AWL history

Documents from the discussions of Workers' Fight and the International-Communist League with the Portuguese revolutionary left, 1975-6. Discussions with the Portuguese Workers' Coordinating Committee, mid 1975 (the pages of this pdf are in the wrong order, sorry, and the edges of some text are cut off, but the gist should be legible) Discussions with left groups in Portugal during 1975 Discussions with left groups in Portugal during 1976 Background: calendar of events Summary article by Dave Stocking ("Mike Evans"), International Communist magazine, 1976.

In the last issue of Solidarity , Bruce Robinson remembered the life of Tom Cashman, socialist trade unionist and long-time associate of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, who died last month. In this and future issues we will print further tributes. Tom Cashman was, quite simply, one of the finest and most principled people I’ve ever met. I first encountered him around about 1974 or 75 in the bar of Birmingham University Guild of Students. Tom was there attending a Troops Out conference; I was a naive young member of IS [today SWP] who had begun to have doubts about the Cliff regime and had...

Open letter for revolutionary socialist regroupment produced in September 1974 by Workers' Fight, a forerunner of the AWL. Click here to download pdf .

THE "George-Galloway-loves-Saddam-Hussein" affair gave the Tories a brief respite from their own scandals and sensational revelations last week. It brought no respite to socialists concerned at the continuing decay of the old left. It was the latest putrescent manifestation of that decay. The Tories needed the respite, and though in fact it was the BBC monitoring service which "broke" the story, we got tabloid front pages. Beneath the abuse, they must have loved George Galloway! "Where's your nose been Galloway? ...Presstuck up Saddam's junta, that's where!" grimly chortled the dingy Star. The...

In the early 1980s, both John Bloxam and Sean Matgamna (John O'Mahony) of Socialist Organiser (forerunner of AWL) worked closely with Vladimir Derer, the founder and long-time secretary of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy who died aged 94 on 10 June 2014, and debated frequently with him on tactical and strategic issues. This debate, in early 1980, set out the underlying differences of strategy. "We need a workers' government" - article by John O'Mahony [Sean Matgamna] "The first task of the left" - Vladimir Derer's critical response "The fight for socialism: now or never" - reply by...

The Devlin plan and the docker (1967) This July 1967 pamphlet was the first piece of public literature put out by the Workers' Fight group, forerunner of AWL. The "Devlin plan" was the government's plan of the time to "rationalise" the ports and push through "containerisation", a root and branch technical revolution in the workplace. THE DEVLIN PLAN AND THE DOCKER D DAY OR V DAY ? The employers have called September 15th D Day - and most dockers take this war- time language as proof that what the employers really want is not D Day but V Day: the day of their victory over the docker, when the...

"Workers Republic" is more than a name: it is a political slogan. The Irish Workers' Group is the single organisation which believes that a workers' socialist revolution in Ireland is not merely possible, but the only important next step forward. It will solve in passing all the outstanding issues of the past, defeated and deflected, attempts at revolution in Ireland. On this perspective we direct our resources towards building a revolutionary Marxist organisation composed of militants actively fighting the proletarian class struggle. Whatever may be our subjective failings, this is an honest...

Rachel Matgamna, a member of the Trotskyist Tendency (forerunner of AWL), in International Socialism magazine (winter 1968-9), calling for an effort to turn the young activists mobilised over Vietnam to the working class. This article was published soon after the Workers' Fight group merged into IS (forerunner of the SWP), and - by explicit agreement with the IS leadership - reorganised as the Trotskyist Tendency in IS. Later the IS leadership would be less willing to print articles by members of the tendency. The call for Vietnam activists to turn to the working class was one of the major...

A Workers' Liberty pamphlet analysing the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and its sequels, with a debate from the time between us and Sinn Fein. Click here to download pdf .

The activists of the Workers' Fight group (forerunners of AWL) in 1966-8 also produced five issues of An Solas/ Workers' Republic, the theoretical journal of the Irish Workers' Group. This page also includes the two issues of Workers' Republic published by the London LWR in 1968.