Report from meeting in East London on 11 August 2024

This meeting was called by Assemble to build on assemblies that took place around the
country leading to Assemble financially supporting 28 independent candidates in the
General election.

It was attended by about 70 people, some of whom had come because they had been
involved in local assemblies and worked on independent campaigns; many others just
came as individuals. The attendees were seated at tables in groups of seven and a facilitator.

The event was run by the Assemble ‘Core Team’. Core Team members spoke about the
project, its vision, and its electoral strategy. Two Independent election candidates, Kamel Hawwash and Shanell Johnson, spoke about their campaigns.

There were two discussion sessions at the tables followed by general feedback, a vote on key issues for discussion by a House of the People, and a social event.

A House of the People

Speakers from the Core Team explained that the plan was for a House of the People to be
convened as a permanent Citizens’ Assembly to discuss and decide on a range of
proposals/demands to be put forward to the Government.

The constitution of the House of the People would be 50% people from local assemblies
(chosen by lottery) and 50% from the general public chosen in a similar way to that juries
are chosen. Ultimately the organisers would like to see this replace the House of Lords
as a second parliamentary chamber. But in the immediate term it would be convened as
a permanent citizen’s assembly. The event booklet said:

“This House of the People will be a Citizens’ Assembly, existing outside the
establishment – a permanent home for inclusive-decision making that meets
regularly across the country, where people are selected – like a jury – to serve the
interests of the nation.“

Electoral Strategy

The aim was to continue Local Assemblies in the areas that had used the model, and to
build them in all other areas. The Local Assemblies would each decide five key demands to
be put to their Local Council.

If the Local Authority did not accept and act on the demands, the Assemblies would
mobilise through a variety of means to achieve the demands, for each assembly to
decide. These might include: withholding payments (Council Tax, rents etc); rallies; sit-ins; and standing candidates in Council elections

Nationally, the House of the people would work up priority demands from those chosen
by the Local Assemblies and submit these to Parliament, with mass mobilisations around
them if they were not accepted and acted on.

Once a framework of Local Assemblies and the House of the People were in place these
would be the basis for a new party, built from the ground up through assemblies, to
contest national elections. New leaders would emerge from this process. The
mobilisations by Assemblies and the House of the People would catalyse political
‘tipping points’ and channel a social movement for change.

Role of today’s ‘House of the People’ meeting

The role of today’s meeting was to prioritise issues that had come out of the local
assemblies convened so far. These would be sent for consideration by the House of the
People when it was convened.

The round table discussions considered 2 questions:
1) What do you not trust politics to deliver for our country? (which was clarified to
mean what do you not trust our current political system and politicians to deliver
for our country).
2) Based on the report from all the assemblies so far – What do you think are the most
important issues/areas/themes the House of the People should address and why (the most popular was ‘End Support for Genocide and Unjust War’).

Some thoughts on the meeting

The plan seems to me to be over conceptual and unlikely to be realistic given the
relatively small base of local assemblies it is based on so far. I do not think this will be the
vehicle either for a new left party or for a new political system (let alone for overturning
the capitalist mode of production and system-change).

There are many weaknesses in the process Assemble is following, but also some
strengths. I don’t think we should prioritise Assemble, but there are some ideas that we
could learn from and develop within our political practice.

Weaknesses & questions

The attendees were self-selecting, rather than representing local assemblies (or the
wider community) and the attendance was relatively low and predominantly white.

It was very directed. The agenda, questions and filtering of issues from local assemblies
was carried out by the Assemble Core Team – no explanation was given about where the
core team derives authority from or how it is comprised/selected. Any new initiative is
likely to have a democratic deficit, but there was no indication about how the organisation
of the project could be democratised going forward, or whether there was even any
intention to do so.

The discussions at the tables were wide-ranging, but were summarised and reduced to a
few bullet points by a combination of a facilitator and a note-taker. The vote was on pre-decided headings,
themselves filtered (by whom?) from manifesto discussions in previous local assemblies.

There was no clear plan for, or discussion about, how to get from discussion circles to a
representative party or organisation rather than just a bigger discussion circle.

Strengths

The meeting brought together a wide variety of people and, through small group
discussion, allowed everyone to have a voice. The discussion was collaborative and
developmental of themes, rather than combative (although much of that value was then
lost through the distillation into a limited number of bullet points)

The assembly model at local level provides a potential vehicle for community
discussions about local priorities and, through inclusion in the policy development
process, for mobilisation of a wide section of the community around key demands.

Going Forward

I think we can learn something from the assembly model about how we can engage and
potentially mobilise a wider level of the community than we are likely to include within
the membership of a new party, at least for the foreseeable future. It may be useful for
some of our members to take up the training offered in organising and running assemblies
to see what aspects of the process might improve our own practice.

Where members have the capacity it can be worthwhile to attend Assemble events
nationally as networking opportunities, and participate in local assemblies where they
exist.

But I do not think, given our resources and our aim to bring about a new left party within
a reasonably urgent timescale, that we should devote resources to building Assemble, or
initiating local Assemble groups independently where they do not already exist.

Doug Thorpe (supplemented by Linda Heiden)