The Premature Burial: A Reply to Martin Shaw

Abstract

Martin Shaw's 'unofficial' history of the International Socialists makes an important contribution to the debate that has been taking place, over the last few years, in the pages of The Socialist Register about the sort of organization that the British left needs. Shaw has written, firmly if not without melancholy, an obituary for the political tendency represented by the International Socialists and (since 1977) the Socialist Workers Party. By 1976, Shaw tells us, the organization was 'radically deformed'; its politics had become 'opportunistic, unrealistic and sectarian'; its 'degeneration' represented a 'squandering of the potential for a new socialist movement'; it had undergone 'catastrophic changes'.