In solidarity, under suspicion

Daniel Frost is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London.Evan Smith is a Visiting Fellow at Flinders University, South Australia, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide.

'There’s a great deal here of interest – about claimants’ unions, trades councils, the early Women’s Liberation Movement and the Anti-Nazi League. Today’s activists shouldn’t dismiss these contributions as historical, academic exercises. On the contrary, there is a lot here that could teach us how to help build contemporary social movements. Many of the currents who made a mess of united front activity fifty years ago are still leading campaigns today – and if they are unable to learn from their mistakes, others should at least try.'Labour Hub'The history of the British non-Labour left is often portrayed as a bewildering series of splits over the ‘true’ legacy of the Russian Revolution and fealty to one or other esoteric analysis of the place of the party in relation to the working class... [This] collection, as the title suggests, attempts to go beyond just the traditional focus on Trotskyist-inspired groups to cover the mosaic of organisations and alliances in the post-war far left and their relationship to both the (UK) state and international liberation struggles, from Ireland to Malaysia and Chile in particular.'Clive Hedges, The Left Lane

• Introduction Studying the far left in Britain after ‘Generation Left’ – Daniel Frost & Evan SmithAgainst the State1 Undercover policing of the left 1968–82: subversives under the lens – Chris Brian2 ‘Secret and Delicate Sources’: British black power, counter-subversion and undercover policing – Rosie Wild & Eveline Lubbers3 Shot by both sides? The foundation of the Institute for Workers’ Control and its critics on the left and right – Ieuan Franklin and Alan Tuckman4 From the SLL to the WRP: violence, gender, and the perils of Leninism – Aidan Beatty5 Anti-statism and the trajectory from the Revolutionary Communist Party to Spiked – Evan SmithWorlds transformed6 Trades councils and The December The Sixth Group: trade unions and the ‘unofficial’ radical left in the early 1970s – Hazel Perry7 ‘Organising to win’: Big Flame and workplace interventions 1970–3 – Kerrie McGiveron8 Socialist-feminist revival in the Merseyside Women’s Liberation Movement: new priorities, strategies, spaces and solidarities after 1978 – Rachel Collett9 ‘Black and white, unite and fight’? black power and the British radical left, 1965–79 – Alfie HancoxBeyond borders10 ‘Let the people of Malaya rule their own country!’: The Communist Party of Great Britain’s solidarity campaign with Malaya – Armand Azra bin Azlira11 British Maoists, China, and the Cold War in the 1970s – Neil Redfern12 British Marxism and the coup in Chile – Owen Dowling13 Difficult solidarities: the Irish diaspora and the British left during the Northern Ireland conflict – Jack HepworthBreaking and entering14 From rupture to retreat: black Power and the rise of black Marxism in 20th century Britain – Azfar Shafi & Ilyas Nagdee15 Inside out, outside in: the IMG’s changing attitudes towards the Labour Party and entryism – Nicolas Sigoillot16 Finally moving on? The Socialist Labour Party and the search for an electoral alternative to New Labour – Alfie Steer17 Researching left-wing activism (after 1956) during and after Corbynism – Daniel Frost