Alan Thornett is dead

Chris just let me know that Alan Thornett has died. International Viewpoint has a long obituary here. I doubt The Graun will carry an obit, and The Times certainly won’t. I got to know members of the Oxford branch of what was then the Socialist Group (a successor of the Worker’s Socialist League, via a fusion with, and then a split from, the International-Communist League), through the Oxford Miner’s Support Group, of which they were the backbone, in the wake of strike’s defeat in 1985. I saw Perry Cullen and Ted Heslin several times a week for the whole of that autumn, and spent less, but quite a lot of, time with Alan; and kept up with them for several years after leaving for the US. Autumn 1985 was when the Workers Revolutionary Party started to fragment, after Gerry Healy’s history of sexually assaulting comrades came to light. (For what it is worth, the SG comrades knew nothing of this, though obviously had experienced serious abuse themselves including, in one case, kidnapping,…