Gerry Healy

[bashthefash]

I'd like to learn more about this phantom figure - there doesn't seem to have been much written about him specifically, it seems fairly uncontested now that he was very much the 'ganster' Trotskyist his detractors claimed him to be - (unsurprisingly the WRP obit for Healy is quite fiery in its polemical condemnation of him i'm told, though i've yet to read it).

So - if anyone wants to share more nuggets of wisdom, knowledge or anecdotal miscally on this individual - do so here.

There are some interesting stories in Grant's "History of British Trotskyism" - for example it is alleged that during the purging of Haston within the RCP there was a stipulatation that there was to be "no personal involvement" with the ex-comrade - member Dave Black objected:

"But Comrade Healy, what am I to do when you are moving this.. I have a wife who is a member of the IKD (an organisation in opposition to the international) "Do you expect me to never talk to my wife?". Healy's answer was typical of the man: "Well, comrade, get a better wife!"

 

[butchersapron]

There's a full scale hagiography complete with a foreword by Ken Livingstone and written by ex-WRP now Movement for Justice goons Corinna Lotz and Paul Feldman called Gerry Healy, A Revolutionary Life.

But you'd be better off with Bob pitts pamphlet THE RISE AND FALL OF GERRY HEALY

 

[treelover]

Is that the Bob Pitt who thinks there are islamaphobes everywhere, a former WRP crank, no thanks

 

[Wilf]

didn't healy shag the young wrp recruits?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

There's a full scale hagiography complete with a foreword by Ken Livingstone and written by ex-WRP now Movement for Justice goons Corinna Lotz and Paul Feldman called Gerry Healy, A Revolutionary Life.

The best bit is the fold out diagram of Healy's dialectical gibberish. The best bit other than the foreword by Livingstone, obviously.

Lotz and Feldman were not Movement for Justice by the way. The MfJ is a broad front run by the Revolutionary Internationalist League. Lotz and Feldman were WRP, then WRP (newsline), then Marxist Party, then Communist League. That particular Communist League changed its name to the Movement for a Socialist Future and then turned itself into A World To Win.

 

[neprimerimye]

Is that the Bob Pitt who thinks there are islamaphobes everywhere, a former WRP crank, no thanks

Whatever Bob was or is it happens to be a well researched critical pamphlet.

 

[charlie mowbray]

It wasn't a question of "shagging" it was a question of rape

 

[ViolentPanda]

didn't healy shag the young wrp recruits?

I don't think "shag" is exactly the right word for forcing unwilling women to have sex with you.

 

[Wilf]

I don't think "shag" is exactly the right word for forcing unwilling women to have sex with you.

okay, point (very much) taken. I genuinely couldn't remember the detail - whether it was a distasteful case of young recruits 'falling under his spell' - or something worse. From what you've both said it sounds like the latter. Cunt.

 

[charlie mowbray]

Funny how the factions turned out at the old monster's funeral, even though they had chucked him out of the WRP and then proceeded to tear it apart. Livingstone was there too, and the singer Maggie Nichols (shame on you Maggie!)

 

[charlie mowbray]

Solidarity did some excellent stuff on Healy, article entitled Mobster Thermidor (! ) was very good

 

[charlie mowbray]

There was also an excellent article in Trotwatch ( libertarian mag that looked at the foibles of the various Leninist groups)

 

[Wilf]

There's a full scale hagiography complete with a foreword by Ken Livingstone and written by ex-WRP now Movement for Justice goons Corinna Lotz and Paul Feldman called Gerry Healy, A Revolutionary Life.

But you'd be better off with Bob pitts pamphlet THE RISE AND FALL OF GERRY HEALY

i've just read the bits on the rape - '1985'. What seems even more shitty is the way it simply fed into factional battles and was never treated as an issue in its own right. Fucking cults.

 

[charlie mowbray]

But it had been going on for years. Healy's opponents only charged him with it when they fell out with him and saw that it was a good way of attacking him. Up to then they had been turning a blind eye to it all. That includes Slaughter and co.

 

[Geoff Collier]

Funny how the factions turned out at the old monster's funeral, even though they had chucked him out of the WRP and then proceeded to tear it apart. Livingstone was there too, and the singer Maggie Nichols (shame on you Maggie!)

I'd have been there to make sure he was actually dead

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

Its interesting to compare and contrast the Gerry Healy tale with the Sheridan situation. Tragic history does indeed repeats itself as farce.

 

[october_lost]

Track down some of the opposition texts by Alan Thornett, that might help.

 

[Geoff kerr-morg]

I once tried to read a four page spread in Newsline [the WRP Daily paper ] entitled, The Leninist Dialetics On The Metaphysics of Positivism.

 

[behemoth]

I once tried to read a four page spread in Newsline [the WRP Daily paper ] entitled, The Leninist Dialetics On The Metaphysics of Positivism.

How on earth did they afford a daily paper with a 4 figure circulation? Even Venessa Redgrave's pockets weren't that deep.

