Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

WRP Against revolutionary violence


Published: New Age, No. 8, November 1978
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.


The bourgeois courts have recently provided an interesting forum for the self-exposure of the so-called ’Workers Revolutionary Party’, which claims to be the very last word in revolutionary socialism.

Leading members of this supposedly ’revolutionary’ party, including millionaire actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, recently sued the ’Observer’ newspaper for a story it carried in September 1975 which alleged (incorrectly in the CWM’s opinion) that the WRP was dedicated to overthrowing the bourgeois state by means of revolutionary violence.

Counsel for the WRP, Mr. Williters, said, they are fundamentally opposed to violence and force. They believe they can achieve their aims by educating people in their beliefs.

When a WRP document supporting revolutionary violence was read to the court, it was stated that it only referred to violence being forced upon the working class following a fascist take­over, thus conveniently forgetting that all states are, as Lenin pointed out, instruments by which one class suppresses another. Corin Redgrave said that he would leave the party the moment it declared itself to be in favour of revolutionary violence.

The WRP’s desire to rescue its reputation in the bourgeois courts and the fact that they confine their violence to social fascist attacks on progressive people who have the temerity to disagree with the thugs who sell their rag, ’News Line’, shows that they have completely forgotten Lenin’s teachings on the state and on proletarian revolution.