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Comrade George McCartney passed away in November 2007 at the age of 90. George was active in the trade union movement and Labour movement for most of his life and it is fitting that we remember him a year after his death. We are reproducing the tribute given at his funeral service by his sons Sean and Neil in Cambridge last December.
Alan
Woods was recently interviewed by the Argentine magazine Sudesta on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. He deals with
the gradual political degeneration of the Revolution and its usurpation by the
Stalinist bureaucracy, discussing the political issues raised in the course of
the struggle. Unease at the rise of bureaucratic rule was signalled by Lenin in
his last years and by Trotsky. As Alan says, “In 1923 Trotsky launched the
Platform of the Opposition, based on a defence of the Leninist principles of
workers' democracy and proletarian internationalism. He began a struggle
against bureaucratic tendencies in the state and Party. This was the beginning
of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and internationally. The struggle
between the Left Opposition and the Stalin faction was at bottom a class
struggle, which reflected the contradictory interests between the working class
and the rising bureaucracy.”
This week we publish in 3 parts a history of British Trotskyism by Martin
Upham. This was a PhD thesis on the subject, and while we would not
agree with all the points raised in it, we believe it deserves a wider
audience, particularly for those interested in the history of our
movement. For a more in-depth study of the subject readers are urged to
consult Ted Grant's book on the the 
Last month was the 68th anniversary of the brutal assassination of Leon
Trotsky by a Stalinist agent. We commemorate this event by publishing
the transcription of his address to the N.Y. Hippodrome Meeting. The
speech "I Stake My Life!" was delivered by telephone from Mexico City
for the opening event of the Dewey Commission on the Moscow Trials.
This year is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth
International. The International was established by Leon Trotsky and
his supporters in September 1938. As part of the commemoration of this
event Rob Sewell
draws out some of the key lessons and methods on which the Trotskyist
movement was built during
the 1930s. He also explains that while the Fourth International no
longer exists in an
organisational form, it continues for Marxists today in our theory,
programme, method and approach.
Tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of the murder
of Trotsky's eldest son - Leon Sedov -by agents of the Stalinist secret police,
the GPU. He was thirty-two years of age. This crime constituted part of the
systematic hounding and murder of Trotsky's key supporters and family, whose
only ‘crime' was to defend genuine Marxism against Stalin and the crimes of the
Russian bureaucracy.
Today is the 67th anniversary of the death of Leon Trotsky. Together
with Lenin, Trotsky was one of the great Marxist theoreticians of the
20th century, who dedicated his life to the emancipation of the working
class. Not only did he work for the overthrow of capitalism, but also
for the overthrow of Stalinism, a monstrous totalitarian regime which
held the Russian working class in submission. As a consequence, Stalin
sought during the Purge Trials to murder the entire leadership of the
Bolshevik party, and ordered the assassination of Leon Trotsky. After
the failed attempt in May 1940, Stalins assassin eventually succeeded
in murdering Trotsky on the 20th of August in Mexico city. Today we
publish Natalya Sedov Trotskys original account of the assasination.
