- Not to be confused with Harry M. Wicks (1889-1956) of the Communist Party USA, who was a Comintern representative to Australia.
Harry Wicks (16 August 1905 - 26 March 1989) was a British socialist activist.
Biography
Born in Battersea, London, he went to work on the railways and joined the National Union of Railwaymen in 1919. He joined the Labour Party, but after Black Friday moved to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). After studying with A. E. E. Reade, he came to support Leon Trotsky and the International Left Opposition.
Elected to the executive of the Young Communist League in 1926, Wicks attended the International Lenin School in Moscow and the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern. He began working with the Balham Group of Trotskyists, and was expelled from the CPGB in 1932. He became a founding member of the Communist League and met Trotsky in Copenhagen but disagreed with Trotsky's advice to join the Independent Labour Party, instead splitting the Communist League and founding the Marxist League, working within the Labour Party. He also chaired the British Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky.
Wicks began working with C. L. R. James of the Marxist Group, and in 1938 their tendencies merged to form the Revolutionary Socialist League. However, Wicks left soon after to form the Socialist Anti-War Federation. In 1940, this group dissolved and he joined the Independent Labour Party.
At the end of World War II, Wicks joined the Labour Party and became active in NALGO. In 1971, he became involved with the Trotskyist movement again, joining the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He was part of the split which formed the Workers League, but soon rejoined the SWP.
References
- Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, Against the stream
- Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, War and The International
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography