Workers' Liberty

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

Dave Spencer’s account of the 1984 faction fight and split in the forerunner of the AWL is misleading. He claims that the majority derided its opponents as ‘non-Marxists’, thereby foreclosing on democratic debate; and complains of the question being put: “why people are still in the organisation when they know they are going to lose the battle. It was as though the process was an arm-wrestling contest, not a democratic debate or discussion from which comrades would learn, no matter what the outcome.” From things like these, he says, “a sect was born.”
The term ‘non-Marxist’ may have been used to describe people’s political positions, as it is in the pages of the Weekly Worker to describe the politics of the AWL, for instance (it or something synonymous). But the complaint was and is a bit rich. It was the Thornett minority who claimed that the politics of the proto-AWL were so revisionist, pro-imperialist etc that nobody in the international Trotskyist movement would “touch us with a bargepole”. We were accused not simply of being ‘non-Marxist’, but of practically fellating Satan.
And Dave’s image of a debate ‘from which comrades could learn’ is surreal. Actually, I did learn quite a bit. But the organisation was unbearable at that time – a bearpit, in which not a day went by without the Thornett group proclaiming some new ‘political’ or organisational scandal. It had begun to be like that since the South Atlantic war in 1982. At the start almost all of us opposed both sides, Thatcher and Galtieri. After a few weeks the 'Thornett group' demanded we change to a pro-Argentina position. I remember a summer school in 1982 when we - the later-to-be AWL - found ourselves for a while a small minority. Perhaps Dave wasn't there. We were mobbed.
By the time the miners' strike began, almost all the 'Thornett group' had decamped, in successive small splits. The embittered 'Thornett' rump was in a state of 'cold split', scarcely cooperating in the day-to-day work of the organisation. It demanded a new special conference, the fifth in little more than a year, to discuss 'the internal situation'. The majority decided to call it a day, accept that the ICL-WSL fusion had failed, and declare a split. Since we were the majority, the only way to do so was to expel the Thornett group. We didn't expel people for their politics. No-one was expelled for sharing Thornett's politics, or being sympathetic to his faction. The question was justifiably put to them, though - and I think this is what I think Dave is referring to - what they intended to do given what they had to say about the group's majority (ranging from its appalling pro-imperialist politics to the fact that most of its members were 'acolytes and handraisers'). Unsurprisingly, most of them left when their faction leaders were expelled.
It was a terrible shame that the 1981 fusion broke down. But the notion that it did so because of the sect-mentality of what is now the AWL is perverse. The irrational (indeed ‘non-Marxist’) denunciation and so on was all from the other side. Much of it was public, incidentally, since the minorities had pretty free access to the paper.
Since then we have had plenty of debates, including sharp disagreements, without the insane factional heat of 1984. We have also, for example, openly and publicly changed our positions on some central questions.
The experience of 1981-4 may have made us cautious about rushing into fusions. But it hasn’t diminished our commitment to unity on the left.