Gerry Healy

Controversial British Trotskyist leader. Healy was born on December 3, 1913, in Cork, Ireland. He received a minor education from the Christian Brothers and emigrated to Britain at the age of 14 to work as a radio operator on freighting ships. While working on these ships, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain's youth wing. He made a reputation for being a good speaker and organizer. In 1939, he joined the Trotskyist Workers International League (WIL) and was consequently expelled from the CPGB. Angering the WIL leaders, he was expelled from that organization as well in 1943 for "personal opportunism and political degeneration."

Healy then founded "The Club" and advocated "entryism," a campaign in which a small number of well-organised and disciplined revolutionaries would join the Labour Party, in power after winning the 1945 general election, and win over militant workers to Trotskyism. His entryist tactics found a hearing in the leadership of the Fourth International, and in 1950 the FI ordered their Revolutionary Communist Party to dissolve into Healy's Club, forming the Socialist Labour League (SLL).

In 1953, Healy broke with the Fourth International's "revisionist" leadership (Pablo's International Secretariat) and became a leader of a rival organization, the International Committee (IC). He centralized the SLL's membership, expelling dissident factions of Trotskyists. Within the Labour Party, the SLL railed against the "anti-working-class" Labour leaders. In 1959, the SLL was expelled from the Labour Party.

Healy's organization grew during the 1960's, gaining the support of influential celebrities which included Venessa Redgrave and (reportedly) John Lennon. In 1969 he began publishing Workers' Press and in 1973 reorganized the SLL as the Workers' Revolutionary Party (WRP).

In 1985, a scandal erupted as reports began to emerge in the British tabloids of the corrupt Healy aparatus of the WRP. Healy was accused of violently intimidating adversaries, accepting money from Libya and Iraq, making sexual advances to female party members, and running a political cult. He was expelled from the WRP and the International Committee by his lieutenant, Cliff Slaughter, and Healy subsequently formed a rival organization in 1987 — the Marxist Party. He moved away from Trotskyism, supporting the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union.

He died in London on December 14, 1989. His ashes are buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, near the grave of Karl Marx.