Socialist Workers Party (UK)
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Socialist Workers Party
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| Leader | Collective leadership (Central Committee) |
| Chairman | Collective leadership (Central Committee) |
| International Secretary | Alex Callinicos |
| Joint National Secretary | Charlie Kimber |
| Joint National Secretary | Amy Leather |
| Founder | Tony Cliff |
| Founded | Socialist Review Group (1950) International Socialists (1962) Socialist Workers Party (1977) |
| Headquarters | PO Box 71327, London SE11 9BW, United Kingdom |
| Newspaper |
Socialist Worker Socialist Review International Socialism |
| Ideology |
Neo-Trotskyism Revolutionary socialism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| National affiliation | Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition |
| European affiliation | European Anticapitalist Left |
| International affiliation | International Socialist Tendency |
| European Parliament group | None |
| Colours | Red, White, Black |
| House of Commons |
0 / 650
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| House of Lords |
0 / 724
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| European Parliament |
0 / 73
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| Local government |
0 / 21,871
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| Website | |
| http://www.swp.org.uk/ | |
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in Britain. 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.
Over the decades, the SWP has founded several 'front' organisations which have sought to exert direct influence over issues of interest to the wider left, such as the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s (now Unite Against Fascism) and from 2001, the Stop the War Coalition. It also formed an alliance with George Galloway and Respect; this alignment's eventual dissolution 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 (now former) 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.
On the international level, the SWP is part of the International Socialist Tendency.
The origins of the SWP lie in the formation of the Socialist Review Group (SRG) which held its founding conference in 1950. The group, initially of only eight members was formed around Tony Cliff's analysis of Russia as a bureaucratic state capitalist regime and were expelled from the Revolutionary Communist Party. Three documents formed the theoretical basis of the group: The Nature of Stalinist Russia,The Class Nature of the People's Democracies and Marxism and the Theory of Bureaucratic Collectivism.
The tiny size of the group meant that they adopted 'entryism' as a means of working in the Labour Party in order to reach an audience and recruit. Of particular importance was the Labour League of Youth. Of the 33 members at the first recorded meeting, 19 were in the LLY.
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