Revolutionary Communist League (UK)

Last updated

The Revolutionary Communist League was a small Trotskyist group in Britain. It was founded in 1970 by two small groups, one who split from International Marxist Group, after failing to persuade the group to turn away from work in the student movement and towards the trade unions and entryism in the Labour Party, and one which had split from Militant. [1]

The League promoted the Socialist Charter initiative of Tribunite Labour MPs which published the Chartist paper, and were consequently nicknamed the Chartists. They took over this initiative, and based their work around the Charter on a conception of transitional politics taken from Leon Trotsky. They were also active around The Soldiers' Charter, an attempt to influence the armed forces.

By 1973, most of the group were moving to the right, while others (including Al Richardson) had left. A split developed and the Right of the group kept the journal, [1] which developed a politics influenced by Euro-Communism and were close to the Labour Co-ordinating Committee.

In 1978, the RCL started to collaborate with the journal Intervention, which was connected to the Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, British section of Michel Pablo's International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency. Until 1980, the group moved away from Trotskyism towards a "distinctly libertarian type of socialism", focusing on advancing Socialist politics through municipal activity. [2]

In late 1980, the Chartist minority faction around figures such as Graham Bash and Keith Veness left the RCL to found the journal London Labour Briefing .

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth International</span> Revolutionary socialist international organization

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Appeal (UK, 1992)</span> Political party

The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) (formerly Socialist Appeal) is a communist political party in Britain, and the British section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). The party was founded as Socialist Appeal in 1992 alongside the IMT by supporters of Ted Grant and Alan Woods after they were expelled from the Militant tendency of the Labour Party. The organisation relaunched itself in May 2024 as the Revolutionary Communist Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialism in New Zealand</span> Political movement advocating socio-economic change in New Zealand

Socialism in New Zealand had little traction in early colonial New Zealand but developed as a political movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Much of socialism's early growth was found in the labour movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Taaffe</span> British Marxist (Trotskyist) political activist & journalist

Peter Taaffe is a British Marxist Trotskyist political activist and journalist. He was the general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and Wales from its founding until 2020 and was a member of the International Executive Committee of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).

The Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established in 1973 and disbanded in 1989.

The International Revolutionary Marxist Centre was an international association of left-socialist parties. The member-parties rejected both mainstream social democracy and the Third International.

The history of the Socialist Workers Party begins with the formation of the Socialist Review Group in 1950, followed by the creation of the International Socialists in 1962 and continues through to the present day with the formation of the Socialist Workers Party in 1977.

The Socialist Labour Group was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1979 and 1989.

Alec Stuart "Al" Richardson was a British Trotskyist historian and activist.

Cliff Slaughter was a British socialist activist, sociologist and author. His best-known works are Coal is Our Life and Marxism, Ideology and Literature. In 2006, Slaughter published the book Not Without a Storm: Towards a Communist Manifesto for the Age of Globalisation, followed by the book Bonfire of the Certainties: The Second Human Revolution in 2013.

The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping which is the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.

The International Marxist Group (IMG) was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1968 and 1982. It was the British Section of the Fourth International. It had around 1,000 members and supporters in the late 1970s. In 1980, it had 682 members; by 1982, when it changed its name to the Socialist League, membership had fallen to 534.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth International (post-reunification)</span> Trotskyist international founded in 1963

The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat (ISFI) and the International Committee (ICFI), reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International.

The Workers' International League (WIL) was a Trotskyist group that existed in Britain from 1937 to 1944.

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 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.

The Revolutionary Communist Party was a British Trotskyist 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's Workers Revolutionary Party, Ted Grant's Militant and Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Woods (political theorist)</span> British Trotskyist political theorist and author

Alan Woods is a British Trotskyist political theorist and author. He is one of the leading members of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) as well as of its British affiliate group Socialist Appeal. He is political editor of the IMT's In Defence of Marxism website. Woods was a leading supporter within the Militant tendency within the Labour Party and its parent group the Committee for a Workers' International until the early 1990s. A series of disagreements on tactics and theory led to Woods and Ted Grant leaving the CWI, to found the Committee for a Marxist International in 1992. They continued with the policy of entryism into the Labour Party. Woods has expressed particularly vocal support for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, and repeatedly met with the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, leading to speculation that he was a close political adviser to the president.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Far-left politics in the United Kingdom</span>

Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.

References

  1. 1 2 Andrew Hosken (2008), Ken: The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone, Arcadia Books
  2. Encyclopedia of British and Irish political organizations : parties, groups, and movements of the twentieth century. London ; New York: Pinter. 2000. p. 276. ISBN   978-1-85567-264-2.