Heiko Khoo’s Karl Marx Walking Tours. Photo credit Heiko Khoo

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‘For me, the key question is to reinvigorate a culture of discussion and debate’

Interviewed conducted by Phil Hall, Paul Halas and Gordon Lidl

Phil Hall: Hi, Heiko. Thank you for joining us. How are you doing?

Heiko Khoo: I’m very well, thank you.

Phil Hall: Let me briefly introduce you. Heiko Khoo was deeply involved as an activist in the Corbyn movement, someone who was expelled from the Labour Party several times; once as a member of the Militant tendency. Heiko has been a stalwart of Hyde Park Corner championing free speech and reason in debate. In this spirit, Heiko organised new Putney Debates before the last election in Putney itself, which I found incredibly inspiring when attending. Heiko stood for the Workers Party, organised a campaign against the government’s proposed Digital ID and he is now organising a very intriguing and, I think, brave demonstration against Palantir outside their London headquarters which takes place every Thursday. We should all find the courage to join in.

So, this is a basic introduction. I’ve probably misstated a few things, Heiko. Perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself properly?

Heiko Khoo: Thank you, Philip. My political journey began when I was around 17, with the Militant section of the Labour Party. It became a major focus of my life for many years. At that time, we were keen to connect with people interested in similar ideas, which led me to travel and live in places like East Germany and China, seeking those connections. Ultimately, myself and a few others who left that tendency—Militant, the Socialist International, and later the group now known as the RCP—were, in fact, expelled. That experience prompted us to focus our activism on other areas.

My main work now is the Karl Marx Walking Tours. It’s a didactic tour, grounded in entertainment and education, rather than the instrumental political education typical of left groups, which aims to recruit people to one tendency or another. I run these with another Marxist comrade, and frankly, they’ve been very successful. I think if any of the revolutionary left groups had contact with the sheer number and diversity of people we engage with every week—from complete novices to hardened academics—they’d be overjoyed. It’s a reach they would envy.

In addition to that, I’ve been speaking at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park since 1985. That experience, I believe, semi-inoculated me against some of the worst aspects of sectarian Marxist groups. At the Corner, you have to constantly discuss, debate, and engage with people from completely different viewpoints. You get taken down a peg, you clash, and you are humbled. It’s a vital discipline.

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Paul Halas: That’s fascinating. Building on that, do you have any time for the Communist Party of Great Britain? Phil and I recently did a piece at the Marx Memorial Library with Alex Gordon, who shared a lot of interesting history about the Party. Given your walking tours, is there much common ground there?

Khoo: I have collaborated with the Marx Memorial Library in the past, coordinating with them for a museum in Berlin that wanted to do an exhibition. But otherwise, they have their own excellent program of events. Meirian Jump is doing a wonderful job there ensuring a lot happens. I’ve met Alex Gordon a few times; he’s even been on one of the walking tours, as has the The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers youth group. But beyond that, I don’t have a personal relationship with him, nor any particular affinity with any political group anymore. I’m not a member of any group, nor do I explicitly support this one or that one.

My walking tour is simply an exposition, an explanation as close as I can get to the reality of Marx’s arguments. Where I drop in my own “sixpence worth,” it’s purely additional—my opinion. I don’t even advertise my Speakers’ Corner activity on the tour because I’m aware of the prejudice against my particular, eclectic brand of free-thinking within the left. I prefer to create a division between my didactic, entertaining work and my personal politics. Marxist groups are particularly sensitive to nuance, and I don’t want to get into those debates when I’m discussing Marx’s life and original ideas. That’s the primary communication. My personal views are separate; I could be wrong, they could be wrong, and I’d rather not have that argument on the streets of London—except at Speakers’ Corner, or perhaps outside Palantir. But Palantir is a different matter.

Phil Hall: Speaking of Speakers’ Corner, do you feel your rhetorical skills were honed there? I’m thinking of the Putney Debates you organised. One of the major problems of the Corbyn era was people not listening to each other and resorting to banning. I noticed you were very sensitive to ad hominem attacks during those debates, always trying to keep the discussion flowing. What is your attitude towards the importance of openness in political debate?

