Workers Power Expulsions

[urbanrevolt]

Another hi to levien. We're all here- Manchester WP though JD and Rebecca are with the lot that stayed. But the rest of us have been expelled!

You speak as if we haven't been active- I've been mainly up in Bolton with the Sukula stuff, plus we've had a few stalls up there with most of the IF 9faction comrades) going to those but we were on the NHS demo, a couple of us'll be at the Respect trade union meeting tonight and the LP demo planning on Thursday.
We were on the pathetic anti-fascist demo outside Manc town hall.

Perhaps it's you who've been off with respect.

 

[socialistsuzy]

very interesting! makes a lot of sense. (she was my teacher) i still chat to her a fair bit, will be interested to hear what shes got to say.
xsuzyx

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Rumour has it WP's 'international' has expelled a few dozen people ... part/all of an international faction against their sectarian and ultra left positions ... anyone know the truth?

Has this been on News24 yet?

 

[urbanrevolt]

Expect they're saving it for the Ten O'Clock news or may be ITN have scooped it- we (the Manchester expelled comrades) were after all all on their news two years ago trashing Le Pen's car in Altrincham

 

[jemima]

hmmmmm.... part 2

Well, indeed. We have our suspicions in fact. But I guess we leave all that orgsanisational nonsense- who said what about whom- behind us now.

i can understand that. but surely it would be beneficial for people to know exactly what these people are capable of if one has to deal with them in the future (if indeed they have a future). i, for one, find it really fucking creepy.

 

[belboid]

Well, indeed. We have our suspicions in fact.

you have your suspicions? I heard you knew exactly who had sent what down, and how she'd got hold of it.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Are you serious? A "significant following"? In 1938?

Yes - there were tens of thousands of left oppositionists locked up in Stalin's Gaols during the 1930s. [I seem to remember in Deutscher's broadcast "The Great Purges" published in the 1960s, the figure of 100,000 supporters of the left opposition is mentioned, but I may have misremembered or Deutscher may have exaggerated it - anyone got it who can check? BarryB might have access to it]

 

[cockneyrebel]

Has this been on News24 yet?

Not seen it yet. Am checking the latest news scroll on BBC website.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

The Weekly Worker editorial team must be going into overdrive, can we expect a special edition next week on this significant historical development?

 

[cockneyrebel]

you have your suspicions? I heard you knew exactly who had sent what down, and how she'd got hold of it.

No-one is sure of how they got hold of our emails.

What makes me laugh is that they slated us for this that and the other in that stalinist piece. But if we were that disloyal how comes no-one knew anything about this until we got expelled! Not even the old weekly worker.

What's happened to the Revo boards then. Suzy, can you still view the forums? What's being said!

 

[socialistsuzy]

cockney rebel, which are u in?

 

[jemima]

The Weekly Worker editorial team must be going into overdrive, can we expect a special edition next week on this significant historical development?

if you think its so trivial, why are you still on this thread?

this may seem like a storm in a teacup for us outsiders but its important for those involved.

 

[cockneyrebel]

I got expelled. So can you view the Revo forums? Anything being said! I can only see the front page when I log in. I've been purged. Along with an Australian member of the international Revo leadership. So much for independence eh!!!

Belboid where did you get that 10 year figure from, wasn't our position as far as I know. We objected to their catastrophist views and ridiculous tasks that flowed from that. Even they had to down grade their last congress analysis that the world economy was flying on one engine and in stagnation. The last three years made that look pretty stupid, even they couldn't keep that one up!!

 

[dennisr]

cockney rebel, which are u in?

expelled - and quite rightly too - i always saw him as a troublemaker

 

[cockneyrebel]

jemima who are you and why are you interested?

 

[Fisher_Gate]

...

Fisher Gate is a pabloite. End of. Why do you think he tails your mob?

Partly guilty of the first charge, but not the second.

Though I do think Pablo was much misunderstood and made an important contribution, like everyone he also made some mistakes.

 

[belboid]

Belboid where did you get that 10 year figure from, wasn't our position as far as I know

from there statement specifically, and from generally following the conversations, that isn't too distorted a version of your argument - if clearly overstated to make you look ultra-conservative.

