Jimmy Deane
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Jimmy Deane was a British Trotskyist who played a key role in building the Revolutionary Socialist League. Alongside Jock Haston and Ted Grant, he played a leading role during the war in the Revolutionary Communist Party, the British section of the Fourth International.
Jimmy Deane was born in Liverpool in 1921. He joined the Militant Group in 1937 and was the co-founder of the Liverpool branch of the Workers International League in 1939. By 1945, Jimmy Deane had joined the editorial board of the Socialist Appeal, the journal of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The next year, Jimmy Deane was the British delegate to the International Conference of the Fourth International. He was one of the founders of the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1956 and was appointed as its first General Secretary.
After bringing about the unsuccessful fusion between the RSL and the International Group, Jimmy Deane left Britain for India in 1965 and subsequently spent a few years in Fiji. Although he returned to Britain he did not resume his active role in the Trotskyist movement: he remained loyal to his political beliefs, however. At the end of his life he declared his support for the Socialist Appeal tendency in the UK in a letter and emphasised that "A Marxist tendency must combat any traces of ultra-leftism that arise out of impatience". Jimmy Deane died in August 2002.
- Keith Dickinson Obituary for Jimmy Deane - pioneer UK Trotskyist
- A short interview with J Deane
- Rob Sewell Jimmy Deane: Proletarian revolutionary, heart and soul
- Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library Description of the papers of Jimmy Deane
