Red Pepper was founded by the Socialist Movement, an independent left-wing grouping that grew out of a series of large conferences held in Chesterfield in 1987 and 1988 after the defeat of Britain's miners' strike of the mid-1980s.

In July 2009, Reyes stepped down and James O'Nions and Michael Calderbank replaced him, with Emma Hughes and Sarah-Jayne Clifton joining the editorial team in 2010.

[1] Red Pepper's editorial charter commits it to "Internationalism; sustainable, socially useful production; welfare not warfare; and self-determination and democracy."

Red Pepper has also collaborated in "Eurotopia", a network of left and progressive European magazines tat publishes a multilingual supplement.

[9] More recently, Red Pepper has supported Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum festival The World Transformed.