People’s Assemblies – an idea whose time has come ?

 30th November 2024

People’s Assemblies aren’t a new idea, but interest in them has been growing recently in this country because groups such as Extinction Rebellion have been advocating for them. Unlike Citizens Assemblies which are representative bodies randomly selected from the population, a People’s Assembly is open to anyone to attend. it’s a place where members of a community can discuss issues or make decisions collectively, and where (in theory at least) all voices are heard and valued equally and no one person or group are able to dominate the process.

A number of Collective-backed independent candidates are interested in the Assembly model, or versions of it. The idea, and the politics behind it, are a good fit for candidates who see themselves as representatives of local communities standing against candidates who are beholden only to the parties that they belong to.

Sean Halsall, the independent candidate for Southport, believes that “just winning power is not good enough if you’re not going to use that to deliver transformative change.” The kind of change that he means is doing politics in a different way. 

“I did my first one,” he says, “a couple of weeks ago, one tomorrow night and then another one the week after. So I’ll have covered the skeleton of the constituency, all the way up… Win or lose that’s something I’m going to continue doing, continue holding these assemblies, and continue building that power in the communities.

These spaces should be for everyone, we shouldn’t allow the people just who’ve gone to Winchester and Eton and these places to represent us.

It is nurses, care workers, child minders, people who work in hospitality, bus drivers, these are the people who represent the vast majority of this country’s interests, so we should be not afraid to take these spaces and not ashamed to fill them with our politics.“

It’s ingrained on us from childhood how lucky we are to live in a democracy. Under our parliamentary system though, democracy is little more than an illusion. Media platforms, political parties and politicians compete to set the agenda while most of us look passively on. Asking politicians a question is about as close as some get to political activism, reinforcing the notion that politicians are somehow better qualified than the rest of us to come up with answers. Popular Assemblies turn this on its head:  as far as possible you want the community to be raising issues, setting the agenda, and working towards solutions.

Shanell Johnson, the independent candidate for Leyton and Wanstead, agrees that we should be looking for a new model of democracy which gives power back to communities. “She says she is running a community-led campaign, representing the collective voice of residents rather than a singular politician’s. The teacher and consultant told us: ‘It’s no use putting all your faith in one person – that’s where I think we’ve gone wrong with politics.’”

The house of the people

On Wednesday July 17th, people who’ve been involved in or inspired by community assemblies linked to independent candidates will converge for an all-day event in South London billed as the State Opening of a New House of the People. The hope is that this could be the start of something bigger, and that it will grow organically as more popular assemblies are started up in different localities, eventually becoming a model of what a people centred alternative to our broken political system could look like.

If you’re interested in finding out more about People’s Assemblies, and maybe starting one up where you live, please go to the Assemble website.