Tribune (magazine)

Tribune is a democratic socialist political magazine founded in 1937 and published in London, initially as a newspaper, then converting to a magazine in 2001. While it is independent, it has usually supported the Labour Party from the left. Previous editors at the magazine have included Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health who spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service, former Labour leader Michael Foot, and writer George Orwell, who served as Literary Editor. From 2008 it faced serious financial difficulties until it was purchased by Jacobin in late 2018, shifting to a quarterly publication model. Since its relaunch the number of paying subscribers has passed 15,000, with columns from high-profile socialist politicians such as former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, former Second Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Pablo Iglesias and former Bolivian President Evo Morales. In January 2020, it was used as the platform on which Rebecca Long-Bailey chose to launch her Labour leadership campaign. Tribune was founded in early 1937 by two wealthy left-wing Labour Party Members of Parliament (MPs), Sir Stafford Cripps and George Strauss, to back the Unity Campaign, an attempt to secure an anti-fascist and anti-appeasement united front between the Labour Party and socialist parties to the left. The latter included Cripps's (Labour-affiliated) Socialist League, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The paper's first editor was William Mellor. Among its journalists were Michael Foot and Barbara Betts (later Barbara Castle), while the board included the Labour MPs Aneurin Bevan and Ellen Wilkinson, Harold Laski of the Left Book Club, and the veteran left-wing journalist and former ILP member H. N. Brailsford. Mellor was fired in 1938 for refusing to adopt a new CPGB policy – supported by Cripps – of backing a popular front, including non-socialist parties, against fascism and appeasement; Foot resigned in solidarity. Mellor was succeeded by H. J.