06.11.2025
Doing things differently
South Yorkshire Your Party regional assembly was a model of transparency, open debate, participation, democracy and control from below. Tina Becker, a member of the Sheffield proto-branch steering group, reports
Our regional assembly, Sunday November 2 in Sheffield, appears to be the only one nationally - so far - where local members were actually in charge. This was down to a few ‘happy accidents’: for a start, the Sheffield proto-branch is relatively far advanced, having first been set up in the summer by Lee Rock and the Sheffield Left, with a meeting of over 200 people. That avoided confessional sects like the Socialist Workers Party taking over or setting up their own tame auxiliary outfit. We elected a politically diverse steering committee and held a number of successful public meetings. There are constituency and ward groups too.
When one of us was asked to book a venue for the assembly in Sheffield, we quickly decided to also set up a proper assembly organising team that could start to make preparations. Thirty people joined the team representing all five proto-branches in South Yorkshire (Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham, Barnsley and Chesterfield) and we met a few times on Zoom to discuss how we could ‘tweak’ the national format to make things as democratic as possible. We decided early on that we would make a very conscious effort to let the members and the branches decide how they wanted to run the assembly, and if, for example, they should be able to vote.
Zoom meetings
Sheffield proto-branch also ran a well-attended public Zoom meeting the week before the assembly, where we went through some of the key questions in the four founding documents. Comrades were able to ask questions and we collectively discussed problematic or unclear formulations - in other words, it helped comrades to prepare for the assembly itself.
We did not actually know that we would be left to run the assembly ourselves (that only transpired 72 hours before!), but we tried from the beginning to involve as many people in the process as possible. We began by sending the participants in our various WhatsApp and Facebook groups an online survey, asking them a few questions about how they would like the assembly to be organised. It transpired that most were not happy about some of the proposals coming from HQ, including their plans for how the constitution and the standing orders should be discussed. (Somebody at HQ had divided the two documents into 11 sections and proposed that each working group of 10 people would be randomly allocated two of the 11 sections.) Comrades also indicated that they would want this to be a decision-making event, where - after thorough discussions - comrades should be able to vote.
At the start of our assembly, we therefore asked the 200 participants (about half of them quite young, and many from the pre-Corbyn era) if they wanted the assembly to allow voting, in the small groups as well as the final feedback session - and, unsurprisingly, nobody put their hand up against that proposal. And why would they? I believe we were also the only region that managed to run the event in a hybrid format, allowing comrades unable to travel to participate in the discussions via Zoom. This was only possible because we had a team of very committed comrades involved, who wanted to make sure the event was a success. We also produced our own briefings for attendees and facilitators, because information from HQ was in rather short supply.
When it came to discussing the four documents, our organising team decided that we would present the participants with two options: they could either stick with the HQ plan (‘option 1’) or they could freely decide in their group what to discuss (‘option 2’). Reflecting pretty much the results from our earlier survey, a third of the 200 or so people present went with option 1, while the others opted for the free discussion. At the back of our mind, we feared this might become a bit chaotic - but it did not. Very ably guided by our two main facilitators, comrades in all groups quickly agreed which issues they wanted to discuss and, judging by the lively feedback session, it was particularly the rights, structures and funding of the branches that comrades were concerned about. Plus the call that official branches should be set up immediately (and where proto-branches exist, they should be recognised ASAP). All facilitators agreed that the discussion was much more important than the ‘note taking’ (via an online Google facility) - chiefly because nobody knows what - if anything - will happen to those notes. The groups instead focused on clarifying various concepts in the documents and on formulating what needs changing.
Throughout, we also canvassed comrades’ opinions on a number of key issues in a so-called ‘visualisation exercise’ (a brilliant suggestion made by comrade Miranda), which was initially conceived as a method to circumvent HQ’s ban on voting at assemblies.1 I am really glad we kept this in, even after it turned out we were able to run the event unchaperoned, because it proved to be a very popular addition to the usual format of organising left events. Participants were able to ‘vote’ with coloured dots to show if they preferred the current formulations in the draft constitution/standing orders - or the alternative proposals prepared by the assembly team (which were based on the seven key amendments agreed by Sheffield steering committee and which have become known rather grandly as the ‘Sheffield Demands’).2
The nine coloured posters on the wall featuring these questions worked really well and always had a good crowd around them: comrades were able to read through some of the most controversial issues in the documents, consider the alternatives and then visually express their point of view. Some were sure about their view and ‘voted’ as soon as they came into the hall. Others felt less certain about an issue and waited until further discussions in their working group. Of course, there was also a ‘neither’ option available, though few made use of that box.
