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The Revolutionary Communist League was a small Trotskyist group in Britain. It was founded in 1970 by two small groups, one who split from International Marxist Group after failing to persuade the group to turn away from work in the student movement and turn towards work in trade unions and entryist work in the Labour Party, and one which had split from Militant.
The League promoted the Socialist Charter initiative of Tribunite Labour MPs which published the Chartist paper, and were consequently nicknamed the Chartists. They took over this initiative, and based their work around the Charter on a conception of transitional politics taken from Leon Trotsky. They were also active around The Soldiers' Charter, an attempt to influence the armed forces.
By 1973 most of the group were moving to the right, while others (including Al Richardson) had left. A split developed and the Right of the group kept the journal, which developed a politics influenced by Euro-Communism and were close to the Labour Co-ordinating Committee. The Chartist Minority around figures such as Graham Bash and Keith Veness became involved in the launch of London Labour Briefing.
Splits and Fusion blog notes: Following his departure from the International Marxist Group, Al Richardson (Richard Stephenson) was to become one of the founders of the Revolutionary Communist League which later became primarily identified with Socialist Charter and known as the Chartist Tendency.
Our Archive contains a number of pamphlets and bulletins but is light on copies of the Chartist newspaper (a situation we would like to rectify)
A few items of note include four issues of The Chartist–Bulletin of the Young Chartists, two series of International Bulletin and three copies of Chartist International from the later 1970s.
Amongst the many pamphlets you will find nos 1 and 2 of a series on the Fourth International, copies of the Socialist Charter and also the Soldiers Charter which attempted to agitate amongst members of the armed forces. There is also a shorter leaflet version of the Soldiers Charter produced by Leeds University Labour Students.
Other gems include Chris Knight’s pamphlet The First Revolution on the origins of human culture. A fascinating read but, sadly, our copy is missing the last page. And, from the same author comes the legendary pamphlet “My Sex Life” in conjunction with the Women and Labour Collective and the Chartist Minority Tendency.
Also of interest will be the joint discussion bulletin of the Socialist Charter and the IC-L
We list below Chartist publications that are of newspaper or journal format. For a complete archive on the Chartist Tendency, see the Splits & Fusion archive page on them.
Chartist Election Special October 19741974
Out Of Work- Chartist Special- Spring 1976
No. 71, October, 1978 (alternate scan)
Last updated on 12 August 2023