Renaming the Socialist Party of England and Wales

Socialist Party of England & Wales. As the name Socialist Party is unfortunately taken by some historical but insignificant group.

Matina above is referring to the "free access only-ist" World Socialist Movement, which has the official "socialist parties" in both the UK and Canada.

Perhaps it can rename itself the Socialist Left Party of GB / the UK, assuming that the SLP abbreviation isn't the exclusive electoral "property" of Scargill's Socialist Labour Party.

Why would it need to be renamed? What it needs is getting rooted in the workers' movement (possibly in the form of a fraction within a militant proletarian party (not the silly, almost electoralist notion of workers' party)). And this in order to overcome the petty history of Trotskyist splits which created the problem of party names in the first place.

I doubt even many people know of the SPGB. The "SPEW" is mostly only used in offcial documents, in leaflets and on demo's we simply present ourselves as the "Socialist Party".

Also there is the point that we have a seperate group in Scotland, the International Socialists. So renaming to include GB or UK would be wrong and confusing. Not to mention "SLP/GB" sounds rather sectarian too.

In the Netherlands the current SP is actually the second party naming itself that way, the first one existed during the interbellum and only historians still know about it. I think the same approach should be adopted in the SPGB vs SPEW discussion.

Thanks for the clarification, Q.

Not to mention "SLP/GB" sounds rather sectarian too.

Why would longer abbreviations be sectarian? The Tories here in Canada were an amalgam of the leftover Progressive Conservative party (PCPC) and the CCRAP (Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, renamed CRCAP for obvious reasons ). Then there's the social-corporatist New Democratic Party (NDP).

Why would it need to be renamed? What it needs is getting rooted in the workers' movement (possibly in the form of a fraction within a militant proletarian (not the silly, almost electoralist notion of workers' party)). And this in order to overcome the petty history of Trotskyist splits which created the problem of party names in the first place.

Comrade, my question above would apply to discussions on the name of that proletarian or worker-class party. As noted above, I also speak from the Canadian perspective of suggesting alternatives to "socialist party." The US doesn't have this problem, since the WSM branch there is also a "World Socialist Party."

Me personally, I think the SP and the SWP should join and make a United Socialist Party. That works, but it's daft if the two parties stop squabbling.

Me personally, I think the SP and the SWP should join and make a United Socialist Party. That works, but it's daft if the two parties stop squabbling.

Should we just ignore the (rather big imo) political differences then we have with the SWP?

the problem is that we cant call our selves the right name in elections because of this very small and unimportant group, which only have about 100 members (and there was a split so probably even less now). they still stand in elections however which is the problem, but the SPGB are a complete joke - an acquaintence of mine went to an election talk between all of the parties, and this group were standing in the area, and on the topic of the Iraq war their candidate started reading out a party document relating to what happened in 1914!!!

maybe the swm in america is slightly better but they are quite funny lol, they think that there is not a point in fighting for any reforms and that socialism can only be achieved through the ballot box and no other way, one of their members stood on a demo with a big sign saying "this demonstration is useless"

How about Chartist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) or Left-Chartist Party of Great Britain (LCPGB)?

My preferred label would be:

Commonwealth (literally speaking, not the British Commonwealth of Nations)
Chartist (denoting working-class orientation)
Left (imitating Die Linke)

Party.

no, hardly anyones gonna know what that means, we need a name that is short, and that people will remember

I reserve "Left" for a proletocratic unity party that has broken from all shades of Labourism, from left to right.