As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
“TOO many socialist parties. Not enough socialists” — Tony Benn.
Readers of the Star will not have failed to notice that since Sir Keir Starmer blagged his way into the leadership of the Labour Party, there has been a lot of soul-searching about whether socialists should remain in the Labour Party or even help build a left-wing alternative — less, I notice, consideration of joining existing left alternatives — more of them later.
The British left inside and outside the Labour Party has faced this dilemma time and again, but perhaps the consequences of adopting such a strategy have never been more dire than the Independent Labour Party’s disaffiliation from the Labour Party in 1932, exactly 90 years ago.
In the final part of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY explains how in 2018, after years spent rebuilding the PCS into a leading force against austerity, a damaging rupture emerged from within the union’s own left wing
VINCE MILLS gathers some sobering facts that would inevitably be major obstacles to any such initiative



