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How big is the far left?

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boxinghefner

Comrade Era
Perhaps a slightly torturous question - but an interesting one none the less. It's long been a subject of speculation between me and certain leftists - with arguments about estimates and so on. I'm not suggesting that the size of the left is necessarily reflective of the validity of the aims of all or any organisation of course. The term 'far left' is possibly open to debate and contention - we'll use broadleft as a rough guide to the types of organisations included within this term.

How big is the active far left? Let's estimate here. Provide a rough figure/estimate of the size of the active far left in this country.
 
The far left is slightly bigger than the ultra left but smaller than the board left.

Whether the extreme left is bigger than the ultra left is a matter of contentious debate.

The loonie left doesn't exist, although we are not sure where to put this lot:

ranks.jpg
 
Depends on what you mean. The Scottish Socialist Party is considered 'far left' by many - it has several thousand members and six MSPs, in a country with a population of 5 million.
 
boxinghefner said:
How big is the active far left? Let's estimate here. Provide a rough figure/estimate of the size of the active far left in this country.
Click to expand...


Similar to the far right, not enough of them to hold a piss up in a brewery.
 
Let's leave the Labour Party out of the equation.

If you add together the two biggest left wing organisations, SP and SWP + all the smaller groups, I expect you would get around the 10,000 - 12,000 mark.

More interesting would be to compare, the size of the organised left with other periods. For example, it could be argued that the organised left was bigger in the 70s, when the British Communist Party was at it's height - leaving aside the discussion of their unrevolutionary politics
 
In other European countries where they have a fairer electoral system, the far left can get between 5 and 10% of the vote. Probably the high water mark, to date, was the vote for the three far left/revolutionary/trostkyist parties (two large ones - LO and LCR - and a very small one - PT), in the first round of the French Presidential election in 2002, where the combined vote was 10%, just under 3 million. All three parties were unambiguously 'far left'. The French CP (PCF), which has been a party of government, got only one third of the vote of the far left, the Greens got just over half, and the Socialists just over one and a half times (16% losing to Le Pen's fascists). So the far left represented about a quarter of the left wing vote.

In some other countries, broader coalitions involving the far left have done well or better - in Italy the 'refoundation communists' PCR, which includes both the far left and reformists got nearly 2 million votes (6%) last year in the european elections, while the PDS in Germany got 4 million (8%) in the recent general election. But I think France 2002 can be said to be the best showing for the far left on its own.
 
If you add together the two biggest left wing organisations, SP and SWP + all the smaller groups, I expect you would get around the 10,000 - 12,000 mark.
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The SWP claim 3500-4000 members now and the SP 2000. Both are laughable figures. In reality I should think the SWP have about 1500-2000 members and the SP about 600.

Everyone else is off the scale. CPB about 200 (mostly pensioners), AWL about 100, Workers Power about 80, ISG about 40, CPGB about 15-20, Anarchist Federation about 80, Sol Fed about 30, Class War about 30.

Haven't got a clue how many the SLP have got now days. But all in all, the groups outside the SWP and SP can't add up to more than about 1000.

The SSP have a few thousand.

The organised far left is smaller now in the UK than it has ever been in the last 100 years.
 
Any thoughts as to why (if you are correct) that the organised left is smaller than at any time in the last 100 years, and the comparisons with other countries are interesting

As to the 10,000 - 12,000 estimate, I was being generous. I also would suggest that WP is closer to 40-50 members - let's be realistic
 
cockneyrebel said:
....
The organised far left is smaller now in the UK than it has ever been in the last 100 years.
Click to expand...

100 years? Ridiculous!

At its formation in 1920 when it brought together virtually all of the revolutionary left, the CPGB had maybe 5,000 members on paper (the number of card votes cast at the founding conference according to Dewar). Its high watermark was towards the end of the second world war when it reached 50,000 members (according to Branson) but by then it was a long way from being 'far left' - advocating a tory-led coalition with Winston Churchill continuing as PM against Labour!

The Trostkyist left was tiny from its earliest days, until the outpouring from the CPGB in 1956, and would have struggled to hold meetings in phone boxes (see Bornstein and Richardson's books).

This is assuming that you don't count reformist groups like the ILP, Bevanites, and Socialist League (of Cripps) as 'far left'. Even in their heyday these groups would have struggled to have 10,000 countable members (maybe ILP a bit more) - but were a long way from being 'far left', being pretty indistinguishable from Tribune today.

Certainly the organised far left was much bigger in the 1970s, the WRP probably did have 3-4,000 active members, the IS/SWP a little less, Militant similar and the IMG 500-1,000. Maybe 10-15,000 all together. But to say that in this period the far left is the smallest for 100 years is ludicrous.
 
TeeJay said:
The far left is slightly bigger than the ultra left but smaller than the board left.

Whether the extreme left is bigger than the ultra left is a matter of contentious debate.
Click to expand...

Yes, but is the extreme left further left than the ultra left? I think we should be told :p :D
 
Just re-read my post and want to make clear what I am saying - between 1905 and 1956, the high point of the far left was probably 1920 when it rose to maybe 5,000 - paper members of the CPGB (probably slightly less on the ground but a few small groups too). As the CPGB moved towards reformism, the number you could count at 'far left' declined to less than 1,000. After 1956, the membership of far left groups rose to thousands, with the high point being maybe 1968-74 when organised groups probably had 10-15,000. After that it declined to the numbers today which still represent more than in 1920.
 
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