The left’s main strength will always be numbers, not money. But mere numbers are not enough, – see, for example, the failure of the huge demonstrations to stop the Iraq war. To win, the left needs to build grassroots power, to organise. 

Organising differs from mobilising and advocacy. Mobilising involves activating existing supporters, such as a political party asking its members to go out canvassing or a campaign group calling supporters out to a protest. Advocacy involves fighting on behalf of others but not necessarily doing anything with those people. Organisations like Greenpeace, for example, mostly collect money from supporters and use it to fund professional political operations to advance their goals, such as by hiring lobbyists and communications experts.

Organising involves finding people who are not currently politically engaged, identifying their problems and helping them see them through a radical political lens. For example, if people suffer from high rent and inattentive landlords, organising might begin by persuading tenants that the real problem is not their particular landlords but housing being an investment asset, not a basic right. An organiser then works with these people to mount a campaign on this issue, probably a small local one, perhaps aimed at the local council’s planning policy. Such campaigns, successful or not, can build solidarity and political agency. In time, local groups combine for larger, more ambitious campaigns.

Organising is slow, difficult and messy, but its methods are well established, but too little known and practiced on the UK left.