Left groups and people

Socialist Green Unity Coalition, Respect, SWP, Socialist Party, Weekly Worker, IWCA, RDG, Green Party, Ken Livingstone ... and a few others.

The "Bad King Cliff" account of what went wrong in IS

In discussing the history of IS — Jim Higgins’ book is an example of it — there is a danger of scapegoating Cliff. For people like Higgins the "Bagehot Question" arises. Walter Bagehot, the Victorian political economist and analyst of the British constitution, asked the question concerning the then reclusive Queen and her playboy son, the future Edward VII: How does it come about that "a retired widow and her unemployed son" can play the pivotal role in the legal structures of the British constitution? How could "Dr Ruth" achieve such power in the organisation that prided itself — to a...

To Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

They slew you in their beastly rage. Because you dared the struggle Wage With tyrants and with traitors too— The traitors feared and so they slew. Deluded naves! Your lifeless tongues More potent now in martyr songs Will trumpet forth the truth until, The very earth will rock and thrill; And thrones and states will crash and fall— And labor triumphs over all. * * So comrades, sleep—your Work is done; Sleep on! The battle will be won.

"Brittle, Irrational and Childlike" - Response to Mark Fischer

On 4 April the Weekly Worker newspaper published a letter from Weekly Worker/CPGB full-time organiser Mark Fischer referring to me (but not mentioning me by name). The letter referred to a real incident in which I was leafleting outside my workplace in defence of a Weekly Worker supporter who is being victimised by our management. When leading Sheffield SWPer Maxine Bowler appeared and went into the building, I became quite upset. The letter claims this is because of Bowler's role on the SWP Disputes Committee in the Martin Smith case, and goes into a laboured attempt at satire (perhaps I...

Faction fight in the SWP: the oppositions' documents, and the leadership's reply

There is currently a faction fight underway in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Britain's largest far-left group. In the interests of openness and the widest possible debate on the left, we reproduce the key publicly-available documents here. Statement of the SWP Democratic Opposition Four comrades have been expelled for forming a ‘secret faction’ during the discussions prior to SWP conference. The expelled members had been legitimately concerned about the handling of very serious allegations directed at a CC member and the way that this was being handled by the organisation and had...

Why “Militant Students” are so right-wing

We invite Socialist Appeal/Militant Student to debate these issues at a public meeting at UCL in the new term. At the end of November, students at University College London organised an occupation in protest at UCL management's plans to buy out and demolish the Carpenters Estate in Newham, evicting 300 families. It was an impressive symbol of the solidarity being built between students at one of London's more privileged academic institutions and the working-class community their university management is attempting to destroy. The biggest socialist group at UCL is “UCL Marxists”, run by members...

Healy's WRP: the inside story

The Workers Revolutionary Party was the largest group on the revolutionary left until the mid-1970s, and a sizeable force until it collapsed in 1985. Here, Richard Price, a former member of the WRP, reviews Come The Revolution: A Memoir, by Alex Mitchell. Mitchell was the editor of the WRP paper from the early 1970s until 1985. He quit politics without explanation in 1986, returned to his native Australia, and made a career in mainstream journalism. Now Mitchell has written an autobiography. In October 1985 the Workers Revolutionary Party split explosively, amid allegations of sexual abuse of...

Labour Briefing: a double coup?

Earlier this year the left saw the equivalent of a small dinosaur walking down the street. Labour Briefing magazine had, as its front page, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s slogan “Prenez le pouvoir” — “take the power”. Mélenchon wouldn’t have known it, but for the inner core of Briefing, and for older readers, the slogan evokes a lot. The people who launched Briefing in February 1980 were veterans of the Revolutionary Communist League of the 1970s, a would-be Trotskyist group distinguished from others by its slogan “Labour Take The Power”. For them that meant a call on the Labour Party, not just to take...

Anti-capitalist, pro-what?

On 28 April seventy or eighty activists came together in London, at a meeting primarily organised by a group of people (Simon Hardy, Luke Cooper, and others) who had just quit the Workers' Power organisation. The meeting set up an "Anti-Capitalist Initiative" . The initiative will start a website for coordination and discussion; establish a coordinating group; and have a day or weekend school in the summer, a conference in the autumn. It wants "unity and co-operation"; to "overcome division and sectarianism"; and "wider discussion". This open letter, addressed both to the ex-WP grouping and to...

Un appel au NPA: non à la scission !

Un appel au NPA: non à la scission ! Martin Thomas Pour le Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste français (Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste - NPA), et l'ex-LCR (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire) qui est le coeur du NPA, scissionner maintenant serait un revers considérable, non seulement pour les militants en France, mais pour nous tous qui se battons pour l’auto-émancipation de la classe ouvrière à travers toute l'Europe. Les rapports en provenance de la France indiquent déjà «une scission à froid», et une scission ouverte après les élections de l'Assemblée législative en juin. À la fin de mars, les...

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