The Socialist Party is a Trotskyist political party in England and Wales. The Socialist Party was founded in 1991 as Militant Labour, its members having previously been organised as the Militant tendency within the Labour Party. A minority of Militant supporters opposed the setting up of an independent party and remained within the Labour Party as Socialist Appeal. In 1997 the party adopted its current name, although in elections it fields candidates as Socialist Alternative, due to the right to stand under the name Socialist Party being held by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The Socialist Party has held council seats in several areas of Britain but has never had any elected MPs, although prominent Militant supporters Dave Nellist, and the late Pat Wall and Terry Fields, were elected to parliament as Labour MPs prior to the formation of the party.
The Socialist Party is registered with the United Kingdom Electoral Commission, however, it is active only in England and Wales, with sister parties active in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The party is a member of the Committee for a Workers' International and the European Anti-Capitalist Left.
Read more about Militant Labour: History, Transitional Demands, Organisation, Trade Union Influence, Campaign For A New Workers' Party
Famous quotes containing the words militant and/or labour:
““I” is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”
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