AWL 2007 Conference: Report on Debates, Disputes, and Documents
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty held our annual conference on 19-20 May 2007. We adopted the following documents (click on "read more"):
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty held our annual conference on 19-20 May 2007. We adopted the following documents (click on "read more"):
The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has been discussing the question of the troops in Iraq since the end of the last year. The debate will continue at our conference on 19-20 May. Here, two contributions to the debate (note: the second is not a reply to the first).
“Troops out”
Paul Hampton reports on the AWL 2007 annual conference
Anyone wondering why AWL members are combative with those we disagree with in the left and the labour movement might be surprised at the way we argue with each other — it’s even sharper.
The culture of the AWL is to fight for clarity in our ideas, to tell the truth and to call things by their right names. It is a culture of debate we want in our press, in our public meetings, and of course in our annual conference.
1. The assessment we made in our long document last year on "Building a Marxist presence in the unions" remains cruelly true.
1. In 2005, long before the public sector unions formal retreat on retirement age, we identified the need, within our very limited resources, to propagandise and agitate for a cross public sector rank and file movement in counter-position to the likely Alliance of Bureaucrats for a Deal with New Labour.
1. The growth of the BNP is largely a result of three factors:
a. The Labour government's continuing attacks on the working class
b. The organisational and political weakness of the any visible fighting left within the trade union and labour movement
c. The flight from class politics of sections of the far-left, in particular the SWP and Respect, and towards communalist politics
1. The fundamental long-term task of a Marxist organisation is to help the working class educate itself.
In order to do that, the Marxist organisation must educate itself. We do our work by educating the advance-guard; educating, organising, and equipping, morally and materially, a revolutionary cadre that works within the working class to educate it, from books and from experience.
A large part of our whole effort is about organising ourselves to be at the right place at the right time - at the right meetings and demonstrations, in the right places for public agitation and paper sales, on the right doorsteps to talk with contacts.
To operate well, we need a number of activists who give their full time to political activity, or who take part-time jobs so that they can give most of their time to political activity.
Amendments 6.1 and 6.2 to the Inside Organising document
AMENDMENT 6.1: "ORGANISING FROM OUTSIDE"
(Refer also to the preamble for this amendment and amendment 6.3. The preamble was not voted on.)
Add after para 10 of the Inside Organising document:
Preamble for amendments 6.1 and 6.3
Marxists have built a real base in a section of the class as the result of winning over existing militants and winning new activists from the existing workforce, whether that is in the Second International, the building of the Communist Parties or the work of the SWP (US) in the Teamsters in the 1930’s and 40’s. Even the rank and file movements in the 1960s in Britain were based on a network of existing militants being won over by the SLL or the IS.
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