Owen Dowling (@owenjdowling.bsky.social)

What can we learn from the UK left of fifty years ago? Mike Phipps reviews In Solidarity, Under Suspicion: The British Far Left from 1956, edited by Daniel Frost and Evan Smith, published by Manchester University Press. This book covers a huge range of material. There is a wealth of detail about state surveillance of left groups, much of it unearthed in the Undercover Policing Inquiry. The Anti-Nazi League and School Kids Against the Nazis were targeted, in contrast with the far right, a genuinely serious threat to public order, who were not infiltrated at all. It was impossible for the state to infiltrate Britain’s Black Power movement, as the Metropolitan Police had not recruited a single non-white officer before 1967. http://labourhub.org.uk/2026/04/05/what-can-we-learn-from-the-uk-left-of-fifty-years-ago/