Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978)
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The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) started as a Trotskyist political organisation in 1978, creating what its founding members saw as a revolutionary Bolshevik Party. The party from thereon slowly metamorphosed into what could be characterised as a Marxist libertarian group rather than a Bolshevik or Trotskyist one as traditionally conceived. The Party was disbanded in 1997, although a number of former members maintain a loose political network which promotes some of its core ideas.
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[edit] Origins
The party started life within the Revolutionary Communist Group, which had split from the International Socialists in the 1970s. Disagreements about the course the Revolutionary Communist Group should take in relation to support for the Anti-Apartheid Movement led Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent (better known then by his cadre name Frank Richards), to break off and form his own group: the Revolutionary Communist Tendency - which later changed its name to the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).
[edit] Stance
Taking a strong line which it considered to be inspired by Vladimir Lenin's work on the relationship between imperialism and reformism, the early ideas of the RCP had it that the working class of the UK were not a revolutionary force for change - being acutely contaminated by what they described as bourgeois ideology. As such, any direct appeal to the working class was doomed to failure and the best that could be done was to prepare a Leninist vanguard for a world revolution. This position included a rejection of support for the Labour Party and one that questioned the allegiances of the Trades Union movement. A consequence of this belief was a growing disinclination to align with the aims of traditional leftwing struggles and to oppose these as "reformist". According to some, the RCP took a view that reformism consolidated bourgeois ideology in the potential leadership layers of the working class.
The RCP's programme can be traced through the publications 'Our Tasks and Methods' (a reprint of the Revolutionary Communist Group's founding document), the 1983 general election manifesto 'Preparing for Power' and the article "The Road to Power" in the theoretical journal Confrontation (1986).
[edit] Life and closure
At the end of the 1980s, the RCP had moved away from its roots as a Trotskyist organisation, leading some critics to argue that they had abandoned the notion of the class struggle.
In the election of 1987, RCP members stood as the Red Front and talked about the replacement of the Labour Party with the RCP but attracted little electoral support. No Red Front candidates retained their general election deposits (currently set at £500).
In 1988, the RCP made its weekly tabloid newspaper The Next Step into a bulletin for its supporters. Later a monthly magazine called Living Marxism was set up which was intended for a wider readership. In 1997, at the same time as the party disbanded, Living Marxism re-branded as LM. LM continued to create controversy on a variety of issues - most notably on the British Independent Television News' (ITN) coverage of the Balkan conflict in the early 1990s. The controversy centred on LM featuring an article by Thomas Deichmann which alleged that the ITN coverage of a refugee centre in Trnopolje during the Balkan conflict gave the false impression that the Bosnian Muslims were being held against their will in Serbian concentration camps. The ensuing libel award and costs, brought in legal action by ITN against LM, was estimated to be around £1 million. It bankrupted the magazine and its publishers. [1]
[edit] RCP and later organisations
Many former members of the RCP and some of the people who contributed to LM magazine continue to be politically active, most notably in the Institute of Ideas (a think tank), led by Claire Fox, the online magazine Spiked magazine, initially edited by Mick Hume and later by Brendan O'Neill, and the Manifesto Club, in which a leading figure is Munira Mirza[2], recently appointed by Boris Johnson as London's Director of Policy for culture, the arts and creative industries. These organisations continue, in their different ways, the adversarial politics of LM magazine and the RCP, leading some commentators [3], notably George Monbiot, to suggest an entryist conspiracy by former RCP members designed to influence mainstream public opinion.
[edit] Articles
- Beckett, Andy. "Licence to rile", The Guardian, 15 May 1999 (Retrieved 17 October 2006)
- Ford, Eddie. "Hitting the big time", Weekly Worker, January 8 1998. (Retrieved 5 April 2007)
- Ford, Eddie. "Farewell, Living Marxism", Weekly Worker, July 13 2000. (Retrieved 5 April 2007)
- Hammill, Danny. "RCP's Designer Liquidationism", Weekly Worker, March 5, 1998. (Retrieved 5 April 2007)
- Milligan, Don. Radical Amnesia and the RCP, Reflections of a Renegade, January 8, 2008.
- Walker, Dave. "The Demise of the Revolutionary Communist Party". What Next Journal. (Retrieved 16 June 2006)
