Socialist Equality Party
The Socialist Equality Party is an American Trotskyist political party affiliated to the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).The origins of the SEP lie in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of the early 1960s. Tim Wohlforth was a youth leader in that party and was opposed to the course of the organisation. With others, including James Robertson, he formed a tendency within the SWP called the Revolutionary Tendency (RT). It developed links with Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League in Britain.
The two main leaders of the RT had different evaluations of the SWP. Robertson's position led the SWP to expel him and his supporters first. Wohlforth's split the RT by remaining in the SWP. His supporters formed a group named the Reorganised Minority Tendency, but were themselves expelled a short while later. They then formed the American Committee of the Fourth International (ACFI) and became the United States section of the ICFI, which by then was dominated by Healy.
The ACFI grew throughout the 1960s along with most leftist groupings. It used similar recruitment techniques to Healy's SLL, for instance drawing youth towards the group based on the organisation of events which combined entertainment and politics. Recruits were then encouraged to work for the group carrying out tasks at a frantic rate. The result was a high turnover of members through "burnout".
The ACFI was renamed the Workers League and developed into a nationwide organisation with hundreds of members, but suffered a collapse in 1972. As the leadership had so closely aligned themselves with Gerry Healy, when he decided that Wohlforth and Nancy Fields were no longer the right people to run the group and delcared that they were agents of the CIA they resigned from the group with little resistance.
In the midst of turmoil in Healy's group, by then called the Workers Revolutionary Party, the group renamed itself the Socialist Equality Party in 1984. It is now based in Michigan and occasionally endorses presidential candidates; it most recently endorsed John Christopher Burton when he ran in the California recall. The party publishes a website called the World Socialist Web Site and an occasional journal, the World Socialist Web Site Review.
The party has decided to nominate Bill Van Auken for President and Jim Lawrence for Vice-President in the 2004 Presidential elections.
Other Socialist Equality Parties linked to the one in the United States exist in Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.