 

[jemima]

jemima who are you and why are you interested?

dear cockney rebel, i am a spy for MI5 trying to use information posted on this thread to bring down the anti-capitalist movement.

for god's sake, can someone vouch for me? i'm getting sick of this.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

The Weekly Worker editorial team must be going into overdrive, can we expect a special edition next week on this significant historical development?

A 16 page 'Workers Power Split' Special Part 1, Part 2 to follow the next week, with exclusive interviews with the protagonists, a thirty year history of everything WP have ever done, and 'a plague on both their houses' editorial, I hope! They'll get so excited you'll need to wear gloves to read it lest your fingers get sticky.

 

[fanciful]

minority statement part 1

Sorry about the C & P but the websites not up yet.
Minority statement in three parts

The split in the League for the Fifth International (LFI)

On Saturday 1 July 33 members of the LFI in Britain, Australia, Ireland and Sweden (30% of the LFI membership) were expelled by the International Secretariat (IS) of the League. They were all members of an International Faction (IF) that had been formed in the run up to the League’s 7th Congress in July.

The formation of the IF was a culmination of a two year long struggle beginning in Workers Power Britain (WPB) and extending into the League. That struggle was around perspectives and tactics. The majority perspectives adopted at the 2003 congress, and many of the tactics deployed by the organisation on the basis of these perspectives, were wrong, especially around the use of the slogan of a Fifth International within the anti-capitalist movement.

The errors in those perspectives became glaringly apparent in the years following the Congress. Yet the majority clung to them as though they were articles of faith. Perspectives were being transformed into doctrine and real developments in the class struggle and the economy were ignored wherever and whenever they contradicted the majority’s “perspective”. The political struggle to correct these errors became increasingly bitter, especially in WPB. That struggle has resulted in the current split.

Differences over period

The 2003 Congress of the LFI decided that globalisation had exhausted all of its economic potential, that world capitalism had entered a phase of stagnation and that the political situation could be characterised as a worldwide “pre revolutionary period”. The IF challenged this view, arguing that world capitalism was benefiting from the collapse of the Stalinist states and the consequent opening up whole new markets and cheap labour for imperialist exploitation in China, Central Europe and Russia.

This had allowed imperialism, in the age of globalisation, to offset the structural crises of capitalism. We pointed out that global GDP had doubled in the last ten years and that the upward swings of the business cycles since 1993 had been strong, while the down phases had been relatively shallow and unsynchronised – hardly symptoms of crisis and stagnation.

For our part, we do not believe that capitalism has overcome its tendency to structural crisis. We continue to assert that imperialism is the epoch of wars and revolutions. We do not, and none of our members has ever advocated Kondratiev's long waves, as the LFI statement of 1st July asserts. But following Trotsky we do recognise there are longer periods in the world economy, which decisively shape the duration, length and depth of the business cycle.

We recognised the need to open and develop a discussion about world capitalism today since it so clearly bore little resemblance to the picture painted in the majority’s political perspectives. Unfortunately this attempt at a scientific debate was greeted with insults – we were “pessimists” who “welcomed good news for capitalism”.

We also argued that the working class, internationally, had moved from a period of international defeats (1980-95) to a period of recovery. But we did not mistake a period of recovery for a period of rude health. We recognised that in major sections of the international workers’ movement militant organisations had not yet been rebuilt. Traditions of struggle and solidarity had not yet been become widespread. The legacy of the former defeats was still a weapon used by the reformist bureaucracies to hinder or hamper the struggles of today.

In short we believe that we are in a period of transition in world politics. We think the recovery has been uneven. In parts of the world, Japan, Britain, USA, Scandinavia, Russia, the trade unions and workers have remained on the defensive. In other areas – Latin America, France, Greece, the Middle East the struggle against neoliberalism, war and oppression has taken on major proportions. Unevenness and recovery have marked the world class struggle and these differing class struggle situations could not be swept away by simply declaring “a world pre-revolutionary situation”.

