Fourth Internationalist Tendency (Group)

The Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT) was a Trotskyist organization formed in 1983 after a factional split within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In the period 1981-1983 a number of leading members of the SWP, including George Breitman and Frank Lovell, created dissident factions within the Party and were soon expelled. Among the issues involved were differences over the SWP's turn toward "Castroism" and the question of affiliation and cooperation with the Fourth International. A 1982 speech by SWP leader Jack Barnes, "Their Trotsky and Ours," led to further defections and expulsions. A group of expelled members, led by Breitman and Lovell, went on to form the FIT in 1983. Other founding members of FIT included Paul Le Blanc, Evelyn Sell and Steve Bloom. Although expelled, the group considered itself an "external faction" of the SWP, and continued to try and influence the Party, without noticeable success. In 1990 the SWP, long estranged from the Fourth International, finally withdrew from the international body. This development caused the FIT to reassess its relationship to the SWP. The result was that the FIT disbanded in 1992 and merged with another Trotskyist organization, Solidarity, in 1993.

From the guide to the Fourth Internationalist Tendency Records, 1984-1992, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)