![]() ![]() But its emphasis on activism, going directly to the workers and breaking with the propagandist traditions of earlier Trotskyist organisations, as well as the opportunities small-group politics offered, appealed strongly to Healy. The WIL had only 50 members before the 1939-45 war. Healy joined the new organisation and endorsed its decision to remain outside the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), the newly-unified Trotskyist organisation, and thus outside the Fourth International, founded in September 1938. In the face of unsubstantiated allegations about his misappropriation of trade-union funds in his native South Africa, Ralph Lee led his supporters out of the Militant Group to establish the Workers’ International League (WIL). He was soon known for that combination of organisational energy and theoretical naïveté that would endure throughout his career, and he quickly experienced the first of the numerous splits that would stud his political trajectory. In August 1937, nominated by Denzil Harber and seconded by John Archer, Healy became a member of the group’s Paddington branch. The following year he was recruited by Jock Haston, who exercised a lasting influence on him, into the Militant Group, one of Britain’s three small Trotskyist organisations. Healy first enters history in 1936 as a member of the Westminster branch of the CPGB. ![]() In a near-contemporary comment and letter, he states only that he had been a member of the YCL, that he had spent ‘several years in the CP’ and that his political development was ‘amateurish’ (Archer Papers, Militant Group Aggregate, 14 November 1937 MRC, Deane Papers, A41(11), Healy to J Deane, nd ). His much publicised recollections of his father’s death at the hands of the Black and Tans, of acting as a Comintern courier and quitting the Communist Party (CPGB) after disputation with Harry Pollitt over the USSR’s role in Spain, have left no trace on the historical record. His sister’s early death from tuberculosis led him to break with his past and around 1931 he joined the Young Communist League (YCL). When he was 14 he went to England with his sister and subsequently he became a seaman. His hard early years, his father’s desertion and his Catholic education marked him for life. His parents, Michael and Margaret Mary Healy, eked out a living as small farmers on the bleak west coast. Gerry Healy was born in Ballybane, County Galway, Ireland on 3 December 1913. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers. Reproduced here with the permission of Professor John McIlroy. Source: Keith Gilbert and David Howell (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, Volume 12, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2005, copyright (c) Professor John McIlroy. John McIlroy Thomas Gerard (Gerry) Healy (1913-1989): Trotskyist Leader ![]() Thomas Gerard (Gerry) Healy (1913-1989): Trotskyist Leader by John McIlroy ![]()
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