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ABSTRACT
In recent years, one of the most controversial stories on the British left is the trajectory of the far left Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) to the libertarian/contrarian online publication Spiked!, via the magazine Living Marxism. The evolution of the RCP into Spiked! has been explored somewhat by journalists, but it has yet to be explored in depth by historians. This paper argues that in the history of the RCP, The Red Front is an often overlooked turning point for the party towards rejection of conventional left thinking in the 1990s and eventual rejection of Marxist politics.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
CBH Bibliography
Primary sources
Archival sources
Undercover Policing Inquiry documents
Magazines and journals
Confrontation
International Socialism
The Leninist
Living Marxism
Marxism Today
New Interventions
Red Action
Red Pepper
Republican Worker
Revolutionary Communist
Revolutionary Communist Papers
Socialist Action
Socialist Review
Socialist Worker Review
What Next?
Workers’ Power.
Newspapers and websites
By the Lines
Conservative Home
The Full Brexit
The Guardian
Lawrence Parker blog
London Review of Books
The Next Step
Spartacist Britain
Spiked
The Positive in the Negative blog
The Times
Variant
Workers’ Hammer
Workers’ Press
Notes
1. Thanks to Gavin Brown, Tim Martin and Chris Gilligan for their comments on previous versions of this article. Thanks to Kieron Smith, James Heartfield, Tim Martin, Rob Marsden and Lawrence Parker for providing me with primary source material on the RCP.
2. “The Times View on the Brexit Party at Strasbourg”, The Times, 3 July 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-brexit-party-in-strasbourg-back-to-the-future-70t76bdz2 (accessed 8 November 2021).
3. James Heartfield, “Why I’m Standing for the Brexit Party”, The Full Brexit, 13 May 2019, https://www.thefullbrexit.com/brexit-party-heartfield (accessed 8 November 2021).
4. These were Kevin Yiull, James Woudhuysen, Stuart Waiton, Alka Seghal Cuthbert, Paddy Hannam, David Axe and Abdul Turay. Turay’s only article for Spiked was an article announcing his candidature for the Brexit Party. Abdul Turay, “Why I’m Standing Against David Lammy”, Spiked, 7 November 2019, https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/11/07/why-im-standing-against-david-lammy/ (accessed 17 December 2019).
5. Andrew Gimson, “Profile: Munira Mirza, the Muslim from Oldham who leads Johnson’s Policy Unit”, Conservative Home, 21 May 2020, https://www.conservativehome.com/highlights/2020/05/profile-munira-mirza-the-muslim-from-oldham-who-leads-johnsons-policy-unit.html (accessed 8 November 2021).
6. Tim Shipman, “How the Tories Weaponised Woke”, The Times, 13 June 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-the-tories-weaponised-woke-jlmwh0p36 (accessed 7 November 2021).
7. See: The Guardian, 9 December 2003 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/dec/09/highereducation.uk2 (accessed 29 April 2020); Mike Small, “The Faction That Fools the World”, Variant, 24, Winter 2005, p. 12; Jenny Turner, ‘Who Are They?’, London Review of Books, 8 July 2010, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they (accessed 29 April 2020); Otto English, ‘Fox Breaks Cover—From Revolutionary Communist to Farage’s Right-Hand Woman’, By the Lines, 24 April 2019, https://bylinetimes.com/2019/04/24/fox-breaks-cover-from-revolutionary-communist-to-farages-right-hand-woman/ (accessed 29 April 2020).
8. George Monbiot, “How US Billionaires are Fuelling the Hard-Right Cause in Britain”, The Guardian, 7 December 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation (accessed 2 January 2019)
9. Andy Beckett, “Why Boris Johnson’s Tories Fell for a Tiny Sect of Libertarian Provocateurs”, The Guardian, 1 August 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-johnsons-tories-fell-for-a-tiny-sect-of-libertarian-provocateurs-rcp (accessed 6 November 2021).
