Alliance for Workers' Liberty

Infobox_British_Political_Party
party_name = Alliance for Workers' Liberty
party_articletitle = Alliance for Workers' Liberty
party_
leader = Cathy Nugent
foundation = 1966 / 1993
ideology = Third Camp socialism
position = Far left
international = "See text"
european = "none"
europarl = "none"
colours = "red"
headquarters = London
website = [http://www.workersliberty.org www.workersliberty.org]

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), also known as Workers' Liberty, is a Marxist group based in the United Kingdom. The group has had a complex history, but has always been strongly identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna. The AWL publish the newspaper "Solidarity".

Members of the group elect a National Committee, which in turn elects an Executive Committee able to take urgent decisions on behalf of the organisation. The AWL is registered with the Electoral Commission as a political party, for which purpose it has listed various executive committee members as officers: its leader as Cathy Nugent, its nominating officer as Mark Osborn and its treasurer as Martin Thomas. [http://www.electoralcommission.gov.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?frmGB=1&frmPartyID=63&frmType=partydetail]

Workers' Fight

The AWL traces its origins to the document "What we are and what we must become" [http://archive.workersliberty.org/publications/wwaawwmb/index.htm] , written by the tendency's founder, Sean Matgamna in 1966. In this document Matgamna argued that the Revolutionary Socialist League, by then effectively the Militant tendency, was too inward looking and needed to become more activist in its orientation. Publication of the document led to his expulsion from the RSL and with a handful of supporters, he formed the Workers' Fight group. Espousing left unity, they accepted an offer in 1969 to form a faction within the International Socialists (IS, later renamed the Socialist Workers Party), and named themselves the "Trotskyist Tendency".

Trotskyist Tendency

The Trotskyist Tendency (TT) clashed with the leadership of the International Socialists (IS) over many issues, for instance on the issue of the Common Market on which the IS leadership was divided and over the use of the "Troops Out" slogan regarding Northern Ireland. This was a particularly controversial issue at the time, the International Socialist leadership arguing that an immediate withdrawal of troops would harm the nationalist cause given the attacks by some loyalists on nationalist areas.

By 1971 the Trotskyist Tendency had grown and its positions had some currency within IS but the leadership of IS itself was increasingly concerned that branches which contained TT supporters were more involved in debating politics than in building IS within the working class. This led to the leadership of the International Socialists calling a special conference on the issue of the relationship between the TT and the rest of IS. The leadership claimed that the TT were inhibiting the growth of IS and that therefore the two groups should be "defused" at the special conference as did in fact happen. The TT described this "defusion" as an "expulsion", given that they did not wish to leave.

International-Communist League

Outside the IS, the TT, considerably increased in size, resumed publication of "Workers' Fight", now as a printed paper, not as was previously the case as a duplicated journal. It also began publication of a theoretical journal entitled "Permanent Revolution" and made efforts to publish a small number of workplace-oriented publications in specific industries.

In 1976 it fused with the smaller Workers Power group, formerly the Left Faction within IS, to form the International-Communist League. A small group of members in Bolton and Wigan opposed to merger formed the Marxist Worker group, which later fused with the International Marxist Group. Workers' Fight was renamed "Workers' Action" and went over to a weekly publication schedule and the group's quarterly magazine was now entitled "International-Communist". It joined with other groups that considered themselves to the left of the USFI in the Necessary International Initiative. But later in the year, much of Workers Power left in a rancorous dispute to resume a separate existence. Workers' Action increased its activity within the Labour Party, and in 1978 set up the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. This campaign proved relatively popular and initially involved a range of figures on the left of the Labour Party who wrote for and supported the irregular paper of the SCLV which was named "Socialist Organiser". Due to a series of disputes, most of the Labour left figures - including Ken Livingstone - gradually withdrew from "Socialist Organiser" until the I-CL was the only force involved in what was now its central publication. Both "Workers' Action" and "International-Communist" were by 1979 discontinued, reflecting the group's entrism into the Labour Party.

Workers Socialist League

In 1981 the I-CL fused with Alan Thornett's Workers Socialist League which had now also joined the Labour Party. The new organisation, also called the Workers' Socialist League, mostly worked through the Socialist Organiser Alliance. It also produced a theoretical journal, "Workers' Socialist Review". In 1984, the groups split apart. The key issue was the Falklands War: most of the former I-CL argued for the defeat of both sides; most of the former WSL supported a victory for Argentina. The tensions had also been strained over questions of internal democracy and differences over the national question.

ocialist Organiser Alliance

The Socialist Organiser Alliance grew from the broad left Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. By 1983 the paper was dominated by Matgamna's supporters (by then in the Workers Socialist League) and was clearly identified with that faction. In particular, splits with independent Labour left politicians such as Ken Livingstone over the GLC's policy of increasing local taxes to pay for improved services weakened the Alliance.

