Wrp Puts

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The Workers Socialist League was founded on December 22nd, 1974.) It was formed after bureaucratic expulsions and the suppression of discuss-! ion within the Workers Revolutionary Party had made it impossible to carry forward within that party the fight for a return to the principles and method of Trotsky's Transitional Programme, the fundamental The main target of the WRP leadership was the comrades supporting! the positions put forward by Cde Alan Thornett, in defence of the Transitional Programme, in two WRP internal documents. These formed the starting point for the work of the WSL and our paper, Socialist Press. Since the WSL was founded, the WRP leadership has attempted just two responses in public to the political and theoretical questions we have posed Cliff Slaughter's "Thornett's Philosopher" (Workers Press, 8th April 1975), and Michael Banda's series "Whither Thornett" (Workers Press, May 5th20th, 1975). Both of these, and especially Banda's unreadably evasive series, are an attempt to justify after the event the conduct of the WRP leadership, and divert from the fundamental questions at issue in the split -| in the course of which the WRP lost its main working class base, and since which it continues to lose members to the Workers Socialist League.

We do not yet possess the space for a point-by-point reply to the innumerable red herrings and falsifications of which Banda's series mainly consists. We concentrate here, therefore, on some of the most central document of the Fourth International. theoretical questions.

The assortment of attacks made on the Workers Socialist League by the Workers Revolutionary Party can be divided into two categories: those which have the appearance of a defence of Marxism; and thos whose light-minded fraudulence declares itself on the surface. The two types have, however, a common political to a collection of misquoted snippets to be used as a factional weapon against opponents and to blind the members of the WRP with unintelligible 'science'.

Let us deal first with one of the numerous examples of selt-evident frivolity. Banda's turgid fourteenpart epic contains just one fragment of reply to our detailed and documented accusations on the WRP's falsification of the history of the Fourth International (in Cde Thornett's Second Document and The WRP School of Falsification). We pointed out that in his Introduction to Volume 1 of the WRP's Trotskyism versus Revisionism: a documentary History Cliff Slaughter simply inventsa leading role for the British section, headed by Gerry Healy, (now National Secrețary of the WRP) in the struggle against the revisionist grouping of Michel Pablo within the International in 1951-3. Far from attempting to refute the charge, Banda quotes our question:

...Why does Cliff Slaughter's commentary distort and invert the fight against revisionism and make it look as if the British sectio played a leading role, when in fact it produced not a political word! (emphasis added)".

And then Banda continues: "Leaving aside the lie contained in Thornett's assertion until later (much later - Banda's ten following instalments never return to it! what 1s most important is that he elevates the ignores, and deliberately so ene ignore actual fight in practice against all forms of revisionism for which the WRP, and before it the SLL, is so rightly hated in the discussion circles of our opponents. For Thornett the only real activity is theoretical activity divorced from the material and social life." (Workers Press, May 8th 1975, p9) LOGIC Such 'logic' has a charm all its own. Even to refer to what others have said (or not.said) brings the charge of 'idealist philosophy' from Banda. Perhaps he thinks that political struggles can be conducted without benefit of words? But no -he himself is the author of fourteen wordy instalments against us, studded with paragraphs beginning (quite accurately) 'Risking repetition....' and 'In other words...'. And

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1972 by the IC. Banda is certain on