Well, there’s no short answer because they’re very much what the local community, region or even the country as a whole wants them to be.
Inspired by the revolution which overthrew the Tsar, 1000 delegates met at a socialist convention in Leeds on 3rd June 1917 and adopted a resolution which called for the creation of “extra-Parliamentary Soviets [representative workers’ councils] with sovereign powers”.
Nothing came of the call at the time.
Our Citizens’ Assembly South Tyneside - CAST - was launched because it was felt that the views of our community were ignored orbypassed by the local council and other public bodies like the NHS. CAST supports campaigns to protect services, amenities and the environment, producing our own consultative report on climate change which was submitted to South Tyneside Council in April of this year.
Local councils have created their own one-off assemblies to deliberate on issues and report back. Members of the assembly are chosen to reflect the social balance of the local community in a process known as sortition. By the end of 2021, some 23 of these types of assemblies had taken place. Since then, Newham Council in East London has created England’s first permanent assembly that deliberates on a whole range of issues.
A more ambitious project was the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK which brought together 67 members of the public online over six weekends. The assembly explored what kind of democratic system people wanted in the UK. Assembly members heard from a wide range of expert speakers and their final report was published in April 2022.
A century after that convention in 1917, could deep dissatisfaction with the political process, a social crisis and a widespread feeling of powerlessness, enable Citizens’ Assemblies to become a part of a system of a more direct democracy as the Leeds conference envisaged?
Anything is possible!
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