What Are Assemblies?

Assemblies make decisions - form consensus - for the Party on specific issues.

Each assembly has a specific purpose and there are several different types of assembly.

They are often open access - even to non-members in most respects - and all decisions are undertaken using the same three-step process in every assembly in the Party.

How Do They Work?

By consensus!

Assemblies are composed of a secretary and a bunch of people.

The secretary is a facilitator and doesn't make decisions - or rather, doesn't make them individually; the secretary is still allowed to take part in the assembly as a participant.

The secretary organises meetings and provides a point of contact other secretaries of other assemblies (and other Party officers).

There's a three step process for making decisions that every assembly uses:

1. Talk it out! If the decision is reasonably simple, nobody raises an objection, and there is quorum for a decision - then the decision is made. Go for it! But if someone raises an objection - typically something like "we need a meeting for this!" - then
2. Hold a Moot. A Moot is a meeting at which participants in one assembly gather to make a decision. The format is pretty simple: it gets talked over. If people have objections, those get talked over too. If everyone agrees, then we're done! We have consensus. But if they don't
3. Hold a ballot. Ballots are unique in that they are only open to Party members, whereas the prior two steps are open to all participants. We use STAR for this because it not only produces high quality results but is resilient, difficult to "game", and the results are also useful to tell us how strongly we felt collectively about the options available. You can read more about STAR here (external link).

Most decisions do not require a ballot as issues can typically be resolved before deadlock is reached in a reasonable amount of time.

What Types of Assembly Are There?

The Party has several types of assembly. These are:

• Operational assemblies, often shortened to "ops". These assemblies are always open access and anyone may participate within them - even members of other parties, provided they behave themselves and are not obstructive. Ops assemblies support all the other assemblies with labour, or perform crucial centralised labour for the Party. A few examples are:
  • the Financial Working Group supports the Treasurer and provides open access to non-personal Party financial data;
  • the Operational Working Group maintains the constitution, provides guidance on the constitution to other assemblies, and integrates new processes fed back from assemblies into Party policy;
  • the Media Working Group meanwhile produces a variety of media - but not booklets, which are the preserve of the Library Society!
• Advocacy assemblies. Advocacy assemblies are rooted in the liberational struggle of a specific community. These assemblies are often more closed in membership: for example, only disabled people may join the Disability Activism Society (though allies often may sit in as observers).
• Ally assemblies. These assemblies exist to provide labour and moral support to the advocacy assemblies, and are open access as a result. They follow the lead of their specific paired advocacy assembly. They can only make decisions to offer support - so for example if a group of allies in an ally assembly wanted to organise a protest during a particular struggle because they knew the advocacy assembly was already very busy, they could ask the permission of the advocacy assembly to do so.
• Activist assemblies. Activist assemblies are single issue and only exist for the duration of their goal. For example, our Action Apartheid assembly is committed to the end of Apartheid (everywhere, but currently particularly in Palestine).
• Aid assemblies. Aid assemblies exist to support people by pooling resources and sharing. Our core aid assembly is the Mutual Aid Assembly, which administers the Mutual Aid Fund and the Emergency Payment Fund.
• Constituency, regional, and city assemblies. These are by far the most numerous in the Party as eventually there will be one for every constituency in the country - plus every city, plus regional divisions. These assemblies fit together like nesting dolls: the constituency assemblies are members of either city or regional assemblies (or both). This is so they can be combined to make decisions that impact them intersectionally. Constituency, regional, and city assemblies are also the only bodies in the Party which are allowed to select Candidates for elections - directly by their members, by consensus. But that's not all they do: these geographical assemblies can also organise local mutual aid efforts, local activism, determine policy locally, and so on (with the support of the centralised national assemblies for those purposes).

How Are New Assemblies Created?

New assemblies can be created by anyone participating in the Party who can persuade at least 3 other people that the assembly is necessary, provided the purpose of the assembly is constitutionally valid. There is a special assembly to verify that, naturally!