The Socialist Equality Party (UK) is launching an initiative to sign up hundreds of new SEP Supporters and involve them in the party’s campaigning and educational work.
This ambitious agenda is made necessary by the severity of the capitalist crisis. Our party must grow to provide leadership to the emerging struggles of the working class against war, austerity and assaults on democratic rights. To do so, it must establish deep connections in the widest layers of the working class and help the most politically farsighted become fighters for socialism.
The SEP is the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world party of socialist revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938—forged in the struggle against the political counter-revolution in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
Its history is one of implacable struggle to resolve the crisis of working-class leadership produced by the political domination of Stalinism, reformism and the nationalist movements that facilitated the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II and have allowed for the survival of capitalism to the present day.
The SEP adopted its current name and form in 1996 after drawing far-reaching conclusions from the Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and China, and from the social-democratic parties’ and trade unions’ abandonment of their old reformist programmes in the 1990s. Their embrace of free-market capitalism and the dictates of private profit had fundamentally changed their relationship to the working class.
This was the result of the globalisation of production, which undermined all national programmes aimed at regulating the class struggle. Globalisation posed, as an immediate practical necessity, the task of reorganising the working class on the basis of an internationalist and socialist programme—the only possible means of combating a capitalist class that is organised across national borders.
The ICFI concluded, in the words of World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Chairman David North:
If there is to be leadership given to the working class, it must be provided by our party. If a new road is to be opened for the masses of working people, it must be opened by our organisation. The problem of leadership cannot be resolved on the basis of a clever tactic. We cannot resolve the crisis of working class leadership by “demanding” that others provide that leadership. If there is to be a new party, we must build it.
The resurgence of the class struggle and the tasks of revolutionary leadership
The three decades since the SEP’s founding have vindicated this decision and the essential socialist principles on which the party fights: working-class internationalism, anti-imperialism, and social equality.
Imperialist-led, backed and provoked wars—from Yugoslavia through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria—have metastasised into the first stages of a third global war, already engulfing Ukraine and the Middle East and threatening to spread to Russia and China. Social inequality has risen to ever more obscene levels, reflected in the life expectancy gap between rich and poor—roughly a decade in the UK. In the US, Elon Musk is set to become the world’s first trillionaire.
Grotesque social inequality and militarism are incompatible with democracy. The fascistic programme of the Trump Administration—a government of, by and for the oligarchy—is the sharpest expression of far-right forces being promoted by the ruling class in every country.
This nightmarish situation is provoking a resurgence of the class struggle—in the imperialist centres, but also in the vastly expanded ranks of the international working class in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The more determinedly workers pursue their interests, the more they confront the national constraints placed on their struggles by pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracies and parties.
Our movement drew the conclusion at the start of 2020 that the new year marked “the beginning of a decade of intensifying class struggle and world socialist revolution… The approach of social revolution has already been foreshadowed in the mass demonstrations and strikes that swept across the globe in 2019”.
We reiterated at this year’s May Day Rally: “The first five years of the decade were dominated by an intensifying drive of the ruling elites towards political reaction… The second half of the decade is being increasingly characterised by the eruption of the countervailing tendency of social struggle on an international scale.”
But we do not make the fatal mistake of assuming that this process will lead automatically to the victory of socialism.
The SEP is alone in the seriousness with which we have addressed the damage done to socialist consciousness in the working class by Stalinism’s counter-revolutionary crimes and its political genocide of the socialist movement. The ICFI was founded in 1953 to defend Trotskyism against a tendency known as Pabloism, which sought to liquidate the Trotskyist movement into Stalinism, social democracy, and bourgeois nationalism, rejecting the revolutionary role of the working class and the historic role of the Fourth International in resolving the crisis of leadership.
The Pabloite and state-capitalist tendencies that broke from the Fourth International constitute the core of what the ICFI has defined as today’s “pseudo-left”: parties of the affluent middle class that are hostile to Marxism and the working class and which defend the pro-imperialist labour and trade union bureaucracy and the capitalist state. They promote reformist demands aimed at improving their own income and lifestyle within capitalism.
The collapse of Your Party and the SEP’s opposition to Corbynism
The debacle of Your Party, the final dead end of Corbynism, coupled with the growth of the anti-migrant far-right, highlights the dangers workers face.
