AWL

More debate on the Right of Return here . Now Kumar deigns to argue rather than hurling stale abuse ( Solidarity 465 ). Discussion is good. The atmosphere on the ostensible left is heavily charged with heresy-hunting, trolling (which is only another name for gang mobbing and bulling), shouting-down, and drowning-out. There is little or no real political debate or dialogue. That is what the internal life of the pseudo-Leninist sects has been for decades (the SWP, for instance, or, worse, the SP). It has now become the culture of Momentum. Here malice does service for information, hostility is...

More debate on the Right of Return here . In response to your reply to my Sky News appearance I had immediately said that I did not seek to send a response of my own. In answer to this you wrote a short text saying that I had failed to deal with the substance of your issue. Now I feel I should reply to answer your political questions. First of the questions posed is: is the AWL racist? To which one might reply: what would a left-wing racism even look like? In the week in which we mark fifty years since Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood speech’ the AWL’s response on this question is an important...

Red London is a Stalinist meme Facebook page and Twitter account which spreads fake news about Trotskyists and others on the left whom they don’t like. Founded some time in 2015 Red London is a clique of individuals in Labour and Momentum, including some involved in the hostile takeover of Lewisham Momentum last month. The people who organise around Red London have a constellation of social media outlets for their bile, platforms which selectively and strategically share content, including Red London, London Young Left (formerly the voice of London Momentum Youth and Students before the group...

Last week saw the fiftieth anniversary of Enoch Powell’s “River of Blood” speech”. The contents of the speech are well known, arguing that black and Asian people were an immutable and alien pollutant in Britain and that immigration should be stopped and reversed through repatriation. The speech’s classicism sounds odd today, but it was a highly functional mask of over-educated respectability which barely concealed its main content — vernacular racism. Powell alternated between allusions to ancient Greek history and vox populi stories purportedly from people in his constituency. These stories...

At last year’s National Union of Students conference, NUS’s broadly leftish leadership was displaced by a new, mostly more right-wing team of officers. President Malia Bouattia, whose re-election we critically supported, lost to incumbent Shakira Martin. Under Martin NUS has moved to a much less radical, combative and dynamic stance. The NUS leadership refused to support the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts -organised national demonstration for free education; failed dismally to mobilise support for the UCU strike and displayed hostility to the wave of student solidarity actions; and...

At London Young Labour conference on 4 February 2018 a witch-hunt was launched against Workers’ Liberty to brand us as a “secretive top-down” organisation; it instrumentalised and exploited a case about sexual assault. Our report of London Young Labour conference is here Our response on and report of our process of investigating the case about sexual assault is here The charge that political organisations like Workers’ Liberty are “cults” is a common weapon in factional battles within the left today. This is our response to that line of argument. The AWL is not at all a cult, and is...

On Saturday 3 February, the AGM of London Young Labour took place at University College London. The conference was attended by about 350 young Labour members from across London, and passed good policy about defending free movement and working with the Labour Campaign for Free Movement, on social housing, and on creating the role of a trans officer on the committee. The conference also discussed a motion relating to a recent anonymous claim of sexual assault on an ex-member of Workers′ Liberty by another ex-member which took place in 2005 when the victim was 16. This is an issue which Workers’...

The introduction to the book The Left in Disarray , published June 2017. “Tell the truth and shame the devil” “To face reality squarely; not to seek the line of least resistance; to call things by their right names; to speak the truth, no matter how bitter it may be; not to fear obstacles; to be true in little things as in big ones; to base one’s programme on the logic of the class struggle; to be bold when the hour for action arrives — these are the rules.” Leon Trotsky The story in the Bible about the Tower of Babel is well known. Humankind starts to build a high tower so it can climb up to...

I have been a person of cause and rebellion for a long time. As an autistic young man growing up under capitalism, alienation has always been something I feel strongly. My parents are trade unionists and far-left socialists, and they brought me to the ideas of anti-oppression and solidarity. My mum did not know she was also autistic until the age of 45. Before then it was a struggle for my family and everyone around me — including at school — to grasp what was actually stressing me and how to fully help me. The journey of growing up therefore brought me to rebellion, emancipation and socialism...

Our new website is now live! Have a look around. But fundraising is not over! We will be fundraising until we reach our £20,000 goal in order to pay for the website, for future updates, and for staff to work on updating the website going forward. Find our how below. Why are we raising money? From Trotskyist newspapers of the 1940s and 50s, to older Marxist classics, to discussion articles on feminism, national questions, religion and philosophy and resources such as guidelines for Marxist reading groups — it’s all there on the Workers’ Liberty website. But this enormous archive of historical...