Workers' Liberty 22: June 1995

From radical feminism to lesbian chic

Over the last decade, much has changed in the political culture of the 'lesbian community'. Ten years ago, the dominant voices were those of 'radical feminists'. Click here to download PDF

The "IS-SWP Tradition": how the SWP narrowed into a sect

PDF below It's a little over eleven years since the SWP EC phoned up to secure a statement from me that they could use to expel me. It was only later they learned I had resigned a month earlier. I had finally given up all hope in protest at their sectarian denunciation of Arthur Scargill in the weeks before the 1984 miners' strike and at their pursuit of that sectarianism in the first months of the strike. From Workers' Liberty 22, June 1995 They criticised miners' support groups for collecting groceries rather than politically-correct (to pay for flying pickets) cash. My partner, Joan Smith...

The road to something more democratic than Parliament

I agree with much of Martin Thomas’ latest response in our ongoing debate (Workers’ Liberty 18) about the attitude of Marxists to Parliament in the transition to socialism. I argued (SO 619) that “the fight to deepen and defend parliamentary democracy, and to merge the power of a transformed parliament with the nascent power of popular local councils, born of and sustained by struggle, runs with the grain of complex advanced capitalist democracies and is a necessary development of the classical Leninist model of the transition [to socialism] in countries like Britain.” Martin replied (WL 18)...

Dockers’ struggles and oral history

PDF below I enjoyed Sean Matgamna’s review of Bill Hunter’s They knew why they fought: unofficial struggles and leadership on the docks 1945-1989 (Workers’ Liberty 21). One small disappointment I experienced reading Bill Hunter’s stimulating book was the lack of any comment on the role of the militants of the Revolutionary Communist Party in the struggles in the docks during the 1940s. The breakthrough which secured the Trotskyists an influence in the struggles of the 1950s came in 1951 when, as Bill Hunter notes, Gerry Healy’s ‘club’ was able to bring the dockers leaders, Harry Constable and...

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