Introducing Joe Hall CEC Candidate for South West

ABOUT JOE: I am not a member of any other political party (besides Your Party). I previously belonged to the Socialist Labour Party in the early 2000s and for a short time, the Respect Party around 2014/15. I joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader but left again after he was removed. I am a current member of the National Education Union and in my student days I was the NUS rep and conference delegate for my college. I am a member of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and have been active with the CSC for 25 years. I have participated in a work brigade to Cuba as well as two other study visits. I am also a long-standing member of the Palestine campaign. I was heavily involved in the Che-Leila Youth Brigades in Palestine during the Second Intifada. I served as a volunteer with the Palestinian Red Cresent Societies during the siege of Ramallah. I then returned to Palestine and worked for a Palestinian water NGO before getting involved with the setting up of a Palestinian-led NGO called Project Hope working with children in the refugee camps in Nabalus. We then extended this to the village of Jayyous where I established a branch and lived for some months during which time I was involved with solidarity work, observer presence and activities with children in a community heavily affected by the apartheid wall, settler violence and enclosures.

JOE ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS….

YOUR HOPES FOR YOUR PARTY

1. What does Your Party mean to you, what do you want to see Your Party members doing more, and how would you support that work from within the CEC?
2. What processes and safeguards would you want to see implemented to curb factionalism in the party and ensure that members remain sovereign when it comes to important decisions.

1. Your Party must succeed. We can’t afford it not to. The inexorable rise of the far right and the continued drift towards authoritarianism, neoliberalisn and eco-fascism can only be slowed by a mass member party which stands up for socialism. No other party is going to do this and this is our generational opportunity. We may not get another one. We need hard structural restrictions to make sure that the party is not captured by a particular faction and that it remains a party led by the working class. For the CEC this means that we must have term limits or colling off periods after a term in office, open publication of agendas and minutes, transparency of interests, branch mandates for all significant decisions, worker friendly meeting times and workers wages for any paid roles within the party. Empowering branches is of fundamental importance and branches should get at least half of party funds and membership fees.

2. One of the main ways we can avoid the centralisation of power and keep members engaged and included is for the party to form policy working groups on key areas such as housing, climate, public ownership and so on. Members should feed ideas in through the branches, facilitated by the CEC and then policy proposals taken to conference. We need bold, radical and forward thinking socialist policies. The process will unite the party and the outcome will give everyone something to rally behind. Without doing this, policy will drift, power will centralise and members will disengage.

LET’S TALK POLICIES

On Disability

1. A disabled person’s care needs don’t end when a parent or carer reaches retirement age but the carer’s allowance does. What do you think the CEC and Your Party could do to address this injustice?
2. Are you committed to the social model of disability?
3. How do we ensure the rights of disabled people are taken seriously?
4. How will you ensure accessibility and inclusivity for disabled people in Your Party?

1. Capitalism treats care as disposable and unpaid labour as invisible. I believe that Your Party should commit to ending this arbitrary cut-off for carer’s allowance and replace it with a universal, non-means-tested carer’s income that reflects the real social value of care. Care does not stop at pension age, and neither should support. No one should be forced into poverty because they care for someone they love. The current system is cruel by design and it must be dismantled, not tweaked.

2. Yes, unequivocally. The social model of disability recognises that people are disabled by barriers, exclusion, and political choices, not by their bodies or minds. We must rejected deficit-based definitions and campaign to abolish so-called work capability assessments. These are designed to punish and exclude. Instead, I believe that we need to focus on the redistribution of resources and power so as to remove physical, social,.economics and attitudinal barriers. The social model should be taken as a direct challenge to austerity, privatisations and a hostile welfare state.

3. Rights mean nothing without power and material enforcement. To take disabled people’s rights seriously we must end austerity, guarantee secure incomes through strong social security, end punitive benefit assessments, and restore fully funded public health and social care as universal services, free at the point of need. Any socialist party or government must recognise disabled people as experts in their own lives, and ensure disabled people’s organisations have decision-making power, not just a consultative role. Under socialism, the economy exists to meet human needs, and that includes restructuring work, housing, transport, and public life around disabled people rather than forcing disabled people to adapt to an ableist system.

4. A socialist party must practice internally what it demands of society. Accessibility and inclusivity are, therefore, non-negotiable principles and not mere afterthoughts. We need to ask disabled people what is needed for them to be included. This means that we need to be ready to provide accessible meeting spaces, online participation as a standard option and materials in multiple formats as default. It may mean paying for access costs. Decision-making structures must be flexible and inclusive and I strongly believe that we should be prepared to reject productivity standards that mirror capitalist exploitation. Most importantly, disabled members should be represented at every level of leadership,  , with autonomous disabled caucuses empowered to shape policy. A socialist party does not “include” disabled people out of goodwill; it is strengthened by disabled people’s leadership and collective struggle against oppression.

