Lesley Elizabeth Mahmood is a British politician. She was active in Militant and Liverpool politics along with her brother Roy Farrar in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mahmood was prominent in the Liverpool District Labour Party's campaign for more money for the city from the government of Margaret Thatcher, and was elected to the Liverpool City Council as part of the Liverpool 29 who replaced the Liverpool 47 when they were surcharged in 1986. [1]
She was also prominent in the campaign against the Poll Tax and was put forward to be the Labour candidate in the Liverpool Walton by-election caused by the death of Eric Heffer in 1991. Although she won a majority of 92 out of 140 Walton Labour Party members, once the union votes were counted, Peter Kilfoyle became the Labour Party candidate. In the ensuing by-election, Kilfoyle won with 21,317 (53.1%) votes while Mahmood, standing as Walton Real Labour, came third with 2,613 and 6.5% of the vote. The Walton by-election was a factor in the decision by Militant to leave the Labour Party, setting up first Militant Labour and then the Socialist Party. [2]
Mahmood was later active in support of the sacked Liverpool Dockers. She left the Socialist Party in 1998 in disputes over the Euro, trade unions, and the relevance of democratic centralism to modern socialist politics and became a supporter of the Socialist Solidarity Network.
Peter Kilfoyle is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Walton from 1991 to 2010.
The Socialist Party is a political party in Ireland, active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Internationally, it is affiliated to the Trotskyist International Socialist Alternative. The party has been involved in various populist campaigns including the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign and the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes. Members of the party were jailed for their part in the former, while members have been arrested for their role in the latter. It had a seat in the European Parliament from 2009 to 2014. In 2015, the party received state funding of €132,000.
The Liverpool Protestant Party (LPP) was a minor political party operating in the city of Liverpool in northwest England.
Peter Taaffe is a British Marxist (Trotskyist) political activist and journalist. He was the general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and Wales from its founding until 2020 and was a member of the International Executive Committee of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).
Liverpool, Walton is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Dan Carden of the Labour Party. Carden won the highest percentage share of the vote in June 2017 of 650 constituencies, 85.7%. It is the safest Labour seat in the United Kingdom, and the safest seat in the country having been won by 85% of the vote in the most recent election in 2019.
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.
Terence Fields was a British politician and firefighter. A member of the Militant group, he was the Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Broadgreen from 1983 to 1992. He was expelled from the Labour Party in 1991 with the rest of Militant. Earlier he had been on the executive of the Fire Brigades Union.
Eric Samuel Heffer was a British socialist politician. He was Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1964 until his death. Due to his experience as a professional joiner, he made a speciality of the construction industry and its employment practices, but was also concerned with trade union issues in general. He changed his view on the European Common Market from being an outspoken supporter to an outspoken opponent, and served a brief period in government in the mid-1970s. His later career was dominated by his contribution to debates within the Labour Party and he defended the Liverpool City Council.
Michael Carr was a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for Bootle for 57 days in 1990 from his election until his death. He was a dockworker who later became a trade union official, but his political rise was assisted by the help he gave the Labour Party leadership in removing the influence of the Militant tendency. Carr had served briefly as a local councillor and did not see his attempts to become an MP as a career move. His sudden death occurred after he had been sent home from hospital where staff failed to identify an imminent heart attack; prosecutions were considered and his family sought legal redress.
The governing New Democratic Party of Ontario ran a full slate of candidates in the 1995 Ontario provincial election, and fell to third place status with 17 of 130 seats. Many of the party's candidates have their own biography pages; information on others may be found here.
Charles Patrick Wall was an English Trotskyist political activist who was the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford North from 1987 until his death. Wall was a long-standing member of the Militant group.
Elizabeth Margaret Braddock was a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Liverpool Exchange division from 1945 to 1970. She was a member of Liverpool County Borough Council from 1930 to 1961. Although she never held office in government, she won a national reputation for her forthright campaigns in connection with housing, public health and other social issues.
Socialist Party Scotland is the Scottish affiliate of the worldwide Marxist and Trotskyist organisation the Committee for a Workers' International. Socialist Party Scotland is the sister party of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. Socialist Party Scotland plays a leading role in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which stood ten candidates in Scotland at the 2015 general election and the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. Four of the ten Scottish TUSC candidates in 2015 were members of Socialist Party Scotland. TUSC did not stand candidates in the 2017 UK General Election or the 2019 UK General Election as it supported Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party. TUSC stood in the 2017 council elections in Scotland alongside Dundee Against Cuts.
The Liverpool Walton by-election was held on 4 July 1991, following the death of the Labour Party Member of Parliament Eric Heffer for Liverpool Walton, on 27 May.
The Bow and Bromley by-election was a by-election held on 26 November 1912 for the British House of Commons constituency of Bow and Bromley. It was triggered when the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP), George Lansbury, accepted the post of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds as a technical measure enabling him to leave Parliament.
Anthony Mulhearn was a British political and trade union campaigner known for being a prominent member of the Socialist Party and its predecessor, the Militant tendency. A native of Liverpool, Mulhearn was a member of the city council from 1984 to 1987 and also held the key role during this time of President of the District Labour Party. With Peter Taaffe, he co-authored a book detailing the struggle of the Liverpool city council called Liverpool: A City that Dared to Fight. Mulhearn's memoirs were published as The Making of a Liverpool Militant.
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.
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 Militant tendency, or Militant, was a Trotskyist group in the British Labour Party, organised around the Militant newspaper, which launched in 1964. According to Michael Crick, its politics were based on the thoughts of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and "virtually nobody else".
The Liverpool City Council adopted policies largely inspired by those elected Councillors who were members of a left wing group known as the Militant tendency through much of the 1980s, and was subsequently taken to court by the Government of Margaret Thatcher.