CARS, BEER, AND SOCIALISM
Oct 19th, 2009 by Conor McCabe
We’re young people like you. We do things you do. Some of us are at work, some at school, and some at university and college. We come from all classes, backgrounds, races and religions - or none at all. We are as varied as any group can be; in fact we’ve only got one thing in common: we are members of the Labour Party Young Socialists.”
New Labour had long roots, no?
From FOCUS, newspaper of the Young Socialists, c.1967.
Is that a young Michael O Leary? Not ‘Flying Mike’, the other one, the one who used to lead the Irish Labour party in the early eighties? And where’s the Mohair suit?
Alas it’s an unknown young socialist from England, drinking bitter while waiting for his feelings to catch up.
This is from one of those periods when the British Labour Party both had a youth wing and managed to keep it out of the hands of leftists.
Up until the beginning of 1965, the Young Socialists had been controlled by Gerry Healy’s Socialist Labour League. Then they decided to split and set up their own independent YS. The remaining Labour Party YS was severely weakened and was closed down.
The LPYS was relaunched in 1967, so the poster above is from an early part of its life. By 1969 Militant resolutions had majority support at LPYS conference. They maintained control of the organisation up until they left the Labour Party, but in effect that only mattered up until 1987 when Kinnock had the LPYS effectively dismantled.
The Labour Party youth wing throughout its history went through periods of left wing control followed by repression. They the body would be effectively moribund for a few years, until another reestablishment or reorganisation would open it up again. At which point it would grow quickly, shift to the hard left and be clamped down on again.
Currently the party youth wing, Young Labour, is just a way for careerists to network and build contacts and given the rather dramatic changes in the adult party over the last couple of decades I won’t be holding my breath waiting for it to open up or shift to the left again.