Weekly Worker

Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)

"CPGB": Time to tell the truth

The pathetic intervention of the CPGB at the AWL-Machover on Sunday has been followed by an even more pathetic write up in its paper, the Weekly Worker (16 October). Interestingly, it does not print what its own comrades said – as we have in Solidarity – since to do so would expose the apolitical...

John Bridge: ‘Drive AWL social imperialists out of the labour movement’

Listening to Sean, it felt like he was living on a different planet... I heard a caricature description of the left. I felt “is he talking to the SWP or is he talking to the CPGB, is he talking to people in this room or is he talking to people in his imagination?” Quite clearly he’s talking to people in his own fertile imagination, because he wasn’t talking to anybody who’s his opponent in this room. We were told in his AWL leaflets that the main question today is Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons and preparing to attack little Israel. Sorry comrades, you’ve got it the wrong way around...

Mike McNair: political dominance in the world

There is a basic thing missing the arguments of the comrades of the AWL... The world is not composed of a flat system of states which are all equal to one another. The... inequality between these states is not purely economic... There is politically constituted exploitation in the modern world. There are systematic hierarchical links between states... the dominance of one state over another state, dependency of one state on another state. There is only one year post-1945 when British troops have not been in action, in counter-insurgency work overseas. Where have British troops been involved in...

Peter Manson: ‘we do not tell lies’

I’m the editor of the Weekly Worker... The Weekly Worker does not publish lies... It’s counter-productive to tell lies, especially when you’re engaged in polemics against another organisation. It’s counterproductive to misrepresent them knowingly. Sometimes we make mistakes as all people do but we do not tell lies, not while I’m editor we don’t. When we said on our front page that Sean Matgamna was excusing a nuclear attack on Iran, that was our understanding of it... He said that faced with the Tehran lunatics — if I may be allowed to paraphrase — Israel’s got the right to self-defence...

Israel-Iran debate: the real issues become clearer

On one level, the debate between Sean Matgamna of Workers’ Liberty and Moshe Machover in London on 12 October was a re-run of an old argument within the left. Sean Matgamna argued that socialists should fight for a “two-states” settlement in Israel-Palestine – a really independent Palestinian state, in contiguous territory, alongside Israel. Moshe Machover insisted that the “overthrow” of Israel (or, as he put it in the prior written debate, “anything like” present-day Israel) is a precondition for peace. As Dave Ball noted from the floor, this is perhaps the most emotionally-charged debate on...

Weekly Worker Chickens Out of Israel Debate

Song of the Weekly Worker I'm so small! But I'm poisonous too; What I say is at best but half-true: I spread gossip thin, So they'll think I'm well in; But I'm useful, torn up in the loo! Readers may remember that on 3 August I challenged the people who publish the Weekly Worker to "debate with me publicly on the Israel-Palestine question, at a meeting presided over by a commonly agreed chair". That was in response to a ridiculous campaign they were - and are - running around the assertion that I, in Solidarity 3/136 . "excused an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran". It is a straightforward lie...

"Zionism: propaganda and sordid reality" ... Moshé Machover replies to Sean Matgamna

Click here for the whole debate and here for Sean Matgamna's article to which this is a reply. The AWL’s Sean Matgamna has swallowed a large chunk of Israeli propaganda, writes Moshé Machover. But is he really so naive? In the July 24 issue of Solidarity, organ of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Sean Matgamna published an article, ‘What if Israel bombs Iran?’, in which he argued against an outright condemnation of Israel in case it launches an attack on Iran. I responded with a brief polemic against him in the Weekly Worker (‘Abominable Warmongering Left’, August 28). SM has now come back...

Weekly Worker Group ("CPGB") and Its Fatuous Gossip Sheet

Song of the Weekly Worker I'm so small! But I'm poisonous too; What I say is at best but half-true: I spread gossip thin, So they'll think I'm well in; But I'm useful, torn up in the loo! The lying cover of the fatuous gossip-sheet Weekly Worker [showing a nuclear-bomb mushroom-cloud, with the headline: "AWL's Sean Matgamna: excusing a nuclear attack on Iran"!] is only the tip of a small iceberg of hysterical lying about Sean Matgamna, a writer for Solidarity, that they have set afloat over the last two weeks. Craziest is the lie that he "excuses" an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran. Lying about...

CPGB – third period Stalinists

The prize for the most hysterical response to Sean’s article on Israel, Iran and nuclear weapons goes inevitably to the CPGB (Weekly Worker, 31 July). No doubt keen to drum up some interest in the callow summer event they call “the Communist University”, the gossip-sheet devotes its cover and three...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.