Political Events this Weekend

All eyes will be on the march against Brexit due to take place in Central London tomorrow.  There's expected to be a large turnout. The news has had non-stop coverage of this issue so if you are a remainer then pop along and make your voice heard.

October 20th: Meet from 11am outside the Hard Rock Cafe on Old Park Lane/Piccadilly, W1K 1QZ.

Besides the fact the far left are mostly for Brexit there shouldn't be hordes of Socialist Worker types hawking their hateful rag. They should all be carping on at the Stand Up to Racism Conference. This takes place between 9:30 and 17:00 in the Friends Meeting House in Euston. 

If you are reading this now you probably weren't that interested since you won't have time to get there now...sorry I wasn't going to promote this gathering. 

Other than Gerry Gable of Searchlight Magazine who probably felt he had to attend there is no one else worth listening to. The idea these people will fight anti-Semitism is laughable to the extreme. If you want to fight the real fascists read Searchlight magazine (subscribe: here).

Last but by no means least is this anarchist get together which got off to a bad start today as the speaker for the first event was ill so the meeting was cancelled. Still there was a film earlier this evening.

There are two days of down right frightening events taking place such as a session on TERF wars so if you believe basic biological facts that women don't have penises then stay well away.

Other sessions include anarchists on mental health which is fair enough and Techno Fantasies and Eco Realities which is:

A discussion around technology, ecology and future worlds. What are the possibilities and limits for technology in the context of climate change and other ecological crises? Can we have our technological cake and ecologically eat it? In this discussion we will explore ideas including fully automated luxury communism, techno-utopianism and degrowth.

There's also a chat entitled The Dead End of Corbynism:

The Anarchist Communist Group notes the recent trend of many on the Left (including some who call themselves anarchists, libertarian socialists and anti-authoritarian communists) seeing a Corbyn led Labour Party as a great step forward in the class struggle.

In this meeting, the ACG will be hosting a discussion on why the Labour Party can never offer hope for anti-capitalists in the UK and we will be looking at what we should do instead.

The events are all over the place from Kentish Town to New Cross back to Kings Cross and the East End, so attendees will spend a lot of time travelling back and forth. 

There will be a book launch which I'd certainly be interested in: Beautiful Idea: History of the Freedom Press anarchists. They did have a regular paper once upon a time, long gone now but the bookshop's still there and I assume a website.

Oh what's the book actually about I hear you ask. Here's a synopsis:

Freedom Press is the oldest anarchist publishing house in the English-speaking world. Founded in 1886, the press has weathered wars, police raids, fascist attacks and innumerable internal crises while publishing some of the world’s most important libertarian thinkers, from Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman to Colin Ward and Murray Bookchin. 2018 marks 50 years since the Press bought its current home in Angel Alley, and to celebrate the occasion is publishing A Beautiful Idea, attempting to draw out a narrative from its densely-packed history.

An hour later band out of reach back in Kings Cross the Anarchist Federation lays out it's wares for the already converted and the unwary:

Members of the London Anarchist Federation will discuss anarchism as a political philosophy, its history, key thinkers and modern currents as well as an anarchist FAQ. This talk is aimed at those interested in learning more about anarchism and will also include an overview of the many anarchist groups you can get involved with. The talk will be followed by a Q&A in case we miss anything in the FAQ and then a social in a nearby pub.

At least attendees can get pissed whilst they are arguing!

There's more stuff on Sunday but I can't be arsed so go to: anarchistfestival.wordpress.com

Beyond the Left's Fringe....

These are strange time indeed when I find myself agreeing with at least something written by the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and I'm no friends of theirs believe me! Since the rise of Corbynism the definitions of political stances has become somewhat blurred.

The CPB (M-L) wrote back in early 2017 that:

In the days leading up to the French Revolution of 1789, the National Assembly used to meet with the commoners on the left and the aristocrats on the right. From this came the terms “left wing” and “right wing”. But what was a useful description 230 years ago has turned into its opposite. In modern Britain, these terms mean nothing.

Of course for them class is the central issue which is hardly surprising given they are at heart very old fashioned Marxists. For the rest of us mere mortals notions of left and right are meaningless in an age where the main opposition party has moved from the centre left to embrace a form of "Strasserism"with a hefty dose of anti-Semitism.

