Healy's unholy alliance in

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New 'Fourth International' hit back at critics With the worst recession and most reactionary government in living memory, not to mention the revival of racist/fascist violence on a lethal scale, it is perhaps heartwarming that sections of the British left-in true 'Life of Brian' style-retains energy and enthusiasm for fighting the real enemy: other parts of the Left, that Nowhere is this more the case, I fear, than Lambeth Trades Union Council, currently embroiled in an almighty row about whether it should defend the democratic rights and status of its own duly elected officers.

The background for this sorry tale is the February 4 Lambeth Day of Action, actively backed by the local NUT branch (Lambeth Teachers Association).

Rule 8

Under the NUT's draconian Rule 8 against unofficial strikes-one that would do credit to the Stalinist unions' in Eastern Europethe officers of the branch have been suspended from office for a two-year minimum.

Ironically, their employers, the ILEA, have made no threats of victimisation and in fact several Labour members have expressed April 13, Dear Comrade, Comrade Ernie Stubbins constructively proposed (in Socialist Press, 25 March) that the Theses discussed at the World Conference of the Fourth International (International Committee) should be studied. This proposal must not fall on deaf ears.

These Theses can help áll revolutionary Marxists to face the tasks which we share here and now in Britain-such as the following:

How can we best relate to developments in the Labour Parties, without falling into opportunism or sectarianism? The cadre of the Socialist Labour Group and of the League for a Workers' Republic, who contributed to drafting the Theses, contain comrades with decades of such experience.

Responsibilities

How can we help workers to exploit the openings for agitation round the marches which the reformist bureaucrats have had to permit?

How. can we best lead British Labour to fulfill its international responsibilities to the Polish working class?

How shall we best mobilise material aid to those who are actually doing the fighting to bring down the Junta in El Salvador?

There are some obstacles, which Comrade Stubbins fears may obstruct this necessary discussion, and 1 must do my best to remove support. Two of the suspended ones are Lambeth Trades Union Council (LTUC) officers: our President, Vanessa Wiseman, and an EC member, Hilary Tarr.

Given the circumstances that these sisters fully retained the backing of their them.

The Fourth International (International Committee) has never laid down any particular interpretation of the history of the Fourth International as a "pre-condition" for discussions.

It has never claimed to 'be" the reconstructed Fourth International.

Proper account

It has never claimed that the Bolshevik Fraction, the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency or the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International have been, are or will be the "only" currents to fight revisionism.

As to Lora, the Bulletin Group, one of the components of the Socialist Labour Group, gave some two years ago a proper account of its position. The Bulletin Group published, in English, the documents which "Politica Obrera" accused the OCI leadership of being agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and the replies of the OCRFI.

It is the misfortune of Comrade Stubbins and other comrades of the WSL that, when comrades of the Bulletin Group offered to sell them this material, the most vehement opposition and denunciation came from members of the WSL who were later to go off to the Spartacist sect, who had made their minds up after having listened only to "Politica Obrera"

Wiseman own branch members, who had no wish to elect replacement delegates, it might have seemed logical simply to co-opt them as honorary members and allow them thus to carry on their work for us.

This was indeed proposed, but the idea met Copies of the documents are still available in English, and they are politically of great interest.

No one "expelled" Lora from the OCRFI. No one ever tried to expel him. Quite the contrary.

Lora walked out of our conference, with almost everyone else present appealing to him to stay to discuss through to the end the political implications of the position of • "Politica Obrera"

Anyone who says today that the OCRFI "expelled" Lora is either mis-intormea or consciously lying in order to obstruct the discussion of our work today. The record exists on tape and can be checked.

Is it really not time that critics of the International with staunch opposition from the unlikely (?) source of delegates supporting the WRP Workers Revolutionary Party).

These case-hardened sectarians previously ran the old Lambeth Trades Council, a laughing stock with no credibility in the area, till its long overdue winding-up by the TUC in 1975.

For a couple of years after this their apparatchiks continued to come along in the hope of driving away everybody else with their negative and hysterical vituperation against the unbelievers in the true Healyite word.

Re-affiliated

Recently, however, their presence had diminished almost to nil. That was until the weekend prior to the latest LTUC AGM, when half-a-dozen branches not heard of for several years suddenly re-affiliated themselves-and nominated three prominent WRP-ites for the EC.