On Benefits

1. What is your vision for sickness, disability, carer, child and unemployment benefits?
2. Do you support a Universal basic income / Universal basic services?
3. Currently, Amnesty International calls the social security system in the UK ‘Consciously cruel’. What do you think needs to be done to tackle this?

1. My vision for sickness, disability, carer, child and unemployment benefits is one based on three principles: universality (no means testing), needs first and social security from cradle to grave. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

2. Yes, I do support both UBI and UBS. UBS are particularly important because they directly decommodify the things people need to live: healthcare, education, water, housing, energy, food provision and internet access. When these are publicly owned, democratically run, and free at the point of use, people are no longer forced to rely on markets or employers to survive. UBS strengthens collective provision, reduces inequality at its source, and ensures that no one’s quality of life depends on their ability to sell their labour—this is a core socialist principle. I would, however add one caveat to my support for UBI which is that it should not be used as a substitute for public services, collective bargaining, or disability and housing support. A flat cash payment cannot replace tailored support or protect people from rising rents, privatised healthcare, or employer power.

3. If a system is “consciously cruel,” then tinkering at the edges won’t cut it. We need to stop treating poverty as a personal failure and start treating it as the political choice it is. That means replacing punitive assessments with unconditional support, funding services instead of starving them, taxing extreme wealth to rebuild a real safety net, and designing welfare around dignity rather than deterrence. A society as rich as the UK has no excuse for cruelty — only a responsibility to guarantee that everyone can live, not just survive.

On Jobs

1. How do we generate more well paid jobs in this country?
2. Do you believe the wealth gap between employers and employees needs to be addressed and, if so, where would you cap it?
3. Do you think the real living wage should continue to be voluntary or obligatory?
4. Do you think we should introduce a ‘back-to-work’ scheme in this country where people are given an annual allowance, instead of fortnightly benefits (for a period of time), so that they can become self-employed instead?
5. Do you think think the Employment Rights Act is adequate and, if not, why not, and how would you want to improve it?

1. If we want more well‑paid jobs, we have to stop pretending the “free market” will magically deliver them. It hasn’t, and it won’t. A socialist approach starts with taking economic power seriously: build a National Investment Bank with real democratic oversight and give it a mandate to pour long‑term, patient capital into the industries this country actually needs — green energy, public transport, social care, advanced manufacturing, and community‑owned enterprises.

2. Of course; the wealth gap between employers and employees is a structural injustice that concentrates power at the top while everyone else is told to “tighten their belts.” It should be capped following extensive consultation and a part of a planning process for a rebalanced needs focused economy. You can’t set the cap at a particular level without looking at all the other levers of economic planning. I would suggest that the public have an already pretty well developed sense of what is fair. Most surveys suggest that salaries which are more than three times median wages would be a good place to start.

3. Obligatory, but it is not currently at the right level.

4. I think that a “back‑to‑work” scheme only makes sense if it gives people real freedom, not another bureaucratic shove toward precarious work. An annual allowance could work — but only if it’s unconditional, generous enough to live on, and treats self‑employment as a choice, not an escape hatch from a punitive system.

5. I don’t think that the Employment Rights Act goes nearly far enough. Every worker should get day‑one rights, strong protections against fire‑and‑rehire, sector‑wide collective bargaining, and real enforcement with teeth.

On Housing

1. How do you think we can improve housing in deprived areas, so as to tackle the urgent issues of rising rents, unaffordable housing, shortage of social housing and, in some areas, Airbnb or developers taking over all free properties that could become homes for people? This issue is badly affecting young people who can’t afford the rent on their low wages and also older people 50+ who also can’t find enough work
2. When we win an election, and if it’s within your remit to do so, what measures would you implement to address the homelessness crisis.

1. Housing should be treated as key infrastructure, not as a commodity. We treat roads, schools, airports etc. as key infrastructure, so why not housing. We need a national social housing building programme by allowing councils to borrow freely to build, by ending restrictions that allow local authorities to develop land and by replacing every right to buy property sold. This will create jobs and reduce pressure on rents. At the same time the Airbnb problem can be addressed through caps on short-term lets per area, banning full-time short-term lets in high-demand areas and requiring planning permission to switch from residential use.

2. We should legislate to make housing a right and set up emergency housing units in each local authority. Empty properties such immediately be converted into emergency housing and the thousands of square metres of empty office space in cities should be requisitioned, along with the large building at the end of the Mall!

