The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name.
The WRP grew out of the faction Gerry Healy and John Lawrence led in the Revolutionary Communist Party which urged that the RCP pursue entryist tactics in the Labour Party. This policy was also urged on the RCP by the leadership of the Fourth International. When the majority in the RCP rejected the policy in 1947, Healy's faction was granted the right to split from the RCP and work within the Labour Party as a separate body known internally as The Club. A year later the majority faction of the RCP decided to join The Club in the Labour Party.
Healy called for a massive educational effort within the organisation, which angered the old leadership. Though he met with opposition, Healy valued having a well-educated cadre over a large number of mindless followers. Healy set to work purging the group of real and imagined opponents with the result that within months the organisation was a fraction of its former size, but Healy's leadership was unchallenged.
In 1948, The Club joined with Labour left-wingers and trade unionists to organise The Socialist Fellowship as a vehicle for left-wing Labour Party members. The Socialist Fellowship launched a paper called Socialist Outlook, with John Lawrence as the publication's editor. When the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) was founded as a public faction of the Fourth International in 1953, it recognised The Club as its official British section. However, Lawrence objected to this and as a result was replaced as editor of the paper. Healy took over editorial duties, but Socialist Outlook was proscribed by the Labour Party in 1954, while the Socialist Fellowship itself was proscribed by Labour in 1951.[2] After this, The Club distributed Tribune.
The Club was one of the ICFI's larger segments. After the American, Austrian, Chinese, Latin American and Swiss parties of the ICFI agreed to reunification with the FI in 1963 (forming the reunified Fourth International), The Club controlled the ICFI until its fragmentation in 1985.
The group gained recruits from among former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain.[2] One of their recruits from the CPGB was Peter Fryer, who had been the Daily Worker's correspondent in Budapest during the suppression of the uprising by Soviet troops, and who edited The Newsletter, a weekly which began publication in May 1958. This paper published some of Trotsky's then hard-to-find books. Among other recruits at this time were Cliff Slaughter and Brian Pearce. Coupled with pressure from a group around industrial activist Brian Behan led to the formation of the Socialist Labour League.
For the first time, the Socialist Labour League was openly Trotskyist, although most of its members remained active in the Labour Party. The foundation of the SLL was formally announced at the end of February 1959, Membership was "open to all who want to see the vigorous prosecution of the class struggle and the achievement of working class power".[2]
The group's Newsletter, and the SLL itself, were proscribed by the Labour Party in late March 1959, which meant that anyone associated with Healy's group became ineligible for membership of the Labour Party.[3]Morgan Phillips, then general secretary of the Labour Party, addressed the issue of SLL entryism. "The principal group is so well disciplined and financed that it is slowly emerging as a serious nuisance to the democratic Socialism which it outwardly accepts and covertly derides", he wrote in an April 1959 letter to the secretaries of Constituency Labour Parties and affiliated trade unions.[4] By August, 23 people associated with the SLL in the Norwood Constituency Labour Party and eight councilors in Leeds, among others, had been expelled by Labour.[2] As a result of the activities of the SLL activists in Norwood, the local Labour Party branch was re-organised later in the year.[5] Meanwhile, J.R. Campbell, by then the former editor of the Daily Worker, wrote in the Communist weekly World News in October 1959 that the SLL was an "anti-Soviet league" and "a disruptive, Trotskyist organisation", who were in favour of the overthrow of the Soviet government by an unaffiliated working class inside and outside the Soviet Union.[6]
Later history
During this period, the SLL did experience considerable internal tensions. Fryer left in 1959 and in 1960 a group of members split away to form Solidarity, which became a theoretically influential, industrially oriented organization strongly influenced by the ideas of Paul Cardan. Brian Behan also severed his involvement with the group after a confrontation with Gerry Healy.
The SLL remained active in the Labour Party's youth organization, the Young Socialists, and gained control of it until the YS was wound up in 1964. The SLL used the YS as their own youth section. It was run through the "centre" in Clapham, the SLL's HQ, in a doctrinaire and almost militaristic fashion. The Annual Conferences of the YS were stage managed by the Healyites. The Labour Party renamed the youth section the "Labour Party Young Socialists" (LPYS).
The SLL leadership claimed in 1963 that they had identified a revolutionary situation in Britain. In their view this meant the most important activity was building the party. They started a daily paper, Workers Press, in the early 1970s and increased the turnover of membership, and began to fear police infiltration. Internal and external dissidents were dealt with harshly. One incident saw Ernie Tate, a Canadian Trotskyist, attacked in public while distributing anti-Healy leaflets. The advocacy of an increasing state of crisis would become a prominent part of their public profile.
