A collection of printed pamphlets relating to left-wing politics mainly of the twentieth century. A great deal of such material exists from many sources but, as such publications are necessarily ephemeral in nature, and often produced in order to address a particular issue of the moment without any thought of their potential historical value (many are undated), they are frequently scarce, and holding them in the form of a special collection is a means of ensuring their preservation. The collection is ad hoc, and is not intended to be comprehensive.

The collection includes material issued from many different sources, both collective and individual, of widely divergent viewpoints and covering an extensive variety of topics. Political organisations represented here are of both the ‘extreme’ or authoritarian Left – for example, Communist Parties of Great Britain and elsewhere, the Soviet Union and the satellite regimes of Eastern Europe which frequently issued ‘official’ versions of events, and organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists, and Militant – and the democratic Left, represented by, for example, the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and the Common Wealth Party. There are in addition publications by individuals, by trades unions, and also occasionally official government documents such as those published by HMSO on relevant topics.

For further details of this collection please see the listings in the external documents section below.