The Party is Always Right
The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism
A working-class movement betrayed from within
Love it or hate it, it's hard to deny that British Trotskyism created some fascinating stories. Finding themselves increasingly irrelevant in modern politics, these political sects often became twisted aberrations of Comrade Trotsky's ideals. Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party was no exception.
This new biography tells the story of Healy's life, picking apart fact from fiction, to reveal a man rotten to the core with authoritarian tendencies. Saturating the party with his personality, Healy took advantage of his comrades' trust and revolutionary zeal, eventually forcing a split in 1985.
This is a tragic story in the history of Communism, wracked with accounts of abuse, collaboration with the state and vicious infighting. It also reveals the dangers of male-dominated political movements, secular cults, and celebrity culture, and is an important reminder of what can happen when a working-class movement is betrayed from within.
Aidan Beatty is an award-winning historian and lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Private Property and the Fear of Social Chaos, and Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, which was awarded the James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize. He has written for Jacobin, the Irish Times and the Washington Post. He will be the president of the American Conference for Irish Studies in 2025.
'Displaying scant sympathy for Gerry Healy, the substantial groups that Healy led, and the Leninist-Trotskyist traditions that Healy claimed to represent, Aidan Beatty nonetheless produces a very readable, meticulously documented take-down that will be seen as a “must-read” source on left-wing politics from the 1930s to the dawn of the twenty-first century.'
- Paul Le Blanc, author of Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution'A meticulously researched deep dive into a political ideology that clung to a flawed orthodoxy and repeatedly failed to adapt to its global context. Aidan Beatty skilfully brings us into this sexist, ultra-hierarchical world, highlighting the courageous actions of predominantly female members who exposed decades of sexual assault committed by Healy which led to his eventual expulsion from the Workers Revolutionary Party.'
- Camilla Fitzsimons, author of Repealed: Ireland’s Ongoing Fight for Reproductive Rights'A detailed look inside the horrifying world of Gerry Healy and the groups he led. This is a cautionary tale of how the dedication of ordinary people prepared to make extraordinary sacrifices for socialist change could be abused in the most disgusting way.'
- Paul Murphy TD, People Before Profit, IrelandPreface
1. Ultra-Leftism, 1913-1959
2. Healyism
3. I Specialise In Clique Busting, 1959-1972
4. The One with the Money
5. I Am The Party, 1973-1984
6. Identity Politics
7. The Split, 1985
8. Spycraft
9. Legacies, After 1985
10. Epilogue: Twenty-first-century Healyism
Notes
Bibliography
eBook ISBN: 9780745348735
140mm x 216mm