It was the Debate of the Year but was anybody listening? “Which way forward for the Left? a mass Communist Party or a broad left socialist movement?”
They are calling it the debate of the year!
Tony Greenstein’s best friend tweeted a couple of days ago:
From the Monster Raving Greenstein Party (canal historique):
The process of forming a new organisation began at the end of November when All Members Meetings of Labour-in-Exile-Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt voted to merge into a single organisation. Both LAW and LIEN had been proscribed by Labour’s National Executive Committee last July 20th.
The decision of the 2 organisations to merge was taken in the teeth of opposition from Labour Party Marxism which is the Communist Party of Great Britain in the Labour Party. 5 of the 6 members of LAW’s Steering Committee were also opposed to the merger and 4 of them explained their reasons in a statement Why we resigned.
his was accompanied by an article both in Weekly Worker and on the LPM website Something serious is needed: confronting Tony Greenstein and Merging into a cul-de-sac. I replied with Not a liquidation? and Self-declared heretic replies.
The fact that the CPGB and its leading theoretician Jack Conrad felt the need to personalise a political disagreement (Note: Heaven Forefend that Monster Raving should stoop so low! ) suggests that the CPGB is finding it difficult to mount a sustainable argument.
LPM insisted, contrary to all the evidence, that what was being proposed was not a merger but a liquidation and notwithstanding the evidence they have continued to insist that this is the case.
A trusty ally comments on his site comments,
As ever Tony your political instincts are spot on for me. LPM and certainly the CPGB will be consigned to the outer political reaches which is where they have always been.
Tendance Coatesy 
Well, what did come out over the weekend is Tony’s new vehicle from the wreckage of LAW / LIEN. It is to be called the SLN (Socialist Labour Network) – another set of initials to be stored in an already overflowing section of ones cranium. Other ideas were canvassed but rejected; ‘The Resistance’ (could that have been suggested via a router in Derby ?) various permutations of ‘Socialist Labour Republican Network’ (Steve Freeman on the line, I guess). The grey amorphous ‘Community First’, ‘The Movement for Economic Democracy’ (keep taking the meds….) and – left on the LEDJ so to speak – the ‘Labour Exiles for Democracy and Justice’. No minutes, so no idea who are to be the little Lenins and Bukharins, but I’m sure that’ll dribble out to an eagerly waiting world.
`David Walsh
January 18, 2022 at 7:16 pm
Extensive research by our top newshounds reveals this:
Steve Freeman has not been around for a while. He had given his archives to The Archivist of the Left.
Concerns have been expressed.
I do not wish him ill (despite an untoward personal attack on me in the august letters page of the WW, not, I hasten to add that I had written anything for them for about 10 years) .
He is a good bloke.
Andrew Coates
January 18, 2022 at 7:42 pm
Don’t know the guy. I always imagined him dressed like one of the levellers taking on the landlords and squirarchy in the 1640’s. (nothing wrong with that, of course) but a bit hoary.
`David Walsh
January 18, 2022 at 10:31 pm
He is a right pain.
Comes to left London meetings and wants to turn everything into Socialist Labour Republican Network (or variants|\ ’.
Did it annually with Chartist,
Andrew Coates
January 18, 2022 at 11:25 pm