British left


British left


The British left (or The Left in Britain) can refer to multiple concepts. It is sometimes used as shorthand for groups aligned with the Labour Party. It can also refer to other individuals, groups and political parties that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political, and cultural institutions of the United Kingdom. There are various subgroups, split between reformist and revolutionary viewpoints. Liberals, progressives and social democrats believe that equality can be accommodated into existing capitalist structures, but they differ in their criticism of capitalism and on the extent of reform and the welfare state. Anarchists, communists, and socialists, among others on the far left, on the other hand argue for abolition of the capitalist system.

History

Leftism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 17th century from roots arising in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Classical liberalism was an early example of a notable leftist British movement that was later thought of as right-wing.

Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopian socialism and philanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the birth of the Labour Party. Below follows historical and contemporary leftist movements.

Historical

  • Anti-Poll Tax Federation
  • Anti-Nazi League
  • Battle of Cable Street
  • Chartism
  • Communist Party of Great Britain
  • Diggers
  • General Strike
  • Great Dock Strike
  • Great Unrest
  • Independent Labour Party
  • Merthyr Rising
  • Miners' strike (1972)
  • Miners' strike (1984)
  • Peasants Revolt
  • Peterloo Massacre
  • Revolutionary Communist Party
  • Social Democratic Federation
  • Socialist League
  • Tolpuddle Martyrs
  • Vietnam Solidarity Campaign

Contemporary

  • Black Lives Matter
  • Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
  • Enough is Enough
  • Extinction Rebellion
  • Just Stop Oil
  • People's Assembly Against Austerity
  • Squatting
  • Stop the War Coalition
  • Trade unionism

Key figures

The following is a list of figures considered significant for the British Left.

Activists

  • Bob Crow
  • Claudia Jones
  • Mick Lynch
  • Len McCluskey
  • Albert Meltzer
  • Sylvia Pankhurst
  • Arthur Scargill

Journalists

  • Aaron Bastani
  • Paul Foot
  • Owen Hatherley
  • Owen Jones
  • George Monbiot
  • Ash Sarkar

Politicians

  • Diane Abbott
  • Tony Banks, Baron Stratford
  • Tony Benn
  • Aneurin Bevan
  • Richard Burgon
  • Andy Burnham
  • Barbara Castle
  • Jeremy Corbyn
  • Michael Foot
  • George Galloway
  • Keir Hardie
  • Eric Heffer
  • Ian Lavery
  • Clive Lewis
  • Ken Livingstone
  • Caroline Lucas
  • Rebecca Long-Bailey
  • John McDonnell
  • Dennis Skinner
  • Zarah Sultana
  • Ellen Wilkinson

Thinkers

  • Tariq Ali
  • Perry Anderson
  • Gurminder K. Bhambra
  • Terry Eagleton
  • Mark Fisher
  • Paul Gilroy
  • Stuart Hall
  • David Harvey
  • Christopher Hill
  • Eric Hobsbawm
  • John Holloway
  • Ralph Miliband
  • William Morris
  • Rajani Palme Dutt
  • James Schneider
  • Ambalavaner Sivanandan
  • E. P. Thompson
  • Raymond Williams

Left-wing electoral organisations active in Britain

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 by membership levels, with 415,000 members as of July 2022. Labour has 197 seats in the House of Commons (not including two MPs elected as Labour who as of 2021 have their whip withdrawn), and has been the Official Opposition since May 2010. The current Leader of the Labour Party is Keir Starmer, who was elected as the party's leader on 4 April 2020.

The second largest party on the British left, by membership, is the centre-left Scottish National Party (SNP), which has 72,186 members as of March 2023, despite only being active in Scotland. The third largest party on the British left is the Green Party of England and Wales, whose membership reached 50,000 in September 2019. The party has one Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas, who was first elected as the MP for Brighton Pavilion at the 2010 United Kingdom general election. She was also Leader of the party from 2008–2012 and then co-leader with Jonathan Bartley from 2016–2018.

The other three political parties on the left and with representation in parliament are the centre-left Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) of Northern Ireland; the centre-left Plaid Cymru (who are only active in Wales) and Sinn Féin, also from Northern Ireland. The SNP has 45 MPs, Plaid has three MPs, the SDLP have two MPs, and Sinn Féin has seven, but the latter party does not sit in Westminster as it refuses to take the parliamentary Oath of Allegiance. In total the British left therefore have 248 out of 650 MPs.

Labour Party

The biggest party on the political left in the United Kingdom in terms of members and representation is the Labour Party, which was founded as the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900. With the party's rebranding as New Labour in the 1990s under the leadership of Tony Blair, the party accepted a number of economic policies associated with the Right, causing it to be identified as centrist (Blair himself stated that his ministry would have governed from the political centre) rather than socialist, despite adding democratic socialism to the party's constitution, and was no longer considered as being a party of the Left; Blair described New Labour's ideology as Third Way, like Bill Clinton's Democratic Party in the United States. The Labour Party under Blair's leadership accepted many of the neoliberal economic policies enforced by the previous Conservative Party governments in the 1980s and 1990s, and continued in successive Conservative governments in the 2010s.