10. Lawrence Parker, “The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) was Really Nothing Special”, Lawrence Parker: Writings on the history of the CPGB and Other Far-Left Organisations, 28 September 2020, https://communistpartyofgreatbritainhistory.wordpress.com/2020/09/28/the-revolutionary-communist-party-rcp-was-really-nothing-special/ (accessed 21 October 2021).
11. Frank Richards, “We Can’t Win With Kinnock”, The Next Step, 6 February 1987, p. 7.
12. RCG, “Our Tasks and Methods: The Founding Document of the RCG”, Revolutionary Communist, 1 (1975) p. 3.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Chris Davies & Judith Harrison, “A Retrograde Step for the Marxist Movement—A Reply to Cde Yaffe”, Revolutionary Communist Papers, 1 (March 1977), pp, 3–26.
16. For a discussion of the RCG and RCT and Irish solidarity, see: Brodie Nugent & Evan Smith, “Intersectional Solidarity? The Armagh Women, the British Left and Women’s Liberation”, Contemporary British History, 31/4 (2017) pp. 611–635.
17. For the RCT’s criticisms of the British left on Ireland (including the Troops Out Movement), see: Frank Richards, “No Equivocation!”, Revolutionary Communist Papers, 2 (May 1978) pp. 21–28; for RCT criticisms of the Anti-Nazi League, see: Frank Richards, Under a National Flag: Fascism, Racism and the Labour Movement (London: RCT pamphlet, 1978).
18. “Support the RCP!”, The Next Step, August 1984, p. 3.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid. For the relationship between the RCP and others on the student left, see: Evan Smith, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech (London: Routledge, 2020) pp. 179–183.
21. Document entitled “Debriefing of a Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) Source”, regarding the debriefing of HN106, 17 October 1983, p. 1, Ref No: UCPI0000034280, https://www.ucpi.org.uk/publications/document-entitled-debriefing-of-a-revolutionary-communist-party-rcp-source-regarding-the-debriefing-of-hn106/ (accessed 1 November 2021).
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 2.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Special Branch report on an internal conference of the Revolutionary Communist Party, 1 September 1981, p. 2, Ref No: UCPI0000015575, https://www.ucpi.org.uk/publications/special-branch-report-on-an-internal-conference-of-the-revolutionary-communist-tendency-to-discuss-forthcoming-policies-and-actions/ (accessed 1 November 2021).
27. Ibid., p. 7.
28. RCP, Malvinas are Argentina’s (London: RCP pamphlet, 1982).
29. Frank Richards, The Miners’ Next Step (London: RCP pamphlet, 1984).
30. Alex Callinicos, “Pickets and Ballots”, Socialist Review (May 1984) p. 15; “Tripped Up By the Class Line”, Spartacist Britain (May 1984) p. 9; James Marshall, The Revolutionary Communist Party: Prepared to Defend Workers’ Power?’, The Leninist (July 1984) p. 10; ‘Scargill’s “Left” Critics’, Socialist Action (15 February 1985) p. 3
In 1981, Alex Callinicos devoted significant space to denouncing the “abstract propagandism” of the RCT in International Socialism Journal, which was one of the most in-depth critiques of the RCT/RCP by the SWP prior to the Red Front. See: Alex Callinicos, “Politics or Abstract Propagandism”, International Socialism, 2/11 (Winter 1981) pp. 111–128.
31. For an overview of the left in Britain during this period, see: Evan Smith & Matthew Worley, “The Far Left in Britain from 1956”, in Evan Smith & Matthew Worley (eds), Against the Grain: The British Far Left from 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014) pp. 1–24; Jeremy Tranmer, “A Force to be Reckoned With? The Radical Left in the 1970s”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique/French Journal of British Studies, 12/3 (2017) https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/1728 (accessed 23 October 2021); John Kelly, Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain (London: Routledge, 2018) pp. 36–58.
32. On the splits in the CPGB, see: Richard Cross, “The CPGB and the ‘Collapse of Socialism’, 1977–1991”, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2003: Geoff Andrews, Endgames and New Times: The Final Years of British Communism, 1964–1991 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2004); Andrew Pearmain, The Politics of Labour: A Gramscian Analysis (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2011) pp. 124–141; Evan Smith, British Communism and the Politics of Race (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2018) pp. 162–166.
