Democracy, accountability and transparency were the key demands that came out of the Bradford regional assembly for Your Party. Most attendees clearly wanted a member led mass socialist party, fewer were convinced that “HQ” want this.
Attendance, around 150, was rather disappointing, especially considering it was the only assembly in West Yorkshire, population around 2 million. By contrast at an “Enough is Enough” meeting in Leeds in 2022 over 2000 people turned out. There were a lot of familiar faces and the Bradford Asian population was definitely under represented. Attendance was undoubtedly affected by the late notice of the meeting – registration went live on Tuesday for a meeting the following Saturday – but clearly recent ‘events’ at YP HQ have diminished interest in the founding process.
The assembly started with a panel of 3 speakers, the first of whom failed to introduce himself which prompted a cry of “who are you?”. This captured the lack of trust in the assembly process but to be fair to the organisers they recognised this. One speaker’s response to the question “what happens to our comments today?” was that they would collate and share them with us before sending them to the ‘sausage machine’ at YP HQ and beyond that they didn’t know what would happen. “We’re confused about the process” Mike Foster of PACE added. Normally it’s not advisable to ask how a sausage is made – in this instance it clearly is.
Louise Lewis of the NEU spoke well about the resurgence of racism and the far right and added “be honest, we’ve wasted precious time”. One might ask who the ‘we’ are but the point was valid nonetheless. Her concern that members must run YP from the bottom up was well received. She was also critical of the proposal that the Independent MPs should run YP till March “In a trade union there’d be uproar” she added. The tone set by the organisers was largely shared by attendees.
After a short and uninspiring video which featured Corbyn and Sultana (but noticeably not together) there was an appeal for donations as the budget was tight – how useful the funds trapped in MOU Ltd would have been if they’d been available.
At this point the assembly split into small groups to discuss the 4 foundational documents. This proved to be a confusing process as despite headings such as ‘Constitution and Standing Orders’ groups were set much more limited questions on one part of each document. Most ignored this limitation and discussed the full documents. The facilitators varied in how they handled this – some tried to stick to the script, others recognised the flawed nature of the process. The quality of facilitation improved during the day but the groups could probably have managed better without facilitators.
During the discussions the majority view was critical of the documents and supportive of a democratic members led socialist party. Recallability and accountability of elected officers and public representatives also had a lot of support. The political statement was rightly considered vague and wordy with important principles missing such as support for Palestine and trans rights.
After 4 sessions there was a useful plenary where there was feedback from all the facilitators and one or two other participants. The first speaker started with “Democracy, accountability, transparency” and this captured the majority opinion. Other valid points were made such as
- No MP control, power at the grassroots
- A fully elected Central Executive Committee with lay members having the majority
- Conference should be the decision making body with elected delegates
- Branches should be set up formally as quickly as possible.
In general there was a healthy scepticism of hierarchy and a party machine and a good level of debate. There were some important differences however. One was that some participants wanted branches set up quickly so that lots of candidates could run in the 2026 local elections, noticeably quite a few of these people were SP and SWP members. Others rightly took a more considered view, not least due to the practical challenges of running a substantial local election campaign as well as opposition to a largely electoral approach. Another difference was on leadership with some wanting co-leaders, deputy leaders but most were opposed to an appointed General Secretary with most favouring elected officials.
The most heavily criticised document was the Organisational Strategy Year 1 Paper which was seen as far too centralising and undemocratic.
At the end of the assembly the organisers attempted to have a straw poll on 4 questions from the documents. This immediately generated some confusion and opposition despite it being a genuine attempt to inject some democracy into the event. It would have been better if this had been stated at the outset giving people time to consider their views during the day. However it reflected a major problem which is that many YP activists are now rather suspicious of any attempt at organisation to the point that even a positive idea such as this was rejected. In the end only one vote was held which was should conference be run on a sortition basis (attendees selected randomly) or with elected delegates. The result was two thirds of the votes for delegates and one third for sortition.
It was good to see that most activists present were for a democratic grassroots party but the low turnout and the opaque process indicate that YP has a considerable task ahead of it, if it is to be successful.
