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Workers Socialist Review

Magazine of the Workers Socialist League

Written: 1984.
First Published: Autumn 1984.
Source: Published by the Workers Socialist League.
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Workers Socialist Review
No. 4, Autumn 1984

The Thornett Group’s response

Having been instructed by the EC majority to respond to the NC resolution of 10 March on ‘resolving the situation one way or the other’ by the next NC, we, as former members of the now dissolved faction declare:

1. We opposed on 10 March and still oppose the bureaucratic attempt of the resolution to prevent the special conference which has been duly called by the required numbers under the appropriate provisions of the constitution, but will now plainly be held if at all only after the ‘next NC’.

2. We have always made clear our willingness to carry out our constitutional obligations within the WSL and that remains our position. As far as the implicit insinuation of clauses b, c, d, and e are concerned, they are deliberately misleading suggestions which have nothing to do with the real attitudes that the comrades have.

3. We in turn ask the NC of 31 March to state unambiguously whether or not it intends to carry out its constitutional obligation to convene a special conference within two months and to uphold the right of political minorities within the WSL during that period.

The Faction “dissolves” itself

We declared a faction on 27 April 1983 (IB 59) because we became a minority under conditions where it was clear that the majority was moving against us and we had to protect our democratic rights. “Comrades Carolan, Hill and Kinnell, who now control the majority leadership of the organisation, have a hardened factional approach to those now in the minority. This is exemplified in IB 35, IB 58, their voting in relation to the Glasgow resolution which called for the leaders of the Internationalist Tendency at the conference to be expelled, and the far reaching ‘party building document’ which they attempted to get on the agenda without prior discussion. Amongst other things, this document appears designed to outline the way the new majority leadership will take control of the organisation over the coming months. This situation cannot be countered other than in an organised way”.

We formed the faction to protect ourselves under these conditions and to advocate the politics of the conference documents which were the political basis of the faction.

Events since then have more than confirmed all our fears.

Now we are faced with probable expulsion (or steps towards it) at the NC on 31 March. Under these conditions we have decided to disband the faction in favour of the call for the conference and the draft document to be put to it by the eight NC members and the 51 comrades who have endorsed it. We will join together with any comrades who are prepared to defend democracy in the WSL and hope to create new conditions and a different regime under which we can again argue for our politics.