International Workers Party

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The International Workers Party (IWP) was a Marxist political organization founded by organizer, playwright and psychotherapist Fred Newman.

[edit] Origins

The IWP had its roots in Centers for Change, a radical community organizing project led by Newman in New York City in the early 1970s. Newman led the CFC into a brief alliance (1973-74) and even briefer merger (three months in 1974) with Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC); the association began shortly after the conclusion of LaRouche's "Operation Mop Up," a series of violent NCLC attacks on other leftist groups.

Newman and 38 of his followers issued an open letter (August 1974) in which they announced they were leaving the NCLC and forming the IWP. The latter, they proclaimed, would be the true vanguard party that would lead the supposedly impending (within months) revolution of the working class against Rockefeller fascism.

In 1975, the IWP was joined by four Trotskyists who had previously constituted themselves as the Class Unity Faction within the Workers World Party but had been forced out as a result of their opposition to the WWP leadership's supposed reformism.

The Trotskyists and a handful of disillusioned former CFCers then split away in 1976 to form the short-lived "Communist Cadre" organization.

Later that year, Newman announced the IWP was being abolished so that he and his associates could concentrate on community organizing. But a Manhattan newspaper, Heights and Valley News, published quotes in 1977 from IWP internal bulletins indicating that the party still existed as an underground formation.

[edit] Ideas and Practices

The IWP considered itself a revolutionary organization.

[edit] After the 1970s

Newman and his followers created an array of public organizations of which the most important were the New Alliance Party (NAP), an electoral party, which at its 1979 inception considered itself "pro-socialist" but also had a broader issue-oriented appeal; the All Stars Talent Show Network, a national youth program which staged talent competitions; and the Castillo Center, a theater and arts facility in Manhattan that would later merge with All Stars (more on All Stars below).

The NAP reached out to individuals and organizations interested in multiculturalism and empowerment. It ran candidates, organized forums and published a weekly newspaper. In 1988 the New Alliance Party fielded Lenora Fulani for President, organizing a national drive that resulted in her becoming the first woman and the first African American to be on the ballot in all 50 states.