Free Republic

here is no better précis of how the Left thinks about the world, and acts on it, than the British journalist Nick Cohen’s article appearing in the new issue of Standpoint. Cohen writes a candid appraisal of what left-wing politics did to the mind and life of the late actor Corin Redgrave, brother of the more famous Vanessa, who like her brother, is a lifetime member of a small fanatic Trotskyist sect, the Workers Revolutionary Party, led by a man named Gerry Healy. The group was so fanatic that it accused Trotsky’s American followers of having been responsible for his...

It would be simply impossible to gather from all the gushing press coverage last week about Corin Redgrave's Lear at Stratford what a truly terrifying influence he had in British theatrical circles for 20 years or more. As the most powerful member of the Trotskyite Workers Revolutionary Party within the actors union, Equity, he helped create political cells throughout the acting profession. Central to this was the nature of the WRP: it was less a conventional political movement than a fully-fledged cult, which monopolised the time, energy and financial resources of its members. At one level, the WRP was plain...