Democratic Socialists Blog

Trans Liberation Now! – Resist the Bathroom Ban, We Decide Our Own Fate!

Democratic Socialists — Sun, 31 May 2026 16:00:00 GMT

In a political and cultural climate that is already viciously hostile towards trans people, the recent update of the guidelines from Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), constitutes a further attack on the rights of trans people within the workplace and wider society. In implementing the Supreme Court’s decision from last year, the guidance suggests that single-gender toilets should be segregated by “biological sex”.

This is both an explicit encouragement from the state to the already relentlessly litigious anti-trans movement but also now to trans-exclusionary sections of the capitalist class to deprive trans people of the facilities of their gender. It also places trans people, already at the sharp end of violence and oppression by the state and society at large, in the middle of an increasingly paranoid moral panic that increases the risk of vigilante violence against, for instance, trans women forced to use male toilets.

This has predictably been supported by almost all sections of our political class. Reform and the rest of the far right, who are the primary political expression of the small but vocal anti-trans movement, unsurprisingly see this as a huge vindication of their reactionary project. The Tories, less than a decade ago publicly very supportive of gender self-identification under the leadership of Theresa May, have now reverted back into a typically paranoid and reactionary stance. The Labour Party also persists with their support of the roll-back and denial of trans rights, with even the “candidate of the left” in their leadership election Andy Burnham predictably siding with the courts and EHRC earlier in the week.

This of course functions in part as a wedge issue, building support for a reactionary movement that distracts from the increasing cost-of-living crisis, dysfunction of our political class and complicity of the British state in genocide and imperialist war. Contemporary transphobia serves another purpose however.

The anti-trans movement, either in its social conservative or trans-exclusionary “feminist” form, ultimately strives to essentialise gender norms, a key aspect of the social reproduction of the working class under capitalism. Rather than assimilating people who do not fit with standard patriarchal norms into wider society, as the brief political consensus in favour of gender self-ID and the acceptance of gay marriage reflected, the current strategy of the ruling class is to reinforce the bourgeois family and strict gender binaries as the means of building the backbone of a compliant, easily exploitable working class.

This is not just a “culture war” distraction but a movement to discipline forms of expression that chafe against the standard forms of social organisation within the more stable capitalism of decades past. It is also an attack on our democratic rights, with the supreme court ‘legislating from the bench’ to deny rights to trans people, , just as we see in the case of pro-Palestinian activism. Are we expected to believe that the government had intended to implement a ‘bathroom ban’ with the Equality Act, even when it was issuing travel warnings against trans people visiting US states which had implemented such bans? This illustrates the need for socialists to put no faith in institutions of the capitalist state.

As democratic socialists, it is incumbent upon us to resist all attacks on trans rights on the streets, workplaces and politically in the wider left, which does contain a small but growing section buying into the ideological framing of modern transphobia. Demonstrations against the EHRC’s guidance are occurring across the country, with hundreds gathering in London, Manchester and elsewhere across the UK with radical and defiant messaging. We should attend and support these protests, whether as trans people or as CIS allies.

We must also struggle for motions and policies within our trade unions that aim to resist this guidance and its consequences,making the link between trans rights and workers rights explicit. Initiatives such as Trans Mutual Aid Manchester and organisations explicitly struggling for trans liberation, such as our comrades in the Trans Liberation Group and organisations like Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly must also receive our support.

Finally, it must be clearly stated that the struggle for trans liberation is a struggle that relates to so many others. Whether through understanding the Supreme Court’s decision as the granting of enormous powers to the capitalist class to discipline and surveil workers, transphobia as a key recruiting ground of the modern far right / street fascist movement or through the rollback of wider LGBTQIA+ rights that could easily follow this, the struggle for trans liberation is one we must win!

Fuck the Courts, Fuck the State, We Decide Our Own Fate!

Trans Rights are Workers Rights!

Trans Liberation Now!

Why We Need A Democratic Socialist Party

Democratic Socialists — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:31:45 GMT

With the de-facto implosion of Your Party, many on the left are asking: where do we go from here? Join us online on Wednesday 3 June at 7pm to discuss how we actually build the mass, democratic socialist party the working class desperately needs.

