Socialist Action is a small Trotskyist group in the United Kingdom. From the mid-1980s Socialist Action became an entryist organisation, attempting to work within other organisations, with members using code names and not revealing their affiliation. Its members have maintained leading positions in many campaigns - the National Abortion Campaign, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, National Assembly Against Racism and various coalitions against the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, for example. As a result, Socialist Action exert an influence beyond that which might be expected from so small a grouping.

History

The group was founded in 1982 when the International Marxist Group entered the Labour Party and changed its name to the Socialist League. It became generally known by the name of its publication, Socialist Action, which first appeared on 16 March 1983. The group adopted an entryist strategy "to protect members from any potential Militant-style purge".

In 2001, SA stopped publishing its journal, also named Socialist Action, but continued to organise as a faction, for instance as the Student Broad Left. In 2003, it played a major role in backing Kate Hudson's leadership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and a long-term CND officer alleged that, along with the Communist Party of Britain, it was becoming dominant in the organisation, in order to exert influence over the Stop The War Coalition. Some of its activists played leading roles in organising the 2004 European Social Forum.

Socialist Action was heavily involved in the publication and editorial control of Socialist Campaign Group News.

Ken Livingstone

The group's association with Ken Livingstone goes back to 1985, when the group's leader, John Ross, became Livingstone's economic advisor. When Livingstone re-appointed his administration in 2004, members of Socialist Action were described as his "stooges". In a January 2008 article that was subsequently spun as revealing a "secret Marxist cell" at the GLA, Atma Singh, a former member of SA who had been Policy Advisor on Asian Affairs to Ken Livingstone from 2001 to 2007, detailed some of the history and activities of Socialist Action, accusing members of planning a "bourgeois democratic revolution", trying to accumulate power and manipulating the Mayor. A subsequent episode of the Channel 4 documentary series Dispatches, "The Court of Ken", presented by journalist Martin Bright, featured Singh and others making these same allegations. Livingstone referred to the claims in the Dispatches documentary as a hatchet job. Later, Livingstone said “Almost all of my advisers had been involved in Socialist Action... It was the only rational left-wing group you could engage with. They used to produce my socialist economic policies. It was not a secret group.”

After 2007

Socialist Action also participated in Respect - The Unity Coalition after the 2007 split in that party. Several of its supporters became members of the party and one served as its national treasurer. In 2009, its members played leading roles in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In 2012, rival Trotskyist group Alliance for Workers' Liberty say that it dominated Unite Against Fascism as a junior partner to the Socialist Workers Party.

Its members continue to publish occasional pamphlets and leaflets. It relaunched its website, with an analysis of the world economic situation following the Great Recession. The group applies the Marxist concept of the organic composition of capital to argue that the US economy is in a long-term decline and in turn the non-capitalist character of China is helping it to emerge from the crisis.

Jeremy Corbyn

Following Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour Party leader and Leader of the Opposition in 2015, many of its leading members became active in the party leadership. Former member Atma Singh said that Socialist Action were building "a real power base" around Corbyn and journalist Paul Mason said that "its members became highly influential in the leader’s office." (having previously been appointed Labour's trade union liaison manager by Ed Miliband in 2013) while John Ross has been linked to Corbyn's inner circle. Fletcher resigned from his role in early 2017.

Russia and China

In 2020 and 2022, focusing on its leading member John Ross, Paul Mason described Socialist Action as among "Western apologists" for "totalitarian China", "committed to whitewashing China's authoritarian form of capitalism".

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mason reported that "three hours after Russia declared war on Ukraine" its Twitter account "hailed the Russian troops as 'defenders and peacekeepers'."

References

Further reading

  • 2008 article by Nick Cohen, The Observer
  • 2008 article by ex-member Atma Singh, Sunday Times
  • The Guardian, 22 January 2008, report on Channel 4 Dispatches documentary
  • Socialist Action