Left groups and people

Click here to download pamphlet as pdf . Abridged introduction How did the Trotskyist left in Britain come to be scattered and divided into hostile and competing groups? At the root the divisions are a product of the repeated defeats and the continuing marginalisation of revolutionary socialism. Small groups - and the biggest of the groups in Britain, the SWP, is still a small group - groups without implantation in the working class, have little power of cohesion when strong political divisions emerge. When members of a small organisation whose raison d'etre is propaganda for certain ideas...

Where Is the Petty Bourgeois Opposition? A Repeated Challenge Remains Unanswered. In his open letter to Comrade Trotsky, Comrade Shachtman, repeating the challenge issued by the Minority since the moment it was accused of representing a petty-bourgeois tendency in the party, declared: “... it is first necessary to prove (a) that the Minority represents a deviation from the proletarian Marxian line, (b) that this deviation is typically petty-bourgeois, and (c) that it is more than an isolated deviation — it is a tendency. That is precisely what has not been proved.” Comrade Trotsky has been the...

In discussing the history of IS — Jim Higgins’ book is an example of it — there is a danger of scapegoating Cliff. For people like Higgins the "Bagehot Question" arises. Walter Bagehot, the Victorian political economist and analyst of the British constitution, asked the question concerning the then reclusive Queen and her playboy son, the future Edward VII: How does it come about that "a retired widow and her unemployed son" can play the pivotal role in the legal structures of the British constitution? How could "Dr Ruth" achieve such power in the organisation that prided itself — to a...

They slew you in their beastly rage. Because you dared the struggle Wage With tyrants and with traitors too— The traitors feared and so they slew. Deluded naves! Your lifeless tongues More potent now in martyr songs Will trumpet forth the truth until, The very earth will rock and thrill; And thrones and states will crash and fall— And labor triumphs over all. * * So comrades, sleep—your Work is done; Sleep on! The battle will be won.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary After the 20th Congress: Will they now Take Back the Lies About Trotsky?

On 4 April the Weekly Worker newspaper published a letter from Weekly Worker/CPGB full-time organiser Mark Fischer referring to me (but not mentioning me by name). The letter referred to a real incident in which I was leafleting outside my workplace in defence of a Weekly Worker supporter who is being victimised by our management. When leading Sheffield SWPer Maxine Bowler appeared and went into the building, I became quite upset. The letter claims this is because of Bowler's role on the SWP Disputes Committee in the Martin Smith case, and goes into a laboured attempt at satire (perhaps I...

There is currently a faction fight underway in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Britain's largest far-left group. In the interests of openness and the widest possible debate on the left, we reproduce the key publicly-available documents here. Statement of the SWP Democratic Opposition Four comrades have been expelled for forming a ‘secret faction’ during the discussions prior to SWP conference. The expelled members had been legitimately concerned about the handling of very serious allegations directed at a CC member and the way that this was being handled by the organisation and had...

We invite Socialist Appeal/Militant Student to debate these issues at a public meeting at UCL in the new term. At the end of November, students at University College London organised an occupation in protest at UCL management's plans to buy out and demolish the Carpenters Estate in Newham, evicting 300 families. It was an impressive symbol of the solidarity being built between students at one of London's more privileged academic institutions and the working-class community their university management is attempting to destroy. The biggest socialist group at UCL is “UCL Marxists”, run by members...

The Workers Revolutionary Party was the largest group on the revolutionary left until the mid-1970s, and a sizeable force until it collapsed in 1985. Here, Richard Price, a former member of the WRP, reviews Come The Revolution: A Memoir, by Alex Mitchell. Mitchell was the editor of the WRP paper from the early 1970s until 1985. He quit politics without explanation in 1986, returned to his native Australia, and made a career in mainstream journalism. Now Mitchell has written an autobiography. In October 1985 the Workers Revolutionary Party split explosively, amid allegations of sexual abuse of...

Earlier this year the left saw the equivalent of a small dinosaur walking down the street. Labour Briefing magazine had, as its front page, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s slogan “Prenez le pouvoir” — “take the power”. Mélenchon wouldn’t have known it, but for the inner core of Briefing, and for older readers, the slogan evokes a lot. The people who launched Briefing in February 1980 were veterans of the Revolutionary Communist League of the 1970s, a would-be Trotskyist group distinguished from others by its slogan “Labour Take The Power”. For them that meant a call on the Labour Party, not just to take...