British Left

Timeline of parties in the broad socialist movement

The term British Left can refer to a range of political parties, movements and events in Britain. These political parties take the position of either centre-left, left-wing or far-left.

The largest political party associated with the British left is the centre-left Labour Party, which is also the biggest political party in the UK with over half a million members.^[1] The Labour Party has 230 seats in the House of Commons.

The largest left-wing party in Britain, by membership, is the Green Party of England and Wales. As of August 2016, membership is approximately 53,000. The party has one MP.

The other two political parties in Britain, on the left and with representation in the UK parliament, are the centre-left Scottish National Party and the left-wing Plaid Cymru. The Scottish National Party are only active in Scotland and Plaid Cymru are only active in Wales. The SNP has 54 MP's and Plaid has 3 MP's.

History

Active in England

Labour Party

The biggest left wing party in the UK in terms of members and representation is the Labour Party, originally formed as the Labour Representation Committee in 1900. With the party's rebranding as New Labour in the 1990s under Tony Blair's leadership, the party accepted a number of Thatcherite policy positions,^[2] causing it to be identified as neoliberal rather than democratic socialist, and no longer a party of the Left;^[3][4] Blair himself described New Labour's ideology as a "Third Way". When Ed Miliband became leader of the Labour Party in 2010, however, he described the Labour Party as "democratic socialist",^[5] pledging to clamp down on tax avoidance, introduce a wealth tax in the form of a Mansion Tax, raise income tax on the highest earners in Britain and break up the banks.^[6]

As an opposition party under Miliband's leadership, the party was criticised by some, including former leader Tony Blair, as straying leftwards from the "centre ground" of British politics,^[7] and that Miliband was a "traditional left-wing" politician.^[8] However, others disputed this view, and put Labour's loss of the 2015 UK election down to the party being too right wing.^[9][10] The unexpected landslide victory of Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour leadership election^[11] represented a resurgence of the Labour Left and led to a surge in membership;^[12] in the reshuffle that followed, John McDonnell (chairman of the Labour Representation Committee) and Diane Abbott (member of the Socialist Campaign Group) were appointed to the Shadow Cabinet.^[13]

Labour's status as a left-wing party has nevertheless been disputed by those who do not see the party as part of the Left.^[14][15][16]

Internal groups

• Momentum
• Compass
• Fabian Society
• Socialist Campaign Group
• Labour Representation Committee

Magazine support

• Tribune
• Chartist

Green Party of England and Wales

In 2015, the membership of the Green Party quadrupled, and its support in national opinion polls sextupled.^[17] Several factors have contributed, including the collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote, the influence of social media and greater awareness among younger people about the rise of other leftist parties in Europe such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, as well as a rise in anti-austerity movements across Europe and Britain.^[18] Other factors include the Scottish referendum, which has proved an inspiration for a new kind of politics. Other key factors had been the contrast in conferences of the Green Party and Labour in September 2014, and the media exclusion of the Green Party during and following their successes in the European elections. A petition against the media blackout of the Green Party reached 260,000 signatures.^[19] The party also received a significant spike in membership during January, 2015 following David Cameron's demand that the Green Party be included in the leaders' debates for the 2015 General Election. The Green Party has been included in a seven-way television debate.^[20] The Green Party of England and Wales' spring conference had 1,300 members attend, a record for the party.

The Green Party of England and Wales is now the second largest party of the European Greens, and has increased significantly in the national polls from an average 1% to 7%. It beat the Liberal Democrats to fourth place in the 2014 European Elections with 8%, under a proportional voting system, having a third MEP elected.

However, the status of the Greens as a party of the Left is also disputed.^[21][22][23]

Internal groups

• Green Left

Other organisations

The now defunct Respect Party, which at one point had the support of other Left groups (such as the Socialist Workers Party, CPGB(PCC) and Socialist Resistance), lost its final two councillors in the 2014 local elections,^[24] and its only MP, George Galloway - who was also the party leader^[25] - in May 2015.

The largest Left organisation (ref. number of electoral candidates) is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, comprising the Socialist Party (England and Wales), Socialist Workers Party, and Independent Socialist Network. As of 2016, TUSC has a small number of affiliated local councillors. Following the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, TUSC floated plans for a future electoral pact with any Labour councillors standing on an anti-austerity platform.^[26]

A new party, Left Unity, was formed in November 2013 and backed by a number of existing leftist parties. Left Unity had an electoral pact with TUSC for the 2015 elections^[27] but has since renounced independent electoral activity in favour of the Labour Party. Other, much smaller, left parties do contest elections independently, such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the oldest extant left party, having formed in 1904) and the Socialist Labour Party.

