Historical
114-802: Historical Historical Thomas Gerard Healy (3 December 1913 – 14 December 1989) 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 . Born in Ballybane, Galway , Ireland, to Michael Healy, a farmer, and Margaret Mary Rabbitte, Gerry Healy emigrated to Britain and worked as
228-580: 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
342-546: 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. In 1983, The Money Programme made similar claims, which were repeated by
456-609: A level of protest, according to a contemporary report by Paul Routledge in The Times . 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. 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. A major split occurred when Alan Thornett
570-641: A more pro-Soviet alignment, and split away in 1987 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 . The WRP (Workers Press) suffered a series of further splits – including
684-419: A pamphlet critical of him outside an SLL public meeting. Allegedly, Healy was present and "essentially supervised" the assault. The incident became a cause célèbre within the world Trotskyist movement. Healy's Socialist Labour League filed lawsuits against Peace News and Socialist Leader for repeating the allegations, threatening them with bankruptcy, prompting the two publications to issue retractions and
798-624: A permanent dissolution into the Communist Party in every country. After the ICFI withdrew from the FI in 1953, many sections of the ISFI entered communist parties. However, it later became clear that the sections of the ISFI did not dissolve, or enter permanently. Nevertheless, the ISFI's political trajectory led its sections to mistakes as well as, in one case, participation in bourgeois governments when
912-595: A political reunion. Ever greater agreement with regard to the Algerian War of Independence , and the Cuban Revolution of 1959 also brought the SWP and the ISFI closer together. Meanwhile, inside the ISFI, Pablo had lost much of his political influence, removing yet another barrier to reunification. In 1962, the ICFI and ISFI formed a Parity Committee to organise a World Congress of the two factions. ISFI and
1026-691: 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
1140-492: A public apology to Gerry Healy “for having published the suggestion that he employs violence or seeks to curtail freedom of expression” on 9 and 10 December 1966 respectively. The incident resulted in Isaac Deutscher , who had previously been a contributor to Healy's publications, summoning both Healy and Tate to his home where he "upbraided" Healy for his alleged thuggery and broke off relations with him. The SLL became
1254-692: A ship radio operator at the age of 14. He soon joined the Communist Party of Great Britain , but then left to join the Trotskyist Militant Group in 1937. He then left to become one of the founders of the Workers International League , led by Ted Grant , Jock Haston and Ralph Lee. Healy's period in the WIL was difficult and he threatened to resign several times and was actually expelled and readmitted. He
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#17328015127451368-501: 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. In 1950, Ted Grant and his supporters were expelled from The Club, eventually forming the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1956, holding its first congress the following year. When the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
1482-797: A very small foothold in French politics. Some members of the SLL continued to support the OCI, later the PCI as it became known and set up the Socialist Labour Group in Britain, affiliated with the OCRFI and defending their positions. It was joined shortly afterward by the above-mentioned League for a Workers Republic in Ireland, further depleting the ICFI ranks. Delegates from eight countries attended
1596-598: 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
1710-606: Is often mistaken attributed to Pablo or to his formulation of what was called the war-revolution thesis. The ICFI saw this as an abandonment of the principles that Trotsky fought for since the rise of Hitler and the consequent establishment of the Fourth International . The founders of the ICFI wanted the International to maintain its organizational independence as the world party of the working-class, asserting that Pablo's policies would leave them an adjunct of
1824-551: 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". 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. Healy and his followers continued to claim to be
1938-414: Is scurrilous for Livingstone to insinuate a link between the WRP majority and the security service. If he believed what he claims he would submit the issue to the verdict of a labour movement jury as has been the practice of revolutionaries since the 19th century. Until he does, he should be treated as a witch-hunter. Geoff Barr wrote in 1994: The trouble is that the evidence of sexual exploitation by Healy
