Weekly Worker July 24th

This Weekly Worker (#731, July 24th) has Christ crucified on its cover, headline 'Church of England; enemy of socialism'. The cover story is three pages of polemic by Jack Conrad against Peter Manson for a tiny difference in the CPGB Draft Programme on religious rights. Good to see Jack Conrad geting another opportunity to write at great length about religion!

Otherwise Mike McNair, also writing about their programme in ''Socialism' or democratic republic'? continues to give the impressioin of much controversy about detailed points by a very small group of people. More interestingly Hillel Ticktin's talk to the Marxism 2008 fringe, 'Who are the Maxists' defends the Trotskists as the only Marxists after the rise of Stalin, and that doesn't just exclude Mao and Marcuse from Marxism, but Gramsci - on the grounds that he supported 'socialism in one country'. There is a polemic about the CPGB's own Stalinist roots.

Ben Lewis continues an analysis of the diplomatic maneouvreing around Iran and th return of a reformist platform in the National Peace Council and relates this to shifts in the British Iranian solidairty scene, with Casmii (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran) seeming to align themselves with these reform tendencies, and the somewhat obscure impact this has on the SWP via Campaign Iran.