The soft left was the name given to the more moderate left wing forces in the British Labour Party in the 1980s. They were first seen as a distinct movement when many previous left wingers such as Neil Kinnock refused to support Tony Benn in the election for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 1981. The term was often used in contrast to hard left. Similar terminology is used in the Australian Labor Party (see Socialist Left).
Lately, the terminology of "soft left" has been used by radical leftists to describe the Communist Party USA because of its continuing decline and tendency to support Democratic Party candidates and positions as the "lesser of two evils."
Read more about Soft Left: Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words soft and/or left:
“There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain’s tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“I felt my cheek
Alter, to see the shadow pass away,
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)