Members first
The result was not always a foregone conclusion. For example, on the question of ‘local assemblies’, a majority voted in favour of the current proposal (“All branches shall undertake the necessary work to run regular public-facing, local community assemblies”) instead of our proposal: “Local branches should decide how they organise, if they want to set up assemblies - and how those should be run.”3 I suspect that, had we had the space to discuss this issue further, the vast majority would have gone with the steering committee’s proposals - after all, the clear vibe of the whole assembly was very much ‘Put the members and branches first!’ This is a problem with breaking up into working groups - contentious issues are not really resolved, at least not in front of, and with the active participation of, the whole audience (more below).
We also used the ‘visualisation exercise’ as a way to structure our feedback session, which made it much sharper than those kinds of sessions usually are. Chair Sophie read through each of the nine posters, the current formulation and our amendments, and then explained how much support they had each received. This allowed both the majority and the minority to be seen and heard. She then asked if any of the working groups had come up with a formulation or an issue different from what was already covered on the posters. It turned out that we seem to have managed to cover most of the issues that members were concerned with, meaning that we were able to go through some uncontentious issues rather quickly.
For example, a clear majority voted via dots that we should campaign for a “party of the whole left”, where all groups are positively welcomed and the establishment of temporary and permanent platforms and tendencies is allowed. There was also no need to discuss at great length why the constitution’s proposal for “confidentiality on internal party matters” is a bad idea and that the phrase should be deleted. Instead, members at our assembly clearly and overwhelmingly opted for our proposed amendment, demanding that the leadership should publish detailed minutes of all its meetings and that all of our elected leaders should be instantly recallable and only receive the average skilled workers’ wage, donating the rest to the party. We do not want MPs defecting to Your Party for careerist reasons: they should be representing the working class, and it is very difficult to do that when you are on almost £100,000 a year (plus many, many expenses and freebies)!
The visualisation exercise also had the added benefit that comrades knew exactly what the emergency motion moved by the Sheffield steering committee was about, because it featured all those amendments - and they were able to make an informed decision when voting on it. A couple of friendly(ish) amendments were accepted, but we did vote down a proposal demanding that platforms and tendencies should be forced to publish their minutes - this obviously should only be a requirement for elected leadership bodies, who should be held accountable by the members, not for platforms and tendencies.
We did not discuss the political statement at great length - mainly because it is so vague. Quite a few comrades criticised the fact that it is way too short and makes references to cross-class alliances rather than the need to focus on the working class (which is everybody who has to sell their labour power, as well as all of those depending on the ‘wages fund’ - pensioners, students, carers, the disabled and long-term sick etc). Comrades also criticised the fact that it presents “redistribution of wealth and power” as the apparent solution, when in fact it is no such thing: the “billionaires” (presented in the document as the problem) would, firstly, use their considerable influence and wealth to prevent any government enforcing such laws - and could also just relocate elsewhere.
In today’s global economy, national solutions are no solutions at all. It is not the billionaires, but the system of international capitalism, that we have to overcome. Comrades also said that the statement should be much more focused on explaining what socialism/communism actually is (ie, the rule of the working class), and how we can get there. “Rip it up and start again”, was mentioned a few times.
In this final feedback session, many comrades also, rather unsurprisingly, expressed unhappiness with the lack of transparency and that there are no methods to actually concretely change the four founding documents. “Who decides which comments and edits are accepted and which ones aren’t?”, as one comrade put it. I think many appreciated the chance to actually vote on some of the policies, rather than doing an ‘edit’ on their computer, in the hope that somebody, somewhere will at least read it (which is very doubtful).
The Sheffield emergency motion expressed many of those frustrations and focused on the need to democratise the foundation process, as well as the party more generally, and that was agreed by an overwhelming majority at the assembly, with nobody voting against.
No doubt, we would have done things quite differently if we had known from the beginning that we could organise the assembly ourselves. For a start, I certainly would have argued against putting people into little working groups for most of the day. Although many said they found them useful, I think they are limited in what they can achieve. Yes, they can be good for educational purposes: comrades are more likely to ask questions and seek clarification. But in terms of collective decision-making, they are a hindrance and actually disempower members. By the time you get to the feedback session, everybody is knackered and just wants to go home.
No privileges
A number of issues were raised, briefly, which should really have been discussed in more detail. For example, an amendment was agreed that “Trades unions and other bodies should not have separate arrangements or special privileges”. We did not have time to properly discuss what exactly that means - there might well be a need for ‘separate arrangements’, without that leading to any automatic representation or privileges.
Another comrade mentioned in passing that they thought there should be more organised sections that should have automatic representation on the YP leadership body. Not a great idea, in my view (and the opposite of what was agreed in the emergency motion). But there just was not enough time to properly discuss any of those differences, because we had to be out of the room.
Overall, however, this was a very useful event and it was good fun working with comrades across the region in planning it. Many members have told us since that they found it a lively and invigorating event, with one comrade from Doncaster even describing it as “the best event I’ve been at this century”. That might have been a little over the top (though gratefully received), but it certainly was a very useful, as well as enjoyable, expression of member-led, democratic organisation.