On Inequality

1. Where do you stand on Trans rights and do you believe a woman’s place on the CEC should also be open to Trans women?
2. What is your stance on a youth/student wing, Disabilities group, BAME group, Women’s group or a LGBTQIA+ group within the party?
3. If it were within your remit, what measures would you want to see put in place to combat Transphobia, gender stereotypes, racism, religious intolerance and the general ‘fear of the other’ within our communities, for example in education, in health, in the work place and in negative media portrayals.
4. How do you think we can tackle the centuries-old culture of blaming poor people, and address the real causes of poverty?

1. I am not a huge fan of positive discrimination. I don’t believe that any places on the CEC should be reserved to any particular identity. We are better than this as a party and don’t need to reflect the structural prejudices built in to capitalist society and political parties.

2. I think that one of the key roles of the CEC will be encouraging and supporting members who want to create and develop wings and groups. All of these (and more) will add to the richness, diversity, inclusivity and sense of belonging for different groups within the party.

3. We tackle transphobia, racism, religious intolerance and every other form of manufactured “othering” by treating them as political problems, not personal quirks. That means embedding anti‑discrimination education in every school, enforcing workplace rights with real teeth, funding community‑led services, and breaking the media’s grip on fear‑mongering by demanding public‑interest journalism over profit‑driven division.

4. As above, by developing public interest journalism and alternative media platforms for public debate.

The Environment + Green & Renewable Energy

1. Consider the challenges of building renewable energy. What is your view on how we should handle the trade‑offs between industrial growth, renewable construction, environmental impact, and the concerns of local people, for example, in the proposed Morgan & Morecambe Wind Farm?
2. What do you think should be done to tackle global warming and environmental degradation?
3. How do we achieve a just transition from the fossil fuel extraction industry to carbon neutral occupations?
4. How do you think we can tackle the lobbying power of the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries?

1. We can’t pretend the transition to renewable energy is neutral — it’s a political choice about who benefits and who bears the cost. I think that projects like the Morgan & Morecambe Wind Farm should go ahead, but only with democratic planning, public ownership, and guarantees that local communities share in the jobs, revenue, and decision‑making instead of being treated as an afterthought.  We also need to ensure that green energy solutions are genuinely green, so scientific input is essential in the decision-making process.

2. By taking power out of the hands of the industries causing it and putting it into the hands of the public.

3. A just transition from the fossil fuel extraction industry to carbon neutral occupations requires guaranteeing every fossil‑fuel worker a well‑paid, unionised green job — not “retraining” as a euphemism for unemployment, but a state‑led industrial strategy that builds renewable energy, public transport, insulation, and ecological restoration at scale.

4. By forcing these industries to comply with increasingly stringent legislation so that they leave the market altogether, allowing the state to step into energy production and distribution. Small scale farming would be encouraged through legislation, finance and support for organic and cooperative farming.

The Economy

1. Imagine Your Party has just won the General Election. How do you think Your Party could best manage the hostile economic reaction of the capitalist markets and hostile hyper capitalist countries?
2. What is your view of economic growth versus de-growth, and what do you think the key economic policies of Your Party should be?
3. Do you support the Wealth Tax?

1. Markets must adapt to socialism and not the other way around. As a socialist government would need to ensure that we stand firm, don’t panic, don’t appease and definitely don’t pretend that markets are neutral technocrats. They are political actors defending power and wealth and we need to treat them as such. As a socialist government our best defence will be democratic legitimacy, plus, of course, lots of preparation. We would need to move fast in the first 100 days (markets and their media will attack hesitation) so this means that we will need to get legislation on public ownership and worker’s rights passed as quickly as possible, along with signalling our tax reforms from the very start to say to the markets that the direction of travel is set. At the same time we would need to use temporary, targeted capital controls to stop capital flight (tools which capitalist states also use when it suits them. We should reduce dependence on private banking by creating state-backed sources of credit for infrastructure and housing. This entails public banking and a National Investment Bank. It will not be easy at first but over time things will get easier  – as the economy becomes less reliant on globalised finance and hostile trading partners, we will be weakening their leverage. Finally, as a party, we will need to make sure that our communication is extremely clear. If markets retaliate, we will need to say plainly that ‘unelected capital is trying to veto your vote’. For the public who are not convinced this will reframe the inevitable economic turbulence as a democratic issue, not a technical failure. Our bottom line must be firm and unbending. We will then be able to get the North Sea oil flowing to Cuba!

