History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom

Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopian philanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the Labour Party that was founded in 1900 and nationalised a fifth of the British economy in the late 1940s.

Workplace militancy had also manifested itself as Luddism and had been prominent in struggles such as the Radical War (or Scottish Insurrection) in Scotland in 1820, when 60,000 workers went on a general strike, which was soon crushed.

Union membership grew as unskilled and women workers were unionised, and socialists such as Tom Mann played an increasingly prominent role.

Carefully valving the steam of the working-class movement, Parliament reduced the working day to ten hours with the Factories Act 1847.

[10] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels worked in England, and they influenced small émigré groups including the Communist League.

theorise that this was because Britain was amongst the most democratic countries of Europe of the period, the ballot box provided an instrument for change, so a parliamentary, reformist socialism seemed a more promising route than elsewhere.

[12] At the time, Marx wrote that he and Engels had been "betrayed [...] in the Reform League where, against our wishes, [Cremer and Oder] have made compromises with the bourgeoisie".

[13] However, a great deal of collaboration came to exist between the Liberal Party and the leaders of the labour movement, though Marx saw these as effective bribes by the bourgeoisie and the government.

Sylvia Pankhurst campaigned for enfranchisement among women in the East End of London and eventually built up the Workers Socialist Federation.

Supporters of Daniel De Leon in the Social Democratic Federation chiefly in Scotland split to form the Socialist Labour Party.

Their fellow impossibilists in London split from the SDF the following year to form the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB, still in existence).

The Great Depression devastated the industrial areas of Northern England, Wales and Central Scotland, and the Jarrow March of unemployed workers from the North East to London to demand jobs defined the period.

[22] Ethical socialism has been publicly supported by British Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald,[23] Clement Attlee,[24] and Tony Blair.

To widespread surprise, the Labour Party led by wartime Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee won a landslide victory over popular war leader Winston Churchill at the 1945 general election, and implemented their social democratic programme.

The CPGB also grew on the back of Stalinist successes in Eastern Europe and China, and recorded their best-ever result, with two MPs elected (one in London and another in Fife).

Labour lost power in 1951 and after Clement Attlee retired as party leader in 1955, he was succeeded by the figurehead of the "right-establishment" Hugh Gaitskell, against Aneurin Bevan.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament briefly gained leverage over Labour Party policy at the beginning of the decade, but soon went into a long eclipse.

In 1969, Wilson's Labour Government introduced In Place of Strife, a white paper designed to circumvent strikes by imposing compulsory arbitration.

The Labour leadership's failure to work with trade unions, or for their opponents an inability to keep them under control, resulted in the election in 1979 of an economically liberal Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, which finally ended the post-war political consensus.

Callaghan resigned as party leader late that year and was replaced by Michael Foot, a left-winger who by then had distanced himself from Benn but failed to transmit this to the media or the voters.

The Labour NEC began to expel Militant members, beginning with their newspaper's "editorial board", in effect their Central Committee.

The Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone, gained the most attention, seeming genuinely innovative to its support base, but the GLC was abolished by the Conservatives in 1986.

Despite support in the coalfields, including many miners' wives in Women Against Pit Closures, the strike was eventually lost owing to a union split, amongst other reasons.

He immediately decided to revamp Clause IV, dropping Labour's commitment to public ownership of key industries and utilities, along with other socialist policies.

[30] The international anti-globalisation movement, while difficult to define, has become a focus for other socialists in the twenty-first century, and many see a reflection of it in the opposition of large sections of the population to the 2003 Iraq War.

[33] Respect though has suffered from the resignation of leading members over the years,[34][35] and Galloway lost his seat to Naz Shah of the Labour Party at the 2015 general election.

Representatives of the party have also claimed that while the break-up of the United Kingdom would not result in "instant socialism", it would cause "a decisive shift in the balance of ideological and class forces".

When the final results were counted however, Labour suffered a second consecutive defeat and the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, formed a majority government for the first time since 1992.

[46] After assuming office as Leader of the Opposition, Miliband softened some of the more left-wing ideas he had adopted during the leadership election, but remained committed to causes such as a living wage and the 50% tax rate on high earners.

Thirty new seats were gained to reach 262 total MPs, and, with a swing of 9.6%,[59] achieved the biggest percentage-point increase in its vote share at a single general election since 1945.