# Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 2024)

The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), is a communist political party in Britain, and the British section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). The party's predecessor Socialist Appeal was founded in 1992 alongside the IMT by supporters of Ted Grant and Alan Woods after they were expelled from the Militant tendency of the Labour Party. The group relaunched itself in May 2024 as the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The Party's aim is to "[organise] the most resolute, class-conscious workers and youth in the fight for a communist future – one in which society is ran by and for ordinary people, not a handful of super-rich-parasites." It described its politics as descending from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
From 21 January 2024, the Party began publishing its fortnightly newspaper The Communist which was a merger of Socialist Appeal (news paper of the predecessor organisation) and the Scottish IMT newspaper, Revolution. The organisation also produces books, pamphlets, magazines and other Marxist educational material, sold through the Wellred Books Britain bookstore, which it operates.
In 2013, the Party's predecessor officially launched its youth wing, the Marxist Student Federation (MSF), to provide a "national platform for Marxist ideas in the student movement." As of 2022, the MSF claims a presence at over 50 campuses across Britain, focused on political discussions at university Marxist societies, as well as campaigning within the labour movement.
At present, the Party claims to have 1,200 members spread across over 100 local branches.

## History

The original RCP was founded in 1944 by Jock Haston, where Ted Grant played a leading role. It was founded in the anticipation of the post-war revolutionary period to conquer the leadership of the working class. It also contested in 1945 Neath by-election. They stood Jock Haston, its General Secretary. This was the first time any Trotskyist organisation had stood a candidate in a British Parliamentary election. The party had only been established the previous year, and Trotskyism had not previously had a base in South Wales.
The RCP (1944) had been leading supporters of strikes by coal miners which had occurred in the area in 1944, for which efforts some of its members had been imprisoned. Several local miners' lodges had supported their defence, and the RCP had sent a prominent member, John Lawrence, as a full-time organiser for the area, recruiting some activists in Merthyr Tydfil, Llanelli and Swansea.
The party stood on a revolutionary internationalist platform, declaring "Our candidate will fight on a platform of uncompromising hostility to the imperialist war, for the breaking of the Coalition, for the overthrow of the Churchill Government and for Labour to take power on a Socialist platform." Their main slogan was "Break the Coalition, Labour to Power".
After the party split in 1992 as a result of internal infighting about the current tasks of the party during the period of post war boom and of revolutionary decline. Jock Haston and Ted Grant and their supporters decided to to join the Labour Party and follow the tactic of entryism. Ted Grant later formed a formal internal faction in the Labour Party, the Militant tendency.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Militant tendency, had been a significant force within the British Labour Party. At the height of its influence in the mid-to-late 1980s, Militant had three Labour MPs, control of Liverpool City Council and later initiated the campaign that they claim forced the abandonment of the Poll tax. Grant had been one of the founders and the theoretical leader of the Militant group, but he was expelled with other supporters after the 1991 debate on the Open Turn.
The split was caused by what Grant and Alan Woods claimed was the bureaucratic centralist degeneration of Militant's internal regime, as well as Grant's continued support for the tactic of entryism within the Labour Party.
Socialist Appeal began publishing their own journal in 1992. In 2000, the group was estimated to have around 250 supporters.
In 2013, the tendency in Britain made a turn towards the student movement by launching the Marxist Student Federation.
Following the Scottish independence referendum in which Scots voted to retain the union with the rest of the United Kingdom, the International Marxist Tendency launched a separate Scottish periodical called Revolution, which analysed events in Scotland, and put forward a Marxist position in relation to the Scottish independence movement. Revolution's masthead carries the slogan "For a Scottish workers' republic and world socialist revolution!".
In July 2021, the Labour Party's National Executive Committee banned Socialist Appeal and ruled that its members could be automatically expelled from the Labour Party.
On 14 November 2023, Socialist Appeal announced that they and the IMT in Scotland were to be refounded as the Revolutionary Communist Party, and that the newspaper would be renamed The Communist, beginning on 21 January 2024, the 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Lenin. The founding congress of the party, attended by 600 delegates and visitors, took place in May 2024. The congress resolved to campaign towards 10,000 members in Britain.
In April 2024, the RCP drew criticism for its controversial campaign to kick Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg off Cardiff University campus, in opposition to his alleged support for British and Israeli imperialism. In its defence, the Party claimed that “Rees-Mogg has the BBC, GB News, where he is a regular, he has all the mainstream newspapers so the idea that his right to express his views is curtailed by the occasional protest is laughable... It is the right to free speech of ordinary working-class people that is constantly curtailed.”

## Elections
### General Elections 2024

RCP's member and National Campaign Organiser Fiona Lali after multiple appearances on GB News decided to stand in the Elections in the constituency Stratford and Bow de-jure as Independent.

## Publications

The Communist was also the name of the original news paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Launched in 1920 and in 1930s was renamed first time into Weekly Worker and the into Daily Worker.
The Party also produced and published a number of pamphlets and books through their Wellred Books publishing arm.
Socialist Appeal was also the name of two British Trotskyist newspapers associated with Ted Grant in the 1940s: one was the newspaper of the Workers International League and immediately following that of the original Revolutionary Communist Party.