Were it not that I have no wish to make myself the target for a libel writ, I might suggest that this bore all the hallmarks of a wellplanned coup-designed to maximise WRP impact at the AGM without forewarning their opponents.

Lora Committee begin to listen to what it has to say for itself!

Criticised Comrade Stubbins criticised the method of Comrade Moreno's interventions, interpreting what he said, in effect, as "History is Bunk". • Moreno can, of course, speak for himself. But the tape of his closing remarks recorded these words.

«We are not averse to discussion on historical questions, but within the overall framework that the important discussion today is on the present situation, on the Theses. We want, in any case, when this historical discussion takes place to fully intervene in it.

They succeeded at any rate, in getting their three comrades elected to the EC (for no better reason than the lack of alternative candidates).

Representatives

Formally, of course, Trades Council delegates are supposed to speak and vote as representatives of branch policy-not of the political organisations they may happen to be members of.

After all, what possible value do decisions have unless they reflect what affiliated branches are prepared to do?

It is unfortunate that the likes of the WRP in Lambeth use their influence not to promote any kind of fraternal debate or collaboration among trade union activists in the area but to create a polarised situation where everything but their fetish of the moment (e.g. Community Councils) is roundly denounced as some kind of reactionary diversion.

No doubt this reflects the views of the serried ranks of USDAW members in South London, whom they ostensibly represent.

The specious arguments put forward by WRPers for excluding Wiseman and Tarr from LTUC were 1) we should not challenge the internal procedures of the Moreno's explanation of the difference between scientific politics and historical scholasticism will repay further study, and for that reason the Socialist Labour Group is publishing the transcript of the speeches of February 28, which will enrich the discussions about what we have to do now.

The Parity Committee worked to produce the Theses over a period of a year. They review the whole experience of the struggle for the Fourth International since 1938. The tape of the opening contribution on 28 February on behalf of the WSL certainly does present a problem. of method: it records these words:

"I was handed the Theses of the World Conference as I came in the door. I have therefore not had much of an opportunity to study them in detail. I remain fairly convinced that a number of questions remain unresolved...

The Theses have now, however, been in that speaker's hands for over a month. When may we expect to hear more precisely what questions this comrade is "fairly convinced" are "unresolved"?

Comrade Stubbins appealed for "an end to sharp practice". I am reminded of a Russian proverb, well known to Trotskyists in old days, that one "should NUT, which could only be altered from inside; 2) the TUC would clamp down on us Un 1) we had a strong implication that the monolithic and centralised NUT regime would be fine so long as the WRP controlled itit's similar to EETPU where Chapple decides who a local branch can delegate to what.

On 2) it's hard to imagine the TUC coming down like a ton of bricks on us for supporting , sisters who were merely going along with LTUC and TUC policy (on not speak of ropes in the house of the hanged" -while I remain convinced that no real obstacle exists to the full discussion of our current tasks between the Socialist Labour Group and the WSL.

Yours fraternally, Alan Bridges It is interesting to learn from comrade Bridges that our comrade's contribution at the rally was taped without his knowledge.

A full critique of the FI (IC)'s World Congress Theses is being prepared and will appear shortly in Socialist Press. The Theses took a year to write: it is only fair to give us a few weeks to reply!

EDITOR Reconstruct the fourtia lat No. 1 Nov. 1979 DISCUSSION BULLETIN 60₽ The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle The founding programmatic document of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee.

Available, price 80p

including postage, from WSL, BM Box 5277, condon WCIN 3XX Healy which the NUT honchos are thoroughly out of order).

The joker in the pack, that brought the WRP within an ace of deposing our respected President at the April meeting was the support of most Communist Party members for their stance: an unholy alliance to beat all, given Healy's apologies for the execution of Communist Parathismegime in trag- the This was mainly pushed for by long-time CP stalwart, "Tambling Sid Easton, clearly one of those who has not yet adjusted to the 20th CPSU Congress and thinks the Moscow Trials were probably too lenient.

Bro. Easton enlivened the meeting by an outstanding display of boorishness and general contempt for the democracy of ne move nent, standing up and bawlhe arrived to he alived ino find Vanessa still in the chair, unready to be browbeaten.

Bossed around by a slij of a girl, worse still a Trot! Easton gave us all a break by storming out, threatening to so in to have us sorted.

out.