Promoted by the parties of the pseudo-left, a leader as weak and cowardly as Jeremy Corbyn became the figurehead of “the left” for a decade. His continual retreats, capitulations and betrayals—coupled with the trade union bureaucracy’s suppression of the class struggle—blocked a genuine left-wing movement of workers and young people and handed power to the right-wing Starmer government, whose anti-migrant, anti-democratic, pro-business and militarist agenda has enabled the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The SEP is the only party that has mounted a consistent opposition to Corbyn and all those in Corbynism’s orbit, from Zarah Sultana to Zack Polanski. We wrote against Your Party on October 22, 2025:
Yes, a mass socialist party of the working class is needed urgently. Such a party must be international, linking British workers with their class brother and sisters worldwide; it must be based on the political independence of the working class from the capitalist class and its servants in the labour and trade union bureaucracy; and it must encourage the growth of rank-and-file organisations in every workplace and neighbourhood to mobilise the working class to expropriate the wealth of the oligarchy, break the resistance of the state, and place economic and political power in the hands of the working class, the overwhelming majority of the population.
Such a party will only develop in a determined fight to develop socialist political consciousness in the working class against the reformist, pro-capitalist politics of Corbyn, Sultana and their backers in the pseudo-left. A party capable of defeating imperialism requires a leadership grounded in the lessons of history, based on the century-long struggle of the Trotskyist movement for the strategy of world socialist revolution. That party is the Socialist Equality Party, the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
Building the Socialist Equality Party
Trotsky described the role of a Marxist party as “the memory of the working class” and the instrument without which “the proletarian revolution cannot conquer.” We stand in the tradition of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, which led the Russian Revolution and founded the first workers’ state, and of the Fourth International, which fought the Stalinist betrayal of that revolution.
Membership of our party, therefore, involves acceptance of its Statement of Principles and a thorough grounding in the history of the Marxist, Trotskyist movement and its relationship to the history of the class struggle—a record contained in the Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party (UK). It is through an understanding of these critical experiences that a person becomes a revolutionary Marxist.
These are complex questions that take time and study to understand. The liberation of society from capitalism is the most difficult challenge ever posed before humanity, fought for against the dangers of war, fascism and all forms of barbarism; it will not be accomplished by the fond hopes and goodwill of political amateurs.
Advanced workers, bearing the scars of many betrayals and defeats, increasingly understand this. So too must the young generation of workers and students now entering the fight against the Gaza genocide, the fascist danger and the threatened destruction of the planet through climate catastrophe and war.
We want all those who agree with this programme and history to join the SEP. But those wanting to fight for socialism who are not yet ready to join and are not yet fully familiar with what we stand for can still lend practical assistance by contributing their time, funds, resources, experience, and ideas as Supporters.
We welcome the participation of all who agree with the party’s essential aims and are prepared to fight alongside us for them. After such a prolonged suppression of the class struggle and socialist ideas, it is our responsibility to provide the environment to make this possible.
SEP Supporters will be invited to attend local party campaigns, Supporters’ meetings, and educational classes; they will be provided with a dedicated SEP member contact and discounts on titles from our publishing house, Mehring Books. They will be introduced to the party’s Statement of Principles and Historical and International Foundations while they contribute to building the party that the working class urgently needs, and which we hope many of them will decide to join.
The basis for playing this role as a Supporter is agreement with the Statement of Aims included below.
It is time to join the fight for socialism
Britain, no less than the rest of the world, is being rocked by the consequences of the wars in Ukraine and Iran. Its society is already wrecked by decades of capitalist economic crisis and austerity. Its government is in a state of almost continual collapse. A broad process of radicalisation has begun. But the working class must formulate and fight for its own socialist way forward to prevent its enemies from seizing the initiative.
At the start of the Second World War, the Fourth International defined the prerequisites for socialist revolution as follows:
(1) the bourgeois impasse and the resulting confusion of the ruling class; (2) the sharp dissatisfaction and the striving towards decisive changes in the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie, without whose support the big bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself; (3) the consciousness of the intolerable situation and readiness for revolutionary actions in the ranks of the proletariat; (4) a clear programme and a firm leadership of the proletarian vanguard…
The document goes on to warn that “The main reason for the defeats of many revolutions is rooted in the fact that these four conditions rarely attain the necessary degree of maturity at one and the same time.”
