The Labour left.

Throughout its lifetime the Labour Party has
experienced ideological divisions resulting in the
formation of Left and Right factions. The Labour Left has
been the more prominent and persistent of the two
factions, intent on defending the Party's socialist
principles against the more pragmatic leanings of the
Party leadership. During the 1930s and 1950s the Labour
Left played a significant, yet increasingly reactive, role
within the Party. In the 1970s, however, the Labour Left
launched an offensive with a wide-ranging political
programme, a set of proposals for an intra-Party
transferral of power, and a political leader with
exceptional skills. By 1981 this offensive had succeeded
in securing the election of a Party Leader whose whole
career had been very closely identified with the Labour
Left, in achieving a significant shift of power from the
parliamentarians to the constituency activists, and in
developing a Party programme which incorporated certain
major left-wing policies. Success, however, contained the
seeds of decline. A split in the parliamentary Party and
continual bitter intra-Party factional divisions played a major part in the Party's disastrous electoral performance
in the 1983 General Election. The election result gave
additional impetus to the Labour Left's fragmentation to
the point that it is no longer the cohesive faction it was
in previous periods and is now a collection of disparate
groups.