While we talking about strange bedfellows the New Worker paper of the equally Stalinist New Communists Party writes:

UKRAINIAN anti-fascists sent a message of support to London demonstrators in Whitehall last week protesting at continuing British support for the fascist regime in Kiev. The early evening protest, opposite the prime minister’s resistance in Downing Street, was organised by the New Communist Party of Britain (NCP), Socialist fight, Posadists in Britain and members of Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine. NCP leader Andy Brooks and Gerry Downing from the Socialist fight movement joined other picketers in a protest that attracted considerable interest on the busy street.

I am sure that this oddball collection would have attracted attention. What a combination of the wicked and the bizarre. Stalinists, the most despised Trotskyist in the country in the form of Gerry Downing's mob, Socialist Fight and other trots who believe flying saucers come from workers planets. Don't ask. The Posadists even forgot to tell the working class their leader Posadas was dead for some years despite filling their paper with his posthumous articles. well that is unless they have managed to find a proletarian medium....

Ukraine is a fascist state according to this mob. They Defend Russia despite it neither being communist or even a degenerated workers state. They read out a statement from an "underground" Marxist organisation (Borbota/Struggle):

After the coup in February 2014 many Ukrainians began to resist the illegitimate liberal-nationalist government with weapons in their hands, forming militia units.

After the terror inflicted by the new Kiev authorities in Odessa on 2nd May, 2014, when neo-Nazi militants killed dozens of civilians, it became clear to Ukrainian society that there was no possibility of reaching any agreement with the new government peacefully. Mass resistance began in the southern and eastern regions. A civil war began. In this war, the new Ukrainian government used the army against civilians of its own country. It used heavy artillery to destroy whole villages.

A wee bit of re-writing of history there comrades. And what about the Russian invasion of Crimea. No? Don't want to talk about that fine. 

A rally for Russian Imperialism! Restore the Soviet Union? It's over comrades, wake up and smell the colonial coffee.

If you are wondering what Socialist Fight is up to whilst Gerry Downing gallavants with stalinists and UFO entusiasts their website published the thoughts of Dov Winter sole member of their Hawaiian section who will upset the NCP by describing China as (wait for it) an Imperialist country:

It is hard to let go of defending a country that Trotskyists deem progressive after it transformed and become reactionary. This is true in particular in regard to the degenerated/deformed workers state. After the successful capitalist restoration in Russia and the Eastern European countries, it took most of those who called themselves Trotskyists years to concede that capitalism has been restored in these countries. A similar process is taking place in regard to China. Some Trotskyists still consider China to be at best a semi-colony, while in reality, China has been imperialist for some time.

Comrade Dov concludes:

It is understandable that comrades want to defend what is progressive, and thus, it is difficult for them to concede that what was progressive in the past, is no longer progressive at the present. It took Socialist Fight a long time to admit that China was no longer a workers’ state. After studying the data about China, Socialist Fight and the LRCI should consider seriously whether China is an imperialist country. The objective world operates dialectically; not in stages, but in leaps and zigzags, forward and backward. That is why a degenerated or deformed workers’ state can leap backward and become capitalist. 

I hate to disillusion the comrades but the rest of the world noticed China was now a capitalist and imperialist competitor a long time ago. Some of us watch the news. Do try and keep up.

And finally lets say hello to the new kids on the block.



There has been a split in the Revolutionary Communist Group (They're the mob that sell the newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! who were expelled from the International Socialists (Socialist Workers Party) way back in 1974) but nobody seemed to know.

It seems the RCG have had some form of scandal involving sexual harassment and cover-ups by the party leadership. The breakaway group have set up shop on a new website and issued a Statement which is far too long-winded to publish in full here:

We outline the appalling way in which the RCG dealt with the recent sexual harassment scandal, pointing out both the events and responses of the RCG as well as their attempt to suppress the issue internally.

We conclude that, as is typical within the British left, the sexism present in the RCG is a result of institutional chauvinism and a complete lack of both representation and solidarity with oppressed people groups, particularly in instances when it is beneficial for the RCG to ignore such oppression.