On the IMG in the 1970s, see: John Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) pp. 113–160; Ernest Tate, Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s & 1960s: Volume 2, Britain 1965–1970 (London: Resistance Books, 2014).
33. Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, pp. 72–83.
For a critical biography of Gerry Healy and the SLL/WRP, see: Bob Pitt, The Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy (2002), http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Healy/Contents.html (accessed 23 October 2021).
There are also a number of autobiographies of former SLL/WRP members, such as: Norman Harding, Staying Red: Why I Remain a Socialist (London: Index Books, 2005); Alex Mitchell, Come the Revolution: A Memoir (Sydney, NSW: NewSouth Publishing, 2011); Clare Cowen, My Search for Revolution: & How We Brought Down An Abusive Leader (Leicester: Troubadour Publishing, 2019).
34. See: Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, pp. 84–112; Ian Birchall, Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time (London: Bookmarks, 2011); Phil Burton-Cartledge, “March Separately, Seldom Together: The Political History of Two Principal Trends in British Trotskyism, 1945–2000”, in Smith & Worley (eds) Against the Grain, pp. 80–97.
For further discussion of the splits in the IS in the 1970s, see: Jim Higgins, “More Years for the Locust: The Origins of the SWP”, Marxists Internet Archive (1997) https://www.marxists.org/archive/higgins/1997/locust/index.htm (accessed 24 October 2021).
35. Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, pp.; Michael Crick, Militant (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016); Christopher Massey, “The Militant Tendency and Entrism in the Labour Party”, in Evan Smith & Matthew Worley (eds), Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017) pp. 238–257; James Ferguson, “The New Vanguardists: An Analysis of Militant Tendency and its Involvement in Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s”, unpublished PhD thesis, Keele University, 2021.
36. Eric Hobsbawm, “The Forward March of Labour Halted?”, Marxism Today (September 1978) pp. 279–286.
37. Tony Cliff, “Building in the Downturn”, Socialist Review (April 1983) pp. 3–5.
38. Diane Frost and Peter North, Militant Liverpool: A City on the Edge (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013).
39. Nick Thomas-Symonds, “A Reinterpretation of Michael Foot’s Handling of the Militant Tendency”, Contemporary British History, 19/1 (2005) pp. 27–51; Christopher Massey, “The Labour Party’s Inquiry into Liverpool District Labour Party and the Expulsion of Nine Members of the Militant Tendency, 1985–86”, Contemporary British History, 34/2 (2020) pp. 299–324.
40. For a discussion of the Labour left in the 1980s, see: Simon Hannah, A Party With Socialists In It: A History of the Labour Left (London: Pluto Press, 2018); Jonathan Davis & Rohan McWilliam (eds) Labour and the Left in the 1980s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018); Leo Pantich & Colin Leys, Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn (London: Verso, 2020).
41. John Kelly, “The Discursive Reconstruction of Poor Electoral Performance: The British Trotskyist Left and the 2010 General Election”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 21/1 (2016) pp. 79–82.
42. Mike Freeman & Kate Marshall, Who Needs the Labour Party? (London: RCT pamphlet, 1978) pp. 34–35.
43. ‘Running for the Council, The Next Step, April 1981, p. 3.
44. “Labour Under Pressure”, The Next Step, May 1981, p. 2.
45. “Labour Under Pressure”, p. 2.
46. “Fight Back with the Party of the Future”, The Next Step, January 1983, p. 13.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. “Tatchell’s Democracy and Ours”, The Next Step, February 1983, p. 5.
50. Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain: How the Personal Got Political (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2007) p. 161.
51. Peter Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey (London: Heretic Books, 1983) p. 129.
52. The Times, 25 February 1983, p. 1.
53. “Vote RCP!”, The Next Step, June 1983, p. 3.
54. Ibid.
55. “Austerity Socialism or Revolutionary Communism?”, The Next Step, June 1983, p. 14.
