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Chris Bambery is a Scottish people political activist, socialist, author, journalist, TV presenter and producer, most recently with the Islam Channel where he hosts their current affairs programme The Report.
Prior to the 2017 UK General Election he was the Parliamentary Assistant to Scottish National Party MP George Kerevan. A leading member of the International Socialist Group, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party until 2011 when he resigned from the party.Toby Young, "Crisis in the SWP: Is this the end of the People's Front of Judea?" Daily Telegraph (blog), 13 April 2011
He is the author of the 2014 book A People's History of Scotland and was the editor of the UK's Socialist Worker newspaper.
Bambery began his political career as a member of the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1972. In 1976, he was one of several Scottish IMG activists who infiltrated the recently established Scottish Labour Party (SLP), a breakaway from the Labour Party, with the intention of using it to co-ordinate the wider labour movement in fighting "the destruction of the welfare state."H. M. Drucker, Breakaway: the Scottish Labour Party (Edinburgh: EUSPB, 1978), p. 72. When the SLP's leader Jim Sillars expelled a number of activists and branches from the party at its first conference in Stirling in October that year, the IMG Entryism were among those who formed the Scottish Labour Party (Democratic Wing) in response. Bambery was appointed to the new "breakaway-breakaway" party's steering committee, but following its collapse soon afterwards he resumed his role as an IMG activist, becoming the group's full-time organiser in Glasgow in 1978.Drucker, Breakaway, p. 121.
Bambery left the IMG in May 1979, joining the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) seven months later. In 1981, he became the SWP's Glasgow organiser. Two years later, he moved to London as an organiser for the SWP, was elected a member of its Central Committee in 1987 and became its National Organiser shortly afterwards, a position which he held until 2004, when he replaced Chris Harman as editor of Socialist Worker.
In 2001, he led the International Socialist Tendency at the Genoa Group of Eight Summit protest in Italy with fellow SWP member Alex Callinicos.
After considerable political tension within the SWP regarding the party's response to the economic crisis, Bambery made public his resignation letter to SWP National Organiser Charlie Kimber on 11 April 2011. His resignation was joined by 38 other party members, based in Scotland, who shared Bambery's analysis that the SWP had retreated from building a political opposition to austerity and the recession along the lines of the highly successful Stop the War Coalition which the SWP was heavily involved with in its first decade.
Following his resignation from the SWP, Bambery was a founding member of the International Socialist Group, an organisation set up by the 39 former SWP members to formulate a united front approach to the recession and to develop a Left argument for Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum.Michael Theodoulou, 'Iran lambasts UK's 'lavish' diamond jubilee celebrations' , The National (Abu Dhabi), 6 June 2012. Retrieved 2012-06-20. During the referendum campaign, Bambery supported the Radical Independence Campaign, and was subsequently a supporter of RISE, the Scottish radical left coalition.
In The Scotsman, Roger Hutchinson in reviewing the book pointed out:
Reviewing the book in Monthly Review, Paul Buhle welcomed it, writing:
Professor John Newsinger, author of The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire, reviewed The Second World War: A Marxist History thus:
Some criticism came from those who maintain a loyalty to the former USSR and did not like the depiction of it as fighting the war with Germany for its own, imperialist interests.
In March 2018 Catalonia Reborn, co-authored by Chris and George Kerevan, was published by Luath Press, and in August 2018 Verso published a new, updated edition of A People's History of Scotland.
Michael Eaude, author of Catalonia: A Cultural History, welcomed Catalonia Reborn, writing:
Writing about the book in The National, Martin Hannan said of it:
"The book is a sustained indictment of the Spanish government’s dealings with Catalonia, made all the more devastating by the detailed factual nature of the work.
Reviewing it in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Ned Thomas, founder of the Mercator Institute for Media, Languages and Culture at Aberystwyth University, said that “Past and present are nicely linked through visits to sites of social memory in the Catalan capital… well-researched, well-structured and well-explained.”
The book was welcomed in the House of Commons, where Plaid Cymru MP Hywel Williams put down an Early Day Motion signed by 11 MPs from Plaid Cymru, the SNP and Labour, stating:
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