Arthur Deane¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter is an obituary for Arthur Deane (1922–2012), written by Alan Woods, which uses the life of one working-class militant to illuminate the early history of British Trotskyism. The core narrative thrust is twofold: to honour Deane’s personal contribution and to stress the collective, familial, and deeply rooted character of the revolutionary socialist tradition on Merseyside.
Woods establishes that Arthur Deane came from a line of working-class militants. His mother, Gertie Deane, was a redoubtable figure on picket lines into her seventies, whose own father had been a member of the old Social Democratic Federation and one of Liverpool’s first Labour councillors. The chapter paints a vivid, unsentimental picture of the Deane household: Gertie’s dedication to political activism was such that domestic order fell to her eldest son, Jimmy, who maintained discipline, occasionally physical, over his younger brothers. This detail grounds the family’s politics in a specific, material domestic reality.
The key claim is that the Deane brothers—Jimmy, Arthur, and Brian—played an outstanding role in British Trotskyism’s formative years. All three were active in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in the 1940s, a period Woods notes is well covered in Ted Grant’s History of British Trotskyism. After the RCP’s dissolution in 1949, they were central to regrouping the forces that remained loyal to genuine Trotskyism. Woods is careful to correct a common designation: the Marxist tendency of the early 1950s was often called ‘the Deane group’, but he insists it would be more correct to call it the Ted Grant group, as Grant provided the ideas and was its leading figure. This is a notable polemical clarification, guarding against personality-based factionalism and asserting the primacy of theoretical leadership over organisational prominence.
The chapter draws on Woods’s own memory of joining the Militant Tendency in the 1960s. He recalls Arthur Deane’s speeches at National Committee meetings in a King’s Cross pub, which made a great impression on him as a young student. Arthur became a trade union official for the Chemical Workers’ Union (later fusing with the TGWU) and wrote for the Militant newspaper. Woods cites specific articles—‘Labour Must Keep Prices Down’ (Issue 4, March 1965) and ‘TGWU Gives the Lead on Incomes Policy’ (Issue 6, May 1965)—to evidence Deane’s practical engagement with working-class economic struggles. The obituary closes with a final meeting at Ted Grant’s funeral in 2006, framing Arthur Deane as one of the very last pioneers of British Trotskyism. The tone is one of irreparable loss, but also of revolutionary enthusiasm, exemplified by the memory of Arthur and Gertie singing the Polish Red Flag with more enthusiasm than talent.