The Revolutionary Marxist–Leninist League was a small

Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

. The group was founded in 1968 by a group of students around Abhimanyu Manchanda (partner of

Claudia Jones Claudia Vera Jones (; 21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964) was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and black national ...

), who had been expelled from the

CPGB The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

in 1965 after Manchanda accused the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

of collaboration with U.S. imperialism in suppressing national liberation movements, including in Vietnam, and of being complicit in the murder of Patrice Lumumba. According to Diane Langford:

Membership of the inner core, the Revolutionary Marxist Leninist League, was not open and could only be acquired by working for some time in one of the ‘front’ groups such as Friends of China or the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front. A period of candidate membership followed, and attainment of full acceptance felt like an achievement. According to Manu, he and Claudia had been aghast at how easy it was to join the Communist Party of Great Britain. Claudia used to make fun of the CPGB,. ‘All you have to do is fill in a form on the back of the Daily Worker (now Morning Star) and you could become a member.’

The RMML participated in the Joint Committee of Communists, but suffered two splits the following year: of the Communist Workers League of Britain (Marxist–Leninist), and of the

Association of Communist Workers The Association of Communist Workers was an anti-revisionist political party in the United Kingdom. It originated in 1969 as a split from the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League around Harpal Brar. Initially regarded as Maoist, it spent time ...

around

Harpal Brar Harpal Brar (born 5 October 1939) is an Indian communist politician, writer and businessman, based in the United Kingdom. He is the founder and former chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist), a role from which he st ...

. In 1971, a further group left, to found the Marxist–Leninist Workers Association, which later merged via the Communist Unity Association into the

Revolutionary Communist League of Britain The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain was a Maoist political party in Great Britain, formed in 1977. History The origins of the RCLB lie in the Joint Committee of Communists, founded in 1968 by former Communist Party of Great Britain m ...

. In 1977, the group was renamed the Revolutionary Marxist–Leninist Communist League, and it attempted to apply the

Three Worlds Theory In the field of international relations, the Three Worlds Theory ( zh, s=三个世界的理论, p=Sān gè Shìjiè de Lǐlùn) by Mao Zedong proposed to the visiting Algerian President Houari Boumédiène in February 1974 that the internationa ...

by working to build

anti-Soviet Anti-Sovietism, anti-Soviet sentiment, called by Soviet authorities ''antisovetchina'' (russian: антисоветчина), refers to persons and activities actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the ...

movements in Britain. This did not prove successful, and the group dissolved in 1980.

References

Further reading