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.
Additional historical context from from Splits and Fusion:
A few years ago we posted a small number of issues of Keep Left, paper of the Young Socialists (Healyite variety) from 1969-70.
Now we can add a further 80 or so copies ranging from the 1950s, to the 1960s and then through to the mid-1970s.
Keep Left started life as the duplicated journal of the Wembley Labour Leagues of Youth and then from 1955 Wembley North and West Hendon, later still it was branded A Paper For Socialist Youth but still Wembley and West Hendon, although by the end of the decade it had become a printed rather than duplicated paper and developed a national readership.
In 1959 the Socialist Labour League was proscribed by the Labour Party but remained active in the LPYS through Keep Left.
The paper itself was then banned in 1962 and supporters of it were continually expelled by the LP until in 1964 the LP Young Socialists itself was wound up.
However, the YS then largely continued as the youth section of the SLL.
The January 1965 issue pushes for Keep Left to be the official YS paper….
In 1969 the YS swung behind the new daily paper, Workers Press and also began to plan and raise funds for a weekly Keep Left which was launched in the 1970s.
In 1976 Keep Left became Young Socialist, around the same time that Workers Press gave way to Newsline. We only have half a dozen copies of Young Socialist from this period although the paper is rumoured to still exist to this day, as a weekly put out by the continuity-WRP /Newsline group.
Last updated on 26 June 2023
