What's the Spartacist League up to these days?

[JeffTipps4]

The SL were at the anti racist demo today with a placard saying donate Trident to North Korea.

Apart from anything else complete illusions in the capitalist state!

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I was at the RMT demo in Dover on Friday and was offered a copy of the Worker's Hammer when I arrived. WRP were there trying to sell their paper aswell.

 

[nogojones]

Get up, get up, get up, get up
Let's make pamphlets tonight
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up
'Cos you do it right

And when I get that feeling
I want sexual accretion

Oh, now you've put me in the mood.

I want to make love to you on top of a big pile of Workers Hammers.

 

[Idris2002]

Imagine him standing over you, with his lad in his hand.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Imagine him standing over you, with his lad in his hand.

At it hammer & sickles

 

[Idris2002]

Pass the sick bag, Alice.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Ruling class tremblers and proletarian chain-play

 

[hitmouse]

Is that a Workers' Hammer in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

 

[DaveCinzano]

Spartacist a girl and I liked it

 

[Carl Steele]

This discussion gives the term "a steel-hardened Bolshevik cadre" a whole new meaning. Who could resist?

 

[Lurdan]

twitter link

 

[belboid]

Donate Trident to North Korea is fucking beautiful

 

[imposs1904]

Donate Trident to North Korea is fucking beautiful

I was going to donate my Trident to Age Concern but if North Korea want it - and are prepared to collect it - then they can have it.

 

[petee]

I was going to donate my Trident to Age Concern but if North Korea want it - and are prepared to collect it - then they can have it.

good idea, maybe they're great gum-chewers.

 

[Carl Steele]

it's a piece of street theatre, it's what they've always done. Gerry Clarke described the phenomena back in 1974:

"The simultaneous rise of the black struggle and the struggle against the war gave the SL an opportunity to “come alive” and put forth its revolutionary line on nationalism and imperialist war. However, this work was carried out, due to force of habit, in a sectarian fashion: leaders and organizations were denounced as usual, communist slogans were advanced everywhere and at all times; lengthy statements were issued on the necessity of class struggle; the red banners were unfurled and the record was made. After all this was done, the SLers disappeared back into their cosy meeting rooms and apartments and planned their next "strategy." No one could say - and let history record it! - that the revolutionary Trotskyists did not speak out against reformism and class collaboration!"

Gerry Clark, April 24, 1974
IDB 23, August 1974

 

[Carl Steele]

I've just sent Tom Riley a reply to his novella, Jimstown as we knew it. It's attached here. I've ignored the personal vitriol in his document and done my best not to reply in kind. Tempting though. Riley's document is very strange in places. The details he relates often contradict the general point he's trying to make.

 

[JeffTipps4]

Thanks Carl very interesting. I wonder if Tom R and the BT will venture a reply on that. I hope so as I would like to hear their views on it.

 

[Carl Steele]

Thanks Carl very interesting. I wonder if Tom R and the BT will venture a reply on that. I hope so as I would like to hear their views on it.

I was quite reluctant to write the response which is why it took me so long to do it. Riley will feel compelled to reply, he has to set the record straight (in the cosmic history book). I'll give it a miss next time unless Riley says something interesting (not likely - it'll probably get quite toxic).

I'm sorry this thought didn't make it in (only occurred to me this morning), but Joseph Hansen who was Trotsky's secretary in Mexico and later a leader of the SWP(US) dismissed Robertson as "a talented archivist." Apparently Robertson's apartment was full of boxes of dog-eared documents, minutes, letters etc. from various Trotskyist groups. And I wonder if he got lost in his reading, maybe he became a character in the docudrama, and built the Spartacist League as a place where he could act out his revolutionary fantasy life (a bit like wacky King Ludwig II and the construction of Neuschwanstein).

 

[PTK]

I have not looked at this forum for months.
I just looked at the Sparts website, and found that there is a special supplement of Workers Hammer on the election in the Phillipines. There is, sad to say, nothing on this document on the issue of the day: the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.

https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/2022-philippines-election/wh-2022-philippines-election.pdf

 

[PTK]

I have not looked at this forum for months. There is some interesting stuff. It inspired me to look at the Sparts website, and I found that there is a special supplement of Workers Hammer on the election in the Philippines. There is, sad to say, nothing on this document on the issue of the day: the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.

https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/2022-philippines-election/wh-2022-philippines-election.pdf

 

[spring-peeper]

I have not looked at this forum for months.
I just looked at the Sparts website, and found that there is a special supplement of Workers Hammer on the election in the Phillipines. There is, sad to say, nothing on this document on the issue of the day: the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.

https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/2022-philippines-election/wh-2022-philippines-election.pdf

bit long.....

