WW archive > Issue 350 - 07 September 2000
SWP: London model 'a mistake'
Neither London nor Coventry, but Greater Manchester. This might have been the motto of the annual general meeting, on September 2, of the Greater Manchester Socialist Alliance. A new structure, for the period leading up to the next parliamentary general election, was adopted by the 70-strong gathering. This consists of a steering committee comprising five officers and five other members, wholly elected by the AGM, which reports to and is accountable to monthly general membership meetings of the regional GMSA. There are, as yet, no locally based SAs within the Greater Manchester region.
Letters
No principle; Fighting fascists; Closed borders; Affiliation; Anti-cultism; On the ropes; SACP expulsion
LSA: different approaches aired
Tied vote: CPGB's indirect and inclusive democracy; SWP's direct elections
Against Taaffe
A split between the Scottish Socialist Party and the Socialist Party in England and Wales has long been on the cards. Peter Taaffe already has his own preferred faction in Dundee around Phil Stott. But recently the Sheridan-McCombes-Curran SSP majority has gone on the offensive, in particular by highlighting the extremely backward, not to say back-stabbing, role of SPEW in the London Socialist Alliance. As can be seen from Frances Curran's article taken from May's Committee for Workers International Members Bulletin, written on behalf of the political committee in Scotland, Taaffe is on very weak ground. His executive committee's reply feebly claimed that her article "seems to have" been based "on reports of other hostile organisations", above all the Weekly Worker, which purportedly publishes "malicious fantasy from beginning to end"
Connolly versus Maclean
Marx and ecology - part two
Michael Malkin continues his three-part examination of the relationship between humanity and nature in Marx's thought