Party & Programme
End the cycle of splits
24 May 2012
If the left is to build a serious political organisation it will have to facilitate internal dissent, writes Mike Macnair. And that will require both majorities and minorities to act responsibly
Not a clean, but a dirty split
09 Apr 2026
The standard left narrative of the 1914-21 schism in the Second International is misleading and nowadays too easily leads to irresponsible splits. Mike Macnair argues for historical complication
Ambitions and institutional limits
09 Apr 2026
Equipped with a long political pedigree and what counts nowadays as a radical social democratic platform, Avi Lewis has just been elected NDP leader. Siamak Mehr reports
A study in bureaucratic inertia
09 Apr 2026
Marking a hundred years since the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad shows that, while the Tory government urgently, assiduously, ruthlessly prepared, the TUC was content to pass left-sounding resolutions and then urge strikers to tend to their gardens
Thou shalt not criticise Karie
26 Mar 2026
CEC members may not ‘misrepresent’ or ‘publicly oppose or undermine a decision’. Nor may they pass on ‘confidential’ information or ‘personally attack’ officers. The CEC’s code of conduct is a bureaucrat’s dream. It is designed to silence all and every opposition. Carla Roberts reports
We need light and air
19 Mar 2026
Real power is being exercised behind the backs of the elected committee members. The aim is clear: a politically pliant membership which votes in the approved way in occasional referendums and does the donkey work in elections. Meanwhile demands for closed sessions, secrecy and codes of conduct are threatening to paralyse Grassroots Left, reports Carla Roberts
Syndicalist quackery
19 Mar 2026
Their understanding of who constitutes the working class is radically false. So is their strategy of industrial colonisation. Mike Macnair thinks that the Spartacists are trapped in a dumb orthodoxy
Black Friday betrayal
19 Mar 2026
Marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad charts the delayed birth of the CPGB, the return of the Great Unrest, the collapse of the Triple Alliance and Lenin’s thoughts on the councils of action
How not to do democracy
12 Mar 2026
Abridged report from Grassroots Left CEC members
Corbyn’s suffocating regime
12 Mar 2026
Everything was factionally choreographed. All of them knew what was going to happen and how they were supposed to vote. That is how The Many fights the left. Appeals for ‘unity’, ‘reconciliation’ or, god help us, ‘away days’ are beyond useless, says Carla Roberts
Great Unrest to councils of action
12 Mar 2026
Marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad looks at the background of imperial decline, Ireland, women’s suffrage, trade union militancy and working class defence of Soviet Russia
Key questions for uniting the left
12 Mar 2026
Today’s left is in a mess. The worst thing we can do is to repeat solutions that unmistakably failed in the past. Charlotte Bourchier of the Spartacist League of Australia discusses the debates in Communist Unity
Definitely His Party now
05 Mar 2026
With Gorton and Denton, Jeremy Corbyn jumped on the Green bandwagon. Where he might simply want an election deal, many will go the whole hog and take out membership. Carla Roberts reports on a very expensive CEC election campaign and the suffocating control-freakery
Beware of Sparts bearing gifts
26 Feb 2026
We have a common view that open polemics, as sharp as may be necessary, are essential to any lasting, any worthwhile unity. However, there are those who object. Mike Macnair replies to Vincent David of the Spartacist League
Those who do the counting
26 Feb 2026
Shedloads of members’ money was spent on a red-baiting election campaign. Grassroots Left remains committed to fight for the kind of socialist, democratic and anti-Zionist party that is urgently needed. Carla Roberts reports
Drag towards bureaucracy
19 Feb 2026
Grassroots Left is discussing how the party can be run democratically and what to do to ensure that CEC members are properly held to account. Carla Roberts explains