About the Event

The evening will kick off with an introduction by Ewan Tilly, author of the Marxist theory blog State & Confusion, followed by plenty of time for contributions and debate from the floor.

Why Now?

Disillusioned by recent setbacks, many socialists are tempted by the Green Party. However, while figures like Zack Polanski lean left, the Greens remain a party of ‘small capitalism’ attempting to appease the establishment (as seen in their stances on NATO and anti-imperialism). They have socialists in their ranks, but they are not a party for socialism.

Meanwhile, despite its lack of internal democracy, Your Party still holds 50,000 members who want a socialist alternative. Rather than walking away or rushing into a premature, disorganised split, we must organise.

Launching the Campaign

This event soft-launches our Campaign to build a Democratic Socialist Party. Operating as a tendency within and outside of Your Party:

Develop a clear programme: Turn our political statements into a living, democratically agreed socialist programme.
Launch an education series: Host regular online discussions to tackle complex issues and build our campaign.
Democratise our structures: Establish a transparent, dues-paying membership with a fully accountable and recallable leadership.

We cannot build a new party on our own. Whether you are in Your Party, a proto-branch, or simply looking for a genuine anti-capitalist alternative, your voice is needed.

Defy the threats and lies – All out for Nakba 78: March for Palestine on 16 May

Democratic Socialists — Mon, 04 May 2026 12:14:34 GMT

We reject this government’s construction of a hierarchy of racism, in which some communities’ fears are elevated into reasons to suppress dissent while others are told to endure abuse, suspicion and violence as the price of public order. Antisemitism is real and must be fought without compromise. But Starmer is now floating the restriction or banning of some pro-Palestine marches on the grounds of their “cumulative effect” on Jewish communities. That is not a neutral defence of minority safety. It is a political attack.

What is being privileged here is not merely “Jewish anxiety” in the abstract, still less every Jewish voice. It is a very particular set of anxieties: the ones that coincide perfectly with the priorities of the British state itself. The government is elevating only those officially sanctioned voices it can use to defend its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza via continued sales of F-35 components and refusal to sanction Israel, its complicity in the Israeli-American war of aggression against Iran, to criminalise Palestine solidarity, its domestic structural racism and to narrow the democratic right to protest. Meanwhile, when Muslims, migrants and other racialised communities are targeted in a political climate saturated with xenophobia, the answer is not exceptional protection but more border violence, more anti-migrant rhetoric, and more appeasement of the forces that inflame racist hostility in the first place. Starmer and Mahmood explicitly promised to tighten work, family and study routes, extend the path to settlement, and harden enforcement against asylum seekers and all migrants.

The British state is perfectly willing to speak the language of “Islamist extremism” when Muslims are the object of suspicion or to ban chants such as “Globalise the Intifada“¹ But it has shown no equivalent appetite for policing pro-Israel incitement from the likes of Ephraim Mirvis or The Jewish Chronicle, and no equivalent zeal in prosecuting British nationals who’ve actively participated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The hierarchy is obvious: Muslims are managed as a danger, while violence aligned with the British state’s own foreign policy priorities is treated with indulgence or silence.

That is the double standard. This government helps create the conditions for racial tension, then pretends to stand above them as the guardian of communal peace. It ranks racisms, plays minorities against one another, and uses one community’s pain as cover for repressing another community’s solidarity. We refuse that logic entirely. The answer to antisemitism is to fight antisemitism. The answer to Islamophobia and xenophobia is to fight Islamophobia and xenophobia. And the answer to mass protest against Britain’s complicity in Israel’s war is not bans, threats and selective policing, but an end to that complicity itself. This is not anti-racism. It is state management of racism: protecting the fears it finds useful, disciplining the solidarities it finds dangerous, and leaving everyone else to live with the consequences.

We call on everyone to defy this abominable logic and come to London on Saturday 16 May for the Nakba 78 march, assembling at 12pm on Exhibition Road, to oppose the ongoing occupation of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the genocide in Gaza, the expanding regional war, and Tommy Robinson and the far right circus that will be engaged in truly a hate march.

