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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. [1] [2] [3]
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. [4]
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.
The following is a list of figures considered[ by whom? ] significant for the British 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 by membership levels, with 415,000 members as of July 2022. [44] Labour has 197 seats in the House of Commons (not including two MPs elected as Labour who as of 2021 have their whip withdrawn), and has been the Official Opposition since May 2010.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. [45] The third largest party on the British left is the Green Party of England and Wales, whose membership reached 50,000 in September 2019. [46] 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.
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. [47] [48]
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, [49] 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. [50] The party was subsequently criticised by some, including Blair himself, as straying leftwards from the centre ground of British politics, [51] and that Miliband was a more traditional left-wing politician. [52] Others disputed this view, and put Labour's loss at the 2015 United Kingdom general election down to the party being too right-wing. [53] [54]
Labour's status as a socialist party has been disputed by those who do not see the party as being part of the Left, [55] [56] [57] although the general consensus under Jeremy Corbyn was that Labour was closer to the Left on the left–right political spectrum. [58] [59] As a result of this, there has always been tension between the Left and the Labour Party. [60] [61] [62] 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, [63] represented a revival of the Labour left and led to a significant increase in membership; [64] 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. [65] 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, [66] [67] which was taken as a vindication by some of the left turn. [68] [69] 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. [70] [71] [72]
In 2015, the membership of the Green Party of England and Wales quadrupled, and its support in national opinion polls sextupled. [73] 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. [74] 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. [75]
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. [76] 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, [77] following a rejection by Labour of an election pact [78] 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%. [79] 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. [80] As with Labour, the status of the Greens as a party of the political left has been disputed. [81]
The Workers Party of Britain (WPB) was formed in December 2019. [82] It is a socialist and socially conservative party. [83] Its leader George Galloway became the Member of Parliament for Rochdale in the 2024 Rochdale by-election. [84]
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 [85] and its sole MP George Galloway - who was also the party leader. Respect disbanded after twelve years, on 18 August 2016. [86]
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; [87] 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. [88] In May 2017, TUSC confirmed that it would stand no candidates at the forthcoming general election, [88] and give full support to Labour. [89] In 2018, TUSC suspended electoral activity until further notice. [90] In September 2020, TUSC became active once again as its steering committee agreed it would stand candidates in the 2021 local elections. [91]
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 [92] but has since renounced independent electoral activity in favour of Labour. [93]
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. [94] In 2017, the CPB announced that it would field no candidates at that year's general election, and give support to Labour instead. [95]
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, [96] [97] [98] or work unofficially in support of, or advocate a vote for, the Labour Party.
The following is a list of media organisations and other progressive British cultural outputs explicitly associated with the Left. [108]
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers is a British trade union covering the transport sector. Its current President is Alex Gordon and its current General Secretary is Mick Lynch.
Lindsey Ann German is a British left-wing political activist. A founding member and convenor of the British anti-war organisation Stop the War Coalition, she was formerly a member of the Socialist Workers Party, sitting on its central committee and editor of its magazine, Socialist Review.
The soft left, also known as the open left, inside left and historically as the Tribunite left, is a faction within the British Labour Party. The term "soft left" was coined to distinguish the mainstream left, represented by former leader Michael Foot, from the hard left, represented by Tony Benn. People belonging to the soft left may be called soft leftists or Tribunites.
David John Nellist is a British Trotskyist activist who was the MP for the constituency of Coventry South East from 1983 to 1992. Elected as a Labour MP, his support for the Militant tendency led to his eventual expulsion from the party in late 1991. He is the National Chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), a member of the Socialist Party, and was a city councillor in Coventry from 1998 to 2012.
Andrew Philip Drummond-Murray, commonly known as Andrew Murray, is a British trade union and Labour Party official and activist. Murray was seconded from Unite the Union to Labour headquarters for the 2017 United Kingdom general election, subsequently becoming an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn from 2018 to 2020.
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists, and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. Since the 2010 general election, it has been the second-largest UK political party by the number of votes cast, behind the Conservative Party and ahead of the Liberal Democrats. The party holds the annual Labour Party Conference.
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is a socialist electoral alliance in Britain. It was originally launched for the 2010 general election.
The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) is a communist party in Great Britain which emerged from a dispute between Eurocommunists and Marxist-Leninists in the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1988. It follows Marxist-Leninist theory and supports what it regards as existing socialist states, and has fraternal relationships with the ruling parties in Cuba, China, Laos, and Vietnam. It is affiliated nationally to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. It is a member of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, together with 117 other political parties. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the party was one of two original British signatories to the Pyongyang Declaration.
Socialism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 19th century from roots arising in the aftermath of 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 birth of the Labour Party that was founded in 1900.
The Socialist Party is a Trotskyist political party in England and Wales. Founded in 1997, it had formerly been Militant, an entryist group in the Labour Party from 1964 to 1991, which became Militant Labour from 1991 until 1997.
The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. The party was established in 1996 and is led by Arthur Scargill, a former Labour Party member and the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. The party's name highlights its commitment to socialism and acknowledges Clause IV of the Labour Party's former constitution, as fundamental to the party's identity.
Left Unity is a left-wing political party in the United Kingdom founded in 2013 when film director and social campaigner Ken Loach appealed for a new party to replace the Labour Party. More than 10,000 people supported Loach's appeal.
Socialist Resistance (SR) is a Trotskyist organisation in Britain. In 2009, the International Socialist Group (ISG) merged into it, making it the British Section of the Fourth International. In 2021, Socialist Resistance helped launch a new initiative, Anti*Capitalist Resistance.
Various newspapers, organisations and individuals endorsed parties or individual candidates for the 2015 general election
Momentum is a British left-wing political organisation which has been described as a grassroots movement supportive of the Labour Party; since January 2017, all Momentum members must be members of the party. It was founded in 2015 by Jon Lansman, Adam Klug, Emma Rees and James Schneider after Jeremy Corbyn's successful campaign to become Labour Party leader and it was reported to have between 20,000 and 30,000 members in 2021.
Novara Media is an independent, non-profit, left-wing media organisation based in the United Kingdom.
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