Stop WRP bid to gag labour movement press

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Healy (foreground) with Corin and Vanessa Redgrave Socialist Press readers will know that last week's issue was reduced in size to eight pages. They may also have deduced from the page numbers and the lack of explanation that this was a last minute change.

But what they will probably not know is that the disruption of our newspaper was the outcome of a particularly nasty exercise in censorship and intimidation carried out by the Workers Revolutionary Party led by Gerry Healy.

Acting in her capacity as d Central Committee member of the WRP, actress Vanessa Redgrave recently issued a writ for libel against both Morning Litho Printers Ltd and Sean Matgarhna of Socialist Organiser. The writ alleged libel in respect of an article in Socialist Organiser 33 entitled "Gaddafi's Foreign Legion to Knight's Rescue"

Contesting

Sean Matgamna is contesting the libel suit, and defending his article.

But Morning Litho Printers, who became involved solely through their commercial relationship with Socialist Organiser promptly published an apology to the WRP in Socialist Organiser 37.

This was not enough for the WRP. Not content with threatening court action against SO, they were determined to prevent that paper from being published at all.

Redgrave therefore issued a further writ against both Morning Litho and SO for the text of an • appeal for funds to defend the case.

Circular And she has issued a further writ against SO supporter John Bloxam for the text of a circular to SO supporters' groups seeking cash to fight the original libel suit.

Morning Litho were also until this week the printers of Socialist Press.

But according to Morning Litho Printers, Redgrave's lawyers told their representatives that further writs would be issued in respect of each and every reference to the WRP in any paper printed by them.

This threat proved to be effective. And last week Morning Litho refused to print a page of Socialist Press (this week's page 9), necessitating the last-minute deletion of two pages out of ten.

Wealth

This monstrous abuse Redgrave's wealth in attempt to silence labour movement critics through the threat of action in the capitalist courts presented us with a problem.

As a matter of principle we could not remain silent about the WRP's outrageous actions in recent months.

Yet if we remained with Morning Litho, Healy was now free to denounce us each day as "scabs" and "police agents" in Newsline while legally blocking our right to reply.

In this situation we have had no choice but to change printers. We are grateful to East End Litho for agreeing to print our paper at short notice.

The new arrangements make possible a return to our old 12-page format-and an increase in coverage. This will enable us to play our part in exposing the WRP's attempts to suppress rival left wing papers and gag its critics.

Certainly the recent actions of the WRP appear most sinister. In taking Sean Matgamna to court the WRi can hope to gain nothing: but it is certain that such a legal confrontation would offer the mass media a new chance to discredit left wing politics in general and Trotskyism in particular.

Sean Matgamna has quite rightly said that he has no wish to go into the courts on the issue; but if dragged into court by the WRP he will have no choice but to defend his article.

The only victors from such a case would be the enemies of the working class.

As an alternative, Matgamna has proposed to the WRP that a labour movement inquiry investigate the charges he has raised and the WRP's claims to the contrary. We have no doubt that Healy will reject such a proposal.

Why is it that the WRt, which refuses to take legal action against the Daily Telegraph for its witch-hunting articles, insists on taking labour movement opponents into the bosses' The answer lies in the complete departure by the WRP from any vestiges of principle.

• Sabotage Its activities particularly since the beginning of 1981 bear all the hallmarks not of political campaign work but of systematic sabotage against the revolutionary left in Britain.

After years in which the WRP had followed a deeply sectarian path far from the mainstream labour movement the Healy leadership decided to take part in the two Lambeth cuts conferences.

But they dia so on the basis of a major political lurch to the right, involving support for swingeing rate and rent increases, support for the sale of council houses, support for popular-frontist "community councils" , and opposing confrontation with the Tory On these issues the WRP was correctly and soundly defeated, particularly at the January Lambeth conference.

In Leicester, WRP delegates to the Trades Council have formed a bloc with Tories and the right wing to push through the abolition of the sub-committees which had led local struggles against the cuts, to defeat a resolution censuring the Trades Council officers for seeking to obtain a state ban on a New National Front demonstration, and to secure the election of a WRP supporter as Trades Council Secretary.

And outside the BL car factories in Cowley the WRP recently distributed a lavish two-colour leaflet with no other purpose than to brand Alan Thornett as a "scab" and a police agent -to the delight of management and the right wing.

The WRP are inordinately fond of branding their opponents as "provocateurs" and "agents" • Their most grandiose campaign along these lines has been aimed at the entire leadership of the American SWP: and by tortuous lines of specious "logic" the net has been widened to include Tariq Ali of the IMG and Socialist Press editor John Lister.

Censorship

We ask the workers' movement and the revolutionary left to make their assessment: which party is now clearly bent on disrupting, discrediting, censoring and bankrupting their political opponents? What party is now playing exactly