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Just realised who the present descendants of the IMG are. They're "Socialist Resistance" who have decided to enter the new Left Unity party. Judging by one of the pamphlets they handed out at the founding conference of the new party today I can see why the other Trotskyist groups say they've abandoned Trotskyism. They say:

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The FI [Fourth International] decided some years ago that it would no longer present itself as the 'world party of revolution'.

That's a relief.

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As the title of an article in the Socialist Standard once put it, charity begins at work.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25162946 Looks as if BTSomerset may be right. Just listened tothis on the 8 o'clock news on BBC Radio 4 which talks of a "Marxist commune" and have sent off this complaint

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25162946Just listened to this item on the 8 o'clock news and wish to officially complain about this being described here as a "Marxist commune" when clearly they had nothing to do with Marx but were followers of the Chinese dictator Mao.In any event I'd be interested in your justification for using the word "Marxist" rather than "Maoist". Is this BBC policy or just a mistake on the part of an unprofessional journalist?

JUst noticed that the word "Marxist" has since been changed to "Maoist". Didn't know I had such influence !Looks as if it was an incompetant sub-editor or news reader after all.

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Just looked up an election address I have of the "Socialist Unity" candidate for Islington North, Michael Simpson, in the May 1979 general election (which brought the Madame Thatcher to power). It says:

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We should all have the right to decent housing, education and health services. An emergency programme of works would provide these and create jobs.This could be done without rocketing rates and taxes. They are rising mainly to pay interest charges on money borrowed. Socialist Unity would pay for more and better services by ending interest payments and nationalising the banks and finance houses without compensation.

What? Under capitalism? These Trotskyists don't change. They (e.g TUSC) still propose this today as a supposed way out of the crisis. Either they believe this. In which cases they are simple reformists. Or they don't. In which case they are cynical manipulators offering workers empty promises as bait for workers to follow them. Nothing special about the old IMG then. Same old story.

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I remember them as just another common or garden Trotskyist group which took a particular interest in "anti-imperialist" struggles in the Third World.. They were the official group in Britain of one of the 4th Internationals, the one led by Ernst Mandel and held the orthodox Trotskyist view that Russia was neither a form of capitalism nor a new exploiting society but the absurd  view that it was some sort of "Workers State" even if a "degenerate" one while its satellites and China were "deformed Workers States" (subtle difference only discernable by experienced Trotwatchers: they couldn't be called "degenerate" as in their eyes they'd never been the real thing; they were born "deformed").In the 1979 General Election they put up a number of candidates under the name of "Socialist Unity" (often against other Trot groups such as the SWP and the WRP usually getting more votes than them — so much for "unity").I never knew what happened to them in the end but Tariq Ali and some of the others "entered" the Labour Party for a while in the 1980s. I think that they got overtaken as the biggest orthodox Trotskyist (i.e holding the above silly view of Russia and its satellites) group by Militant..

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Not sure that nearly half the votes cast will have been postal votes. The figure on the council website for postal votes is that for the number of people sent ballot papers by post rather than the number returned. It will be true that 40% or more of these will have been returned, meaning that about a quarter of the votes cast will have been postal votes. It also means that in at least one of the four polling districts the turnout will have been less even than 19%.

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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/27/boris-johnson-thatcher-greed-goodI think his ambition must to be the Leader of the Opposition not Prime Minister. People might support or put up with capitalism, but most still won't go along with this sort of thing:

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I stress – I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.

Mind you, he is right when he recognises that competition inevitably leads to inequality (i.e. to winners and losers):

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On the politically sensitive issue of inequality Johnson warned that the growing competition Britain faced in a globalised economy meant that inequality would deepen. He said: "No one can ignore the harshness of that competition, or the inequality that it inevitably accentuates,

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

The CPGB take on co-ops here.http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/988/co-op-scandal-labour-is-the-real-targetAnd i have never read such a stalwart defence of the Labour Party"…the bourgeoisie, even now, does not quite trust the Labour Party, and would rather it ceased to exist, or were at least relegated to a position of impotence. This would emphatically not be good news for the left. For many, Labour still represents some sort of independent representation of workers. Its reliance on a working class, and left-leaning voter base, is evidenced by Ed Miliband’s quiet dumping of the New Labour project and fractional moves to the left. Despite all the recent attacks by the right, Labour is still the most likely port of call for the millions outraged by austerity, not any of the ‘Labour mark two’ projects being hawked around. Genuine Marxists must engage in order to highlight the contradictions of Labour and build a pole within it – not hold their noses for the sake of ‘revolutionary purity’…"The eventual and inevitable route of the new Left [Unity] Party ?

This group is infiltrating both the new Left [Unity?] Party and the Labour Party. They're worse (got even less principles) than the Trotskyists. They're going to have a problem at election times, though, with half of their members campaigning for one candidate and the other half for another.

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Official result here (Lambeth Council are quick off the mark):http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/moderngov/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=106&RPID=19407432                                   

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Mondragón president Txema Gisasola stated:

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We receive visitors from many companies and many countries, and some come here with a magical idea of what Mondragón is. This is not magic. We are in this market, competing in the capitalist world, and the only difference is how we do things and why we do things. We have to be competitive, we have to be efficient, we have to have quality in our products and give satisfaction to our clients, and we have to be profitable. In that sense we are no different from anyone else.

The source of this quote (which members can use in discussions with those who see co-operatives as some sort of alternative to or way out of capitalism) is an article in the Financial Times of 21 March 2013 by Miles Johnson entitled "Drivers of Change: Workers united".http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7d2fbcc-85b9-11e2-bed4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2lvDgVAVs

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

We can now add the Lefty-capitalist's favourite model Mondragon, to the casualty list.

Here's more on this failure of a co-operative to buck the economic laws of capitalism. (Warning: despite its name this site has nothing to do with us, but is a Trotskyist one as its subtitle makes clear)http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/26/span-n26.html

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My experience of the Black Blob was at a European trade union demonstration in Amsterdam. They came on the train from Italy. The riot police were lined up waiting for them at the station. They got off and lined up opposite them. The stand-off lasted for hours with passengers walking in between them. I wish I'd had a camera. I think that in the end they got back on the train and went back to Italy.The real objection to them is not so much that they want to break the law but that they are acting undemocratically compared to what most of the other demonstrators want, i.e. a peaceful demonstration.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Old crusties such as myself,

You were once a crusty? Did you have a dog on a piece of string?

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jondwhite wrote:

His criticism of the Black Bloc was criminal

Why was his criticism of the Black Bloc criminal. Don't they deserve to be criticised?

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J Surman wrote:

(PS – sorry, don't know how to create links on here, if you want them you'll have to copy and paste)

But you did create links ! A bit like the character in one of Moliere's plays who didn't realise he'd been speaking prose all his life.

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