When Ed Miliband was elected as Leader of the Labour Party in 2010, he announced the abandonment of the New Labour agenda, and promised to return to socialism, clamp down on tax avoidance, introduce a wealth tax in the form of a mansion tax, raise income tax for high earners, and break up the banks. The party was subsequently criticised by some, including Blair himself, as straying leftwards from the centre ground of British politics, and that Miliband was a more traditional left-wing politician. Others disputed this view, and put Labour's loss at the 2015 United Kingdom general election down to the party being too right-wing.

Labour's status as a socialist party has been disputed by those who do not see the party as being part of the Left, although the general consensus under Jeremy Corbyn was that Labour was closer to the Left on the left–right political spectrum. As a result of this, there has always been tension between the Left and the Labour Party. The Corbyn Labour Party leadership campaign, which led to a landslide victory at the 2015 Labour Party leadership election held in the month of September, represented a revival of the Labour left and led to a significant increase in membership; in the shadow cabinet reshuffle that followed, John McDonnell (chairman of the Labour Representation Committee) and Diane Abbott (member of the Socialist Campaign Group) were both appointed to Corbyn's shadow cabinet. While not winning, Labour made significant gains in terms of vote share and modest improvements in terms of seats, enough to deny a Conservative majority and led to a hung parliament, at the 2017 United Kingdom general election, which was taken as a vindication by some of the left turn. The party fell in the 2019 United Kingdom general election to its lowest share of seats since 1935, although it was not the party's worst election in terms of vote share (it did better than in 1931, 1983, 1987, and 2010); many believe this was due to a complicated Labour Party manifesto and Brexit policy, a poor approach to campaigning, and the unpopularity of Corbyn's leadership.

Internal groups

  • Campaign for Labour Party Democracy
  • Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance
  • Labour Representation Committee
  • Momentum
  • Open Labour
  • Socialist Campaign Group

Magazine support

  • Chartist
  • Tribune

Green Party of England and Wales

In 2015, the membership of the Green Party of England and Wales quadrupled, and its support in national opinion polls sextupled. Several factors contributed, including the collapse of the Lib Dem vote, the influence of social media and greater awareness among younger people about the rise of other left-wing parties in Europe such as: Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, as well as a rise in anti-austerity movements across the UK and Europe. Other factors included the Scottish independence referendum, which proved to be 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 Greens during and following their successes at the European elections; a petition against the media blackout of the Green Party reached 260,000 signatures.

The party also received a significant spike in membership during January 2015 following David Cameron's demand that the Greens be included in the leaders' debates for the 2015 general election. The Green Party has been included in a seven-way television debate. The Greens' 2015 spring conference had a record 1,300 members attend; the party became the second-largest of the European Greens in this period, as well as increasing significantly in national polls from an average 1% to 7%. It beat the Liberal Democrats to fourth place at the 2014 European Elections with 8%, under a proportional voting system, having a third MEP elected. However the Greens achieved only a 1.6% vote share at the 2017 general election, following a rejection by Labour of an election pact and an increase in vote share by the two major parties.

In the 2019 general election, the Green Party increased their vote share by 65% to 2.7%. In the 2021 United Kingdom local elections, the party made a net gain of 91 council seats, taking its national total to a record 444. As with Labour, the status of the Greens as a party of the political left has been disputed.

Internal groups

  • Green Left

Workers Party of Britain

The Workers Party of Britain (WPB) was formed in December 2019. It is a socialist and socially conservative party. Its leader George Galloway became the Member of Parliament for Rochdale in the 2024 Rochdale by-election.

Other organisations

The now defunct Respect Party (formed in 2004), which at one point had the support of other left groups (such as the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Resistance) and some electoral success, lost its last local councillors in 2014 and its sole MP George Galloway - who was also the party leader. Respect disbanded after twelve years, on 18 August 2016.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), founded in 2010, comprises the Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party and RMT trade union. As of 2016, TUSC had 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; subsequently TUSC stood fewer candidates in the 2016 and 2017 local elections, based on a case by case reckoning of the political stance of local Labour candidates. In May 2017, TUSC confirmed that it would stand no candidates at the forthcoming general election, and give full support to Labour. In 2018, TUSC suspended electoral activity until further notice. In September 2020, TUSC became active once again as its steering committee agreed it would stand candidates in the 2021 local elections.

A new party, Left Unity, was formed in November 2013 and backed by a number of existing left-wing parties. Left Unity had an electoral pact with TUSC for the 2015 elections but has since renounced independent electoral activity in favour of Labour.

The Communist Party of Britain (CPB), is a split from (and effectively the political successor to) the historical Communist Party of Great Britain, once the largest British far-left organisation. In 2017, the CPB announced that it would field no candidates at that year's general election, and give support to Labour instead.

