Red Mole Rising

Fancy a night out in Glasgow? Well, what better than a Red Circle meeting?

GLASGOW RED CIRCLE meetings

A few familiar names here.

A short duplicated A4 pamphlet from 1974 raising awareness of the Eldon Square, Newcastle, building site pickets who faced jail in a case similar to that of the Shrewsbury pickets jailed two years earlier.

Thanks again to Iain for this.

Another nice IMG publication from Iain.

This 20 page duplicated pamphlet dates from 1976 and covers the emergence of the reformist parties in Spain after the death of Franco.

Unfortunately the duplication is a bit poor in parts and the articles on page 6, reproduced from the Morning Star, are quite illegible!

A single sided duplicated page on the politics and activity of the International Marxist Group.

This appears to have been intended as a page or insert in another publication or bulletin and presumably dates from the late 1960s. Interestingly it references Intercontinental Press but not the IMG publication International or ventures such as The Week or Black Dwarf…

Several years ago we found a copy of Inprecorr- News about the Fourth International no1 which describes itself as an internal bulletin of the FI and the Anti-Imperialist Commission of the IMG.

An introduction by Clarissa Howard explains its purpose:

Now I am pleased to report a second issue has come to light: Inprecorr no2.

Sadly this issue is missing pages 11-15 which cover Spain and the LCR.

Were any furhter issues of this bulletin ever produced?

Not to be confused with the slightly later Inprecor magazine- note single “r” at the end of the title.

INPRECORR- News About The Fourth International

After a bit of a hiatus, we have quite a few IMG and IMG related items to bring you in the next few weeks. Particular thanks to Iain G who just sent us half a dozen pamphlets we hadn’t seen before…

The first of these is produced by Manchester IMG as the second in its “Educational Notes” series and is a statement by the IMG National Committee on relations between the Fourth International and the Workers Fight (Matgamna) group.

The statement is dated 21st January 1973 and is in response to an article in Workers Fight making allegations about the IMG’s approach to fusion negotiations.

Readers may be aware that the Workers Fight group, emerging from the expelled Trotskyist Tendency of the International Socialists was relatively strong in the Manchester / North-West area.

This pamphlet appears to have been primarily an internal document or for close contacts of the IMG.

Thanks to Glyn R for this issue of Workers Republic from August / September 1970. This 28 page magazine is duplicated with what appears to be a hand stencilled or screen printed cover.

Key articles include D. Whelan on India and R. Lysaght on Fascism in Ireland.

We also have a copy of issue 25 which we posted some years ago.

Workers Republic was the journal of the League For A Workers Republic and at this time the organisation contained the comrades who would later found the FI section in Ireland as well as those who would gravitate to the Healyites and the continuity LWR which joined the Lambert current.

Confusingly, the LWR published, at the same time, a fortnightly newsletter also called Workers Republic!

Thanks to Glyn R for sending us, amongst many other wonderful things, a couple of pamphlets on Iran.

The first is Iran, The Unfolding Revolution by Saber Nickbin from 1978. A detailed 50 page pamphlet written at the start of the Iranian Revolution.

The second is an issue of Socialism and Revolution- the bulletin of a number of Iranian revolutionary currents in the aftermath of the 1981 defeat of the revolution. This issue takes the form of a pamphlet Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Iran– by the HKS (Socialist Workers Party) a section of the Fourth International in Iran, and was published in Paris.

UPDATE: This pamphlet is also available in Farsi here.

We have a few copies of a couple of books which might be of interest to readers of this Blog and which we can offer at a low price.

OCTOBER 1917- Workers In Power

Le Blanc, Mandel, Trotsky, Luxemburg and Lenin.

Merlin Press, 240 pages paperback.

Available from us for just £6 including UK postage

The Balfour Declaration by Bernard Regan. Verso, hardback 280 pages.

Available from us for £7.00 including UK postage

Just drop me a line- kazeliot (at) hotmail (dot) com for more details.

You can do a bank transfer or Paypal or send a cheque.

A crosspost from WeaponisedPoetry

Issue 88 of Socialist Challenge contained a four page Surrealist Challenge supplement presenting work from British and American surrealists and the Trotsky-Breton Manifesto for Independent Revolutionary Art. Whilst it was published with a disclaimer from the Socialist Challenge editorial board over violent and sexist imagery in some of the ‘automatic texts’ presented, socialist feminists staged an occupation of the Socialist Challenge offices in protest and several letters on the topic appeared in subsequent issues.

Less well known is the text And Onan Cried Over His Spilt Milk attributed to the “Sara Emanuele De Maupers Faction of the Surrealist Group in England” which attacks Socialist Challenge’s self-criticism on the issue. We were pleased not only to receive a copy of this text from John Richardson but shortly afterwards to find an article discussing it in World Revolution paper of the International Communist Current.

This latter makes the error of seeing the surrealist break with what it considered Trotskyism and feminism to be a shift to the left when it later became apparent that it represented a sharp move to the right and abandonment of the terrain of radical politics.

That said, it is unclear that the Onan text represented the views of most of those who had contributed to the Surrealist Challenge supplement.

This piece takes up the trajectory of some of those associated with the Surrealist Challenge and perhaps those who issued the Onan declaration…

There were, of course, other surrealists active in Britain at the time who remained politically engaged.