*A Guardian Book of the Day*

The defeat of socialist firebrand Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader in 2019 confirmed Tony Benn’s famous retort 'the Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it.'

For over a hundred years, the British Labour Party has been a bastion for working class organisation and struggle. However, has it ever truly been on the side of the workers? Where do its interests really lie? And can we rely on it to provide a barrier against right-wing forces?

Simon Hannah’s smart and succinct history of the Labour left guides us through the twists and turns of the party, from the Bevanite movement and the celebrated government of Clement Attlee, through the emergence of a New Left in the 1970s and the Blairism of the 1990s, to Corbyn’s defeat and his replacement by Keir Starmer.

This new edition is updated throughout, with a new final chapter and conclusion bringing the story up to date.

'A welcome corrective, This book astutely appraises British politics’ most frustrating but important dissident tradition'

'Admirably clear-sighted'

'At a very crucial time in British politics, this book helps us to fill in important gaps in our knowledge'

'A well-timed explanation of the class contradictions at the root of the Labour Party from its creation to the present day'

Simon Hannah is a writer, activist, and trade unionist living in South London. He is an assistant branch secretary in UNISON and has written several books, including A Party With Socialists In It: A History of the Labour Left, which was a Guardian Book of the Day. Nadia Whittome is Labour MP for Nottingham East. On her election in December 2019 at the age of 23, Whittome became the youngest MP in the House of Commons. She is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. John McDonnell is a British Labour Party politician first elected in 1997, who served as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2015 to 2020, in the later years under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Sitting on the left of the party, he served as chair of the Socialist Campaign Group in Parliament and the Labour Representation Committee as well as the Public Services Not Private Profit Group. In 2024 he was suspended from the party as a result of voting to scrap the two child benefit cap.