Labour Party history

Articles about the history of the British Labour Party

Reclaiming radicalism

Something strange has happened to the word “radicalisation”. Schools are now officially instructed that they must police their students against being “radicalised”. It is taken for granted that “radicalisation” means a drive to slaughter civilians in the name of imposing clerical-fascist tyranny. For 200 years until recently, “radical” had a different meaning. The Oxford dictionary defines radical, in politics, as dating back to 1802: “One who holds the most advanced views of political reform on democratic lines, and thus belongs to the most extreme section of the Liberal party”. The first...

Gaddafi’s Foreign Legion to Knight’s Rescue (1981)

(This article was the subject of a five-year long libel case brought by the WRP in the name of the actress Vanessa Redgrave against its author, Sean Matgamna, and John Bloxham, who had repeated some of it in a circular letter to supporters of Socialist Organiser. The libel case collapsed when the WRP imploded at the end of 1985.) SOMETHING strange and nasty happened at the "Local Government in Crisis" conference. Gerry Healy’s so-called Workers Revolutionary Party turned up to support Ted Knight and rent and rate rises. Perhaps as many as forty delegates were members or sympathisers of the WRP...

The Old Left Continues To Rot (1994)

THE "George-Galloway-loves-Saddam-Hussein" affair gave the Tories a brief respite from their own scandals and sensational revelations last week. It brought no respite to socialists concerned at the continuing decay of the old left. It was the latest putrescent manifestation of that decay. The Tories needed the respite, and though in fact it was the BBC monitoring service which "broke" the story, we got tabloid front pages. Beneath the abuse, they must have loved George Galloway! "Where's your nose been Galloway? ...Presstuck up Saddam's junta, that's where!" grimly chortled the dingy Star. The...

Workers of Ireland! (By the author of "The Red Flag")

[To the tune of O'Donnell Abú] Workers of Ireland Jim Connell, author of The Red Flag, published this song in Jim Larkin's paper, the Irish Worker, in 1911. It goes to the tune of O'Donnell Abú Workers of Ireland, why crawl ye like cravens? Why clutch an existence of insult and want? Why stand to be plucked by an army of ravens, Or hoodwinked forever by twaddle and cant? Think on the wrongs ye bear, Think on the rags ye wear, Think on the insults endured from your birth; Toiling in snow and rain Rearing up heaps of gain, All for the tyrants who ground you to earth. Your brains are as keen as...

Workers of Ireland!

[To the tune of O'Donnell Abú] Workers of Ireland Jim Connell, author of The Red Flag, published this song in Jim Larkin's paper, the Irish Worker, in 1911. It goes to the tune of O'Donnell Abú Workers of Ireland, why crawl ye like cravens? Why clutch an existence of insult and want? Why stand to be plucked by an army of ravens, Or hoodwinked forever by twaddle and cant? Think on the wrongs ye bear, Think on the rags ye wear, Think on the insults endured from your birth; Toiling in snow and rain Rearing up heaps of gain, All for the tyrants who ground you to earth. Your brains are as keen as...

Vladimir Derer, campaigner for Labour Party democracy

Vladimir Derer who was the leading figure in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) for forty years after its foundation in 1973 has died at the age of 94. Although almost unknown other than amongst Labour activists, he was the Labour left’s leading strategist at the height of its influence in the 1970s and 1980s.His strategic vision made CLPD, the most effective organisation on the Labour left through to the New Labour years and the present. Tony Benn was rightly regarded as the Labour left’s outstanding leader and communicator of the period but he was often wrongly credited with...

Tony Benn, 1925-2014

(The author worked with Benn and others to set up the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, which for a while united most of the Labour Party left, at the start of the 1980s.) The first thing that should be said and remembered about Tony Benn, who died on Friday 14 March, is that for over four decades he backed, defended, and championed workers in conflict with their bosses or with the "boss of bosses", the government. That put him decidedly in our camp. The political ideas which he too often linked with those bedrock working-class battles detract from the great merit of Tony Benn, but do not...

How workers' action freed the Pentonville Five

Vic Turner carried aloft as the Pentonville Five are released From Workers' Liberty magazine 41, July 1997 Part two, on the role of the left, here It is July 1972. With the union leaders safely in talks with Tory Prime Minister] Heath and knuckling under to his Industrial Relations Act (IRA), the Tories now went for the real union power on the docks: the rank and file. They were going to make an example of five dockers from east London to cauterise resistance to the long-term running down of the docks, to stop the unofficial blacking (refusal to unload) of lorries and picketing at the...

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