HUNDREDS of trade unionists have celebrated the return of Labour left magazine Tribune.

At a Unite fringe event at Labour’s conference in Liverpool last night, 200 people listened as contributors to the magazine discussed the need for more voices in socialist politics in the British media.

Labour MP Jon Trickett, who chairs Tribune’s advisory board, said that the magazine is “expertly placed to make decisive intellectual interventions into our movement.

“When Tribune was originally founded, it was launched in a world engulfed by capitalist crisis, as we are today.

“There was an urgent need for the publication then, and there still is now.”

Faiza Shaheen, Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Iain Duncan Smith’s seat of Chingford and Woodford Green, discussed Tribune’s potential role in communicating complex ideas to the public.

“I feel there is a new desire out there for ideas about how to build a better society in this country,” she said.

“The first issue of Tribune has already shown that it is more than capable of providing this space for debate.”

Unite assistant chief-of-staff Adrian Weir, who sits on Tribune’s advisory board, discussed Unite’s history of backing socialist politics in the media and expressed his optimism that Tribune can join the Morning Star in advancing left-wing discourse.

The magazine was founded in 1937 by socialist Labour MPs to promote anti-fascist unity in the labour movement, and was closely associated with Nye Bevan and Michael Foot.

Though it gained prominence in the 1960s and ‘70s through its parliamentary grouping, it declined throughout subsequent decades and had ceased to print by January 2018.

However, the publication was bought by US publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, who is the editor of the socialist magazine Jacobin.