Thread by @AlfieSteer

As has been rumoured for some time, Labour's Tribune Group is being reformed. By my count, this is the third relaunch in its complex 60+ year history. Thread below on the Group's history, factionalism, and the soft left's major issues🧵

theguardian.com/politics/2025/…

The Group was set up by a few dozen left-wing Labour MPs supportive of @tribunemagazine after the 1964 general election. Most had been veterans of the Bevanite rebellion of the 1950s, or supporters of the early Labour left group Victory for Socialism.

@tribunemagazine As @LiamAbramo has demonstrated, their early activity was based around pushing the Wilson govt in a more radical direction, but they found themselves heavily constrained by cabinet collective responsibility and real fear of bringing down the govt tribunemag.co.uk/2021/03/tribun…

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo Disillusionment with the Wilson govt from the late 60s, plus the influx of younger, more radical, and less deferential MPs in the 70s, radicalised the Group. With left-wingers like Arthur Latham chairing by the 74-79 govt, Tribune MPs formed the core of backbench rebellions

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo However, its important to stress that the Group was never particular organised. It had no constitution, statement of aims or internal whipping system. As in the 1960s, they were also unwilling to push their rebelliousness so far as to bring down the government

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo By 1979, as the Bennite left began its march through the party, Tribune had lost its edge, and was criticised as an insular talking shop uninterested in extra-parliamentary social movements. A sharp distinction between the 'old' and 'new' Labour left was clear by this time.

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo The decision of 16 Tribune MPs (including Neil Kinnock) to abstain in the final ballot of the 1981 deputy leadership election, to the detriment of Benn, cemented the split. 23 MPs left to set up the Socialist Campaign Group the following year.

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo From the mid-80s the Tribune Group were the key parliamentary figures in the 'realignment' of the soft left, when former Benn supporters threw their support behind Kinnock, in the hope that they could influence him. As early as 1986 this was acknowledged as a failure.

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo Rather than influencing Kinnock, the Tribune Group found itself effectively 'annexed' by the party leadership. Kinnock loyalists flooded the Group, diluting its ideological potency as a result.

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo This had a dramatic effect on left-wing unity. After the 1987 GE the soft+hard left had a majority in the PLP for the first time ever. Key members in the TG and SCG (notably Ken Livingstone and John Prescott) negotiated a joint slate for that year's shad cab elections

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo But at a meeting to ratify the joint slate, dozens of previously inactive TG members packed the room to vote down the proposals, most notably Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Jack Straw. It was the last serious attempt at factional unity in the PLP.

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo Instead of a left caucus, the Tribune Group under Kinnock had become, in Peter Hain's words, 'a forum through whcih the leadership can pull people into line... whenever their is a key decision the pay roll vote appears en bloc and stifle's the groups independence and radicalism'

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo By the time Hain entered Parl in 1992, the TG was inactive, and just about everyone in the PLP apart from the old right and SCG was a member, stripping it of any kind of distinctiveness or focus.

@tribunemagazine @LiamAbramo For a brief period, however, TG radicalised under the leadership of Hain, Michael Meacher and Roger Berry. They were more vocal in their dissent from the party leadership (particularly on issues like Maastricht) and published a pamphlet calling for Keynesian demand management