Socialist Campaign Group
The Socialist Campaign Group, also simply known as the Campaign Group, is a UK parliamentary caucus of the Labour Party including Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. The group also includes some MPs who formerly represented Labour in Parliament but have had the whip withdrawn or been expelled from the party.
The group was formed in 1982 following the 1981 Labour Party deputy leadership election when a number of soft left MPs, led by Neil Kinnock, refused to back Tony Benn's campaign, leading a number of left-wing Benn-supporting MPs to split from the Tribune Group to form the Campaign Group. It was at a meeting of the Campaign Group in 2015 that the decision was taken that Jeremy Corbyn would contest for the leadership of the Labour Party. The Campaign Group maintains close links with Momentum.
Origins
The Socialist Campaign Group was founded in 1982 owing to a disagreement within the Labour left, traditionally organised around the Tribune Group, about whom to back in the 1981 Labour Party deputy leadership election. Tony Benn's decision to challenge Denis Healey for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party in 1981 was heavily criticised by Labour's leader Michael Foot, who had long been associated with the Labour left and Tribune Group. Tribune Group member and future Labour leader Neil Kinnock led a number of Labour MPs to support John Silkin in the deputy leadership election and abstain in the run-off between Healey and Benn. This sowed the seeds for a split in the left between a "soft left" supportive of Foot's leadership and a dissenting "hard left" organised principally around Benn.The Campaign Group would go on to back Eric Heffer and Michael Meacher in their unsuccessful bids for the leadership and deputy leadership in 1983. The Campaign Group subsequently organised itself around opposition to the direction the party took under the leadership of Kinnock and his successors. An advertisement in Tribune gave the membership of the Campaign Group as: Norman Atkinson, Tony Benn, Ron Brown, Dennis Canavan, Bob Cryer, Don Dixon, Martin Flannery, Stuart Holland, Les Huckfield, Bob Litherland, Joan Maynard, Willie McKelvey, Andy McMahon, Bob McTaggart, Michael Meacher, Bob Parry, Ray Powell, Reg Race, Allan Roberts, Ernie Roberts, Ernie Ross, Dennis Skinner, and John Tilley.
Activities and campaigns
During Kinnock's leadership of the Party
was hostile to the Campaign Group. He pursued a "carrot and stick" approach to undermining the Campaign Group by promoting MPs who were willing to leave the Campaign Group and renounce their previously held views and by isolating those who remained members.1984–85 miners' strike
During the 1984–85 miners' strike, MPs from the Socialist Campaign Group took action to support the striking miners by visiting picket lines and raising money to be donated to the miners' relief centres. This put pressure on the Labour Party leadership to support the strike, something Neil Kinnock resisted until 10 months after the start of the strike. Members of the Socialist Campaign Group also led a "direct action protest" in the House of Commons by refusing to sit down in order to force a debate on the strike.Anti-poll tax campaign
In 1989, the third Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher announced plans to introduce a flat-tax to fund local Government. The planned tax became known as the poll tax and was thought by many to be intended to save the rich money and move the expenses onto the poor.Only 15 Labour MPs supported the Anti Poll Tax Federation. Socialist Campaign Group MPs made up a significant number of these including Tony Benn, who gave his full support to the campaign and spoke at the 200,000 strong anti-Poll Tax demonstration in Trafalgar Square, and Jeremy Corbyn who appeared at Highbury Magistrates' Court in 1991 for not paying his poll tax bill of £481. Corbyn was in court alongside 16 other Islington residents all opposing the levy on grounds other than inability to pay. He told The Times newspaper "I am here today because thousands of people who elected me just cannot afford to pay."
The scale of public opposition in both polls and in the streets have been identified as one of the key causes of the end of Thatcher's premiership. Labour historians have identified the campaign against the Poll Tax as a "huge victory" for the Labour left who campaigned in alliance with the extra-parliamentary socialist left "against one of the most reactionary pieces of legislation dreamt up in the modern age". Tony Benn described the relationship of the campaign against the Poll Tax with the Labour Party:
During the New Labour years
Following the 1997 General Election, 7% of Labour MPs were members of the Campaign Group.Tony Blair enthusiastically carried on Kinnock's attempts to "delegitimise the left". He sought to reduce the number of left-wing Labour MPs by centralising control of candidate selections and used "open shortlists in a fast and loose way, mainly to ensure that left candidates are excluded or defeated." Labour Party historian Alex Nunns described how "Left-wing hopefuls, like Christine Shawcroft or Mark Seddon, were stopped at all costs. Party workers were tasked with personal lobbying for the leadership's preferred choice, or were even told to chase up certain postal votes but not others."
