![]() | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(February 2018) |
![]() | |
Formation | 2015 |
---|---|
Purpose | Political advocacy |
Location |
|
Co-Chairs | Tessa Milligan Amen Tesfay |
Affiliations | Labour Party |
Revenue (2018) | £3,114 [1] |
Expenses (2018) | £1,147 [1] |
Website | openlabour |
Open Labour is an activist group in the British Labour Party which acts as a forum for members to discuss ideas, tactics and campaigning. It is in the soft left political tradition, to the right of left-wing groups like Momentum and to the left of New Labour groups such as Progressive Britain. [2]
Open Labour was founded in 2015 following the 2015 Labour Party leadership election with the aim of giving voice to the soft left tradition within the Labour Party, and their interests, which many of its members felt had been sidelined. [3] [4] [5]
The soft left tradition within Labour traces back to, at least, the 1980s. While many Labour MPs, including the recent Labour leader Ed Miliband, had at times been characterised as coming from the soft left politically, there had not been an internal group advocating for this strand of politics since Compass unaffiliated from the party in 2011 in order to open up its membership to those from other political parties.
Since 2015, Open Labour has produced and published a number of essays across a range of topics on its website, and has held meetings and conferences routinely to establish its strategy and political positions. It has also held a number of political fringe events at Labour Party conferences. Open Labour has offered its backing to candidates in internal party elections and candidate selections for local and general elections. Several Open Labour activists and members were elected to Parliament in the 2017 United Kingdom general election, including Open Labour Treasurer Alex Sobel, Jo Platt, Emma Hardy, Anna McMorrin, Paul Sweeney, Marsha de Cordova, and Lloyd Russell-Moyle.
Founding committee member Ann Black was a longstanding member of Labour's National Executive Committee, with the group backing her in her failed re-election bid in 2018. [6]
In the 2019 General Election a number of Open Labour supporters and members were elected to parliament, including Nadia Whittome, Olivia Blake, Feryal Clark, James Murray, and Abena Oppong-Asare.
Open Labour made no endorsement during the 2016 Labour leadership elections. During the 2020 Labour leadership elections, Open Labour endorsed Lisa Nandy for Leader and Angela Rayner for Deputy Leader after an extensive ballot of its members. [7]
In the 2020 National Executive Committee elections, its members voted to endorse Ann Black and Jermain Jackman for the CLP section, George Lindars-Hammond for the new disability section and Alice Perry for the local government section, with Black and Perry winning election. In 2021, the organisation said its membership stood at 1,500 and it plans to make a number of endorsements for upcoming local and devolved elections.
Coming politically from the soft left tradition within Labour, Open Labour looks to recast this ideology as the "open left", defining it as "a practical, open-minded and tolerant type of democratic socialism". The group promotes a "democratic, participatory and pluralist culture". [8]
Their beliefs include advocating an economic platform of transforming the UK economy to a higher-investment, environmentally conscious and more democratic model. They are also generally pro-European, and call for Labour to maintain a close relationship with Europe and its sister parties on the continent, and for solidarity with those campaigning for social justice here and internationally.
Open Labour has roots in the history of organisations like the Tribune Group and the Labour Coordinating Committee, but also through local government and through trade unions.
In an article about the 2017 Labour Party Conference, Isabel Hardman described the group as "[carrying] the Corbynite flag", arguing that it and the wider soft left in Labour had shifted to the left after that year's general election. [9]
The Communist Party of Great Britain is a political group which publishes the Weekly Worker newspaper. The CPGB (PCC) claims to have "an internationalist duty to uphold the principle, 'One state, one party'. To the extent that the European Union becomes a state then that necessitates EU-wide trade unions and a Communist Party of the EU". In addition, it is in favour of the unification of the entire working class under a new Communist International. It is not to be confused with the former Communist Party of Great Britain, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist), or the current Communist Party of Britain.
The Socialist Campaign Group, also simply known as the Campaign Group, is a UK parliamentary caucus of the Labour Party including Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. The group also includes some MPs who formerly represented Labour in Parliament but have had the whip withdrawn or been expelled from the party.
Ann BlackOBE is a British political activist who serves as a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party. She served from 2000 to 2018 and was re-elected in November 2020. She was chair of the NEC from 2009 to 2010, and has also served as chair of the NEC's disputes panel.
The NDP Socialist Caucus is an unofficial left-wing faction within Canada's New Democratic Party.
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.
Walter Jakob Wolfgang was a German-born British socialist and peace activist. Up to the time of his death, he was Vice-President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Vice Chair of Labour CND, a caucus of CND members who are also members of the Labour Party. He was also a supporter of the Stop the War Coalition. Walter became better known to the general public after cameras recorded him being forcibly ejected from the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton on 28 September 2005, aged 82, for shouting "nonsense" during Jack Straw's speech in which the then Foreign Secretary extoled the virtues of the government's role in the Iraq War. The eviction of Walter Wolfgang provoked much media comment and embarrassed the Labour leadership. The following morning he was re-admitted to conference to a standing ovation and an apology from the chair of the session.
The Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) is a centre-left group of elected members on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, founded in 1998. They represent members from a broad spectrum of the Labour membership, ranging from the centre-left to those on the left-wing.
LGBT+ Labour is the socialist society officially representing the LGBTQ wing of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the organisation is to campaign within the Labour Party, and the wider Labour movement to promote the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) people, and to encourage members of the LGBT community to support the Labour Party.
Progressive Britain, formerly known as Progress, is a political organisation associated with the British Labour Party, founded in 1996 to support the New Labour leadership of Tony Blair. It is seen as being on the right of the party.
The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), known as Poale Zion (Great Britain) from 1903 to 2004, is one of the oldest socialist societies affiliated to the UK Labour Party. It is a member of the progressive coalition of Avodah/Meretz/Arzenu/Ameinu within the World Zionist Organization. Its sister parties are the Israeli Labor Party (Havodah) and Meretz.
Lisa Eva Nandy is a British Labour Party politician serving as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport since 2024. She has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wigan since 2010. Nandy previously served as Shadow Foreign Secretary, Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, Shadow Energy Secretary and Shadow International Development Minister.
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.
Vladimir Derer (1919–2014) was a British political activist in the Labour Party who escaped from Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s to live in Britain. For nearly four decades Vladimir was an important leader and strategist in the campaign to transform the Labour Party by making it more democratic and accountable to its members. He helped to form the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) in 1973 and was its secretary from 1974 until 2005. The CLPD is dedicated to introduce constitutional and rule changes and modernise the governance of the Party. Mandatory reselection of MPs and electoral college for the Leader were the most notable of many important democratic reforms implemented from the late 1970s until today.
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.
The 2016 Labour Party leadership election was called when a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party arose following criticism of his approach to the Remain campaign in the referendum on membership of the European Union and questions about his leadership of the party.
Labour Party Black Sections (LPBS), commonly known as Black Sections, was a caucus made up of Labour Party members of African, Caribbean, and Asian descent from 1983 to 1993. Its aims were campaigning against racism, demanded political representation of black and Asian members and establishing a group in the party.
BAME Labour, formerly the Black Socialist Society until 2007, is a socialist society affiliated to the Labour Party made up of black, Asian and ethnic minority Labour Party supporters.
Labour First is a British political organisation associated with the Labour Party. It was originally founded in 1980 but refounded in 1988. Born out of the political right wing of the Labour Party's struggles with its left wing, it sees itself as protecting the tradition of the "old Labour right". It has been described externally as "the voice of the party’s traditional right" and "a group on the right of the party". It organises petitions, endorses likeminded candidates, and runs events.
The 2020 Labour Party leadership election was triggered after Jeremy Corbyn announced his intention to resign as the leader of the Labour Party following the party's defeat at the 2019 general election. It was won by Keir Starmer, who received 56.2 per cent of the vote on the first round and went on to become Prime Minister after winning the 2024 general election. It was held alongside the deputy leadership election, in which Angela Rayner was elected to succeed Tom Watson as deputy leader after Watson retired from Parliament in November 2019, in advance of the election.