Revolutionary Communist Group
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The Revolutionary Communist Group is a communist group in the United Kingdom. It evolved from the "Right Opposition" of the International Socialists. The Right, or as they called themselves Revolutionary Opposition, had functioned for some time as an internal faction in IS and was strongly influenced by Roy Tearse once the Industrial organiser of the wartime Revolutionary Commuist Party.
When the Right Opposition was expelled its members met to decide on their course of action and disagreements between Tearse's allies, many based in Bristol, and the majority of the faction around David Yaffe rapidly surfaced. The result was that Tearse's friends formed the Discussion Group which led a quiet life for a number of years inside the Labour Party before dissolving. Meanwhile Yaffe's followers proceeded to found the Revolutionary Communist Group.
In its turn the RCG gave rise to the Revolutionary Communist Tendency led by Frank Richards, a cadre name for University of Kent sociologist, Frank Furedi. It developed into the Revolutionary Communist Party which published the review The Next Step.
The RCG began by publishing a theoretical journal called Revolutionary Communist in which it espoused an ultra-orthodox view of crisis theory, a theme they had already addressed in the IS when challenging the work of the theoreticians of that group.
The RCG rapidly developed a positive view of some of the traditional communist parties such as the South African Communist Party and from that position developed into a more orthodox communist grouping with a particular fondness for Cuba. They continue to publish their paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! more or less monthly.
By the end of the 1990s the much diminished RCG was experiencing internal problems as members alleged that the leadership was bureaucratic and failing to train the membership in Marxism-Leninism. The result was a split of the dissidents, calling themselves Communist Forum, but more often known by the name of their strident newsletter, Fightback. If anything Fightback is even more Third Worldist than the RCG and has opposed workers struggles in Britain.