Strengthening socialism in South Yorkshire: Sheffield Transformed past, present and future

The Sheffield Transformed team chart their experience of organising in South Yorkshire and reflect on the success of their 2025 conference.

Sheffield Transformed Festival returned to South Yorkshire during the last weekend of November 2025, promising ‘activism, culture and coalition-building’. In this article, the Sheffield Transformed organising team reflect on what their movement has achieved to date, chart a brief history of radical politics in South Yorkshire, and outline the key frontlines in the ongoing struggle to foster socialism which are particularly relevant across South Yorkshire today.

If we are to bring about socialism in Britain, we must create an ecology of social movements in the communities where we live which can organise collaboratively to create that future. Sheffield Transformed was founded to provide spaces where groups from the many strands of working class organising across South Yorkshire can discover, debate and dance. We try to curate events which centre cultural and artistic expression as a means of political education, whilst also offering ways into action and stimulating discussion. 

The most recent such event occurred from 28 – 30 November 2025, where we hosted over 30 talks, workshops and installations across several venues: Sheffield And District African Caribbean Community Association (SADACCA), Sheffield Flourish and Raccoon Studios. Our programme drew on contributions from individuals representing over 60 different organisations, some local to specific neighbourhoods with a few dozen members, some with thousands of members and an international presence. Supported financially by a grant from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, alongside donations from local trade union branches, we relied on a team of over 30 volunteers to run the event. Hundreds of attendees, from South Yorkshire and further afield, braved cold, wet weather to join us in our vision for a better future. As organisers, we were energised to be a part of this collective effort, and pull off what we feel was a really cohesive and vibrant few days of radical culture and politics.

How did we get here?

Sheffield Transformed formed in 2019 and like many other local ‘Transformed’ groups were inspired by The World Transformed. Since our formation, we have hosted a series of cultural events largely inspired by local political issues, including film screenings, book launches and talks. At our inaugural festival in July 2024, we wanted to offer a broad programme covering a range of left-wing approaches, combining more traditional approaches to political education with more experiential, experimental ones. There were panel discussions, participatory workshops, nature connection and historical walks, art practice sessions and a big party on the Saturday – culture is at the centre of our politics. The event was a resounding success, and for our second festival in 2025, we wanted to create something even bigger and better, which also clearly addressed the challenges of the present moment within the regional context of South Yorkshire. 

International solidarity and anti-imperialism

Sheffield is home to diaspora communities from many parts of the world, with significant populations with Kurdish, Sudanese, Eritrean, Slovak Romani, Pakistani, Yemeni and Somali heritage, amongst many others. Sheffield was the location of the first City of Sanctuary in the UK, and has a strong cadre of committed activists organising to oppose the hostile environment and raise anti-colonial consciousness in groups such as Anti Raids Sheffield, SYMAAG (South Yorkshire Migrant and Asylum Action Group) and VVIDY (Voice of Voiceless Immigration Detainees Yorkshire), who all contributed to sessions at the festival alongside South Yorkshire Refugee Law and Justice and national organisation Right to Remain. 

Furthermore, it was fantastic to welcome historian and activist Barnaby Raine alongside Sheffield local Maria Vasquez-Aguilar, a prominent activist within Chile Solidarity Network and Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Their contributions provided an essential backdrop to consider how we can truly bring about a revolutionary end to capitalism – it is only by breaking down national borders and standing in solidarity with workers struggles the world over that we can hope to achieve this end goal. 

The Palestinian struggle

Residents of Sheffield have shown longstanding solidarity with the Palestinian people, recognising its importance within the terrain of anti-imperialist struggle. The Sheffield branch of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign first met in 1968 in the aftermath of the 1967 war and has been active since, and Sheffield was the first UK city to recognise Palestinian statehood in 2019. The role of local industrial development and academic institutions in perpetrating the genocide in Gaza has prompted a number of local actions, including a student encampment lasting over three months in 2024 and several arms factory blockades since 2023. Other local campaigns include work towards making Sheffield an apartheid-free zone, which was launched in 2022 and aims to pressure local institutions and companies to cut their ties with Israel. We were pleased to host workshops organised by a number of these groups, one of which, hosted by Sheffield Writers for Palestine, our comrade Mark considered his 2025 cultural highlight for rs21.

Combatting a resurgent far right

Since the race riots and far-right attack on the Holiday Inn at Manvers near Rotherham which occurred in summer 2024, far-right and fascist street activity has grown in prominence across South Yorkshire and on our doorstep in North East Derbyshire, such as recently in Sheffield city centre when the police enabled UKIP to march by violently suppressing the anti-fascist response. Furthermore, the raising of St George’s and Union Jack flags in public places to intimidate minorities and sow fear and division has led to further street confrontation in several areas.

At the Festival, we aimed to map existing anti-authoritarian initiatives and local groups resisting the spread of far-right ideology, to encourage coordination between communities across South Yorkshire and give people ways into action. We also wanted to think about how we fill gaps in anti-fascist organising in South Yorkshire and who we should most seek to influence with our work to stop further recruitment by the far right. Alongside mobilisations to counter the far right in the street and remove flags from public places, we suggest that the Left needs to focus more on proactive community organising – preventing radicalisation before it happens through a relationship-first model, as outlined by Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven as part of their Sense and Solidarity workshops and podcasts. We were also joined by writer and historian Taj Ali, who spoke with veteran activists from the Sheffield Asian Youth Movement about contemporary Islamophobia as an industry of oppression and how we can combat this in our communities.

Trans liberation

Far right politics also pose a present and real threat to the rights and lives of transgender people, which must be challenged and dispelled in our communities and workplaces by daring to imagine a society . At the festival, sessions on defending trans rights at work and trans solidarity and participation in sports allowed participants to come together to focus on concrete actions to defend rights and challenge false narratives. Sheffield Right to Choose led a session connecting the struggles of transgender people and cis women around bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, situating the lived experience of activists expressed through poetry and storytelling alongside ongoing organising to counter anti-abortionist presence outside clinics in the city.

Land, housing and the natural world

Sheffield’s land justice movement has a rich history of radical organising and debate, and this was well represented at the 2025 Festival. Groups such as the Merry Earth Collective and Reclaim Our Moors ran workshops around building radical power and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity via the government’s new ‘community right to buy’, with Keir Milburn also delivering a seminar on his ‘Radical Abundance’ ideology. There were also powerful sessions from Sheffield Tenants Union and Cooperation Sheffield showcasing the work of ongoing neighbourhood campaigns to hold corporate landlords Placefirst to account at their Sky Edge development and block unpopular development plans lodged by McDonalds and Starbucks in the Highfield area. Residents of the Little London estate in Maltby also ran an excellent session in collaboration with several local and national groups, using their campaigning experience to brainstorm new actions and initiatives to force the Mayor of the South Yorkshire Combined Authority, Oliver Coppard, to prevent and reverse the toxic proliferation of damp in homes across the region.

What next for Sheffield?

This was the title of a session which we ran on the Sunday of this year’s Festival, with contributions from activists working within party politics (Your Party, the Green Party), alongside two activists representing alternative formations of radical power (Cooperation Sheffield and neighbourhood anti-fascism). After 4 minute stump pitches outlining their vision for the future of left organising in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, a period of facilitated discussion in small groups resulted in a range of thoughts concerning how these various strands of left strategy should best co-exist to bring about radical change. Debates as to the best way forward for our movement will continue, and Sheffield Transformed hopes to provide a forum for these important discussions suffused with joy and cultural expression and exchange. The latter elements we think are essential to enacting engaging and radical political change.