2052-503: Is too strong. Those who play a role in socialist politics must not abuse their positions of power. Livingstone says that MI5 destroyed the old WRP because its close alliance with the Labour left during the miners strike of 1984–5 was a threat to the establishment. Those who were active then will tell a different story. Healy kept his movement out of the support committees which backed the NUM. His
2166-485: The Socialist Organiser newspaper. While the WRP initially chose to sue, it quickly abandoned the case. 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 ,
2280-463: 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
2394-457: The Labour Party in Britain resembled entrism sui generis. However, Pablo aimed for the FI to implement entryism more deeply than the leaders of the ICFI felt wise: They were also concerned by Pablo preparedness to enforce entrism, if necessary by splitting sections or appointing new leadership teams. The Open Letter went on to explain that, in the SWP's view, what it described as Pabloite Revisionism
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#17328015127452508-600: The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) entered the government of Ceylon and was expelled from the International. The ICFI sees similar pressures at work now: describing as "Pabloites" those former Trotskysists who today are enforcing IMF dictates in Brazil as members of the Lula government. Some sections of the ICFI have practiced temporary entryist policies, but continually emphasized to their membership that this
2622-639: The Marxist Party had very few members, but did retain the allegiance of Vanessa and Corin Redgrave . One faction within the WRP supported the perspective advanced by the ICFI and Workers League National Secretary David North . They formed the WRP (Internationalist), later renamed the International Communist Party and, in 1996, the Socialist Equality Party . Ken Livingstone, the Labour Party left-winger who later became Mayor of London, said he believed in 1994 that
2736-399: 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
2850-633: 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. Another split in
2964-530: The Workers' Revolutionary Party in 1973. In 1974, some 200 members around Alan Thornett , then a leading militant in the automobile industry at Cowley, were expelled from the party. Part of this group would form the Workers Socialist League . From this point, the WRP lost members and became ever more isolated from the rest of the labour movement. Healy was known to have punched members of
3078-633: The 'Security' Campaign. In 1977 and 1978 Gelfand asked questions concerning the Workers League's charges inside the SWP. In March 1978, Gelfand was warned by the local executive committee against publicly questioning the leadership of the SWP. Rather than attempt to answer Gelfand's concerns, the political committee considered the raising of these questions as a slander against Hansen, and warned Gelfand in April 1978 that he would be disciplined if he continued to seek answers. In December 1978, Gelfand took
3192-422: The 1966 conferences "remained dead letters". It argued: "The SLL has had its own international activity, so has the OCI. Germany and Eastern Europe have remained the 'private hunting-grounds' of the OCI...". By the late 1960s all far left tendencies were growing and the ICFI was no exception. Increased membership, cheaper airflights and phone contact also allowed contacts to become more regular overseas. In this way
3306-770: The British section of an ICFI, with other sections in Russia/Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Greece. The Russian section is called the Workers Revolutionary League which is the Soviet section of the ICFI and has members in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. (Source 'Marxist Review' September 2008 Volume 23 Issue Number 8) Anticipating an outbreak of US militarism after the collapse of the USSR, the ICFI associated with
3420-519: The CIA's computer division, and it criticized the fact that neither Fields nor Wohlforth had revealed that to the League. Fields and Wohlforth had denied that Fields had connections with state agencies. In August 1974, the League's central committee suspended Fields from membership and removed Wohlforth as national secretary pending a commission of inquiry, in a unanimous vote that included Wohlforth's. Both left
3534-664: 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
Gerry Healy - Misplaced Pages Continue
3648-660: The Chinese RCP, Lutte Ouvrière , the Revolutionary Workers Party in Sri Lanka and the SWP united to brand it "a Shameless Frame-up". After the Workers' Revolutionary Party left the ICFI in 1985, WRP secretary Cliff Slaughter also repudiated the investigation. Both sides claimed that the other had no factual detail to support its charges: The ICFI argues that the defense of the SWP leadership, and
3762-796: The Fourth International led at that time by Michel Pablo (Raptis) and Ernest Mandel (Germain). The Committee was co-ordinated by the American section, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and included the British section led by Gerry Healy and Pierre Lambert's Internationalist Communist Party (PCI) in France. Trotskyist groups in various other countries, notably in Switzerland, China, Canada and Nahuel Moreno 's group in Argentina, also joined. The grouping's founding statement
3876-407: The Fourth International or to muzzle and handcuff them." "Their scheme has been to inject their Stalinist conciliationism piecemeal and likewise in piecemeal fashion, get rid of those who come to see what is happening and raise objections." Linked below is a history of the founding of the ICFI and the "Open Letter". In the eyes of the ICFI, Pabloite entryism sui generis meant liquidationism or
3990-681: The French Section of the FI. The Club recruited a substantial number of former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain after they became disillusioned with Stalinism after the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956 which brought Khrushchev 's revelations about Stalin and, later that year, the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution . This qualitatively changed
4104-583: The Gelfand case only released the grand jury testimony after the case had been closed. The ICFI's investigation into the SWP and defense of Alan Gelfand was opposed by almost all Trotskyist groups: no current outside the ICFI supported it. Most Trotskyist organisations joined forces to defend the SWP leadership, including the United Secretariat of the Fourth International , Pierre Lambert 's OCI, Nahuel Moreno 's PST, Robertson's Spartacist League ,
4218-472: The ICFI group in the United States, Workers' League , developed political differences with the majority: Tim Wohlforth and Nancy Fields, his partner. A number of political and organisational disputes unfolded, which the ICFI described as a series of disruptions and expulsions animated by Fields. It was brought to the attention of the Workers' League's Central Committee that Fields' uncle had worked for
4332-643: The ICFI was able to grow in Sri Lanka. New sections appeared in Germany, in 1971, and Ireland. The OCI and its supporters around the ICFI left the ICFI in 1971. This reflected growing differences, primarily over the OCI's support for the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR) and the SLL's emphasis on Marxist philosophy in the training of its newer members. Both the SLL and OCI were at this point developing connection to Trotskyists in other countries, but in different ways. The contest between
4446-825: The International Socialist League and supporters of the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International – and ended as a tiny organisation known as the Movement for Socialism . 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,
4560-574: The Iraqi embassy. 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. The group also set up youth training centers in various deprived communities across Britain. Liberal Party MP David Alton claimed in Parliament that youths were being taught anti-police methods at
4674-418: The LSSP was the notable absence from the ISFI's 1961 World Congress. In 1964, the LSSP joined the bourgeois government of Sri Lanka, which the ICFI and USFI condemned as betraying Trotskyist principles. The ICFI and USFI no longer considered the LSSP a Trotskyist party at that point, and encouraged Sri Lankan Trotskyists to leave that party. Some time later a new organization, the Revolutionary Communist League
Gerry Healy - Misplaced Pages Continue
4788-406: The Labour Left such as the Labour Herald for Ted Knight , a former member of the SLL, and Ken Livingstone , with whom Healy forged a friendship. The Herald also served as a vehicle for the WRP's limited entryist operation in this period. Healy's regime within The Club, SLL and WRP was marked by demands for a high level of activism. An exception to this requirement was made for participants in
4902-480: The Latin American sections of the ICFI also left the ICFI to join the USFI, allowing the SWP and its allies to claim that a majority of the sections of the ICFI had joined the USFI. In the eyes of the ICFI, the Latin American sections had adopted Pabloism and were dependent on their connections to the SWP. Within the SWP, some members who had studied the meaning of the 1953 split opposed the reunification. These were gathered around Tim Wohlforth and James Robertson in
5016-404: The League and eventually joined the SWP for a few years. An investigation conducted by the Workers' League concluded that Fields did not have connections to the CIA and the two were requested to resume their membership. However, they refused. Wohlforth wrote an extended attack on the International Committee in Intercontinental Press . Intercontinental Press began a campaign denouncing the ICFI for
