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211 pages

English

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In October 1985, Gerry Healy was expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) on charges of sexual abuse and violence. His defenders included leading Party members Vanessa and Corin Redgrave and sympathiser Ken Livingstone. Clare Cowen was one of five Party members who secretly laid plans to challenge Healy. Now, in a tell-all book, she sets the record straight.Cowen joined the Trotskyist Young Socialists and Socialist Labour League, later to become the WRP, as a student in Bristol in the heady days of the late 1960s. It was exhilarating; she felt in tune with major class struggles and believed her actions were making a difference. But by the early 1980s she began to question Healy's autocratic control of the Party's policies, members and finances.The 1984-85 miners' strike raised troubling questions among the members about Party policies. On 1st July 1985, Healy's secretary went into hiding, leaving a letter exposing his decades-long sexual abuse of Young Socialists and women Party members. The work of the five conspirators was beginning to bring about his downfall.

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	19 novembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838597061
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright © 2019 Clare Cowen
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Cover design: Brian Eley
Photographs in this book are scanned from the daily newspapers Workers Press (Socialist Labour League, 1969-1976) and News Line (Workers Revolutionary Party, 1976-1985) and retain the appearance of their source newspapers, which were an integral part of the author’s life. Other pictures are the author’s or were provided by Durham Miners Gala Brochure, Dot Gibson, Dave Bruce, and Sandra Baker for the photograph of Phil Penn.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1838597 061
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Aileen Jennings
And for all Healy’s victims
– they know who they are
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have helped me with research, remembering details, refining the text, and giving me permission to include their story.
Colleagues on my Creative and Life Writing MA at Goldsmiths, University of London, originally convinced me to change tack to write a memoir and commented on early drafts; my tutors, Blake Morrison and Francis Spufford, encouraged me.
My university friends Sue Branford and Helen O’Riain commented on several early drafts; Rosie Barron improved the text with a late, detailed reading.
Countless former comrades, some mentioned by name in the book, gave me assistance, encouragement and confidence to continue. Bridget Leach advised me from the beginning. Martin Westwood and John Spencer read it with lawyers’ eyes. Sue Hunter checked the text from a literary angle. Liz Leicester, Dave Temple, Hilary Horrocks, Terry Brotherstone, Simon Pirani and Martin Mayer encouraged me, as did many others. Brian Eley shored up my confidence in bleak moments and designed the cover. Steve Drury gave me incomparable assistance and advice with the pictures and allayed my panic.
I’m particularly grateful to those – comrades and others – who encouraged me in moments of doubt about the wisdom of revealing Healy’s sexual abuse.
I’m grateful to Mary Russell and John Manix who contacted me of their own accord.
The moral support of the four others in our group of five – Aileen Jennings, Dave Bruce, Dot Gibson and Charlie – has been essential.
I appreciate the encouragement and patience of my wider family.
CONTENTS
2016 THIRTY YEARS ON
1961 RIOTS IN RHODESIA
1964 PARIS
1965 BRISTOL
Unilateral Declaration of Independence
The Socialist Labour League
1967 SHEFFIELD
Marriage
May-June 1968
1969 LONDON AND WORKERS PRESS
Launch of the daily paper
My husband, T
1972 the Right to Work Marches
Dagenham and the docks
Work at the Centre
1974 Three-day week
Cowley
Workers Press ends
1976 NEWS LINE
Firemen’s strike
Runcorn printshop
A revolutionary daily paper – pictures
My parents
1982 FINANCE OFFICE
International Committee
Twenty thousand dollars
Volume 38
Finances deteriorate
1984 MINERS’ STRIKE
South West Africa
My secret flat
News Line circulation
M1 motorway
Political Committee meeting
My mother visits London
1985 CLARITY
The revelation
My confusion
We prepare to act
The letter
Alexandra Pavilion
1ST JULY TURNING POINT
The following days
Central Committee
The bookshops
Political discussion
August heat
SEPTEMBER CRACKS APPEAR
News Line report
Challenges
Brixton riots
Finance report
The boil bursts
OCTOBER RUNCORN STRIKES
A stormy Central Committee
The charges
Two London aggregates
Expulsion
Congress confirms
The Minority splits
1986 AND BEYOND THE WOMEN’S QUESTION
Loose ends
Afterword
GLOSSARY
Political terms
Party publications
Party premises and companies
Party members who recur
Brief bibliography
Historical and political figures
Chronology 1964-87
2016
THIRTY YEARS ON