56. “Vote RCP!”, p. 3.
57. Ibid.
58. “Hitting Back with the RCP”, The Next Step, July 1983, p. 6.
59. Ibid.
60. RCP, Preparing for Power: The Programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party (London: Junius Publications, 1984) pp. 4–5.
61. RCP, Preparing for Power, p. 6.
62. “Making A Start”, The Next Step, 16 May 1986, p. 3; ‘8 May—Vote RCP’, The Next Step, 2 May 1986, p. 4.
63. “Libya and the Local Elections”, The Next Step, 2 May 1986, p. 11.
64. “Summing Up The Elections”, The Next Step, 16 May 1986, p. 11.
65. “The Lesser Evil”, The Next Step, 16 May 1986, p. 2; “Summing Up The Elections”, p. 11.
66. “Summing Up The Elections”, p. 11.
67. The Lesser Evil’, p. 2
68. “Summing Up The Elections”, p. 11.
69. The Times, 4 August 1986, p. 10.
Ironically Kilroy-Silk was a UKIP MEP in 2004, with Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill describing UKIP as ‘cranky’. Brendan O’Neill, “Why Waste Time Tanning Kilroy’s Hide”, Spiked, 8 February 2005, https://www.spiked-online.com/2005/02/08/why-waste-time-tanning-kilroys-hide/ (accessed 30 April 2020).
70. “Kinnock Scorns the Working Class”, The Next Step, 31 October 1986, p. 3.
71. “Kinnock Gives Workers a Kicking”, The Next Step, 7 November 1986, p. 3.
72. “Kinnock Gives Workers a Kicking”, p. 3.
73. Andrew Calcutt, “Learning About Labour”, The Next Step, 14 November 1986, p. 2.
74. Anne Burton “The Knowsley Campaign”, The Next Step, 31 October 1986, p. 11.
75. Burton “The Knowsley Campaign”, p. 11.
76. Ibid.
77. Franz Fitzmaurice, ‘Boycott Kinnock;s Man—Vote Hallsworth’, Workers’ Press, 8 November 1986, p. 4.
The WRP (Workers’ Press) was the result of a split in the WRP after the allegations of sexual abuse by the WRP leader Gerry Healy were made public a few years earlier. Those loyal to Healy retained the WRP’s newspaper Newsline, while those who left coalesced around the newspaper Workers’ Press, which was the name of the WRP paper prior to 1973.
78. Fitzmaurice, “Boycott Kinnock;s Man”, p. 4.
79. Ibid.
80. Charlie Pottins, “Look Before You Leap”, Workers’ Press, 15 November 1986, p. 12.
81. Phil Penn, “No Fixed Rigid Formulas”, Workers’ Press, 22 November 1986, p. 11.
82. Franz Fitzmaurice, “Legitimate Alliance”, Workers’ Press, 22 November 1986, p. 11.
83. “Fever”, The Next Step, 14 November 1986, p. 2.
84. Alan Harding, “RCP Reply: ‘Unfair Criticism’”, Workers’ Press, 22 November 1986, p. 11.
85. “The Battle is Just Beginning!”, The Next Step, 21 November 1986, p. 3.
86. “1986 Knowsley North By-Election”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Knowsley_North_by-election (accessed 8 November 2021).
87. The Battle is Just Beginning!’, p. 3.
88. Mike Freeman, “A Platform for Working Class Unity”, The Next Step, 28 November 1986, p. 7.
89. “Election Platform”, The Next Step, 28 November 1986, p. 2.
90. RCP Political Committee, “The Party’s Progress”, The Next Step, 5 December 1986, p. 8.
91. Freeman, “A Platform for Working Class Unity”, p. 7.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid, pp. 6–7.
94. RCP Political Committee, “The Future is in Our Hands”, The Next Step, 5 December 1986, p. 7.
95. See above 91.
96. Mike Freeman, “Why We Need an Alternative to Labour”, The Next Step, 16 January 1987, p. 7.
97. Ibid.
98. Frank Richards, “Open Letter from the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party”, The Next Step, 23 January 1987, p. 6.