On the 13th October 2017, the eve of the RCG’s annual 2 day national event at which all members would be in attendance, an email was sent out by the EC (the executive committee of the RCG) via the RCG email list: “A public accusation of sexual harassment has been made against AF (Manchester). The Manchester branch committee has discussed this but they should have both informed the EC immediately and sent in a written report without prompting. Such an allegation has the potential to cause serious political damage if it is not handled correctly. The EC therefore suspends AF from membership whilst an investigation takes place. This is a necessary step to protect the integrity of the organisation.

It seems that the member was reinstated with his "suspension being the only punishment" which seems to have precipitated the split.

An appendix gives a rough outline of the complaint which included:

At branch it seemed like there was a large effort to minimise what AF did for one example a comment from LB was “Yeah he got into someones bed a year ago… when he was drunk”, time since or drunk or not does not excuse these actions. Comments like this (although the situation was not rape) contribute to rape culture and I found it to be unacceptable, as well as other comments.

I was told the victim was very involved in the investigation and agreed with the decision, it turns out this was not the case at all according to her twitter account activity.

The woman who complained plus a small group of around five other people quit. They seem to have been in touch with other ex-members of the RCG but whether this group lasts is open to question.

Lansman, the JVL and the CPGB (Weekly Worker)

Image: By Source, Fair use

An astonishing but useful insight into the thinking of Momentum's leadership appeared in the Jewish Chronicle yesterday:

Jon Lansman, the architect of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to power, thinks the “very existence” of pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice For Labour group is inflaming tensions between Labour and the Jewish community, sources have said.

A senior figure in left-wing campaign group Momentum said that its founder, Jon Lansman, believed it is problematic that senior JVL figures claim to speak for the entire community but actually only reflect the views of a small faction of anti-Zionist Jews.

The source also told the JC that Mr Lansman felt it was entirely wrong for leading JVL figures to suggest that their organisation deserves equal recognition from Labour, on a par with the bigger, more established Jewish Labour Movement.

That there is no love left between Lansman and the JVL miscreants is not new. Tony Greenstein and Jackie walker split from Momentum a while back when they did not get their way originally establishing a "Grassroots momentum" which has disappeared and been replaced with the Jewish Voice for Labour groupscule to back Corbyn and cause mischief with the mainstream Jewish community.

There is little support left for the Labour Party in the wider Jewish community other than in the form of the long running Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that has been an affiliate of Labour for decades.

It's not just the JVL that causes problems. The Communist Party of Great Britain's (Weekly Worker) front organisation Labour Against the Witch Hunt which has overlapping memberships and ties.  Greenstein is a regular writer in the pages of the Weekly Worker and of course is himself protesting about his suspension from the Labour Party. His preferred subject is of course Zionism. This self-obsessed individual presents himself as the expert on this field of course.

LAW also seem to have a problem with Jewish concerns about Labour. When the JLM started to monitor anti-Semitism in the Labour Party the comrades dismissed these concerns in no uncertain terms:

We call on all Labour Party members to stay well clear of the Jewish Labour Movement’s latest stunt. The JLM, which is the sister party of the Zionist Labor Party in Israel, has written to CLP secretaries, asking them to distribute their “survey” on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party to all local members. Many CLP secretaries have quite rightly moved this email directly into their Spam folder. If you have been unfortunate enough to have received the email, we urge you to do the same.

Of course even Corbyn and McDonnell have admitted to the existence of anti-Semitism in their party despite the fact neither of them will do much about it. No other ethnic group would have their worries dismissed so lightly. The outlook of LAW is effectively racist. Our concerns are of no importance whatsoever to them.

Of course LAW is full of entryists from the CPGB (Weekly Worker) a tiny group of around 50 or so individuals who have tried burying themselves in all sorts of organisations from the Socialist Alliance in the early 2000's to the more recent, now failed Left Unity Party project launched by Ken Loach.

The group present themselves as the Labour Party Marxists who just happen to hold joint "educationals" with the CPGB!  Members of the LPM and some of LAW are in breach of Labour Party rules but it's unlikely anyone will bother to act. The CPGB mob also cause disruption amongst other left-groups hiding inside the Labour Party.

However despite all this Momentum, the CLPD LRC/Labour Breifing & JVL crowd have come together to form a united slate. The JVL write:

We are delighted to report that the existing diffrences between Momentum and a number of other campaigning groups have been resolved.

The united slate of candidates below is currently backed by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), Labour Briefing Co-op, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (LCND) and Momentum.

At the end of the day no matter what Lansman may say (and it needs to be remembered he's no friend of ours) for pragmatic reasons his organisation Momentum is at the end of the day a danger not just to our community like the other groups but also a threat to democracy.

Reading The Left Press So You Don't Have to!

The most important task for the Socialist Party (Militant) is to ensure that it's boy Chris Baugh currently Assistant General Secretary of the PCS Union gets nominated and re-elected. He has an uphill task despite being in the post for a decade.

Marion Lloyd one of the Militants on the PCS NEC writes:

Meetings to agree nominations and motions are taking place until 26 October. These will be followed by voting meetings during November, culminating in the national Left Unity conference on 1 December.

A key issue will be who the Left Unity candidate is for the union's assistant general secretary (AGS).

Socialist Party member Chris Baugh is up for re-election. He has been the Left Unity candidate on three successive occasions since 2004, and won the union's election each time.

Chris is being challenged by Janice Godrich, the union's president. This challenge was started and is actively supported by the general secretary, Mark Serwotka, supposedly because of personal dislike and alleged inability to work with Chris.

As the rival PCS Independent Left puts it:

What we have is court politics where the King has fallen out with one of his nobles and there is battle to replace the rebel courtier.

Meanwhile the SP are making sure that Baugh is getting a high profile while this all goes on. The Socialist reports that:

Up to 2,000 marched in London against the far-right Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) on 13 October. Socialist Party members took part in the counter-demonstration where PCS assistant general secretary and Socialist Party member Chris Baugh was one of the speakers.

Whether the Socialist Party will break ranks with the rest of the PCS left and run Baugh against Janice Godrich if he loses remains to be seen. It is certain that Janice will. She has the backing of PCS head honcho Mark Serwotka and he wants rid of the troublesome Baugh.

Meanwhile as people prepare to march against Brexit in Central London  they will be happy to know that sellers of the Socialist Worker are for Brexit and won't be pestering them to buy a copy.

The SWP are using one of their front organisations Stand Up to Racism is holding an "International Conference" this weekend. The comrades write:

...a long-term task that has to unite anti-racists whether they are in the Labour Party, the revolutionary left, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the trade unions or have no party. This cannot be left to a Labour Party that has a terrible record of conceding to racism and implementing racist laws.

Now the latter part of that statement is absolutely true. Labour does have a racism problem as an elderly Jewish woman and others found out last night in the heart of Jeremy Corbyn's constituency when they were assaulted outside a meeting defending Corbyn and the Labour Party against racist accusations. Not sure that's what the SWP means but anti-Semitism is rife on the Labour left.

"We are facing the biggest rise in support for fascism, racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism since the 1930s."

Speakers include John McDonell MP who shared a platform with Jenny Manson from which Jews were excluded, Lyndsey German who was a speaker at last nights event in North London. (I have asked her for comments but have yet to receive a reply). Someone from the Muslim Council of Britain which is really a window dressed Muslim Brotherhood banned in so many Arab countries and laughingly someone from the Unite Against Racism organisation which like the SUTR is a front for the SWP.

There are some legitimate speakers such as Gerry Gable of Searchlight magazine but David Rosenberg of the tiny Jewish Socialists Group is hardly representative of the Jewish Community. All this is in order to build a demonstration on November 17th.

It'll be strange beyond belief to see racists of the left marching against themselves....



Meanwhile the sole group on the far-left that actually opposes anti-Semitism, the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) has been holding meetings around the country and in an overview Ira Berkovic writes in their newspaper Solidarity:

The aim of the meetings, however, has not merely been to provide a space for debate but to convince comrades of a particular view: that antisemitism does exist on the left, and in a specific and distinct form, and that the way to uproot it is to replace the conspiracist form of anti-Zionism that currently predominates on much of the far left with a consistently democratic policy that upholds the equal right of all peoples to self-determination.

If only there were more like the AWL on the left.

