Workers Revolutionary Party

The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) is a Trotskyist organisation in Britain, originally formed in 1947 and led by Gerry Healy.

The group began as The Club in 1947, growing out of a faction in the Revolutionary Communist Party led by Gerry Healy that argued for the group to work within the Labour Party. In 1959 it became the Socialist Labour League, and dominated the Labour youth wing, the Young Socialists, for a period. In 1973 the Workers Revolutionary Party was formed, by which time it was an independent organisation.

In 1985, the party expelled Healy and his supporters, and the party split, with two main factions coming to be known by their publications: the Workers Revolutionary Party (Newsline), led by Gerry Healy and Shiela Torrance; and the Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press), led by Cliff Slaughter.

Both groups splintered further in subsequent years, with a number of current small groups in the UK having derived from the party. The WRP name is retained by an organisation led by Shiela Torrance.

Internationally, the Club was one of the larger segments of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) when the ICFI was formed in 1953, and one of the most prominent groups to continue the International after the majority of the ICFI merged into the Reunified Fourth International.

In Ireland

Affiliates of the SLL, WRP and its later splinters have arisen at various times in Ireland, North and South, though generally have been small and short-lived.

• In the 1960s, The Socialist Labour League had branches in Derry and Belfast (and apparently, briefly in Dublin).
• In the 1970s, the League for a Workers’ Vanguard (later Workers League) were affiliated via the ICFI.
• In the 1980s, the International Socialist League of Ireland was affiliated to the UK International Socialist League, a split from Cliff Slaughter’s version of the party.
• In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Socialist Revolutionary Group of Ireland was extant as an affiliate of Cliff Slaughter’s WRP (Workers’ Press).