The new left, the third camp, workers’ control and The Revolutionary Movement in Britain: the life and work of Walter Kendall

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The historiography of the British New Left has devoted little attention to working-class activists who pursued Third Camp and anti-Stalinist agendas before as well as after 1956. Among them was Walter Kendall, who combined research as a historian with activity in the trade unions from the 1940s to the 1990s. He was a Labour Party Marxist and opponent of Communism who occupied the ground between reform and revolution. Critical consideration of his career sheds light on a post-war British left sometimes viewed over-benignly from the vantage point of subsequent decline. This article revisits Kendall’s participation in initiatives such as the Socialist Workers’ Federation, the Institute for Workers’ Control and Voice of the Unions, reviews his scholarly contribution and provides a critique of his innovative text, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain.