Cliff Slaughter

Cliff Slaughter (born 1928) is a British socialist activist and writer. His best-known works are Coal is our life (written with Norman Dennis and Fernando Henriques) and Marxism, Ideology and Literature; Index Books published his Not without a storm: towards a communist manifesto for the age of globalisation in 2006.

Early life

During the Second World War, Cliff Slaughter worked in a coal mine as one of the Bevin Boys. He later became a lecturer and writer on sociology and Marxism.

As a lecturer at the Universities of Leeds and Bradford, Slaughter joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. He left in 1956 following the Soviet invasion of Hungary and joined Gerry Healy's group The Club. Slaughter remained with the tendency for almost three decades, during which it became known as the Socialist Labour League and then the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). During this period, he was regarded as one of the group's leading intellectuals, and remained on the Central Committee.