22.10.2026

Programme for a kingdom

Among those expelled under the anti-communist proscribed list is Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP and former deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain. Steve Freeman calls for his reinstatement and an urgent change of course

Republic Your Party remains steadfastly in favour of staying in Your Party and fighting for a new programme. We, therefore, call on all members to:

• Oppose the expulsion of Chris Williamson;
• Defend democratic rights in Your Party;
• Support the rights of dual members.

An injury to one is injury to all.

Chris Williamson attended the launch of the Derbyshire branch of Your Party on August 13 and took minutes for the meeting. Two days later he received an email from the Your Party membership team informing him that he was expelled from the party by membership cancellation. They say: “As Your Party membership is not compatible with current membership of another political party, your membership has now been removed from the membership system.”

Chris replied to the membership team on August 27 and appealed against his expulsion. He said: “I attended the inaugural conference of Your Party in Liverpool last year, at which dual membership was agreed. Consequently, your assertion that my ‘membership is not compatible with current membership of another political party’ is not consistent with the decision that was agreed at conference.”

The allegation that Chris is a member of “another political party” is correct. It is no secret, because he has always been open about it. He was a Labour MP, unlawfully suspended from the Labour Party on February 27 2019. He resigned in November 2019. He joined the Workers Party of Britain in July 2023 and became its deputy leader in December. In August 2025 he joined Your Party as an openly declared dual member. He applied to attend the Your Party founding conference and was selected via the sortition process.

His first ‘expulsion’ [from YP] took place on November 28 2025 - the day before the Liverpool conference opened. He received an email expelling him for being a member of “another political party”. However, he attended the conference and was allowed to participate as a full member. The founding conference then ‘resolved’ the issue by voting in favour of dual membership. In February 2026, Chris tried to stand in the central executive committee (CEC) elections. He was barred, but not expelled. He remained a dual member until the launch of the Derbyshire branch of Your Party on August 13 and his second expulsion.

Who and why?

At any political crime scene, the question is, who did it and why? Who carried this out? Who was responsible? It raises the question of the governance model. We know the membership team took this decision. Did they have the authority to ban the Workers Party? Did they act alone or did the CEC sanction it? Is it in the minutes of the CEC? Did Jeremy Corbyn know and support this? Were members consulted?

Of course, this is not a legal case. Nevertheless, Your Party has contractual relations with its employees and members. It entered a financial and moral contract with Chris. It took his membership subscriptions for 10 months in full knowledge of his membership of the WPB. A court would inquire whether there was a breach of contract, not least because there was no misconduct by Chris.

Courts demand accountability and transparency. They expect and require truthful answers about what was really going on behind the scenes. They would look carefully at the words and intentions of the constitution. As sovereign members, we expect no lower standard of probity than demanded by courts.

The first and most obvious explanation for the expulsion is that this action was not a political decision or anything to do with class politics. It was simply the application of the rule that says nobody can be a member of “another political party”. The team, acting alone, applied the rules without fear or favour.

This theory stands in contrast to a political explanation, which locates this decision in struggle (ie, class struggle). Chris is a political activist and comrade, not simply ‘member No567’ on the membership spreadsheet. All political actors in this story are in struggle, driven by theories and motives. It is not simply whether we are ‘for’ or ‘against’ Chris’s expulsion, but what we learn from this about Your Party’s direction of travel.

Why has this expulsion taken place and why now? What is the political motive? It should not be assumed this is an isolated incident. There is a pattern of struggles; a chain of events that go back even before Your Party was launched. There is a wider context traced back to the Labour Party. This expulsion is a moment in a struggle over the future of the left and the attempt to build Your Party.

The first question is whether this expulsion is linked to the political-ideological struggle over the party programme. This possible motive seems absent from consideration. The programme was not discussed or fought over at the founding conference. It seems to be Your Party’s ‘elephant in the room’. Is the issue really about a programme concealed from members? We will have to go back to find the divisions over programme in the Labour Party now replicated in Your Party.

Constitutional struggle is the most obvious source for the motive. It is not simply that Chris is being expelled for allegedly breaching the constitution: the rules are being rewritten through conflict. The leadership of Your Party is redefining and reshaping the constitution by putting their boots on the ground some distance from where they should be. It makes common sense to locate the motives for Chris’s expulsion here.

Labour origins

The great achievement of the 1945 Labour government was to establish a ‘social monarchy’ to restore stability in post-war Britain through a social contract with the working class. What became the Elizabethan welfare state is recognisable to the ‘baby boomers’. The destruction of that settlement - begun by Margaret Thatcher and extended by Labour - lasted until the September 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader called it into question.

The origins of Your Party are from within the Labour Party. Its roots are in the crisis of Labour in the 1990s following the victory of Thatcher and the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers and the trade union movement. New lines of demarcation were drawn between New Labour under Tony Blair, the defence of ‘old Labour’ or ‘socialist Labour’ (Scargill) and Tony Benn’s Commonwealth Bill as the source of ‘republican Labour’.

In 1997 New Labour was triumphant. Scargill had split from Labour to form the Socialist Labour Party. Benn was marginalised. His republican Commonwealth Bill was unrecognised and unloved by the working class movement. What was missing from this picture was an independent, working class republican party which would turn the idea of a ‘commonwealth’ into a class issue.

By 2005 the Socialist Labour Party had failed, but its programme idea had followers in the Socialist Alliance and Respect. New Labour ideology was destroyed in 2007-08 by financial crisis in the ‘free’ markets of the City of London. By 2015 New Labour was completely discredited. However, the idea of ‘socialist Labour’ made its great comeback through the joint leadership of Jeremy Corbyn/John McDonnell. A programme to restore the social monarchy presented itself in the Labour manifestoes of 2017 and 2019.

McDonnell was central to the Corbyn-Labour project. He described himself as a ‘socialist’ who aimed to become “the first socialist Labour chancellor”. Like Corbyn, he believed in reforming the constitutional monarchy with an elected House of Lords, electoral reform (proportional representation), allowing a second referendum for Scotland and English devolution. In an interview with Iain Dale he said, “I describe myself as a socialist. I think I’m in the tradition of the Attlee government.”

After 2017 the Corbyn-McDonnell programme of restoration came under the hammer blows of the Crown-In-Parliament, the BBC, the national press and the Zionist lobby. A split began to open in the Corbyn-McDonnell alliance. This was most visible in the divergence between John McDonnell and Chris Williamson.

Chris Williamson was Labour leader of Derby City Council and then a Labour MP for Derby North from 2010 to 2015, and 2017 to 2019. Under the Corbyn leadership, he was one of the staunchest defenders of Jeremy in the Parliamentary Labour Party. He promoted Labour Party democracy with his ‘Democracy Road Show’ tour. His politics stood broadly in the Labour tradition of Arthur Scargill, George Galloway, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, etc.

From 2018 the crisis in the Corbyn-McDonnell Labour Party opened up a fracture between a ‘Corbyn right’ represented by Sir Keir Starmer and McDonnell and the ‘Corbyn left’. Chris was a voice for the ‘Corbyn left’, acting in solidarity with falsely accused and slandered Labour members. He actively supported expelled members Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone and worked with the Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW) campaign.

In taking this stance, Chris became a target for the Labour right and general secretary Jennie Formby. In February 2019 he was suspended from the party and had the Labour whip withdrawn by the Parliamentary Labour Party. He was reinstated in June, and this caused a huge furore inside the PLP. Around 150 Labour MPs signed a motion calling for the whip to be withdrawn for a year. Then Formby intervened and resuspended him. The High Court ruled that Labour’s second suspension of Williamson was procedurally unlawful.

