Hard left

Hard left refers to those on the extreme left-wing edge of the political spectrum (see far left and left-right politics) or to contrast those seen as left-wing extremists from those seen as moderate.

In its second usage, the term was used in particular in the British Labour Party in the 1980s. At that time, hard left referred to the supporters of Tony Benn, organised in the Campaign Group and Labour Briefing, as well as Trotskyist groups such as the Militant Tendency and Socialist Organiser. The hard left were more strongly influenced by Marxism, while the soft left had a more gradualist approach to building socialism. Politicians associated with the hard left in Labour included Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, Dennis Skinner and Eric Heffer.

Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann write:

Labour [in the early 1980s] was... in the depths of the fratricidal blood-letting that had engulfed it after the defeat of Jim Callaghan's government. The activist left in the constituency parties and the trade unions, with support from some left MPs, most notably Tony Benn, was in revolt against what it saw as the failure of the 1974—9 government to put Labour's principles into practice. On policy, it was insistent that Labour adopt unambiguously radical positions, particularly withdrawal from the European Economic Community and unilateral nuclear disarmament... But the activists' biggest priority was to make the Parliamentary Labour Party accountable to the party as a whole... The left coalition [the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy] was a bizarre mix of radical democrats, Leninists old and new, traditional Labour leftists, feminists, libertarians and decentralists. It was notoriously unstable, not least because it could not agree on the detail of its proposed reforms to the party constitution, and was already beginning to divide into a hard left that wanted to push the revolt to its limit and a soft left that was prepared to compromise.

The term continues to have currency in the labour movement. For example, in the Labour Party today, John McConnell and Michael Meacher are seen as constituting a hard left, in contrast to a soft left represented by politicians like John Cruddas.[1]

Similar terminology is used in the Australian Labor Party (see Socialist Left).

References

Further reading

• Charlie Kimber. Waiting for Lefty. Socialist Review 1997

See also

• Ultra-left
• Municipal socialism
• Social Democratic Party (UK)