5130-444: The Libyan and Iraqi governments had risen within the party to the point at which it imploded, the final straw being assertions from Aileen Jennings. Jennings, Healy's former secretary and "close personal companion" over 19 years, revealed Healy's sexual abuse of female members of the WRP. On the front page of Newsline , which re-appeared after 12 days absence because of the internal dispute, she wrote in an open letter that flats owned by
5244-438: The Pabloites had sought to attract during the mass exodus of people from the Stalinist Parties after the revelations of Stalin's atrocities in the 1950s. They called this "opportunism" because it represented what they saw as a revision of Marxism for the sake of attracting new members from the radicalizing middle class. Within the SWP, as well as within the rest of the ICFI, an opposition to the reunification came together. Some of
5358-399: The Revolutionary Tendency. They echoed the SWPs Open Letter, arguing that the leaders' turn to Pabloism coincided with the introduction of Stalinist ideas, followed by an expulsion of those members who exposed the leadership's lack of principles. The SWP had supported the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro . However, Robertson's followers embarrassed Wohlforth and the SLL by suggesting that
5472-415: The SEP prepared for a new radicalization of the working class. For this reason, its sections reorganised into Socialist Equality Parties throughout the world. After a year of internal discussion, in 1998 the ICFI launched the World Socialist Web Site . There are also groups working to build SEPs in other countries: Workers%27 Revolutionary Party (UK) The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP)
5586-437: The SLL argued that the programme of the IC had to be the basis for further revolutionary organisation. The PCI's differences were reflected in its openness to the Algerian MNA and the Bolivian POR. Early in 1967 the PCI changed its name to Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI), a move that also suggested the OCI's greater modesty. By May 1967, the OCI argued that the IC was not functioning well, and that key decisions of
5700-500: 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
5814-414: The SWP could not be saved. With Wohlforth laying the evidentiary basis for claims of "party disloyalty" the RT leaders were expelled from the party, forming Spartacist. Wohlforth now led a Reorganized Minority Tendency until the tiny group of 9 people was also expelled from the SWP early in the fall of 1964. Wohlforth and his associates went on to found the American Committee for the Fourth International ,
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#17328015127455928-436: The SWP officially only acted as observers at the event, being prevented from affiliating to the ICFI by US law . As early as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution , the leadership of the American SWP was beginning to show signs of convergence with the developing political line of the organisations grouped in the ISFI . The disappearance of the Socialist Union of America , the American affiliate of the ISFI, removed one such barrier to
6042-467: The Spartacist tendency after the failure of Robertson to attend a conference session. Robertson said this was due to exhaustion; the IC argued that Roberton's alleged refusal to apologise reflected a rejection of communist methods, and he was asked to leave. The Spartacists would go on to form the International Spartacist Tendency . The ICFI now claims that the Sparticists were never interested in an agreement, and desired to go off in their own direction. If
6156-430: The Sparticists did not desire to break off into their own organization, the ICFI now argues, a misunderstanding at the conference could have been solved. The ICFI also says the Sparticists are nationalist in their orientation, refusing to be controlled by an international organization, as well as supporting politically affirmative action, black nationalism , Stalinist regimes and denying the existence of globalization. In
6270-631: The Stalinists. His faction's heavy-handed tactics of removing members who disagreed with his radical revisions made compromise appear impossible. An excerpt from the concluding part of the "Open Letter" reads: "To sum up: The lines of cleavage between Pablo’s revisionism and orthodox Trotskyism are so deep that no compromise is possible either politically or organizationally. The Pablo faction has demonstrated that it will not permit democratic decisions truly reflecting majority opinion to be reached. They demand complete submission to their criminal policy. They are determined to drive all orthodox Trotskyists out of
6384-410: The Trotskyist program and definite steps taken towards its organisational liquidation. As an example, the letter explained that Pablo expelled a majority of the French section of the International, because they disagreed with the International's policy of working within the Stalinist Communist Party of France . This policy was described as one of entrism sui generis, entryism of a special kind, in which