Globalise the Intifada!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

“Intifada” is an Arabic word meaning “shaking off,” “rebellion,” or “uprising” and can refer to both violent and non-violent uprisings. The First Intifada for instance, was largely non-violent; while the Second Intifada, which came on the back of continued occupation and apartheid post-Oslo, took a more violent turn after it was met with extreme violence from the Israeli side. Furthermore, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is also referred to as the Warsaw Intifada in Arabic. ↩︎

On 7 May, vote socialist where you can!

Democratic Socialists — Sat, 02 May 2026 12:35:12 GMT

It is a great shame that on 7 May, there will not be a united socialist challenge at the ballot box. Our forces are disunited, thanks in no small part to the collapse of Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party. It was never the kind of thoroughly democratic and unashamedly socialist party we actually need – but with the ban of the organised left, it has become little more than a narrow electoral vehicle, bureaucratically controlled with little scope for an active membership to make an impact. This defeat has caused a great deal of political confusion and disappointment and means our forces are being scattered.

Democratic Socialists are launching a Campaign for a Democratic Socialist Party/Communist Party that, we hope, can bring some political clarity and sharpness into this discussion. Join us in this fight! We will soon launch a new membership structure to help us in this process.

On 7 May, we urge comrades to vote for socialist candidates, including:

Those standing under the banner of the Socialist Party’s Trade Union and Socialist Coalition.
Candidates supported by Your Party
Socialists standing as part of independent community organisations, for example hunger striker Amu Gib and Democratic Socialists members Anahita Zardoshti and Nathanial Jones in Islington, Democratic Socialists member Jay Singh in Sandwell, Mel Mullings in London and Grace Lewis in Coventry (members of the Your Party CEC).

Join us on 27 May on video call (details coming soon!) and on 6 June at the Connections Convention in Sheffield to discuss the next steps.

May Day Greetings!

Democratic Socialists — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:45:21 GMT

Today we echo the words of Rosa Luxemburg that “May Day this year stands out particularly because it is being celebrated in the midst of the noises of war.” In Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Myanmar, Iran and across the world war is destroying life, communities, the planet and taking us closer towards even greater catastrophes.

We stand in unwavering solidarity with the people of Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran and all those living under bombardment, occupation, and the violence of imperial power. Their struggles are not separate from ours; they are part of the same global fight against exploitation, war, and domination. Internationalism is not optional, it is the lifeblood of socialism.

At home, we face a rising far-right feeding on and amplifying racism, transphobia, and misogyny. We are witnessing an epidemic of violence against women and girls and we have seen repeated violent attacks on our Muslim, Jewish and Trans neighbours, on places of worship, on LGBT+ venues. These forces seek to fracture our class and obscure the real enemy: a system that thrives on inequality and crisis. This May Day we recommit ourselves to building practical unity across workplaces, communities, and movements to resist reaction in all its forms.

The current Labour government, looks to be the most authoritarian in generations, seeking to limit freedom of speech, the right to protest and to organise and make disrupting the machines of war an act of terrorism. The power of the Palestine solidarity movement, a movement that has touched every part of this country, has so far shown great resilience and all attempts to silence the mass movement, to hide the British state’s complicity in genocide have been stridently defeated. This May Day we restate our solidarity with those who have paid a high price for furthering and defending this movement. They truly are the best of us.

We fight for a world beyond war and scarcity, a world of freedom, dignity, and abundance for all. To end, as we started we further echo Luxemburg that now “more than ever, in the presence of war, the specifically proletarian demonstration must also be the expression of this idea, that the realisation of universal peace cannot be conceived of except as linked to the realisation of our socialist final goal.”

That future will not be handed to us; it will be won through struggle, solidarity, and working class power.

Long Live May Day.

We urge everyone to join the Nakba 78: March for Palestine – United against Tommy Robinson & the far right – Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DB on Saturday 16 May @ 12pm.

