Workers' Liberty

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.

To the Weekly Worker Group (The "CPGB")
By Sean Matgamna

Dear Mark Fisher,
I’d written the friendly letter that follows this note before we received the CPGB’s refusal to debate the question of Iraq and the slogan “troops out now” with us at your summer school. Mark, plainly you don’t believe in making life easy for those of us in the AWL who are your friends, admirers and advocates! One minute you are publishing blustery little articles in your paper that suggest you are spoiling for a fight, and which accuse us of being “afraid” to debate with you. And what happens when, after a lot of lobbying and arguing, I manage to persuade our office to take you up on it? You back out!

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.

By Sacha Ismail

In “Military coups and soldiers’ rights’ (Weekly Worker, 26 October), a response to our editorial “Keep the army out of politics” (Solidarity 3/100), the knives were out. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, they were not very sharp.

Kiss me, Edward

You might have hoped that the rotten elements had gone away to leave you to discuss ‘politics’ in peace. You may have even hoped that we turned the site into a proper tribute to Edward Upward. If you did hope for this, I love you, I do.

The SWP and the ‘clerical-fascists’

In Britain the SWP usually claims that it is a “slander” to say that their allies, Muslim Association of Britain, are an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest Islamic fundamentalist party in the Arab world.

Letter to Weekly Worker, from Paul Hampton, AWL

John Ball’s uncritical summary of The Politics of Empire (Weekly Worker December 16) rehashes some “anti-imperialist” conventional wisdom but misses the flaws of the book – its distortion of reality and its terrible political conclusions.

More, from the participants, on the recent departures from the CPGB/WW.

Debate between the AWL and the CPGB (Weekly Worker)

Kabul 1978 and Petrograd 1917: In defence of the October Revolution by Sean Matgamna. An analysis of the claim by The Leninist and the Weekly Worker that the Stalinist coup in Kabul in April 1978 was a great and authentic revolution (pdf, 338k).

By Martin Thomas

A few AWL members attended a session at the CPGB (Weekly Worker)'s summer school on 17 August, when they had invited Sean Matgamna of the AWL to speak on "Marxism and Zionism".

Communist University - Cardiff, 26th June.

Attendance for the Communist University peaked at 15 in the debate on Respect, but the discussions were enlightening and mostly quite encouraging.

Two things can really be taken away from the event by a partisan by-stander:

The Weekly Worker group/Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) originated as a small, still ultra-Stalinist, offshoot from the New Communist Party (NCP), which was a stone-age Stalinist breakaway from the real CPGB in 1977.

In a recent editorial Jack Conrad (CPGB) argues (Weekly Worker 498 October 2 2003) that "the SA could commit itself to the aim of a new workers' party. Not an old Labour mark two; rather a revolutionary party basing itself on a clear Marxist programme." As if to disprove himself he turns to the Scottish Socialist Party as his example. He says "riddled with left nationalism though it is, the SSP can nevertheless be used to illustrate what can be done". He then goes on to show how the SSP's intervention in the anti-war movement has enabled them to benefit in contrast to the Liberal Democrats in England. All this is fine except for the obvious point. The SSP is neither 'old Labour Mark two' nor 'revolutionary party basing itself on a clear Marxist programme.' Surely there is another alternative.

A letter from Ian Donovan of the CPGB/Weekly Worker and a response from Cathy Nugent, editor of Solidarity.

The anonymous author of your column, Writing on the Wall (Solidarity 3/30), seems determined to underline that the AWL leadership has lost the plot politically. Being reduced to flinging personal abuse and grossly mangling quotations is a transparently dishonest method of argument. I counted seven ellipses, often denoting substantial gaps, in one passage (attributed to me) alone - an incredible technique of "quotation" that can mangle someone's words to "mean" virtually anything the author chooses. This, used in order to supposedly show that someone who argues for a counterposed viewpoint is a "nut", only illustrates that the author has run out of political arguments.

(You alone know what is right?)
Weekly Worker is sometimes very bizarre indeed. Most of us become more calm and reflective when we sit down in a quiet corner to write. Some Weekly Worker writers who in person are mild and sane-seeming turn into crazies when they rev up to go into print.

Recent changes in the so-called Communist Party of Great Britain have forced us to conclude that it is not a vehicle for the building of a revolutionary movement in Britain today. Many of these changes are abrupt and radical departures from the direction in which the organisation seemed to be going after its break in the mid-1990s from old-style Stalinist attitudes on what it called the "bureaucratic socialist" states and from vulgar "anti-imperialist" positions on Ireland and Israel-Palestine.

By Martyn Hudson

The toppling of Saddam's regime by coalition troops has led to some interesting political debates on the left. One of the most intriguing was Ian Donovan's response to AWL criticism of the CPGB/Weekly Worker "victory to Saddam Hussein for the gutless" take on the war.

I wrote a little note for Solidarity 3/28, but there wasn't room for it in the paper, especially as Martyn Hudson had covered some of the ground in his article. For the Internet, I've added a few comments about the substance of the Weekly Worker's new position on Iraq.

• Reasons to be cheerful

• BNP gears up for elections
• Not in our name
• Back to the church

Reasons to be cheerful

Not everyone views the prospect of civilian casualties in any assault on Baghdad as bad news.

By Martyn Hudson

After all those years and books arguing the need for a "Socialist Alliance party", and that the SA as the only show in town, the Communist Party of Great Britain have effectively abandoned it.

A further response to Dave Spencer's article and letters in WW.

by Gerry Byrne

Dave Spencer’s extraordinarily self-serving explanation in the WW is that Workers Fight /ICL /WSL was all fine and then turned overnight into a sect – the AWL. That’s not how I remember it. Dave allows that none of the attempts at uniting the left were predatory exercises, that they were entered into sincerely.

Having your cake... the fantasy opportunism of Jack Conrad on the Muslim Association

In a lengthy and convoluted article in this week's Weekly Worker, Jack Conrad appears to pin the CPGB's colours to the mast on the Muslim Association of Britain - though, since the article is signed, who can be sure? - namely, that the CPGB is in favour of the Stop the War Coalition's collaboration with the British wing of the Muslim Brethren.

In Weekly Worker 466, Dave Spencer gives an account of the history of the AWL, in which he concludes that after our split in 1984 with the 'Thornett group' (now in the ISG) - when Dave himself left - we became a 'sect'. See http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/466/awl.html

Clive Bradley replies