A few years ago we posted a small number of issues of Keep Left, paper of the Young Socialists (Healyite variety) from 1969-70.
Now we can add a further 80 or so copies ranging from the 1950s, to the 1960s and then through to the mid-1970s.
Keep Left started life as the duplicated journal of the Wembley Labour Leagues of Youth and then from 1955 Wembley North and West Hendon, later still it was branded A Paper For Socialist Youth but still Wembley and West Hendon, although by the end of the decade it had become a printed rather than duplicated paper and developed a national readership.
In 1959 the Socialist Labour League was proscribed by the Labour Party but remained active in the LPYS through Keep Left.
The paper itself was then banned in 1962 and supporters of it were continually expelled by the LP until in 1964 the LP Young Socialists itself was wound up.
However, the YS then largely continued as the youth section of the SLL.
The January 1965 issue pushes for Keep Left to be the official YS paper….
In 1969 the YS swung behind the new daily paper, Workers Press and also began to plan and raise funds for a weekly Keep Left which was launched in the 1970s.
In 1976 Keep Left became Young Socialist, around the same time that Workers Press gave way to Newsline. We only have half a dozen copies of Young Socialist from this period although the paper is rumoured to still exist to this day, as a weekly put out by the continuity-WRP / Newsline group.
Keep Left is a fascinating read- lots of familiar names of young comrades who then became older comrades, graduating from the YS to SLL / WRP.
Thanks to Barry and to young Ritchie Hunter for supplying some of these papers. Others were found here.
(including large numbers of YS leaflets, bulletins and pamphlets)
Splits and Fusions 