Electoral groups

• Alliance for Green Socialism
• Class War
• Communist League
• Communist Party of Britain
• Respect Party
• Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
• Socialist Equality Party
• Socialist Labour Party
• Socialist Party of Great Britain
• Workers' Revolutionary Party

Groups working within TUSC

• Socialist Party (England and Wales)
• Socialist Workers Party

Non-electoral groups

Anti-revisionists

• Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
• Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Revolutionary Communist Group
• Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
• Spartacist League

Others

• Anarchist Federation
• Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)
• Communist Workers Organisation
• International Socialist League
• Independent Working Class Association
• World Revolution
• Solidarity Federation
• Workers' Fight

Groups working within Labour Party

• Alliance for Workers Liberty
• Left Unity
• Socialist Resistance

Entryist groups within Labour Party

• Socialist Action
• Socialist Appeal
• Workers Power

Active only in Scotland

• Communist Party of Scotland
• RISE - Scotland's Left Alliance
• Scottish Socialist Party
• Scottish Green Party
• Solidarity
• Scottish National Party

Active only in Wales

• Plaid Cymru
• Wales Green Party (semi-autonomous within Green Party of England and Wales)

Media

Publications affiliated to parties

• Economic and Philosophic Science Review^[28] (EPSR Supporters)
• News Line^[29] (WRP)
• The New Worker^[30] (NCP)
• The Socialist^[31] (SPEW)
• Socialist Appeal,^[32] monthly newspaper by a group of the same name
• Socialist Resistance,^[33] periodical by a group of the same name
• Socialist Standard^[34] (SPGB)
• Socialist Worker^[35] (SWP)
• Solidarity^[36] (AWL)
• Weekly Worker^[37] (CPGB (PCC))
• World Socialist Web Site^[38] (SEP)

Unaffiliated

• Morning Star (Independent since 1945 but Britain's Road to Socialism, the programme of the Communist Party of Britain, underlies the paper's editorial stance)
• New Statesman (founded 1913)
• Red Pepper (founded 1995)

Archive

• Aufheben journal archive
• Fabian Society archive
• Marxism Today archive
• Marxists Internet Archive/Britain
• Revolutionary History journal
• Socialist History journal
• What Next Journal archive

Further reading

• Barrow, Logic and Bullock, Ian. Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
• Beilharz, Peter. Labour's Utopias: Bolshevism, Fabianism and Social Democracy (Routledge 1992)
• Biagini, E.F. and Reid, A.J., eds. Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain 1850–1914, (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
• Black, L. The Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 1951–64: old Labour, new Britain? (Basingstoke, 2003)
• Bryant, C. Possible Dreams: a personal history of British Christian Socialists (London, 1996)
• Buchanan, Tom. "Britain's Popular Front?: Aid Spain and the British Labour Movement," History Workshop Journal, 31, 1991
• Callaghan, John. British Trotskyism: Theory and Practice (Blackwell 1984)
• Callaghan, John. Socialism in Britain since 1884 (Blackwell, 1990)
• Callaghan, John. The Far Left in British Politics (1987)
• Chun, L. The British New Left (1993)
• Morgan, Kenneth O. Ages of Reform: Dawns and Downfalls of the British Left (I.B. Tauris, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 314 pages; the history of the British left since the Great Reform Act of 1832.
• Parker, Martin, et al. The Dictionary of Alternatives Zed Books, 2007.^[39]
• Shipley, Peter. Revolutionaries in Modern Britain (1976)

Labour Party

• Cole, G. D. H. A history of the Labour Party from 1914 (1969)
• Pelling, Henry. A short history of the Labour Party (12th ed. 2005)
• Pugh, Martin. Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party (2011) ^[40]
• Taylor, Robert. The Parliamentary Labour Party: A History 1906–2006 (2007)
• Thorpe, Andrew and Jeremy Black. A History of the British Labour Party (3rd. ed. 2008)^[41]
• Worley, Matthew. Labour Inside the Gate: A History of the British Labour Party between the Wars (2009)^[42]

Communist Party

• Callaghan, John. Cold War, Crisis and Conflict: The History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1951–68 (Lawrence & Wishart, 2001) ^[43]
• Britain's Road to Socialism - the programme of the Communist Party of Britain
• Croft, Andy, (ed.) A Weapon in the Struggle: The Cultural History of the Communist Party in Britain (Pluto Press, London, 1998)
• Pearce, Brian, and Michael Woodhouse. A History of Communism in Britain

Women

• Bruley, Sue. Leninism, Stalinism and the Women's Movement in Britain, 1920–1939 (Garland, London and New York, 1986)
• Graves, Pamela M. Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics 1918–1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
• Jackson, Angela. British Women and the Spanish Civil War (Routledge 2002)^[44]
• Mitchell, Juliet, and Ann Oakley, (eds). The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Penguin, London, 1976)
• Rowbotham, Sheila. Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It (Pluto Press, London, 1973)

Critiques

• John Sullivan, As Soon As This Pub Closes
• Jim Higgins, Ten Years for the Locust
• Jim Higgins, More Years for the Locust
• AWL critique of the SWP
• Red Party critique of the AWL
• CPGB(M-L) critique of the SLP
• CPGB(M-L) critique of the Morning Star/CPB
• Socialist Party critique of the SWP

See also

• History of socialism in the United Kingdom
• Convention of the Left
• Campaign for a Marxist Party
• Campaign for a New Workers' Party
• Socialist Alliance
• Socialist Unity Network
• List of political parties in the United Kingdom

References