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….
Throne was expelled from the U.S. organization because while he was a hard-ass on democratic centralism, when it came to be applied to his acitivity then he thought he was above it. Throne and his few accolytes were voted down time after time on the national committee of the U.S. organization and Throne refused to abide by the results of those votes and so he was expelled. Among the votes he chose to ignore as a paid organizer of the organization: 1) to not intervene with an Anarchist grouping called D.A.N. . 2) to not attend the meetings of a second branch in Chicago. 3) to give back money he owed to the organization. There were other votes he ignored as well. He did none of these things despite tons of debating, voting, etc… . Throne made it so we had no choice but to expel him. He was a loose cannon with an ego the size of Jupiter. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
There has been a lot written on my expulion from the CWI. I will only add one thing here as this is the first time I have seen it written down in black and white. It was of course spread by word of mouth far and wide. This is that I refused to give back money I owed to the CWI. I have been in many struggles in the workers movement. I have been for years in ferocious struggles with the social democracy and trade union leadership, but never, never in all that time did any of these people accuse me of being dishonest where money is concerned. It took to CWI to stoop to this level of lies and slanders. This is a stalinist method. Tell any lie. spread any slander to try and win a political debate. This is the method of the CWI. Its internal life is corrupt. The rest of the lies I will leave alone.
Throne thinks he can simply assert his way out of the truth. I did not lie in my response. I would testify to it, I would have witnesses. Again, Throne would invoke, in a very Stalinist way, democratic centralism but when, miraculously, the votes no longer went his way, he thought he was too big for the results of votes that went against him. He fundamentally believed he was above the democratic decisions of the U.S. section and the CWI. These included that, as a paid organizer, he stop a useless intervention in an Anarchist coalition called DAN, that he re-orientate to Labor Party work, that he not attend the meetings of a second branch in Chicago (since he only went there to threaten and disrupt) and that he return funds he unilaterally used to improve his house (and which he then used the improvements to take on a renter to charge rent). Throne, you see, is an inveterate petit bourgeois. A fish out of water in the workers movement, ultimately. You can smell his type a mile away. He has to dominate, to be glorified, or else… . Well, surprise, the workers wouldn’t have it after a certain point. The movement didn’t revolve around Throne, surprise again! So, of course, it’s not his problems and his petit bourg. prejudices that he could at long last acknowledge and try to correct; it’s the method of democratic centralism that must go! Good thinking Sean-O.
very interesting stuff..knew bits of the story back in the day but this fills in a few gaps ..thanks for posting the interview