Origins of an influential libertarian socialist organisation - Part 1
Based on extracts from a working draft by John Quail, plagiarised with permission by LW.
In the beginning: a gripping tale of splits and factions, in which our heroes finally escape from the scary authoritarian left, after many adventures
The first issue of the magazine that was to become Solidarity was published in October 1960. Called Agitator for its first few issues, it was produced by ‘Socialism Reaffirmed’– the group’s name being also the title of what was effectively a manifesto, libertarian and autonomist in content, issued the same month. In brief, the earliest members of the Socialism Reaffirmed group were expelled from or left the Socialist Labour League (SLL, precursor of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, its heirs and assigns) at various times in 1960 and formed a new organisation with a new perspective which then attracted further recruits.
Trotskyist background
The SLL emerged in 1947 from a split in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a short-lived unification of the UK Trotskyists, following a dispute about the correctness or otherwise of joining the Labour Party as a clandestine faction, the alternative being to continue as an open independent party. It was now forbidden to
