Tony Cliff

(1917-2000)

British Trotskyist and founder of the Socialist Workers Party. Cliff was born Ygael Gluckstein on May 20, 1917 in Palestine. He was the son of Zionist Jews from the Russian Empire. Observing the poor treatment of Palestinians by the Zionists, Cliff began at a young age to look for alternate philosophies. When he was 13, Cliff wrote in an essay, "It is so sad that there are no Arab kids in the school." The teacher wrote "Communist" on his paper. At 17, he fought the "left-wing" Zionists who opposed Palestinian rights and was consequently attacked by them. He joined the Communist Party of Israel/Palestine, but by 1937 he became a Trotskyist. During World War II, he was imprisoned by the British government for his revolutionary agitation in Palestine.

After the war, Cliff moved to Britain with his South African wife, Chanie — only to be deported to Ireland by the Labour Party government. Cliff managed to get into Britain when the Tories took power and joined the main Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). As Cliff rose in the RCP ranks, Ted Grant left the RCP, describing the Soviet Union as "state capitalist" and denouncing the RCP's critical support of the USSR (see Shachtmanism and the Socialist Party). Cliff was asked to write an RCP response to Grant's state capitalist theory, but instead supported it himself and was soon afterward expelled from the RCP.

In 1950, he founded the Socialist Review Group, which had only a handful of supporters. During the 1956 anti-Stalinist revolution in Hungary, Cliff gained many new adherents with his message "Neither Washington nor Moscow." In 1958, the SRC became the "International Socialists" (IS) and in the 1960's managed to capture the Labour Party's Young Socialists group. His organization left the Labour Party and became the Socialist Workers Party in 1977. Due to the high election results of neo-fascist groups such as the British National Party in the 1970's, Cliff's SWP also formed a highly influential front group, the Anti-Nazi League.

The SWP formed a world unit, the International Socialist Tendency (IST), which included the American ISO and German Linksruck groups. By the 1990's, Cliff's SWP was the largest far-left party in Britain, with roughly 5,000 card-carrying members.

Cliff passed away at the age of 82 on May 9, 2000. Though he had many critics, he should be given credit for his ability to organize and his role in revitalizing the far left in the world. He wrote extensive biographies of both Lenin and Trotsky, as well as State Capitalism and his own autobiography, A World to Win.