Socialist Workers Party (UK)

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party says it is Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.

It set up the Anti Nazi League in the Autumn of 1977 and then Rock Against Racism. This organised successful carnivals with The Clash, the Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, The Ruts, Generation X and the Tom Robinson Band. It stopped in 1981 after the National Front had got smaller.