The Working People's Alliance is a social democratic political party in Guyana. WPA was founded in 1974, as an alliance of Working People's Vanguard Party, Association for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa, Indian Political Revolutionary Associates and Ratoon.[1]
At the elections, 19 March 2001, an alliance of the Guyana Action Party with the Working People's Alliance won 2.4% of the popular vote and two out of 65 seats. In 2005 one of the 2 MPs left the party to join the Alliance for Change. Its coalition with the Guyana Action Party also ended. Results of the August 2006 elections for the WPA are not yet available, but it definitely did not improve on its 2001 performance.
WPA is the party of the historian Walter Rodney, who was assassinated during an election campaign in 1980. It has never been the ruling party in Guyana. Usually it has been the third largest political party in Guyana, but its strength has been decreasing.
Working People's Vanguard Party (WPVP) was a small, Maoist political party in Guyana. It was formed through a split in the People's Progressive Party (PPP) in the 1960s. The party was led by Brindley Benn and Victor Downer. Initially the party advocated a violent overthrow of the PNC government. WPVP took part in the formation of the Working People's Alliance in 1974. During the 1980s, WPVP joined forces with the right-wing Liberator Party and formed the Vanguard for Liberation and Democracy.[1][2]
The Working People's Party of England (WPPE) was a Marxist-Leninist political party in England.
Its origins lay in the break-up of the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity. Of those who had not joined the Action Centre for Marxist-Leninist Unity, a group in Islington founded the "Islington Workers' Committee", which in 1966 became the "London Workers' Committee". They published the London Workers' Broadsheet, and in May 1968, they formed the "Working People's Party of England".[1]
The group had five main principles:
The party was led by Paul Noone, a prominent member of the small Medical Practitioners Union. It developed links with the Workers' Party of Scotland (Marxist-Leninist), but suffered a split when a section of members left to form the Committee for a Socialist Programme. According to Barbaris et al., the English People's Liberation Army may also have originated in the WPPE.
In 1975, the party began publishing Workers' Newsletter, and in 1980 it renamed itself the Workers' Newsletter Group. In 1985, it again changed its name, to the Workers' Association (not to be confused with the group linked to the British and Irish Communist Organisation ) , but it appears to have disbanded the following year.