Beyond Labour's Fringe: Red Flag

One of the smaller, well tiny little groups that have entered the Labour Party on the back of the "Corbyn revolution" was Workers Power, They set up a publication called Red Flag which comes out from time to time including one for party conference where they might be able to sell a copy or two especially to the new crowd who won't have a clue who these people are.

The clueless are a major component of the Corbynistas so Red Flag joins the Labour Party Marxists (CPGB), Socialist Appeal (Militant) and the Alliance for Workers Liberty to compete for new recruits.

Workers Power is a Trotskyist organisation that got so fed up with so many organisations calling themselves the "Fourth International" (as established by by the "man" himself) that they set up The Fifth International, or at least a league towards it in several countries that have small groups of their co-thinkers. I recall reading it had a split but Trots are always splitting. That's the fun of "Trot Spotting" to coin a term!



They were far too small to blog about before conference but a sponsored advert for them appeared on my Facebook timeline so I had a dip into their on-line myopic world.

Workers Power has put it's own website on hiatus whilst the comrades bury themselves in the Labour Party but the fact they are in breach of Labour Party rules is quite clear and Red Flag link to their own international links which are just happen the same as Workers Power. Lucky for them the NEC has more important things to worry about and has now lurched to the far left following the electoral purge by Momentum.




Workers Power/Red Flag was one of those groups that originated from the International Socialists (Socialist Workers Party) after the inevitable faction fight that groups like these indulge in. It was expelled in 1974, briefly fusing with another refugee group from the IS/SWP, Workers Fight, predecessor of today's Alliance for Workers Liberty.

Neither group was suited to each other so they divorced and went their separate ways. The group was never very large and appears to never had more than 50 or so members. Incapable of working with other groups for long or constantly changing it's strategy to attract new members the inevitable happened in 2006 and expelled a group which became known as Permanent Revolution. They published a "theoretical journal of the same name until they gave up and dissolved themselves in 2013.



Further reductions in Workers Power membership took place in 2012 when two groups left with one group taking a third of the membership into the Anti-Capitalist Initiative group. I have no idea what happened to the second group.

Workers Power threw themselves into Left Unity before finally "dissolving" themselves into the Labour Party where they have reconstituted themselves as "Red Flag".

There aim is to:

To carry out a radical transformation of society, we need a radically different kind of party; a party led by its members, rooted in working class campaigns and communities, and committed to a revolutionary break with the British state and the capitalist class it serves......

Internationally, we work with our sister sections in the Americas, Asia and Europe as part of the League for the Fifth International to strengthen the common struggle of the world working class against capitalist exploitation, oppression, environmental crisis and war.

Another entryist organisation on the block.