2. I don’t think the question is really ‘growth’ or ‘de-growth’, but rather growth for what, for whom and at what environmental cost. My view is simple – de-growth for the destructive stuff (arms exports, fossil fuels, speculative finance, advertising etc.) and expansion or growth where it improves life (social housing, public transport, education, health, cultural production, care work and renewable energy). We need to end GDP fetishism, introduce a 4 day working week, bring in universal public services and ensure the public ownership of natural monopolies.

3. Of course. How could I be a socialist if I didn’t?

Foreign and Defence policy

1. Do you commit to a complete arms embargo on Israel and ending all military cooperation, and what do you think about the global militarisation of foreign policy generally, including the planned defence of Ukraine.
2. Do you believe the UK government is complicit in the Palestinian Genocide (named as such by the UN 9/25).
3. If it were in your remit, would you reverse the proscription of Palestine Action?
4. What are your thoughts on defence expenditure in general, but also in light of the fact that we’re going through a cost of living crisis in this country and our taxes could instead be used to ease the financial burden on households and support our public services?
5. What does a ‘free Palestine’ look like to you?

1. Yes, yes, and yes again!

2. Yes, politically, legally and militarily complicit.

3. Of course. Probably the very first action I would take!

4. There can be no excuse for prioritising military spending over education, housing and healthcare. Military spending should be slashed significantly, something which would follow an immediate withdrawal from NATO.

5. Whatever the Palestinian people want it to look like – this is a matter for Palestinians to determine and they have been extremely effective at advancing a free, sovereign and independent Palestine for decades and decades!

General Questions on policy

1. What are the key policies that you would like to see in the Your Party manifesto for the next general election?
2. Imagine Your Party has just won a general election, what’s the first action or policy you would work to implement?
3. What do you think our taxes should be spent on?
4. What should, or should not, pension funds be invested in?
5. What are your thoughts on mass surveillance? Mandatory ID might be on ice but what about future attempts to reintroduce it, and what do you think about live facial recognition?
6. What are your thoughts on full public ownership of vital public services?

1. My top ten key policies would be: Unconditional support for the Palestinian people and a complete end to all arms sales and financial and trade relations with Israel, including the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel, a deep and meaningful trade agreement with Cuba, including the sale of oil to Cuba on credit, the re-nationalisation of the Royal Mail and the Post Office, bringing water and energy into public ownership, along with full re-nationalisation of all rail services and infrastructure, the right to housing enshrined in law as a human right and the development of a huge council house building programme, building at least 200,000 council homes per year, along with meaningful rent caps, a reshifting of the tax system to tax wealth, not work (wealth tax on assets above a high threshold and the end of corporate loopholes, a national infrastructure investment fund and green industrial strategy, worker representation on company boards and a significant increase in workers rights, including the banning of zero-hours contracts, the end of outsourcing in the NHS and the proper pay of NHS and care workers. (Mental health services should be funding to parity with physical health), the abolishing of university tuition fees and the restoration of maintenance grants, alongside a national youth employment guarantee and safe routes for asylum seekers and the ending of all hostile and detention policies. This should be accompanied by investment in communities experiencing rapid population change and the enforcement of labour standards to prevent undercutting.

2. The de-proscription of Palestine Action, the explusion of all Israeli diplomats from the UK and the conversion of the former Israeli embassy into a refugee shelter. At the same time I would work on an immediate trade deal with Cuba, finding a way to provide Cuba with its immediate energy and food needs. Domestically in the first week, I would restore control over setting interest rates by the Bank of England to the government and impose capital controls to prevent capital flight. This would pave the way for the beginning of the economic restructuring.

3. I can tell you what I don’t think they should be spent on – the armed forces, subsidies for fossil fuel companies and the royal family. Fiscal policy should be set by democratic consensus as a result of policy formulation through the democratic processes of Your Party.

4. Pension funds, if they need to be invested, should be invested in the things that actually sustain life — public housing, renewable energy, local infrastructure, and worker‑owned enterprises — not in fossil fuels, arms manufacturers, or corporations built on exploitation.

5. I am completely against mass surveillance in any form.

6.The word vital here says it all – if they are vital (dictionary definition of vital =  absolutely necessary, essential, or indispensable for something to function or survive) then they are too important to be left to the vagaries and insecurities of the market. In any democratic society they belong to us, the wealth creators.

