Alan Thornett

Alan Thornett (born 15 June 1937) is a British Trotskyist leader, and one of the officers of the left-wing Respect party.

Alan Thornett began his career as a car worker in Oxford. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, but left before being recruited to Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League in 1966. [Bob Pitt: [http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Healy/Chap7.html "The Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy"] , Chapter 7.] He helped to build a formidable support for Trotskyist ideas in the Cowley, Oxford, plant during the 1960s and early 1970s. However, in 1973 he and most of the Cowley group were expelled from the SLL along with up to 500 other members of the SLL. Some of them went on to form the Workers Socialist League (WSL) of which Thornett was a senior leader. It participated in an international tendency of groups expelled from Healy's ICFI known as the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee.

However the WSL foundered after losing members to the Spartacist League and gradually losing its basis of support as industrial struggle tailed off in the late 1970s. The WSL entered the Labour Party and fused with Sean Matgamna's group the International-Communist League in 1981, only to be expelled again in 1983 somewhat smaller.

Thornett and his comrades regrouped as the Socialist Group and then fused with the International Group to form the International Socialist Group (ISG). Thornett is now a leader of the ISG, the British Section of the (reunified) Fourth International of which he is also a central leader.

Thornett successfully argued for the ISG to exit the Labour Party and join the Socialist Alliance. Later, bucking the trend among small far-left groups, he supported the Alliance's dissolution into the Respect Coalition. Thornett sits on Respect's National Council. He is the author of two volumes of autobiography: "From Militancy to Marxism" and "Inside Cowley".

References

External links

*" [http://www.isg-fi.org.uk/what/wwt01.htm Debate on The European Radical Left] A reply to Alex Callinicos". Article by Alan Thornett contrasting the ISG's approach to Respect to the SWP's.

*" [http://socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/voices/thorn02.htm Building Respect, how we get beyond the current stage] ". Article by Alan Thornett critically assessing how to move Respect Coalition forwards.
* [http://www.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/ead/391.htm Alan Thornett papers] . University of Warwick.