In order to "kill the bill" which became the Industrial Relations Act 1971, the SLL called for a general strike to force the government of Edward Heath to call a general election. While a SLL-organised meeting at the Alexandra Palace, London in February 1971 had an attendance of 4,000, the SLL and the other Trotskyist groups had a very limited industrial presence incapable of organising such a level of protest, according to a contemporary report by Paul Routledge in The Times.[7]
Workers Revolutionary Party
The WRP formed the All-Trade Unions Alliance, which it wholly controlled. Among its policies was the immediate replacement of the police by a workers militia.[8] The party slowly lost members from the mid-1970s as demands on members to serve the organisation took their toll, although by now Corin and Vanessa Redgrave had joined.[9][10]
In 1975, Corin Redgrave bought the White Meadows Villa in Parwich, Derbyshire, and the WRP used the house as a venue for training, under the name 'Red House', run by television director Roy Battersby.[12]The Observer printed a report alleging that actress Irene Gorst was interrogated while at the school and prevented from leaving. The group sued Observer editor David Astor over the report, in a case marked by discussion of an armed police raid of the building in which bullets were found.[13] The jury found that not all words in the article were substantially true, but that the complainants' reputations had not been materially injured.[14]
In 1976, the WRP launched an inquiry into the details of Trotsky's death, following claims from Joseph Hansen that Harold Robins, a founding member of the American Socialist Workers Party might have been a Soviet agent.[15] The eventual report exonerated Robins and claimed that Ramón Mercader was alive in Czechoslovakia.[16] In 1979, the group purchased Trotsky's death mask to use as an iconic focus for events.[17]
The WRP met with Libyan officials in 1977 and issued a joint statement, opposing Zionism, U.S. imperialism and Anwar Sadat. There were immediate suggestions that this statement might be linked to Libyan funding for the party's newspaper, News Line.[18] Close links continued, with party members regularly speaking at official events in Libya.[19] In 1981, The Sunday Telegraph alleged that News Line was financed by money from Muammar al-Gaddafi's government.[20] In 1983, The Money Programme made similar claims, which were repeated by the Socialist Organiser newspaper. While the WRP initially chose to sue, it quickly abandoned the case.[21] When, a little later, the WRP disintegrated, an investigation was carried out by the leadership of the ICFI, with the support of Mike Banda and Cliff Slaughter, leading figures in the WRP. The report concluded that the WRP had collected information for Libyan Intelligence. As printed by Solidarity, the report claimed £1,075,163 had been received by the group from Libya and several Middle Eastern governments, between 1977 and 1983.[22] While only a small proportion of this is alleged to have come from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government, it draws particular attention to photographs which it claims WRP members were instructed to take of demonstrations of opponents of Saddam Hussein, and it states that those photos were later handed to the Iraqi embassy.[citation needed] Dave Bruce, who oversaw the printing press, claims that income from Libya mostly covered the cost of raw materials for printing work for them, including copies of The Green Book, and that the party could otherwise cover its own costs.[23]
The group also set up youth training centers in various deprived communities across Britain.[24]Liberal Party MP David Alton claimed in Parliament that youths were being taught anti-police methods at the centres,[25] and when he repeated the allegations outside Parliament was sued by the WRP.[26]
Gerry Healy expelled
In late October 1985, the Workers Revolutionary Party expelled Gerry Healy.[27] Other expulsions, including those of Vanessa and Corin Redgrave, soon followed.[28] Initially, Healy was accused of "non-communist relations".[29] Shortly afterwards, a Newsline front page open letter by Aileen Jennings, Healy's former secretary, asserted that the real reason for the expulsion was that Healy had sexually assaulted at least 26 female members.[30][31] Some of these allegations were confirmed by an internal party investigation. This was conducted by two long-standing members of the WRP, one of whom later published the control commission report in his memoirs.[32]
There was a counter-claim that the expulsion had been motivated by a failed political coup attempted by party general secretary Michael Banda. "This is part of a political frame-up by Mr Banda who wants to dissolve the WRP because he has moved to the right", asserted Vanessa Redgrave, who also said at this time that Healy's accusers were "liars".[33][34] Banda was the leader of the majority on the party council, and was accused by Healy and Vanessa Redgrave of "unprincipled and unsupportable" deviation from the Trotskyist road to Socialism.[35]
Healy and his followers continued to claim to be the WRP, and for a time two versions of the group were in existence, each publishing its own daily News Line paper. The split in the WRP also had repercussions in the ICFI and as a result there were also two versions of that organisation.[citation needed]
The two versions of the WRP soon became known by their newspapers, with the group led by Gerry Healy and Sheila Torrance being known as the WRP (Newsline). The group led by Cliff Slaughter expelled Banda, and became known as the WRP (Workers Press). Both groups fragmented further over the following years.
The first split in Healy's WRP (Newsline) came when a section of the London membership around full-timer Richard Price revolted and were expelled in due course. They formed the Workers International League in 1987, which later evolved into Workers Action and away from the Healyism it defended when first founded. [citation needed]
Another split in the pro-Healy ICFI and WRP developed when the American section of the ICFI led by Workers League National Secretary David North revolted against Healy's leadership and split to form its own rival movement also called the ICFI.[citation needed] Some members of the WRP sympathetic to North, led by David Hyland, left the WRP in 1986 to form the International Communist Party, based in Sheffield. This grouping has since been renamed the Socialist Equality Party.