99. See above 93.
100. Anne Burton, “Building the Red Front”, The Next Step, 23 January 1987, p. 11.
101. Ibid.
102. Mike Freeman, “The Red Front: Uniting the Working Class”, The Next Step, 30 January 1987, p. 6.
103. Ibid.
104. “Fighting for a Change”, The Next Step, 13 February 1987, p. 4.
105. James Curran, Ivor Gaber & Julian Petley, Culture Wars: The Media and the British Left (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005) pp. 196–197, pp. 260–261.
106. “The Tory/Labour/SDP Alliance”, The Next Step, 20 February 1987, p. 3.
107. Ibid.
108. Frank Richards, “Greenwich: What We Learnt”, The Next Step, 27 February 1987, p. 11.
109. “Rotten Fruit of Kinnock’s Labour”, The Next Step, 6 March 1987, p. 3.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. Ibid.
113. John Gibson, “Greenwich Guts”, The Next Step, 27 February 1987, p. 10.
114. Graham Bell, “Greenwich Greens”, The Next Step, 27 February 1987, p. 10.
115. “Rotten Fruit of Kinnock’s Labour”, p. 3.
116. “No Place for Socialists”, The Next Step, 6 March 1987, p. 2.
117. RCP, The Red Front, p. 8.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid.
120. Freeman, “A Platform for Working Class Unity”, p. 6.
121. RCP Political Committee, “The Future is in Our Hands”, p. 7.
122. Anne Burton, “Debating the Red Front”, The Next Step, 30 January 1987, p. 11.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid.
125. RCP, The Red Front, p. 53.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid, p. 56.
128. Ibid, pp. 56–57.
129. Ibid, p. 60.
130. Donny Gluckstein, “Class Struggle and the Labour Vote”, Socialist Worker Review (June 1987) p. 16.
131. Ibid.
132. See above 125., p. 60.
133. Ibid, pp. 60–61.
134. See above 127., p. 61.
135. Ibid.
136. Ibid, p. 63–65.
137. Ibid, p. 14. Italics in original text.
138. Ibid, p. 14.
139. Ibid, p. 24.
140. Ibid, p. 25.
141. Mike Freeman, “’Self-Activity’ Makes You Blind: A Reply to Alex Callinicos and the Socialist Workers Party”, Revolutionary Communist Papers, 7 (July 1981) p. 24.
142. Mike Freeman, Taking Control: A Handbook for Trade Unionists (London: Junius Publications, 1984) pp. 258–270.
143. RCP, The Red Front, p. 25.
144. Ibid, pp. 25–26.
145. See above 127., p. 30.
146. Ibid., p. 41.
147. Ibid, p. 41.
148. See above 127., p. 40.
149. Michael Fitzpatrick & Don Milligan, The Truth About the AIDS Panic (London: RCP pamphlet, 1987).
150. Robinson, Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain, p. 177.
151. Ibid, p. 178.
152. “WRP Political Committee, ‘Throw Out Thatcher! Vote Labour!’, Workers” Press, 30 May 1987, p. 1.
153. Andy Bell, “Against the Red Front”, The Next Step, 30 January 1987, p. 10.
154. Ibid
155. Ibid.
156. Frank Richards, “Political Committee Report-Back”, The Next Step, 3 April 1987, p. 11.
157. Richards, “Political Committee Report-Back”, p. 11.
158. Evan Smith & Matthew Worley, “Introduction: The British Left and Ireland in the Twentieth Century”, Contemporary British History, 32/4 (2018) p 441.
159. “Vote Red Front”, Red Action, 33 (June 1987) p. 1.
160. Ibid.
161. ‘Revolutionary Democratic Group—Faction of the Socialist Workers Party, Republican Worker, 5 (Summer 1987) p. 11.