Because we were prepared to say this, the Majority yell in their 1st July statement: “they systematically ignored or grossly underestimated the strengths and scale of the movements resisting neo-liberalism and imperialist war, regarding them as dead or as good as dead”. This gives a flavour of the caricatures and histrionics that marked the leadership’s polemics against us in the latter period of the political struggle in the LFI.

The anti-capitalist movement and the fight for the new international

Central to the 2003 Congress perspective was the idea that the “flowering of the anti-capitalist movement”, marking the new pre-revolutionary period, made the founding of a new Fifth International an immediate prospect. It meant “forming the new International as soon as possible – not in the distant future but in months or years”. The vehicle for this became the World Social Forum and its regional bodies, like the ESF, and a local social forum movement modelled on Italy. This was where “important elements of the new International were taking shape”.

In the years that followed 2003 this proved to be a completely wrong perspective. The anti-summit protests went into crisis after the repression of Gothenburg and Genoa (2002), the Italian social forum movement collapsed. In the two years following the Florence ESF in 2002, the WSF and the ESF turned further right under the leadership of the Brazilian PT, Italian RC, the PDS of Germany, (parties that joined or ran neo-liberal national or local governments).

These parties blocked all attempts to turn the ESF/Assembly of Social Movements into a co-ordinating body of struggle, let alone into a new revolutionary international. The Majority refused to recognise that the ESF/WSF has become an obstacle, not a vehicle, for the construction of a revolutionary International. Indeed it declared that, “We will not demand that the mass organisations within the ESF and allied international forums must first ditch their reformist and post Stalinist leaders before they can form a new international.” A new revolutionary international led by the likes of the Rifondazione’s Bertinotti!

In truth the task of the day was to rally the best revolutionary elements, especially from amongst the radicalised youth and militant union organisations in this important movement, against the leadership and against very purpose that the reformists had now established for the WSF/ESF – an international talking shop which they could use to refurbish their left credentials. The Majority could not say this because they thought it was an embryonic international, they could not fulfil the Marxist duty to say “what is” – that this movement had to be split into competing trends if a revolutionary international was to come about.

Instead the LFI leadership declared that “we were nearer the tasks Marx faced at the beginning of the First (international) than Trotsky in 1938.” That is, nearer to refounding the International as a united front with reformist leaders, but in this case where the revolutionary Marxists were an insignificant minority with little influence. The analogy with the First International was laughable. What was being proposed was an echo of the call made in the 1980s for a new international in which Trotskyists would be in the minority, a call popularised by the Argentinean centrist leader at that time, Nahuel Moreno.

This new strategy for the LFI was accompanied by a turn away from argument and discussion with leftward moving groups, often from the Fourth International tradition, and from the fight for revolutionary regroupment. The LFI was no longer interested in the “tiddlers” and “sectarians” who did not recognise the potential of the WSF/ESF. It was now able to address the masses gathering in an embryonic international.

But the LFI was a tiny organisation with little implantation in the global workers’ movement. The masses at the WSF/ESF had not responded to its shrill calls to form the Fifth International in the months or years following the 2003 call. Indeed no allies amongst other organisations had been found to unite with to fight for the Fifth International – or even take the next step in that direction. The leadership ignored these stubborn facts. It was now substituting delusion and schema for accurate perspectives and revolutionary tactics.

The perspective of a pre-revolutionary period and the assembling of forces for a new international in the ESF movement in the short term, led the Majority declaring that the London ESF in 2004 would present “unparalleled opportunities to transform, radicalise and re-organise class politics in Britain”. We said it wouldn’t, especially given the weakness of the anti-capitalist movement in Britain and the low level of trade union and class struggle. We were proved right but the Majority pressed on.

Building “local social forums in every town and city” (social forums were seen as part of the fight for proto soviet organisations in the pre revolutionary period worldwide) became a “key slogan”. The social forum “movement” – which didn’t actually exist – nevertheless became a key area of work.

 

[belboid]

jemima who are you and why are you interested?

hehe - even I know who Jemima is cockers!

worry ye not...

