This May’s local elections promise to be seismic. The end of the two-party system in Britain is all but confirmed. Socialist Alternative members in Your Party will be part of this historic shift and will be standing as candidates or supporting local working class fighter who have put themselves forward.

Here we carry a few short reports of the election work, along with how we are helping to shape YP into a vehicle for working-class struggle – not just an electoral vehicle.

Waltham Forest

The Leyton and Wanstead proto-branch of Your Party will be running in May’s local elections for Waltham Forest Council. This will be the first electoral outing after setting up in August last year, in response to the announcement of a new left party. We were quickly joined by left-wing former Labour Party members who defected en masse from the local group.

Cost of living bites hard

Working-class people in East London have been squeezed particularly hard in recent years by the cost of living crisis. Londoners spend, on average, an eye-watering 54% of their income on housing alone (compared to a national average of 32%), leaving 2.3 million people in the city living below the poverty line. And with 40% of Waltham Forest being born overseas, the anti-migrant agenda championed by the whole capitalist political establishment is a particularly urgent threat.

All of these issues are particularly sharp in Cathall – one of the poorest wards in the borough – where Your Party will be standing. Last year, Waltham Forest Council announced a £32 million overspend in its budget, which it is trying to cover through a £19 million government loan, a 4.99% rise in council tax, and further cuts to public services. This will only make the living situation harder for the poorest in the borough.

But the working class of London has a proud tradition of struggle. We know a new party that’s organising as part of those struggles, with bold demands that can take them forward, has the potential to win.

Your Party in action on the picket lines and in the ballot box

In Leyton and Wanstead, Your Party members have joined striking bus drivers and teachers on the picket lines. We have mobilised to keep UKIP (the former party of Farage, now reborn as an out-and-out fascist organisation) out of East London. We have done so in the face of their attempts to march through our streets and intimidate migrant communities. We have also raised the banner of Your Party at the national marches for Palestine.

While we are not yet able to stand as official Your Party candidates, we will stand under the temporary banner of “Waltham Forest Independent Socialists” alongside YP members in Walthamstow. In Leyton and Wanstead, two members of our branch will be on the ballot, including a Socialist Alternative member, Connor Rosoman, standing in Cathall ward.

May’s election is a chance to turn outward and build on the strong foundations of L&W YP by campaigning for rent control, standing against cuts and austerity, standing with Palestine and fighting for a working-class, socialist challenge to the politics of the right and the billionaire class.

Salford

In Salford, we are activating Your Party’s membership and ensuring that socialists in the party can put forward a radical programme for change this May. Socialist Alternative members, alongside local activists and trade unionists, have been collaborating to build a united movement against capitalism, imperialism and the rising threat of the far right.

Preparing the stand

With the assistance of veteran ex-Labour councillor John Warmisham, local members have been preparing to stand candidates in over a third of the city’s wards on a single platform fighting for the socialist change the city needs. “I believe it is vital that Your Party stands candidates in the forthcoming local elections this May,” said Warmisham. “We must ensure there is a genuine socialist alternative to the Labour Party, which I feel has lost its moral compass and no longer represents working-class people.”

He continued:

“It is essential that Your Party has a voice in council chambers across the country to fight for more council housing, the introduction of rent controls, and meaningful support for communities facing an imposed cost-of-living crisis. Standing in these elections will also help raise the party’s national profile, which I believe is urgently needed.”

Since leaving the Labour Party, Warmisham has been freed from the constraints of the Labour whip and has been able to challenge the mayor directly on key issues affecting residents – including the lack of maternity facilities in the city and delays in the rebuilding of a leisure centre following an arson attack in one of the city’s most deprived wards.

Combatting the far right

Your Party cannot afford to fall into the trap of only showing up only during election time, though. In Salford and beyond, the party must now turn outwards and begin showing up week after week on our picket lines and our streets, beating back the bosses and the racist far right.

Members of Greater Manchester Socialist Alternative and Salford Your Party were among the 1,200+ counterprotesters on 21 February when Britain First thugs from up and down the country came to march through Manchester city centre. Their hate march was subsequently forced to re-route several times, with Britain First finding themselves stuck in the pouring rain, vastly outnumbered by local socialists and antifascists.

Salford activists in Your Party have also recently stood shoulder to shoulder with striking UNISON members on pickets outside Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, when 11 drivers at the hospital were suddenly denied a previously agreed re-banding award, with no consultation or negotiation from their employer. Later in the month, Councillor Warmisham spoke as a guest speaker at a Kurdish rally linked to Defend Rojava. Events such as these are crucial in demonstrating that Your Party stands unequivocally for solidarity and internationalism.

While Salford is only one of many branches of our new movement, Your Party members in every part of the country are working together to serve their local community, defending those who are all too often left behind, and championing our socialist principles within the party.

Kirklees

This May, Kirklees People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE) will be standing in the local elections as part of our fight to offer people a real, socialist alternative at the ballot box. We are building a campaign against cuts, closures and privatisation, in solidarity with Palestine and to stand up to the racism and division peddled by Reform.

Disillusionment with Labour

There is huge anger at the Labour Party locally, following their control of Kirklees Council from 2018 to 2024. On their watch, sports centres, primarily those in deprived wards, have been closed on spurious grounds. This is despite huge amounts of public money being given to a private company to run them. Labour also threatened the privatisation of the last two specialist dementia homes in the area – something which is currently under appeal at the High Court.

There has been a failure to act on evidence of asbestos and heavy metal contamination on a social housing development. Meanwhile, the council refused to discuss a motion on Palestine, despite the ongoing genocide.

The council has also earned a reputation for a lack of transparency and democracy, using the cabinet system to take major decisions behind closed doors among a small clique.

Independent gains

In the last local elections, a number of independent candidates were successful in Dewsbury and Batley. These were community candidates elected based on their standing as activists on Palestine and other social issues. They were joined by another cohort of councillors leaving Labour for similar reasons. Labour now has no overall control, although not all the independents on the council have the same political leanings.

In order to push through their austerity budget (the only major decision that cannot be taken at cabinet), Labour have formed an effective coalition with the Tories, who of course enthusiastically support their cuts programme.

Needs budget required

The council leadership clearly won’t take responsibility for these cuts. They hide behind the Westminster government’s years of slashing council funding. But socialists know that councils can stand up to austerity. We look to examples like Liverpool in the 1980s, where the Labour council, led by supporters of our predecessor organisation, Militant, set a budget to meet the needs of the people and confronted the Thatcher government.

In May, every seat in Kirklees Council will be contested. This will be an opportunity to unseat this corrupt Labour leadership and replace it with an alliance of socialists, community independents and Greens who we hope can fight to stop the rot.

Socialist challenge

PACE Kirklees was co-founded and supported by members of Socialist Alternative. It has brought together local anti-cuts campaigns, such those fighting the sports centre closures, dementia homes privatisation and dangerous housing developments.

PACE will be directly standing one candidate in the elections this May, and supporting a number of other independents whose views align with those of PACE. These are grassroots activists who support no cuts, closures or privatisations, no redundancies and no increases in council tax.

Working-class communities in Kirklees deserve better. Young people need better prospects than gangs, knife crime and unemployment. Campaigning in the local election gives us the opportunity to explain that Reform is not the answer they pretend to be, and that a working-class fightback, spearheaded with socialist policies, can achieve real change.