Socialist Society

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The Socialist Society was founded in 1981 by a group of British Marxists, including Raymond Williams and Ralph Miliband, who founded it as an organisation devoted to socialist education and research. Active and prominent members of the Society included Hilary Wainwright, Richard Kuper, John Palmer and John Williams. The Society published a magazine (Interlink, later relaunched under the name of Catalyst) and a series of pamphlets.

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 and the Campaign Group of Labour MPs, for the initiation of the Chesterfield Conference and the subsequent founding of the Socialist Movement. During the late 1980s and early 1990s the Society also had some success in spreading its ideas: these included opposition to Euroscepticism, commitment to electoral reform and openness to Green ideas, all of which were fairly controversial on the Left at this stage. Another organisational achievement of note was the founding of the Red-Green Network.

The Society's last AGM was in 1993.