Alliance for Workers Liberty
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty, also known as Workers' Liberty or the AWL is a small Trotskyist group based in the United Kingdom and Australia. The AWL publish the newspaper Solidarity.
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Politics
The AWL, unlike other trotskyist groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party, calls for two states in Israel / Palestine, and counters the orthodox trotskyist concept of the former Soviet Union as a deformed workers state, and the SWP's theory of state capitalism with a theory of bureaucratic collectivism. The AWL also lay great importance on democracy.
The UK AWL is a founder member of the Socialist Alliance, and their Scottish members are in the Scottish Socialist Party.
History
The group originates from Sean Matgamna's expulsion from the Militant tendency. He formed the Workers' Fight group with a few other comrades. Espousing left unity, they accepted an offer to form a faction within the International Socialists (later renamed the Socialist Workers Party).
By the mid 1970s, the SWP had decided to ban factions, and in the process, expelled the Workers Fight group. This had grown, and the concerned SWP sent Martin Thomas to infiltrate it. Martin Thomas decided, however, to actually join the group and has remained a prominent member ever since.
After a short-lived union with Workers Power, the group decided on a policy of entryism into the Labour Party, and set up the 1979 Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. This campaign proved popular, and enabled the group to start the weekly Socialist Organiser paper.
The newspaper was banned by the Labour Party in the early 1990s, and the group changed its name and gradually moved away from Labour and toward setting up the Socialist Alliance.
