Left groups and people

Socialist Green Unity Coalition, Respect, SWP, Socialist Party, Weekly Worker, IWCA, RDG, Green Party, Ken Livingstone ... and a few others.

Introduction (1985)

Just after Christmas 1979, 100,000 soldiers of the Russian army occupied Afghanistan. Five and a half years later the Afghans are still putting up an unquellable resistance. Russia holds only the towns; even its hold on the towns is insecure. Over large areas of the country the writ of Russia’s puppet government does not run. The invaders are forced to move around in convoys which are frequently ambushed, reportedly with heavy losses. Even the Russian “embassy” in Kabul is not safe from rocket attacks. Kabul, the capital city, with a population of one million, is reportedly surrounded by three...

Further debate on the "social strike" and workplace organisation

Cautiously Pessimistic's[1] thoughtful reply to my critique of Plan C's "social strike perspective" is very welcome. Many of its themes were telegraphed in an exchanged of comments between me and Cautiously on the AWL website, under my original article (click the link above and scroll to the bottom). I'll try to focus here on issues I haven't already responded to. Their response, and mine, substantially move away from discussion of the “social strike” issue, into a more general discussion of perspectives and strategies. Although the focus is now rather wider, I think the debate is worth...

On the "social strike": a response to Plan C

For a response to this article by the anarchist blogger "Cautiously Pessimistic", click here . For a further response from Daniel Randall, click here . Plan C comrades have told us they also plan a collective response, which we will link to once it is published. Recent strikes by Deliveroo and UberEats drivers are profoundly significant. They explode the myth, peddled by some on both left and right, that workers in the so-called "gig economy" can't organise, and that the proliferation of those types of work is in the process of rendering labour organising historically redundant. Some on the...

Fight for migrants' rights and workers' unity

There are strong voices in the Labour Party, in the trade unions and even on the Labour left arguing that, after the Brexit vote, the labour movement should support further restrictions on freedom of movement and migrants’ rights. Paul Mason, Len McCluskey, even some in Momentum have taken such a position. On 1 July, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was reported in the press as saying that with exit from the EU, the limited freedom of movement that exists would come to an end. McDonnell has since said that he was misrepresented — that he was talking about the legal situation, that he and...

Stop the expulsions of Socialist Appeal supporters!

A number of Workers’ Liberty supporters have been expelled from the Labour Party, by an unaccountable factional hit squad — the “Compliance Unit”. Some have been reinstated after a fight, some told there is nothing doing and they must wait five years, and some are yet to hear back on their appeals. We are fighting for all of them to be readmitted. Now the Compliance Unit has expelled some supporters of another socialist group, Socialist Appeal. The Compliance Unit is always coming with new justifications. Whereas they told our most recent expellees that the “programme and principles” of the...

"Scrap the Compliance Unit", says John McDonnell

“I’d like to scrap the Compliance Unit completely”, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told a 300-strong Momentum meeting in Barnet on 22 February, “and I want people automatically accepted into membership when they first join”. He wants a fair and democratic process for membership disputes, and he’s right. Two weeks ago it looked as if expulsions by an unelected body with no place in the rulebook, the Compliance Unit, had come to an end, with none since November. Now there are new expulsions and threats of expulsions. That includes two friends of Workers’ Liberty in Lewisham, Jill Mountford and...

The metamorphosis of Andrew Gilligan

Andrew Gilligan, it should not be forgotten, once saw better days. Thirteen years ago, the BBC reporter’s role in making clear that the Blair administration purposely sexed up the first of the two dossiers advanced in fraudulent justification for the invasion of Iraq should rightly have won him every journalistic prize going, not to mention the plaudits of the entire left. Predictably, the New Labour machine responded with all the brutal fury it alone could muster. ‘Scuse French if I quote verbatim the party’s then director of communications Alastair Campbell, a thuggish adversary with rather...

Plan C's "Fast Forward" Festival

Nearly 200 people attended "Fast Forward", a three-day "festival" organised by Plan C and held at a youth hostel in Edale, Derbyshire, from 12-14 September. The event was an impressive undertaking, of which the organisers will undoubtedly, and rightly, feel proud. Plan C was set up in 2012, mainly by people moving away from anarchist-inspired "network" forms of organisation, but who remained sceptical of the Leninist party model (or at least, the version of it embodied by most of the British left). The traditions they look to include Italian "autonomist" Marxism, various radical anti...

Class War in Britain's Ports (1967)

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...

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