Jeremy Corbyn ‘was regular writer for hard-Left newspaper’

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were regular writers for a hard-Left newspaper which celebrated the IRA’s deadly bombing of the Tory Party conference in Brighton.

Mr Corbyn remained a leading contributor to Socialist Organiser even after it said – only six days on from the 1984 attack that killed five people – ‘a very large number of people in Britain, though a minority, are sorry that the bomb did not kill Margaret Thatcher and wipe out her Cabinet.’

A week later, Mr Corbyn welcomed two former Irish republican prisoners as guests in the House of Commons, leading Labour Chief Whip Michael Cocks to scold him for ‘thoughtlessness of the highest order’. 

The Labour Party formally shunned Socialist Organiser in 1990. But within weeks, Mr Corbyn wrote a front-page article opposing the first Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s forces.

Sean Matgamna, the newspaper’s founder, told The Times that Mr Corbyn ‘had close links with the paper. He wrote for the first five or six years. He wrote frequently.’

Socialist Organiser’s mailing address was the office of the Hornsey Labour Party where Mr Corbyn was chairman.