Originally posted by rebelworker+Mar 25 2006, 07:59 AM--> (rebelworker @ Mar 25 2006, 07:59 AM) This is going out to all the WIL heads,
Are you sertious???????????
Ok where is your mothership? What happened in Great Britan to your flagship org, once the envy of trots everywhere?
Have you heard of the poll tax rebellion?
Ill give you a hand, it happened in that period inbetween the time the millitant was at the top and the period after when they started to re ublish stuff after the split....
Read up on it, the parties behavior was horrific, they didnt disapear for no reason.
The leadership got pissed off when the working class decided they were going to organise the largest rebellion against the state in the western hemeshphere in modern times withtout waiting for the vanguard to lead them.
So what did they decide to do in response, organise harder?
Nope they went public in the beurgoise media denouncing working class militants in the thousands for defending themselves against a brutal police onslaught.
They even went as far as sayong they would work with the police to root out "troublemakers", name names and all that.
I would serriously doubt that this is the kind of revolutionary tradition that you all want to be part of, I suggest you do some independant research, I recomend "the Poll Tax rebellion" by Danny Burns and then jump ship and statr all over.
A briliant example of the negeative outcome of centrlised self serving power.
Im sure you are all dedicated rev's(thought i have heard some rediculous stories about the fightback central comitte), Im sure you can find better ways to send your time than proping up the legacy of intelecual self proclaimed vanguards working against the interests of th working class.
In Solidarity,
rebelworker [/b]
Originally posted by
[email protected]
Militant was in the leadership of the movement because they were on the forefront day in day out campaigning against it - not just on the day of 31st March.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riot
The Rise of Militant
At the National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference, a Militant supporter recounted that he "was only allowed to speak to one harmless sentence of my poll tax resolution - the NEC ruled the rest out of order because it called for non-payment." (8)
The fact that Militant was the backbone of the non-payment campaign was of course an additional reason for opposing this motion. The conference had actually voted in favor of strike action against redundancies. Jobs were threatened by the implementation of the local management of schools policy (LMS) and by poll tax capping.
The NUT right-wing general secretary, Doug McAvoy, had been trying to make the union give up the strike weapon. He therefore reacted to the resolution by trying to frighten delegates and the membership at large by claiming that the resolution for strike action was "a Militant plot". Anita Dickinson, NEC member-elect, answered McAvoy's charges point by point.
http://www.socialistalternative.org/litera...itant/ch40.html (http://www.socialistalternative.org/literature/militant/ch40.html)
But in the end it was Militant who brought the war to Thatcher. The anti-poll-tax campaign remains the chief battle of the tendency – they being the ones who had the extraordinarily audacious idea of launching a campaign of civil disobedience, inciting people to refuse to pay the new tax. In Scotland the campaign became a massive affair, the main role being played by Tommy Sheridan, a particularly charismatic and combative militant, who was thrown in prison for refusing to pay the poll tax. He was far from being the only one: while 18 million Britons followed the call for non-payment, dozens of Militant supporters were jailed.
http://www.le-militant.org/engdeutch/militantlabour.htm
Hmm... nice try. Militant grew by leaps and bounds during the poll tax campaign. Infact they grew too fast which was one of the reasons the membership could be tricked into thinking that Peter Taffe was a reflection of the tendancy.
By the way, no arguments whatsoever about the collapse of Militant / Socialist Party except for one thing... the collapse occured after the theoretical leadership was kicked out in a grab of power by Taffe.
At the time Militant was 8000 strong and had multiple MPs, however, Taffe ran the tendancy into the ground while the real leadership of Militant was busy building the beginnings of Socialist Appeal / IMT / WIL.