Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1944)

During the Second World War, 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 (ISFI), the two groups met during the early 1940s, fusing into a single party in March 1944.^[4]

The WIL had taken a position similar to the Proletarian Military Policy 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".^[5][6] The leadership bodies of the new party incorporated leaders of the RSL such as Denzil Dean Harber and John Lawrence,^[7] with the exception of the old RSL Left Fraction who soon left.^[8]

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."^[9]

However, it also maintained an entrist faction in the Labour Party.^[4] This faction was led by Charlie van Gelderen and maintained publication of The Militant as its organ.^[10]

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 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.^[11] 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 and some anarchists.^{[citation needed]}

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, in the Neath by-election of 1945.^[11] 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."^[9]

Haston's leadership of the party was challenged by Gerry Healy, 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.^{[citation needed]}

In 1947, the party split over the question of entrism into the Labour Party. The majority, led by Haston and Ted Grant, opposed it; a minority, led by Healy and John Lawrence, formed a faction in favour of it.^[4][12] 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.^[9]

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 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 states than the International's leadership around Ernest Mandel and Michel Pablo.^{[citation needed]}

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".^[4][9]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Some of Tony Cliff's supporters in Birmingham were expelled – Cliff himself could not be expelled being resident in Dublin 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 Militant), and Healy's Socialist Labour League (later the Workers' Revolutionary Party).^[4]

• Jim Allen
• Sam Bornstein
• Maurice Brinton
• Tony Cliff
• Jimmy Deane^[13]
• Charlie van Gelderen
• Mildred Gordon
• Ted Grant
• Duncan Hallas
• Betty Hamilton
• Denzil Dean Harber^[14]
• Jock Haston
• Gerry Healy
• Jeanne Hoban
• Bill Hunter
• John Lawrence
• Anil Moonesinghe
• Stan Newens
• T. Dan Smith

• Upham, Martin, 'The History of British Trotskyism to 1949' (PhD thesis), on the Marxists.org mirror of the Revolutionary History website.

• Archive of the Socialist Appeal, paper of the RCP from Bill Hunter's website
• Crawford, Ted, "HO45/25486: a report on the RCP and the Trotskyist movement", Revolutionary History, May 2003.
• "Trotskyist Sources at the Modern Records Centre". University of Warwick. 1905-08-16. Retrieved 2024-03-11.