Name: The Party and the Street: Discussion Workshop
Start: 2026-04-29T19:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-04-29T21:00:00+01:00
Location: Townhead Village Hall

The Party and the Street: Discussion Workshop

Join PEN Scotland for this one-off discussion workshop on the relationship between social movements, political parties and activism.
About this Event

How should left-wing political parties and social movements relate to one other? Can a tightly organised, hierarchical political party have a collaborative relationship with a horizontal, grassroots social movement, or will it inevitably descend into confrontation?

From trade unions and the Labour party in Britain, to the anti-austerity protests and Podemos in Spain; and from land occupations in the rainforests of Brazil and Lula's Worker's Party, to anti-privatisation movements and the Democratic Party in the USA, there are countless examples of how tensions between political parties and the movements on whose behalf they often claim to speak have played out globally.

In the run-up to May’s Scottish parliament election, the need to understand how our existing activism fits together with parties engaged in electoral politics has never been more urgent – yet seemingly never more difficult. This PEN Scotland discussion workshop is aimed at activists, trade unionists and members of political parties to help think about this problem, and provide greater clarity to how it is that we solve it.