Workers Revolutionary Party

History

The Club (1948-1959)

In 1948, a minority faction led by Gerry Healy split from the Revolutionary Communist Party to form The Club, which then joined 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.

The Club joined with Labour left-wingers to organise The Socialist Fellowship as a vehicle for left-wing Labour Party members and launched the Socialist Outlook. In 1950, Ted Grant and his supporters were expelled from The Club, forming their own marxist tendency. Tony Cliff and his supporters were also expelled from the group during this time, due to Cliff's position of remaining neutral in the Korean War, forming the Socialist Review Group.

A split emerged within The Club in September 1953, relating to the Fourth International. While Healy was associated with the US SWP and the ICFI, John Lawrence supported the ISFI and controlled both Socialist Outlook and its print shop. Healy wrested control of both, and his supporters held a majority on the organisation's national committee.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) recognised The Club as its official British section. 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. 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.

Socialist Labour League (1959-1973)

In 1959, the Club became 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. In 1959, the 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".

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. 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. 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. As a result of the activities of the SLL activists in Norwood, the local Labour Party branch was re-organised later in the year. 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.

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).

Workers Revolutionary Party 1973-

In 1973, the SLL became a political party, renaming itself to the Workers Revolutionary Party.

A major split occurred when Alan Thornett was expelled, and went on to found the Workers Socialist League. In 1979, a smaller group split from the WRP to found the Workers Party.

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. 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. The jury found that not all words in the article were substantially true, but that the complainants' reputations had not been materially injured.

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. The eventual report exonerated Robins and claimed that Ramón Mercader was alive in Czechoslovakia. In 1979, the group purchased Trotsky's death mask to use as an iconic focus for events.

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. Close links continued, with party members regularly speaking at official events in Libya. In 1981, The Sunday Telegraph alleged that News Line was financed by money from Muammar al-Gaddafi's government, which the WRP denied.

On 20 March 1983, The Money Programme made similar claims and claimed that the WRP had received £1.5 million from the Gaddafi government. Sean Matgamna wrote in the Socialist Organiser newspaper that while the programming was "both shallow and under-researched", the WRP should be investigated by the labour movement to determine if the WRP was being funded by the Libyan government or others like Saddam Hussein.

Ideology and Organisation

The WRP is an Orthodox Trotskyist party, and the position of Gerry Healy was similar to Trotsky, as he also believed that the world was going through "impending economic collapse, the erosion of parliamentary democracy, a drive towards right-wing dictatorship, and imminent revolutionary struggles".

The party holds the position of being the definitive revolutionary party, and the SLL also held this position. This has led to non-cooperation with other Trotskyist groups, and believes that they have deviated from Trotskyism. The WRP denounced various groups including the SWP, the IMG, Militant tendency and Alan Thornett's group who were expelled from the WRP in 1974.

Fragmentation and Legacy

In 1986, the ICFI loyal to Healy expelled the WRP (Newsline) faction. 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.

In 1987, Healy, Corin Redgrave, and Vanessa Redgrave resigned to form the Marxist Party. 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. As of 2007, the WRP had assets of just over £4,000. It remains electorally active and stood seven candidates for the 2015 UK General Election, six in London and one in Sheffield, gaining a total of 488 votes. It supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum. In 2019, the WRP announced their intention to stand six candidates in the 2019 United Kingdom general election.

Election results

House of Commons

WRP endorsed Labour in constituencies they were not contesting in the 2019 and 2024 general elections.

List of Splinter Groups

Solidarity (1960).

Workers Socialist League (1974), later the International Socialist Group and currently Socialist Resistance.

Workers Party (1979), currently 'Economic and Philosophic Science Review Supporters'.

WRP (Workers Press) (1985), later the Movement for Socialism. Dissolved in 2000.

Workers' International League (1985), later 'Workers Action'. Dissolved in 2006.

International Communist Party (1986), currently the Socialist Equality Party.

Communist Forum (1986), split from WRP (Workers Press); later the 'Marxist Philosophy Forum'. Dissolved in 1988.

Marxist Party (1987). Dissolved in 2004.

International Socialist League (1988), split from WRP (Workers Press).

Revolutionary Internationalist League (1988), dissolved in 1995.

Communist League (1991), split from Marxist Party; later the 'Movement for a Socialist Future' and now "A World to Win".

Socialist Fight (2009)