Enlightened constitutions weeklyworker.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from weeklyworker.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Letters
Problems
Dave Vincent admits to having problems grasping the CPGB’s position on some issues - relating mainly to the kind of party that should be established and the nature of socialism (Letters, January 21). He seems to agree that “all Marxists should unite in one party with a programme along the lines suggested by the CPGB” - in other words, a Marxist party. But he adds that the CPGB “frowns upon the setting up of any other party of the working class, which it always derides as being a ‘Labour Party mark two’”.
Well, if the left did unite in a single, democratic-centralist Marxist party, I can assure you we would more than welcome that! Our central organisational aim is the achievement of such a party and we will work in any political grouping where we believe that cause can be advanced. Over the years our comrades have participated in Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, Respect and Left Unity, to name just a few - and, of co
Letters
Most readers of the
Weekly Worker agree that capitalism must be overthrown, that this should happen as a result of the actions of the working class majority taking power, and that all Marxists should unite in one party with a programme along the lines suggested by the CPGB.
However, the CPGB stubbornly persists in urging all Marxists/socialists to join the Labour Party and fight within it to win members to Marxism. It frowns upon the setting up of any other party of the working class, which it always derides as being a “Labour Party mark two” and therefore doomed to fail.
A conservative revolution
National sovereignty crystalised Gaelicism and late Victorian mores. Marc Mulholland argues, in his second article, that there was no transformation of popular consciousness
If there was an Irish revolution, it probably began with the Irish Land League of 1879-81. This was founded by Michael Davitt, the one-armed son of farmers evicted during the famine (he had lost a limb working as a boy in an English factory), and presided over by Charles Stewart Parnell, a Protestant landlord. The league campaigned against ‘rackrents’ (anything above what tenant farmers thought reasonable) in the short term, and for the peasant proprietorship of the farms they worked in the longer term. The result was a huge social struggle that coined the term ‘boycotting’ and attracted international attention.