A request for clarification on CEC election rules
The following letter was sent on 7 January to the interim leadership of Your Party, the Independent Alliance MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, as well as to Zarah Sultana MP. As we go to press, the Socialist Party has so far received no response.
Dear comrades,
I am writing to you, on behalf of the Socialist Party, to seek confirmation that members of our party are eligible to stand in the elections to Your Party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC). A number of our members, including Dave Nellist in the West Midlands, are considering putting themselves forward, but would like to have the rules clarified before doing so.
As you know, Socialist Party members have been enthusiastic advocates for, and participants in, the development of Your Party at local and national level from the early pre-discussions to today. We have assumed that our members would be allowed to stand in the elections for the first democratically chosen leadership body of the new party. However, we read in the ‘Who can stand’ section in the CEC election rules, circulated on 23 December 2025, that: “For the avoidance of doubt, members of other political parties shall not be permitted to stand for election. Per the constitutional amendment passed at Your Party’s conference, 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.”
Clearly we, along with the vast majority of members of Your Party, would be opposed to members of pro-capitalist political parties being eligible for dual membership. However, we are assuming that organisations such as ourselves, who wholeheartedly agree with Your Party’s aspiration, summarised in its founding statement, to build a “democratic, member-led socialist party” with the “working class at its heart”, are welcomed as part of Your Party.
This was certainly the mood of the majority of the members who took part in the vote on the issue during the founding conference. 69.2% of the 8,947 who voted agreed that Your Party “members shall be permitted to hold membership in other national political parties where they have been approved by the CEC as aligning with the Party’s values, to include those with whom the Party cooperates electorally. The approved list shall be subject to ongoing CEC review and annual ratification by National Conference.” The only other option selected for members to vote on was “that members may not hold membership of any other national party”, which was overwhelmingly rejected.
However, the interpretation of the members’ decision in the CEC Election rules appears closer to the defeated “no dual membership” proposal than what was actually passed. Nowhere was it agreed that membership of other political parties “shall not be permitted” until CEC proposals were ratified by the next conference, but rather that dual membership would be permitted, with the CEC approving a list of parties that align with Your Party’s values, which would be subject to annual ratification by the conference. Given that the CEC does not yet exist, surely all Your Party members, including those who are also members of other left parties, should be allowed to contest these first CEC elections, provided they are in good standing?
We hope that you are able to confirm that this is the case, and that the election will be run on the inclusive lines clearly favoured by the big majority of Your Party members.
Of course there are some, a small minority judging by the conference votes, who believe that Socialist Party members should be welcome in Your Party only if they leave the Socialist Party or, better still, that the Socialist Party agrees to dissolve into Your Party. However, in our view this is a profoundly mistaken standpoint, revealing a lack of understanding about what approach is required to bring the mass workers’ party that is needed into being. Even if there were currently no different trends within Your Party, which is patently not the case, attempts to impose from above political uniformity on Your Party’s membership would be doomed to failure.
A top-down approach, banning different political trends arguing for their ideas within the broader framework of the party, could result in this new party being stillborn, as was the case with Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, for example, notwithstanding his authority in the movement. And if, as we are all working towards, Your Party was to make serious gains, political debate and discussion will be absolutely inevitable, no matter what the rules. Can anyone seriously imagine Your Party dealing with the political challenges ahead – from how to fight the cuts at local authority level to how a Your Party government could defeat the sabotage of the capitalist class and implement socialist policies – without trenchant political debates?
Some may respond by saying ‘yes, but those debates should just be between individuals, not organised trends’, but this is also totally unrealistic. Individuals who share a common position will inevitably start to organise to argue for it, and it will be vital for them to do so, because it is absolutely clear from history in Britain and internationally that, if Your Party takes off, pro-capitalist forces will join it in order to try and move it to the right, attempting to make sure it is no threat to the existing order. When Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the pro-capitalist forces were already dominating the party machine, but it would be naïve to imagine that similar attempts at sabotage won’t take place in a new party. To say that should only be countered from the top of Your Party, rather than via democratic organisation and debate at the base, would be certain to hand victory to the pro-capitalist ‘moderates’.
