"The Alliance for Workers Liberty is... resolutely anti-Stalinist... Shachtmanite Trotskyism... AWL, amid its totalitarian theory and regimented thinking... has a record of honourable opposition to modern dictatorships, and has not joined the rest of the far left in supporting any secular or clerical variant of fascism as long as it is anti-Western. [The Morning Star]...damns them for ‘uncritical support for Israel’ –..mean[ing] it does not want to abolish the ‘Zionist entity’ and drive the Jews into exile... Naturally, the heirs to the Stalinists of the 20th century hate it.... A secretive, ruthlessly disciplined Shachtmanite-Trotskyist-Marxist-Leninist sect, is now the voice of moderate Labour."
Nick Cohen in the Spectator (7 December 2016)
***
James Connolly:
Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek
Our programme to retouch,
And will insist, whene’er they speak
That we demand too much.
’Tis passing strange, yet I declare
Such statements give me mirth,
For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the earth.
“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry,
Who dread the tyrants’ thunder.
“You ask too much and people fly
From you aghast in wonder.”
’Tis passing strange, for I declare
Such statements give me mirth,
For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the earth.
Our masters all a godly crew,
Whose hearts throb for the poor,
Their sympathies assure us, too,
If our demands were fewer.
Most generous souls! But please observe,
What they enjoy from birth
Is all we ever had the nerve
To ask, that is, the earth.
The “labour fakir” full of guile,
Base doctrine ever preaches,
And whilst he bleeds the rank and file
Tame moderation teaches.
Yet, in despite, we’ll see the day
When, with sword in its girth,
Labour shall march in war array
To realize its own, the earth.
For labour long, with sighs and tears,
To its oppressors knelt.
But never yet, to aught save fears,
Did the heart of tyrant melt.
We need not kneel, our cause no dearth
Of loyal soldiers’ needs
And our victorious rallying cry
Shall be we want the earth!
Be Moderate (1907)