 

[tim]

Its interesting to compare and contrast the Gerry Healy tale with the Sheridan situation. Tragic history does indeed repeats itself as farce.

An nteresting comparison to make, if you don't mind being hauled up before a court accused of libel.

 

[TopCat]

All the members had to sell hundreds of papers. This meant in practice that they paid for the copies themselves and lied that they had actually been sold. The Newsline did not exactly fly off of ther shelves.

The reason for this mendacity is that at meetings at their Stockwell HQ in the early eighties, the members had to say how many papers they had sold, if it was deemed too few gerry healy would get violent right there and then in front of the meeting.

We had one of their life long members Bill Boakes working with us at the TGWU and the union used to buy 100 copies a day just to support Bill and stop him getting licks .

When I visited the HQ in 1984 you had to go up this alley and get a big gate opened up. the people inside really looked like they had little contact with the outside world, banjo's played in the background as if by magic....

 

[Jean-Luc]

How on earth did they afford a daily paper with a 4 figure circulation? Even Venessa Redgrave's pockets weren't that deep.

For a while they were funded by Colonel Gadafty of Libya in return for advertising the merits of his regime. Details are in the Solidarity pamphlet someone has already mentioned.
Also, Trotskyist (and Maoist) organisations require their members to hand over at least 10 percent of their income to the organisation. Some have required their members to hand everything over above what they'd get on unemployment benefit. You can't be a "professional revolutionary" and (junior) member of the "vanguard" for nothing.
One of the remnants of the WRP still publish a daily newspaper. As I don't think they're getting any money from abroad they must be taxing themselves to the bone. Unless like another remnant calling itself the "Socialist Equality Party" they're funded by some eccentric capitalist as has recently come to light.

 

[glenquagmire]

I saw a copy of Newsline on the tube the other day. Who publishes that these days then? The rump of the WRP?

 

[selamlar]

Also, Trotskyist (and Maoist) organisations require their members to hand over at least 10 percent of their income to the organisation

Erm, no they don't. While this has been the case for certain cults/sects across the political and religious spectrum, it certainly isn't the case in general, nor has it ever been.

Searching around, it appears that Newsline is still published by the rump of the WRP, although there are also several other publications called Newsline from diverse groups such as the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, and the National Secular Society

 

[barney_pig]

the newsagents in the Cut (by waterloo) used to stock it- I think that had summat to do with Pathfinder being nearby.
most trotskyist groups that I have been around expect large amounts of dosh from their members- if only to keep the organisations going- and the full timers paid.

 

[cockneyrebel]

To be fair most trotskyist groups do expect fairly sizeable sums from their members wages.

whether it was a distasteful case of young recruits 'falling under his spell'

Yeah and the WRP certainly wouldn't be the only left group who has been guilty of that kinda thing.

 

[hot air baboon]

Kate Beckinsale: ‘Our phones were tapped by spooks when we were growing up’


Five years later, her mother married the TV director Roy Battersby, and Kate found herself cast into a house full of Battersby’s four sons, and actors, and above all, political activists from the Workers’ Revolutionary party, the tiny Trotskyist groupuscule with which her stepfather was so deeply involved that he was blacklisted by the BBC.

“‘Shortly after being blacklisted by the BBC ...’” she intones. “I mean, it has the same anachronistic ring to it as ‘shortly after being jailed for homosexuality’.”

The house teemed with ardent Trots, in the years when it still seemed it was almost impossible to be too leftwing. The WRP was headed by the notorious Mr Toad lookalike Gerry Healy – “No, really, he was around the house all the time!” laughs Beckinsale, clearly delighted that I have uncovered this colourful back room of her life. WRP acolytes such as Vanessa and Corin Redgrave were often around, and the cream of top 70s and 80s Beeb lefties were family friends: legendary producer Kenith Trodd, Ken Loach, producer Tony Garnett, plus “very solid Shakespearean actors”, miners, Palestinian activists, trades union bigwigs and shop stewards. “We were selling our Trotskyist newspaper, Newsline, on the streets as kids, things like that.”

“Roy did a documentary called The Palestinian with Vanessa Redgrave, and consequently our phones were tapped growing up. After he was blacklisted by the BBC, me and my girlfriends would be on the phone talking, you know “bum, willy, fanny”, and we’d hear the little click on the phone as the listener came on. And you can imagine some spook somewhere trying to crack the “bum-willy-fanny” code!”

Next, she returns to the Underworld franchise that has made her world famous in spite of consistently middling reviews. It’s the last kind of fame she ever expected.

 

[treelover]

Kenith Trodd, Ken Loach, producer Tony Garnett,

I don't think this supremely talented, ethical trio were Healeyites, I hope not.

 

[charlie mowbray]

Garnett and Trodd were in the orbit of the WRP for awhile but never joined, whilst Loach was an actual member ( as were Bernie Grant, Tony Allen, Keith Allen,Peter Fryer, etc)

 

[charlie mowbray]

Hmm calling the WRP "a tiny groupuscule" is not very accurate, implying a membership of a few score at the most when they had a membership that reached over 1,000