of radical working class movements in the fight for democracy, and how such struggles were fundamentally rooted in left politics.

It will move to the modern period by looking at how the political system is designed to serve the interests of a minority, drawing on examples from Part 1 (e.g. privatisations), and how as popular consent in the system fails the elite have ruthlessly shifted the goal posts to stay in power. Finally, we will discuss the current growth in independence movements in Scotland, the North of England and Wales as inevitable result of people seeking an ‘exit’ from a British state that is nakedly not working for most of us.

This session will show how it’s not just elites who make history, and how popular movements have created the society we have today. People said as early as 1850 that a Parliament only has power to declare as official an already changed society - it cannot overturn an existing order by itself.

Exploring working class movements for democracy to the struggle for trade unions, we will challenge the myth that women were given the vote as a ‘reward’ for WW1, and that the threat of revolution has driven big steps forward for justice. Exploring the astonishing community mobilisation during the crisis of the 30s, it will make the case that grassroots movements made the taming of capitalism after WW2 not just possible but essential.

But it was at the height of working class power that demands for liberation of women, LGBTIQA+ and people of colour exploded. Rather than hippy decadence, these were organic demands for the radical democratisation of society.

While session 1 looked at Thatcher’s economic revolution, here we look at the broader goals: putting the people back in their box, reasserting hierarchy, and smashing alternative sources of power that could challenge the state.

Finally, how have Black Lives Matter and the climate strikers changed society? What do we need to do for these movements to win?

Case studies to be drawn on: Mitterand’s France in 80s, post-neoliberal Latin America

So what does all this have to do with Green politics? And what do we actually mean by a radically transformed society?

Almost all ideologies engage with environmentalism in one way or another - but what makes our politics distinct? For us, unrestrained capitalism has brought our species to the brink of disaster. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of human CO2 emissions.The status quo impoverishes hundreds of millions while burning the planet. We believe the planet can sustain all of our basic needs in a society that values people above profit.

This final session will introduce ideas like eco-socialism and social ecology, and why any environmental politics that neglects where power lies is doomed to failure. We’ll look at how radical democracy is the solution to both the climate crisis and ending systems of oppression, and why that means we need to build people power right now.