Lessons of Our

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The vast majority of the rank and file want to fight and change Wilson's policies, and they can do this whilst still retaining a Labour government in Parliament. Ther tary Labour Party allows left MPs the opportunity to present their opposition against the leadership of the present government. If this were done, then the rank and file would imriediately be rallied in a struggle to change the leadership and - policy of the Labour Party and replace it with people pledged The demand of the Socialist Labour League for making the left MPs fight Wilson for socialist policies is the only realistic policy to rally the mass movement for alternative leadership and expose those inside the Parliamentary Labour At the same time, if on a single issue the Labour government had fought Toryism, we would have giren it our critical!

support insofar as it did this. If the leit MPs now break from Wilson and challenge him in the Parliamedian Labu: Par they will also hare our critical suppert. We 2e isee De with taking the working class through all Lie aggerties sece sary in order io expose the bankup of me meg Labour leaders and the fake leit MPs thus prepare is ma From "Tbe Alternative to Wilson' bi G. Hes:. Ser:. 135As the need for new leadership in the working class is shown clearer every day, a crisis now grips the world Trotskyist movement.

This has split the opportunist bloc of the Unified Secretariat into warring factions, and it is reflected in the International Committee by the mass expulsions from its leading section, the British Workers Revolutionary Party, together with the complete disruption of its subsidiary sections in the USA and Australia. We must begin an objective study of the history of these tendencies and of the International, it any clarity is to be found on the way forward.

We therefore intend to examine in this and coming editions of Socialist Press some questions which can lead us nearer a grasp of the problems as they developed in the world Trotskyist movement. Initially we will examine the degeneration of the Workers Revolutionary Party, in order to approach some central questions of programme. We will go on in further articles to look more specifically at some of the theoretical problems which have divided and split the world movement.

The mass expulsions from the WRP in December 1974 marked the determination of the leadership of that party - at the centre of which is General Secretary G. Healy - to defend to the utmost the sectarian method which still continues to liquidate the WRP and all the gains it has made.

DOCUMENT

It is significant to note that the expulsions began only days after Comrade Thornett had been given authority by Healy at an aggregate meeting to produce a second opposition document. This was to deal with the historical, philosophical and class content of the degeneration of the WRP into sectarianism; show the starting point of the degeneration in a party which contained the core of Troisi!im: and examine in this c0m:es: ine international perspectis =::be International Commit=2:25 the prospect oi =.=: stosse-E heing FILETEDCE "hich prompted the expulsions in order to suppress the document until Comrade Thornett was out of the What, then, was Healy so afraid oi! Why, in a party which continually spoke of the importance of "principle" and "the record", could no discussion be permitted on the history of that party?

Clearly because the WRP membership had been given a version of that history slanted to project Healy and the leadership in the best possible light, even as infallible leaders who had always stood unreservedly on the right side in every issue.

If an objective study was begun (even if only by one comrade in opposition) it could lead to other members reading and assessing that material and detecting the inadequacies of the Healy leadership. This was begun in Thornett's Second Document which, though suppressed, was produced and distributed at the First Conference of the WRP.

But further work on the history of the WRP (which was founded in 1973 out of the old Socialist Labour League) has shown that Healy is deliberately concealing important past struggles of the movement in order to protect the WRP's present sectarian course.

Their current demand "Make the Labour Government Resign" is a clear example of this. As we showed in our last edition, such a demand turns away from the nec essary struggle to expose the fake left MPs to their supporters by pressing them to fight Wilson and the right wing under conditions where they refuse to lift a finger. Our slogan is "Make the 'lefts' fight Wilson". . It has a long history from the SLL.