After a debate of well over an hour, it was agreed by 3 or 4 votes out of a meeting of 50 to co-opt Wiseman and Tarr as life members (a practice followed elsewhere for CP members).

High jinks will continue, to be sure.

The WRP's objectives on LTUC seem to be twofold: a) to win it to Lambeth Council's previous No cuts, high rates' policy-which Knight et al have since unfortunately abandoned, leaving them apologising for the £11 million cuts package; b) to use it as a launch-pad for a model Community Council: a policy now embraced by the CP too it appears.

Of course, were it genuinely possible to construct a broad anti-Tory alliance involving non-Labour Movement forces such as black groups, tenants associations, shopkeepers, and religious groupings, that might be a handy idea:

In practice, though, one suspects a rump like the early 70s WRP 'Councils of Action' making a lot of noise but. representing no one much bar themselves.

Fraternally Martin Cook, Treasurer, LTUC, personal capacity)

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Tha Canoreca nronases d papara ate to recall that the history of May Day as the international day of the working class is closely bound up with the fight for the shorter working day.

This fight first gathered momentum in the USA at the beginning of the nineteenth century-almost from the outset of the factory system in the USA.

The American working day-shaped in part by the brutal exploitation of negro slave labour-had tradition. ally been defined as from "sunrise to sunset"-giving a day as long as fourteen, sixteen and even eighteen hours of labour.

From the 1820s-1830s strikes of workers demanding a reduction of the working day to ten hours became increasingly common.

A major strike in 1827 of building trade workers in Philadelphia demanding the ten-hour day led to the formation of the Mechanics' Union of Philadelphia-regar. ded by many as the world's first trade union.

Bakers' strike

In 1834 bakers walked out on strike in New York in protest against a working day of 18-20 hours in duration.

Towards the end of the 1830s the movement for the ten-hour day had grown sufficiently to pressure President Van Buren into decreeing a ten hour day for all workers employed on government work.

This spurred on the fight in other industries. And amidst this agitation came the new demand for the 8hour day.

The 8 hour day struggle spread not only within the LSA. but was taken up and actualiy won by the Austral:- "sitin- tata darkers in In the USA delegates from 60 trade unions met in Baltimore in 1866 to form the National Labour Union. At the head of this union was William H. Sylvis, who was in touch with the leaders of the First International in London.

Sylvis persuaded the NLU to establish links with the First International. And it also adopted a resolution pledging itself to struggle for the legal restriction of the working day to 8 hours throughout the USA.

actior The 1866 convention. also voted for independent political action and to seek the "election of men pledged to sustain and represent the interests of the individual classes."

From the initiative of the NLU came a proliteration of "Eight hour leagues". . Their agitation secured the 8-hour day for public service workers from several state governments, and a similar law passed by Congress in 1868.

But the tragic and premature death of Sylvis contributed to the crisis and decline of the NLU. Future struggles in the USA would be led by other formations.

The struggle for shorter hours was possibly more advanced in the USA-but was far from a national phenomenon. Elsewhere, in the world, particularly in Europe, similar struggles were developing.

Legal limit

In 1866 the Geneva Congress of the First International voted for a resolution which declared that:

"The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive . . .

workers the working day Engels, hours as the legal limit of Marx and the leaders of the First International,, had indeed been impressed by the movement in the USA.

In the first volume of Capital, published in 1867, Marx calls attention to the 8 hour day demand adopted by the NLU.

"In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was an agitation for the 8-hour day -a movement which ran with the seven league boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to Californa.

"For "protection"

agonies" agains he labourers must put their heads together and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death.

In place of the pompous catalogue of the "inalienable rights of man" comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working day, which shall make clear "when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins."

(Capital, Vol. 1 pp284-6)

The First International made it clear that its own adoption of the 8-hour day demand was a move to extend "the general demand of the workers of the NorthAmerican United States?" into "the general platform of the workers of the whole world."

But the International itself soon ran into crisis, and was effectively, dis Day 1890. ters were moved from London to New York in 1872.

Not until 1884 were there significant further moves towards the international struggle for the shorter working day.

Chicago

In Chicago the fourth conference of the Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Unions of the United States and Canada (later renamed the American Federation of Labour) voted for a resolution declaring the objective that:

"Eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labour from May First 1886, and that we recommend to labour organisations throughout their jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named."

