Workers Party" are merely another obstacle in the path to workers' power in Ethiopia.
Behind the split in the Workers Socialist Document of the Democratic
League "PAINFULLY, and after a long iliness: mourned by few". That might be the most fitting obituary to the demise of the fusion which in 1981 united two British Trotskyist organisa- tions, the Workers Socialist League and the International Communist League, and which died under the knife three The brutal, bureaucratic expulsion of a minority Faction of 35 mainly old-WSL members from the fused Workers Socialist League put an end to any hopes of a healthy or tolerant regime. And it set the dominant ex-ICL majority firmly on a sectarian trajectory on a national and interna- While cynics and sceptics will no doubt greet this news as more evidence for their view that a mass Marxist party will never be built, serious militants will be concerned to learn the lessons from this sorry end to the biggest effort at revolutionary regroupment in Britain since World War 2. It is for this reason that we are reprinting for readers' information the full texts of the public statements on the split issued by those expelled from or resigning from the Centralist Faction WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE: The Death of a Fusion ON MARCH 31, 1984, 35 members of the Workers Socialist League were summarily and collectively suspended without advance notice by a vote of 14 to 8 on the WSL's National Committee. They were charged, vaguely and collec- with "disruption"; specific tively, no breaches of discipline or the WL's Con- stitution were cited. Thirty-one of the thirty- five were not even told of their impending suspension until after the event. Two weeks later on April 14, the same 35 members, the non-NC members of whom had no chance of a hearing, were expelled on the same vague charge. Attempts to invoke the WL's Constitu- tion and convene a Special Conference to discuss the expulsions (backed up in each case by the signatures of the necessary per- centage of the membership as required by the Constitution) were twice overruled; instead the NC majority opted to call a "nor- mal" annual conference of the League for June 30, at which the appeals of the 35 expel-
ratified the expulsions. of the Socialist Group. centralist organisation. work and forging international links. led members would be heard.
In the event, the appeals were rejected by a majority of 45 with 4 abstentions at the Conference, and the demands for a fundamental change in the WSI's heavily bureaucratised internal regime, argued strongly by the minority Democratic Centralist Faction (DCF) were voted down by a similar margin.
These expulsions were in fact not for any breach of the WL constitution or for any disruptive activity but because the 35 members had political disagreement with the majority and had formed a faction to fight for their ideas. This has been clearly admitted on several occasions by supporters of the majority.
With these unseemly events, carried through by the WL leadership to split the organisation in the midst of the miners' strike, the final nails were hammered into the coffin of the 1981 fusion between the old Workers Socialist League and the International-Communist League.
That fusion has been hailed on both sides as a historic stride forward for British Trotskyism, because it represented both a substantial break from the two "traditions" Socialist Viewpoint, No. 1, Autumn 1984. Page 20
The first, shorter document, is from the minority Democ- ratic Centralist Faction, comprising members from both wings of the fused group, which fought against the expul sions within the WSL, but resigned after its June conference The second, more extended