3 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 serve the organisation took their toll, although Vanessa Redgrave and some minor celebrities 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 twenty-six female members by his secretary.

4 Fragmentation

This turmoil led to the WRP fragmenting. At the beginning of what was to be a period of intense factional struggle two versions of the WRP were in existence, each publishing their own daily News Line paper! The split in the WRP also had repercussions in the ICFI and as a result there were two versions of this body, too.

The two versions of the WRP soon became known by their newspapers with the version led by Gerry Healy and Sheila Torrence being known as the WRP (Newsline) and that led by Cliff Slaughter known as the WRP (Workers Press). Both would fragment further over the coming years.

The first split in the pro-Healy WRP came when a section of the London membership around full timer Richard Price went into revolt and were expelled in due course. They formed the Workers International League which has since evolved into Workers Action and no longer has anything in common with the Healyism it defended when first founded.

Another split in the pro-Healy ICFI and WRP would develop when the American section of the ICFI led by David North revolted against Healy's leadership and split to form its own rival movement also called the ICFI. Some members of the WRP sympathetic to North left the WRP at this point to form the International Communist Party based in Yorkshire. This grouping has since been renamed the Socialist Equality Party and largely confines its activity to the publication of texts on the internet.

In 1986, the ICFI loyal to Healy expelled the WRP (Newsline) after Healy had been pushed out of the WRP and had formed his own Marxist Party in 1987 with his few remaining supporters including the well-known actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave. The Marxist Party would in turn lose another small split after Healy's death which formed the Communist League while the Marxist Party would linger on to 2004 before dissolving itself.

The WRP (Workers Press) led by Cliff Slaughter meanwhile entered into a period in which its press became the focus of debate on the history of the WRP/ICFI for the members of the WRP and other Trotskyists in Britain and abroad. Moves were made to organise an Open Conference of Trotskyists throughout the world, but this miscarried and in the end a minority of the WRP around veteran Bill Hunter and Martin Ralph were to form the Bolshevik Faction in August 1987. This which split in February 1988 to form the International Socialist League as a section of Argentinian Trotskyist leader Nahuel Moreno's International Workers League (LIT).

The ever declining remnant of the WRP(WP) limped on and in 1990 it formed the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International with a few other tiny groups including that led by Belaz Nagy called the Group of Opposition and Continuity of the Fourth International (GOCFI). In 1996 the decision was taken to abandon the name WRP, and it renamed itself the Movement for Socialism in 1996. This later split again with Slaughter's group continuing to use the name MFS and the Bob Archer and Dot Gibson group going by the name WIRFI. Neither have any regular press and are now minuscule.

Torrance's WRP is now the only surviving Workers' Revolutionary Party in the UK and it still publishes News Line almost daily.

Trotskyist organisations

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