Democratic Socialists – Campaign for a Democratic Socialist Party

Democratic Socialists — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:58:59 GMT

Your Party has in its short life inflicted enormous damage on the left in Britain and has destroyed the promise of a mass socialist party, with 800,000 registering their interest last year and over 60,000 signed up to be members. Socialists up and down the country set up branches, city and regional networks, held meetings, prepared candidates for election, supported local campaigns, mobilised against the far-right and helped organise strikes.

An unelected clique, staffed by the team that filled Corbyn’s office when he was leader of Labour, used every bureaucratic trick in the book, and leaked red-baiting stories to the press about socialist organisations, and, what is still, the only official Your Party MP Zarah Sultana. They watched on as Scotland got organised and then ignored whatever was decided. Through this clique’s efforts, the party has been beset by crisis after crisis and now, after banning the entire left, is clearly in a death spiral. At best, it will become a Momentum-style organisation, without an active membership and occasional email referendums.

Over several weeks, we have been discussing the way forward, for our own organisation and what proposals we will take into the movement. Some wanted to stick it out in Your Party, some wanted us to back an almost immediate split, others wanted us to take a path between the two. All three approaches had merits and reflect the questions being posed by the collapse of Your Party. Collectively and democratically, we settled on an approach that keeps us working in the branches and structures built by Your Party members, while also looking beyond. We will support and critically participate in attempts by branches and socialist organisations to find a new way forward, towards the party we have been fighting for since our inception.

We will be launching a campaign for a Democratic Socialist Party/Communist Party and in this process are looking to draw together socialist factions and organisations, with whom we want to work collaboratively and openly on the way forward. We will review and build on the documents we have developed together, starting with our proposal for a draft programme called ‘Workers Deserve the Earth’, which evolved throughout our work in Your Party and the Grassroots Left slate. We need to start building the kind of democratic socialist party that we actually need: unashamedly socialist, internationalist and anti-Zionist and with an open and democratic culture that does not just allow differences, but enshrines the right to form open tendencies and platforms. Only such a party could hope to make a real difference – when it comes to taking on the state, the fight for democracy in our trade unions or strengthening the movement in our local area, in Your Party branches, community organisations or campaigns. United we would be so much stronger!

Everyone who wants to get involved in this fight is welcome to join our organisation as we start our re-founding and launch our next campaign. We have a lot of work to do.

Join Democratic Socialists

Vote Amu Gib, Vote for Gaza

Democratic Socialists — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 02:11:14 GMT

Strike a blow against British complicity in genocide

In Finsbury Park, the local election has taken on enormous moral weight. Amu Gib is standing not from a campaign office, but from a prison cell, following their arrest after the break-in at RAF Brize Norton to engage in direct action against British complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Their hunger strike, now ended after a prolonged period that took a serious toll on their health, marked this candidacy from the outset as an act of defiance as much as representation.

The comparison to Bobby Sands is direct and unavoidable. Like Sands, Amu Gib is contesting an election from prison, forcing the political system to confront the reality of dissent against imperialist violence it would rather prefer to contain. This is not symbolic; it is a challenge to what democratic representation means when those acting on conscience are criminalised and the British State finds itself complicit in genocide.

To support Amu Gib is therefore to affirm that protest against injustice cannot be extinguished by imprisonment. A vote in Finsbury Park becomes a declaration that political voice does not end at the prison gate, and that those willing to take such risks in solidarity with others deserve not silence, but representation. We call upon all socialists and progressive forces to extend their support to Amu’s campaign. We especially call upon Your Party, the Green Party, the trade unions and community activists to extend their support and actively campaign for them in Finsbury Park.

Democratic Socialists
18th April 2026

Your Party – Goodbye Scotland

Democratic Socialists — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:28:29 GMT

Solidarity with members and former members of Your Party Scotland

After months of bureaucratic provocations, the withholding of data, funds and support for the Holyrood election in May, Your Party has suffered a mass resignation in Scotland. The Scottish CEC member Niall Christie, the entirety of the Interim Scottish Executive Committee along with many others have effectively been forced out of the party.

Your Party Scotland held a conference in Dundee in February where documents were submitted, amended and voted on. Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the conference, so could not have been surprised by the decisions members took on dual membership, an independent Scottish party and standing socialists in the elections. Yet, almost immediately members in Scotland had their efforts stymied and work undermined. Following the CEC election, their rep fought to have Scotland and the elections taken seriously, but to no avail. Instead, the Officers Group, under the direction of Jeremy Corbyn, dispensed with conference decisions and sought to force members to either capitulate to the leadership clique or leave. This was part of what appeared to be a general culture on the CEC of poor and opaque communication with no sense of urgency or leadership around the imminent Holyrood elections.

Your Party Scotland has been dealt a fatal blow by the party leadership. It is another sign that Your Party as a whole is in a death spiral.
Democratic Socialists of Your Party extends our solidarity to Scottish members who have decided to leave. We look forward to working with them all in the fight for the internationalist, democratic socialist party workers and the left in Scotland and across Britain desperately need.

Democratic Socialists of Your Party
14th April 2026

Your Party – Squandering a Generational Opportunity

Democratic Socialists — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:37:21 GMT

DSYP Statement on the CEC vote to ban and exclude socialists

Democratic Socialists of Your Party express our dismay at the decision of the Central Executive Committee to impose bans on socialist organisations and to introduce rules restricting members from organising politically.

This is a direct attack on the democratic rights of members and a clear break from the founding principles of Your Party, including the commitment to pluralism and unity.

DSYP organisers will not accept or abide by these bans and exclusions and will continue to welcome any expelled socialist into our branches and work. We will continue to organise, campaign, and build openly as socialists within Your Party, fighting for the mass socialist party we so desperately need.

We extend our thanks and solidarity to those members of the CEC and the rank and file of Your Party who have stood firm in defence of party democracy, who have held to their principles under pressure, and who have stood with the membership against these measures.

Your Party members have never really been consulted on allowing dual membership, with the only motion allowed at conference not offering it as an option.

When they are eventually allowed to form, DSYP will support branches who choose not to uphold this undemocratic ban, and who continue to welcome any expelled socialist into their branches and work – the stakes are simply too high to turn good socialists away.

A generational opportunity is being squandered by a small sectarian clique under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. We will continue to fight to build a party of the whole left, uniting all socialists and taking the fight for socialism forward.

Democratic Socialists of Your Party

12th April 2026

Your Party – No to Bans! No to Expulsions!

Democratic Socialists — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:44:13 GMT

A party for all socialists

The report that Your Party CEC has produced a list of banned socialist organisations and automatic ineligibility rules (which would encompass all groups with a “national political membership list”) is deeply concerning. Such an attack on members’ rights to politically organise would contradict Your Party’s constitution agreed at our launch conference and in which members explicitly opted for ‘dual membership’. A list of banned organisations goes entirely against the spirit of what members want. A confident, democratic socialist party does not fear organised ideas but tests them openly and democratically and would welcome all left and socialist groups into Your Party (as long as they accept the party’s programme and rules).

We, the undersigned, appeal to all members of the CEC to openly and publicly oppose any such attack on Your Party members.

We call on all Your Party branches to continue to welcome all socialists in their meetings.

Democratic Socialists of Your Party
Socialist Alternative
Democratic Bloc
Communist Party of Great Britain/Weekly Worker
Greater Manchester Left Caucus
Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (rs21)
Anticapitalist Resistance
Workers Power
Harmony UK
Eco-Socialist Horizon
Your Party Bolshevik Caucus
The Spartacist League
Sheffield Left
Trans Liberation Group

Branches

YP Sheffield

DSYP EC note

This statement is an initial response by ourselves and other friendly organisations whose members have helped build Your Party. You can find the CEC document containing the motions to ban socialist organisations and members organising together here: bit.ly/3OtVtrW and can find the statement by Grassroots Left CEC members who are working to stop the bans here: https://x.com/candi4changeSW/status/2042685747107434883

There is also a member petition that we would encourage individuals to sign here: https://tinyurl.com/3au6dz4u

If any organisation or branch wishes to sign please email us at mail@dsyp.org