For some years, Workers Power held on to their parent group’s fetish of state capitalism, while alleging that the SWP were not applying their own theory. When Russian troops entered Afghanistan, Workers Power stood out from most of the left by refusing to call for their withdrawal: the group had stumbled into a Trotskyist position which it later ratified by dropping the state capitalist fetish. Having done so, it logically had to consider whether to put in a bid for the Fourth International franchise, which would inevitably meant it being told to unite with the political illiterates of the IMG. Recoiling from this fate, Worker Power had no choice but to justify its decision by producing a criticism of the Fourth International by means of a critical history. Surprisingly, the work entitled The Death Agony of the Fourth International, published in 1983, was an excellent, well-researched booklet, demolishing many of the myths about that venerable body through a very accurate account of its tragi-comic history. Like a previously dull child who has unexpectedly passed an exam, Workers Power grew in confidence and went on to produce a very decent theoretical journal titled Permanent Revolution. The group believed that it had sorted out the problems caused by its late development and curious ancestry, and was poised to begin the task of building the genuine revolutionary party. Alas! It was not to be. Workers Power remains a group of 1970s students becoming polytechnic lecturers. Its monthly paper of the same name, filled with really appalling gibberish, is after the Militant the most unreadable of all the left periodicals, light years away from its theoretical journal. Workers Power has an Irish sister organisation, the Irish Workers Group, which has tentatively begun to apply Marxist theory to Ireland. This will end in tears: a Marxist analysis of Ireland will shatter the romantic green nationalism which the English left depends on.
