JOHN THRONE ON THE CWI AND EXPULSION
Nov 19th, 2009 by Conor McCabe
In September 2009 I interviewed John Throne about his own history, as well as the Irish left and working class. We talked for about two hours and after I had stopped recording, I asked John would it be ok to ask him about his expulsion from the Committee for a Workers’ International. He said yes, it would be ok, and so I started taping again, and below is the recording.
I feel I should make clear that I initiated the conversation about the CWI and the expulsion, and I did so because I knew nothing about it and wanted to find out the background to it. In other words, John didn’t bring this up, I did.
The clip is about seventeen minutes long.
Your John Throne interviews have been fascinating, Conor. Thanks for sticking them online.
Yeah, agreed.
17 minutes of my life I won’t be getting back.
For the record:
The reason John Throne wasn’t allowed to address the Irish Militant after the members of our American sister party booted him out was fairly straightforward. John was trying to use his prestige and contacts in Ireland to get back into the American organisation through the back door and without the agreement of the members of that organisation. If we had allowed him to do that, our critics would quite correctly point to it as an almost perfect example of leaders of the organisations being immune to the democratic decisions of the rank and file.
When Dermot Connolly was jailed, his partner was contacted by a leading figure in the organisation to make sure everything was alright. He was also featured on the front page of a special edition of our paper. We were not in a position to run a prisoner support service at the time - for him or for the seven other party members who were jailed - because the whole organisation was engaged, from dawn till late at night, every day, in an all-out attempt to shut down the entire city refuse collection service. That involved hundreds and hundreds of public meetings, blockades, protests etc in an eight week period and all of the postering, door knocking and leafletting that were necessary behind the scenes. An effort which nearly ran the party into the ground.
There are plenty of other falsehoods to correct in his interview, but as I’ve been around the block with John on these issues on Indymedia and elsewhere on a number of occasions and realise that engaging with him only encourages him to produce more bile-filled smears, I won’t be commenting further.
Democratic centralism gone mad! John speaks a lot of sense. If there is ever any attempt at building a genuine united party of the working class in Ireland i hope John has a say in its structural make up.
Great interviews.
actually mark you haven’t been around the issues even once, let alone many times. Repeatedly, people on indymedia have asked you to state in very simple terms why this man was expelled from the US organization. You simply refuse to answer, and I have no doubt you will repeat this again. All you ever do is moan that there were lots of documents produced at the time and advise people who have an interest in the democratic traditions of your organization to go and read them. Good trick. But it doesn’t answer the question, and you could do so easily in a paragraph. Your refusal to do so, since it is evidently so boring for you, says a great deal to many people about how casually you treat both democracy and your obligation to account to non-members for your practice.
So to this post. Actually, CWI statues provide for expelled members to appeal to both your international conference and those of affiliated sections. Both were refused to John Throne. Again, why? You don’t wish to explain? That is your right. But you can hardly be surprised that critical conclusions are drawn about the internal environment of your organization
It is obvious that the issue transcends the fate of one man. At stake is really whether left organizations such as yours can tolerate debate, dissent, factions, openness. The record is not encouraging - which is why I gently suggest that growth into a mass force is a rather unlikely prospect.
I second D.Thomas.
The SP never state why they expelled and refused to let J.T back in. J.T is telling the truth, because he tells everything. The SP REFUSE to answer such a little, simple question. Until the issue is resolved, I will warn people to stay away from the SP. Mark, you answer the question(s), I’ll change my mind. Until then….