This project aims to capture the experiences of members of the Socialist Review Group (SRG) and the International Socialists (IS) from the founding of the SRG to 1977 when IS became the Socialist Workers Party (the SRG changed its name to the International Socialists in 1962).
We aim to interview as many of members of the SRG/IS as possible. We hope that interviewees will both describe and reflect upon what it meant to them to be involved in a revolutionary group.
We aim to get a range of different experiences, stories and contexts. Interviewers, who will be volunteers with some knowledge of the political background, will have a guide to topics, but narrators will be encouraged to talk about what was important to them at the time and their later reflections upon those experiences. If practicable, we would also like to arrange some group discussions themed around particular events or campaigns.
We have approached the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University as a potential home for the resulting archive and they have been very positive and encouraging. We have also been assisted by the Oral History Society https://ohs.org.uk in the planning of this project.
The project is to be run independently from the control of any political organisation.
Please get in touch with us at contact@is-history.net if you’d like to be involved either as an interviewee or interviewer.
The IS History Project Team
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Standing for the Labour Party: The International Socialists 1959-1970
Even new members of the SWP today will be aware of its general tradition of calling for a vote for the Labour Party at General Election time. Less of those members will be aware of the fact that up to the late 1960s many members of the organisation were also active members of the Labour…
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Standing Alone: The Socialist Worker Experience
In the first of three articles on the International Socialists (IS) and aspects of its electoral politics I looked at the tradition’s relatively consistent policy of calling for a vote for the Labour Party at General Elections. This was done through the example of the 1966 Hull North by-election. In the second of my articles…
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Voting for Labour: The Hull North By-Election of January 1966
Many on the left today will be well acquainted with the fact that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and its predecessor organisations, the Socialist Review Group (SRG) and the International Socialists (IS), have consistently called for a vote for the Labour Party at UK Parliamentary elections. To give an example of how wedded to the…