 

[socialistsuzy]

no i can't view the forum, neither can 'raiije' or a few others. i have no idea whats been happenin on it, i've heard it was pretty firery.

 

[fanciful]

part two

Even after the dramatic decline of the mass anti-war movement in Britain the majority retained the slogan of building social forums. It had no resonance and was a complete failure wherever we tried to implement it. This slogan, along with the call for a National Social Forum, was only dropped after the small turnout at the Gleneagles G8 summit siege showed how weak the movement was in Britain. But even at the point the LFI majority leaders insisted we had been wrong to oppose the slogan. The majority could not accept that the minority were right on anything. They were becoming impervious to all criticism.

The Workers’ Party and tactics towards reformism

Another area of difference, one that primarily affected the British section, concerned tactics towards reformism.

WPB had historically taken a critical electoral support position towards the Labour Party. We regarded Lenin’s description of the Labour Party as a “bourgeois workers party” – a party with a bourgeois reformist programme and leadership but with a working class base mainly through the affiliated trade unions – as correct and still accurate.

The united front – placing demands on Labour, trying to win its working class supporters to struggle and revolutionary politics, and mobilising reformist workers in a fight with their leaders, inside and outside the Labour Party – is still a crucial tactic in our view. Critical electoral support was part of this tactic – gaining a hearing with reformist workers, putting their party to the test of office, winning these workers to a revolutionary alternative.

This was a tactic not a strategy – if we had been larger we would have stood revolutionary candidates against Labour. We supported “class struggle candidates” where workers in struggle represented a real break from Labour and stood against the party. We actively supported and helped build the Socialist Alliance (SA). One of our faction’s members was a parliamentary candidate for it in Greenwich while another was on the SA’s executive.

Part of this struggle against Labour reformism was a fight to democratise the political fund. This was designed to break Labour’s monopoly hold on TU political funds and allow unions nationally and locally to fund and support other working class political parties as well as Labour – like the SSP in Scotland. This was the position WP argued for in the SA and was a tactic the Alliance used with some success with many faction members playing a leading role in mobilising a thousand strong trade union conference on the issue.

In the last two years, against our opposition, WP has abandoned all of these positions. It now calls on trade unionists to disaffiliate from Labour even though there is no “workers’ party” to affiliate to. This is a recipe for encouraging the growth of apolitical trade unionism – a danger that now faces the FBU since its disaffiliation from Labour. The WPB leadership calls for a general abstentionist position in elections – calling on workers not to vote is somehow “relating to the vanguard”. Worse, in one document they went so far as to say WPB was not “putting demands on Labour in this conjuncture.” So, no demands on them to repeal anti-unions laws, anti-asylum seeker laws and so on? This was getting ludicrous.

Rejecting critical electoral support was even the case where there was a real threat of fascist gains. While the UAF called on people to vote anyone but the BNP, WPB tells workers threatened with a fascist council election victory not to bother to vote at all!

Of course, we don’t think voting Labour will defeat fascism. We need to defeat them on the streets and through a fight for a real revolutionary alternative to capitalism. But we do think it is necessary – indeed it is an elementary united front tactic – to block them building an electoral base for fascism wherever we can. If a revolutionary candidate or a serious candidate of struggle is not standing we should critically support Labour under such circumstances.

The Majority’s statement on the split tries to make out that because we take this position we are “soft on Labour”. Far from it. The argument over the workers’ party was about how to relate to both the vanguard who are deeply disillusioned with Labour and, at the same time, to the mass of organised workers and trade unionists who still vote Labour against the Tories. Many of these workers have illusions in Gordon Brown or other left figures and campaigns in the Labour Party. The RMT, for example, which has been kicked out of the Labour Party nevertheless continues to support politically and financially left wing Labour MPs.

With the collapse of the Socialist Alliance, the diversion of many of its militants into a populist, non-socialist alternative, Respect, and a continuing low level of trade union struggle in Britain, we did not think the workers’ party tactic was a central one to use in the current situation. In the absence of substantial organised trade union forces driving for a new party we thought it would have little resonance as an operative tactic – no more resonance in fact than the clear and straightforward idea that the party that workers needed was a revolutionary party. There was no short cut to this goal, no quick fix via a “new mass workers’ party”, and it remained vital to engage with vanguard militants on the need to join with us in the fight to build a revolutionary party.

