Category: The opposition to the IS majority – known as the Non-Faction Faction (NFF)

*With all NEC comrades, bar Paul M voting for the document

November 2018

Link to the document ‘Women’s Oppression and Identity Politics – Our Approach in Ireland and Internationally’

This is a response to the IS document, “Women’s Oppression and Identity Politics – Our Approach in Ireland and Internationally”. The IS document mostly focuses on our approach and methods in relation to our interventions on women and abortion in Ireland, including our approach in ROSA which we initiated nearly six years ago. We will make points:

• On identity politics and our battle against it
• On the importance of the global women’s movement, which we feel the IS seems hesitant about
• On the decisive role we actually played in the abortion rights struggle
• On whether, as the IS suggest, the Irish section has moved away from a working-class orientation and stand point

December 2018

The Greek section has been one of the sections that, apart from the Irish section, has found themselves in the epicenter of the crisis in the International.

It is a fact that the leadership of the Greek section, its EC and its IEC members, fought with determination against what we saw as a disproportionate attack by the IS majority on the leadership of the Irish section and the threat of a split in the International, based on weaknesses or mistakes of the Irish section which the IS unjustifiably characterized as “fundamental differences of principle” and as a breach with the working class orientation and Marxist analysis of the CWI.

A response to the IS majority and platform statement – part 1

Irish NEC Majority

17 January 2019

Introduction

The rapid escalation of the current dispute in the CWI is a source of huge concern for comrades internationally, both because of the content of some of the argumentation as well as concern as to where the dispute will lead.

Reply to ‘Working class Trotskyist’ faction platform

By DB (IS), TC (EC, USA), SB (IEC, Ireland).

January 2019

The platform of the recently formed international faction, made up of a minority of IEC members from 11 sections of the CWI, correctly states that recent developments in the International will “undoubtedly come as a big shock to comrades throughout the CWI”.

Irish NEC Majority

February 2019

Election 2016 – what really happened

The IS Majority and the Faction mention the February 2016 General Election campaign. The accusations they make in relation to that are: 

• The leading comrades in Ireland denied that there were issues/mistakes with the material produced during the election;
• We only accepted that there were mistakes after a series of sharp discussions;
• The mistakes reflected an opportunist trend in the leadership.

Document of the opposition to the CWI International Secretariat majority

May 2019

A new phase in the internal struggle has opened up in the recent period. In March the IDWCTCWI faction split, followed by the departure of the Spanish section “Izquierda Revolucionaria” from the CWI. The leaderships of the Mexican, Venezuelan and Portuguese sections are urging their members to follow them. In mid-April, without any consultation with majority IEC members, the IS majority announced it wanted to overturn the unanimous decision of November 2018’s IEC to convene an IEC in August followed by a World Congress in January 2020, instead announcing its plan for an IEC meeting four months later. A majority of IEC members objected to this and insisted that the IEC be convened, as agreed, in August. In response, in what appears to be an accidentally leaked draft letter, which wrongly anticipated the outcome of a meeting held by the IEC majority comrades on 16 &17 April 2019, the faction announced that comrades who participate in an August IEC meeting, a large majority of IEC members, “are placing themselves outside the CWI and in a rival organisation”. This outrageous threat to expel the majority of IEC members and their sections by the minority is the most dramatic demonstration to date of the destructive path being followed by the faction, using methods completely alien to those earlier used in the CWI. It unfortunately confirms fundamental problems with the faction, that the majority of IEC comrades have pointed to in our recent statements.