The demand was central to campaigns run by the SLL, its Young Socialists organisation (after they has been witch hunted out of the Labour Party), and the League's weekly newspaper The Newsletter: This carried such banner headlines as:

"CHANGE WILSON POLICY"

(May 21st 1966)

"Left MPs Must Learn the Say NO to Wilson" (December 31st. 1966) and the correct, if rather uncritical, headline: "LEFTS MUST FIGHT-WILSON"

(April 22nd, 1967)

This policy had been carried forward from the SLL 1965 Manifesto which read: «Wilson and the betrayers must be removed and a socialist policy implemented. That policy must be bold and direct, and there must be no hesitation in relying on the workers themselves to enforce it along the following lines: ..." [How to Defeat the Tories for Good, September 11th, 1965] IMPACT The campaign on this orientation had a great impact in the unions and among the youth, and it was arougd bold and decisive initiatives including these slogans that the SLL won a considerable periphery of trade unionists in the mid and late 1960's.

Not only this, but the SLL correctly slammed into their opponents who refused to expøse the to fight for socialist policies.

ftin =-14.,00 Party who talk left but do nat want to fight.

for the building of revolutionary leadership lobbies ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 on working days. Their influence could be seen to extend to directly political campaigns when on May 1st 1970, as a direct result of SLL-YS initiative, Liverpool docks, together with numbers of building and engineering workers struck work in solidarity with the struggle of the workers and peasants in Indochina.

REVISIONISTS

None of the revisionists (particularly the IS and IMG) who have always so readily denounced the SLL as 'sectarian' have any comparable record of struggle. More often than not the SLL exposed Sand IMG opportunism in practice. The crime is that the WRP now chooses to obscure its own past for fear of exposing its present bankruptcy. The Workers Socialist League alone is able to assess these past achievements and draw strength from them.

It was not only on the question of demands on the 'lefts' and interventions in the unions that the old SLL had a more correct approach than the sectarian WRP.

It is conspicuous that the Healy leadership's struggle against Comrade Thornett's call for a return to the Transitional Programme centred very much on devaluing the transitional demands and, most important concealing their relation to the fight for workers' control of Not one leading WRP member in the discussion referred to the earlier programme put forward for a long period by the SLL, in which ada sarasition The constitution of the Parliamen1964 YS Conference, SLL support Indeed the very call for nationalisation is carefully prepared in the 1965 document. It moves from demands on wages to call for the ending of business secrets, and from this demand expands on the demand for : "workers supervision and control of business" .. The nationalised industries are exam ined first: "... on the railways, the liner train and other modernisation schemes musi be introduced under the control ol workers committees, which ensure the sharing of all work, no unemployment retraining on full pay.

These committees will represent al grades of railway workers and employee: who, in lact, understand and run the industry every day • • They wil immediately enquire into all relation between private industry, the banks and the nationalised industry".

Here, despite the inadequati formulation (not calling tor tradi union committees, and not stressin that they must emerge from below and not be imposed from abor by unions or management the SLL attempted to concretis the demand for workers conțrc and come to grips with the task o taking the management out of th han‹s of the bourgeois nominee who run state industry.

SUPERVISION

this is a fight to supervise tl existing management, in prepa ation for workers management at later stage.

Today's version of this pro ramme in the WRP is the gl phrase "workers control" attache to anything and everything. In tl October 1974 Manifesto, demands included:

•A SOCIALIST FUEL POLICY. Workr control and the planned expansion mining, electricity and gas. Nationali the fuel monopolies, North Sea Oil a gas. A SOCIALIST TRANSPORT POLIC forters coon of she railmays, aviatic i sis as i Dis service. Nation = = rations point !

=: ::: :: the struggle 1 .:: s industry: a ni = = * steiopment of res consciousness in = 00:30 Liæi ine connow cal nationalisation by the ORP generally separated I0m my to action in the working

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Thus the 1974 Manifesto: 66 •.. Nationalise the food monopolies and the supermarket chains without compensation under workers control... STOP UNEMPLOYMENT. Take basic industry and the banks into public ownership [ie. nationalise them!] withinvolvement or intervention in struggles of the working class.

The fight for the method of the Transitional Programme now undertaken by the Workers Socialist League, is for us the very TU

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The specific call for "workel supervision and control" shows thi