I last glimpsed Gerry Healy in 1986, near Stockwell station: an elderly man, short, round, bespectacled, accompanied by my former comrade Corinna. He seemed disconcerted at seeing me but I looked at him unflinchingly, amused, quietly triumphant. An image from The Wizard of Oz film suddenly came to mind: the erstwhile power of the mighty wizard exposed as a few tricks of fire and smoke when a curtain flapped open to reveal an ordinary, bald old man.
‘You have to be careful of this kind of thing,’ Healy said, pointing to my baby in his buggy.
I smiled and said nothing. You can no longer frighten or intimidate me, I thought. Your ability to harm anyone has been reduced to almost nothing. We rose up and expelled you and I’m proud of my role in your downfall.
Thomas Gerard Healy, longtime leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party, was expelled by a unanimous vote of the Party’s Central Committee on Saturday 19th October 1985. If he had attended the meeting to defend himself the vote would not have been unanimous as he had supporters on the committee. But he scuttled into hiding and his supporters didn’t turn up either.
The Party’s daily newspaper, News Line , reported his expulsion: Healy, a leader of the International Committee of the Fourth International, member of the Trotskyist movement for 49 years, had been charged with violating comrades’ constitutional rights, establishing ‘entirely non-communist and bureaucratic relations’ inside the Party and abusing his power ‘for personal gratification’.
Reports of sexual abuse caught the attention of the Fleet Street press, their interest heightened because well-known actors Vanessa and Corin Redgrave were Party members. ‘Red in the bed – Sex scandal of sacked Trot chief and 26 women,’ said the Mirror. ‘Exit left the two Redgraves – Stars face purge in “Reds in bed” storm,’ proclaimed the Daily Mail . The Daily Express declared ‘fears for the safety of the secretary whose sex allegations ousted founder Gerry Healy’.
Some in the labour movement regretted the fall of an important leader; others felt vindicated in their disagreements with him over Trotsky’s political legacy. Yet others felt Healy’s overthrow and the Party’s spectacular implosion were long overdue because of what they considered his crazy, extreme, left-wing politics. Healy’s supporters formed a breakaway party, which split further. The Party majority continued for several years afterwards; groups split off and individuals left. The turbulent 1970s and 1980s gradually faded in memory and interest in the Workers Revolutionary Party receded.
For the first 20 years of my adult life Gerry Healy was a major influence. I had been impelled into political activity in the 1960s by events in apartheid South Africa, where I was born, and in white-controlled Southern Rhodesia, where I spent my teens. At university in Bristol I joined the Trotskyist Young Socialists and Socialist Labour League, later the Workers Revolutionary Party. My life was exhilarating, if exhausting. I felt in tune with major class struggles in Britain and worldwide, I had a purpose in life and I believed my actions in the working-class movement were making a difference.
Two things ended this phase. The first was the major explosion within the Party. The second was the birth of my first son.
Conversation round the supper table with a visitor turned to our shared past in the Party. Our teenage sons were mystified.
‘You just let him smash you in the face?’ the older one said to his father.
‘He broke your glasses? Was he bigger and stronger?’ asked the younger.
‘Not at all. He was short, podgy and quite old.’
‘I’d have hit him back really hard.’
‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ I said. ‘He had great authority as the leader of a big political organisation …’
‘That’s stupid.’ They were already bored.
‘Will our sons ever grasp anything about our lives?’ I sighed as they left the table.
‘ Why not write something for them?’
‘To read when they’re about 40? Maybe.’
From time to time I met up with former comrades socially, after a political event or at a regular gathering in a pub near Victoria. Discussion inevitably turned to our time in the Workers Revolutionary Party. When I mentioned that I might write about my experiences reactions were mixed.
‘Well, yes, someone should write a proper evaluation of what happened. But who has the energy?’ said one. ‘We were just a footnote to history and who would want to read it anyway?’
‘It’s all best forgotten,’ said another. ‘Come on, we were nothing but a sect – why couldn’t we see it at the time?’
Others disagreed.
‘ During the miners’ strike I found that dozens of local leaders had been recruited to the Young Socialists when they were 15 and 16,’ said miner Dave Temple. ‘ I meet them every year at the Durham Miners’ Gala and they tell me that whatever was wrong with the Party it gave them a basic education which changed the course of their lives.’
‘Thousands of young people learned about socialism because of us.’
‘Yeah, discos, football, coach trips. Very political.’

▲ Durham Miners’ Gala 2018

▲ Audience at a 1983 Young Socialists’ conference
‘Come on, we organised demonstrations, meetings, conferences, classes. We gave them a perspective of defending their rights, fighting the government’s attacks.’
‘Have you read Kevin Flynn * ’s online oral hi