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The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries. The SWP has founded several fronts through which they have sought to coordinate and influence leftist action, such as the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s. It also formed an alliance with George Galloway and Respect, the dissolution of which in 2007 caused an internal crisis in the SWP. A more serious internal crisis emerged at the beginning of 2013 over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against a leading member of the party. The SWP's handling of these accusations against the individual known as Comrade Delta, later identified as Martin Smith, led to a significant decline in the party's membership. It also led to a number of formal reviews which resulted in new procedures to support any member who experienced sexual harassment or other forms of oppressive behaviour. On the international level, the SWP is part of the International Socialist Tendency. History Socialist Review Group The origins of the SWP lie in the formation of the Socialist Review Group (SRG) which held its founding conference in 1950. The group, initially of only eight members, was formed around Tony Cliff's analysis of Russia as a bureaucratic state capitalist regime and were expelled from the Revolutionary Communist Party. Three documents formed the theoretical basis of the group, namely The Nature of Stalinist Russia, The Class Nature of the People's Democracies and Marxism and the Theory of Bureaucratic Collectivism. The tiny size of the group meant that they adopted entryism as a means of working in the Labour Party in order to reach an audience and recruit. Of particular importance was the Labour League of Youth (LLY); from the 33 members at the first recorded meeting, 19 were in the LLY. Through campaigning within the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Young Socialists, a new Labour Party youth movement, the Socialist Review Group was able to recruit among a new generation of activists and by 1964 had a membership of 200. In 1959, the first edition of Cliff's book on Rosa Luxemburg was published. In this, Cliff asserts: Rosa Luxemburg's conception of the structure of the revolutionary organisation – that they should be built from below up, on a consistently democratic basis – fits the needs of the workers' movement in the advanced countries much more closely than Lenin's conception of 1902−4, which was copied and given an added bureaucratic twist by Stalinists the world over. Cliff wrote in 1960 that Leon Trotsky's insight in 1904 about Vladimir Lenin's substitutionism was a strong warning of the serious flaws "inherent in Lenin's conception of party organisation" sustained by events since 1917. International Socialist period The paper Industrial Worker was created in 1961 and was quickly renamed Labour Worker before evolving into Socialist Worker. Socialist Review was reduced in size and then scrapped. The Socialist Review Group became the International Socialism Group (IS) at the end of 1962. With the Labour Party in power and many Labour members becoming disillusioned, IS started doing more work that was external to the Labour Party and ceased to practise entryism as a tactic around 1965. After 1967, few IS members were active in that party. In 1965, an article in Labour Worker said: "Obviously Marxists should take those positions which give access to the direct workers' organisations. But in the wards and GMCs the practice of buying the right to discuss politics by over-fulfilling the canvassing norms, should cease or be reduced to the minimum". It marked a turn to more of a focus on work in the trade unions, and a key part of this process was the pamphlet published in 1966: Incomes policy, legislation and shop stewards, which opposed the Labour Party's incomes policy and discussed how it could be fought. In 1968, the group adopted Leninist democratic centralism as an organisational practice, returning to Cliff's original position after leaving aside brief flirtations with Luxemburgian critiques of party vanguardism. This period saw the IS heavily involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (in support of the Viet Cong) and local variations of the student protests of 1968, where it was able to recruit from this pool of youngsters. As a result, the IS grew from 400 to 1,000 members but also suffered many splits. According to group historian Ian Birchall, "IS's position was always one of unconditional support for the IRA in the struggle against imperialism". However, Socialist Worker argued against those who prematurely raised the slogan "Troops Out!" on the grounds that the presence of British troops would allow the nationalist population to recover: The breathing space provided by the presence of British troops is short but vital. Those who call for the immediate withdrawal of the troops before the men behind the barricades can defend themselves are inviting a pogrom which will hit first and hardest at socialists. With hindsight, Tony Cliff concluded that the years 1970–74 had been "the best years of my life". That period saw the creation of rank-and-file newspapers and a general turn to industry, including setting up factory branches. During the 1972 miners' strike, Socialist Worker was taken and sold by miners. Between March 1972 and March 1974, the membership of IS increased from 2,351 to 3,310 and also recruited a large number of manual workers into membership. Meanwhile, other much smaller far-left groups emerged as a result of their members being expelled from the IS. The Workers' Fight group joined as an open and allowed faction, but were expelled in 1971, and ultimately became the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. In 1975, what had been known as the Left Faction suffered the same fate, and became Workers Power. The Revolutionary Faction were expelled from the IS in 1973. The resulting Revolutionary Communist Group soon found itself with an internal opposition which eventually became the Revolutionary Communist Party led by Frank Furedi. Labour in power and the SWP formed In 1974, Labour returned to power and introduced the Social Contract which implemented a voluntary incomes policy, with the backing of many left wing union leaders such as Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones. This period also saw an increase in the number of full-time union convenors, and these factors along with an increase in unemployment have been blamed by Tony Cliff and the SWP for a drastic fall in union militancy. In 1974 the IS was ambitious and optimistic expecting to double the number of its factory branches over the next year. In practice, they declined swiftly from 38 in 1974 to onl.... Discover the Ian Johnson Cliff Rowbotham popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ian Johnson Cliff Rowbotham books.