11.11.1999

CWI split rumours

Peter Taaffe has recently been up in Scotland doing a speaking tour. He is not being promoted by the Scottish Socialist Party, but is here on his own initiative and attended a special conference and a series of hush-hush meetings.

Via the Committee for a Workers’ International Taaffe is formally the power behind the scenes. A red moriarty. Tommy Sheridan (convenor), Alan McCombes (Scottish Socialist Voice editor), Richie Venton (industrial organiser) and most of the SSP’s regional organisers are CWI members through the semi-clandestine group International Socialism.

However, driven on by the logic of nationalism and as a gesture towards social democratic elements in the SSP leadership - Hugh Kerr, Bill Bonnar and Alan Green - the majority of the CWI leadership in Scotland are proposing to liquidate their organisation completely.

In other words comrade Taaffe has been attempting to save Scotland for the CWI. He has just lost the Merseyside region of his Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Pakistani Labour Party. To lose Scotland would be the last straw.

The only significant support he managed to garner has been Phillip Stott - the SSP’s north east organiser. Comrades Sheridan, McCombes, Venton and co are determined to make the break from Taaffe’s crisis-ridden sect for what they believe is the big time around the corner in Scotland.

Jimmy Gordon