Socialist Party of England and Wales
The Socialist Party is a Trotskyist political party. They publish a weekly newspaper entitled The Socialist. As an organisation, it has evolved from the Militant Tendency, who were expelled from the Labour Party, after opposing the social democratic line of the leadership.For a while, they were known as Militant Labour. The majority of their Scottish members broke away to form the core of the Scottish Socialist Party. The Socialist Party of England and Wales have close relations with the Irish Socialist Party.
Since ending their short tenure in the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Party has run candidates in elections as Socialist Alternative. They have two councillors in Coventry and one in Lewisham, South London.
The Socialist Party is a much smaller organisation than the Militant of the 1980s. Under the leadership of Peter Taaffe, their policies have remained close to the Trotskyist mainstream. Their demand for the nationalisation of the one hundred and fifty top British companies and occasional claims of a parliamentary road to socialism have led some critics to label them as reformists.
The Socialist Party is affilliated the Committee for a Workers International, and is indeed the largest of its forty members.
