Gerry Healy

Gerry Healy (born December 3, 1913 in Ballybane near Galway , Ireland , † December 14, 1989 in London ) was a Trotskyist politician.

Life

In his youth, Healy emigrated to England to work as a ship operator. He joined the British Communist Party early on, but left it in 1937 to join the Trotskyist Militant Group. He also quickly separated from this group and became one of the founders of the " Workers International League " (WIL), which was led by Jock Haston and Ralph Lee .

Healy's period in the WIL was difficult and he was repeatedly forced to surrender, expelled, and then reinstated. During his time in the organization, the "Revolutionary Communist Party" (RCP, Revolutionary Communist Party) formed and the WIL came closer to the leadership of the Fourth International , that of the American "Socialist Workers Party" (SWP, Socialist Workers Party) and her deputy in the UK, Sam Gordon, was dominated. The SWP encouraged Healy to found his own parliamentary group and introduce it into the social democratic “Labor Party”. In 1950, after the dissolution of the RCP, he was rewarded with its trustworthy incorporation into this faction. The faction got the name " The Club ".

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)

In 1953 Healy became a member of the " International Committee of the Fourth International, " which emerged from the division of the Fourth International by James P. Cannon . The "Club" won a noteworthy number of former members of the British Communist Party when they - disaffected by Khrushchev's revelations about Stalin at the XX. Congress of the CPSU in 1956 and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in the same year - turned away from Stalinism . This increase in membership increased Healy's group's ability to expand its activities, and in 1958 the "Club" first published a weekly newspaper, The Newsletter . Healy restructured the "Club" to the "Socialist Labor League" (SLL, Socialist Workers 'League, 1959) and finally to the "Workers Revolutionary Party" (WRP, Revolutionary Workers' Party, 1973).

In 1974 the party lost a large number of members around Alan Thornett, a leading activist in the automotive industry. Parts of this group later founded the "Workers Socialist League". From then on the WRP lost more and more members and became more and more isolated from the labor movement . Even so, she remained big and wealthy enough to publish a daily newspaper.

Crisis and fragmentation of the Workers Revolutionary Party

Healy's leadership within the "Club", the SLL and the WRP was characterized by the demand for a high degree of pragmatism. His demands were sometimes abusive and Healy did not shrink from threats of violence. Revelations of Healy's sexual missteps with female members of his movement (e.g. Aileen Jennings) resulted in the WRP eventually splintering into many separate groups.

Healy was expelled from the WRP and the party broke up into two groups. The anti-Healyist group announced in their daily newspaper that Healy had been excluded, while the pro-Healyist group published a completely different version. Healy stayed in the pro-Healyist WRP until 1987 when he found he had no more power over the party. He ended his membership and founded the "Marxist Party" (MP, Marxist Party). Although it had very few members, Healy managed to win over the respected actress and Trotskyist Vanessa Redgrave . At an advanced age, Healy believed that the disintegration of the WRP was driven by the British secret service MI5 . Contrary to his earlier opinion, Healy announced that Mikhail Gorbachev would be a representative of the second political revolution in the USSR called for by Leon Trotsky .

literature

David North : Gerry Healy and His Place in the History of the Fourth International , Essen 1992, ISBN 978-3-88634-055-2

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Healy, Gerry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Trotskyist politician
DATE OF BIRTH	December 3, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ballybane near Galway
DATE OF DEATH	December 14, 1989
Place of death	London