YOUR PARTY RULES & MANAGEMENT

1. In your opinion, what would be the most effective and fair way for Your Party to decide on and write policy (i.e. proposed and written the by CEC, by branches, by individual members, or by Sortition Assembly, for example)?
2. What are your thoughts on how the CEC, and other Your Party structures, could be made to function more effectively and in the interests of its members?
3. Do you support dual membership and, if so, which other parties would you approve?
4. ⁠Will you ensure that ‘one member, one vote’ is enshrined into the party’s constitution?
5. Voters do not want to see discord in Your Party.  What processes would you want to see put in place to allow members to raise grievances, have them addressed fairly and expediently, and for lessons to be learnt?
6. Would you ensure the CEC provides members with a contact number and email so that members can contact you with suggestions and questions?
7. Taking cybersecurity concerns and obligations into consideration, at a time when there is serious concern  that member’s data could be hacked, leaving members exposed to harassment and other risks, what protections, other than those provided by cybersecurity tools, would you want to see put in place when sharing membership information with local branch executives?
8. How do you see Your Party operating in areas where people are fundamentally right wing and any kind of public street stalls can be very dangerous for those involved, and how should Your Party CEC and the party centrally support comrades in those areas?
9. Do you support the party investing, on a targeted and financially sustainable basis, in permanent and visible local spaces to enable branches to hold meetings, run public-facing events, and engage with citizens outside of election cycles? Please also explain why you support, or don’t support, this initiative.
10. Given the fact that politics is rife with self-serving careerists who priorities their own interests and the interests of their donors, over the interests of party members, and British voters, to the extent that they are prepared to lie their way into office and then break every promise they ever made, would you support a simple mechanism that allows party members to call an immediate vote of confidence in any Your Party elected official, including MPs, councillors and staff on the CEC (or other party structures)? Also, in the event that they lose that vote of confidence, that they are immediately removed from that office (ideally triggering a by-election in the case of MPs and Cllrs)

1. There is only one proper way to do this, through open and extensive policy group discussions at a branch level. This can then be translated into drafty policy by working groups for each area and put to conference for approval or amendment. .

2. Getting conference right is essential – we need a vibrant, active and rather lengthier conference which flows from working groups which prepare for conference in the preceding months.

3. My view is simple. Anyone should be able to belong to Your Party if they share the party’s core values and align themselves with its political statement. I don’t really understand why someone would want to belong to two parties (that’s a personal opinion) and I did vote against dual membership at conference in November but I have since changed my view and now support it as a principle.

4.  Yes, but this needs to be approved at conference.

5. We stop party discord by giving members real democratic power, not back‑room fixes. That means a transparent, independent grievance process with clear timelines, trained investigators, and outcomes that are published so lessons are actually learned. Unity should be a culture, not just a performance or slogan.

6. Yes of course!

7. This is a tricky one but I would say that we need to ensure that there are data‑minimisation rules, mandatory training for branch officers, clear accountability for misuse, and democratic oversight so members know exactly who can access what and why.

8. I think that we need to consider online outreach, community networks, door‑knocking in pairs, and events in safe, accessible spaces. Another good strategy is to build alliances with unions, anti‑racist groups, and local campaigns. The CEC and the central party must back comrades with training, legal support, rapid‑response safeguarding, and a clear commitment that no member is ever left to face intimidation alone.

9. This would depend on the resources available to us at that juncture in time. Ideally, yes, but other priorities may emerge.

10. Yes, I would support this.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

1. How would you distinguish democratic socialism from social democracy, do you identify with either, and, if so, why?
2. Should there be an electoral alliance with the Green Party?
3. Please sketch how you would fight an election campaign paying particular attention to the voting base you would attempt to mobilise, the messages you would try to get across, and the means you would employ to promote such messages.
4. Do you think we should keep the Monarchy?
5. Do you think it’s important for Your Party to have strong animal rights policies? If so, can you provide examples?

1. I identify more with democratic socialism than with social democracy. Democratic socialism aims to build a socialist economy and society and doesn’t believe that capitalism can be reformed. Social democracy wants to keep capitalism and tweak it.

2. In my opinion, no, not a formal electoral alliance . I don’t think that the Green Party will ever be in a position to truly build socialism in this country. I would however support Your Party being selective in where to stand whilst resources and support are initially limited. Ultimately we should aim to stand in every seat, including Green seats.

3. A winning campaign starts by mobilising the people who’ve been written out of politics for decades — renters, young people, workers in precarious jobs, carers, and communities abandoned by austerity. The message has to be clear and consistent: we’re fighting for public ownership, secure jobs, affordable homes, and a society built around human need rather than corporate profit.

4.  No!

5. Absolutely! I think we should push to end factory farming, invest in plant-based innovation and research and enforce strict welfare standards in research, farming and entertainment.

YOUR PARTY SOUTH WEST HUSTINGS (8th February 2026)….

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