Workers' Communist League of New Zealand

The WCL traced its roots to a 1970 split in the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ). A faction had emerged in Wellington, that saw the CPNZ as being under the control of a "bureaucratic, devious and drunken party leadership clique". The expelled faction, referred to by the CPNZ as the 'Manson-Bailey gang' after its leaders, Xinhua News Agency correspondent Rona Bailey and watersider Jack Manson, began building a rival organisation to the CPNZ. The group organised activities at campuses of Victoria University, against apartheid and the Vietnam War and in favour of Maori land rights. Ron Smith was among the cadres of the Wellington group that would become the WCL. The group was active in the New Zealand China Friendship Society, organizing student delegations to visit China. ==Working Women's Alliance==

The group led the formation of the Working Women's Alliance (WWA) in 1974, seeking to unite female workers and housewives into a platform of socialist feminism. The WWA set up branches in Wellington, Dunedin, Hamilton, Palmerston North and New Plymouth. By 1978 WWA had become largely defunct. == Wellington Marxist–Leninist Organisation ==

In 1976 the group took the name Wellington Marxist–Leninist Organisation. The group would be nick-named 'MILO'. MILO began publishing Unity in 1978. ==Formation of WCL==

In 1980 MILO merged with the Waikato-based Northern Communist Organisation and different campus-based groupings, forming the WCL. WCL upheld Marxism–Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, seeking to "unite democratic forces under working-class leadership to 'oppose fascism, imperialism and reaction in New Zealand' with 'mass struggle to defend living standards, democratic rights and oppose superpower contention'." The party was established on the foundation of democratic centralism. WCL functioned as an underground party. The membership was largely academics and students. The group also had a some presence among unemployed and industrial workers, in particular around Wellington. ==1981 anti-tour protest movement==

Opposition to rugby union exchanges with apartheid South Africa had organised in New Zealand since the 1960s, with the emergence of the Halt All Racist Tours movement. The WCL played a prominent role in the 1981 South Africa rugby union tour protests in Wellington, with a more "disciplined" approach compared to the chaotic protests in Auckland. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Robert Muldoon publicly attacked "members of subversive organisations" within the anti-tour movement, including many "known" and "probable" members of the WCL, with his controversial publication of a report prepared by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS). According to activist Don Carson, who later successfully sued for libel, Muldoon was "trying to drive a wedge between what the SIS described as the radicals and subversives, and the mainstream decent protesters." ==Tripod theory==

In the aftermath of the anti-tour protests, tensions arose between WCL cadres (who had key roles in the Halt All Racist Tours movement) and Maori radicals who wished to steer the energy of the anti-tour movement to local anti-racist and land rights causes (a proposition the WCL leadership rejected). The increasingly public debates between WCL and Maori activists brought Maori radical discourse to a wider audience, with Donna Awatere Huata articulating the views of the Maori movement in articles and literature. During 1982–1983 WCL revised its political model, and by 1984 the organisation came to reject the Leninist ideal of a proletarian vanguard party in favour of seeking to build a coalition of diverse forces struggling against capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism. ==Rights Centre and labour movement==

In 1983 the Auckland Unemployed Workers' Rights Centre was founded, at an assembly of unemployed workers, Auckland University students, WCL members, community workers, Auckland Trades Council representatives and Project Employment Programme workers. The majority of the Rights Centre founders came from WCL, such as Sue Bradford, Bill Bradford, Zoe Truell and Brian Avison. ==Later period==

As of the mid-1980s, WCL was estimated to have had around 120 members and a larger network of sympathizers. During the 1985 protests against the planned All Blacks tour in South Africa, WCL reportedly controlled the demonstration's marshals' committee of the Citizens Opposed to the Springbok Tour, thus effectively controlling the protest movement in Wellington. In the preparations for protests against the proposed 1985 tour, WCL sought to combat sexism throughout the protest movement. WCL remained active in anti-apartheid movements and organised solidarity campaigns for Central America. In its latter period WCL was led by Graeme Clarke. By the late 1980s WCL held formal conversations with the Trotskyist Socialist Action League about a possible merger, albeit no such unification materialized. ==Dissolution and launch of Left Currents==

By 1989 the group was estimated to have had some 50 members. The 16 March 1990 Unity issue stated that Left Currents intended to "build a revolutionary alliance for the forces struggling for Maori, women's and workers liberation" and that the organisation had removed the word 'communist' from its discourse due to its "negative associations with monolithic, patriarchal, excessively hierarchical, racist and/or national chauvinistic, and environmentally exploitative actions of communist parties in power". The history of the WCL is outlined in Ron Smith's 1994 autobiography Working Class Son: My Fight Against Capitalism and War. ==References==