Formby continued to find new ways to frustrate the High Court and keep Chris suspended, so that he could not contest the seat for Derby North again. Despite being promised support by Jeremy Corbyn, this did not materialise. Some have said that Chris became the sacrificial lamb for the ‘greater good’ of fending off the Labour right and the Zionist lobby to win the 2019 general election. If so, then the tactic of throwing your allies under the bus failed spectacularly.

In February 2020 the Labour Left Alliance (LLA) was launched in Sheffield with delegates from LAW and local groups from, for example, Brighton and Bristol. Speakers included Jackie Walker, Tina Werkman and Jo Bird among about 130 delegates and over 1,500 supporters. The LLA voted to support Rebecca Long-Bailey for Labour leader and Richard Burgon for deputy leader.

The LLA set up a ‘Republican Labour’ working group to investigate republican ideas and policies, taking inspiration from Tony Benn’s Commonwealth Bill. In September 2021 ‘Resist’, a political campaign supported by Chris, organised a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference on ‘Socialists, republicanism and proportional representation”.

Over the next two years, two trends - Socialist Labour and Republican Labour - emerged within the LLA. In January 2022 a section of the LLA set up the Socialist Labour Network through a merger of LAW and the Labour In Exile Network (LIEN). In January 2023 the Republican Labour Education Forum (RLEF) was launched by the working group as an independent organisation. The RLEF presented Benn’s case for a republic to the Workers Party Political Committee.

In November 2025 the Corbyn-Labour movement gathered in Liverpool to launch Your Party without John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon, etc. Supporters of the RLEF attended and issued the first Republic Your Party leaflet. Former allies in the Parliamentary Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Williamson, were back together in the same party at the same conference. Jeremy Corbyn arrived as leader, while Chris arrived as an ordinary member, ready to consider a republican direction.

Both Jeremy and Chris were driven out of the Labour Party. The whip was removed by the Corbyn Labour Party to prevent Chris standing as a Labour candidate in 2019. In 2024 Corbyn suffered a similar fate at the hands of Starmer’s Labour. They were joined by Zarah Sultana, who resigned the Labour whip to help found Your Party. Liverpool was also a magnet for a variety of socialist and communist groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party in England and Wales, RS21, the CPGB, etc.

YP constitution

The dominant programme at the Liverpool founding conference remained the Corbyn-McDonnell (CMcD) Labour manifesto from 2017 to 2019. It was not discussed or its validity questioned. It was simply assumed. The most important fact about Liverpool was that it did not debate or agree a programme for Your Party. As a result, the CMcD manifesto remains the default. This ‘elephant in the room’ continues as the guiding hand of Your Party, from which subsequent events unfolded.

The main struggle in Liverpool became a conflict within the Corbyn Labour ‘family’ between a Corbyn-Murphy right trend and a left trend led by Zarah Sultana, supported by left Corbynistas and all the left groups. This bloc became the Grassroots Left, which played the Corbyn game of constitutionalism. The principal question of politics (ie, programme) was ‘the dog that didn’t bark’.

The YP founding conference ‘reunited’ two ex-MPs who led the Labour Party in 2019 or led the Corbyn ‘left’ opposition to Zionism and the witch-hunt. Now Chris was extending the ‘Democracy Road Show’ to Benn’s criticism of the Westminster system and forming an alliance with some supporters of the Republican Labour Education Forum in recognising the importance of Tony Benn’s 1991 Commonwealth Bill. At Liverpool, however, Republic YP was only an idea, not an organised platform.

Left unity was the spirit of Liverpool. Working class opposition to Labour from the left was fragmented into multiple groups. Left unity was an important objective for building a mass alternative to the Labour Party and against the rise of right populism. It made good sense for parties and groups to cooperate, pool resources and ultimately merge. If the left could work together, it could gain the confidence and the goodwill of working class activists.

Dual membership was welcomed and agreed by the Liverpool conference in the spirit of unity. This was the intelligence of the ‘ordinary’ working-class activists, not the politics of sectarianism. It was aimed at overcoming the fragmentation of the left. Your Party did not demand you simply give up your existing membership and commit to a party that does not even have a programme yet or a record of struggle.

The Liverpool conference voted for dual membership. This was made clear in the constitution, clause 4 xii. The principal part comes first - giving permission to hold membership in “other national political parties”. The qualifications in the sub-section are not intended to abolish the primary purpose of this clause about encouraging left unity in a newly forming left party. The sub-clause is about an agreed process to facilitate the principle. Hence it concerns other parties, “where they have been approved by the CEC as aligning with the party’s values, to include those with whom the party cooperates electorally” (my emphasis). It adds a democratic requirement that “The approved list shall be subject to ongoing CEC review and annual ratification by National Conference.”

The socialist left in Scotland was inspired by Your Party and organised a founding conference of YP Scotland on February 7-8 in Dundee. By all accounts it was very good conference, well organised and conducted in a comradely way, with real policy disagreements decided by democratic means.

Republicanism is largely ignored by the left in England, although it is very present in Northern Ireland. It is inherent in the constitutional crisis in Scotland and Wales. A republican programme in the UK is indissolubly bound up with anti-unionism. Most of the socialist left in Scotland is in favour of Scottish independence and hence a Scottish republic, not a constitutional monarchy. This stands in stark contrast to the Corbyn-McDonnell unionist programme.

Unlike the Liverpool conference, YP in Scotland could not avoid the programme question. In Dundee, the anti-unionist republicans won a majority. To add insult to injury, the conference approved an interim Scottish executive committee (ISEC) with an anti-unionist majority. Corbyn and Sultana both spoke at the Scottish conference and it was rumoured that he was not happy. But, like all skilful politicians, he would bite his lip and wait.

The English left was happy enough to ignore the national programme, being focused on local and regional politics. In Scotland it was not possible to ignore the programme issues carried over from the unionist CMcD manifesto. In England, the national question was ignored, but appeared in the disguise of the Liverpool constitution. Scotland and Wales were allocated one seat each on the CEC, while each English region was awarded with two. It did not occur to Your Party’s English unionists that this might be provocative and insulting.

The next step was the CEC elections, whose results were announced on February 26. This was a key moment in the development of Your Party. After the election four platforms were represented on the CEC - The Many, the Grassroots Left, the Platform for a Democratic Party and Republic Your Party. The Corbyn-McDonnell Labour programme appeared as The Many. The main left-Corbyn alternative, the Grassroots Left, was led by Zarah Sultana and backed up by the various socialist/communist groups.

CEC candidate

Chris Williamson had tried to stand as a CEC candidate for Republic Your Party in the East Midlands, along with four other candidates in England and one new supporter in Scotland. Chris was a dual member, so he was barred from standing in the CEC election. This action was undemocratic, not least because it implied two-tier membership. It denied members in the East Midlands a chance to hear Tony Benn’s case from a comrade with a strong record of supporting working-class struggles.

The result was a clear victory for The Many with 14 seats, while Grassroots Left secured seven. Three seats went to independents. Significantly, Niall Christie, a supporter of Republic YP, was elected to represent Scottish members. In The Many and Republic YP we have two opposed views about the democratic future of the United Kingdom.

The main conflict in Liverpool between Corbyn and Sultana ended with a constitution that supported dual membership. However, once the CEC was in place, it took up the struggle over programme. It began by moving against Scottish republicanism and the various socialist/communist programmes. These issues of programme were not debated or voted on: they were resolved by imposition ‘from above’ through expulsions and resignations.

There was no debate about the future constitutional relations between the people of England and Scotland. Instead, the new CEC planned a coup and simply overthrew the ISEC elected at the Dundee conference and set aside the decisions taken by the Scottish membership. This seriously undermined the credibility of YP in Scotland. In protest the ISEC resigned. CEC member Niall Christie resigned in solidarity with the Scottish executive. It was a major setback for supporters of the republican programme.