Of course, it is possible to accept these arguments about debates and organised trends inevitably developing in the future, but to still argue that Socialist Party members and others have to ‘leave their organisations at the door’ in order to be allowed to participate in Your Party. But this would be to take a dishonest approach to Your Party and its members.
We, along with our co-thinkers internationally, have a developed programme and approach to the struggle for socialism. It is based on the historical experience of the working class summed up in the ideas of Marxism, and on our party’s own experience in class struggle over more than six decades, first as Militant and now as the Socialist Party, including in leading two mass struggles that successfully defeated the Thatcher government, in Liverpool City Council and the poll tax.
Today, we have a sizeable base in the trade union movement, and also play a leading role on the university campuses. Our resources – including our weekly newspaper and monthly magazine – have been built by the dedication and self-sacrifice of our members who see our programme as vital to the working class carrying out a successful struggle for socialism. Would it not insult the intelligence of Your Party members if experienced fighters for the working class now suddenly ‘renounced’ their history and ideas to join Your Party only as individuals? Dave Nellist did not do so in 1991, when it was a matter of remaining as a Labour MP, a stand supported by Jeremy Corbyn at the time. Nor did many other Militant supporters with positions in the Labour and trade union movement.
Socialist Party members take extremely seriously the struggle to build a new, broad mass workers’ party, and strive to work together in a common struggle with all other forces who want to achieve this, whatever other political differences we may have. As an organisation, we fight for every step forward for the workers’ movement, and have been campaigning for a new party since Tony Blair transformed Labour into New Labour, as a vital means of strengthening the cohesion and confidence of the working class. When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, we saw an opportunity for Labour to be transformed into a workers’ party, applying to affiliate to Labour in order to assist in that struggle. Following Starmer’s victory within Labour we have welcomed every step towards a new party, not least Your Party which, at its inception, clearly had the potential to be a decisive step towards what is needed.
Nor can it be argued that Socialist Party members are unwilling to abide by the democratic decisions of broader workers’ organisations of which we are part. On the contrary, we have demonstrated consistently in our long history in the trade unions and labour movement that we do so, working alongside other forces to further the immediate interests of the working class. We have also shown that in our work in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) where we have collaborated with various other forces over fifteen years in order to help provide an inclusive electoral banner under which workers’ candidates, from different organisations or none, can contest elections on an anti-austerity programme.
We look forward to our members continuing to prove our constructive approach in practice, as they work as part of Your Party, and we look forward to your confirmation that this includes our members’ rights to take part in the elections to the CEC. In taking this approach, Your Party will be adopting the best traditions of the workers’ movement in Britain, which involved Marxist organisations from the beginning.
Yours in solidarity,
Hannah Sell
Socialist Party general secretary
On behalf of the Socialist Party
Dave Nellist
Dave Nellist was Labour MP for Coventry South-East from 1983 to 1992, and a supporter of Militant, the Socialist Party’s predecessor. While in office Dave took the average wage of a skilled worker in the city, the level of which was determined by the city’s trade union movement.
Acting in defiance of Thatcher’s Poll Tax, with millions of others led by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation, in which Militant and Militant-supporting MPs played a central role, he refused to pay.
Dave was expelled from membership of the Labour Party in 1991, while serving as MP, as part of the right-wing witch-hunt against socialists.
Dave also served as a Coventry city councillor for St Michael’s ward from 1998 to 2012.
Today, Dave is a member of the Socialist Party National Committee and chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
For a fighting socialist stand in May’s elections
Socialist Party members are fighting for the strongest possible socialist stand in this May’s elections. Millions will go to the polls to express their anger at Starmer’s Labour government. They should not be left without an option that points towards the party of the working class that is needed.
If you are a trade unionist, young person or campaigner, determined to fight against Labour’s austerity policies, and to offer an alternative to Reform UK’s divide-and-rule policies serving the rich bosses, then why not stand?
