Reply To: Glasgow COP26
Thank you ALB, that is certainly very clear.
Now, no pertinence to your clarification of the SPGB’s practice and position as against that of others, purely regarding the history of the Mattick group being called a ‘party’, the Roth book (online here: https://shorturl.at/cqrCE ) has come to mind, and looking in it:
‘The colleagues from the Proletarian Party [ie a ‘left split’ from Keracher’s party that joined the Mattick people -ZJW] wanted an identifiable organisation: thus the United Workers Party (UWP) was formed. […] Mattick was agnostic about the name, taking his lead from Canne Meijer and the Dutch colleagues who already referred to themselves as a ‘Group of Council Communists’ in order to avoid the party-designation. This same collection of people were variously referred to as the Workers League, the left wing of the Proletarian Party, and the United Workers Party, depending on exactly when the commentator had been informed of the latest developments.’
[…]
‘By the end of 1935, the group no longer referred to itself as the United Workers Party, preferring instead the nomenclature adopted by the Dutch colleagues, Groups of Council Communists. The UWP had never been a political party as commonly understood and its name had caused many ‘needless misunderstandings’.75.’
Footnote 75 reads ‘‘Please Notice’, ICC, January 1936, p. 9’. And that ‘Please Notice’ can be seen in that issue of International Council Correspondence which is here on the Pannekoek Archive site: http://aaap.be/Pdf/International-Council-Correspondence/International-Council-Correspondence-2-02a.pdf .