Telling the story of the infamous Comrade Delta scandal that has become synonymous with the Socialist Workers Party, this book details the story of the year-long struggle for women’s rights and democracy on the British left.

Comrade Delta recalls the sequence of events in 2013, when hundreds of members of the Socialist Workers Party learnt for the first time that their party had mishandled an allegation of rape. The accused was one of the party’s leaders, and those handling the investigations – the leader’s friends – humiliated the complainant, asking demeaning and sexist questions before clearing him of all wrongdoing. When members protested the decision, supporters of the party leadership sought to drive the dissidents out of the party. For 12 months, the conflict wore on without resolution as more and more information became known to the members and the public.

Based on documents held by fellow activists and interviews with more than 50 participants, including each of the main complainants, this book analyses the structures and personalities that made these failures possible – from shielding perpetrators to harassing victims and accusing critics of abandoning Marxism.

David Renton is a barrister and historian who writes for publications including The London Review of Books, Tribune, and Jacobin. He posts regularly on the themes of this book on Substack (davidrenton590934.substack.com).

“An honest, balanced, and well-documented account of an appalling episode. If the left is to progress, it must learn from its own history.”

Ian Birchall, author of Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time (Bookmarks, 2011)

“Why must left anti-capitalists be extreme democrats? What could a durably open, dynamic and non-hierarchical far-left organisation look like? How exactly does sexual violence reproduce itself institutionally, destroy solidarity, undermine freedom struggles, and relate to Marxist theory? Part autoethnography, part revolutionary feminist cri de cœur, David Renton's Comrade Delta is an impeccably researched, generous, principled reckoning with the causes and consequences of a catastrophic betrayal of sexual violence survivors perpetrated by the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in the period 2010-2013. I cannot recommend it enough.”

Sophie Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso, 2019)

July 2026
Ebb Books
252 Pages, 5×8

Paperback ISBN: 9781738468768
Ebook ISBN: 9781738468775