AWL history

The Trotskyist Tendency 1968-71

The Trotskyist Tendency came from Workers' Fight, forerunner of AWL, a small group perhaps ten strong when it merged with IS in December 1968. We merged on the basis that we could continue to argue inside the group for what we considered to be authentic Trotskyism while cooperating in practical work. We entered as an ideological tendency, not a faction. Our distinctiveness was in our general political approach and tradition, not in this or that conflict with the leadership on immediate questions. We remained a tendency all the way through, even though at the end we were forced formally to...

1971 and Europe

In a nutshell, the story of IS's transformation and the emergence of the neo-Healyite SWP out of it is the story of how a very loose group, with a family cult at the centre, grew, centralised itself, and developed a "machine" with the once seemingly benign cult figure in control. Here there is a danger of scapegoating Cliff and presenting a Bad King Cliff account of the history. Cliff was only part of it. Jim Higgins's book More Years For The Locust (a sort of history of IS/SWP) is an example. For people like Higgins the "Bagehot Question" arises. Walter Bagehot, the Victorian political...

What happened to IS democracy?

There is no doubt that IS was loosely democratic up to the mid 1970s. What happened to that democracy? In 1970 there was a Commission on Factions. Its report denied that there could be such a thing as an ideological tendency: there could only be factions defined by short-term battles over short-term issues. But the Trotskyist Tendency was a tendency. We were people from a different tradition who upheld what we thought to be the basic and long-term ideas of that tradition; we were not a faction in the narrow sense of fighting over each day-to-day issue, or fighting for control. We didn’t want...

For healthy debate, help us raise £15,000

Workers’ Liberty has always been committed to debate. Not “debates” in the sense of one-sided denunciations of straw-men opponents with no chance for them to reply, but genuine debates — in writing or in person — between opposing viewpoints. We are committed to debate within our own organisation, within the left, and between left and right. That’s why, in 1992, we debated Roger Scruton and David Marsland, ideologues of the “New Right” proclaiming the death of socialism. That’s why we carry internal debates in our public press. That’s why we seek debates with socialists and other...

Why the Crisis in the SWP? "The politics of IS" - a 1969 polemic

The explosion of political discussion in IS, ignited by the sudden change of line by Cliff in favour of building the embryo of a "revolutionary party" seemed six months ago to be the most hopeful thing on the British left. Many, seeing also the new-type IS positions on Vietnam and the Middle East — a radical break with the abstentionist attitude of the group to this kind of struggle in the first 15 years of its existence — wondered whether the leadership might not even disavow other aspects of its past. But actually the leadership disavowed none of its past. Cliff said he had always advocated...

How I was expelled from the SWP (IS)

I was expelled from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, then called IS) on 4 December 1971. IS then was different from, and more open than, the SWP today. But there are links between then and now. IS (SWP) had deliberately promoted itself as democratic and open since 1957-8, as a riposte to the bigger and more active, but tightly-controlled, SLL led by Gerry Healy (only tiny shreds from which continue today: it collapsed in 1985). IS really was more open. There was debate in its press. In December 1968, it accepted a merger with the small Trotskyist group Workers’ Fight, forerunner of the AWL...

The Falklands/ Malvinas war of 1982. and working-class politics

Click here to download as ePub Click here to download as Kindle e-book Click here to download as pdf Introduction to dossier on the Falklands/ Malvinas, from Workers' Liberty 2/3 . The WSL and the Falklands crisis , by Sean Matgamna, May 1982. The texts and the method , by Sean Matgamna (from Workers' Socialist Review, 1982). Class politics and bloc politics : resolution for the Workers' Socialist League, 1982 (expanded 1984). Some reflections on the left and the Falklands war , by Sean Matgamna, May 2007. The SWP and the Falklands war More from Workers' Socialist Review Supplement to WSR 2 on...

Socialist Organiser archive at Warwick University

An archive of Socialist Organiser, a forerunner (1978-1996) of Solidarity, is now available at Warwick University's Modern Records Centre: Click here to view the catalogue . Another archive of Socialist Organiser, and a larger archive of material from the AWL and its forerunners, are at the library of the London School of Economics. Click here for information on the LSE archive .

Triumph of the ideologues? Some lessons

Recent events on the Australian left will probably stir wide discussion among activists internationally as the news filters out. A shorter version of this article is in Solidarity 259 . The two Castroite groups in Australia, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Socialist Alliance (SA), are talking about merging into Socialist Alternative, the group there which claims the same tradition as the SWP in Britain but is out of favour with the SWP. Probably Socialist Alternative will follow up this coup by a new unity offensive on the fourth of the larger left groups in Australia, the SWP...

"The case for socialist feminism" pamphlet

Originally published in 1989 "What is the relationship between sex and class in the oppression of women? How useful is the concept of ‘patriarchy’? How do we assess developments in feminism, and what are the prospects for women in the years to come? "This pamphlet addresses these questions and many more. Beginning with a survey of different theories of the origins of women’s oppression, it goes on to examine the history of the theory and practice of the Marxist movement in relation to women. The pamphlet then assess the [then] current dominant theories in feminism, including an analysis of the...

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