Pakistan is a Sharia Prison

Cartoon from: www.jesusandmo.net

Freedom of speech and expression is constantly under attack whether it be in Russia under Putin, China under Xi Jinping or Pakistan under Imran Khan. With the first two it's all about power with the latter it's also about power but with the pretence of victim-hood. The cry of being offended and the issuing of death threats is part and parcel of so much of the Islamic world.

As Islamists murder Christian teachers in Kenya and another is on death row in Pakistan we are expected to believe Islam is the victim when the intolerance and violence of the Islamists is so widespread and the "moderates" remain silent lest they be the next victims as bloggers have discovered in Bangladesh where so many have been murdered for simply expressing a point of view.

First there was the Satanic Verses a controversy artificially kicked up by the mad Ayatollah Khomeini as part of a strategy to spread his evil influence in the Muslim world, then there were the Danish Cartoonists and finally there was the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdoe. I have a copy of the edition of that newspaper to remind me that religious intolerance has become murder. 

Now Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan wants to go to the United Nations to "stop all cartoons of Mohammed". 51 Muslim nations have already attempted to make so-called "blasphemy" a world wide crime. On both counts their suppression of free thought must be opposed. We cannot allow these backward thinking bigots to interfere in our society's freedoms.

Rather we should campaign for the separation of religion and the state everywhere.  No religion should be forced down anyone's throat. 

Pakistan is nothing more than a giant Sharia prison as anyone who is not a Muslim can attest to. Under the pressure of self interested and deranged clerics there is a demand that non-Muslims abroad should face the same punishments Muslims do for offending their religion.

Never should that be allowed to happen. Stand up to the Islamists and their left-wing allies!

Sixty Years of Blue Peter! Down Shep!

Photo: By RockingSummer

There are two programmes from the sixties that used to be essential viewing. The first was Doctor Who of which I recall seeing the first episode of at the age of 7 and have followed the good Doctor to this day. The other programme that we tuned into as a family was Blue Peter.

I don't recall when I started watching this but at tea time twice a week it was always on with mum and dad watching this as avidly as I did. The first presenting team I remember was Christopher Tracey with Valerie Singleton and then John Noakes. Peter Purves came a little later.



This programme had started broadcasting in 1958 before my memory (I was err..one!) and has continued to this day though sadly sidelined onto the BBC children's Channel CBBC. It's viewing figures have dropped which is sad but I haven't watched it in years but will tonight for their anniversary programme.

Pity they don't bring it back to BBC 1 prime time to be the family show it was always meant to be!

There were times when both my favourite shows overlapped as this clip wonderfully illustrates:



I always remember John Noakes now sadly departed taking risks that scared the pants off both me and everyone else who watched. Up chimneys and Nelson's Column years before 'elf & safety really kicked in....



Then there was the Blue Peter garden (once vandalised) and their time capsule!



Along came Leslie Judd and  I gradually grew out of the programme simply because I was never home at the right time due to college and other commitments.

Any readers get a Blue Peter Badge?

BBC website: Blue Peter

CBBC: Today at 5:00 (27 past presenters!)

BBC Radio 2 has a celebration at 9PM this evening. 

Pity they don't bring it back to BBC 1 prime time to be the family show it was always meant to be!

Book Review: Contemporary Trotskyism - John Kelly

Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties Sects and Social Movements in Britain - John Kelly (Routledge) Paperback £23.99

"They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers democracy."

And so spoke Leon Trotsky at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communists Party Congress as he attacked the Workers Opposition.  The same man who sent the Red Army to crush the Kronsdadt sailors who rebelled against the authoritarian dictatorship being established by the Bolsheviks. Later Trotsky himself became the victim of "the party" as Stalin turned against him and his Left Opposition ending in exile and then murder in 1940.

Trotsky despite all his obvious faults was a great orator and polemicist renowned for his literary style. Never able to work as part of a team (one of the contributory factors leading to his downfall) the Trotskyist movement that arose out of his later work and the establishing of the Fourth International in 1938 has always suffered from factionalism and splits since its foundation.

This particular history of Trotskyism is of great interest to me as for many years up until the age of 30 or thereabouts I was either influenced by or participating in Trotskyist politics and organisations. In around 1981/2 I joined the Socialist League which was infiltrating the Labour Party (of which I was already a member). The League had been better known as the International Marxist Group "led" by Tariq Ali who had gone by that time. We all had to use "party names" for Internal Bulletins. Amusingly I discovered Tariq had used the moniker "Howard".