162. RDG, The Politics of the SWP (Edinburgh: RDG pamphlet, 1987) pp. 58–59.
163. Steve Forey, “The RDG and the Red Front”, Republican Worker, 5 (Summer 1987) p. 14.
164. Ibid.
165. Ibid.
166. “Letter to the RCP”, Republican Worker, 5 (Summer 1987) p. 14.
167. Ibid.
168. Steve Freeman, “For a United Front”, The Next Step, 19 June 1987).
169. Ibid.
170. Ibid.
171. Ibid.
172. Linda Ryan, “For the Red Front”, The Next Step (19 June 1987).
173. Ibid.
174. “An RCP Front”, Workers Power, 91 (March 1987) p. 2.
175. “Rogues’ Gallery”, Workers’ Hammer (May 1987) p. 5.
176. “If the Red Front is Not Standing in Your Town”, The Next Step, 22 May 1987, p. 2.
177. “4 Reasons to Vote for the Red Front”, The Next Step, 22 May 1987, p. 8.
178. Ibid, p. 9.
179. See above 154.
180. Linda Ryan, “Marxists Against Labourism”, The Next Step, 22 May 1987, p. 11.
181. “Vote Red Front”, The Next Step, 15 May 1987, p. 11.
182. Mick Hume, “We’ll Have to Fight”, The Next Step, 5 June 1987, p. 3.
183. “Labour is not Our Saviour”, The Next Step, 5 June 1987, p. 9.
184. Ibid.
185. “The Election is Just the Start”, The Next Step, 29 May 1987, p. 15.
186. Hume, “We’ll Have to Fight”, p. 3.
187. Ibid.
188. ‘Knowsley North (UK Parliamentary Constituency’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowsley_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency) (accessed 8 November 2021).
189. Mick Hume, “Let’s Face Facts”, The Next Step, 12 June 1987, p. 2.
190. Frank Richards, “The Battle is Just Beginning”, The Next Step, 19 June 1987, p. 10.
191. Ibid.
192. Ibid.
193. Richards, “The Battle is Just Beginning”, p. 11.
194. Ibid.
195. “Looking Forward to The Red Front”, The Next Step, 12 June 1987, p. 15.
196. Ibid.
197. Ibid.
198. Linda Ryan, “Labour or The Red Front”, Confrontation, 2 (Summer 1987) p. 8.
199. Ibid, p. 19.
200. Ibid, p. 26.
201. Ibid, p. 27.
202. Ibid.
203. Anne Burton, “Calling RCP Supporters”, The Next Step, 26 June 1987, p. 15.
204. Ibid.
205. RCP, Preparing for Power 1987 (London: RCP pamphlet, 1987) p. 2.
206. Ibid.
207. Frank Richards & Mike Freeman, “The Third Thatcher Term”, Confrontation, 4 (Summer 1988) pp. 85–144.
208. Mike Freeman, “Editorial: Building a New Opposition”, Confrontation, 4 (Summer 1988) pp. 5–11.
209. Chus Aguirre & Mo Klonsky, As Soon as This Pub Closes: The British Left Explained (Bristol: Estate of Prunella Kaur, n.d.) p. 25.
210. “The Left: Running Scared”, The Next Step, 12 June 1987, p. 13.
211. “The Election is Just the Start”, p. 15.
212. Ibid.
213. Nigel Rogers, “Afront to All Thinking Reds”, The Next Step, 26 June 1987, p. 14.
214. Ibid.
215. Linda Ryan, “Nice Title, Shame About the Politics”, The Next Step, 26 June 1987, p. 14.
216. Mark Perryman, “Rusty Dynamos of the Revolutionary Left”, The Next Step, 17 July 1987, p. 14.
217. Ibid.
218. Linda Ryan, “Modesty, Realism and the Red Front”, The Next Step, 17 July 1987, p. 14.
219. Freeman, “Editorial”, p. 11.
220. See: “The Vacuum on the Left”, The Next Step (4 May 1990) p. 2; Mick Hume, ‘Why the Poll Tax is Not a “Class Issue”’, Living Marxism (August 1990) pp. 36–38.
