The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is the successor group to the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT).
Nominally Trotskyist, the RCT sharply criticised other revolutionary parties for reformism, holding that the end of capitalism would only come through independent revolutionary politics that the RCT alone represented.
HN106 ‘Barry Tompkins’ spied on the RCT during its name change to the RCP between 1980 and October 1983. From 1983 until August 1985, the RCP was also infiltrated by HN19 ‘Malcolm Shearing’ , who sold papers for the group, and by HN122 ‘Neil Richardson’ , who spied on the west London branch between early 1990 and October 1991.
Before the name change, the RCT set up Workers Against Racism (WAR) in east and south London, which agitated against racist policing, campaigned for the removal of immigration controls and organised patrols to protect victims of racist attacks.
According to Michael Fitzpatrick, a prominent member of the RCP at the time, there was a conscious strategy to use the party as a vanguard that selectively intervened in communities to develop working-class consciousness.
The RCP published the theoretical journal Confrontation, in addition to The Next Step, the RCP Review, and, later, Living Marxism, through the party-owned publisher Junius Publications. Often taking provocative political positions, the RCP also pursued extensive propaganda and campaign work.
In 1982, it took an anti-British and pro-Argentinian position during the Falklands War, which, as with the RCT’s unconditional support for Irish republicanism, saw any defeat of the British abroad as a defeat of imperialism and capital.
Following on from WAR, the RCP set up another front organisation, the Irish Freedom Movement (IFM), focusing on anti-imperialism in Ireland.
The RCP publicly criticised the National Union of Mineworkers' strategy during the miners’ strike, when most left-wing groups were fundraising to support the dispute.
Frank Furedi of the RCP said that the working class did not exist politically, rendering class-based politics impossible. Abandoning its unique brand of Trotskyism, the RCP moved towards libertarianism, with an emphasis on free speech. It shifted away from activism and focused on publications including Living Marxism.
Post-RCP
The RCP was dissolved in 1996; many of its leading figures, including Frank Furedi and Claire Fox, became associated with Spiked Online and the Academy of Ideas. Appearing in public, notably during the 2016 European Union Referendum, many RCP members adopted conservative political views in later life.
Where work with WAR had involved advocating for no borders, some post-RCP members stood for the Brexit Party in the European Parliament, worked alongside Nigel Farage in UKIP and Reform, and worked for Boris Johnson. Now firmly entrenched on the right, ex-RCP members active in British public and political life include Clare Fox, Brendan O’Neill and Munira Mirza.
Sources
Michael Fitzpatrick: ‘The point is to change it': a short account of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Jack Hepworth: ‘Preparing for Power’: The Revolutionary Communist Party and its Curious Afterlives, 1976-2020.
Revolutionary Communist Party. Spinwatch.