Heiko Khoo: At Speakers’ Corner just this week, I ran into a pro-Israel scientist who started out as a vegetarian speaker. To his credit, he stands there and takes the flak. He’ll stand among a group of Muslims and voice his opinions, and they’ll shout him down. But I’ve always gotten along with him, despite disagreeing with his politics. He remarked to me, “There aren’t many people who stand on a platform anymore,” and sadly, that’s true. I do hope we can shift that.

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I saw something recently, two right-wing posts—I don’t know why I get them. One was of a guy addressing a big crowd, and it was clearly AI-generated. It was getting traction precisely, I think, because none of these activists are actually any good at speaking spontaneously to a random crowd. The left, too, is often good at speaking at people, but not good at speaking with people or to people without a megaphone. I’ve always found that a problem. But I live in hope, because it doesn’t actually take much. When the mood is right, people will get up and speak.

During the first major Palestine demonstrations after October 7th, we went down with an amplifier and set up. Because the demonstration was so large, crowds gathered and stopped at our location. At many demos, you’re lucky to get three minutes as the crowd moves past. But at this spot in Pimlico, we had crowds both heading to and returning from the rally, which created a natural space. We invited people to speak, and there was a queue. Random people. A Palestinian woman, a student, spoke from the heart, crying as she did. A young Palestinian man was incredibly eloquent. I’ve never seen them on any other platform. They’re never given a platform because the left groups tend to hog them.

I recently challenged John Rees about this. He’s a coalition kingpin, always trying to be at the centre of any movement. I said to him, “Why do you always have the same speakers? It’s tedious. I’ve heard you a hundred times.” His response was, “We pay for the platform, so we decide the speakers.” Which I think is the exact opposite of what you should do. You should facilitate.

Phil Hall: For our readers, who is John Rees?

Heiko Khoo: He’s a leader of the Stop the War Coalition. Along with his partner, Lindsey German, they effectively control who gets on the platform at every major demonstration. They’ve been doing this since at least 2003—for anti-war platforms, the People’s Assembly, everything. They control the amplifier, and therefore they think they control the movement. In reality, it just stunts it, makes it dull, and robs it of any dynamic edge. I remember being in France in 1986 during a student protest. There, they have that revolutionary tradition; once a movement starts, everyone gets up to speak. No one was afraid. So, I’m not worried that people won’t speak; they just need a cause that compels them to stand up and use their voice. That potential is in everyone.

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Phil Hall: Before we get to Palantir, could you give us your perspective on what happened with Jeremy Corbyn—the antisemitism crisis, the rise of Keir Starmer, and how that leads us to figures like Peter Mandelson, who was so involved in sabotaging Corbyn’s leadership?

Heiko Khoo: You know I was involved from the very beginning of Corbyn becoming a candidate. A few grassroots activists in Kensington, people from Speakers’ Corner, got together to start campaigning. We tried to build a genuine grassroots movement. While I don’t think we were as successful as some believe, we did help get Janice Mendes in. Unfortunately, quite early on, Jeremy was surrounded by a group of trade unionists, some bureaucratic-minded young people, and figures in the background like Andrew Murray, John Rees, and Seamus Milne, who all brought a very bureaucratic approach to campaigning. They gained the upper hand in the group around him.

While the external sabotage from the Labour right, people like Peter Mandelson, was a massive force, I was actually more concerned about this internal dynamic. It ultimately boiled down to a small clique of people. I met with Seamus Milne at Portcullis House early on. He seemed reasonably militant and was describing the dynamics they faced. But they didn’t create an energetic, involved mass movement of supporters. They talked about being a big movement, but they operated in a bureaucratic way. The ability to mobilise was limited by this trade union and bureaucratic emphasis. They didn’t facilitate the kind of energy you’re talking about—the debates, the mass involvement we saw on that demo. If the people around him had had that mindset, things might have been different.

Momentum, of course, was key, and it was run by Jon Lansman, who ironically is a Zionist. The antisemitism campaign he engaged with was first targeted at Jackie Walker, then Mark Wadsworth, then Chris Williamson. I think the capitulation came not so much from Jeremy—he didn’t like a fight—but from Seamus Milne, who had an old GLC, trade unionist tendency to think bureaucratically, that you could manoeuvre between different groups.

