The roots and history of British Trotskyism and of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty: London study course 2008-9
A study course, led by Sean Matgamna. Thursday evenings (1st, 3rd, and 5th Thursdays of the month) from 16 October 2008, 7.30pm at the Plough, Museum St, London WC1.
16 October, 30 October, 6 November, 20 November, 4 December, 18 December. (Details of continuation in January to be arranged).
To register for the course, email awl@workersliberty.org or phone 020 7207 3997. The registration charge (towards the cost of the meeting room) is £10, £5 unwaged.
Schedule for the first batch of sessions:
1. The Marxist movement in Britain before World War 1. Click here to hear the talk (mp3).
2. The Communist Party, the Labour Party, and the trade union movement: World War One to the 1930s.
Click here to hear the introduction (mp3) and here to hear the summing-up (mp3)
Reading: Brian Pearce: Early Years of the CPGB
Brian Pearce: Some Past Rank and File Movements
Sean Matgamna: The Labour Party in Perspective
Brian Pearce: Marxism in Britain 1881-1920 is also worth reading for dates, and the brief summary at the end of how the CP was formed, though in the first session we discussed reasons for questioning Pearce's judgement on the SDF.
3. British Trotskyism, 1931 to 1943
Reading (for narrative facts, not for political analysis): Martin Upham: History of British Trotskyism to 1949. Or this short summary.
Also read Workers' Liberty 3/8, for an outline of the great division in Trotskyism from the early 1940s.
4. From the RCP (1944) to the Third World Congress (1951)
Reading (for narrative facts, not for political analysis): Martin Upham: History of British Trotskyism to 1949. Or this short summary.
Also read Workers' Liberty 3/8, for an outline of the great division in Trotskyism from the early 1940s.
5. The history of British Trotskyism, 1949 to 1970
Reading: The RSL (Militant) in the 1960s, by Sean Matgamna
Seedbed of the left: the origins of today's far-left groups, by Sean Matgamna
The life and times of Bob Pennington, part 1, and part 2, by Patrick Avaakum.
6. The formation of the AWL tendency ("Workers' Fight")
Reading: The RSL (Militant) in the 1960s, by Sean Matgamna
What We Are And What We Must Become (the founding document of our tendency).
7. The Irish Workers' Group
8. IS (forerunner of the SWP) before our fusion with them in 1968
9. Our fusion with IS (forerunner of the SWP), 1968-71
10. Workers' Fight, 1972-5
11. The International-Communist League, 1975-6
12. Towards a new beginning, 1976-9
13. "Third Camp" politics: the revaluation of values, and a new political turn, 1979-81
14. The split with the Labour Party lefts (early 1980s)
15. Fusion with the Thornettites, 1981-4