[The still unresolved political crisis and fragmentation of…]
Socialist Press1980 1980-04-16Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
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The still unresolved political crisis and fragmentation of the post-war Trotskyist movement provided the basis for a lively debate at the WSL conference.
A short document. entitled "The WSL, the TILC and the fight to reconstruct the Fourth International" was adopted by the conference-but only after a small minority of comrades had provoked considerable discussion by counterposing their own very different conception of the way in which the crisis of the worid Trotskyist movement must be resolved.
Reconstruction
The WSL majority reemphasised that our call for the "reconstruction" of the FI is used explicitly to reject any sectarian proclamation of the WSL and its co-thinkers as "the" Fourth International, while at the same time rejecting any simple "reorganisation" of the existing tendencies into a new "international" without the establishment of a principled basis of political agreement.
The minority pointed in contrast to the emergence under the banner of orthodox Trotskyism of the Parity Commission (comprising the OCRFI, the Bolshevik Faction and the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency), and called for the "regroupment" of the PC organisations into single national sections. The WSL, they suggested, should on this basis approach the British Bolshevik Faction grouping and the OCRFI section the Socialist Labour Group.
This view was decisively rejected by a succession of speakers who pointed to the substantial political differences that separate our movement from the PC leadership, and to the necessity to avoid the temptation simply to reshuffle the organisations of the world Trotskyist movement without resolving the problems that have split and divided it throughout the post-war period.
Broken isolation
Our chances to bring about such a development have been massively improved by the establishment of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, which has for the first time broken the national isolation of the WSL and opened up the possibilty of a coordinated internationa fight for political clarity.
In an additional resolution the WL committed itself unequivocally to the struggle for the unity of Trotskyist forces in a single, democratic centralist world party on the basis of a thoroughgoing international discussion and programmatic agreement.
Reconstract The Fourth Internat No. t Now. 1979 INTERNATIONAL DISCUSSION BULLETIN 75p including p&p from WSL . BM Box London WCIV 6XX. 5277,
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SOCIALISȚ PRESS, Wednesday April 16, 1980 • WSL conference report Callaghan Tory leaders in conference