Workers' Liberty

Concern for clarity and consistency of political ideas is not just
pedantry; and of that there is clear proof in the sad history of the
Socialist Labour League.

Renamed the Workers' Revolutionary Party (WRP) in 1973, it was until
1974 at least by far the biggest and most visible organisation of the
revolutionary left in Britain. It was still a sizeable operation up
to its spectacular final collapse in 1985.

Apt though it was to denounce any rival as "revisionist" and
"opportunist", the SLL/ WRP's guiding principle was that it could say
or do anything so long as it would "build the revolutionary party"
(i.e. its organisation). From 1976, in order to sustain its daily
paper, the WRP took money from Libya, Iraq and other vicious
dictatorships, rewarding its paymasters with anti-Jewish propaganda
and support for those regimes, dressed up as "anti-imperialism".

In 1981, actress Vanessa Redgrave, the WRP's best known member, sued
our comrades John Bloxam and Sean Matgamna for libel for comparing
them to the Moonie sect and the Scientologists, and for reporting
that they used systematic emotional, political and physical violence
against vulnerable young people. The WRP tied us up us in expensive
and potentially ruinous legal processes for four and a half years,
although they never took the case to court. In response, we launched
a campaign for a labour movement inquiry.

We repeated in our paper that there was "circumstantial evidence" the
WRP was getting money from one or more Arab governments. We
challenged them to sue us on that. They never did. Their paper
"Newsline" spoke glowingly of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and
the Libyan despot Gaddafi. And they raged against "the Zionists".
From 1983 the WRP fomented a heresy hunt against us because we told
the truth about them. They organised meetings to denounce us at which
local shop stewards, convenors and secretaries of trades councils
appeared on the platform. Ken Livingstone, now Mayor of London, also
backed them.

We were vindicated in late 1985 when the WRP imploded. It expelled
its 72 year old leader Gerry Healy, accusing him of sexually abusing
young women members. As the fall-out increased, Healy's associates
admitted that the organisation had, in return for money, spied on
Arab dissidents and prominent Jews in Britain. They helped to get a
number of Iraqi CP members shot by Saddam Hussein.
Only tiny splinters of the WRP survive today.