Socialist Society
The Socialist Society was founded in 1981 by a group of British socialists, including Raymond Williams and Ralph Miliband, who founded it as an organisation devoted to socialist education and research, linking the left of the British Labour Party with socialists outside it. The Society grew out of the "New Left Review" (NLR) and many of its active members were involved in the NLR: Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali, Michèle Barrett, Michael Rustin and Hilary Wainwright. Other active and prominent members of the Society included Richard Kuper, John Palmer, John Williams and Barney Dickson. The Society published a magazine ("Interlink", later relaunched under the name of "Catalyst") and a series of pamphlets.

Many of its members were said to be active in the 1980s magazine Socialist Alternatives, edited for a period by Keir Starmer.

One of the Society's key goals was overcoming the division on the British Left between socialists inside and outside the Labour Party. To this end, the Society was jointly responsible, with the Conference of Socialist Economists, Tony Benn and the Campaign Group of Labour MPs, for the initiation of a series of conferences between 1987 and 1992 which were held in Chesterfield, Sheffield or Manchester and the subsequent founding of the Socialist Movement. The Society was opposed to Euroscepticism, committed to electoral reform and open to green ideas, all of which were fairly controversial on the left at the time. Several prominent figures involved in the society, including Miliband and Wainwright, were signatories to Charter88. Another organisational achievement of note was the founding of the Red-Green Network.

The Society's last AGM was in 1993.
Q7272
socialists
Concept
Q394628
Raymond Williams
PER
Q2036385
Ralph Miliband
PER
Q9630
British Labour Party
Concept
Q206249
New Left Review
MEDIA
Q2742180
Robin Blackburn
PER
Q314787
Tariq Ali
PER
None
Michèle Barrett
UNK
None
Michael Rustin
UNK
Q5761098
Hilary Wainwright
PER
None
Richard Kuper
UNK
None
John Williams
UNK
None
Barney Dickson
UNK
Q104878834
Socialist Alternatives
UNK
Q6383803
Keir Starmer
PER
Q5159921
Conference of Socialist Economists
UNK
Q332412
Tony Benn
PER
Q10672913
Campaign Group
MEDIA
Q17020656
Socialist Movement
UNK
Q223200
Euroscepticism
Concept
Q5356385
electoral reform
Concept
Q1661415
green ideas
Concept
Q164597
left
Concept
Q5086714
Charter88
ORG
None
Red-Green Network
UNK
Q7551756
Socialist Society
ORG
1981-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1981
DATE
1980-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1980
DATE
1987-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1987
DATE
1992-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1992
DATE
1993-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1993
DATE
+88^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
88
NUMBER
member of political party
member of political party