:''There was also a Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) in Peru.'' The Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) was a

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

political party in Britain, based in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

.Peter Barberis, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley, ''Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations'', London: Frances Pinter, 2000

History

It was founded in 1963 by members of the Revolutionary Socialist League who supported the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...

of J. Posadas when it split from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. The group began working on the ''European Marxist Review'' and publishing ''Red Flag''. It later supported

Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( ; ; ) is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The History of Sinn Féin, original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffit ...

, the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newto ...

and also worked within

Labour Party Young Socialists The Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) was the youth section of the Labour Party in Britain from 1965 until 1991. In the 1980s, it had around 600 branches, 2,000 delegates at its national conferences and published a monthly newspaper, ''Left' ...

. In the early 1970s, the party suffered a major split, with supporters of

Dave Douglass David John Douglass, sometimes known as Dave or "''Danny the Red''", is a political activist in Tyneside and Yorkshire. He is a member of the IWW, the NUM and Class War, and was formerly in the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) and the ...

leaving to form the Socialist Union (Internationalist). The remainder of the party remained loyal to Posadas' line; it continued with a very low level of activity after his death in 1981, and continued to publish ''Red Flag'' intermittently until the year 2000.

Posadism

The organisation adhered to Posadism, the theories of Argentine Trotskyist, J. Posadas. He was the author of a number of works with an unconventional slant; he tried to create a synthesis of

Trotskyism Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

and

Ufology Ufology, sometimes written UFOlogy ( or ), is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary claims, extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial hypothesis, extrate ...

. His most prominent thesis from this perspective was ''Flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist future of mankind'' (1968). Posadists believed that extra-terrestrials visiting earth in

flying saucers A flying saucer, or flying disc, is a purported type of disc-shaped unidentified flying object (UFO). The term was coined in 1947 by the United States (US) news media for the objects pilot Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting, Kenneth Arnold claimed fl ...

must come from a socially and scientifically advanced civilisation to master inter-planetary travel and that the working-class should welcome the alien invaders as their liberators.

References

External links

Satirical portrait of the group by John Sullivan
at Trash Fiction {{UFOs 1963 establishments in the United Kingdom Defunct Trotskyist parties in the United Kingdom Fourth International Posadist Political parties established in 1963