The Revolutionary Communist Party was a British

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...

group, formed in 1944 and active until 1949, which published the newspaper ''Socialist Appeal'' and a theoretical journal, ''Workers International News''.

Collapse of the RSL and founding of the RCP

The party was founded as the official section of the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of wor ...

in Britain after the Revolutionary Socialist League collapsed. Moreover, the RSL had not adopted the positions of the Fourth International with regard to the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and was polemicising against the Workers International League (WIL), declaring it to be following politics which it characterised as social patriotic. The positions of the WIL corresponded to those of the Fourth International and the American SWP and as a result the latter decided that the WIL should become the International's British section. In order to draw the WIL into the International, the Americans exerted pressure on the three factions of the RSL to re-unite, after which the re-formed RSL could fuse with the larger WIL. The fused group, which adopted the politics of the majority WIL group, became the Revolutionary Communist Party. The leadership bodies of the new party incorporated leaders of the RSL such as

Denzil Dean Harber Denzil Dean Harber (25 January 1909, Streatham, – 31 August 1966) was an early United Kingdom, British Trotskyist leader and later in his life a prominent British ornithologist. Denzil Dean Harber was born at 25 Fairmile Avenue, Streatham ...

and John Lawrence, with the exception of the old RSL

Left Fraction The Left Fraction, sometimes calling itself the Left Fraction, British Section of the Fourth International (In Opposition), Harry Selby, Brief Notes on the History of the Left Fraction' (1964) was a Trotskyist organisation in the United Kingdom. ...

who soon left.

Recruiting methods

The new party maintained an

entrist Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, or infiltration) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand the ...

faction in the Labour Party. This faction was led by

Charlie van Gelderen Charlie van Gelderen (14 August 1913 – 26 October 2001) was a South African Trotskyist active in the British Labour movement from the 1930s. He attended the founding conference of the Fourth International in 1938, and towards the end of his ...

and maintained publication of ''The Militant'' as its organ. The main area on which the party concentrated however was the industrial front. This led to recruitment from the Communist Party but more recruits came from direct intervention in the industrial struggles of the war years such as that of the Kent miners and the

Tyneside Tyneside is a built-up area across the banks of the River Tyne in northern England. Residents of the area are commonly referred to as Geordies. The whole area is surrounded by the North East Green Belt. The population of Tyneside as published i ...

engineering apprentices. This latter dispute led to the RCP receiving the attention of the police as their headquarters in London were raided and a number of leading members were jailed. In furtherance of this industrial work a Militant Workers Federation was organised by the RCP in conjunction with the Industrial Committee of the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...

and some

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...

s. During the war the RCP opposed the electoral truce which guaranteed that where parliamentary seats fell vacant they would automatically be filled by another member of the incumbent party. When an opportunity for the RCP to stand occurred, the party stood their leader,

Jock Haston James "Jock" Ritchie Haston (1913–1986) was a Trotskyist politician and General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party in Great Britain. Early years Haston was born in Edinburgh and went to sea in the merchant navy where he became a m ...

, in the Neath by-election of 1945. The Left Fraction of the former RSL remained organised within the RCP but were expelled in 1945 and pursued

work in the Labour Party work around the ''Voice of Labour'' newspaper. It broke up in 1950, when most of its members joined the Socialist Fellowship group which was associated with the paper ''

Socialist Outlook ''Socialist Outlook'' was the name of two publications edited by supporters of the Fourth International in Britain. ''Socialist Outlook (1948–1954)'' The first ''Socialist Outlook'' was the name of the newspaper published by the Socialist Fello ...

''. Other former Left Fraction members revived the group in the early 1960s.

End

In 1947, the party split over the question of

entrism Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, or infiltration) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand the ...

into the Labour Party.

and

Ted Grant Edward Grant (born Isaac Blank; 9 July 1913 – 20 July 2006) 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. Early life Grant's father had s ...

opposed it;

Gerry Healy Thomas Gerard Healy (3 December 1913 – 14 December 1989) was a 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 Par ...

and John Lawrence formed a faction in favour of it. With the agreement of both groups, the International Secretariat divided the British section and the minority pursued the entry tactic and published the newspaper

from 1948. The remaining RCP found existence outside the Labour Party increasingly difficult with the end of wartime militancy. The RCP's membership and influence started to decline. The new regimes in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...

caused further debate within the RCP, as they did within the International as a whole. The leadership of the RCP around Haston was more cautious with regard to declaring these new regimes to be

degenerated workers state In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class' democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Tr ...

s than the International's leadership around

Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fo ...

and

Michel Pablo Michel Pablo ( el, Μισέλ Πάμπλο; 24 August 1911, Alexandria, Egypt – 17 February 1996, Athens) was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis ( el, Μιχάλης Ν. Ράπτης), a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin. Early activism ...

. A debate developed as to whether the RCP should enter the Labour Party. The majority supported entry. A faction was declared by some supporters of the leadership, which firmly opposed entry. This grouping of RCPers called itself the Open Party Faction and was increasingly disillusioned with the leadership around Jock Haston and Ted Grant whom they thought to be caving in to Healy's entry group, ultimately leading to a decision to dissolve the RCP in 1950 and join the Labour Party. The International then ordered that the members of the RCP join Healy's entry group, known as The Club, but that despite being in a majority they were not able to exercise democratic control of the fused group. Jock Haston immediately dropped out of politics as did much of the remaining leadership. Ted Grant made a decision to join the fused group but was purged by Healy who strongly discouraged dissent. Some of

Tony Cliff Tony Cliff (born Yigael Glückstein, he, יגאל גליקשטיין; 20 May 1917 – 9 April 2000) was a Trotskyist activist. Born to a Jewish family in Palestine, he moved to Britain in 1947 and by the end of the 1950s had assumed the pen na ...

's supporters in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

were expelled – Cliff himself could not be expelled being resident in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

and therefore beyond Healy's reach – and then when Grant attempted to defend the rights of Cliff's supporters he too was expelled. Cliff would regroup his supporters around the magazine '' Socialist Review'' and Grant similarly formed a group called the International Socialist Group. Most former members of the RCP had left the Trotskyist movement by the end of 1951.

Members

* Jim Allen *

Sam Bornstein Sam Bornstein (1920 - 1990) was a British Trotskyist historian and activist. Bornstein was a member of the ILP Guild of Youth, but eventually moved towards Trotskyist ideas and joined the Workers' International League (1937), Workers Internationa ...

Maurice Brinton Christopher Agamemnon Pallis (2 December 1923, in Bombay – 10 March 2005, in London) was an Anglo-Greek neurologist and libertarian socialist intellectual. Under the pen-names Martin Grainger and Maurice Brinton, he wrote and translated for th ...

Jimmy Deane Jimmy Deane (31 January 1921 – 21 August 2002) was a British Trotskyist who played a significant role in building the Revolutionary Socialist League. Along with Jock Haston and Ted Grant, he played a role during the Second World War in the ...

* Mildred Gordon *

Duncan Hallas Duncan Hallas (23 December 1925 – 19 September 2002), was a prominent member of the Trotskyist movement and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party in Great Britain. Biography Born into a working-class family in Manchester, Duncan Hall ...

Betty Hamilton Betty Hamilton (1904–1994) was a British Trotskyist. Born Berthe Dutoit in the Valais area of French Switzerland, the daughter of a socialist engineer, Hamilton moved to Paris as a young woman. There, she worked as a fashion journalist and, i ...

Jeanne Hoban Jeanne Hoban (3 August 1924 in Gillingham, Kent – 18 April 1997 in Sri Lanka), known after her marriage as Jeanne Moonesinghe, was a British Trotskyist who became active in trade unionism and politics in Sri Lanka. She was one of the handful ...

* Bill Hunter * John Lawrence *

Anil Moonesinghe Anil Moonesinghe (15 February 1927 – 8 December 2002) was a Sri Lankan Trotskyist revolutionary politician and trade unionist. He became a member of parliament, a Cabinet Minister of Transport in 1964, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament from 199 ...

Stan Newens Arthur Stanley Newens (4 February 1930 – 2 March 2021) was a British Labour Co-operative politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1983, and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1984 to 1999. Born ...

T. Dan Smith Thomas Daniel Smith (11 May 1915 – 27 July 1993), also known by his nickname “Mr Newcastle”,"Southern Discomfort" (leading article), ''The Times'', 3 August 1993. was a high-profile British Labour Party politician who served as chairman of ...

References

External links

Archive of the Socialist Appeal, paper of the RCP from Bill Hunter's website
*Crawford, Ted

''

Revolutionary History ''Revolutionary History'' was a British journal covering the history of the far left. It was established in 1988 by Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson and maintained an editorial board representing many strands of British Trotskyism.

'', May 2003. 'HO 45/25486 seems to be the main source of Special Branch records of RCP and Club activities (up to c. 1954). It is about 1000 pages or so, divided into 24 internal folders.' *Upham, Martin,
The History of British Trotskyism to 1949
(PhD thesis), on the Marxists.org mirror of the ''

'' website. {{Authority control