The Communist Workers' Group
CWG originated as the New Zealand Spartacist League (NZSL) in 1970 under the influence of the Spartacist League -US (SL-US) "Declaration of Priniciples". The NZSL split in 1972 in a dispute between Owen Gager and Bill Logan and Adaire Hannah essentially over joining the SL-US. Gager argued that the SL-US had not broken completely with the SWP-US, nor did he think that the SL-US represented any programmatic continuity with Trotsky. The theoretical basis for this position is argued in "James P Cannonism" which can be found at this site in the CWG Archive.
Gager went on to form the Communist Left of Australia (CLA) in 1974 while Logan and Hannah set up a Spartacist group also in Australia. In 1981 Dave Bedggood then a member of the British RCP formed the Communist Left in NZ in solidarity with CLA. The CLA split over a tactical difference with Gager in the mid 1980�s. Gager left and moved towards anarcho-communism. CLNZ had fusion talks with the Bolshevik Tendency (now IBT) in the late 1980�s and with Workers Power (LRCI) in the early 1990�s. CLNZ fused with the LRCI in 1992 as its NZ section, Workers Power (NZ) and ceased fraternal relations with CLA.
Some members of WPNZ had differences within the LRCI�s over its movement away from Trotskyism in forming a united front with Yeltsin in August 1991, and its characterisation of the first period of the overthrow of the bureaucracy as a �political revolution�. The catalyst for the split was the LRCI�s refusal to defend Serbia from the NATO bombs of 1995. Half of WPNZ left to form the CWGNZ, along with the Bolivian and Peruvian sections of the LRCI who were either suspended or expelled.
These comrades formed the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI) in late 1995. The main documents of this split can be located under LCMRCI Archive. See Declaration of the Proletarian Faction. Essentially, these fusions and splits were attempts to apply the original position of the NZSL and CLNZ on the defense of dialectics against post-war degenerate trotskyism. Today the CWG fights inside the LCMRCI and in discussions with other tendencies for a 5th International understood to mean the return to the pre-war method and programme of the 4th International.