The Party Is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism by Aidan Beatty

Paperback
Pluto Press
20 September 2024

‘A very readable and meticulous take-down that will be seen as a must-read source on left-wing politics from the 1930s to the twenty-first century’ Paul Le Blanc, author of Lenin

‘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of predominantly female members who exposed decades of sexual assault committed by Healy’ Camilla Fitzsimons, author of Repealed

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.