One the much smaller Trotskyist groupings that entered the Labour Party during the Corbyn era (and still remain) are the Workers Power organisation which has rebranded itself as "Red Flag". Of ll such groups it is probably the least well known as being so small it's activities are limited to one or two constituencies.
I have come across comments about how difficult these individuals are in meetings in one of the Leeds CLPs if I recall correctly during a previous discussion on this group. The reason for highlighting this organisation is two-fold. Firstly they are a classic example of an entryist group and secondly Red Flag is in clear breach of Party rules.
Workers Power is yet another group that originated as a split/expulsion from the International Socialists (SWP) back in the seventies who went on to merge with Workers Fight (now AWL) for a brief period as the International Communist League. However as we saw in a previous post this did not last long and the group became an independent entity.
Unlike it's parent organisation the International Socialists (who developed a "state capitalist" theory of the the Soviet Union) Workers Power reverted to the more traditional Trotskyist Degenerated Workers State position.
Over the tears the group has variously participated in the failed Socialist Alliance and Left Unity projects. They have a youth group "Revolution" and themselves had a"major split as a large group of members left and formed the (now defunct) Permanent Revolution Group.
Workers Power also gave up on the idea of the "Fourth International" and established a tiny Fifth International which consists of a number of similarly tiny groups in seven other countries.
The turn to the Labour Party was taken quietly as Corbyn came to the fore. The main Workers Power website and it's print paper of the same name ceased publication. Readers at the time were refered to Red Flag.
Workers Power simply reconstituted themselves around the name of another publication, this time Red Flag and are seeking to build their organisation from within the Labour Party.
Their website clearly states:
Our goal is the creation of a genuine, mass revolutionary party capable of challenging social-democracy and Stalinism for leadership across the whole range of working class struggles. Our model is the Bolshevik party that led the Russian revolution to victory in – so far – the only successful socialist revolution in history.Red Flag is the British section of the League for the Fifth International, which exists to agitate for the creation of a new world party of socialist revolution, whose emergence is the precondition for the working class conquest of power and the establishment of the world socialist order.
...hey resorted to the utterly deceitful strategy of the false antisemitism accusations. In this they knew they could count on the support of the Establishment and the media. Perhaps more surprisingly, they also benefitted from the refusal of Momentum, under Jon Lansman’s leadership, and even sections of the far left, notably the AWL, to condemn it for what it was.
That the antisemitism accusations were so effective is related to the more general issue of foreign policy. This goes to the very heart of Labour’s longstanding support for British capitalism’s global strategy, in which support for Israel is a fundamental element in its alliance with the USA.
To have as the leader of a potential governing party a man with Corbyn’s record of principled opposition to imperialist wars and support for the rights of the Palestinians, among other oppressed peoples, was always completely out of the question for not just the right wing of Labour but even some on the Left.
Red Flag will certainly contribute to that debate and our immediate priorities will be defence of those policy gains that were made under Corbyn
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