A will o’ the wisp

The writer cannot resist the temptation to bring to the notice of readers of the “S.S.” the following tit-bit taken from the Weekly People (New York) of May 31st, 1924.

The extract is from the National Executive Report to the 16th National Convntion of the Socialist Labour Party of America:

“The trouble experienced with the Workers’ International Industrial Union office definitely established the following facts :

1. That the W.I.I.U. is not even a propaganda league for Industrial Unionism. That it is a farce where it is not a tragedy, not merely because it is so very small, but above all because these members, or most of them, are already members of the S.L.P., and, accordingly, not even supplemental to the Party, as would naturally be the assumption of the uninitiated.
2. That in the present circumstances the existence of the W.I.I.U. at best is a useless and superfluous duplication of the S.L.P., serving no special function, adding nothing to the movement, either in membership or activity, serving instead as a drain on the financial resources of the Party membership and sympathisers.
3. That the W.I.I.U. has in the past been a source of friction and disturbances in the Party, having done much damage to the Party. And that it to-day is a positive menace to the Party, not merely because of the financial drain, but above all because the existence of the W.I.I.U, makes inevitable a division of loyalty (dual and potentially conflicting discipline) that would threaten the existence of an organisation many times stronger than the S.L.P.”

Is comment necessary?

E.B.

(Socialist Standard, July 1924)