Comments on: 25 years

By: harry b

harry b — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:30:08 +0000

Bloody hell, that’s brilliant (response to #28).

I remember, immediately after the initial implosion of the WRP became public (late 1985), Alan Thornett saying that he had thought there would be no openings until Healy, Grant, and Cliff were all dead, at which point each of their groups would implode, and being very excited about the possibilities raised by the WRP split. In fact both the WRP and Militant split prior to their leaders’ deaths, and the WSP (UK) has continued in much the same vein despite Cliff’s death (all the time continuing an amazing degeneration—a mutual friend of mine and Scott’s just reported the ISO shouting the slogan “Long Live Palestine, Long Live Hezbollah!” at a demo in SF —yes, I know that the ISO split from the SWP UK, but still).

By: chris y

chris y — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:01:36 +0000

Christ on a bike! According to a comment here, the WRP were doing an entry job in the ISG in the 1990s. How sad is that?

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 09:32:20 +0000

Confusing, I think I understand, but where does the People’s Front of Judea fit in?

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 09:10:16 +0000

“The Brian Grogan/Dodie Weppler/Jonathan Silberman group”

Brian Grogan! Now there’s a name from the past. I recall him touting his “more proletarian than thou” credentials while on the pull in 1969. Hung out with the nearly as offensive Paul Preston who I understand has achieved some respectability.

(I assume it’s the same ratbag?)

I guess as jacob suggests, these schisms need their own Pete Frame to draw tress; trouble is there’s even less talent and likeability in this mob that there was in the British Blues dregs of Chicken Shack/Groundhogs etc.

By: harry b

harry b — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 20:30:43 +0000

jacob—Dsquared has encouraged me to write a book about it. But I can’t bring myself to do it, partly because of time, and partly because there are too many people in the far left for whom I have too much respect to seem to be making fun (which it would be impossible not to seem to be doing). I suspect Scott and I could produce a pretty good transatlantic forest. Chris B is also a specialist… (sorry chris).

By: jacob

jacob — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:13:15 +0000

I’m far to young to have any memory of the post-1960s splits in the sectarian left, and too anarchist (and simultaneously bourgeois) to have much to do with their descendants now. Is there a family tree available? Who split off from whom when, and such. (Presumably there would have to be at least two versions—U.S. and U.K., although perhaps it could be international.) It would make things much easier to follow for whippersnappers like me.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 18:33:11 +0000

Seems to be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DuncanBCS

mainly. I wonder if it’s someone we know Chris?

By: chris y

chris y — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 18:12:45 +0000

Out of idle curiosity, who wrote the Wikipedia articles? They’re surprisingly accurate.

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:05:48 +0000

Ah, the ISG, I knew them well. (Back in the early 90s, they were the last nasty organised centralised Leninist group to have their nasty organised centralised Leninist fingers prised off the Socialist Movement – which didn’t last very long once nobody was fighting over it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.) Maybe the fourth ‘group’ consisted of all the IMGers who decided to give up on the whole Trot lark and concentrate on publishing and academia – not that there’s anything wrong with that, I hasten to add.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:02:17 +0000

No, three ways:

The International Group/International Socialist Group (Packer, Pennington, Hearse et al. and (briefly) Bertram, as it happens)

The Socialist Action people (Ross, O’Neil, Woodward et al, who went on to become advisers to Ken Livingstone and now have nice well paid jobs working for the mayor)

The Brian Grogan/Dodie Weppler/Jonathan Silberman group, who went on to form the British arm of the US SWP - the Communist League.

(You could make it four ways if you include the people who went off to join the Spartacists a little earlier, I suppose)

By: T. Gracchus

T. Gracchus — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:40:00 +0000

“cracker”?

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:22:02 +0000

I distinctly remember an ex-IMGer telling me that the IMG split four ways, but at the moment I can only think of Socialist Alternative and the group Harry referred to – they were the smallest of the four and were generally known not as Communist anything but as American Militant, since selling the US SWP’s paper Militant was pretty much all they did.

By: harry b

harry b — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:33:14 +0000

I thought the timesink was going to be following CB’s pathfinder links. But now I’m obsessing about the movie. Not S&RGL, which I’ve still not seen for some odd reason. Perhaps it just wasn’t a very memorable movie (I remember whom I was with, and almost every word of the exchange with ZM, who was selling the tickets).

By: lazygal

lazygal — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 12:38:57 +0000

That, or ask a library to purchase it for the collection. My library gathers requests for that purpose.

While many libraries do honor purchase requests, they tend to be leery of self-published works (even those given as donations). Which this appears to be.

Someone’s just going to have to pony up the $$ at Amazon or Alibris.

By: etat

etat — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:35:37 +0000

Back to the library…

It isn’t online in WorldCat, as mentioned in #7, nor is it in the J. Erik Jonsson Library/Dallas Public Library. The Wills Point/Wingo Public Library is apparently still using paper based catalogs.

Guess that means some public-minded person may have to purchase a copy and donate it to one of the above. With or without marginalia.

That, or ask a library to purchase it for the collection. My library gathers requests for that purpose.