Workers' Liberty

The Weekly Worker, published by the so-called "Communist Party of Great Britain" group, generally focuses its coverage obsessively on the activities of the far left.

Open letter to the left from the SWP; and the AWL's reply
An open letter to the left from the Socialist Workers Party

It’s time to create a socialist alternative

Unwilling to debate the AWL in public, the so-called CPGB continues its snipping at us from the safe distance of its paper.

I got something wrong in my previous comments on the current Weekly Worker campaign - which consists of wriggling out of debate with AWL on Israel and Iran and at the same time claiming that we evade debate with them.

"Matgamna [Sean Matgamna of AWL] knows he would be forced to state openly that he believes an Israeli attack [on Iran] justified...", claims Mark Fischer in Weekly Worker 745 (13 November).

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!
__________
In August AWL approached the Weekly Worker group for a debate on Israel and Iran. The WW group has wriggled out of this debate, while simultaneously, at the top of its voice, accusing AWL of refusing to debate with WW! Bizarre? Yes. But here's the correspondence since 14 October, so that readers can see for themselves that there is no fire behind the billowing masses of WW smoke on this question. MT.

Following the debate on 12 October on Israel and Iran between Sean Matgamna of AWL and Moshe Machover, AWL wrote to the Weekly Worker group proposing a debate between AWL and WW under a similar title ("Israel, Iran, and socialist politics" - the 12 October was "Israel, Iran, and the left").

As some readers will know, for nearly three months now the Weekly Worker has given over a large part of its coverage to high-pitched attacks on the AWL.

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).

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?”

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...

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.

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.

Audio files from the debate in London on 12 October are now available as podcasts on our podOmatic page (see the 'Visit this podcast' button below).

This is a first experiment for us in putting audio files up on this website: bear with us while we work on getting the presentation right!

For a pdf of the written debate, over the last month or so, in pamphlet form, see "attachment" below.

For articles by other writers in the debate, click here.

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".

• 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?

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 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).

Hello Mark Fischer!
Sacha showed me your recent letter, and I take the chance to make a few points on our differences. I think I have said it

It sounds like some sort of elaborate practical joke, revolutionary politics as re-imagined by the Bash Street Kids.

Over the last few months every edition of the Weekly Worker has carried at least one article about Workers Liberty.

(This is a reply to an article in 'Communist Student', the newspaper of the student group linked to the CPGB/Weekly Worker.

By Paul Hampton
The CPGB, those pretentious squirrels of left-wing tittle-tattle, outdid themselves by chickening out of a debate with the AWL over Iraq.

• For The "CPGB" — Gossip or Political Debate? By David Broder click here

• For An Open Letter to a confused Anti-Imperialist, by Sean Matgamna click here

By David Broder

The minority group of opinion in the AWL which thinks we should call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq has been courted in recent months by the Communist Party of Great Britain, who, while displaying no interest in building working-class politics in the Middle East, have noticed a superficial similarity between their own slogans and those of our minority.

Dear Mark Fisher,

In defence of the October Revolution: Kabul 1978 and Petrograd 1917. Was the Russian Revolution a 'coup'? By Sean Matgamna (August 2004). Download pdf or read articles in html below.

Another pathetic article slandering the AWL over Iraq in the latest Weekly Worker (28 June), notable only for Mark Fischer’s ever more vapid rhetoric.

Nowhere does Fischer address the central point: what would happen if the troops left Iraq tomorrow? The CPGB avoids the question, because given the current balance of forces, it’s clear the sectarian militias would effectively partition Iraq into mini-statelets and in all probability smash the labour movement in most areas. That’s not self-determination in any meaningful democratic sense.

More proof that the Weekly Worker is scarcely more than a grubby little gossip sheet (677, June 14 2007). Its flirtation with some AWL comrades over Iraq goes unrequited, so out come the slurs about “imperialist economism”, with neither the majority nor the minority spared.

The reports in this week's Weekly Worker on the Socialist Youth Network conference were classics of a genre the CPGB is well-practiced in. Factual and political errors are so interlaced in Ben Lewis and James Turley's contributions that comrades will excuse us if we take space to deal with both.