This ambitious resolution was carried by an organisation representing not more than 50,000 members in 1884. It therefore directed towards a campaign to mobilise . unorganised workers in the workplaces in the fight for the 8 hour day.

The reference to organis ations "directing their laws" to conform to the resolution relates to the question of preparing to pay strike benefit to workers in dispute from May 1 1886.

In taking such a decision the Federation was reflecting the greater militancy and class consciousness that had emerged in the US working class in the wake of the mass strikes of steel and railroad workers in 1877. The strikes had been defeated by state violence, but formed the first ever national-level struggles by US workers.

Now the Federation began in earnest to prepare for action on May 1 1886, calling on its rival organisation the Knights of labour support the stoppage.

There followed a period of rapid growth of the US labour organisations with the Knights of Labour reaching 700,000 members.

Yet the Knight's leadership was at work behind the scenes attempting • to sabotage the strike, advising members not to take part. This antagonised the militant rank and file and increased the prestige of the Federation.

The sabotage by the Knights' leadership failed to prevent over 500,000 workers taking part in strike action in 1886 in pursuit of the 8 hour day. At their centre were the workers of Chicago, with further stoppages in New York, Baltimore, Washington, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

In Chicago an 8-hour Association had been formed to prepare the strike, composed of leit wing labour unions including those affiliated to the Federation, the Knights and the socialist Brute force A demonstration on the Sunday before May 1 was attended by no less than 25,000 workers.

But the strike was met by the brute force of the employers and the state.

Police on May 3 attacked a meeting of strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works, killing six and wounding many others.

On May 4 came a huge protest demonstration in Haymarket Square. But just as the peaceful rally was about to disband, it too was attacked by police. • A bomb was thrown into the crowd, killing a police sergeant. In the ensuing battle seven policemen and four civilians were killed.

Four militants were framed and hanged for the affair-and other Chicago union leaders jailed.

Marx Taking the signal from the Chicago bosses, employers throughout the country cracked down on the strikers.

Stoppage

But two years later the now none ten of Label red to mobilise again behind the 8-hour day demand. A further national stoppage was called for May 1, 1890.

Conservative US union leaders who had attempted to restrict the strike action in the USA surprisingly approached the Congress of the Second International on July 14 1889 proposing that the US stoppage should become an international day of action.

The Paris Congress adopted the following resolution:

"The Congress decides to organise a great international demonstration, so that in all countries and all cities on one appointed day the toiling masses shall demand of the state authorities the as the carrying out of other decisions the Paris Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1, 1890 by the American Federation of Labour at its convention in St. Louis December 1888, this day is accepted for the international demonstration. The workers of the various countries must organise this demonstration according to conditions prevailing in each country."

This final proviso in the resolution was a concession to the reformist elements, particularly in the British delegation to the International, who had no real intention of being bound by international discipline, and were gradually to gain the upper hand in the Second Red Guards in Petrograd International, until the point of their combined betrayal of the international working class by their collaborátion with their "own" capitalist classes in the First World WaMay Day 18,90 was widely celebrated in Europe -bringing clashes between workers and police in Germany, and demonstrations in many other capitals. In New York and Chicago major demonstrations were held.

The 1891 Congress of the Second International under lined the 8-hour day demanc as central to May Day, but added calls for other improvements to working conditions and for peact among nations. The Congres:

Horrors of the First imp International betrayed "

ments.

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Lenin at First Congress Third International Lu 1017. hu 1018 Mar Dav was a holidav in the first workers'state Members of the Left Opposition 1927 World War - in which the parties of the Second class by supporting their "own" capitalist governstressed the importance of the "class character of the May First demonstrations" which were seen as a way of "deepening the class No doubt recognising this aspect of the demonstrations the British labour movement leaders persisted in abstaining from strike action, and (together with the German Social Democrats) voted to postpone ineir May Day 11. п--. demonstration until the first Sunday after May 1.

But while the reformists attempted to turn May Day into simply a day of rest and recreation militant workers and the most principled sections of their leadership responded to the opportunity to demonstrate the strength and independence of the Thursday 30 April 1981 TTWU *547 international working class.

Lenin in 1896 wrote from prison a May Day leaflet for the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class, one of the early Russian Marxist circles.

