National convenor Doug Cameron Youth wing Young Labor Left House of Representatives 18 / 150 | Student wing Young Labor Left Colours Red Senate 11 / 76 | |
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The Labor Left (also known as the Socialist Left and Progressive Left) is an organised social democratic faction of the Australian Labor Party. It competes with the more conservative Labor Right faction.
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The Labor Left operates autonomously in each State and Territory, and organises as a broad alliance at the national level. Its policy positions include party democratisation, economic interventionism, progressive tax reform, and refugee rights.
In New South Wales and Victoria, it is made up of two sub-factions. These are the Hard Left and the Ferguson Left (also known as the Soft Left).
Factional activity
Most political parties contain informal factions of members who work towards common goals. However the Australian Labor Party is noted for having highly structured and organised factions across the ideological spectrum.
The Labor Left is a membership-based organisation which has internal office bearers, publications, and policy positions. The faction coordinates political activity and policy development across different hierarchical levels and organisational components of the party, negotiates with other factions on political strategy and policy, and uses party processes to try and defeat other groups if consensus cannot be reached.
Many Members of Parliament and trade union leaders are formally aligned with the Left and Right factions, and party positions and ministerial allocations are negotiated and divided between the factions based on the proportion of Labor caucus aligned with that faction.
Labor Party split of 1955
The modern Labor Left emerged from the Labor Party split of 1955, in which anti-Communist activists associated with B. A. Santamaria and the Industrial Groups formed the Democratic Labor Party while left-wing parliamentarians and unions loyal to H. V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell remained in the Australian Labor Party.
The split played out differently across the country, with anti-Communists leaving the party in Victoria and Queensland but remaining within in most other states. This created a power vacuum which allowed the Left to take control of the Federal Executive and Victorian state branch, while its opponents were preserved elsewhere.
From 1965 organised internal groups emerged to challenge the control of the Left, supported by figures such as John Button and Gough Whitlam. After the Victorian branch lost the 1970 state election in the midst of a public dispute with Whitlam over state aid for private schools, the South Australian Left, led by Clyde Cameron, and New South Wales Left, led by Arthur Gietzelt, agreed to support an intervention which saw the Victorian state branch abolished and subsequently reconstructed without Left control.