6498-435: The Trotskyists were to join the Stalinist or Socialist mass parties with a long term perspective of working within them. Some critics of the Open Letter counter that the SWP and their co-thinkers in The Club had failed to defend the French majority against Pablo, and that they had shared the 1951 perspectives of International on war-revolutions and the need for deep entryism in the Communist Parties. The Club's entryism into
6612-454: The US Government to court: his brief summarised the Workers League's charges and demanded that the US government name its informers in the SWP. The SWP expelled him the following month, leading Gelfand to take both the US Government and the SWP to court, arguing that since those expelling him were, in his opinion, agents of the US government, his civil liberties were being infringed upon by the US Government. The ICFI came to Gelfand's aid and, in
6726-464: The US alleged to have participated in the assassination of Trotsky, and claimed that this was done without the knowledge of the Trotskyist movement. FBI documents describing these meetings were published by the Workers League. Hansen claimed that this contact had been agreed by the SWP's leadership. Felix Morrow , who had been an SWP leader in 1940, said in 1975 that he thought that the SWP would not have authorised Hansen's meetings. The ICFI concluded that
6840-421: The US and Soviet states to be groundless. By the end of the 1970s, the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s had subsided. Membership of the ICFI fell, and the WRP leadership was not prepared. It entered into alliances with nationalist leaders in the under-developed countries. This aroused the consternation of some members throughout the ICFI. The WRP had gained members and prominence in Great Britain, but
6954-474: The US government's Cointelpro program, in which the FBI illegally infiltrated many groups and political parties and conducted provocations against opponents of the war in Vietnam. From 1961 to 1976, fifty-five FBI informants held SWP offices or committee positions and fifty-one served on executive committees of the party. In May 1975, the sixth congress of the ICFI initiated a "Security and the Fourth International" investigation into "the circumstances surrounding
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#17328015127457068-414: The US sent delegates: that of Tim Wohlforth and that of James Robertson . Observers came from a group in French-speaking Africa, a small group in Germany later to form the Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter, and individuals who had left USFI sections in Ceylon and Denmark. Non-voting observers came from Voix Ouvrière and a state capitalist tendency in Japan. One result of this Congress was the expulsion of
7182-421: The WRP because he has moved to the right". As a result of these developments, the WRP collapsed into eight or nine competing groups. One fragment produced a version of their daily paper headlined "Healy Expelled", while Healy's WRP produced a totally different version. Healy's WRP continued until what he saw as unconstitutional manoeuvres by the Torrance leadership led him to form another new group. Formed in 1987,
7296-433: 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 . WRP endorsed Labour in constituencies they were not contesting in
7410-459: The WRP's formal principles and programme for Middle East oil money and who has done more than anyone to degrade the reputation of Marxism and Trotskyism in Britain. Healy was depicted as "Frank Hood of the Hoodlums" in Tariq Ali 's satire, Redemption (1990). The character John Tagg, played by Laurence Olivier in Trevor Griffiths ' 1973 play at the National Theatre, The Party , was also based on Healy. He married Ellen Knight in December 1941:
7524-589: The WRP's internal regime which did not allow members to challenge his ideas or policies. While enjoying a financially comfortable life himself, he allowed some of his most committed activists to live in poverty. John Lister, expelled from the WRP in 1974, concluded: Healy was a crook and a political charlatan, who preserved his position as General Secretary of the WRP by resorting to the most bureaucratic and anti-democratic measures, who stubbornly opposed any campaigning for women's liberation or gay rights, who habitually subjected women "comrades" to sexual abuse, who sold out
7638-468: 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. 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
7752-401: The Wohlforth incident, with its editor Joseph Hansen writing that the concern over security indicated "paranoia" on the part of the IC's central leader, Gerry Healy. The ICFI thought this reaction was surprising, given the role that state infiltration had played in the Trotskyist movement, including in the assassination of Trotsky. In addition, this came only a few years after the revelations of
