Gerry Healy: After Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin - will they take back the lies about Trotsky? [1956]

Introductory note

This article by the then leader of the British "orthodox Trotskyists", Gerry Healy, appeared in the March 9, 1956, issue of Tribune, the paper of the left wing Bevanite current in the Labour Party and the trade unions.

The Bevanites were then a mass movement. Healy's piece appeared in the middle pages alongside a larger article by Aneurin Bevan on the same subject. It shows how well-integrated the Healy group was in the mass labour left wing of that time.

Miliband review: letting the people back in?

“Let’s Build a better Labour Party, so we can build a better Britain” is the cumbersome title of a three-page brochure published by the Labour Party to drum up support for the party ‘reforms’ proposed by Ed Miliband on 9 July.

It begins with the boast by Miliband that “under my leadership, Labour has begun to change: opening up our party and policy-making to people outside.”

Challenge sexual violence everywhere

One of the lessons we have learned from the last few years is that many “progressive” people hold reactionary ideas about women. Worse than this, people who hold some socialist ideas do not always follow this through in terms of the way they treat the women around them.

A particularly shocking example of sexist violence in an activist movement has been the epidemic of sexual assaults and harassment in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Extreme violence against women has been a threat or reality for many women revolutionaries.

Perfunctory, shallow, formulaic

The 17 July 2013 issue of The Socialist (paper of the Socialist Party) carried a feature “End Violence Against Women”.

The feature included an extract from a booklet by Christine Thomas about the social attitudes which underpin violence against women, an account of the Campaign Against Domestic Violence (a 1990s campaign set up by the Socialist Party’s forerunner the Militant Tendency), and a list of demands to tackle violence against women.

Which side is the left on?

At Unison National Delegate Conference 2013, we discussed a motion about creating “a safe space for women in the labour movement”. We also discussed an amendment about male violence against women. I am still angry about the discussion around the amendment and upset by the fact it was defeated.

The original, uncontroversial, motion was about organising women in the labour movement, actively supporting young women, buddying systems and many other ways. The amendment on male violence against women should have been uncontroversial. Sadly, it wasn’t.

Organising a carnival of the oppressed

In the opening plenary of Workers’ Liberty “Ideas for Freedom” event (20-23 June) RMT Executive and TUC Disabled Workers’ Committee member Janine Booth argued for class-struggle liberation politics to be at the heart of the Marxist project.


On 23 June 2012, Steven Simpson, a gay autistic student, was verbally abused, stripped, and his body scrawled with homophobic slogans.

Tackling DV in the workplace

Domestic abuse and violence has been taken up as a workplace and trade union issue since the 1990s, under the impact of feminist-inspired campaigning and practical work of organisations like Women’s Aid.

Unison was at the forefront of these initiatives. In 2002 the TUC published a guide on domestic violence for unions and employers.

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