International Socialist Group

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Socialist Outlook is the quarterly magazine of the International Socialist Group

The International Socialist Group is a Trotskyist organisation in Britain. It is the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. The organisation is also known by the name of its publication, Socialist Outlook.

The ISG is the result of the 1988 fusion of two organisations, the International Group and the Socialist Group.

Former members of the Socialist League established the International Group after the Socialist League moved away from the Fourth International in the mid-1980s. Initially, the FI recognised both the International Group and the Socialist League as its sympathisers.
The Socialist Group represented the political continuity of the Workers Socialist League which had broken from Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League in 1973 and suffered a failed merger with the International-Communist League.

They merged in order to re-establish a British Section of the Fourth International after a breakdown of the Socialist League. Initially, the organisations were active in the Labour left, supporting the fortnightly Labour Briefing, and in the broad left, supporting the Chesterfield Socialist Movement.

In 1990, the ISG was recognised as a sympathising section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. By the 1995 World Congress the ISG became the British Section. The Group is controlled by a national delegate-based conference, which elects both a central committee and a control commission. A number of the ISG's central committee members have served in the international executive committee of the Fourth International including Alan Thornett, a former WSL leader.

The merged organisation drew together over 300 activists initially, but the defeat and crisis of the Labour left in the 1990s also eroded the ISG. The organisation is oriented towards united front campaigns and recomposition of the left. It has supported developments like Workers Aid for Bosnia, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance, the International Socialist Movement, the World Social Forum, the Respect coalition, Hands Off Venezuela and the Campaign against Climate Change.

Alongside its quarterly magazine the ISG sponsors Socialist Resistance, a monthly newspaper produced jointly with the smaller Socialist Solidarity Network and some individuals. The group's membership can be assumed to be somewhere around 72, the number signed up to its members-only email discussion group [link].

External links

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