The SL/IMG was an affiliate of the grandly named United Secretariat of the Fourth International the largest of the organisations claiming to be the continuation of Trotsky's Fourth International. In fact the IMG paper Red Weekly was the first Trotskyist paper I ever came across when a student at tech back in 1974. The second was Workers Press a daily paper produced by the Workers Revolutionary Party and occasionally on sale outside the college.

 

When first attending demonstrations I was amazed at the number of different paper s or magazines on sale all claiming to be "Trotskyist" and returned home with copies of Socialist Worker, Socialist Press, Militant, and Workers Power or was it Workers Fight? Difficult to remember now. There were others and some anarchist and Maoist publications as well but none interested me as much as the Trot papers.

It is with this in mind that I picked up this book as it covered the years I was active in  Trotskyist politics only finally leaving when the Berlin Wall came down and Socialist Worker said this was an "opportunity to show workers what Marxism really was". Unreal. I thought to myself why would people who have been oppressed under the rule of Stalinism want to sign up to something just the same.

Although I threw myself into the Green Party and away from Trotskyism and Marxism this was a difficult action for me to take. It was only the sudden lurch of the Greens to the left that threw me into the political mainstream though I have not belonged to a political party since 1992 and concentrated on trade union work ending up fighting the far-left that I had broken from in the civil service unions SCPS and PCS for over two decades.

Trotskyism is resilient and many groups  still exist though Corbynism has stolen their thunder for now. The two biggest groups the SWP and the Socialist Party (Militant) the largest of the groups from that milieu have ossified outside of Labour. The SWP has barely recovered from a rape scandal and Labour continues to reject advances from the old Militant Tendency.

John Kelly examines the Trotskyist movement in the UK in some detail including background material on Trotsky and pre-seventies groups to concentrate on the period 1970 to the present day well 2017 to be precise.  he covers the politics, sectarianism and influence that these groups have had on wider British politics through "fronting movements".

The Anti-Nazi League owed it's existence to the SWP, The Anti-Poll Tax Movement to Militant and Stop the War Campaign to the SWP and Counterfire. A lot of smaller less known movements could not have existed without the input of Trotskyist politics.

There are still around 20 or so "Trotskyist  groups in the UK ranging from the largest, the SWP which claims 5,000 plus members which no one believes. More likely between 2- 2,500 these days following several recent splits, to the smallest believed to be the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency in Britain which  has more words than members numbering just two. Alongside them are the "Lambertistes" (don't ask) who likewise number just two.



Then there are the Fourth Internationals. Kelly asserts that there are Trotskyists in 51 countries. Actually I think there's more but he identifies 23 "Fourth Internationals" which is more than I knew of but some have no group in the UK. There is believe it or not a "Fifth International " represented by the Workers Power group in the UK who organise under the Red Flag label inside the Labour Party. There perhaps 30 of them.

This is a worthy volume for anyone remotely interested in "Trot spotting" and fun for reminiscing for the biggest Trotskyist movement of all those who gave up and left to get a real life. An interesting experience but I for one was hopeless at "toeing the party line" and was always critical of Trotsky's actions over Krondstadt and grew to realise his opposition to internal and external democracy would lead to a form of Stalinism.

All Trotskyist groups have this almost religious sect fervour and the author does compare these groups to religious ones. He has a point. They all have their Icons and "holy texts". Trotsky was the latest "Messiah" and his disciples multiplied through the fifties sixties and seventies. Gerry Healy WRP), Tony Cliff (Yagel Gluckstein) (SWP), Ted Grant (MIlitant/Socialist Appeal), Sean Matgamna (Socialist Organiser/AWL) among them.

There are those that have left such as Tariq Ali (IMG), Frank Furedi (RCP now Spiked!) and countless others around the world.

None of these people have ever led a revolution except Trotsky himself and that was really a coup  d'etat.  Undoubtedly  Trotskyist groups will continue to pop up split, fuse or give up in the future and will be around to "pick up the pieces when the Corbyn project collapses and fails. But that is a story yet to come.

For now read the story of what has been and consider why Trotskyism has attracted so many and disillusioned even more over the years.