7866-402: The ability of Healy's group to carry out activity and they launched The Newsletter as a regular weekly paper in 1958. The creation of the Socialist Labour League was formally announced in February 1959, and proscribed by the Labour Party in late March that year, along with The Newsletter , rendering anyone associated with Healy's group ineligible for membership of the Labour Party. Later in
7980-468: The assassination of Leon Trotsky". By mid-1977, the Security campaign used publicly available government documents, and court testimony by Soviet agents tried in the United States, to allege that some leading figures of the American SWP, including a figure close to Leon Trotsky, were agents of the US or USSR governments. They noted that Joseph Hansen had met FBI agents numerous times over a number of months in 1940 to give them information about Stalinists in
8094-442: The basic Leninist principle of inner-party democracy. In 1963 the SWP and the smaller Swiss, Canadian, Chinese and Latin American sections of the ICFI agreed to reunite with the ISFI at the World Congress, to form the United Secretariat of the Fourth International . This was immediately opposed by the Revolutionary Tendency of the SWP, and by the SLL in Britain and the PCI in France, as well as many orthodox Trotskyists throughout
8208-508: The centres, and when he repeated the allegations outside Parliament was sued by the WRP. In late October 1985, the Workers Revolutionary Party expelled Gerry Healy. Other expulsions, including those of Vanessa and Corin Redgrave, soon followed. Initially, Healy was accused of "non-communist relations". Shortly afterwards, a Newsline front page open letter by Aileen Jennings, Healy's former secretary, asserted that
8322-422: The charge that the ICFI's campaign was a 'frame up,' are slanders against Workers' League without factual backing. Those who supported the SWP against the ICFI argued that it was a breach of socialist principals to bring the courts into the labour movement, (although the ICFI did not bring the courts in, a supporter of the ICFI who was in the SWP did) and that the ICFI's charge that the SWP was controlled by agents of
8436-575: The continuations of the ICFI; 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. The International Committee originated as a public faction of the Fourth International . It was formed in 1953 by a number of national sections of the FI that disagreed with the course of the International Secretariat of
8550-551: The couple had a daughter, Mary, and a son, Alan. He had affairs with Swiss-British Trotskyist Betty Hamilton and with his political secretary Aileen Jennings. International Committee of the Fourth International Historical The International Committee of the Fourth International ( ICFI ) is a public faction of the Fourth International founded in 1953. Today, two Trotskyist internationals claim to be
8664-657: The course of the trial, made many claims about US government infiltration into the SWP as part of CoIntelPro and earlier. The ICFI also wanted to investigate infiltration by the USSR, considering the resources that the Stalinists had devoted to infiltrating and physically destroying the Fourth International culminating in the murders of Erwin Wolfe in Spain, Lev Sedov in France, and Leon Trotsky in Mexico. It had been known that
8778-481: The cultural fronts the SLL set up to attract actors and writers, at least until they became full party members. This attracted prominent figures including Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour , although they "were resented by many members of the WRP who felt they had parachuted into leading positions because of their fame and money." In late October 1985, Healy was expelled from the WRP. By then, concern as to Healy's financial, political and intelligence links with
8892-586: 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
9006-473: The documents, along with FBI documents suggesting that Hansen had met with a recruiter for the Stalinist GPU two years before Trotsky's assassination, and his refusal to answer questions put, showed that Hansen was a government agent. The investigation intensified in 1978 after the decision by the SWP leadership to warn Alan Gelfand, a lawyer who had joined the SWP late in 1975, just after the start of
9120-509: 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". The group's Newsletter , and
9234-601: 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
9348-513: The fourth world conference of the IC in April 1972. In conjunction with a massive growth in membership and preparations for what they believed would be "mass influence", the SLL renamed itself the Workers Revolutionary Party in 1974 and remained a part of the ICFI along with affiliated sections in Ireland, Greece, Germany, Spain, Australia, the USA, Ceylon and Peru. In the middle of the 1970s, two leaders of
