EditorIal Resources of hope HILARY WAINWRIGHT & SIOBHÁN McGUIRK Red Pepper has always been a political project. When it launched, 31 years ago, it defined itself as giving voice ‘to a growing opposition to a political system paralysed by corruption and lack of vision’. Now – facing climate catastrophe, a tsunami of right-wing politics and nominally left parties’ aggressive repression of the debate necessary to produce new ideas – we must rethink and radicalise the content of that project as we explore new organisational forms [SEE PAGE 12] . We – the internationalist, socialist and pluralist left in the UK and beyond – must together find ways of becoming more responsive and proactive. We must create new tools for critical popular education and political organising – online, in print and in person. We must support political innovation wherever it arises in a political and media context radically changed since 1994. Back then, Red Pepper sought to redress the disproportionate electoral system and the lack of representation of left social movement ideas in mainstream politics. At the height of New Labour, as its evangelically market-led politics embedded, a voice was needed for the disenfranchised left. We must now recognise the extent to which neoliberal politics has destroyed not just social democracy but liberal parliamentary democracy itself, on which the idea of ‘representation’ depended. It has become clear across the world – most immediately with the victory of Trump and its rapidly unfolding consequences – that powerful sections of capitalism are not only happy with but desirous of authoritarian rule. We must also recognise the alarming truth that it is now the far right, not the anticapitalist left, that is successfully mobilising popular resentment over the insecurity and marginalisation that results from disaster capitalism. Across the left, a collective and practical rethink is urgent. At a time when precarious work and the effort simply to survive is draining people’s individual and collective everything they can to suppress.’ Now is a pressing time to support the burgeoning local political initiatives – including alternative media [PAGES 14-27] , local political and educational initiatives [PAGES 47-59] and international struggle [PAGES 31-39] – in a way that more directly strengthens the independent political organisation of currently disparate and organisationally Across the left, a collective and practical rethink is urgent self-confidence, the trade unions and other groups no longer provide the political education they once did. As Jenny Pearce writes [PAGE 40] , ‘New approaches to informal education are a crucial step towards rebuilding people’s analytical capacity and releasing once again independent agency for change, which capitalist authoritarians are doing disconnected movements. Our resistance, driven by necessity and solidarity, must move from the defensive to creating practical alternatives. In the context of a deep democratic vacuum as private corporations and their bosses hold sway, we must all ask: what are the needs faced by grassroots struggles that our movements can help meet? And how can we organise to meet them? These are questions that the team at Red Pepper must and will also ask, as we work with our readers and supporters to explore what future forms our own contribution to socialist movements may take. Following Raymond Williams – one of our inspiring influences – we will do so while striving to remain a ‘resource of hope’. RED PEPPER 247 Spring 2025 3