This document, the Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party (United Kingdom), was adopted at the founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party, held in Manchester from October 22-25, 2010. It reviews and examines the most critical political experiences of the British working class, centring in particular on the post-war history of the Trotskyist movement.

Further material on the history of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International is available here.

  1. The principled foundations of the Socialist Equality Party
  2. Reform and revolution in British history
  3. The theory of permanent revolution and October 1917
  4. Stalinism and the degeneration of the Third International
  5. The Left Opposition and the struggle against centrism
  6. The Fourth International and the Workers International League
  7. Preparing the Fourth International for war
  8. Britain’s wartime government of “National Unity”
  9. Healy takes up the struggle for the Fourth International
  10. The Revolutionary Communist Party during the war
  11. The aftermath of World War Two
  12. The 1945 Labour government
  13. Haston/Grant and the Morrow/Goldman faction
  14. The East European “buffer states”
  15. The vexed question of entrism in the Labour Party
  16. Tony Cliff and the origins of the International Socialists
  17. The emergence of Pabloism
  18. Healy Joins the Struggle Against Pablo
  19. The Open Letter
  20. The struggle against the Lawrence Group
  21. The 1956 intervention into the Communist Party
  22. The founding of the Socialist Labour League
  23. A determined orientation to the working class
  24. The 1963 Reunification and the “Great Betrayal” in Ceylon
  25. The SLL assumes leadership of the International Committee
  26. The role of the International Marxist Group
  27. The political difficulties facing the SLL
  28. The Third Congress of the ICFI
  29. The global revolutionary crisis of 1968-1975
  30. Pabloism and Northern Ireland
  31. Security and the Fourth International
  32. The mass movement against the Heath government
  33. Growing political disorientation in the SLL
  34. The founding of the Workers Revolutionary Party
  35. The global capitalist counteroffensive
  36. The WRP’s ultra-left turn
  37. The Thatcher government
  38. The Workers League’s critique of the WRP
  39. The WRP explodes
  40. The International Committee expels Gerry Healy
  41. The formation of the Workers Revolutionary Party (Internationalists)
  42. The WRP breaks with the International Committee
  43. The significance of the split
  44. Globalisation and the perspective of socialism
  45. Capitalist restoration in the USSR
  46. The national question and self-determination
  47. The fight for socialist consciousness
  48. Renunciationism and the emergence of New Labour
  49. The Socialist Equality Parties
  50. The World Socialist Web Site
  51. Imperialist War and Militarism
  52. The world economic crisis and the tasks of the SEP