We think the severely muted response, around the country, to the launch of the Socialist Party’s Campaign for a New Workers Party (barely a regional or town meeting over 60 people and often a lot less) confirms that this tactic is not useful for revolutionaries at the moment. Yet this has now become the central, “over-arching” campaigning work of WPB, the key, unifying element of the group’s agitation.

The IS asserts that because we opposed the new workers’ party tactic politically, the IF in WPB “boycotted the areas of work that they did not approve of, like campaigning for a new workers’ party.” In fact at union national conferences (Unison, NUT, Natfhe, for example) it was IF members who loyally pressed the case, and faction members initiated or were involved in campaign launches in Sheffield, South Wales and south London.

Finally and ironically, abandoning critical support was never applied to LFI sections in Sweden or the Czech Republic where the League continued to advocate a vote for neo-liberal social democratic parties that have been in power for many years.

The new turn to agitation

The Majority paints a picture of the IF resisting a new turn to agitation, that we “attempt to move the League firmly in the direction of passive propagandism and a discussion circle existence.” Moreover, we are an “embittered” group of trade unionists who are unable to recruit to WPB.

Of course any revolutionary trade unionist will tell you that after the defeats of Thatcherism, the shrinking of the unions and the strengthening of the reformist union bureaucracy via the anti union laws, it is not easy to win recruits to revolutionary politics. This is even more the case in a period like today of very low levels of trade union struggle. If it was as easy to recruit in the unions as the leaders of the LFI think the far left would not be so much smaller, and, frankly more marginal, now than it was even 10 years ago.

We recognised many years ago that there was a radicalisation amongst youth and it is through Revolution youth work that WPB has recruited. And all the faction supported this work. Indeed we helped build it. However, as the political struggle deepened the majority began to exclude faction supporters from youth work. They created or maintained separate youth branches and cells, even where those branches were patently failing to build independent Revo groups, as in London, for example. The youth branches and cells were used as exclusion zones by the majority - a purely factional decision by them to reduce our influence amongst a layer of their supporters who by this time were being systematically miseducated.

Yet we never learned from the majority what their new turn to agitation consisted of. For WPB it seemed to come down to “a few more stalls, more leafleting, more nights of activity” and some talk about using the methods of Revo to attract workers – campaigns, street theatre etc. The only political campaign mentioned was the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party – hardly a roaring success in getting workers along to meetings, let alone recruiting them to revolutionary politics.

The IS says the IF “favour of a tailist and routinist perspective in the trade unions.” The irony is that it is the trade union members of the faction, the bulk of the trade union base of WPB just expelled, were the ones who undertook some of the most political actions in the last period and demonstrated what real revolutionary agitation was. Our teachers, for example, were instrumental in bringing out their schools on strike in London, bringing pupils and parents onto the streets, the day Blair invaded Iraq. These were some of the only trade union actions against the war in the country.

What the Majority leadership objected to, in their impatience and voluntarism, was that to rebuild confidence and organisation amongst workers and to begin to build a militant leadership in a workplace takes a lot of ordinary, everyday, union work, alongside communist work. Unfortunately the Majority duped a lot of young members with little experience of workplace and union work into going along with them on this, dubbing such work “routinism” reflecting a “conservative outlook”.

International youth work and democratic centralism

We are accused of attacking “the youth work that was so successful in Britain and Austria” in the LFI statement.

 

[fanciful]

part three

WPB had moderate success for a small group in this area of work. Revolution has been very good at drawing young people into WPB, less successful in establishing a genuine independent youth movement. Its annual national conferences have hovered around 40-50 people. But only in one town, Leeds had we managed to established a self–sustaining active Revo group.

In Austria results are disputed, as half the organisation, mostly young members, left shortly after the Athens ESF leaving only five members in the section. The comrades who left claim the success of the Revo work in Austria is much exaggerated by the full-timer and International Secretariat member there.

