The Revolutionary Communist Party was a British

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

group, formed in 1944 and active until 1949, which published the newspaper ''Socialist Appeal'' and a theoretical journal, ''Workers International News''. The party was the ancestor of the three main currents of British Trotskyism:

Gerry Healy 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 Work ...

's Workers Revolutionary Party,

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 tendency, Militant and later Socialist Appeal (UK, 1992), ...

Militant The English word ''militant'' is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Lat ...

and

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

's Socialist Workers Party.

History

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, there were two rival Trotskyist parties in Britain: the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) with around 70 members, and the Workers International League (WIL) with around 400 members. At the instigation of the International Secretariat of the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...

(ISFI), the two groups met during the early 1940s, fusing into a single party in March 1944. The WIL had taken a position similar to the

Proletarian Military Policy The Proletarian Military Policy was a policy adopted by the Fourth International in response to World War II. It was an attempt to apply transitional demands such as trade union control of military training and the election of officers to transform ...

adopted by the Fourth International (and its large US member, the Socialist Workers Party) on issues to do with war, while the RSL had described these as " social patriotic". The leadership bodies of the new party incorporated leaders of the RSL such as

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

and John Lawrence, with the exception of the old RSL Left Fraction who soon left. The new party believed in "open work" under its own independent identity. As one scholar put it, "The RCP was initially largely united in predicting an impending capitalist collapse, revolutionary opportunity and thus the need for an open party." However, it also maintained an entrist faction in the Labour Party. This faction was led by Charlie van Gelderen 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 List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, built-up area across the banks of the River Tyne, England, River Tyne in Northern England. The population of Tyneside as published in the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 774,891 ...

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 Liberal Party (UK), Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse work ...

and some

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

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. After the war, Haston's group "argued that capitalism was moving into a temporary boom, that the workers supported Labour’s reforms and that no organised left, still less a revolutionary current, was emerging in the constituencies." Haston's leadership of the party was challenged by

, who was backed by the Paris leadership of the Fourth International and James P. Cannon, the leader of the SWP in the US. The Left Fraction of the former RSL remained organised within the RCP but were expelled in 1945 and pursued entrist 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''. Other former Left Fraction members revived the group in the early 1960s.

Decline and legacy

In 1947, the party split over the question of entrism into the Labour Party. The majority, led by Haston and

, opposed it; a minority, led by Healy and John Lawrence, formed a faction in favour of it. With the agreement of both groups, the International Secretariat divided the British section, with both remaining members of the International. The minority pursued the entry tactic and published the newspaper '' Socialist Outlook'' 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. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

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 T ...

s than the International's leadership around

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

and

Michel Pablo Michel Pablo (; ; 24 August 1911, Alexandria, Khedivate of Egypt, Egypt – 17 February 1996, Athens) was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis (), a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin. Education Pablo studied at the National Technical Univers ...

. Haston's group declined in influence. A faction was declared by some supporters of the leadership which firmly opposed entry, calling itself "the Open Party Faction"; it was increasingly disillusioned with the leadership around Haston and Grant who they thought to be caving in to Healy's entry group. By June 1949, Haston's group shifted to a policy of entrism, and the last 150 members of the party merged with the minority in Healy's " The Club". Haston 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

's supporters in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

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

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

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. Former RCP members went on to establish the three main postwar British Trotskyist groups: Cliff's International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers Party), Grant's Revolutionary Socialist League (later

), and Healy's

Socialist Labour League The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) 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 Club The WRP grew out of the faction Ger ...

(later the Workers' Revolutionary Party).

Members

* Jim Allen * Sam Bornstein *

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

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 ...

* Charlie van Gelderen * 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 *

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 *

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. Bac ...

* T. Dan Smith

References

External links

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

'' Revolutionary History'', May 2003. * {{Authority control

History

Decline and legacy

Members

References

Further reading

External links