The origin of the party can be traced back to the ideological divisions in the Labour Party in the 1950s ( with its forerunner being the Campaign for Democratic Socialism established to support the Gaitskellites ), but publicly lies in the 1979 Dimbleby Lecture given by Roy Jenkins as he neared the end of his presidency of the European Commission.

* Holger Nehring, ' From Gentleman's Club to Folk Festival: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Manchester, 1958-63 ', North West Labour History Journal, No. 26 ( 2001 ), pp. 18 – 28

In the United Kingdom in the 1980s, the term hard left was applied to supporters of Tony Benn, such as the Campaign Group and Labour Briefing, as well as Trotskyist groups such as the Militant Tendency and Socialist Organiser.

Associated with the Labour left for most of his career, Foot was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community.

Foot became a journalist, working briefly on the New Statesman, before joining the left-wing weekly Tribune when it was set up in early 1937 to support the Unity Campaign, an attempt to secure an anti-fascist United Front between Labour and the parties to its left.

* Gary Kinsman, "' Character Weakness ' and ' Fruit Machines ': Towards an Analysis of the Anti-Homosexual Security Campaign in the Canadian Civil Service ," Labour / Le Travail, 35 ( Spring 1995 ).

He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1975 to 1979, and a member of the Labour National Executive from 1986 to 1987 for the Campaign group.

She was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group and took part in almost all of the backbench rebellions against the Labour government.

She supported John Prescott in the Labour deputy-leadership election in 1988 ( against Eric Heffer and the incumbent Roy Hattersley ), leaving the Socialist Campaign Group, along with Margaret Beckett, as a result of Tony Benn's decision to challenge Neil Kinnock for the leadership.

Most of these conferences, and in particular the elections held at them, are contested by factions including Conservative Future, Education Not for Sale, Labour Students, Liberal Youth, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, the Organised Independents, Socialist Students, Socialist Workers ' Student Society, Student RESPECT and Student Broad Left.

The I-CL increased its activity within the Labour Party, and in 1978 helped set up the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory.

The Socialist Organiser Alliance grew from the broad left Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory.

In November 2005 at its annual Socialism event, the Socialist Party formally launched the Campaign for a New Workers ' Party along with other socialists, left activists and trade unionists with the aim of persuading individuals, campaigners and trade unions to help set up and back a new broad left alternative to New Labour that would fight for working class people.

He was once a member of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory.

The newspaper was founded in 1979 by the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory, later renamed the Socialist Organiser Alliance.

The Socialist Party, along with other left-wing organisations, intiatiated the Campaign for a New Workers ' Party in 2006, arguing that trade unions should break with Labour and construct their own political formation.

There are other organisations, such as Arts for Labour, Centre Left Grassroot Alliance, the Labour Animal Welfare Society, Muslims for Labour, Labour Against the Euro, and Labour Campaign for International Development, which are not formally affiliated to the Labour Party but act as campaign groups for Labour Party members.

Instead they urged their urban sympathizers to vote for Labour candidates, as the representatives of the urban working class.

With the exception of the first term, it has been held by the Labour Party, and for seven years was held by Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister in 1924 and from 1929 to 1935.

The party gained ground in the 1923 general election but ominously made most of its gains from Conservatives whilst losing ground to Labour – a sign of the party's direction for many years to come.

But instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense.

With many traditional domestic Liberal policies now regarded as irrelevant, he focused the party on opposition to both the rise of Fascism in Europe and the appeasement foreign policy of the British government, arguing that intervention was needed, in contrast to the Labour calls for pacifism.

The agreement lasted from 1977 to 1978, but proved mostly fruitless, for two reasons: the Liberals ' key demand of proportional representation was rejected by most Labour MPs, whilst the contacts between Liberal spokespersons and Labour ministers often proved detrimental, such as between finance spokesperson John Pardoe and Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who were mutually antagonistic.

Eddie Milne at Blyth ( Northumberland ) and Dick Taverne in Lincoln were both victims of such intrigues during the 1970s, but in both cases there was enough of a local outcry by party members – and the electorate – for them to fight and win their seats as independent candidates against the official Labour candidates.

In Taverne's case, he had been fighting efforts by the Lincoln Constituency Labour Party to deselect him largely over his support for British membership of the European Communities.

The final straw for many in the Manifesto Group was the behaviour of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey at a meeting with them during the Labour leadership campaign to replace James Callaghan.

Ivor Crewe and Anthony King found five defectors who claimed to have voted for Foot in order to saddle Labour with an unelectable leader and make life easier in their new party.

Democratic, Democratic Labour, and Radical were all mentioned as possible names for the new party, as well as New Labour ( which future Labour leader Tony Blair would use to promote the Labour Party more than a decade later ) but eventually Social Democratic was settled on because the ' Gang of Four ' consciously wanted to mould the philosophy and ideology of the new party on the Social Democracy practised on mainland Europe.

Claret is an " agreeable " wine, and a metaphor for the party's harmonious internal relations compared to those of the strife-torn Labour Party of the period.

On 6 May 1997, following the 1997 general election which brought a Labour government to power for the first time since 1979, it was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, that the Bank of England would be granted operational independence over monetary policy.

Henry McLeish, Labour First Minister of Scotland, failed to refund the House of Commons for income he had received from the sub-let of his constituency office in Glenrothes while still a Westminster MP.

Tessa Jowell, Labour cabinet minister, embroiled in a scandal about a property remortgage allegedly arranged to enable her husband to realise £ 350, 000 from an off-shore hedge fund, money he allegedly received as a gift following testimony he had provided for Silvio Berlusconi in the 1990s.

A story was running at the time that Dr Chai Patel and others had been recommended for Life peerages after lending the Labour party money.

Following revelations about Dr Chai Patel and others who were recommended for peerages after lending the Labour party money, the Treasurer of the party, Jack Dromey said he had not been involved and did not know the party had secretly borrowed millions of pounds in 2005.

Under the Labour government of James Callaghan, a review by Lord Beswick had led to the reprieve of the so-called ' Beswick plants ', for social reasons, but subsequent governments were obliged under EU rules to withdraw subsidies.

His first taste of ministerial office came in 1924, when he served as Under-Secretary of State for War in the short-lived first Labour government, led by MacDonald.

In 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left the party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem.

Though a Labour Party member she sits as an Independent and is Ireland's first Lesbian Senator.

In elections since 1999, the Labour Party has published pamphlets advertising " Labour's Gay Lesbian and Transgender candidates ".

The by-election was described by Gay News as " the dirtiest and most notorious by-election in British political history " because of the slurs against the character of the Labour candidate and gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell by various opposition campaigners.

Tabloid newspapers opposed to the Labour left had begun researching his background when Michael Foot denounced him, and in particular Tatchell's activities with the Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s.

In 2011, he was awarded a Knighthood for services to transport and the voluntary sector, though the honour was criticised by Scottish Labour politicians and by Gay Rights campaigners.