In 1986, the ICFI loyal to Healy expelled the WRP (Newsline). Healy was removed from the group's Central Committee and became an advisor. When the organisation printed an article reviewing Healy's contribution to Trotskyism, he concluded that his forced retirement was being finalised. With Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, he formed a minority tendency which called for a more pro-Soviet alignment, and split away in 1987 to form the Marxist Party.[36] The Marxist Party in turn experienced another small split after Healy's death which formed the Communist League. The Marxist Party continued until 2004 before dissolving itself with Vanessa and Corin Redgrave forming the Peace and Progress Party.
Torrance's WRP is the only surviving Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK and still produces The News Line as a daily paper, and it is also included in a website. The party has been registered with the Electoral Commission since 15 May 2001, with Frank Sweeney as registered leader.[37] As of 2007, the WRP had assets of just over £4,000.[38] It remains electorally active and stood seven candidates for the 2015 UK General Election, six in London and one in Sheffield,[39] gaining a total of 488 votes.[40] It supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum.[41] In 2019, the WRP announced their intention to stand six candidates in the 2019 United Kingdom general election.[42]
The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
The Workers Socialist League (WSL) was a Trotskyist group in Britain. The group was formed by Alan Thornett and other members of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) after their expulsion from that group in 1974.
James "Jock" Ritchie Haston (1913–1986) was a Trotskyist politician and General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party in Great Britain.
Bill Hunter was a Trotskyist activist in Britain and a leader of the International Socialist League.
John Gordon Michael Lawrence was a leading far-left activist in a wide variety of groups in Britain.
The Workers League was a Trotskyist political party in Ireland.
The Socialist Labour Group was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1979 and 1989.
Betty Hamilton (1904–1994) was a British Trotskyist.
David North is an American Marxist, who has been active in the international Trotskyist movement since 1971. He is currently the National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States (SEP), formerly the Workers League. He served as the National Secretary of the SEP until the party's congress in 2008.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.
Thomas Gerard Healy was an Irish-born British political activist, a co-founder of the International Committee of the Fourth International and the leader of the Socialist Labour League and later the Workers Revolutionary Party.
The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat (ISFI) and the International Committee (ICFI), reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
The French Turn was the name given to the entry between 1934 and 1936 of the French Trotskyists into the French Section of the Workers' International. The French Turn was repeated by Trotskyists in other countries during the 1930s.
The Marxist Party was a tiny Trotskyist political party in the United Kingdom. It was formed as a split from Sheila Torrance's Workers' Revolutionary Party in 1987 by Gerry Healy and supporters including Vanessa and Corin Redgrave. At first, it was also known as the Workers Revolutionary Party, but it renamed itself later in the year. The party also maintained its own version of the International Committee of the Fourth International, although this was moribund by the late 1990s.
The Revolutionary Communist Party was a British Trotskyist group, formed in 1944 and active until 1949, which published the newspaper Socialist Appeal and a theoretical journal, Workers International News. The party was the ancestor of the three main currents of British Trotskyism: Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party, Ted Grant's Militant and Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers Party.
Edward Grant was a South African Trotskyist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. He was a founding member of the group Militant and later Socialist Appeal.
Pierre Lambert was a French Trotskyist leader, who for many years acted as the central leader of the French Courant Communiste Internationaliste (CCI) which founded the Parti des Travailleurs.
Orthodox Trotskyism is a branch of Trotskyism which aims to adhere more closely to the philosophy, methods and positions of Leon Trotsky and the early Fourth International, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx than other avowed Trotskyists.
Michael Banda, born Michael Alexander Van Der Poorten, was a Sri Lankan communist activist best known as the General Secretary of the British Workers Revolutionary Party.
Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.
↑ Paul Keel, "The vicarious road to revolution", The Guardian, 11 February 1980
↑ Billington, Michael. "Corin Redgrave obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 January 2022. In 1971 he joined the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP).
↑ Anthony, Andrew (21 February 2010). "Vanessa Redgrave: A performer of passion, conviction and tragedy". The Observer. Retrieved 1 January 2022. She has said that she took to heavy drinking in 1972 'when Ted Heath imposed statutory wage controls'. Not even the most neurotic of her profession would try that story at the Betty Ford clinic. ...But Redgrave didn't check into a clinic. Instead, she joined the Workers Revolutionary party.
↑ Alan Smith, "Revolutionaries are breaking into a trot", The Guardian, 3 March 1975
↑ Colin Smith and Robert Chesshyre, "Vanessa and the Red House Mystery", The Observer, 28 September 1975
↑ "Secret report on Redgrave party revealed", The Guardian, 31 October 1978
↑ "Observer stresses its victory over Vanessa", The Guardian, 13 November 1978
↑ Martin Walker, "The revolutionaries devour their own", The Guardian, 17 August 1976
↑ David Pallister, "Trotsky's death ripples down the years", The Guardian, 7 March 1977
*Co-operative Party candidates stand jointly with the Labour Party. †Sinn Féin have elected members and offices at Westminster, but as abstentionists do not take their seats.
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