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The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), also known as Workers' Liberty is a small Marxist group based in the United Kingdom. The group has had a complex history, but has always been strongly identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna. The AWL publish the newspaper Solidarity.
Members of the group elect a national committee, which in turn elects an executive committee able to take urgent decisions on behalf of the organisation. The AWL is registered with the Electoral Commission as a political party, for which purpose it has listed various EC members as officers: its leader as Cathy Nugent, its nominating officer as Mark Osborn and its treasurer as Martin Thomas. *
Workers' Fight
The AWL can trace its origins to the document What we are and what we must become, written by the tendency's founder, Sean Matgamna in 1966. In this document Matgamna argued that the Revolutionary Socialist League was too inward looking and needed to become more activist in its orientation. Publication of the document led to his expulsion from the RSL and with a handful of supporters, he formed the Workers' Fight group. Espousing left unity, they accepted an offer in 1969 to form a faction within the International Socialists (IS, later renamed the Socialist Workers Party), and named themselves the Trotskyist Tendency.
Trotskyist Tendency
Within IS the Trotskyist Tendency (TT) clashed with the leadership of the IS over many issues, for instance on the issue of the Common Market on which the IS leadership was divided and over the use of the "Troops Out" slogan regarding Northern Ireland. This was a particularly controversial issue at the time, the IS leadership arguing that an immediate withdrawal of troops would harm the nationalist cause given the attacks by some loyalists on nationalist areas.
By 1971 the TT had grown and its positions had some currency within IS but the leadership of IS itself was increasingly concerned that branches which contained TT supporters were more involved in debating politics than in building IS within the working class. This led to the leadership of the International Socialists calling a special conference on the issue of the relationship between the TT and the rest of IS. The leadership claimed that the TT were inhibiting the growth of IS and that therefore the two groups should be "defused" at the special conference as did in fact happen. The TT described this "defusion" as an "expulsion", given that they did not wish to leave.
International-Communist League
Outside the IS, the TT, considerably increased in size, resumed publication of Workers' Fight now as a printed paper not as was previously the case as a duplicated journal. They also began publication of a theoretical journal entitled Permanent Revolution and made efforts to publish a small number of workplace oriented publications in specific industries.
In 1976 they fused with the small Workers Power group, formerly the Left Faction within IS, to form the International-Communist League. A group of members in Bolton and Wigan opposed to merger formed the Marxist Worker group, which later fused with the International Marxist Group. Workers' Fight was renamed Workers Action and went over to a weekly publication schedule and the groups theoretical journal was now entitled International-Communist. But in 1976 much of Workers Power left in a rancorous dispute to resume a separate existence. Workers Action increased its activity within the Labour Party, and in 1978 set up the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. This campaign proved relatively popular and initially involved a range of figures on the left of the Labour Party who wrote for and supported the irregular paper of the SCLV which was named Socialist Organiser. Due to a series of disputes most of the Labour left figures gradually withdrew from Socialist Organiser until the I-CL were the only people involved in what was now their central publication as both Workers Action and International-Communist were by 1979 discontinued.
Workers Socialist League
In 1981 the I-CL fused with Alan Thornett's Workers Socialist League which had now also joined the Labour Party. The organisation mostly worked through the Socialist Organiser Alliance. In 1984, the groups split again, mostly over questions of internal democracy and different over the national question. The key issue was the Falklands War: most of the former I-CL argued for the defeat of both sides; most of the former WSL supported a victory for Argentina.
Socialist Organiser Alliance
The Socialist Organiser Alliance grew from the broad left Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. By 1983 the paper was dominated by Matgamna's supporters (by then in the Workers Socialist League) and was clearly identified with that faction. In particular, splits with independent Labour left politicians such as Ken Livingstone over the GLC's policy of increasing local taxes to pay for improved services weakened the Alliance.
The group initially decided to organise its student work through the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS), forming Socialist Students in NOLS to campaign within the National Union of Students. After leaving NOLS in the late 1980s, it established and led a number of left opposition campaigns in the NUS, including Left Unity and the Campaign for Free Education. It continues to organise left opposition in the NUS through its activity in the Education Not for Sale network.
Its student work has been quite successful, winning elected positions in the National Union of Students on the basis campaigning for free education, among other issues. Numerous supporters have won seats in the structures of the NUS. Kat Fletcher, President of the NUS from 2004 to 2006 was formerly a member of the AWL and the Campaign for Free Education. It has played leading roles in the NUS Women's and LGBT Campaigns, championing the politics of liberation and international solidarity within them, securing their representation within the NUS and working with groups such as Outrage! and Al-Fatiha.
In 1985, after the split in the WSL which led to the departure of what became the Socialist Group, the group reassessed its politics, and adopted a two state position on Israel-Palestine. In 1988, the group's national committee moved from its original position that the Stalinist states were "deformed or degenerated workers states", and opened a discussion on the thesis that they were some 'new exploiting society'. By the 1990s, the organisation adopted a bureaucratic collectivist analysis, with a minority around Martin Thomas holding a state capitalist analysis. The supporters of a further small minority, which defended the degenerated workers' state theory, left and joined the International Socialist Group in 1992. Subsequently, the AWL adopted a number of other positions associated with Third Camp socialism.
Alliance for Workers' Liberty
Socialist Organiser was banned by the Labour Party in 1990 when it was not allowed to register. The register was an attempt to regulate entryists, but this measure was aimed at the Militant Tendency and had little effect on the newspaper. In 1993 Socialist Organiser re-launched its organisation as the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and gradually moved away from a focus on the Labour Party. In 1998, the AWL helped to set up the Socialist Alliance. It later supported the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, and in the 2005 UK general election, stood candidates as part of the Socialist Green Unity Coalition.
The AWL publishes the fortnightly left tabloid newspaper Solidarity. They published the journal Workers' Liberty as a bi-monthly magazine until 2001, when it became an occasional journal.
The AWL is active in campaigns such as No Sweat and Iraqi workers' solidarity.
The group has international links with Solidarity Tendency, who are members of the Scottish Socialist Party, Workers' Liberty Australia and supporters within the Revolutionary Left Current in Poland and Solidarity in the United States. Its website also carries links to a number of organisations with whom it says it has "friendly relations", among them Débat Militant Liaisons *" target="_blank" >and mondialisme.org Worker-Communist Party of Iraq and Workers' Left Unity Iran [http://www.etehadchap.org/" target="_blank" >*.
In 2006, the AWL published the cartoons that were originally published in Jyllands-Posten on their website to aid the debate, which they describe as being about free speech.*. This publication has proven controversial.
External links
Political parties in the United Kingdom | Trotskyist organisations
"Alliance for Workers' Liberty"