The group initially decided to organise its student work through the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS), forming "Socialist Students in NOLS" to campaign within the National Union of Students.

In 1985, after the split in the WSL which led to the departure of what became the Socialist Group, the group reassessed its politics, and adopted a two state position on Israel-Palestine. In 1988, the group's national committee moved from its original position that the Stalinist states were "deformed or degenerated workers states", and opened a discussion on the thesis that they were some 'new exploiting society'. By the 1990s, the organisation adopted a bureaucratic collectivist analysis, with a minority around Martin Thomas holding a state capitalist analysis. Subsequently, the AWL adopted a number of other positions associated with Third Camp socialism.

Several supporters of a small minority that maintained the degenerated workers' state theory left and joined the International Socialist Group early in 1992, arguing that the AWL were wrong to support Boris Yeltsin in the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 and should have opposed Yeltsin's ban on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Alliance for Workers' Liberty

"Socialist Organiser" was banned by the Labour Party in 1990 when its application to register with the Labour Party was rejected. The register was an attempt to regulate entryists, but this measure was primarily aimed at the Militant tendency and had little effect on the newspaper prior to 1990. In response to the ban, the Socialist Organiser Alliance dissolved. In 1993 the editors of "Socialist Organiser" re-launched an organisation known as the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and gradually moved away from a focus on the Labour Party. In 1998, the AWL helped to set up the Socialist Alliance. It later supported the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, and in the 2005 UK general election, stood candidates as part of the Socialist Green Unity Coalition.

After closing SSiN in the late 1980s, it established and led a number of left opposition campaigns in the NUS, including Left Unity and the Campaign for Free Education. It continues to organise left opposition in the NUS through its activity in the Education Not for Sale network.

Its student work has been quite successful, winning elected positions in the National Union of Students on the basis campaigning for free education, among other issues. Numerous supporters have won seats in the structures of the NUS. Kat Fletcher, President of the NUS from 2004 to 2006 was formerly a member of the AWL and the Campaign for Free Education. It has played leading roles in the NUS Women's and LGBT Campaigns, championing the politics of liberation and international solidarity within them, securing their representation within the NUS and working with groups such as Outrage! and Al-Fatiha.

The AWL has supported a tabloid newspaper, "Solidarity", since 1998: it was originally sponsored by the Welfare State Network. It also published "Workers' Liberty" as a roughly quarterly magazine between 1985 and 2001. [http://www.workersliberty.org/taxonomy/term/1] In 2001 and 2002, a second series of the magazine was published; three issues of "Workers' Liberty" were produced in a journal format. [http://www.workersliberty.org/taxonomy/term/429] A third series of WL started in February 2006, taking the form of thematic collections issued as inserts within "Solidarity". [http://www.workersliberty.org/taxonomy/term/486] There are 141 members of the group's internal information list. [http://www.workersliberty.org/lists/arc/awl-announcements/2007-06/msg00007.html]

The AWL is active in campaigns such as No Sweat, Education Not for Sale and Iraq Union Solidarity [http://www.iraqunionsolidarity.org] .Fact|date=February 2007

The group has international links with the "Solidarity Tendency", who are members of the Scottish Socialist Party, Workers' Liberty Australia and supporters within the Revolutionary Left Current in Poland and Solidarity in the United States. Its website also carries links to a number of organisations with whom it says it has "friendly relations", among them the Débat Militant/Democratie Revolutionnaire tendency [http://www.lcr-debatmilitant.org/] in the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, Liaisons [http://site.voila.fr/bulletin_Liaisons/] , Convergences Révolutionnaires [http://www.convergencesrevolutionnaires.org/] and mondialisme.org [http://mondialisme.org] in France, the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq and Workers' Left Unity Iran. [http://www.etehadchap.org/]

In 2006, the AWL published the cartoons that were originally published in "Jyllands-Posten" on their website to aid the debate, which they describe as being about free speech. [http://www.workersliberty.org/node/view/5619?PHPSESSID=21994b2d99b0c18b0e139dd5f411a51c] . This publication has proven controversial. While it opposed the Iraq war and opposes the occupation of Iraq, the group does not actively call for the immediate withdrawal of US and UK forces [http://www.workersliberty.org/node/8512] , a position that is unique among far left organisations worldwide,Fact|date=August 2007 and disagreed with by a minority within the AWL. [http://www.workersliberty.org/node/8481]

In August 2008 two members left the alliance to form The Commune [http://www.thecommune.co.uk] . Their resignations were part of a wave of discussion triggered by an article by Sean Matgamna which argued that "The harsh truth is that there is good reason for Israel to make a precipitate strike at Iranian nuclear capacity.". [http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/07/28/discussion-article-what-if-israel-bombs-iran]

External links

* [http://www.workersliberty.org/ Alliance for Workers' Liberty site]