WRP Crisis
Socialist Press1976 1976-03-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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With the first book of a series of planned publications coming out next week, we are calling on our readers, members and supporters to help us carry through our schedule, by giving generously to our £500 Publications Fund. This Fund, to be completed by May Day, will Beguide work additi cash bod sures name to First response to our Fund, which opened last edition, has been extremely encouraging. To date we have received: Oxford (Meetings and classes) £30: Oxford (NHS Branch) £25: London (East) £15: Islington £10: London (South) 16: Midlands reader £3 Total So far: £89.00.
All donations should be sent to the WSL Publications Fund, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.
The demise of the Vorkers Press' on 14th ebruary is not, see Is, to at an end to the ictarianism and guidationism of WRP indership. : This is the only conclusion that m be drawn from the ysteriously produced News igest they are now bringing out.
The world is told to 'wait and e. We assume from this that the orkers Press will reappear in me form.
For our part, we are all glad of is. It will enable us to study the rists and turns which emerge in • politics of the WRP. But we n only hope that by then they • have found some political planation of the difficulties my are now facing. • The frenzied and disgusting Larges against every political rponent of being an agent of pitalism, or at the very least an ent of an agent of an agent, we been just one facet of the treat of the WRP from political inciple of any kind.
Such charges presumably are sidered to remove the need for I discussion.
But, this attitude leads WORKERS SOCIAL LEAGUE CLASSES ON MARXISM LIVERPOOL lednesday, 17th March AUEW Hall, Mount Pleasant Every Sunday, 8.00pm. Lake St Community Centre SUNDAY, 14th March: The Boom Years, 1951-64"
SUNDAY, 21st March: The 1964-70 Labour brernment"
Saturday, 13th Marct Trades Council AGAINST PUBLIC SPENDING CUTS ! isemble Cowley Rd. ospital, 10.30 am.M larch St l Giles at 11.04 Oam. ling your banners LETTERS Ne welcome letters from aders, whether critical or ith additional information • matters raised in these *ges. Letters for publication would be kept as brief as assible. sad to:
Dartmouth Park Hill, paton, NWS 1HR further, to what might be described as an Alice in Wonderland theory of infallibility.
Thus in reply to a question at his Manchester public meeting, Stephen Johns, formerly on the editorial board, said the collapse of Workers Press was a 'step forward' for the movement, though he had omitted to mention this 'step forward' in his preliminary speech to the meeting. Johns did not account for why £35,000 had been extracted from members to preserve a paper whose liquidation was a 'step forward'!
This degeneration has gone alongside an increasing opposition' to any form of political discussion within the workers movement. Thus it has become routine for members of other political tendencies to be physically excluded from 'public' meetings of the WRP.
Members of the WSL, the and the ex-Workers Fight have been treated in this way.
Leaflets have been "confiscated' by moral policeman Banda; people seen talking to WSL members have been thrown out of meetings; caretakers have been told to threaten to call the police on paper sellers.
These brazen attacks on democratic rights must not be allowed to continue. There are historical precedents for some of these practices in the Stalinist movement, but there are none whatever within Trotskyism.
We demand an explanation from the leaders of the WRP for their conduct on these questions. Where do they stand on the right to discussion within the workers' movement, which they continually undermine, even by use of the capitalist state and its police force?
It is a scandal that a movement claiming to be Trotskyist can bring discredit to the entire movement by such practices. The WSL will fight to bring this to an end.