Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
Socialist Party statement
The eruption of enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party in summer 2025 was a product of the huge forces exerted by the acute need for the working class to have its own party.
They are forces that are greater now than at any point since Tony Blair completed his counter-revolution to turn the Labour Party into an out and out party of the capitalist class. For the first time since the immediate aftermath of the 2007-08 economic crisis and Great Recession that followed, the working class is experiencing the harsh reality of a Labour government ruling in the interests of the capitalist class.
The world is increasingly unstable and volatile, accelerated by Donald Trump’s second presidency, with all of the horrors of the capitalist system displayed for all to see.
The collapse of support for the two primary capitalist establishment parties – Tories and Labour – has given space for the rise of Nigel Farage’s right populist Reform. The elections in May – which include to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and every single seat on London councils, as well as thousands more council seats – present a watershed challenge for the hugely unpopular Starmer. As well as a huge opportunity to put the case for a socialist alternative to fight for fully funded local services and council homes.
Had those in the leadership of Your Party taken the correct approach in the months since its announcement, it could have marked a historic step forward for the working class in Britain.
Unfortunately, however, as a result of the wrong approach taken, Your Party is not on route to fulfil the huge potential it initially had. Your Party has been formed without a clear ideological basis on the need for the socialist transformation of society with the working class playing a central role, and without the necessary orientation to the trade unions. Instead, a top-down and undemocratic approach has been taken.
The Your Party Central Executive Committee elections, and importantly the exclusion of Socialist Party members, is a stark demonstration of that wrong approach.
Despite its initial potential, there is no mass participation in Your Party. In its most recent online poll, open to all members, 10,046 voted. As yet, no official structures have been formed. The huge opportunity to, as the Socialist Party has argued, ‘turn to the working class’ by taking a bold socialist, anti-cuts stand into May’s local elections is not being seized.
And yet those tectonic forces that brought Your Party into existence have not gone away and are in fact increasing. The 800,000-plus who signed up in the first weeks have not disappeared. And Jeremy Corbyn’s authority among sections of workers and youth, a legacy from his time as Labour leader, remains.
A rejection of the bureaucratic expulsions faced by socialists in the Labour Party previously, including most recently during Jeremy’s battle against the Blairite machine, is in part behind a desire for ‘unity’ among the majority involved in Your Party. This was shown in the overwhelming conference vote in favour of dual membership.
The instinct that the working class itself is stronger united is absolutely correct. The Socialist Party puts the demand for a new mass party to bring together the mass of the working class to fight in its own interests central.
But unity is not achieved artificially from the top down, or through exclusions and bureaucratic measures. In any new party – even without pre-existing organisations, groups and factions – individuals with shared aims and objectives inevitably come together to organise and decide how best to fight for them. Even at its very young age and with modest numbers participating, the existence of multiple slates for the CEC elections, including ones headed by both Jeremy and Zarah, is a case in point.
Your Party has a potential mass membership of hundreds of thousands, there is no question of the Socialist Party, with around 2,000 members, being able to numerically dominate votes.
On the contrary, our approach is to try to politically convince others through discussion and debate. In fact, we have argued for Your Party to open to affiliations from trade union bodies and for them to have a collective democratic voice in the party’s structures. With that would come the democratic involvement of potentially millions of organised workers.
Neither is the Socialist Party at odds with the aims and aspirations of Your Party, we share the objective to fight for a “democratic, member-led socialist party… with the working class at its heart”.
Socialist Party activists have long been the flagbearers for a new mass workers’ party, and have demonstrated a serious approach to working with other forces in the struggle for one. Including standing in elections as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition alongside others including, until 2022, the RMT transport workers’ union.
But the Socialist Party is steadfast in our insistence of maintaining our organisation and banner. Our party has a rich history of leading mass struggles of the working class, in Liverpool City Council in the 1980s and the victorious mass Poll Tax non-payment campaign in the early 1990s. The success of those campaigns contributed to the determination with which the capitalists drove us, then Militant, out of the Labour Party.
Those struggles were successful because they were led by Militant, which consciously sought to win the working class to a programme for the socialist transformation of society. A programme of nationalisation under democratic working-class control and management of big business and the banks, with wealth and power taken out of the hands of the capitalists and put into the hands of the working class.
In this volatile era of capitalist crisis and instability, with British capitalism stagnant and especially vulnerable, politicians elected at any level of government will quickly be confronted by the limits of the system. To effectively fight in the interests of the working class requires being prepared to help mobilise workers’ struggles, and to help arm those struggles with a programme that points towards the need for the socialist transformation of society. The Socialist Party is vital for that task.
Socialist Party members will continue to be the most determined fighters for a new mass workers’ party with a socialist programme. The most crucial arena for that struggle is within the structures of the trade unions. Another is by taking the appeal for a new party to the mass of the working class at the May elections. And as well, by putting forward the kind of approach Your Party needs to take if it is to play a role in the future development of a mass working class party.
We urge Your Party members to endorse candidates who support the call to ‘turn to the working class’, to put the trade unions central, to make the most of the opportunities presented for an anti-cuts socialist stand in May’s elections, and stand against expulsions of socialists. And importantly, to join the Socialist Party and assist us in carrying out those struggles.
Your Party CEC elections – socialists disqualified
The nominations process for the Your Party Central Executive Committee election opened on 21 January, running until 29 January. On 19 January, two Socialist Party members, Dave Nellist and April Ashley, among a number of others seeking nominations, were disqualified.
Andrew Jordan, Your Party nominating officer, informed Dave and April that this was for being in contravention of item 2 of the CEC election rules that state: “For the avoidance of doubt, members of other national political parties shall not be permitted to stand for election”. Both sent an appeal to Your Party Treasurer Marion Roberts which was rejected.
In our view, the CEC election rules are clearly in contradiction to what was passed by the founding conference. In fact, Your Party conference voted 69.2% in favour of allowing dual membership, and decisively against the only other option B: “Members may not hold membership in any other national political party.” The founding documents and ‘roadmap amendments’ were drafted behind the scenes through an unknown process, with no avenues for amendments or democratic discussion.
Clearly the leadership interpret the conference decision differently to most members. But, rather than enforce their mistaken view, they could at least have held an online ballot to clarify the situation. An online vote of all members that took place from 23 to 30 December changed the constitution to expand the structure of the CEC to include 18 rather than 16 ordinary members, for example.
The CEC election rules state that Your Party conference agreed that “dual membership of Your Party and any other national political party is not permitted until the CEC approves specific national parties as aligning with the Party’s values, before ratification by conference.”
The CEC currently being elected is set to take office on 28 February. And, according to conference decisions, serve a term of 18 months.
By interpreting the Your Party conference vote on dual membership as being in favour of excluding members of existing organisations until approved by the future CEC and ratified by conference could be used to exclude the Socialist Party until Autumn 2027.
Appealing disqualifications
The following are excerpts from appeals lodged by three Socialist Party members disqualified.
April Ashley is a member of Unison’s National Executive Council, re-elected as the female black members’ rep in 2025, topping the poll with 28,792 votes.
As I said in my application statement, I am a member of the Socialist Party. I will not be resigning. But given the decision at Your Party conference on dual membership, as well as the Socialist Party’s support for Your Party and its aims, this should not be an issue.
Even more importantly, how are we building this new party? Jeremy and Zarah have said this party will be different, and the founding statement said it will be a ‘democratic, member-led socialist party’. It also says that it should have the working class at its heart.
I am a Black woman worker. I am a working-class fighter. I am a member of a trade union national executive – and I am committed to building a political voice for the working class.
I request that you put me on the ballot and let the members decide if they want a socialist trade unionist and a life-long anti-racist campaigner representing them.
Dave Nellist, Socialist Militant supporting former Labour MP for Coventry South East (1983-1992) and Chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
In seeking to avoid exactly this problem, Hannah Sell, the Socialist Party General Secretary, wrote nearly two weeks ago to the four MPs currently leading Your Party, seeking to clarify the rules before any of our members, including myself, submitted a self-nomination.
Unfortunately, we have not received a reply to that communication, nor, regretfully, even an acknowledgement.
Your Party conference decisively rejected a ban on dual membership. And Jeremy and Zarah have consistently said Your Party will be different, fully controlled by its members. That cannot be the case if the members do not have access to a full range of views when selecting candidates for the Executive Committee.
I urge you to let members vote for whom they want on the CEC – and reject bans decided in secret.
Muhsin Manir, Unite the Union branch organiser at Lea Interchange bus garage in east London, in an ongoing dispute including strike action
I am a member of the Socialist Party, and I will not be resigning. I shouldn’t have to.
We left Labour to get away from this! By excluding socialist activists before a single ballot is cast, you are mimicking the very same top-down, bureaucratic exclusions we saw in the Labour Party, the exact culture this party was founded to oppose.
I’ve been a London bus driver for 16 years. I’m an elected Unite organiser and have worn several hats in the union, from the Young Members’ Committee to the frontline.
If ‘Your Party’ is serious about being a “party for the working class,” how can you block a frontline union organiser just because I’m a socialist?
As an elected Unite organiser, I know how proper working-class democracy functions. In our unions, we don’t disqualify candidates from the top down just because they belong to a political grouping or a “Broad Left.” We accept nominations from the floor and let the members decide.
A branch of Die Linke, the Left Party in Germany, unanimously agreed to send the following Open letter to Your Party
We have learned that there is currently a controversy within Your Party about dual membership and the right of members of socialist organisations to stand for election. We can say that such dual membership is a matter of course inside Die Linke (Left Party) in Germany and that, since our branch was founded, we have had branch executive members who are also members of the sister organisation of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. This has never been a problem.
We believe it is important that there is transparency regarding such dual memberships. But if that is the case, what is wrong with letting the members decide who they want to represent them?
The success or failure of Your Party will not only affect Britain, but will also mean tailwinds or headwinds for the left internationally. Based on our experience in Germany, we believe that an open and inclusive approach is important for success.
From Die Linke Bad Cannstatt – Mühlhausen – Münster in Stuttgart, 22 January, 2026
