Workers World Party - History

History

The distant origins of the WWP go back to the Global Class War Tendency, led by Sam Marcy and Vincent Copeland, within the Socialist Workers Party. This group first crystallized during the presidential election of 1948 when they urged the SWP to back Henry Wallaces's Progressive Party campaign, rather than field their own candidates. Throughout the 1950s the GCWT expressed positions at odds with official SWP policy, categorizing the Korean War as a class, rather than imperialist, conflict; support of the People's Republic of China as a workers' state, if not necessarily supporting the Mao leadership; and supporting the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviet Union in 1956.

The Global Class War Tendency left the SWP in early 1959. In their May day issue of their new periodical, its third number, the group proclaimed "We are THE Trotskyists. We stand 100% with all the principled positions of Leon Trotsky, the most revolutionary communist since Lenin". The sect appears to have organized officially as the Workers World Party in February 1960. At its inception the WWP was concentrated among among the "working class" in Buffalo, Youngstown, Seattle and New York. A youth organization, first known as the Anti-Fascist Youth Committee, and later as Youth Against War and Fascism was created in April 1962.

From the beginning both the WWP and the YAWF concentrated their energies on street demonstrations. Early campaigns focused on support of Patrice Lumumba, opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and against racial discrimination in housing. They conducted the first protest against American involvement in Vietnam on August 2, 1962. Their opposition to the war also included the tactics of "draft resistance" and "GI resistance". After organizing demonstrations at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in support of a soldier being tried for possessing anti-war literature, they founded the American Servicemens Union, intended to be a mass organization of American soldiers. However, the group was completely dominated by the WWP and YAWF.

During the late 1960s and 1970s the Party threw itself into protests for a number of other causes, including "defen of the heroic black uprisings in Watts, Newark, Detroit, Harlem" and women's liberation. During the Attica Prison riot the rioters requested a YAWF member, Tom Soto, to present their grievances for them. The WWP was most successful in organizing demonstrations in support of desegregation "busing" in the Boston schools in 1975. Nearly 30,000 people attended the Boston March Against Racism, which they had organized. Also during the 1970s they attempted to begin work inside organized labor, but apparently were not very successful.

In 1980 the WWP began to participate in electoral politics, naming a presidential ticket, as well as candidates for New York Senate, congressional and state legislature seats. In California they ran their candidate, Deidre Griswold, for in the primary for the Peace and Freedom Party nomination. They came in last with 1,232 votes out of 9,092. In 1984 the WWP supported Jesse Jacksons bid for the Democratic nomination, but when he lost in the primaries they nominated their own presidential ticket, along with a handful of congressional and legislative nominees.