Lynn Walsh

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Lynn Walsh is a leading figure of the Socialist Party of England and Wales, the English and Welsh part of the Committee for a Workers International, and editor of the Socialist Party's monthly magazine, Socialism Today [1].

Walsh joined the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), the forerunner of the Socialist Party, whilst a student at Sussex University at the time when the RSL established the Militant newspaper, in October 1964. Walsh soon became a contributor to the newspaper, his first article appearing in issue 9, September 1965. He became a significant figure in what became the Militant tendency, a Trotskyist party which attempted to get the Labour Party, or at least a significant part of its working class membership, to adopt a thorough-going Marxist programme. This met with only a temporary, partial success, such as at Labour Party congress in 1972, where the congress adopted a call for the nationalisation of the commending heights of the economy under workers' control and management, moved by a Militant supporter from Brighton, and later particularly in Liverpool (1983-87), and elsewhere.

Walsh was expelled from the Labour Party in 1983 together with Peter Taaffe, Ted Grant, Clair Doyle and Keith Dickinson, as one of the members of what was presented to the Labour Party as the 'editorial board' of Militant.

In the 1991 discussion on the "Open Turn", Walsh played a role in the joint preparation of the documents of the Majority faction ^[1], in which it was argued that the Labour Party had lost its working class base, with the result that the Militant was isolated and without a basis of support against the pro-capitalist leadership. It was necessary, Walsh argued, at the 1991 Special Congress convened to discuss the issue, to take an "open turn", leave the Labour Party and start afresh "with an open banner". Of the original 'Militant editorial board', Peter Taaffe Clair Doyle and Keith Dickinson supported this 'Open turn' whilst its historical leader, Ted Grant, opposed. After a Congress adopted the leadership's proposals by a majority of 93%, Militant Labour was formed, but this group later argued that the Labour Party had become a thoroughly pro-capitalist party, and that there was a need for the rehabilitation of the ideas of socialism, and changed its name to Socialist Party.

Walsh became editor of the Militant International Review (MIR) at the end of the 1980's and carried this role over as MIR became the monthly Socialism Today in 1995.