Socialist Workers Party (UK)
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Socialist Workers Party (UK)
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries. The SWP has founded several fronts through which they have sought to coordinate and influence leftist action, such as the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s. It also formed an alliance with George Galloway and Respect, the dissolution of which in 2007 caused an internal crisis in the SWP. A more serious internal crisis emerged at the beginning of 2013 over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against a leading member of the party. The SWP's handling of these accusations against the individual known as Comrade Delta led to a significant decline in the party's membership ...
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Alex Callinicos
Alexander Theodore Callinicos (born 24 July 1950) is a Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary. He is also editor of ''International Socialism'', the SWP's theoretical journal, and has published a number of books. Biography Early life Callinicos's mother, the Honorable Ædgyth Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, was the daughter of the 2nd Lord Acton, descended from the 19th-century English historian Lord Acton. Callinicos's Greek father was active in the Greek Resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. Callinicos was educated at St George's College, Salisbury (now Harare). He became involved in revolutionary politics as a student at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read for his BA and came to know Christopher Hitchens, then himself active in the International Socialists (the SWP's forerunner). He also received his DPh ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism. Born to an upper-middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empire's Tsarist government, he devoted the following years to a law degree. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye in Siberia for three years, where he married ...
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Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, political theorist and politician. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Trotskyism. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Yanovka (now Bereslavka, Ukraine), Trotsky embraced Marxism after moving to Mykolaiv in 1896. In 1898, he was arrested for revolutionary activities and subsequently exiled to Siberia. He escaped from Siberia in 1902 and moved to London, where he befriended Vladimir Lenin. In 1903, he sided with Julius Martov's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks during the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's initial organisational split. Trotsky helped organize the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, after which he was again arrested and exiled to Siberia. He once again escape ...
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Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Spartacus League (), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Born and raised in an assimilated Jewish family in Poland, she became a German citizen in 1897. After the SPD supported German involvement in World War I in 1915, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League () which eventually became the KPD. During the November Revolution, she co-founded the newspaper (''The Red Flag''), the central organ of the Spartacist movement. Luxemburg considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a blunder, but supported the attempted overthrow of the ...
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Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of Nuclear weapon, nuclear, Chemical warfare, chemical or Biological warfare, biological weapons and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK. CND began in November 1957 when a committee was formed, including Canon John Collins as chairman, Bertrand Russell as president and Peggy Duff as organising secretary. The committee organised CND's first public meeting at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958. Since then, CND has periodically been at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK. It claims to be Europe's largest Single-issue politics, single-issue peace campaign. Between 1958 and 1965 it organised the Aldermaston Marches, Al ...
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Labour Party (UK)
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. The party holds the annual Labour Party Conference, at which party policy is formulated. The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940–1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfa ...
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Entryism
Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, or infiltration) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. If the organization being "entered" is hostile to entrism, the entrists may engage in a degree of subterfuge and subversion to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right. Definitions Horton (2014) gives the "example of entryism – the infiltration of a self-proclaimed human rights activist into an institution committed to neoliberalism, a market fundamentalism that has been credited with eroding health systems in dozens of low and middle-income countries." Leslie (1999) uses the example of gender: "alternative, yet complementary, strategies of 'entryism', with attempts to enter and transform these institutions' gender inequalities from within (as missionaries)." Socialist entryism Trotsky's "Fren ...
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Martin Smith (activist)
Martin James Smith (born October 1963) is a British political activist. He is a former National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a position he held from 2004 until January 2011. He is reported to have left the SWP in 2013 following accusations of the rape of a much younger female member of the party. Smith joined the SWP in the 1980s and eventually become a member of the Central Committee. He was involved in disrupting talks at Acas in May 2010 between British Airways and the Unite trade union which he defended on ''Channel 4 News''. He has also been involved at a senior level in Unite Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism. In September 2010, he was convicted of an assault on a police officer during the protest in October 2009 against British National Party leader Nick Griffin's appearance on ''Question Time''. He was sentenced to a 12-month community order. Smith is a former Director of Sherborne Publications Limited,
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Respect Party
The Respect Party was a left-wing to far-left, socialist political party active in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2016. At the height of its success in 2007, the party had one Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons and nineteen councillors in local government. The Respect Party was established in London by Salma Yaqoob and George Monbiot in 2004. Arising in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it grew out of the Stop the War Coalition and from the start revolved largely around opposition to the United Kingdom's role in the Iraq War. Uniting a range of leftist and anti-war groups, it was unofficially allied to the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a far-left, Marxist group. In 2005, Respect's candidate George Galloway was elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and the party came second in three other constituencies. Respect made further gains in the 2006 and 2007 local elections, at which point its support peaked. In ...
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George Galloway
George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, broadcaster, and writer who is currently leader of the Workers Party of Britain, serving since 2019. Between 1987 and 2010, and then between 2012 and 2015, Galloway was a Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for four constituencies, first for the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party and later for the Respect Party, the latter of which he joined in 2004 and led from 2013 until its dissolution in 2016. Galloway was born in Dundee, Scotland. After becoming the youngest ever chair of the Scottish Labour, Scottish Labour Party in 1981, he was general secretary of the London-based charity War on Want from 1983 until his election as MP for Glasgow Hillhead (UK Parliament constituency), Glasgow Hillhead (later Glasgow Kelvin (UK Parliament constituency), Glasgow Kelvin) in the 1987 United Kingdom general election, 1987 general election. In 2003, he was expelled from the Labour Party for bringing the ...
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Anti-Nazi League
The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was an organisation set up in 1977 on the initiative of the Socialist Workers Party with sponsorship from some trade unions and the endorsement of a list of prominent people to oppose the rise of far-right groups in the United Kingdom. It was wound down in 1981. It was relaunched in 1992, but merged into Unite Against Fascism in 2003. 1977–1982 In its first period, 1977–1982, the Anti-Nazi League was launched directly by the SWP; it was effectively its front organisation. Many trade unions sponsored it, as did the Indian Workers' Association (then a large organisation), and many members of the Labour Party, including MPs such as Neil Kinnock and future MPs such as trade unionist Ernie Roberts and anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain. According to socialist historian Dave Renton, the ANL was "an orthodox united front" based on a "strategy of working class unity", as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Critics of the ANL, such as Anti-Fascist Action argu ...
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