Hundreds – including Jeremy Corbyn – attend sold-out launch of Southport Community Independents

Saturday 1 March saw the launch party event for the new grassroots community group Southport Community Independents, with more than 250 in attendance. The group will host a series of local assemblies to put local people in the heart of British politics for the first time, with funding and support from Assemble. The planned outcome is rapid progress on local and national issues where politicians are failing.

Southport Community Independents also has the backing of Collective, which is aiming to “drive the formation of a new, mass-membership political party of the left”. And the Canary has been closely following the efforts of Southport Community Independents leader Sean Halsall.

Southport Community Independents launches

Andrew Feinstein and Jeremy Corbyn attended to show support for the grassroots community organisation, and before the event visited sites in town including the mosque, to show respect.

Corbyn, the independent MP for Islington North who is running assemblies in his constituency, gave a speech, saying:

I always wanted the Labour Party to become a community based organisation… And that’s what we’re about, building a community force, in the unions, in the communities, that will bring about that social justice and that social change.

You’re doing it here in Southport, we’re doing it in North Islington, Andrew’s doing it in Camden, and it’s happening in Newcastle, it’s happening in Liverpool, it’s happening all over the country. These are exciting times, let’s work together, united together, with our vision of a better world, a peaceful world and a more just world, and do you know what? It’s all possible.

Assemble is a grassroots organisation with a plan to upgrade British democracy, stating: “The mission is to have local people like us making the important decisions about our country and our communities”.

Assemble is supporting 15 communities from Cornwall to Glasgow to host open meetings (called Assemblies), each writing a Community Charter of five areas where politicians are failing them. Local concerns can be addressed by collective action, while national priorities will be handed up to the House of the People – a new democratic institution, open to the British public, meeting for the first time in 2025 to create a democratic mandate for the country.

Rising from communities

Andrew Feinstein, a peace campaigner who halved Keir Starmer’s majority when he ran against him in Holborn and St Pancras last year, said:

So delighted to have been at the launch of the Southport Independents yesterday: a new politics is rising up from communities across the country, organising themselves to take on the UK’s corrupt, mendacious, broken politics.

Bertie Coyle, an Assemble spokesperson, said yesterday:

Communities own Britain. People should have a say in how their country is run – none of us voted for crumbling services, cold homes, and poisoned rivers. Assemble is supporting local communities to meet up and agree on what needs to change, and figure how to make those changes happen fast.

A public-led institution like a House of the People will produce fairer, more effective, and more democratic outcomes than the existing parliamentary system, which is not fit for purpose. The recent election saw the lowest turnout and vote count for two decades, yet produced a prime minister with the strongest majority.

Polls show that nearly one in four British people are in favour of replacing the House of Lords with a permanent rolling citizens’ assembly.

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