UK Socialist parties

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Does anybody have any reliable info on the membership composition (in terms of numbers and % of members active) for some of the UKs Socialist parties?

Reason I ask is that I was reading somewhere that Scargill's Socialist Labour Party (which I thought was by and large defunct) had a total of 6,000 members, which seems high.

Wondering how many members (and how many are active) it really has, and also the likes of the CPGB, SWP, SPEW, SPGB, RCP, NCP etc. I know teh CPGB-ML is tiny at around 100 or less, or so I have heard.

[costello1977]

Would the workers party in Ireland consider themselves as UK socialists?

[bricolage]

SWP claims about 6,000 I think
CPGB I'm sure can't be more than a 100 or so.
SPEW would probably be a few thousand.
Dunno really.
It's all pretty irrelevant.

[Zanthorus]

SWP claims about 6,000 I think

I remember there being some controversy over that. If I recall the SWP was using a method of counting "members" that inflated the number of people who could reasonably be said to give political support to them.

EDIT:

This (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1675275&postcount=80) is what I was thinking of.

[Lyev]

I would guess the SWP and SPEW are roughly both 2,000 each. Last time SPEW had a big get-together in London -- some sort of conference, can't remember exactly what it was for -- the official number of active (and not just folks who pay a monthly sub) was something like 1,987, but we've probably around 2,000 now. Anyway to analyze the success or "how good" an organisation is by their numerical strength alone seems somewhat erroneous. To be sure, it may be easier for a party to organise on a daily basis simply if they have more members, but I don't think numerical strength in itself is always directly conducive to a party's success. From what I know there's roughly around 57 (perhaps 67) far-left groups in the UK, all with varying levels of activity. SPEW and SWP are equally the biggest.

[bricolage]

I also think it needs to be stressed that having more and more people together in a party means nothing if there is no actual mass movement to relate to.
You can collect as many socialists together as you like as long as there is no self-organisation in the workplaces and communities, as long as there is no concentrated solidarity and affinity in this areas you are just a bunch of dreamers hanging around with each other.

I also maintain that genuine organisation will arise out of prolonged revolutionary struggle itself and near to all (probably all) organisations that exist now will be swept away at this time. As such I think looking at the strength and sustainability 'cracks' in capitalist normalacy and relations (strikes, occupations, riots, rebuilding the commons...) is far more representative of how far we are progressing than how many pro-revolutionaries are in groups x y and z.