Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Despite Starmer’s efforts, Labour will always have a left
The pressures capital itself creates in society leads to the pressure for radical change, says KEITH FLETT
Keir Hardie (centre) addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square

THE efforts of Labour Party HQ to remove the left from the party are perpetual. 

Arguably the first occasion was the formal refusal to recognise the young Communist Party as an affiliate in the late 1920s. 

The most recent purges have included Socialist Appeal and various groups opposed to the expulsion of critics of the current leadership.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 20 August 2025
20 August 2025

Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY

Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomes American President George W Bush to the first meeting of the G8 Summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, July 7, 2005
Features / 26 June 2025
26 June 2025

While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT

Leaders of the Labour Representation Committee in 1906. From
Features / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
YESTERDAY’S HOPE: Crowds outside the 2017 leaders debate
Features / 6 January 2025
6 January 2025
Every few years, it seems like the ‘right time’ to build a new left party — but what are the right conditions, asks socialist historian KEITH FLETT, looking back at the last two centuries and the insights of Ralph Miliband and EP Thompson