In the last article (http://www.fifthinternational/node/1495) we examined the development of the Independent Labour Party up to Labour’s electoral disaster in 1931. The Independent Labour Party was down to five MPs who were not endorsed by the Labour Party because of their refusal to abide by the Parliamentary Labour Party’s discipline. In this second part of the article John McKee and Keith Lawry look at the problems of the ILP’s split with the Labour Party and its subsequent political evolution Read more...

The Labour party has not been the only mass working class party in the history of the British Labour movement. But what are the lessons of the shortlived Independent Labour Party? Read more...

Militant’s turn to standing candidates against Labour contradicts everything they said and did in the 1980s. It is the result of the collapse of their political perspectives, argues Richard Brenner. Read more...

“We live in exciting times” Socialist Worker told its members in it’s party column in May 1990. True enough. But in exciting times it is the duty of revolutionary Marxists to give a sober assessment of the situation and point the way forward for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party, argues Arthur Merton, has once again proved it can do neither. Read more...

The Second World War was supposedly the "finest hour" of the British Communist Party (CP). It grew to 56,000 members, controlled many workplace organisations and had great influence in the unions. But throughout the war the CP acted as the puppet of Kremlin foreign policy. Read more...

“We have proclaimed hundreds, if not thousands of times that we believe that, armed with a clear programme and perspective, the labour movement in Britain could effect a peaceful socialist transformation.” Peter Taaffe, editor of the Militant

“The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.” V I Lenin Read more...

The year 1988 opened with an eloquent rebuttal of the arguments from all those who have bid farewell to the working class. The strikes in Ford, on the ferry services, in the mines, in the NHS and in the civil service all demonstrate not merely the physical existence of the working class, but also its continuing capacity for class struggle. Read more...

Julian Scholefield reviews the history of the Healy group in the Labour party in the 1960s Read more...

Part four of a history of the Labour Party Read more...

Part three of a history of the Labour Party Read more...

Part two of a History of the Labour Party by Jon Lewis and Dave Stocking Read more...

Arthur Scargill has justly been compared with Arthur J. Cook, the secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) from 1924 until 1931. During the miners’ great struggle of 1926 no figure came to represent the anger and determination of the miners more than A.J. Cook. He was adored by the militants in every coalfield as a tireless and selfless fighter for the cause of the miners. He was hated by the right wing trade unions leaders. He was pilloried in the bosses’ press. Read more...

A theoretical supplement published by Workers Power newspaper in the 1980s that explains the role of the National Minority Movement built by Communists in the 1920s and its lessons for trade union organising Read more...

Throughout the 1984 miners' strike, Workers Power has fought for the TUC to call a general strike. We have argued that it is necessary in order to secure a victory for the miners and to smash the entire Tory offensive that the MacGregor closure plan is merely one part of. We have been justified by events. Read more...

Dave Garroch looks at the unemployed struggles between the Wars in a review of two books about the period – Harry McShane’s “No Mean Fighter”  (Pluto Press) and Wal Hannington’s  “Unemployed Struggles (Lawrence and Wishart). Read more...

This is the first part of a series of articles by Stuart King which will examine Marxist tactics towards the Labour Party Read more...

An article from 1984, after the TUC sold out the struggle at the Stockport Messengernewspaper, pointing to the similarity with Black Friday in 1921 Read more...

In a period when the leadership of the Labour Party is once again setting out on its well trodden course of “cleansing” the Labour Party of “Marxists and Trotskyists”  it is highly appropriate to look at the very first witch-hunt in the Party’s history. During the 1920’s the right wing set out to drive the Communists from the Party. Read more...

Some sixty years after the word 'Poplarism" was first coined, the struggle between local Labour councils and Tory central government has lost none of its importance. While, after the humiliating retreats of Lambeth, Lothian and the Greater London Council it becomes more and more difficult for "left" councillors to invoke the militant heritage of the Poplar council, it is more important than ever to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of that movement. Read more...

Part one of a History of the Labour Party : The road to Labour Representation

The History of the original Labour Representation Committee, by Jon Lewis Read more...