Weekly Worker

On 15 November Southwark NUT agreed a motion proposed by a member or sympathiser of the Weekly Worker grouplet. The motion (attached) passed with ten votes in favour, to my vote against, and a couple of abstentions. It will be submitted by Southwark NUT to our annual conference.

The WW leaders – notorious liars with malleable politics - are currently positioning themselves as the go-to people for ‘left’ antisemites, defending Livingstone - amongst others - against justifiable charges of antisemitism.

Had it not been distributed as a leaflet at this year’s Labour Party conference, Moshe Machover’s article “Anti-Zionism Does Not Equal Anti-Semitism” would have been just another turgid and distasteful article which had found a natural home for itself in the pages of the Weekly Worker.

A longer version of the same article – entitled “Don’t Apologise – Attack” – had been published in Weekly Worker four months earlier. According to that article:

Moshe Machover, members of Labour Party Marxists, a front for the "CPGB" group, which publishes the Weekly Worker newspaper, have been expelled from the Labour Party.

Labour Party Marxists distributed a leaflet at the recent Labour Party conference, extensively quoting Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, appearing to support the creation of a "Jewish state", to justify the outrageous claim that Nazism and Zionism share an essential ideological core.

Afghanistan’s “Great Saur Revolution”, in April 1978, and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that flowed from it 20 months later, at Christmas 1979, were two of the most important events of the second half of the 20th century.

What is the attitude of Marxists to "backward" and "underdeveloped" countries and peoples who are being assaulted, occupied, or colonised by a more advanced but predatory civilisation?
No-one expressed it so clearly and so forcefully as Leon Trotsky:

The Weekly Worker has published a reply to our reply. It is not serious but we want to respond to some of its more ridiculous distortions.

(The Weekly Worker has replied to this statement; we have replied to their reply here.)

The Weekly Worker, newspaper of the "CPGB", has published an article alleging a Workers' Liberty attempt to cover up incidents of sexual abuse by a student activist (not an AWL member).

Our 2006 introduction to Workers' Liberty 3/1, about Marxism and religion, has been much reviled on Facebook, but little criticised.

Instead of contributing to discussion and explaining his differences with the majority of the AWL on questions of Islamism, the definition of Islamophobia, and imperialism, Patrick Smith has decided to resign from the AWL, publishing a resignation letter on the website of the Weekly Worker group.

Over the next two and a half months, a fundamental debate will be run among some hundreds of left activists, most of them at present politically homeless and looking for a way forward.

At the founding conference on 30 November of the Left Unity group, the main debate will be between the "Left Party Platform" (LPP), proposed by Kate Hudson and others, and the "Socialist Platform" (SP), proposed by Nick Wrack, Soraya Lawrence, Will McMahon, Chris Strafford, Cat Rylance, and others.