Today, the Spartacists defend what they see as the remaining deformed workers' states and have called for the defense of North Korea's right to nuclear arms as a necessary component keeping it free of U.S. military intervention. This is a continuation of their earlier positions on what they consider the deformed workers states of the Republic of Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the People's Republic of China. On these countries they continue to call for political revolution against the ruling communist parties while at the same time calling for the defense of these revolutions from imperialism and internal capitalist counter-revolution. The first Spartacist League, founded in 1966 with James Robertson as national chairman, developed in the United States from the Revolutionary Tendency that had emerged within the Socialist Workers Party. Among their criticisms of the SWP was its embrace of "Pabloism" and its decision to leave the International Committee of the Fourth International and join the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. After its expulsion from the SWP both the Spartacists and the American Committee for the Fourth International were considered affiliates of the ICFI. However, at the 1966 London Conference of the ICFI the positions of the Spartacists were condemned and the ACFI was recognized as the only American ICFI section. The American Spartacists remained isolated until Bill Logan formed another Spartacist League in New Zealand in the early 1970s. Logan later expanded the group to become the Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand. The two groups signed a "Declaration for the organizing of an International Trotskyist Tendency" in July 1974 which proclaimed the combined central committees an International Executive Committee and an International Secretariat as its executive arm. The iSt held its first international conference in England in the summer of 1979. Delegates attended from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France and Canada. There were also fraternal delegates from the Revolutionary Workers Party of Ceylon led by Edmund Samarakkody and the Lega trotskista d'Italia. They attempted to recruit both groups to their tendency, but only succeeded with the latter. A new International Executive Committee was also elected. By the 1985 conference of the iSt an "external tendency" had split from the iSt. This group had adherents in the US, Canada and Germany. Initially based in the San Francisco Bay area and Toronto the ET was to define itself as a public faction of the SL and sought to be readmitted to the ranks of the parent organization. Said efforts were rebuffed by the SL who have since waged a polemical war with the ET and its successor groups the BT and IBT.