History of The Socialist Workers Party (Britain) - The 1980s

The 1980s

Throughout the 1980s the SWP maintained its presence as perhaps the best known far left group and, certainly the most visible until the Militant Tendency faced its most serious difficulties as an entryist group within the Labour Party. By 1981 after a series of internal discussions the SWP was united around an understanding that the period was one that was best characterised as being a downturn in class combativity and that this meant that the SWP should concentrate its work on basic propaganda tasks and educational development of its membership. This understanding was balanced in the early part of the decade by adding a caveat that while the period was generally one of downturn there was also a political upturn around the Labour Left and the resurgent Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

This understanding could also lead to the group isolating itself when struggles did break as with the Miners' Strike in the middle of the decade. At that time Miners Support Goups developed in all of Britain's major cities but the SWP chose in the first months of the strike not to join them, on the basis that they were inadequate to deliver the solidarity actions, such as mass picketing and solidarity strike action, which the SWP argued were the tactics needed for the Miners Strike to be concluded victoriously. Later this stance was reversed. Although the SWP continued to argue that the Miners' Strike could only be won if other sections of workers were able to provide solidarity actions, as was the case in a number of major disputes in the 1970s, its members continued to be active around the dispute which was considered doomed to failure without solidarity actions. The hit squads which appeared late in the strike were seen as symptomatic of the desperation and isolation of the more committed younger miners and were firmly disapproved of.

In the aftermath the leadership of the SWP initiated moves towards the Militant Tendency to form a common organisation. These moves being motivated by the expulsion of that grouping from the Labour Party and its supporters' moves towards a more open style of political work. However there was no response to the SWP's overtures and the Militant Tendency, later Militant Labour, was the object of several Open Letters in Socialist Worker during the 1990s but to no avail. The SWP was, like most socialists in this period, involved in activity around the Print workers' strike but refrained from involvement in the Support groups which sprang up in a clear echo of the Miners' Strike.