Gordon Lidl: I have loads of questions about Palantir. They’re one of the stars of my recent painting, and I’ve been concerned about them for a long time. They are one of the most evil companies on the planet, especially the two founders, Thiel and Karp. These tech companies started as CIA investments, bred inside that environment. We’ve all known about Epstein for years; some of it made me physically sick. But the wider public doesn’t know Palantir is in their house via our streaming services. They’ve been groomed by Mandelson, and stuff will come out about him. Palantir is the tip of the iceberg on the tech bros. Then there’s the climate crisis—the Jevons Paradox. The amount of energy these data centres use, the water alone… there’s an environmental crisis outside of any political manipulation. They are a complete disaster waiting to happen. Our governments are inviting them in, giving them more and more contracts—I think they have 40 now in our ministries. It’s astonishing. The public is completely unaware, and the press won’t touch it. There’s no integrated coverage of the totality of this threat.

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Heiko Khoo: Precisely. That’s why we want to make the protest outside Palantir into a wider question about the whole future of AI. Palantir has had some bad press recently regarding the Mandelson-Epstein connection and Gaza. There have been a few isolated protests, but it raises a critical question: Why has Palantir never been a focus of the anti-war movement? If you can mobilise 100,000 people to march from Hyde Park to Parliament Square, why can’t you march them to Soho Square? It seems most odd that where it matters—the corporate headquarters profiting from war—is ignored, and you march on Whitehall, which is never going to change the policy on Gaza or any other war.

We want to initiate a debate. Partly, this is because Palantir seems to be on the back foot. They are suing a Swiss publication for comments made, but unusually, they’re suing for a right of reply, not for money. That signals vulnerability. Now is the time. I’ve been planning something outside Palantir for a year, meeting with people discreetly. But with the Epstein information now in the public domain, I think we can launch a political and a debate offensive against them that we couldn’t have done six months ago.

Soho Square is ideal. It has fantastic acoustics, few cars, and lots of people gather there, especially in good weather. The AI industry also heavily affects the music and film industries, and many people working in those sectors are local. We could stimulate quite a discussion. For me, the key question is to reinvigorate a culture of discussion and debate. Just like with the Putney Debates during the election—it didn’t fully take off as I’d hoped, but the idea was right. In Soho, with an audience already there, we could potentially stimulate something like the “Soho Debates” on the future of AI and humanity.

Gordon Lidl: No, we haven’t even started to discuss AI properly. The planned AI data centres in the UK will use an estimated 50 gigawatts of electricity. The UK’s current total consumption is 45 gigawatts. Where is that power going to come from?

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Heiko Khoo: Yes. Someone contacted me this week with completely different politics, but he’d developed an app to counter these organisations. The point is, you don’t need that level of energy consumption. The data centres exist to centralise information in the hands of a few. I downloaded Llama onto my own computer, for instance. It runs locally and doesn’t have the censorship. There are alternative ways to structure this relationship so we aren’t squandering all these resources just so one company can outdo another in a race to produce, essentially, AI porn or better video graphics. It’s a complete squandering of resources driven by pure competition.

Paul Halas: I’m interested in your take on the Workers Party. From where I stand, it feels like history is repeating itself with the same kinds of people influencing events, and it’s preventing me from throwing my weight behind it. What do you say?

Heiko Khoo: It was a coalition, Paul. I put myself down as a candidate but didn’t get enough nominations. I didn’t try that hard, to be honest. But yes, a lot of it does feel like it’s repeating. Some of the people around Jeremy are bureaucratic, and some around Zarah Sultana are the same. We’ll just have to see where it goes. The election result will be out tomorrow, so we’ll see. Personally, I’d prefer to see Jeremy get in over Zarah Sultana, and if a lot of independents and Corbyn-supporting candidates get in, perhaps it could hold together. But I tend to think the whole thing is falling apart. The old structures are crumbling. Perhaps it could have gone somewhere with a different, more dynamic team at the top from the beginning.

Phil Hall: Thank you, Heiko. That was excellent. We appreciate your insights. Thank you so much for your time.

Heiko Khoo: Thank you. My pleasure

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