On Guy Fawkes Night, an alliance of hard-left political groups involved in the pro-Jeremy Corbyn group Momentum were called together in the London HQ of the Fire Brigades Union.

In the room were 18 members of Momentum's national committee, including FBU boss Matt Wrack, along with four people from the Trotskyist group Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL) and representatives of groups with names such as the Labour Representation Committee, Red Labour, Socialist Appeal, and Labour Party Marxists.



Not everyone was welcome. Socialist Workers party and Socialist party representatives turned up but – for reasons of internal left-wing politics – were told to go away, with one told to leave after being spotted, according to a leaked email from Tina Becker of the Communist party of Great Britain, having "simply put his bum down on a seat in the back”. But many key figures on the British left, veterans of political parties to the left of Labour such as Left Unity, were present.

They planned to work out how to take back control of the Corbyn-supporting campaign group Momentum from allies of its co-founder Jon Lansman.

Earlier that week, at a hastily convened meeting, Lansman had pushed through a vote on a crucial decision regarding the organisation’s future, handing control of all future decisions to Momentum's 20,000 members, in a giant display of direct democracy.

This would, without consultation, take power away from many of the people gathered in this room, many representing different warring groups on the left of British politics, who felt they were finally able to come together.

“A coup, in other words,” Becker wrote in an internal email account of the meeting, which was later leaked to BuzzFeed News.

Momentum, which has tens of thousands of members and a far wider support base, was formed out of Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign, helping to build his support outside a hostile Labour party.

It began with a focus on nationwide education programmes and days of action aimed at involving young campaigners enthused by the new Labour leader, before helping to successfully organise Corbyn’s leadership defence during the 2016 Labour coup.

Now the organisation is at risk of being torn apart with accusations and counter-accusations from internal political infighting.



On one side is a supposed attempt to take a group formed in the heat of Corbyn’s leadership victory and turn it into a front for a Trotskyist splinter movement. On the other are accusations that a group of young activists who want to run national campaigns are being played by the “Blairite” actions of Lansman and individuals in Corbyn’s office.

To Lansman – a veteran of battles on the left wing of British politics who helped run Corbyn’s Labour leadership elections and who worked as an aide to Tony Benn – it looked as though he had won and ensured his vision of a decentralised, internet-based political movement would be implemented. But he reckoned without the efforts of Becker and those in the room that night.