[the I-CL called for the withdrawal of Russian…]

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the I-CL called for the withdrawal of Russian troops; while condemning the Russian invasion the WL believed that reaction in Afghanistan and internationally would gain from Russian withdrawal now.

There are differences on the EEC: the I-CL believed that the call for British withdrawal panders to British nationalism and to the myth that there can be a British solution to the crisis, and stressed instead the creation of working-class links within the EEC. The WSL, repudiating AT ITS conference the new Workers Socialist League collected over £2,000 as the first instalment of a €10,000 fund to get new equipment - especially a printing press for its magazine and premises.

The address they give for contributions is WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX. the call for import controls of the Tribune left and Communist Party, nevertheless thought that the widespread support in the labour movement for withdrawal has an anticapitalist content and can lead to a blow being struck against the ruling class.

And there were differences on how best the call fora general strike should - when it is appropriate - be raised.

The WSL and the I-CL decided that these issues should be discussed in a non-factional way in a fused organisation The platform records the differences and the commitment to discussion.

One of these issues — Afghanistan - came up for discussion more than once during the week preceding the fusion conference. The discussion was occasionally heated, but not to the point of forgetting a common purpose - to work out a working-class political line independent of both imperialism and Stalinism.

At the fusion conference a comrade questioned the procedure of leaving some questions open for later decision. The majority felt that there was in fact no slide towards discussion-circle politics, such as dominates certain petty-bourgeois Trotskyist groups for whom nothing is ever settled and discussion is a way of life.

The WSL would organise discussion to reach conclusions, in the spirit of a serious workers' organisation.

The issues raised and the discussions undertaken by such an organisation are regulated by the rhythm, norms, and concerns of the class struggle and of working-class life, not by the latest "bright idea' thrown up in the discussion circle.

Alan Thornett wound up the conference by pointing to the wide range of work the new organisation would be doing and coordinating. He said that the process of fusion had lasted 11 months, but that the actual fusion was qualitative break through for both organisations, not a mere addition of their forces. He appealed to sympathisers present to commit themselves to joining the new organisation.

Trotskyist

Of course the fine words' in the platform and the good intentions of the new organisation will have to be made into deeds in the labour movement before the hopes that the conference obviously aroused in the participants will have been justified. My own feeling is that the chances that they will is high.

A most moving incident, and an instructive one, was when Alan Thornett, proposing the Draft Platform, read out a very long quotation from Leopold Trepper's book on his experiences in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. A former Stalinist, Trepper (as quoted by Thornett) penned a horrifying account of the Stalinist terror in Leningrad in the mid-'30s, the summer school:

blaming himself and his comrades for silence and collusion in such horrors.

He ends with a tribute to the incorruptibility and the political strength of the Trotskyists who stood out against Stalin despite slaughter and imprisonment in the Arctic wastes of the USSR.

The conference was clearly moved. It felt itself profoundly to be, and to want to be, part of the great tradition of international working-class revolutionary struggle. Speakers like a recently victimised Midlands car industry shop steward got up and spoke about it. Trotskyist traditior The most striking thing about the conference was the way it combined sobermindedness and a measured critical-mindedness (as shown in the debates on Afghanistan) with an adherence to a tradition. It was free from both the fashionable iconoclasm that usually denotes the pressure of anti-Marxist anti-revolutionary moods and perspectives; and free too from sectarian religiosity and from that brittle edginess and intolerance that is the unmistakable mark of underlying ambivalence or uncertainty.

There was ardent commitment to a tradition and a doctrine, but also a commitment to develop: ing that doctrine.

commitment to democracy in the organisation, in. the labour movement and, through workers' revolution, in society generally - commitment to work for the only answer to our present crisis, that the workers should take control of their own destiny.

This fusion is a small step towards uniting the forces of revolutionary Marxism in Britain - but a very important one. It is part of a self-renewal of Trotskyism in Britain, and therefore a contribution to the general self-renewal of the labour movement. -The politics and concerns of the new organisation are, essentially, those of the Socialist OrgAnn aniser Alliance and the other supporters of Socialist Organiser. While the SOA is a loosely linked coalition of trade union and Labour Party activists, the WSL is more intensively organised, with a much higher general level of commitment from its activists. l We are not in competition. Our concerns parallel each other. It is a legacy from the past that the WSL, which does not run election candidates against the Labour Party, cannot apply for affiliation to the Labour Party.

Socialist Organiser is already sponsored by a number of labour movement bodies and individuals, and is appealing for more sponsors. We do not support bans and proscriptions. The WSL plans to produce a magazine, perhaps bi-monthly - it will not be in competition with Socialist OrgFor myself I came away from the conference convinced that Socialist Organiser should invite the new WL to become one of its sponsors. Does any reader think differently?

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Commitment Finally, there was