Workers' Liberty 21, May 1995

Forum

Letters and correspondence Turning round in the unions (Martin Thomas) Filling the gap in Fife (John P Mathieson) Unfair to revolutionary history (Alan Johnson) To download pdf click here

Trotskyists at Buchenwald

Extracts from an interview with Marcel Beaufrere after he spent two years in Hitlers jails. Published in La Verite, 11 May 1945 click here for PDF

Militancy on the docks in the 1960s

Nothing will ever efface for me the memory of my first real strike - on the Salford docks - the first time I saw my class acting as a surging, uncontrolled force breaking the banks of routine capitalist industrial life and, for a while, pitting itself against those who control our lives. Docks strikes were quick and frequent then, in the mid-’60s. Dockers fought back; they stood together. Lord Devlin’s Commission of Enquiry into conditions in the ports reported that to get a strike going in Liverpool often all that was needed was somebody running down the quays shouting "everybody out"...

The SWP and British troops in Ireland in 1969

In August 1969 the major group on the far left in Britain, panicked by the pogroms in Belfast and Derry, were so relieved to see the British troops go into action that for nearly a whole year they dropped the slogan 'British Troops Out'. For months before August when the British troops had no role in Northern Ireland affairs, they had made Troops Out one of their main slogans. It was a front page headline in Socialist Worker in April 1969! In August, when the troops moved centre stage, it was eloquently dropped. On August 17th 1969, a hastily convened special meeting of members of the two...

Editorial. Clause 4: the dress rehearsal

We go to press just before Labour’s special conference vote on Clause Four. Our supporters will do everything they can to maximise the vote in support of common ownership on April 29, and win, lose or draw the serious left will keep up the fight for socialist policies inside the Labour Party. It is worth spelling out why. Marxists worked in the Labour Party before it adopted Clause Four. We will continue to work inside Labour if Clause Four is abandoned. We do so because of what Labour is. Labour is the political wing of the multi-millioned trade union movement. Despite all its many...

When IS couldn’t say “Troops Out”

By Rachel Lever* In August 1969 the major group on the far left in Britain, panicked by the pogroms in Belfast and Derry, were so relieved to see the British troops go into action that for nearly a whole year they dropped the slogan “British Troops Out.” For months before August, when the British troops had no role in Northern Ireland affairs, they had made Troops Out one of their main slogans. It was a front page headline in Socialist Worker in April 1969. In August, when the troops moved centre stage, it was eloquently dropped! On 17 August 1969, a hastily convened special meeting of members...

The perspective of the long haul

By Ray Challinor I was involved with the organisation from the first meeting. If I remember correctly that was October 1950. There were 34 members. But that really exaggerates the size of the organisation. A number of the members had been in the Open Party faction of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) — that is, they did not want the RCP to fold up — and were really burnt-out. These people quickly dropped out. Our biggest branch was Birmingham with six members. I lived in Crewe and was associated with the Manchester branch. I had been convinced for some time that Russia was not socialist...

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