Sam Bornstein was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Trotskyist historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and activist.

Bornstein was a member of the ILP Guild of Youth

ILP Guild of Youth

The ILP Guild of Youth was a British socialist youth organization, the youth wing of the Independent Labour Party. The ILP Guild of Youth was founded in 1924. A year after its founding, the ILP Guild of Youth had 171 branches. The launching of the ILP Guild of Youth provoked the Labour Party to...

, but eventually moved towards Trotskyist ideas and joined the Workers International League, helping to build their branch in Stepney.

With Al Richardson, published three books on the history of Trotskyism

Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...

 in Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 through their "Socialist Platform" publishing house. In 1988 they founded the journal Revolutionary History

Revolutionary History

Revolutionary History is a British journal dedicated to the history of the far left. It was founded in 1988 by Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson and has maintained an editorial board representing many strands of British Trotskyism. In its articles, it also covers other anti-Stalinist communist...

, dedicated to the history of the anti-Stalinist left

Anti-Stalinist left

The anti-Stalinist left is an element of left-wing politics that is critical of Joseph Stalin's policies and the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule...

.

Publications

• Two Steps Back: Communists and the Wider Labour Movement, 1939-1945 (with Al Richardson), Socialist Platform, London 1982.

• Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1924-1938 (with Al Richardson), Socialist Platform, London 1986.

• The War and the International: A History of the British Trotskyist Movement, 1937-1949 (with Al Richardson), Socialist Platform, London 1986.