 

[JeffTipps4]

I was quite reluctant to write the response which is why it took me so long to do it. Riley will feel compelled to reply, he has to set the record straight (in the cosmic history book). I'll give it a miss next time unless Riley says something interesting (not likely - it'll probably get quite toxic).

I'm sorry this thought didn't make it in (only occurred to me this morning), but Joseph Hansen who was Trotsky's secretary in Mexico and later a leader of the SWP(US) dismissed Robertson as "a talented archivist." Apparently Robertson's apartment was full of boxes of dog-eared documents, minutes, letters etc. from various Trotskyist groups. And I wonder if he got lost in his reading, maybe he became a character in the docudrama, and built the Spartacist League as a place where he could act out his revolutionary fantasy life (a bit like wacky King Ludwig II and the construction of Neuschwanstein).

No reply from TR yet, could be a big one building. What look very strange if he didn't reply, would be sort of accepting your points

 

[Carl Steele]

No reply from TR yet, could be a big one building. What look very strange if he didn't reply, would be sort of accepting your points

I don't think a non-reply would indicate an acceptance of my points because it's all agenda driven. He doesn't seem to notice how muddled it all is.

Anyway, since you seem to enjoy this so much here is the text of Riley's 1980 resignation letter from the Sparts. It's standard "I am not worthy of this wonderful revolutionary organisation" stuff - the work of someone who's been trashed - with the added twist that the Sparts considered Riley so unworthy they told him to resign.

The letter was reprinted in Spartacist Canada (page 14).

----------------------

September 6, 1980

Dear Comrades:

I never thought I'd be writing out a resignation from the iSt, the only revolutionary organization in the world, but here it is. At the request of the organization I am resigning from the TLC.

In my 6 1/2 years in the organization I have never really assimilated any Cannonism -- instead on the org. question I have always tended to New Leftism. [The National Chairman] was probably right when he said that to make it in the org. I would have to undergo a "personality transformation"--something that's not going to happen as far as I can see.

So I guess it's best that I leave--Although I am very reluctant to do so. I have no bitterness towards the org.--and of course I agree with the political program. I'm just very sorry that I couldn't have fitted in.

[Tom] Riley

--------------------------------------------

Riley relates the bizarre story of his demise in Jimstown as we knew it, where for obvious reasons he only quotes the first two sentences of his letter.

 

[JeffTipps4]

Thanks Carl that really is a classic! Imagine actually writing that?!

 

[hitmouse]

The letter was reprinted in Spartacist Canada (page 14).

----------------------

September 6, 1980

Dear Comrades:

I never thought I'd be writing out a resignation from the iSt, the only revolutionary organization in the world, but here it is. At the request of the organization I am resigning from the TLC.

And no, I don't want no spart, a spart is a guy that can't get no love from me, etc etc.

 

[Carl Steele]

Thanks Carl that really is a classic! Imagine actually writing that?!

I think I may have written something similar (can't quite remember), it's an expression of intense shame. Of course, as Riley was keen to point out, I actually wrote 2 resignation letters. I recall on the second occasion waiting some weeks to write it so as to allow the sense of shame and guilt to abate before putting pen to paper.

From Riley's own account it seems he hoped his resignation would give him a chance of being readmitted to membership - a bit like getting a divorce to save a marriage (as David Cameron put it in a different context).

 

[Shechemite]

Several threads this could go in

 

[Cerv]

Donate Trident to North Korea is fucking beautiful

it's a step up from "defend the North Korean worker's state right to nuclear weapons"
or was that some other group?

 

[Dom Traynor]

it's a step up from "defend the North Korean worker's state right to nuclear weapons"
or was that some other group?

Nope that was them.

 

[PTK]

Several threads this could go in

This is a significant change in style for the Spartacist League/Britain. For one thing, it never before employed such attractic graphics.