The Socialist Party of Great Britain: a political Ealing comedy

There's something amusing about a tiny socialist party that finds it has become rich by sticking to its principles. It's the stuff of a political Ealing comedy.

BBC News reports:

A tiny socialist party which fights for a moneyless society has amassed reserves of more than £2.6m, newly-published accounts reveal.

The documents, released on Wednesday, show that the Socialist Party of Great Britain holds over £400,000 in cash and a further £800,000 in investment funds.

The party also owns a property in south London, bought in 1951 for £4,000, which is now worth £1.3m.

In the past year it received a £400,000 inheritance from a member who had died.

And the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), not to be confused with a dozen other parties with similar names, really is part of British political history.

It was founded in 1904 as, says Wikipedia, a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF):

to oppose the SDF's reformism and as part of a response to that organisation's domination by Henry Hyndman (which also led to the SPGB's aversion to leadership). This split was also partly a reaction to the SDF's involvement in the Labour Representation Committee, which went on to found the Labour Party. ... 

The founders of the SPGB considered themselves to be part of a wider impossibilist revolt within the Second International. When in 1903 most of SDF members in Scotland broke away to form the Socialist Labour Party without contacting their fellow impossibilists in London, those impossibilists chiefly in Battersea branch decided to break away and form their own organisation, which they did the following year. Unlike the Socialist League, the SPGB advocated the revolutionary use of the ballot box and parliament.

The SPGB's use of the ballot box has not proved very successful. At the last election it fought two seats, receiving a total of 157 votes.

Yet you will still find it's little shop, sandwiched between two bars, on Clapham High Street today. I have stolen the BBC's Google Street View capture of it to stick it to the man. 

As I shall be tweeting this, I'd better make it clear I accept that anyone claiming to be left wing who does not live in a shoebox and make their children go barefoot is a hypocrite.