Red Star was a
revolutionary socialist organisation in Britain formed by former members of the
, the
Alliance for Workers' Liberty
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), also known as Workers' Liberty, is a Trotskyist group in Britain and Australia, which has been identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna throughout its history. It publishes the newspaper ''Solidarity''.
...
and the
Peace Party.
Founded in July 2004 as the Red Party, it produced five issues of its paper called the ''Red Star''.
History
Red Platform
Politically, the Red Party was a continuation of the Red Platform of the CPGB formed in April 2004 in opposition to the CPGB's electoral support for
Respect Party
The Respect Party was a left-wing to far-left, socialist political party active in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2016. At the height of its success in 2007, the party had one Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons and nineteen ...
, with the aim to reverse the CPGB's withdrawal from the
Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform
The Socialist Alliance was a left-wing electoral alliance in England between 1999 and 2005.
Origins
The Socialist Alliance grew out of local alliances formed by the Socialist Party, Independent Labour Network and independent socialists from 1992 ...
. It also argued for greater democracy and humanism in the party's internal structure. Though it won the battle to take the CPGB back into the SADP, most of the platform members left following disputes over the publication of their views in the ''
Weekly Worker
The ''Weekly Worker'' is a newspaper published by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) (CPGB-PCC). The paper is known on the left for its polemical articles, and for its close attention to Marxist theory and the po ...
''.
The Red Party regarded the division of the left into separate groups as natural and even a healthy sign that socialists are arguing out complicated questions of programme. It believed the left had "lost its way" through "sectarianism", which it defined as the refusal to unite in a single workers' party unless each group's own programmatic demands are met. It further believed that the left focuses primarily on arguing these programmatic issues internally, rather than taking basic socialist arguments to the working class as a whole. It placed an emphasis on plain language arguments for socialism.
Red Party
Leninism
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establish ...
became the rupture point within the group in the early summer of 2005. The discovery by group members of the writings of
Maurice Brinton (pen name of Chris Pallis) and the
Solidarity
''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti ...
group led to a reassessment of the groups political orientation and the departure of one member to the AWL. The surviving ''Red Star'' group considers itself as a part of the
libertarian left and has comrades who are active in
Class War
Class War is an anarchist group and newspaper established by Ian Bone and others in 1983 in the United Kingdom. An incarnation of Class War was briefly registered as a political party for the purposes of fighting the 2015 United Kingdom gener ...
, the
Anarchist Federation and Surrey Anarchist Group whilst maintaining a
libertarian Marxist persona and links with parts of the traditional left through the
Socialist Alliance.
David Broder, whose departure from the Red Party group in protest at its lack of Leninist purity, is now a leading figure in The Commune, an anti-Leninist and libertarian Marxist group that derives a great deal of its founding politics from the writings of Maurice Brinton and the Solidarity group.
Publications
* ''The Red Party Tiny Red Book'' (July 2004)
* ''Red Star 1'' (August 2004)
* ''Red Star 2'' (October 2004)
"Spoiling your ballot"
* ''Red Star 3''
* ''Red Star 4''
* ''Red Star 5''
References
{{reflist
External links
Red Star blog
Red Party homepage
Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform
The Commune
Political parties established in 2004
Defunct socialist parties in the United Kingdom