Socialist Students’ statement on Your Party conference
The long-awaited Your Party conference took place in Liverpool at the end of last month. Socialist Students members intervened within the conference, including speaking from the platform, and are looking forward to the opportunity to work within Your Party to fight for young people and socialism.
Despite the summer enthusiasm dwindling after 800k+ signed up to support Your Party, and only 22k of 55k members registering to vote, the mood at the conference represented the appetite for a new mass socialist alternative. Frustrations about how the conference was organised, and spats among the leadership, underpinned much of the debate and influenced how the voting went, with a feeling that this political project needs to work.
Socialist Students national organiser Adam Gillman spoke about the need for Your Party to be explicitly socialist and have “the working class at its heart”. The conference attendees subsequently overwhelmingly voted this way. However, the necessary democratic structures for a mass socialist party of the working class were not established last weekend.
For example, it is regrettable that an element of sortition will remain in place for the next conference – rather than a system of representative democracy which allows Your Party branches, as well as affiliated organisations such as trade unions and other groups, to send delegates.
Socialist Students also believes that Your Party won’t become a mass workers’ party without taking the question of the trade unions – the existing mass organisations of the working class – seriously. In order for that to happen, the relationship with trade unions needs not only to be reviewed (as another motion outlined), but there needs to be a priority of bringing the collective voice of the trade unions into the party, through affiliation, under the democratic control of its members. By not approaching the trade union rank-and-file and campaigning for their collective voice to be heard in Your Party, it only makes it easier for trade union leaders to continue dodging the question of political representation for the working class.
Ninety per cent of voters backed an amendment for needs-based council budgets, rejecting cuts and austerity. Contributions from the floor emphasised how committing to no cuts would distinguish Your Party from the Greens. Zack Polanski, the Greens’ leader, was asked by Socialist Students if he would commit to a similar stand – Zack refused to do so.
However, the conference also chose to limit the number of election candidates for May 2026, which misses the opportunity for a wide anti-austerity stand. Only this could cut across support for Reform UK in a meaningful way: standing socialists on a no-cuts platform in communities where working-class people, out of frustration, are voting for Reform. It is worth remembering that in 2017, 1 million + UKIP voters from 2015 voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity manifesto.
Your Party has the potential to harness the energy of young people and students. Many of us are already struggling for free education, against the cost-of-living crisis, for rent controls, and many other things.
Young people were enthused by Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader – precisely because of his anti-austerity message, and the pledge to scrap tuition fees. Polls over the summer suggested that Your Party was the most popular among young people – this is not a surprise, considering the popularity of Corbyn and the increasing number of young people looking for a way out and towards socialist ideas.
Along with immediately establishing branches, Your Party must develop a formal youth and student section. This party must allow youth to organise and debate the way forward for the problems facing us and the working class, such as the cost of living crisis and climate change.
The slim vote by conference for a collective leadership was positive. The Central Executive Committee (CEC) – made up of 16 normal members, rather than MPs – should have a seat reserved for a youth representative. This would allow young people to democratically elect a socialist to represent their views on the deciding body of the party. The CEC is also preferable to a single leader model as it helps create and develop new leaders rather than dependence on individuals, which without proper contingency plans, can lead to problems when someone needs to step down for whatever reason.
Socialist Students invites the current MPs for Your Party – Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, Shockat Adam, and Ayoub Khan – to do a speaking tour of the universities in the new year. We would be happy to help facilitate these meetings, as an already existing broad socialist organisation on campuses, with groups across the country. These meetings could potentially be ‘launch events’ for a Your Party youth section.
Socialist Students looks forward to a reply from Your Party MPs and to be able to organise within an affiliated democratic youth section.
Socialist Students 