Labour Party Uk

A panel hosted by Platypus London on October 19, 2017 at Goldsmiths, University of London. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Jack Conrad HaPe Breitman Robert Liow Lyndon White Description Labour lost the election. But Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran of the 1980’s Labour left, seems to have saved the party. Corbyn’s tenure has raised old questions about the Left’s relationship to the Labour Party. [Read More]

On March 23rd, 2017, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion, “What is Socialism? International Social Democracy,” at the London School of Economics. Moderated by Nunzia Faes of Platypus, the event brought together the following speakers: Jack Conrad of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Weekly Worker; Adam Buick of the Socialist Party of Great Britain; and Robin Halpin, translator of works by the Exit! group. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion. [Read More]

1960: “The last general election has had at least one beneficial result: it has shocked many more people into a recognition of the fact that the Labour Party is a sick party…. It is within its power to retrace its steps and dedicate itself anew to the socialist policies which are its only alternative.”1 1976: “The belief in the effective transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of socialist policies is the most crippling of all illusions to which socialists in Britain have been prone. [Read More]

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it… even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. – Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History SINCE JEREMY CORBYN took leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, he and his party have been the North Star for many on the Left. [Read More]

IN SEPTEMBER 2015, THE VETERAN RADICAL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT Jeremy Corbyn defeated three other mainstream candidates to be elected leader of the UK Labour Party. He won over 250 thousand votes from members, registered supporters, and affiliated union members, 59 percent of the total. Corbyn was backed by most major unions, including Unite, the CWU, ASLEF, and UNISON. During the first few months of Corbyn’s leadership, he enjoyed an uneasy peace with the 230 or so members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP, the collective organization of Labour’s members of the House of Commons), the vast majority of whom had little confidence in his leadership. [Read More]