The return of Maoist monday!
In 1981 The Workers Newsletter Group (as the former Working Peoples Party of England became in 1980) jointly published a pamphlet with the Coventry Workers Association-“The Labour Party: A Vehicle For Socialism?”
The text of this pamphlet is also online here.
The few references to the Coventry Workers Association which we can find are in relation to Jack Sprung, a Labour councillor in Coventry who left the Labour Party in 1968 (after 20 years as a member and 9 as a councillor) objecting to the junketing of fellow councillors.
He either joined or co-founded the Coventry Workers’ Association in 1968. An obituary in the Guardian covers some of his earlier life.
Sprung was a shop steward at what was then the Standard Triumph car factory, and active in the Woodcraft Folk. Much later he was prominent in the pensioner’s movement.
This article on the Poll Tax on the RS21 website also describes Jack’s role and, together with an obituary by Dave Spencer in the Commune, refers to the CWA as a breakaway from the Communist Party.
Presumably the CWA was larger than one or two people and may have had other publications of which we are unaware.
Splits and Fusions 