Ben Lewis surveys the British left’s response to the crisis gripping the SWP, and calls for a radical change of culture Judging the crisis at present ripping through the Socialist Workers Party, our writers have has quite rightly stressed that thetrigger that set the whole thing off was the scandal surrounding its former national secretary, Martin Smith. Yet we ...
Here we publish our reply to comrades from the Revolution youth group, who emailed CS (see below) suggesting closer collaboration between our organisations. Dear comrades, We thank you for your correspondence dated April 20 2012. The question of revolutionary unity and rapprochement is absolutely vital to our movement today. We in Communist Students are willing to debate and ...
Last Saturday's launch of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative provided further evidence of an increasingly fractured, rightward-drifting left. Ben Lewis reports As I reported in last week’s Weekly Worker, bound up with the recent decamping of 15 younger comrades from Workers Power (British Section of the League for a Fifth International) is another far-left unity drive under the ...
The left must begin a process of rebuilding the movement and discussing how to create a revolutionary alternative, argues Chris Strafford The economic crisis and the austerity agenda has thrown the working class into largely defensive actions. The trade union leadership has crucially undermined any serious fightback and is offering only token resistance. We have a ...
The left must organise on the basis of genuine democratic centralism, argues Ben Lewis Readers might be aware that Workers Power, the organisation which heads the League for a Fifth International (LFI), has recently suffered yet another split - its second haemorrhaging of cadre in the last six years. Around 15, predominantly younger comrades departed, reducing ...
Laurie Smith reports on a split in the student anti-cuts movement. (first published in the Weekly Worker) The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Workers Power have vied for influence in the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) since its formation over a year ago, but their tense marriage of convenience appears to ...
Laurie Smith reports on last Saturday’s surprisingly positive conference of leftwing student activists Over 100 student activists gathered on Saturday February 6 for the Convention Against Cuts and Fees. Hosted by University College London Students for Free Education and given the green light by both the Socialist Workers Party’s and Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s student fronts, ...
Dave Isaacson responds to the Revo national committee The letter from the Revolution national committee claims to be a response to the letter sent to them by the Communist Students executive, yet it completely fails to deal with the issues which we raised. For the most part it is simply a restatement of their belief that ...
After the victory of the wildcat strike at the Lindsey refinery, James Turley draws some lessons Let us begin with the story so far. On January 28, 800 workers at Lindsey oil refinery in Killingholme walked out illegally. They were protesting against the ‘dumping’ of 200 workers of Italian and Portuguese origin in order to fulfil ...
Revolution (Revo), the small youth front controlled by Trotskyist group Workers Power, have recently circulated a proposal amongst the student left calling for a "student coordination". The way this has been circulated was at times cynical. When the statement was distributed at the Stop the War student activists meeting in London on February 7 many activists ...
by Robbie Folkard On October 18, over 200 people, mainly students, took to the streets to protest against a demonstration in Leeds by the self-proclaimed Nazi British People’s Party; a group whose local organiser had just been imprisoned for having nail bombs ready to attack mosques, and a computer containing over 40,000 images of children being ...
Communist Students members Dave Isaacson and Ben Klein reject economism and put forward the case for Marxism: Left unity not on offer This weekend will, farcically, see two separate gatherings to discuss ‘left unity’ in the student movement. Firstly, the ‘Reclaim the Campus’ event on Saturday May 17, called by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty-run Education Not ...