The Socialist Equality Party is the name of several branches of the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the largest being in the United States. They are best known for publishing the World Socialist Web Site.

In the United States, the SEP ran Congressional candidates and a Presidential ticket in the 2004 elections. It nominated Bill Van Auken for President and Jim Lawrence for Vice-President in the 2004 Presidential elections, in which its main call was for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.

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 claimed that this was due to their criticisms of the Sri Lankan Lanka Sama Samaja Party. 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 he declared 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 1995. It is now based in Michigan and recently endorsed John Christopher Burton when he ran in the California recall.

Other Socialist Equality Parties linked to the one in the United States exist in Australia, Canada, Germany, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.

Presidential candidates

• 1984 - Edward Winn
• 1988 - Edward Winn
• 1992 - Helen Halyard
• 1996 - Jerome White
• 2004 - Bill Van Auken

External link

• World Socialist Web Site