Blair's strategist Peter Mandelson reportedly described wanting the parliamentary left to become "a sealed tomb". Alan Simpson, a member of the Campaign Group during the New Labour years, described it as "the only bolt-hole of real political thought that I found throughout my parliamentary years ... they were the MPs you would always find on picket lines, at trade union and social movement rallies, on anti-war marches and at the forefront of campaigns to restore rather than exploit the planet."
Opposition to single parent benefit cuts
Under Blair, the Labour government introduced plans to cut lone parent benefit, a measure which members of the Campaign Group believed would disproportionately harm women. The cut was brought in by Harriet Harman, Secretary of State for Social Security, who championed the cut despite the majority of people affected being women and children who were already poor. Backbench Labour MPs, led by the Campaign Group, opposed these plans, speaking and voting against them in Parliament. Blair ally Patricia Hewitt was alleged to have described the rebellion as a "conspiracy organised by the Socialist Campaign Group"47 Labour MPs voted against the proposals including Campaign Group members Ken Livingstone, Ronnie Campbell, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, Ann Cryer, Alan Simpson, John McDonnell, Dennis Skinner, Audrey Wise, and Diane Abbott. Despite the scale of the opposition from Labour MPs and campaigners, Harman continued to implement the cuts. She was sacked from Cabinet the following year.
Opposition to the Iraq War and founding the Stop the War Coalition
The Stop the War Coalition was founded in the weeks following 9/11, when George W. Bush announced the "War on terror", and has since campaigned to oppose and end the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. Socialist Campaign Group MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Tam Dalyell, along with Tony Benn, were among the most high profile of the initial sponsors of the Stop the War Coalition at the meeting on 21 September 2001, along with figures such as Tariq Ali, Harold Pinter, Andrew Murray and Lindsey German, who became the convenor of Stop the War.The Coalition organised what is widely thought to be the largest demonstration in British history, when on 15 February 2003, over a million people marched against the Iraq War. Campaign Group MP Alan Simpson launched Labour Against The War to coordinate parliamentary opposition to Tony Blair's decision to follow George W. Bush in invading Iraq. Although Blair was able to win these votes with the support of Conservative MPs, 139 Labour MPs voted against his plans for war, one of the largest rebellions ever seen in the Commons.
Opposition to academisation
In 2005, Blair's government announced plans to encourage every school to become an independent self-governing trust. These schools would, like academies, determine their own curriculum and ethos, appoint the governing body, control their own assets, employ their own staff and set their own admissions policy. These plans were described as intending to "all but abolish local authority involvement in state schools" and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott argued that it would "condemn a generation of poorer children to ghettos of collapsing schools".14 Campaign Group MPs, working with other Labour backbenchers, sought to block the plans by proposing an alternative plan for education. John McDonnell, then Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group, argued "Our sincere hope is that the prime minister desists from relying upon a Cameron coalition to force his education policies through in the face of this overwhelming opposition within the parliamentary Labour party." With Tory support, the reforms were eventually passed by 422 to 98 votes; however, this was the largest rebellion a Labour government had ever suffered at the third reading of a Bill.
Reform 2019–present
While Corbyn was party leader, from 2015 to 2019, Socialist Campaign Group activity reduced as many members joined the shadow cabinet. The rule that shadow cabinet MPs could not be group members caused difficulties, and this rule was removed, allowing the group to recover to 23 members by 2019.In January 2020, the Socialist Campaign Group was reformed. It supported Rebecca Long-Bailey for Leader and Richard Burgon for Deputy Leader in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, which was won by Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, respectively. In October 2020, the Socialist Campaign Group produced a pamphlet called "Winning the Future", which proposed solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic.