Molly Shelton is a co-founder and coordinator of Assemble, a group working to set up local assemblies around Britain with the aim of empowering ordinary people to work on solving the problems they face. And speaking at the launch party of Southport Community Independents (SCI) this month, she said it:
will go down as a historic day for the North West – for the North – as a blueprint for our country, people coming together to get things done
She added:
This is the future. Southport is leading the way, building strong local networks where people can connect with each other, respect each other, launch community organisations and parties, and win elections, fundraise to meet our local needs when we know that our government is sacrificing us for profit. And we’re gonna connect all of this to a national movement to build something better for all of us.
She also stressed:
We have a demand – a better way of running this country. And we’re not waiting for it to be handed down to us.
Building a system where ordinary people are at the heart of politics
SCI leader Sean Halsall has the backing of both Collective and Assemble. And he previously told the Canary:
I believe there will be a mass party of the left – whether that is an umbrella organisation that shelters all these small community independent groups that can pivot and react quickly to the needs in their community, or if that is a mass party of the left.
Halsall added that we can’t waste time, and we need to just get the ball rolling.
In Shelton’s speech, meanwhile, she highlighted the hard work that Halsall and others are putting in to build a system where ordinary people are at the heart of politics. She explained that the idea of a local assembly is about bringing neighbours together to “share food, talk through the issues they face, and come up with solutions together”. It encourages everyone to speak equally with respect, to get to know each other and build trust. “From there”, Shelton said, “you can take collective action and build power”.
Southport had its first assembly in 2024 before the general election, when Halsall stood as an independent candidate. And as Shelton said, “we all know no meaningful change was going to come” from the election on a national level, but the assembly was about something bigger. As she insisted:
It’s never just about election day. It’s about so much more – building a movement that could grow and sustain. And sustain it has.
The community movement in Southport mattered, she stressed, because:
just having our say on election day by putting a tick in a box isn’t a meaningful version of democracy. We don’t stand for that round here. We don’t just deserve better – we can do better ourselves… Working people, particularly in the North, don’t get a word in or have many spaces to have their voices leveraged on a national level
Linking into a bigger national movement
It’s not just a new mass party of the left that’s on the cards. It’s also a challenge to the parliamentary system. Because Assemble has been pushing for the replacement of the House of Lords with a House of the People. And this is closely connected to the movement of local assemblies.
As Shelton said:
each series of local assemblies puts all of the issues and the wonderful solutions that arise into a community charter – a list of five things that you want to see change, which everyone’s pitched into. Communities are taking these charters to their local authorities, to their local councils and to the national governments. And if and when these charters’ demands aren’t met, communities are taking action through boycotts, strikes, occupations, whatever they choose, to leverage their demands. Communities are also using these charters as the basis of manifestos for local parties to emerge from these assemblies.
Then, she insisted:
These local community charters from all over the country also feed up into a new national assembly – the House of the People. This is the national home for all of our voices, which we’re organising to replace the House of Lords. This summer, people selected at random like a jury will come, listen to the evidence, review the local community charters from across the country, and will draw up the People’s Charter, which we will take to the UK government, hand in hand with trade unions, community organisations and activists.
This is an exciting moment, and a necessary one. Britain is in desperate need of a compassionate alternative to a status quo, where the interests of the rich and powerful overwhelmingly determine what politicians do. Assemblies, local parties and, soon, a national mass movement will all play a key part in building that alternative as the strong vehicle for change that ordinary people need so badly.
Featured image via screengrab