9462-429: The general secretary of the party, publicly commented that Healy had probably sexually abused more than 26 women, Vanessa Redgrave said at a press conference that "these allegations are all lies and the women who are supposed to have made them are all liars. I don't care whether it's 26, 36 or 236. They are all liars". She denounced her former colleague: "This is part of a political frame-up by Mr Banda who wants to dissolve
9576-469: The leadership increasingly went its own way against the ICFI as a whole. This conflict erupted in the mid-1980s and ended with the disintegration of the WRP. The various currents of the WRP attempted to found their own ICFIs each claiming to be the official one, yet they did not break with their old policies systematically and won no new international support. They disintegrated, and as of 2006 , only two active ICFIs survives, one led by David North of what
9690-483: The leadership of SWP revised the basic Trotskyist principle that only a conscious Marxist leadership can ensure a successful socialist revolution. Instead they argued that "unconscious Trotskyists" would come to power in colonized countries as well as within the Stalinist bureaucracies. It was no longer necessary to build a mass Trotskyist party. Anyone who opposed these conceptions was silenced or expelled, breaking with
9804-406: The members entering into revolutionary politics during a revolutionary upsurge of the international working class. The OCI and the OCRFI considered the ICFI to be an ossicifed political sect incapable of growing beyond their 'mother' section in the UK. The OCRFI in fact outpaced the ICFI in growth from then on. Some members of OCI continued to support the ICFI, however, which allowed the ICFI to regain
9918-426: 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
10032-507: The murderer of Trotsky had been a boyfriend of one of his secretaries, who was introduced to her by a Stalinist agent in France. The investigation of the ICFI later revealed that Cannon's secretary, Sylvia Callen , had been a Stalinist informer working through the CPUSA , and had been formerly married to a KGB agent, a fact that was confirmed by Grand Jury testimony. (See External link to FBI file on Jack Soble, at bottom of this page.) The judge in
10146-534: The official organ of which was a bimonthly mimeographed publication, the Bulletin of International Socialism, launched on September 24, 1964. When the Fourth International had split in 1953 the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Sri Lanka (LSSP) refused to take any side and maintained contacts with both the ISFI and ICFI while arguing for a joint congress. After the ISFI criticised the LSSP's parliamentary tactics in 1960,
10260-442: 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
10374-435: The party were used in a "completely opportunist way for sexual liaisons" by Healy, who had used his status "to degrade women and girl comrades and destroy their self respect". Healy described the allegations as a smokescreen for those who had become disappointed with revolutionary politics, following the defeat of the miners' strike, although the involvement of the WRP in the strike was reportedly minimal. After Michael Banda ,
10488-403: The party's central committee while theoretical discussions were in progress. However, the group remained sizeable and wealthy enough to produce a daily newspaper. Much of the money for the printing enterprise coming from subsidies and printing contracts with various Middle Eastern regimes as internal reports later proved. They supplemented their income by printing newspapers for leading figures of
10602-477: 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. 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
10716-464: The real reason for the expulsion was that Healy had sexually assaulted at least 26 female members. 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. There was a counter-claim that the expulsion had been motivated by a failed political coup attempted by party general secretary Michael Banda. "This
10830-443: The report claimed £1,075,163 had been received by the group from Libya and several Middle Eastern governments, between 1977 and 1983. 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
10944-600: 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
11058-468: The split was the work of MI5 . Party member and The News Line editor John Spencer rejected the idea, writing in The Guardian : Livingstone apparently cannot accept that a majority of WRP members in 1985 felt their first loyalty was to the party. They felt that the female members of the party staff who were victims of Healy's callous and cynical mistreatment were entitled to support against him. It
11172-542: The two political lines could not last and in 1971 the OCI and its allies would leave the ICFI to form their own international tendency, which later became known as the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International . In 1979 it fused with a grouping led by Nahuel Moreno . The ICFI later considered this a major tragedy, stemming from the relative inexperience of the majority of