The IF certainly thought that the rush to push the international Revo groups, which were often struggling to establish themselves nationally, into a fully blown international democratic centralist structure – while not wrong in principle – was premature. It flowed from the IS’s desire to prove that not only a new Fifth international was on the cards but that we were on the way to building a youth international as well. In fact despite the occasional successful youth meeting at ESFs we had discovered few co-thinkers willing to join us in this task.

A Revolution International Committee (RIC) was set up, and a Bureau to meet in between. Neither functioned very well and at the first sign of differences a tendency, described by the IS as “libertarian”, in the German and Swiss Revo groups, were suddenly being denounced as people who “flouted” democratic centralism. We said that this problem demonstrated that the drive towards democratic centralism should be reconsidered. We were duly denounced as “effectively surrendering to the libertarian and anarchising trends that are trying to split Revo in Germany, Czech Republic and Switzerland away from its association with the League.”

We replied: “Whatever happened to the idea that we were trying to build broad, fairly loose Revo organisations that might contain members of other tendencies, including libertarians? Genuinely independent organisations, in their majority under our political leadership, a leadership not imposed but won through argument and activity?”

No, for the super centralists of the LFI majority all Revo groups must immediately follow to the letter the directions and campaigns decided by the RIC and a new two person bureau (of LFI members) in Leeds. This is a recipe for driving young people into the arms of libertarians, and for splits. It is completely inappropriate for the current stage and state of Revolution internationally. It is destroying it as an organisation.

The internal struggle and the expulsions

The LFI, WPB and most other sections, have a strong tradition of democratic debate, of political tendencies forming and dissolving and of a collective leadership representing various strands of opinion. This has been increasingly undermined over the last two years.

In WPB we were forced to turn from a tendency to a faction in order to guarantee our proportional representation on the National Committee at our national conference last March. As a result of us taking this justified action the NC majority immediately barred us from representation on the Political Committee (PC), the weekly meeting executive. This was despite the fact that two minority Tendency members had worked loyally on the PC for the entire preceding year without incident. From that moment the PC became a weapon in the hands of the majority faction to be used, systematically, against the minority Faction.

Soon disciplinary commissions were hunting down those suspected of talking to outsiders about the political divisions in the group (invariably faction members). Despite the Majority’s efforts no evidence was ever found – because there wasn’t any. The Manchester branch was unconstitutionally split with a “youth cell” being formed reporting directly to the PC – a measure about to be challenged at our National Committee before our expulsion.

When a crisis broke out in the Austrian section – leading to the resignations of half of the organisation - the IF was immediately accused by the IS of meddling in it and using it for factional advantage. There was no evidence for this, but just as truth was no longer getting in the way of the majority’s political perspectives it was now also no barrier to their organisational offensive against the faction. Indeed such was the scale of the witch-hunt against us that all personal e-mails between comrades in the League which even mentioned the Austrian crisis were demanded to be handed over to the International Secretariat on pain of discipline. The aim was a trawling expedition to “pin something” on the IF. These outrageous demands imposed on the Austrian opposition undoubtedly helped to drive the young comrades away from the League.

All factional struggles can lead to a breakdown in comradely relations. These measures contributed to a breakdown of trust of comrades in the LFI leadership.

By the time WPB assembled for its pre-congress aggregate in June the IF had been denounced as “passive propagandists”, “a petit bourgeois formation”, “a clique” and “liquidationists”. The leadership clearly thought it was re fighting the 1940 Cannon-Shachtman struggle in the US SWP with quotes flying around from “From a scratch to the danger gangrene” – second time round this really was farce.

The Majority had made clear that whatever the support the IF had at Congress they would keep control of all of the executive committees – the International Secretariat and the WPB PC were by now virtually one and the same thing with overlapping membership. Given the IF’s experience of what this factional control meant it was no surprise that discussions started on whether we would be better taking our differences and our politics into the class struggle outside of the framework of the League.

