USFI speakers hi only sour notes

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conference the Strawson tendency was the focus for opposition to the leadership The SWP (USA) supporters blocked with Strawson and, after certain amendments from Harris were accepted, voted for the Strawson resolution.

The "Trotskyist Opposition" in an extremely weak position due to the fact that they had come to the conference with no resolution for voting eventually announced the closure of their tendency on Sunday evening and called on their supporters to join the Strawson tendency.

The IMG majority however remain firmly attached to the bankrupt notion of the "New Mass Vanguard" which has been handed down from Michel Pablo to current USFI leader Ernest Mandel, and from Mandel to his protege Jones.

Concept

The "new mass vanguard" concept envisages a broad, ready-made leftward moking layer as the essential milieu for revolutionary work.

For Pablo in the early 1950s this layer was supposedly to be found in the mass Communist Parties of Europe and he proposed liquidating the Trotskyist movement into "deep entry" work into the Stalinist parties in order to Leading SWP member Novack 'fuse' with these layers.

For the Pabloites in the late 1950s and the 1960s the 'new mass vanguard' shifted ground and became the petty bourgeois nationalist forces in the colonial world engaged in guerrilla struggles against imperialism and dictatorship.

By the late 1960s this 'vanguard' had been broadened to include radicalised students in anti-war movements and Mass struggles in the wake of the 1968 events in France. Since then the label has been applied to strikers in various sectors.

Now in 1978 the IMG majority has decided that the "vanguard' is located in and around the left groups.

For this reason the central thrust of the IMG's recent work has been the building of Socialist Unity as part of a drive for a unified revolutionary organisation' to embrace these groups.

This has centred on an orientation towards the British Socialist Workers Regroupment On 6 October last year Socialist Challenge printed the article 'Our Common Ground' as the proposed basis for regroupment.

This document systematically adapts to the forces the IMG would like to see in its unified revolutionary organisation-the SWP, Big Flame, Workers League, etc.

All of them are hostile to the Trotskyist Transitional Programme-both its principles and its method 'Our Common Ground' therefore, aroids spelling out transitional demands, avoids political characterisation of the degenerated and deformed workers states, avoids a clear demand for their defence against imperialism, and even avoids any mention of the Fourth International!

Defence

At the conferenc Jership stood in dete However the only example he could give was on the united front-which to the IMG leadership has always meant lowest common denominator' co-operation an and the abandonment of the struggle for programme and The sort of forces which the IMG is attracting in its regroupment campaign are typified by the Workers League.

Hostility

The speaker from the International Socialist Alliance, a Workers League member, spelled out the hostility there is to the Transitional Programme.

"We are not against transitional politics as such, but we think the demands have to flow from the struggle" , he said.

This opportunist approach has nothing in common with PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report The Apr! Con'er nee While the IMG majority claim to understand this, in practice they were caught by every CP trick. In particular, IMG vacillation over the April 1977 Leyland Stewards conference-which was worked for and supported by the CP to sabotage the struggle against Phase 2-gave credibility to the conference and indicated the weakness of the IMG's analysis.

But at the IMG conference nobody even questioned the way in which the leadership impressionistically concentrated solely on the protest campaign against the cuts (without spelling out a clear case for strike action) while the WSL was correctly arguing the need for preparation against wage control and continually drawing out the beginnings of workers action against it.

Rumbling

There were, however

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SOCIALISI PRESS, Hednesiar 3 Mar, 1978 TA Trotskyist Opposition to present a political resolution conference.

Whatever they may argue Bolshevik Party in order :o justify their regroupmen: