The “IS tradition” and the Independent Labour Party
The “IS tradition” of the 1960s, which members and old ex-members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) cherish, was in fact largely taken from the Independent Labour Party in its last years. The first part of this article described the earlier history of the ILP. After 1946 the ILP mutated. This article tells the rest of the story. From about the time James Maxton died, and Fenner Brockway, John McGovern and others left to join the Labour Party, the ILP shed its character as a trimming, evasive, manoeuvring left social-democratic organism, and took on the character of an “ideological”...