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The Alliance for Workers' Liberty

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The Alliance for Workers' Liberty The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty: Britain’s Revolutionary Imperialists Tony Greenstein T MAY seem to be a contradiction, a rev- of the African and Malaysian colonies, in order to I olutionary imperialist, and of course it is, but fund the dollar deficit. that is in essence the contradiction that lies at the I first came across the AWL when I was a heart of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Not of young member, about 18 at the time, of the course that the AWL is alone in wrestling with International Socialists (now the SWP). I was in this dilemma. On the contrary, the AWL stands in the Liverpool branch when a proposal came from the finest traditions of labour imperialism. It was the leadership that the organisation should expel Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation that pio- the Trotskyist Tendency as they were called. A neered the belief that socialism and imperialism speaker was invited from this group and Andrew could be reconciled. Coming from a rich Ulster Hornung, their most effective speaker and some- family, Hyndman was antagonistic to the strugg- one with whom I worked closely over Palestine les of the Irish, supported the Boers and eventually in future years, spoke to the branch. Nonetheless the British in world war one. Another prominent the branch split 2-1 in favour of the expulsion and British socialist of the period, Clarion editor Robert delegates were elected proportionately. Blatchford, later to join the Tory Party, was equally One member of the Liverpool branch who came a supporter of British imperialism and its foreign to play a prominent part in Socialist Organiser/ ventures. AWL was John Bloxham, then a young teacher. Marxism is to be distinguished from Fabianism When I was expelled a few months later, for and the different varieties of reformism in that it publicly disagreeing with and voting against the is wedded to a class analysis of society and in its decision of IS to close down the Anti-Internment historical materialist approach. New Labour is League, Bloxham repaid my support by abstain- forever talking about its values (even if they end ing. He explained that it was all a question of up in imprisonment without trial at Belmarsh) but democratic centralism! socialists deal with concrete actualities. What is it By way of an aside, I should mention that the that has led generations of socialists and their Liverpool branch was somewhat reluctant to expel organisations into supporting the wars and ad- me. It was felt necessary to bring up to Liverpool ventures of the ruling class? What material base their Industrial Organiser, Roger Rosewell. do these politics have? Although it is fashionable Rosewell managed to complete his task admirably. to deride the thesis of Lenin, it is unarguable that It was no doubt a good preparation for his future his thesis, that the conservatism of the British career, which included sitting on the SDP’s working class was due to their being the recipients Industrial Committee, working for the free-market of the crumbs from the fruits of imperialism, Aims of Industry and being a leader-writer on the explains both the racism and the lack of revol- Daily Mail. Currently he is bag-carrier-in-chief for utionary fervour of this class. Lady Shirley Porter! British racism, at its heart, has material I digress however. The Trotskyist Tendency foundations. It does not exist solely in the realm was expelled at an Extraordinary Conference of of ideas. The relative privileges of the British IS and soon became Workers’ Fight. It was a working class, compared with their Argentinian typically Trotskyist organisation with standard or South African counterparts, lies in the oper- views in support of the Irish and other liberation ation of British capital abroad, the returns from movements. their investments in the form of a social wage – I first caught up with what was by now the NHS, Social Security etc. Repression abroad Socialist Organiser when I went, after the invasion paid for reformism at home. The greatest reforming of Lebanon, to a Bradford Labour Movement Labour Government, under Attlee, was also the Conference on Palestine in or around 1982. There government which most intensified the robbery I met up with Andrew Hornung, with whom I 25 was to work for the next four or so years on Pal- adopted this position I argued with them, in estine. The Labour Party had traditionally been a debates and articles, that what they are doing is bastion of support for the Zionists. Indeed the only supporting an imperialist solution to the problem support the Palestinians had ever received came – a Palestinian Bantustan which would merely from the right of the Party – people like Andrew replace the face of the Israeli soldier with that of Faulds MP and David Watkins MP. Ian Mikardo, the Palestinian. Jo Richardson, Tony Benn, Eric Heffer – all were However AWL’s position is actually far worse stalwarts of the Labour Friends of Israel, though than this. the latter two left shortly after the invasion of There are many good supporters of the Pal- Lebanon. estinians and genuine anti-Zionists who support Andrew and myself set up, at a meeting in the a Two States position, not because they wouldn’t GLC’s County Hall, the Labour Committee on wish to see one, unitary, democratic and secular Palestine, which led directly to the passing of an state but because they don’t think it’s practical emergency motion at the 1982 Conference support- politics or feasible. People such as Noam Chomsky ing a democratic, secular State of Palestine. At this and the late Israel Shahak. No one could doubt time SO had a policy, common on the far left, of that these people are genuine and sincere oppon- support for a democratic, secular state in Palestine. ents of Zionism and the racism of the Israeli State. However SO had already begun moving in the It’s just that they don’t see an alternative to Two direction of imperialism, when it began to criticise States. Now I would argue they are wrong in Sinn Féin from the right. It began to warm to the thinking that a stable and organic Palestinian Ulster Loyalists, arguing that they were merely State, with its own sovereignty and free from Is- articulating the sub-national feelings of the raeli domination, is possible. Today the presence Protestants, rather than seeing them as a political of some 400,000 settlers and the cantonisation of representatives of a form of settler colonialism and the West Bank would, I suggest, make this im- an appendage and extension of British imper- possible. However this is a debate within the ialism. This resulted in SO supporting some sort Palestine solidarity movement. of federation in Ireland to accommodate Loyalist AWL’s position is however entirely different. desires and for their guru, Sean Matgamna/John They don’t support a Two States position because O’Mahoney to argue for the repartitioning of it is the only thing that is attainable. They see the Ireland so as to excise from the current Northern existence of the Israeli State, a State of its Jewish Ireland statelet the Catholic counties of Fermanagh citizens, for whom its Arab citizens are at best a and Tyrone! tolerated minority, as a good thing in its own right. The LCP became transformed into the Labour AWL, beyond the occasional reference to Israeli Movement Campaign on Palestine after the racism, have absolutely nothing to say about the Workers Revolutionary Party, at the instigation inherent racism in the Zionist State. Nothing of Ted Knight, then leader of Lambeth Council, about the fact that 93% of the land is reserved for took over the organisation. SO were traditional Jews, or that welfare benefits are higher for Jews enemies of the WRP, having been taken to court than Palestinians in order to encourage a higher by the latter for libel. So at this time the main battle birthrate. AWL even support the Israeli Law of was with the WRP’s LCP, but within a couple of Return which allows people like myself to go and years Matgamna was becoming restless as he live in Israel and become citizens but denies the sought to take his organisation down what is same right to Palestinians who have been born known, in the Trotskyist jargon, as the road of and brought up there. the “Third Camp”. It is little wonder then that both Sean Mat- AWL has now become a full “Third Campist” gamna and his faithful lapdog, Martin Thomas, organisation. This term was used to describe the both describe themselves in Thomas’s words as “a position of Max Shachtman, one of the leaders of little bit Zionist”. This is the ideology that the American Trotskyism, which was in essence a fore- founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, runner of the SWP’s “Neither Moscow nor described as “an antidote to socialism”. The Washington”. Shachtman himself ended up as a nationalism of Zionism was seen as the only way cold war warrior, supporting the CIA invasion of to wean the Jews off socialist politics. It was no Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Matgamna has now suc- accident that the Balfour Declaration was issued ceeded in taking AWL down exactly the same road. five days before the Bolshevik Revolution in a AWL have since the mid-1980s adopted a “Two forlorn attempt to win the allegiance of Russia’s States” position on Palestine. Both “nations” Jews. Balfour himself, as the author of the Aliens according to them are entitled to their own state.
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