By Linda Wall?
The first three official YP branches were formed last weekend, 6th and 7th June 2026, in Ceredigion Penfro, South Scotland, and the Isle of Wight.
Darren Galpin reports that around 30 of 113 registered members attended the founding Isle of Wight meeting, including a few on Zoom, having already elected officers in advance of the event. Jeremy Corbyn gave a message of support by live link. In place of any formal agenda, members took part in assembly-type discussions.
According to the YP website (which lists 18 other locations where branches will be formed by the end of July):
“We’re doing politics differently – and that includes how Your Party’s branches will operate. These won’t be branches in the old familiar model. Many people have too much experience of torturous branch meetings that turn into endless arguments between a few key players over the wording of motions, with little impact on the world outside. It drains the life out of you.
Your Party branches will be hubs for community organising, supporting the campaigns and struggles already happening on the ground where you live. Whether that’s industrial action, housing campaigns, Palestine solidarity, or fighting the far right, Your Party branches will amplify and support that work.
We need branches that prioritise participation and inclusion over conflict and factionalism; that face outwards and are defined by their campaigning and solidarity – not by their internal administration.”
The rationale then is that traditional ways of doing politics may be food and drink for activists, but leave many ordinary members feeling excluded. This is controversial to say the least: many are asking how it empowers members when national officers impose (without consultation or democratic mandate) a model of how branches should operate and what their campaigning priorities should be. Time will tell whether branches are given the opportunity to exercise greater autonomy.
YP members may also be interested to learn that the CEC agreed on Sunday that for the time being at least, branches won’t receive any money or have any direct control over funds, which will have to be claimed from the national party.
In her latest CEC report, YP Chair Jenn Forbes strikes a positive note: “Official branches are forming; a summer programme of activity is planned; we’ve got policy commissions coming up.” This may be less than reassuring to many members who in the long months since YP was founded haven’t been consulted, haven’t been given any opportunity to take part in local activity, and haven’t been invited to meetings of any kind other than CEC hustings.
One such member is Carmen Williams. She says, “We need not only more frequent communications; not just reporting on what the CEC members have been doing… What is urgently needed, in my opinion, is to actually ask us, members of this party, to involve us, directly, in shaping the ongoing development of the party. When this state of affairs is presented as the democracy we should all be happy with, even grateful for, is there any wonder that people feel disappointed, disaffected and, many, downright giving up on the very idea of YP?”
YP Isle of Wight Facebook page
YP Ceredigion Penfro Facebook page
YP South Scotland Facebook page
(Previously published in Connections Newsletter issue no. 4)
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