WORKERS AID Lo Bosnia FRANCIS Ambrose Ridley died on March 27 at an old age home. He was the last link with the generation inspired by the October revolution who resisted its Stalinist distortion.
Frank founded the Marxian League in 1920, which became the first group to disseminate the writings of Leon Trotsky following his exile from the Soviet Union.
Pioneer Trotskyists, including Hugo Dewar and Reg Groves, gained their inspiration and training from him.
Frank played an important part in influencing Sri Lankan revolutionaries - including Colvin de Silva and Phillip Gunawardena - towards Trotskyism.
He fell out with Trotsky over the formation of a new International, Ridley prematurely calling for it before its necessity was established following Hitler's victory in 1933.
Frank gravitated towards the ILP, becoming one of its principal theoreticians. The Marxist groupings in the ILP regarded him as a maverick, oscillating from ultra-leftism to centrism, whilst Fenner Brockway et al viewed him as a Trotskyist.
Despite his disagreements with 'the Old Man' and the Trotskyist movement, he wrote a moving tribute to Trotsky in "Socialist Leader' after his assassination in 1940.
Ridley actively supported efforts made by the RCP to expose the Moscow Trials, particularly during the Nuremberg trials when demands were made to cross examine Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former Deputy, about allegations that Trotsky had collaborated with the Nazis in the pre-war period.
He had some fifty works catalogued in the British Library ranging from materialist studies of Christianity and Islam, to studies on the rise of fascism and Nazism.
On the 50th Anniversary of the Fourth International Frank sent a message of solidarity.
His importance in the formative phase of the movement cannot be understated.