It is the last two closely related conditions which must urgently be brought to maturity today. To readers of the World Socialist Web Site and those who follow the activity of the SEP (UK), to the workers and young people we meet every day who agree with our campaigns, we say: Now is the time to make your political allegiance known and felt. If this is your party, then you must help build it.
Submit a Supporter sign-up form today and take your place in the fight for socialism. Our Statement of Aims is presented below.
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Socialist Equality Party (UK) Statement of Aims
Workers and young people are looking for a way to fight genocide, world war, social inequality, environmental catastrophe and the drive to dictatorship and fascism.
The capitalist parties, whether Labour, Conservative, Scottish National Party or Green, offer no way forward.
It is time to join the fight for socialism. The Socialist Equality Party is the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.
Our party fights for the following policies:
Stop the war on Iran, end the genocide in Gaza! Dismantle NATO!
The Gaza genocide, backed by the US and Britain, has initiated a new phase of imperialist barbarity. The US-led onslaught on Iran, an unprovoked war of aggression, aims to enslave the peoples of the Middle East and colonise its resources, to prepare for war against Russia and China. A new imperialist carve-up of the planet has begun. The SEP demands the immediate withdrawal of all UK military forces globally and the closure of its overseas military bases. NATO must be dismantled.
Defend immigrants and refugees! Oppose nationalism and racism! For the international unity of the working class!
The vicious scapegoating of immigrants and refugees for the social crisis caused by capitalism is the stock-in-trade of all capitalist parties, from Labour to Reform UK. The entire framework of “border controls” and anti-immigrant legislation must be abolished. Full democratic and citizenship rights must be granted to all immigrants, including those classified as “illegal.” Against the noxious fumes of racism and nationalism, the working class must unite globally in the fight for socialism.
End the rule of the billionaire oligarchy!
Globally, more than 3,000 billionaires hold £18.3 trillion in wealth, and the 12 richest own more than the poorest half of humanity, or 4 billion people. The UK boasts 156 billionaires, and the 50 richest families own more wealth than 34 million people. Society can no longer afford the rich. The wealth of the billionaires must be confiscated and directed to meet urgent social needs.
Billions for social programmes! Free healthcare, housing, childcare and education!
Resources must be poured into the National Health Service to meet the population’s needs for GP, hospital, specialist medical and dental treatment. In-home and residential social care services must be massively expanded to care for the elderly. Housing is a social right and must be provided for all, not used to squeeze rent and interest payments. Nursery and childcare must be available to parents free of charge. Abolish tuition fees and provide income support to all students in need.
Guarantee a living income and secure employment!
Immediate measures are needed to protect workers from rising inflation. A 30 percent wage increase must be granted, reclaiming just a fraction of the billions stolen via wage suppression over the past three decades. The working week must be reduced to 30 hours, with 40 hours’ pay. Zero-hour and gig economy contracts must be outlawed, with all workers guaranteed full employment benefits and a safe working environment from day one.
Repeal anti-strike laws and overturn legislation banning protest and free speech!
All laws curtailing and suppressing industrial action must be repealed. This includes strike vote threshold mandates, secret state-controlled postal ballots, and bans on picketing and secondary boycotts. The battery of laws introduced under the guise of the War on Terror aimed at criminalising protest and speech against British imperialism must be overturned. End the ban on Palestine Action!
Protect a liveable planet for all!
Billions must be spent replacing fossil fuelled infrastructure with clean energy and sustainable industries and agriculture, providing guaranteed jobs and retraining to all affected workers. Productive enterprises must be held responsible for managing their environmental and public health impacts, locally and globally. Money must be made available to protect communities from the effects of climate change caused already by capitalism.
For a workers’ government and socialism!
There is no solution to the crisis confronting the working class except by ending the capitalist system and replacing it with socialism. The SEP fights for a workers’ government based on rank-and-file workplace committees and workers’ councils that will establish democratically controlled public ownership of the economy, dissolve the vast military-industrial complex, and establish production for human need, not corporate profit, as part of the fight for the United Socialist States of Europe and a world socialist society.
If you agree with these policies, become an SEP Supporter today. There is no time to lose! Play your part in building the necessary mass socialist party of the working class.