By Jeremy Dewar – Workers Power – UK

Against all the odds, the All London Delegate Assembly of Your Party met on Sunday 8 February in Chat’s Palace, Homerton. We held successful hustings for the Central Executive Committee elections, debated motions from the proto-branches around the capital, and decided our next steps.

There were around 65 of us in the hall with a few more online, with just over half of us being elected delegates and the rest observers with speaking, but not voting rights. The atmosphere was one of excitement and comradeship. Most of the left who are active in YP were represented.

Hustings

The first thing we did, correctly but ironically given the inclusivity of the event, was to vote to ratify the organising committee’s decision to disinvite Piers Corbyn from the hustings.

We were sent a video of Piers Corbyn on a far right demo outside an asylum hotel holding a giant placard with the words, ‘Shut the hotels – Seize the boats’ on it. He was clearly on good terms with the fascist organisers of the protest. The motion, which also called on the interim leadership to expel Piers Corbyn, was carried unanimously.

Hustings are Q&A panel sessions, where voters can ask questions of the candidates, in this case for the CEC elections. This took up all of the morning session, in which we heard eight candidates give their introductory spiel; then delegates’ names were drawn from a hat and invited to put a question.

In a useful innovation, we were then asked if anyone would like to ask a supplementary question. This allowed us to penetrate deeper into controversial issues, and was most useful when questioning candidates’ positions on transwomen’s rights to use single sex spaces that accord with their gender, and on their views of the Ukraine war.

Valerie Cousins was forced to defend her opposition to transwomen’s rights, even though the mood in the room was clearly in favour of trans rights (as was YP Conference in November). That Cousins was listened to respectfully was a credit fto the democratic instincts of the assembly.

But on Ukraine, only Ruth Cashman (AWL) supported Ukraine’s right to self-determination, with others, like Raj Gill, claiming still that the war was started by NATO – a terrible campist distortion of reality, which blindsides socialists in navigating the web of international relations in the coming period. However, Cashman was deceptively free with her commitment to opposing NATO. Indeed the AWL has rarely if ever opposed British imperialism and its allies, in Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Afghanistan.

Anahita Zaragoshti and Mel Mullins from the Grassroots Left Slate both gave a confident account of themselves, though it is probably fair to say that we learned nothing new. Most of the members present had already decided to vote for the GLS candidates because of the overriding necessity to win a left majority on the CEC, but it was useful to hear the others, some of whom could clearly become allies after the count.

Motions

After lunch we reconvened to hear a proposal from the organising committee, which essentially agreed to reconvene in the near future and keep the coordination of the London branches going. This was passed and we set the date of 21 Marchfor the next Assembly.

Having done this we agreed to hear five motions which were clubbed together as the ‘3 L’s’: local services, local democracy and local struggles. Of these the motion to produce a 10-point Manifesto for London, proposed by Workers Power via the Southwark branch, was the most far-reaching.

This motion built on the YP Conference commitment to stand candidates on a No Cuts platform in the forthcoming council elections. It called for the no cuts pledge to be combined with a commitment to promise no rent or council tax rises, no raiding of reserves and no job cuts or downgrading of posts. 

Most importantly it sought to break with the reformist conception of elections as passive gathering of votes, and focus on elections as a means to ‘mobilise the working class to stop all cuts and fight for  these changes with protests, direct action, occupations and strikes’.

The speaker drew enthusiastic applause for the slogans, ‘Break the law, not the poor!’ and ‘Other parties chase votes, Your Party mobilises the resistance!’

We did get to vote on motions, chosen by delegates during the lunch break, on allowing members of socialist propaganda groups to join YP, on permitting non-binary and trans people to participate in YP elections, and demanding the leadership adopt the most progressive of the proportionate representation (PR) systems for the CEC elections. All were passed.

More contentious were the two motions on the Together Alliance. While the first was less controversial and simply committed us to organising a YP bloc on the 28 March demo, the second one asked us to ‘sign up’ to the TA statement. For a significant minority of delegates, this was a step too far. The TA is a popular front, which restricts its activities and messaging to what is acceptable to the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois parties and celebrities in its ranks. As one delegate put it, ‘Peace & Love is not a working class slogan.’

Katie Alexander (Hacknet YP, SWP) tried to defend the tactic by saying ‘We can do both: a popular front and a workers’ united front.’ But the truth is the trade union leaders are rushing to sign up to the former in order never to have to do the latter. However, both motions were passed overwhelmingly.

Next steps

The organising of the first ALDA was a great achievement. But it only represented the first tentative steps. Although the 35 delegates represented the political views of over 400 YP members across over 20 boroughs, and although this was all achieved, along with other campaigning activities, without access to the membership data, guarded jealously by the unelected bureaucracy, it is still far too small.

We need to triple the size of the next assembly in March.

Furthermore we need to stand together against any attempt by the incoming CEC, especially if Jeremy Corbyn’s bureaucratic right wing The Many faction wins a majority, to break up the proto-branches and only recognise those based on parliamentary constituencies.

This will be a battle. But it is a battle we can win. The comradeship and unity shown at the assembly must be carried forward if we are to build a member-led, democratic and, above all, fighting party of the working class.

Friday, February 20, 2026