International Committee of the Fourth International

1938-61: The Fourth International and the formation of the ICFI

The Fourth International (FI) was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his followers. The FI had previously been organised as the International Left Opposition since 1923 within the Communist International. Its American section was the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), led by James P. Cannon. Its British section was the Revolutionary Socialist League, which merged with the smaller Workers' International League (WIL) in 1944 to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). One of the leaders of the WIL was Gerry Healy, who would later split from the RCP to form "the Club", which became the Socialist Labour League, later (from 1973) called Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). Cannon and Healy were close politically.^{[citation needed]}

On 3-4 October 1953, representatives from The Club, the Internationalist Communist Party, the Swiss section of the FI and a member of the SWP met to form a faction opposing Pabloism and liquidationism. At a meeting on 7-8 November 1953, the US SWP came into conflict with the FI's leadership for expelling a faction within their party, and was criticised in a letter written on 16 November for undermining the unity and principles of the FI.

In the same meeting, the SWP adopted A Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World. which was then published in The Militant on 16 November 1953. The SWP's letter, which criticised Michel Pablo's leadership and urged sections to demand the removal of him and his allies, was backed by the "Resolution Forming the International Committee" published on 23 November 1953. The resolution had been signed by the sections that had met in October, along with a member from a New Zealand section who was allegedly actually Farrell Dobbs of the US SWP. The resolution officially organised the faction into the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), claiming to represent the majority of Trotskyists in the Fourth International.

In response, the International Executive Committee (IEC) of the Fourth International suspended members in the IEC who signed either declaration or were in leadership roles of supporting organisations. This meeting, held on 26-28 December, also recognised the expelled minorities of the US and UK sections as the legitimate sections and replaced Gerry Healy from his positions in favour of John Lawrence.

Over the following decade, the ICFI referred to the rest of the International as the "International Secretariat of the Fourth International", emphasising its view that the Secretariat did not speak for the International as a whole. While presenting it self as an international, the group did not hold full congresses and was described by Pierre Frank as acting more like a political faction.

Following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the ICFI published a manifesto in November of the same year supporting the uprising against Stalinism.

A world conference was held in 1958 in Leeds and was led by the SWP's delegates. Latin American delegates complained of the SWP's attitudes towards the ICFI, and their stance on reunification with the International Secretariat.

By 1961 the ICFI had split politically: Lambert’s Internationalist Communist Party (PCI) in France and Healy’s Socialist Labour League (SLL) in Britain argued that a workers' state had not been created in Cuba, putting them at odds with the American SWP and the other organisations in the ICFI.^{[full citation needed]} By 1963, the split was also organizational. Each side held a congress at which it claimed to be the majority of the ICFI. On the one hand, the remaining Austrian, Chinese and New Zealand IC groups, which had not already unified, met at a congress with the SWP and voted to take part in the reunification congress. On the other hand, the PCI and SLL called an "International Conference of Trotskyists" to continue the work of the ICFI under their own leadership.

1962-1985: The reunified International and the split on ICFI

In 1962 the International Committee and International Secretariat (the term that the ICFI used to refer to the Fourth International Secretariat led by Michel Pablo) formed a Parity Commission to organise a common World Congress.^{[citation needed]}

At the June 1963 reunification congress held in Italy, the two sections reunified, electing the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) to replace the former groups. The British and French parties in the ICFI did not join this reunified congress, as they believed that Michel Pablo's ideas should be completely rejected before reunification could occur.

The remainder of the ICFI held a conference opposing the USFI in April 1966, hosted in London.

By 1971, the ICFI began collapsing due to disagreements between Gerry Healy and Pierre Lambert. The group met seven times between the early 1970s and 1985, and affiliates numbered maximum 10–12. In 1971/1972, the IC split in two. The Socialist Labour League under Gerry Healy kept the name while the Internationalist Communist Organisation under Pierre Lambert left to create the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (CORQI).

1985: after Healy

In 1985, Healy was expelled from the WRP. This had come as a result of several allegations of sexual assault made against him.

The WRP collapsed into ten smaller organisations One faction, under the leadership of Sheila Torrance, retained the name WRP and daily newspaper The News Line. A further split from this, in 1987, was the Healy-loyal Marxist Party, including Vanessa and Corin Redgrave. Both groupuscules maintained small international organisations claiming the name ICFI, the former still extant, the latter moribund by the late 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

In 1986 Dave Hyland broke away from the WRP to form the International Communist Party, which he led until his death in 2013. This group maintained itself as Orthodox Trotskyist, and was backed by the US Workers League National Secretary, David North. This group created their own ICFI, with groups in Australia, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UK, and the USA. In 2016, the group also expanded to France and New Zealand.

This group supported the perspective advanced by ICFI and won the support of a majority of sections of the ICFI to expel the WRP from the organization, deciding that any supporters of theirs among the WRP would have to undergo a reregistration of membership based on recognizing the ICFI's political authority to be readmitted. They argued that “the WRP tended to view the international organization as little more than an adjunct to its own British-based organization”.

In 1995, the International Communist Party renamed itself to the Socialist Equality Party. In 1998, the ICFI launched the World Socialist Web Site. ICFI runs the publishing house Mehring Books, formerly named Labor Publications. In 2006, the Socialist Equality Party relaunched its student movement (the Students for Social Equality) as the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE). In 2012, the SEP renamed the ISSE as the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).

Works cited