Fellow

Ben Sellers worked for the TUC between 2007 and 2011, first as a graduate of the Organising Academy, where he won a 10-year prize for his work organizing with A8 Eastern European migrant workers, and subsequently on the ground-breaking Vulnerable Workers Project, working with refugee-led organizations to politically empower refugees and asylum seekers. He has also worked as a trade union tutor, as a union organizer and as a social media co-ordinator for Union Solidarity International, alongside global union federations. 

In 2011, Ben opened the People’s Bookshop in Durham, England, and turned it into a hub for the local community, labor movement and campaign organizers. The bookshop has since developed into a thriving co-operative, run by a collective of volunteers, based in the heart of Durham City.  

In the 2015 Labour Party leadership campaign, Ben played a major role in helping to elect Jeremy Corbyn, leading his social media campaign, and creating a democratic organizing space which became the forerunner to Momentum. He returned to work for Jeremy Corbyn during the 2017 General Election campaign, as part of the core Leader’s Office team, crafting social media messages and strategy. 

After the 2017 campaign, he became political advisor to Laura Pidcock MP and worked on Labour’s manifesto commitment to create a Ministry of Employment Rights and a raft of transformative employment legislation in co-operation with the Institute of Employment Rights (IER), the Labour leadership and the trade union movement. 

In early 2021, he worked as campaign manager for North of Tyne Mayor, Jamie Driscoll, developing a strategy for his re-election, and later that year became Director of the IER. In 2024, Ben took on the role of National Secretary of the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, whilst maintaining a communications brief at the IER. As National Secretary, he sought to rebuild a grassroots network of anti-austerity campaigns from the ground up, in the face of continued austerity measures under the newly elected Labour government.