Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 09:56:22 +0100
Subject: M-G: Message from Gerry




  ------- Forwarded message follows -------
Dear John,

I am forwarding this message by Gerry D. to you, which was sent to the
list by mistake.

Please send your eventual reply to him directly, as the list is not
really the place where we should be debating what each one of us did,
when and why.

Surely many of the people involved in this project may end up having an
entry written about them, but they will be short and to be point.

CG's,
Luciano

PS: This is copied to Gerry for information.>From spoons  Fri Sep 12 22:16:27 1997
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Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 01:10:21 +0100
To: trotsky-project-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: Gerry Downing <gerry-AT-gerryd.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: TP: Re: Structural Questions (Gerry Downing's post, etc.)
In-Reply-To: <memo.296476-AT-cix.compulink.co.uk>
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Disallowed Message:

Dear jplant,

Perhaps I have got you all wrong. I thought you were an anti-trotskyist
and an anti-marxist now who was only interested in history as an
academic exercise. Granted this is all second hand information -
comments from Steve Masterson and others - but your shot at me seemed to
say that 'getting things right' on questions of Trotskyist theory and
method no longer interested you whereas I recognise that all the work I
do in the class struggle is meaningless unless someone, somewhere, 'gets
it right' and so begins to break the vangard out of the political and
ideological impass they have been in basically since Stalin betrayed the
revolution.

I will post to you Tony Gard's contribution on the WSL - when I sort
things out about this document - because I think it is a real political
contribution to Marxist/Trotskyist theory on the transitional method and
why the WSL went so far and then collapsed.

Gerry

Allowed Message:
   

In message <memo.296476-AT-cix.compulink.co.uk>, Jj Plant
<jplant-AT-cix.compulink.co.uk> writes
>In-Reply-To: <3417C2E1.348FA885-AT-pn.itnet.it>
>I don't believe I have ever made a statement 'rejecting my history' in the WSL. 
>To the best of my knowledge, and bearing in mind all the bias my own 
>involvement would impart, I think the WSL was one of the best attempts at 
>trotskyist organisation since the RCP (in Britain that is - I would not presume 
>to claim a global perspective). I resigned from the WSL about a year after the 
>Matgamna anschluss when the organisation instructed me to abandon efforts to be 
>selected as a Labour MP. The Matgamnites were backing a soft-left christian on 
>a pop-front platform and didn't want a 'trotskyist' intervention into the 
>process. Their perspective was to 'organise the left' in the LP. Mine (and the 
>pre-anschluss WSL's) was to intervene on the basis of programme.
>
>What happened to the WSL ? Inevitably there was a split, substantially along 
>the lines of the two original components. An early issue of Socialist Viewpoint 
>gives the views of Thornett's faction and another anti-Matgamna faction. The 
>sparts were substantially right in their diagnosis at the time of the 
>'unification' - "Matgamna's wedding, Thornett's funeral". Thornett's grouping 
>ended up in the USEC (I believe Dave Walters knows something of the 
>negotiations) where the incessant factioneering seems to have reduced their 
>productivity to nothing - but I'm now very distant from them so I may be wrong.
>
>When I get the time I'll try to write an entry for the encyclopedia on the WSL.
>
>
>
>_________________________________
>jplant-AT-cix.compulink.co.uk
>

-- 
Gerry Downing

-- 
Gerry Downing


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