Socialist Labour Group

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The Socialist Labour Group was a Trotskyist grouping in the United Kingdom.

The SLG originated in the 1971 split in the International Committee of the Fourth International. (ICFI), between Gerry Healy's British Socialist Labour League (SLL) and Pierre Lambert's French Internationalist Communist Organisation. Betty Hamilton, a Trotskyist since the 1930s and still formally an SLL member, had sided with Lambert since 1971 but remained isolated. John and Mary Archer, also Trotskyists since the 1930s, had split with the SLL in the mid 1960s, continuing to work in the Labour Party in North London. They were contacted in 1975 by Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins, both leading SLL members who had broken with Healy. Harry Vince and Ken Stratford had broken with the SLL in the late 1960s, joined and been expelled from IS and Worker's Fight (see Socialist Organiser) and discussed with the Militant and Chartists. They were in touch with the OCI from 1972 and in contact with Betty Hamilton from 1973.

In 1974 the two groupings, mainly based in London, the larger around Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins (perhaps 20 plus including associates in Reading and Swindon) and another around Harry Vince and Ken Stratford (perhaps 10 plus including associates in St Helens) began publishing the Marxist Bulletin. As a result, they became known as the Bulletin Group, aligned with Lambert's Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International. A heterogeneous tendency, they attempted to act as an 'external' faction of the SLL, with the aim of winning over more SLL members. Healy remained hostile to them, and accused the group of writing substantial sections of documents purported to be by SLL oppositionist Alan Thornett, who was soon to form the Workers Socialist League. Thornett did have contact with Blick and Jenkins from the Bulletin Group, who reached him via Kate Blakeney in Reading and Ray Howells in Swindon. The initial document upon which the Thornett opposition was founded was partly drafted by this Blick-Thornett nexus, but this did not lead to a long-term working relationship.[1]

Lambert wanted Robin Blick to lead the Bulletin Group as open supporters of the OCRFI but Blick and Jenkins, along with most of their supporters were moving away from Trotskyism by early 1976. The Archers regrouped some newer student members centred on John Ford, who had never been members of the SLL-WRP, and kept the name Bulletin Group. Some of them engaged in entrist work in the Labour Party. They continued with the publication of Marxist Bulletin until 1977 but its influence on the SLL had waned. Harry Vince moved to Ireland in 1975 and Betty Hamilton, Ken Stratford, Regis Faugier and their associates formed the British Committee for the Fourth International. The two small groupings were both affiliated to the Lambert OCRFI but had little relations with each other. In 1979 Vince moved back from Ireland at Lambert's request and the two groups joined together. Then this new grouping, which called itself the Socialist Labour Group, was strengthened in 1981 by a merger with a few supporters of Nahuel Moreno in the IMG, including Mike Phipps and affiliated to the Parity Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International when that was fomed.

The Socialist Labour Group remained active in the Labour Party, student unions and trade unions until 1986/7, publishing Unite and Fight, Socialist Newsletter and later Fourth Internationalist. However, differences between them and the leadership of the OCI appeared when Harry Vince along with 6 other members of Lambert's international leadership criticised Lambert's Fourth International - International Centre of Reconstruction (FI-ICR) for, among other things, proposing to proclaim itself the Fourth International, the continued Lambertist insistence on a decades long 'pre-revolutionary' period, {leading Francois de Massot to say that the British miners' strike was not a historic defeat) and corrupt methods within the OCI. In 1987, all but four of the SLG sided with the wing of the FI-ICR linked to Luis Favre, Camilo Gonzalez, Roch Denis, Carol Coulter and others. The SLG was briefly part of a Liaison Committee with those (in Brazil, Colombia, Quebec, Ireland, Sweden, Germany and France) who broke with Lambert in 1987. It also held discussions with Stephane Just, but by 1988 was discussing joining with the International Socialist Group (ISG) which was a section of the USec. The SLG dissolved itself in 1989 and its remaining members joined the ISG, although most of them left over the next few years. Harry Vince stayed outside the ISG and moved to Ireland.

The few members of the SLG who remained loyal to the OCI, centred on Charlie Charoulambous, had a tenuous existence for a year or so, but John Archer, who had joined the ISG, found it difficult to accept the ISG leadership and formed a small faction within the ISG supportive of the FI-ICR. In 1991 it split to form the British Committee of the European Workers' Alliance, a new Lambertist group in the Labour Party, around the Fourth Internationalist Bulletin. Mike Calvert (sometimes known as Frank Wainwright) worked closely with John Archer at that time but later had his own differences with the Lambertists. Today, led by Stefan Cholewka [2], a Labour Party member in Rochdale, it is the British Section of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International and publishes Workers' Unity and The Link. Regis Faugier is associated with this grouping. [3]