Jimmy Deane

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Jimmy Deane (1921 in Liverpool-August 2002) was a British Trotskyist who played a significant role in building the Revolutionary Socialist League. Along with Jock Haston and Ted Grant, he played a role during the second world war in the Revolutionary Communist Party, the British section of the Fourth International.

While a member of the Labour Party, he was won over to Trotskyism and joined the Militant Groupin the middle of 1937 at the age of 16. Through him his mother Gertie was recruited, and then his brothers Arthur and Brian, who also played an important role in the Trotskyist movement. When the old militant group split and the Workers International League was formed in 1937, the Deanes, along with Eric Brewer, Tommy Birchall and Harry Matthews, were won over to the new group, and commenced a long association with Ted Grant. 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, though. 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.

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