Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She became the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham was a Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer. He was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP); the first ever socialist member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; a founder, and the first president, of the Scottish Labour Party; a founder of the National Party of Scotland in 1928; and the first president of the Scottish National Party in 1934.
The Community Charge, commonly known as the poll tax, was a system of local taxation introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government whereby each taxpayer was taxed the same fixed sum, with the precise amount being set by each local authority. It replaced domestic rates in Scotland from 1989, prior to its introduction in England and Wales from 1990. The abolition of the poll tax was announced in 1991 and it was replaced in 1993 by the current system of the Council Tax.
Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx, sometimes called Eleanor Aveling and known to her family as Tussy, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist who sometimes worked as a literary translator. In March 1898, after discovering that her partner Edward Aveling had secretly married the previous year, she poisoned herself at the age of 43.
The poll tax riots were a series of riots in British towns and cities during protests against the Community Charge, introduced by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The largest protest occurred in central London on Saturday 31 March 1990, shortly before the tax was due to come into force in England and Wales.
Edward Bibbins Aveling was an English comparative anatomist and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution, atheism and socialism. He was also a playwright and actor.
The Socialist Union was a British political party active from February 1886 to 1888.
The Socialist League was an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation began as a dissident offshoot of the Social Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman at the end of 1884. Never an ideologically harmonious group, by the 1890s the group had turned from socialism to anarchism, and disbanded in 1901.
The Red Flag riots were a series of violent demonstrations and attacks that occurred in Brisbane, Australia over the course of 1918–19. The attacks were largely undertaken by returned soldiers from the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and were focused upon socialists and other elements of society that the ex-servicemen considered to be disloyal. The name was coined because of the flags that a number of the demonstrators carried, which were associated with the trade union movement and which were banned under the War Precautions Act. The most notable incident occurred on 24 March 1919, when a crowd of about 8,000 ex-servicemen clashed with police who were preventing them from attacking the Russian Hall in Merivale Street, South Brisbane.
The 2009 May Day protests were a series of international protests that took place across Europe, Asia and in the other parts of the world due to the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the resulting Great Recession. Several May Day marches, which are traditional events, had turned violent in Germany, Turkey and Venezuela as riot police battled protesters in their respective countries. Banks and shops had been attacked in Turkey.
The 2010 United Kingdom student protests were a series of demonstrations in November and December 2010 that took place in several areas of the country, with the focal point of protests being in central London. Largely student-led, the protests were held in opposition to planned spending cuts to further education and an increase of the cap on tuition fees by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government following their review into higher education funding in England. Student groups said that the intended cuts to education were excessive, would damage higher education, give students higher debts, and broke campaign promises made by politicians.
The 2011 anti-cuts protest in London, also known as the March for the Alternative, was a demonstration held in central London on 26 March 2011. Organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), it was a protest march against planned public spending cuts by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government that was formed in May 2010.
John Lincoln Mahon was a Scottish trade unionist and politician, best known as a prominent socialist activist.
Socialism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 19th century from roots arising in the English Civil War. Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopian philanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the Labour Party that was founded in 1900 and nationalised a fifth of the British economy in the late 1940s.
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury, James Connolly and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture. Many of its early leading members had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League.
Margaret Elise Harkness, also known under her pen name John Law, was an English radical journalist and writer.
On 16 October 1993, an anti-racism march near Welling in South East London turned violent, leading to large-scale clashes between police and protesters which left around 70 people injured. The march was intending to demand the closure of a bookshop which was the headquarters of the British National Party (BNP).
During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, numerous protests took place over the government's response.
