Weekly Worker

Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)

Crazies of the world unite!

(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. Thus Jack Conrad's seven-part series on the AWL, late last year. And WW's second polemic-writer, Ian Donovan? In the last Weekly Worker he wrote this about the editorial on George Galloway in Solidarity 3/29: "One gets the distinct impression that Matgamna, for all his proclaimed credentials as a democrat...

An open letter to CPGB members

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. Before and during the war in Afghanistan which followed September 11, the CPGB took a principled...

Would it have been better if Saddam had won?

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. For arguing that Weekly Worker's "Victory to the people of Iraq; defeat for US/UK imperialism" headline basically amounted to the same line as that of the perennially foolish "anti-imperialists" Workers' Power, the AWL is lambasted as racists: "For the AWL, the Arab people of Iraq only have the right to resist...

Weekly Worker goes ballistic on Iraq

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. *** Down at the Weekly Worker, their repeated political u-turns (on Islamic fundamentalism, on the Socialist Alliance, on Iraq, etc) are causing frayed nerves, and generating a level of reckless factional slander not seen since the days of the now-defunct Healyites. In a long tirade in WW of 10 April, Ian Donovan denounces us as...

Reasons to be cheerful

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. Leading UK shares rose 1.5% after reports that US forces are closing in on Baghdad. European shares also rose. Reports that US forces were attacking Iraqi Republican Guard positions in the outskirts of Baghdad after intense air strikes dispelled recent gloom about the war effort. Renewed speculation about the health of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, who has not been seen for days, also...

On the coat-tails of the SWP

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. Blaming others for the "liquidation of the SA" - absence as an independent force in firefighters' dispute and the anti-war movement - they have removed reference to the SA from the masthead of the paper, got shot of any mention of it from their "What we fight for column" and refused to endorse some suggestions from the RDG and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty to re-energise the Alliance...

Sects, democracy and revolutionary unity

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. So how did Matgamna (the evil genius behind the sect-turn) transform genuine unity-seeking revolutionaries into sectarian ‘hand-raisers’? As a materialist, you would expect quantitative indicators before that...

Fantasy opportunism and the Muslim Association

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. This plainly is a different Jack Conrad to the one who argued (at a CPGB meeting shortly after 9/11, at which I spoke) that in principle 'these reactionaries' (meaning...

A Reply to Dave Spencer's "Cults and Sects": AWL's 1984 Split With the Thornettites.

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. 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...

How not to break from Stalinism

Paul Hampton reports on the AWL-CPGB (Weekly Worker) day school on 25 January Opening the discussion for the AWL, Sean Matgamna said that the AWL wants a rational Marxist politics based on saying what is - facing reality squarely, calling things by their right names, basing ourselves on the logic of the class struggle. It is the tradition of Marx and Engels, continued by Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. It is a tradition largely lost and forgotten after 1940, carried on halfway consistently by only a handful of Trotskyists around Shachtman and Draper. The "CPGB", which began 20 years ago as a...

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