Recently we started polling members of the IF on the question of whether we should resign as a block before or after the congress. The vote was never completed before the IS gained access to (or hacked into) the Faction e-list and proceeded to expel everyone in the faction whatever their opinion on this matter. On the very day of the expulsions members of the IF were working loyally on the July issue of WPB’s newspaper, carrying out the discipline of the group as they had done for the whole two years they were in opposition.

The Majority are publishing their side of the story – which the outside observer will note involves an awful lot of insults against this or that faction member but not very much about the politics of the dispute. We on the other hand have chosen to highlight the political character of our struggle inside the LFI. The reason for this is that, above all, we are political activists, now, in the past, and for many years to come. We don’t feel personally injured, embittered or demoralised by the political fight we waged in the LFI.

It is time to move on and we will leave the screaming and shouting to those who have expelled us. We will move on to the formation of a new organisation to continue our struggle and to the production of a new magazine in Britain – Permanent Revolution. We will be bringing into it the core of the established leadership of WPB and almost half the membership of WPB, including most of its trade unionists. We bring into it the Australian section of the League, WPA, plus comrades from Ireland and Sweden.

We are confident that our new organisation will press forward and win more adherents. We are ready to face our new challenge.

3rd July 2006

Contact us at:
prtendency@btinternet.com
www.permanentrevolution.net (under construction)

The following members of the LFI have been expelled.

Adrian S (WPB) – member since 1984
Alison H (WPB) - 1989
Andrew J (Dublin) - 2004
Andy J (Galway) - Founder member Irish Workers Group 1975
Andy S (WPB) - Founder member WPB 1975
Bill J (WPB) - 1986
Carlene W (WPA) - 1991
Dan J (WPB) - 2002
Dave A (WPB) - 1993
Dave E (WPB) – 1986
Dave G (WPB) – 1992
George B (WPB) - 1986
Helen W (WPB) - 1979
James T (WPB) - 2003
Jason T (WPB) - 2001
Joel B (AM) - 2002
John C (WPB) - 1993
Jon B (WPB) - 1984
Kate (WPB) - 1984
Kath (WPA) - 2002
Keith H (WPB) - 1979
Kirstie P (WPB) - 1989
Kr (WPA) - 2004
Lisa F (WPA) - 1994
Mark H (WPB) – 1977
Maureen G (Galway) - 1985
Michelle R (WPA) - 2002
Pauline A (WPB) - 1980
Pete A (WPB) - 1981
Rekha K (WPB) - 2002
Steve F (WPB) - 1995
Stuart K (WPB) - Founder member WPB 1975
Yuen C (WPB) - 2002

 

[cockneyrebel]

from there statement specifically, and from generally following the conversations, that isn't too distorted a version of your argument - if clearly overstated to make you look ultra-conservative.

I think it is pretty distorted. And in some conversations we might have bent the stick a bit, but when you're coming up against people who told you three years ago that the world economy was flying on one engine and in stagnation and that the 2004 London ESF had the potential to radically change the working class in the UK it's hard not to.

But yeah they do want to make us look conservative. But didn't you think the expulsion statement read like a mad rant!

So come on Suzy, what's going on on the Revo boards!!!

 

[cockneyrebel]

dear cockney rebel, i am a spy for MI5 trying to use information posted on this thread to bring down the anti-capitalist movement.

for god's sake, can someone vouch for me? i'm getting sick of this.

It was a genuine question

 

[socialistsuzy]

lol i said, i have no idea, its not letting anyone on

 

[fanciful]

On China, you won't obviously be aware that at the beginning of the debate, the majority compared its impact on the world economy to that of Italy...
The problem was that we didn't really have the opportunity to develop a nuanced argument about the length of the depth of the present capitalist advance because whenever we did we were denounced as wanting "good news for capitalism" or as "Chinamaniacs" or somesuch crap.
Now that we are free from the majority (at last!), then I'm sure we can develop a really good rounded position.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Do Permanent Revolution have a website?

 

[jemima]

heres a genuine answer

It was a genuine question

ok, well, i live in manchester and, in my activist pursuits, have a lot to do with many of the people involved.

is that ok?