The Revolutionary Democratic Group (RDG) is a socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. They were founded in the early 1980s as a split from London and Scottish branches of the Socialist Workers Party, of which, for many years, they considered themselves an "external faction".
The ideological centre of the RDG is an explicit commitment to republicanism. The RDG believes that the far-left concentrates excessively on economic struggles without a clear focus on the need for democracy. The organisation developed the concept of the social monarchy to explain the nature of the British state and seeks to demonstrate links between the existence of the monarchy and the continuation of capitalism.
The RDG has consistently sought alliances with other socialist groups, with the aim of forming a larger, democratic socialist party. For example, they began working with the Socialist Federation in 1984. For the 1987 general election the RDG joined the Red Front, an electoral alliance spearheaded by the Revolutionary Communist Party. In 1988, they sought fusion talks with Red Action. In the late 1990s they joined Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, officially dissolving their organisation and becoming the Republican Group. They left, regained the RDG name and soon after joined the Socialist Alliance. They have patchy relations with Communist Party of Great Britain and occasionally have articles carried in the Weekly Worker. The RDG is also active within the United Socialist Party political initiative started by former Liverpool Dockers to build a new workers' party.
They briefly sold the Alliance for Workers' Liberty's newspaper Solidarity. The group occasionally produces one-off editions of its newspaper, Republican Worker. These are targeted at particular events, such as conferences or demonstrations.
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“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
“The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots.”
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