Workers Revolutionary Party (UK)

The Workers' Revolutionary Party was a Trotskyist political party in the United Kingdom.

The Club

The WRP grew out of Gerry Healy's split from the Revolutionary Communist Party, known as The Club. They joined the Labour Party and sold Socialist Outlook until it was banned in 1954, then joined the Tribune group. They formed a new group around The Newsletter newspaper in 1957.

This group was the official British section of the Fourth International, and when it split in 1953, they became one of the largest sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Under its influence, they put out very anti-Pablo publicity, and fostered their support of Mao Tse-Tung in China.

Socialist Labour League

The group grew, in part as people grew disillusioned with the Communist Party of Great Britain's position on the Hungarian revolution and in part from recruits from trade union activities. This led them to form the Socialist Labour League in 1959, independent and for the first time openly Trotskyist, although still with most of its members in the Labour Party. Very active in Labour Party youth organisation, the Young Socialists, and gained control until it was shut down in 1964.

In 1963, the SLL leadership claimed that they had identified a revolutionary situation in Britain. In their view this meant the most important activity was building the party. They started a daily paper, Workers Press, in the early 1970's and increased the turnover of membership, and began to fear police infiltration. They rejected using united fronts and instead formed the All Trade Unions Alliance, wholly controlled by them.

Workers Revolutionary Party

Leaving the Labour Party, they claimed that it was necessary to unconditionally support nationalist groups in various Arabic countries, including Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi. The party slowly lost members from the mid-1970s as demands on members to service the organisation took their toll, although some minor celebrities such as Vanessa Redgrave joined. A major split occurred when Alan Thornett was expelled, and went on to found the Workers Socialist League. The WRP also notoriously purchased Trotsky's death mask to use as an iconic focus for events.

In the early 1980s, the BBC claimed that News Line, was financed by money from Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein's governments. The Socialist Organiser newspaper repeated these claims, and the WRP chose to sue them. The WRP soon abandoned the case, leading many to surmise that they were guilty. At around the same time, Gerry Healy was expelled from the party he founded, having been accused of sexual abuse of a number (26) of female members by his secretary.

Fragmentation

This turmoil led to the WRP fragmenting. Several different factions set up their own parties. At one time, there were two competing WRP organisations, each publishing their own daily News Line paper!

In 1986, the ICFI expelled the WRP, and a faction in the WRP supporting the US group in the ICFI split to form the International Communist Party, now known as the Socialist Equality Party.

Later in 1986, another faction, this one around Cliff Slaughter split and including a slight majority of the membership. It still called itself the WRP, but joined Nahuel Moreno's international. This faction changed the name of its newspaper to Workers Press, before it split in turn in 1988, the section loyal to Moreno now called the International Socialist League. The remainder of Slaughter's WRP renamed itself the Movement for Socialism in 1996.

Sheila Torrance and Healy formed a new WRP, but Torrance decided Healy should have only an honorary role, and Healy again split to form yet another WRP with Vanessa Redgrave. In 1987, Healy's group renamed itself the Marxist Party which in turn suffered a small split called the Communist League. In April 2004 the Marxist Party announced its dissolution.

Meanwhile, there was another split in Torrance's WRP, to form the Workers International League (now known as Workers Action). Torrance's WRP is now the only surviving Workers' Revolutionary Party in the UK and it still publishes News Line almost daily.