Some small left and far-left parties continue to contest elections independently, such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the oldest extant left-wing political party, having formed in 1904). Other parties and groups are electorally inactive, renounce participation in elections, or work unofficially in support of, or advocate a vote for, the Labour Party.

Electorally active parties

  • Alliance for Green Socialism
  • Communist League
  • National Health Action Party
  • Socialist Equality Party
  • Socialist Labour Party
  • Socialist Party of Great Britain
  • Social Justice Party
  • Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC)
  • Transform
  • Workers' Revolutionary Party
Entryist groups within Labour Party
  • Socialist Action
Parties working within Transform
  • Breakthrough Party
  • Left Unity
Parties working within TUSC
  • Socialist Party (England and Wales)
  • Socialist Party Scotland
  • Socialist Workers Party [in Scotland only]
Others
  • Alliance for Workers' Liberty
  • Anarchist Federation
  • Communist Party of Britain
  • Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist)
  • Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist)
  • Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)
  • Communist Workers Organisation
  • International Socialist League
  • New Communist Party of Britain
  • Revolutionary Communist Group
  • Revolutionary Communist Party
  • Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist)
  • Socialist Alternative
  • Socialist Resistance
  • Solidarity Federation
  • Spartacist League
  • Workers' Fight
  • Workers' Power

Active only in Scotland

  • Republican Communist Network
  • Scottish Greens
  • Scottish National Party
  • Scottish Republican Socialist Movement
  • Scottish Socialist Party
  • Socialist Party Scotland

Active only in Wales

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

Local parties

  • Old Swan Against the Cuts
  • Lewisham People Before Profit
  • Mebyon Kernow (only active in Cornwall)
  • West Dunbartonshire Community Party

Media and culture

The following is a list of media organisations and other progressive British cultural outputs explicitly associated with the Left.

Comics

  • Frankie Boyle
  • Steve Coogan
  • Nish Kumar
  • Stewart Lee
  • Josie Long
  • Alexei Sayle
  • Linda Smith
  • Mark Steel

Events

  • Durham Miners' Gala
  • Glastonbury Festival
  • Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival
  • The World Transformed

Film

  • I, Daniel Blake
  • Pride (film)
  • Adam Curtis
  • Ken Loach
  • Mike Leigh

Television

  • A Very British Coup
  • Boys from the Blackstuff
  • Alan Bleasdale
  • Jimmy McGovern

Theatre

  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Jim Allen
  • Edward Bond
  • Howard Brenton
  • Trevor Griffiths

Independent news sources

  • Byline Times (founded 2014)
  • Evolve Politics (founded 2015)
  • Left Foot Forward (founded 2010)
  • Morning Star (Independent since 1945 but Britain's Road to Socialism, the programme of the CPB, underlies the paper's editorial stance)
  • New Statesman (founded 1913)
  • Novara Media (founded 2011)
  • Red Pepper (founded 1995)
  • The Canary (founded 2015)
  • The Guardian
  • Tribune

Journals

  • Historical Materialism
  • New Left Review
  • Race & Class
  • Socialist Register

Online content creators

  • Hbomberguy
  • Shaun (YouTuber)
  • Abigail Thorn

Music

  • Attila the Stockbroker
  • Roy Bailey
  • Billy Bragg
  • Chumbawamba
  • The Clash
  • Crass
  • Crass Records
  • Easterhouse
  • Brian Eno
  • Thee Faction
  • Sam Fender
  • Gang of Four
  • The Housemartins
  • Linton Kwesi Johnson
  • Robb Johnson
  • The Left Field
  • John Lennon
  • Ewan MacColl
  • Massive Attack
  • McCarthy
  • Radiohead
  • The Redskins
  • Red Wedge
  • Rock Against Racism
  • The Style Council

Literature

  • W. H. Auden
  • Edith Nesbit
  • George Orwell
  • Michael Rosen
  • H.G. Wells
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
  • The Making of the English Working Class
  • The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

Publishing Houses

  • Pluto Press
  • Manifesto Press
  • Verso Books

Publications affiliated to political organisations

  • Emancipation and Liberation (Republican Communist Network)
  • News Line (WRP)
  • Scottish Socialist Voice (SSP)
  • Socialist Resistance periodical by a group of the same name
  • Socialist Standard (SPGB)
  • Socialist Studies quarterly journal by a group of the same name
  • Socialist Worker/Socialist Review (SWP)
  • Solidarity (AWL)
  • The New Worker (NCP)
  • The Socialist (SP)
  • Weekly Worker (CPGB-PCC)
  • World Socialist Web Site (SEP)

Think tanks

  • Compass ThinkTank
  • Centre for Labour and Social Studies: CLASS
  • Institute for Public Policy Research

See also

References

Further reading

  • Murray, Andrew (October 2019). The Fall and Rise of the British Left. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78873-513-1.
  • Schneider, James (September 2022). Our Bloc: How We Win. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-83976-850-7.
  • Leys, Colin; Panitch, Leo (May 2020). Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78873-834-7.

Text submitted to CC-BY-SA license. Source: British left by Wikipedia (Historical)



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