221. Evan Smith, “How the First Gulf War Shaped the British Left”, Red Pepper, 11 March 2021, https://www.redpepper.org.uk/how-the-first-gulf-war-shaped-the-british-left/ (accessed 11 November 2021).
222. Although Hoey was heavily criticised by the RCP at the time, she was portrayed favourably in Spiked after she became an outspoken supporter of Brexit within the Labour Party. See: “I Trust Jeremy on Brexit More Than I Trust the Tories”, Spiked Online, 27 July 2018, https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/07/27/i-trust-jeremy-on-brexit-more-than-i-trust-the-tories/ (accessed 9 June 2020).
223. “RCP to Stand in Vauxhall”, The Next Step, 5 May 1989, p. 3.
224. Joan Phillips, “There is an Alternative”, The Next Step, 5 May 1989, p. 2.
225. Joan Phillips, “Still a Loser”, The Next Step, 12 May 1989, p. 2.
226. Ibid.
227. Don Milligan, “Vauxhall: A Black Candidate for Labour?”, The Next Step, 2 June 1989, p. 3.
228. Ibid.
229. Don Milligan, “Vauxhall: Don’t Waste Your Vote on Labour”, The Next Step, 26 May 1989, p. 7.
230. Linda Murdoch, “Neither London nor Edinburgh but Working Class Struggle”, The Next Step, 26 May 1989, p. 7.
231. Linda Murdoch, “Give Our Class a Voice”, The Next Step, 16 June 1989, p. 7.
232. Ibid.
233. Linda Murdoch, “Our Flag Stays Red”, The Next Step, 9 June 1989, p. 7.
234. Murdoch, “Our Flag Stays Red”, p. 7; Murdoch, “Neither London nor Edinburgh but Working Class Struggle”, p. 7; Murdoch, ‘Give Our Class a Voice’, p. 7.
235. John Fitzpatrick, “’If Labour Won’t, Then. We Will’”, The Next Step, 12 May 1989, p. 7.
236. Joan Phillips, “A Labour Party Revival?”, The Next Step, 23 June 1989, p. 3.
237. Ibid.
238. Michael Fitzpatrick, “The Point is to Change It: A Short Account of the Revolutionary Communist Party”, in Evan Smith & Matthew Worley (eds), Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017) pp. 232–233.
239. Kenan Malik, “The Party We Need”, The Next Step, 4 May 1990, p. 5.
240. See: Evan Smith, “Did 1989 Matter? British Marxists and the Collapse of the Eastern Bloc”, in P. Kimunguyi & E. Polonska-Kimunguyi (eds), Transitions Revisited: Central and Eastern Europe Twenty Years after the Soviet Union (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2012) pp. 145–172.
241. Frank Richards, “Midnight in the Century”, Living Marxism (December 1990) pp. 34–37.
For a discussion of the “Midnight in the Century” article, see: Lawrence Parker, “Towards ‘Midnight in the Century: The RCP in 1989–90”, Lawrence Parker: Writings on the history of the CPGB and Other Far-Left Organisations, 12 January 2021, https://communistpartyofgreatbritainhistory.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/rcp-1989-90/ (accessed 8 November 2021).
242. See: Mike Freeman, The Empire Strikes Back: Why We Need a New Anti-War Movement (London: RCP pamphlet, 1993); Mick Hume, ‘No More Hiroshimas’, Living Marxism (August 1994) pp. 4–5.
243. Elli Dashwood, “Break Out of the Grey”, Living Marxism (April 1992) p. 22.
244. RCP, Break out of the Grey (London: RCP pamphlet, 1992). Emphasis in original text.
245. Ibid.
246. Dashwood, “Break Out of the Grey”, p. 22.
247. Ibid.
248. Ibid.
249. Malik, “The Party We Need”, p. 4.
250. Mick Hume, “End of an Era”, Living Marxism, May 1992,
251. “Vauxhall (UK Parliamentary Constituency)”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_1990s (accessed 8 November 2021).
252. Hume, “End of an Era”,
253. See Living Marxism (January 1994) cover and insert.
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