WW archive > Issue 387 - 07 June 2001

For an SA-SSP all-Britain party

There is no going back now. The success of the Socialist Alliance campaign and our organisational achievements have been outstanding. The foundation work to build a party is well advanced. A new party will surely be born.

Letters

Oldham mistake; Relate to Labour; End for Gates?; Canvassing; SP mark I; SP mark II; Reformist SA

Our history Principle or tactic

?Left? critics of the British Socialist Party refused to unite with it in a Communist Party over one (for them) key issue: affiliation to the Labour Party. Legitimacy was given to their stubborn intransigence by the Amsterdam sub-bureau of the Communist International, headed by SJ Rutgers. Its communication ?addressed to the communists of Great Britain? denouncing any communist activity in the Labour Party was eagerly reproduced in the Socialist Labour Party?s The Socialist on May 6 1920, and two days later in the Workers? Dreadnought, the paper of the Workers? Socialist Federation. The BSP?s reply was printed after being ?given careful consideration? by its executive committee. Labour Party affiliation was ?purely tactical?; the BSP was therefore prepared to refer the issue to the membership of a united Communist Party to decide. For it, communist unity was the main question, and hence the intervention of the Amsterdam sub-bureau was ?entirely gratuitous and mischievous?; a view that could only be reinforced by the coinciding announcement from the executive committee of the Communist International in Moscow: it had ?unanimously decided to annul the mandate of the Amsterdam sub-bureau?, because of its ultra-leftism.

A candiidate?s diary

CPGB member Lawrie Coombs is the Socialist Alliance parliamentary candidate for Stockton South

Himalayan crisis

Winning hearts

Nottingham

Real work starts now

The choice is clear

There is no reason why activists moving towards the Socialist Alliance from Labour cannot be won now to revolutionary politics, argues Martin Blum

Greenwich and Woolwich

New beginning

Opportunity for advance

Neil Davidson, author of 'The origins of Scottish nationhood', is now a member of the Scottish Socialist Party, along with his comrades from the Socialist Workers Party in Scotland. Sarah McDonald interviewed him for the Weekly Worker

Opening up to the left

The Peoples Press Printing Society, the cooperative which owns the Morning Star, holds its annual general meeting this weekend. Ivan Beavis, circulation manager (and Communist Party of Britain parliamentary candidate for Hackney South and Shoreditch), spoke to Stan Keable about the Morning Star?s prospects

Leicester

Twilight zone

WeeklyWorker