In April the CEC produced a paper called ‘Dual party membership eligibility’ and subtitled ‘CEC governance paper - status: internal governance. Date: April 2026’. This document is long and complex. In section 3 on the ‘Principle of organisational independence’, the paper distinguishes between two kinds of party. The first is a broad left party (“a broad left approach and the values that underlie it”), in contrast to “a number of small, self-described revolutionary parties that operate according to principles of democratic centralism”.

The practical conclusion of section 3 is found in section 5, ‘Ineligible organisation’. It says: “Membership of the following organisations is deemed not to be aligned to our Party’s values and proposed as ineligible for the purposes of Your Party membership rules (this is not an exhaustive list)”: It lists the SWP, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Socialist Party, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (Tusc), the CPGB (Provisional Central Committee), the Scottish Socialist Party, the Socialist Equality Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party.

The distinction between “self-described revolutionary” and “broad left” parties should leave members of Tusc and the WPB as dual members. Indeed, because of an objection from CEC member Sam Gorst, Tusc was rightly removed from the banned list of ‘revolutionary’ parties.

The CEC governance paper contains an “Additional principle”. This appears as a huge net designed to catch all the fish in the sea. It says:

The constitution should also apply to: Any organisation that:

• Operates as a democratic centralist party or organisation
• Maintains its own national political membership structure
• Requires political discipline and accountability to an external leadership or programme.

Such organisations would automatically fall within the scope of the ineligibility rule.

The Liverpool conference supported dual membership in principle and left practical details to be worked out later. The door was left open for the new CEC to overturn the decision on membership. The constitution refers to an approved list, but nothing was ‘approved’. Instead, a banned list was invented and grows longer. This is unconstitutional.

Any party in the UK that “maintains its own national political membership structure” will “automatically fall within the scope of the ineligibility rule” (ie, ‘be ineligible’ if you prefer fewer words). This catchall phrase about “national political membership” shows no intention of abiding by the spirit or letter of the Liverpool conference. Since every party has its own “national political membership”, then dual membership is reduced to zero.

The constitution recognises an approved list for dual membership. It does not recognise a banned list. A banned list is unconstitutional. It is an idea outside the constitution and has no status in a party where the leadership abides by the rules. The members at Liverpool avoided a banned list for good reason. Many recognised this would create an atmosphere of ‘reds under the bed’ and fuel sectarian paranoia. It would give the impression of a party that is weak and lacks self-confidence in its programme.

The banned list was invented by the CEC not to draw working-class people towards the party, but to exclude people. It goes against the letter and the spirit of the Liverpool constitution. Even though the banned list is all about constitutional rules, its purpose was programmatic. It says, indirectly, that Your Party is not a communist party defined by a revolutionary programme. The revolutionary programme has been shown the door.

Democratic struggle

The question arises as to which parties are approved to allow dual membership. Should it include Labour, the Greens, the Workers Party or Tusc? If so, members of these parties are welcome in Your Party without having to give up their pre-existing party membership. This is a political decision and should be taken through a democratic process.

The CEC, as the elected leadership, may want to make a recommendation and provide members with a rationale. Nevertheless, the members must be consulted, with an opportunity to amend or reject any proposal. There should be a process and an effort to win a majority or consensus about whether Labour, the Greens, the Workers Party or Tusc should be on the approved list.

The decision is about parties first, not individual members. Once a party is put on the approved list or rejected, then Your Party members must be informed. A comradely discussion should take place with the member concerned. Individual comrades who are already dual members should be given the opportunity to discuss their membership and find accommodation, resign or refuse and appeal their case.

The struggle over democracy in the Your Party leadership led to crisis. Niall Christie was the first resignation. On July 3, three CEC members - Mel Mullings, Solma Ahmed and Naomi Wimborne Idrissi - were suspended by the national secretary. Sam Gorst resigned on July 17. Three officers and one CEC member resigned. A vote of no confidence in Jenny Forbes was carried and then overruled. On August 14, Solma Ahmed, Sophie Wilson and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi resigned from the CEC. The next day Chris Williamson was expelled.

Programme

Chris was expelled by the membership team - this is a fact. We do not know who was behind it or why. Was it simply because of ‘the rules’ or the struggle by the party leadership to redefine the YP constitution, or a manifestation of the hidden politics of struggle for the YP programme. In the latter case the words ‘Jeremy’ and ‘Chris’ represent a struggle between different programmes.

In politics, motive and struggle are connected. In this we need to see the bigger picture, relating events inside Your Party to the wider crisis in the country and the political struggle within the left about the programme we need to confront it. The expulsion of the “self-described revolutionary” programmes of various communist groups will begin to reveal the real contradiction at the heart of Your Party. It is between the programme of social monarchy or ‘socialism’ as its supporters claim, and the social republic or ‘republicanism’.

The United Kingdom is built on an historical fault line between conservative, loyalist unionism and democratic, republican anti-unionism. In Northern Ireland this fact is clear and obvious. The Good Friday Agreement was designed to paper over the cracks. In England, Your Party (UK) is being built over these constitutional tectonic plates. The current ‘crisis of democracy’ is a tremor that should alert us to the coming danger of a political earthquake.

The Corbyn-McDonnell movement won the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015 on a programme to restore the social monarchy. The 2017 Labour manifesto proved popular with voters. Yet in 2019, after the Brexit vote, it was defeated in the general election. Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn were excluded as Labour candidates in 2019 and 2024 respectively. Both joined Your Party and attended the Liverpool conference in November 2025.

However, they drew opposite conclusions from their experiences. Jeremy had been a leading supporter of Tony Benn’s republican bill in the House of Commons, but he set it aside in becoming Labour leader. Chris moved in the opposite direction. As a supporter of Jeremy, he opposed Zionism and promoted Labour Party democracy and mandatory reselection. Becoming a left critic of ‘Corbynism’ led him back to Benn’s republic.

The Liverpool conference brought Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Williamson back together in the same party, but on different sides of the fault line running through British politics. The party needs a strong voice for a republican programme that alone can extend democratic public control over the economy and end the crown’s imperialist policies. It cannot succeed by tying itself to the sinking ship of Labour’s social monarchy, even with captain Burnham at the helm.

Support for Chris’s right to continue as a member of Your Party is first and foremost political and programmatic. The republican ideas of Tony Benn and Chris Williamson must be freely available inside Your Party. We would have supported Tony Benn’s right and necessity to bring his republican programme into Your Party as a member even if he retained his Labour Party card.

The democratic interests of the working class set out in the party programme come first. This is independent of constitutional rules, such as clause xiv. Dual membership is not a principle, but a tactic to gather the best advocates for working-class democracy into a new kind of party. It is not therefore a permanent rule. It should be implemented as intended, at least until a programme is agreed or a second conference is held.

Clause 4(xii) is useful if it permits or enables comrades like Chris Williamson and Tony Benn to be full members of Your Party, despite membership of the Labour Party or the WPB. This was the intention of the Liverpool conference, to enable more left-wing people to join Your Party. When all the obfuscations and interpretations of rules have been dispersed, the reality is that all working class republicans - like Chris - should be in Your Party and no rules should be put in their way.

However, the application of clause xiv by the membership team disregards the democratic norms of Liverpool. It is like the high-handed way the decisions of the Dundee conference were treated when the CEC overthrew the ISEC. They have turned it into a barrier or bureaucratic entanglement, whilst maintaining a fiction.

Clause 4(xii) has been stolen by supporters of social monarchy and unionism in the guise of The Many. Supporters of the republican programme do not need to demand a change in this clause, but its implementation as intended. Otherwise, it should be scrapped forthwith because it has become a deceit.