The Red Party is a tiny new revolutionary socialist organisation in Britain formed by former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (PCC), the Alliance for Workers Liberty, and the Peace Party . Founded in July 2004, in August the group published the first issue of its paper, the Red Star.
Politically the Red Party has some continuity with the Red Platform of the CPGB. The platform was formed in April 2004 in opposition to the CPGB's electoral support for RESPECT The Unity Coalition, and aimed to reverse the CPGB's withdrawal from the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform . It also argued for greater democracy and humanism in the party's internal structure. Though it won the battle to take the CPGB back into the SADP, most of the platform members left following disputes over the publication of their views in the Weekly Worker.
The Red Party regards the division of the left into separate groups as natural, and even a healthy sign that socialists are arguing out complicated questions of programme. It believes the left has "lost its way" through sectarianism, which it defines as the refusal to unite in a single workers' party unless each group's own programmatic demands are met. It further believes that the left focuses primarily on arguing these programmatic issues internally, rather than taking basic socialist arguments to the working class as a whole. It places an emphasis on plain language arguments for socialism.
The Red Party lays emphasis on humanism, and believes that the left has elevated the undemocratic tactical compromises forced on Vladimir Lenin in defence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 into principle.
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