Socialist Labour Party (UK)

The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. The party is led by former trade union leader Arthur Scargill, who helped establish it in 1996 as a breakaway from the Labour Party, following the changes to the Labour Party's Clause IV. The name 'Socialist Labour Party' symbolises the fact that the Labour Party moved away from any commitment to progressive Socialism when it removed Clause IV from its constitution. Clause IV of the Socialist Labour Party constitution is therefore a fundamental element of the Party's identity.

According to accounts filed for the year of 2010 with the Electoral Commission, the Socialist Labour Party had 3,260 members excluding affiliates. It had an income of around £14,200 and an expenditure of about £10,000.

Formation
Arthur Scargill formed the Socialist Labour Party in 1996 as a reaction to 's rewrite of Clause IV in the Labour Party's constitution a year earlier, seen as a final rejection of a commitment to socialism. The SLP advocates the public ownership of leading industries - which had been privatised under prime minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, with the policy being maintained by her successor  and then advocated by Labour Party leader Tony Blair in his re-write of Clause IV.

The party initially attracted trade union figures such as Mick Rix and Bob Crow.

The SLP advocates economic localism and is in favour of reopening the mines.

Electoral performance
At the the party took about 3% of the vote in seats it stood in.

The Party managed to get its highest percentage share in any individual parliamentary constituency at the when it gained 14.2% of the votes cast in Glasgow North East.

The Socialist Labour Party did not contest the, but fielded a full list of candidates for England, Scotland and Wales in the , where it took 173,115 votes, or 1.1% of the national vote.

The Socialist Labour Party ran 23 candidates in the, who received a total of 7,196 votes, fewer than 0.1% of the UK national vote. All lost their deposits. The best results were those of Kai Andersen in Liverpool West Derby (614 votes - 1.7%) and Ken Capstick in Barnsley East (601 votes - 1.6%). In the local elections held on the same day, Andersen also received 244 votes (4.2%) in the Croxteth ward of Liverpool.

The Socialist Labour Party contested both the Scottish Parliamentary and Welsh Assembly Elections in 2011. In Scotland the Party's share of the vote increased from 0.7% (in 2007) to 0.9% in an election at which nearly every other political party saw a decrease in votes due to the Scottish National Party (SNP) landslide. In Scotland the SLP beat all other left-wing opposition and, amongst others, the British National Party (BNP). In Wales the party's share of the vote increased from 1.2% (in 2007) to 2.4% giving the SLP the second biggest percentage gain of the total votes cast in the election meaning it far outperformed all other left-wing opposition as well as once again outperforming the BNP. The SLP also received more votes than the Green Party in two of the five regions of Wales.