The Marxist Party was a tiny Trotskyist political party in the United Kingdom. It was formed as a split from Sheila Torrance's Workers' Revolutionary Party in 1987 by Gerry Healy and supporters including Vanessa and Corin Redgrave. At first, it was also known as the Workers Revolutionary Party, but it renamed itself later in the year. The party also maintained its own version of the International Committee of the Fourth International, although this was moribund by the late 1990s.
After the death of Healy in 1989, the party declined, and in 1990 expelled a group which became the Communist League.
The group, which called for support for the Liberal Democrats in the 2001 UK general election, published The Marxist magazine. They also famously owned Trotsky's death mask.
In April 2004, the Marxist Party announced its dissolution. The Redgraves then announced the formation of a new group named the Peace and Progress Party, supporting liberal principles of human rights.
Famous quotes containing the words marxist and/or party:
“One good reason for the popularity of “reductionism” among the philosophical outposts of the Western Establishment is that it can be, and is, used as a device for trying to take the wind, so to speak, out of the sails of Marxism.... In essence reductionism is a kind of anti-Marxist caricature of Marxist determinism. It is what anti-Marxists pretend that Marxist determinism is.”
—Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)