11286-409: The wake of the 1966 congress, pressures started to build between the SLL and PCI. The Congress did not attempt to present the ICFI as 'the Fourth International', rather it positioned the IC as a force that defended what it saw as the political continuity of Trotskyism and called for the 'rebuilding and reconstruction of the Fourth International'. The PCI came to feel that the SLL was ultimatistic, because
11400-467: The world. Those currents still valued the political lessons learned from the 1953 split. They saw the SWP's decision as an abandonment of the most basic principles of the Fourth International, and of Trotskyism, and as an attempt to ingratiate itself to the growing middle class protest movement in the United States. The RT, SLL and PCI argued that the anti-war movement in the US contained the same types of people
11514-493: The year. Healy was excluded from the Streatham Constituency Labour Party, by which time the local party had been suspended, and the neighbouring Norwood Labour Party was in the process of being re-organised because of the activities of SLL activists. In 1966, Healy and the SLL were accused of thuggery after Ernie Tate was allegedly beaten and hospitalised by supporters of Healy while selling
11628-413: Was a sectarian body, it offered little to the miners and it made minimal gains in the strike. It was no threat to anybody. In his old age, Healy would claim that the disintegration of the WRP was due to the intervention of MI5 . He also declared that Mikhail Gorbachev was leading the political revolution in the USSR. Healy died at the age of 76 from natural causes. Healy has often been criticised for
11742-408: Was a short-term move. They maintained, however, the principle that only the Fourth International, as a consciously Marxist organization of the working class can lead the world revolution. The SWP, partly because of McCarthyism and politically repressive laws, found it hard to cooperate on a world scale in a democratic centralist International. The first conference could not take place until 1958, and
11856-477: Was an open letter of the National Committee of the SWP which outlined the disputes it had with Pablo's faction within the International Secretariat of the Fourth International . It reiterated what it saw as the basic principles of Trotskyism and described the direction of the "Pabloite" faction as "revisionist", claiming that this threatened the survival of the Fourth International, the liquidation of
11970-606: 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
12084-508: Was formed out of the left wing which split from the LSSP to form the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) . In 1966, a "third world conference" of the ICFI occurred in England. Delegates were present from the SLL, Lambert's PCI and Loukas Karliaftis’s Greek organisation, which had joined the IC in 1964. Michel Varga, a PCI member, represented the exile Hungarian League of Revolutionary Socialists, which he had founded in 1962. Two groups from
12198-516: 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. After this, The Club distributed Tribune . The Club
12312-400: Was in the group when it fused with the Revolutionary Socialist League to form the Revolutionary Communist Party but grew closer to the leadership of the Fourth International , effectively the leadership of the American Socialist Workers Party , and their representative in Britain, Sam Gordon. They encouraged Healy to form a faction and to take that group into the Labour Party . In 1950, he
12426-420: 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
12540-401: 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
12654-410: Was rewarded as the RCP voted to dissolve itself into his faction which became known as The Club . In 1953, Healy joined the wing of the Fourth International led in part by James P. Cannon after the FI split into two competing wings. Healy's wing was the International Committee of the Fourth International of which he soon became a leader, along with James P. Cannon and Pierre Lambert , the leader of
12768-497: Was the result of a lack of confidence in the revolutionary capabilities of the working class and an impressionistic, overly positive, assessment of the strength and prospects of Stalinism. Pablo had, in 1951, argued that the transition between capitalism and socialism will probably take several centuries. The supporters of the Open Letter read this to suggest there would be "centuries of deformed workers states ", and this phrase
12882-587: Was then known as the Workers' League in the United States. North and his supporters gained the allegiance of half of the remaining national sections, with the Greek, Spanish and Peruvian sections splitting and the German, Australian, and Sri Lankan sections, as well as a fraternal grouping in Ecuador, supporting North. The other ICFI is based on the surviving group that still holds the name of WRP and refers to itself as
12996-573: 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
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