Since the end of the First World War, when the international labour movement split into a social democratic and a communist part, socialist groups have existed refusing to join one of the two big wings. These politically ‘homeless’ may, somewhat schematically, be divided into those who described themselves as the saviours of the Bolshevik heritage and therefore considered themselves to be the true communists (Trotskyists, Maoists, etc.),1 and those who neither wanted to follow the Bolshevik example nor to imitate the social democratic parliamentary strategy. This second, variegated current comprises the ‘left socialists’. During the interwar years a part of these left socialists founded their own international partnership which became known as the London Bureau. It perished with the Second World War.2