Keep Left was the newspaper of the youth organized in support of the Socialist Labour League in Britain operating, initially, inside the Labour Party. Given that almost 60% of the founding members of the Socialist Revolution Group were also Labour League of Youth (LLOY) members and, indeed, one of these (Jeanne Hoban) was on its 22-person National Consultative Committee, the decision to set up a youth paper is not surprising. Neither is the organisational method surprising as LLOY branches in different locations already produced their own publications. In this respect it should be noted that amongst the other Trotskyist remnants of the recently deceased Revolutionary Communist Party, the Grant-Deane tendency had a base in Liverpool and had acquired control of the Birkenhead LLOY publication Rally [Rally = Read About the Labour League of Youth]. Rally had been produced since September 1949 and as at October 1950 (Vol. 2 No. 4) it was a professionally produced and presented 16-page publication. The Healy Group published the first issue of its own youth paper Socialist Youth at the end of 1950. It was professionally printed and in newspaper format. Of interest, but no particular significance, is the fact that the Healyite paper was published by Audrey Brown of Edmonton LLOY. Audrey Brown had been a member of the “Club” since her schooldays in Newcastle and was later better known as the Labour MP Audrey Wise. Coincidentally, November 1950 also saw issue number 1 of Keep Left. This was a roughly typed and duplicated “magazine” produced by “the combined Wembley Labour Leagues of Youth” – a small beginning from which something larger was to grow.
In 1965, the SLL ceased doing entry work in the Labour Party and split, taking the Keep Left with them. Keep Left them became the paper of the SLL organized youth, the Young Socialists. It ceased publication in 1985. We present below a very limited run of the paper that the Hold Labor Library had on hand. Rob Marsden from the Splits and Fusion blog provided the very first issue as well as the last 9 listed below of Keep Left for this limited collection.
Last updated on 19 June 2018