International Socialist League (UK)

The International Socialist League is a small Trotskyist organisation in Britain.

The group's origins lie in the disintegration of the Workers' Revolutionary Party (WRP) in the 1980s. It was founded as the Bolshevik Faction of Cliff Slaughter's WRP in August 1987 and from the start was sympathetic to the Latin American-based Trotskyist leader Nahuel Moreno.

In February 1988 the future ISL split from the WRP and under the leadership of the veteran Bill Hunter and Martin Ralph founded their organisation, which affiliated to Moreno's International Workers League (LIT).

The ISL remains active in the North West of England where its small membership is concentrated and was active in the Socialist Alliance. It was supportive of the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, the Merseyside-based United Socialist Party, and the TUSC.^[1] It is currently active in Liverpool as part of Old Swan Against The Cuts (OSAC);^[2] Martin Ralph stood as the OSAC candidate in the May 2014 council election, polling third in Old Swan with 8.5%.^[3]

Martin has a long standing history which is well recognized among the left on Merseyside of waffling at meetings and forming front groups to mislead new activists in order to perform his party trick of leading them "up the garden path". A proud and dedicated sectarian, Martin declared in 2014 that Old Swan was now a peoples republic after it held elections, in which only Marty (to his other 2 ISL comrades) was allowed to vote. As self appointed dictator of Old Swan Marty has waffled admirably since his coronation. Martin announced in February 2015 that he had changed his name by deed poll to accommodate one of his greatest traits, he is now known as Martin "master sectarian" Ralph.

ISL irregular publication, Socialist Voice, was published frequently until 2002,^[4] and from 2011 to 2013. Between 2000 and 2006 the League published a website called socialistvoice.org.^[5] Latest website internationalsocialistleague.org.uk was active as of 2013.

References

External links

• http://internationalsocialistleague.org.uk/
• http://www.litci.org/en/