Thomas Gerard Healy, known as Gerry Healy, (3 December 1913 – 14 December 1989) was a Trotskyist activist.
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Early career
Born in Ballybane, County Galway, Ireland,[1] though some sources claim Liverpool,[2] he emigrated to England and worked as a ship radio operator at the age of 14. He soon joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, but then left to join the Trotskyist Militant Group in 1937. He then left to become one of the founders of the Workers International League, led by Jock Haston and Ralph Lee.
Healy's period in the WIL was difficult and he threatened to resign several times and was actually expelled and readmitted. He was in the group when it came to form the Revolutionary Communist Party, but grew closer to the leadership of the Fourth International, effectively the leadership of the American Socialist Workers Party and their representative in Britain, Sam Gordon. They encouraged Healy to form a faction, and to take that group into the Labour Party. In 1950, he was rewarded as the RCP voted to dissolve itself into his faction, which became known as The Club.
In 1953, Healy joined the split in the Fourth International instigated by James P. Cannon and was soon nominal leader of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The Club recruited a substantial number of former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain after they became disillusioned with Stalinism after the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956 which brought Khrushchev's revelations about Stalin and, later that year, the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution. This qualitatively changed the ability of Healy's group to carry out activity and they launched The Newsletter as a regular weekly paper in 1958. He reconstituted The Club as the Socialist Labour League in 1959, and then in 1973 as the Workers Revolutionary Party.
Workers Revolutionary Party
In 1974, some 200 members around Alan Thornett, then a leading militant in the automobile industry at Cowley, were expelled from the party. Part of this group would form the Workers Socialist League. From this point the WRP lost members and became ever more isolated from the rest of the labour movement. However, they remained sizeable and wealthy enough to produce a daily newspaper. Much of the money for this printing enterprise coming from subsidies and printing contracts with various Middle Eastern regimes as internal reports later proved. They supplemented their income by printing newspapers for leading figures of the Labour Left such as George Galloway and the Labour Herald for Ted Knight, a former member of the SLL, and Ken Livingstone. Healy forged a friendship with Livingstone. The Herald also served as a vehicle for the WRP limited entrist operation in this period.
Healy's regime within The Club, SLL and WRP was marked by demands for a high level of activism. An exception to the requirement for 24/7 activism was made for participants in the SLL's cultural front activities set up to attract actors and writers, at least until they became full party members. This attracted figures of the prominence of Vanessa Redgrave among others.
Implosion of WRP
By 1985, concern as to Healy's financial, political and intelligence links with the Libyan and Iraqi governments had risen within the WRP to the point at which the group imploded, the final straw being revelations from long time associate Aileen Jennings concerning Healy's sexual abuse of female members of his party. Healy described the allegations as a smokescreen for those who had become disappointed with revolutionary politics, following the defeat of the miners' strike. The result was that Jennings disappeared and the WRP collapsed into many tiny, competing, groups.
In 1985 Healy was expelled from the WRP and it promptly split in several parts. One version of the group producing a version of their daily paper headlined "Healy Expelled" while his WRP produced a totally different version. Healy's WRP continued until what he saw as unconstitutional manoeuvres by the Torrance leadership led him to form another new group. Formed in 1987, the Marxist Party had very few members, but did retain the allegiance of Corin and Vanessa Redgrave. One faction within the WRP supported the perspective advanced by the ICFI and Workers League National Secretary David North. They formed the WRP (Internationalist), later renamed the International Communist Party and, in 1996, the Socialist Equality Party.
In his old age Healy would claim that the disintegration of the WRP was due to the intervention of MI5. He also declared that Mikhail Gorbachev was leading the political revolution in the USSR [3]
Healy died at the age of 76 in the UK from natural causes. He is depicted as Frank Hood of the Hoodlums in Tariq Ali's satire Redemption (Chatto & Windus 1990 ISBN 0-7011-3394-5).
Criticism
Healy has often been criticised for his inability to introduce a democratic system within the WRP. His leadership strategy, according to critics, allowed none of his members to challenge his ideals or policies. He was reported to have exerted physical terror on his 'outspoken members', and whilst living a financially comfortable life, some of his most committed activists are said to have 'gone without'.
Biographical studies
A full political biography of Healy was published by Lupus Books in 1994: Gerry Healy, A Revolutionary Life, by Corinna Lotz and Paul Feldman, Healy's political secretary and close collaborator (ISBN 0-9523454-0-4).
Bob Pitt's study The Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy, originally serialised in Workers News, is available in a revised and expanded version on the What Next? website.[4]
David North wrote a political biography Gerry Healy and his place in the history of the Fourth International (ISBN 0-929087-58-5).
References
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- ^ Sean Matgamna "Gerry Healy and the Failure of the Old British Trotskyist movement", a review of Corlona Lotz and Paul Feldman "Gerry Healy, A Revolutionary Life", Socialist Organiser, 1994, as reproduced on the Workers' Liberty website.
- ^ p. 498, The Heritage We Defend: A Contribution to the History of the Fourth International, David North, (Detroit: Labor Publications, 1988), ISBN 0-929087-00-3
- ^ Bob Pitt, The Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy
- Christophe Le Dréau, « Repères pour une histoire du trotskisme britannique, 1925-2005 », Communisme, 2006, 87, numéro spécial « Regards sur le communisme britannique », pp.149-160.
External links
- The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet provides a bio-bibliographical sketch on Gerry Healy
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