2,000 copies were distributed to workers at 40 factories. A month later a wave of textile strikes broke out, with some workers renortedlv citing the workers reporcuy cring wie May Day leaflet as a stimulus to action.

Lenin saw May Day as a focus for "the irrepressible struggle for the political liberation of the Russian people" , and for "the class development of the proletariat and its open struggle for socialism."

New slogans were added to the 8-hour day demand as international themes of May Day demonstrationsincluding "International Working Class Solidarity"; "Universal Suffrage"; «War Against War"; "Against Colonial Oppression"; and 'Free Political Prisoners"

In Russia it was the mass demonstrations by Russian workers on May Day of 1912-in the aftermath of the massacre of strikers in the Lena goldfields-which 741 т indicated for Lenin that there was a renewed upsurge in the working masses, recovering from the repression that had followed the failed Like Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg responded to May Day from the standpoint of independent, international expressions of the strength or ine working class. - CALa ... lann But the Second international after 1907 issued no further directions in relation to May Day. Its parties miserably betrayed the working class on the outbreak of the imperialist world war in August 1914.

And on May Day 1915, Social Democrats Germany, France and elsewhere came out against strike action, arguing that workers should stay at work to defend "their" country.

Only the Bolsheviks in Russia and principled minorities within other social democratic parties held the line for internationalism in the face of the jingoism and war hysteria of the bourgeoisie.

Internationalists

At Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916) conferences of revolutionary internationalists and other antiwar elements were held. and Lenin struggled under the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war against capitalist rule.

In Germany. under thi leadership of Karl Liebknecht, a huge May Day demonstration was staged in Berlin at the height of the war in 1916.

And in the USA the Socialist Party defied the American declaration of war in 1917 to organise an antiwar May Day protest-with a march some 20,000 strong in Cleveland that braved a vicious assault by police in which one worker was killed.

But it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks who most decisively and dramatically put the politics of revolutionary internationalism into practice in the tumultuous events of 1917.

The overthrow of Tsarism and the establishment of a bourgeois coalition Provisional Government in February of that year was followed by rising agitation from the Bolsheviks after Lenin' s return to Kussia In April.

Seize power Against those "Old Bolsheviks"-(like Stalin) who wished simply to seek reforms from the new capitalist government, Lenin argued for the necessity to press home the struggle for the seizure of power by the working class.

May Day 1917 was to be the last May Day celebrated by the Russian working class under capitalist rule and formed a rallying point in the development of the strength of the Bolsheviks prior to the triumphant insurrection in October that smashed the capitalist state power and established the world's first workers' state.

The victorious Bolshevik government made May Day an official holiday: and, learning the lessons of the political collapse of the Second International, it took immediate steps. even in the midst of demanding struggle against invading imperialist forces, to establish a new, revolutionary Third International.

The Third (Communist) International-OI Comintern' was formed in 1919. Its platform was in explicit contrast to the reformist, collaborationist politics that had disfigured and crippled the Second International.

The 1918 May Day declaration of the new Bolshevik government in Russia had underlined the failure of the Second International to form an "organisation of international proletarian action with one centre and with one international political orientation' It pointed out that:

"The Second International was merely a weak union of workers' parties which were independent of each other in their activity."

The Bolshevik leaders explain the reason for this weakness:

"Under the influence of the party bosses made up of intellectuals and the labour bureaucracy, the socialist parties . • concentrated their attention on very useful parliamentary activity which was in its essence national and not international or of a class character. The organisations of workers looked on their activity not as a means of class struggle but as an end in itself."

Calling for the formation of a new International the declaration goes on to stress that:

•The lessons of the past and the demands of the present epoch powerfully dictate to socialists from all countries: 1) a radical change in their policy, 2) putting forward appropriate slogans for May Day.

In the first instance the Trotsky following steps are necessary: 1) concentrate efforts on the formation of the Third Revolutionary International; 2) subordinate the interests of each country to the general interests of the international proletarian movement, and subordinate parliamentary activity to the interests of the struggle of the proletarian masses.' (Trotsky: First Five Years of the Comintern', Vol 1, pp21-22).

The rise of a parasitic bureaucracy headed by Joseph Stalin within the isolated Soviet workers' state and the bureaucracy's growing conservative grip on the apparatus of the Comintern was to lead to both the Soviet CP and the Communist Parties internationally abandoning the final points of this proposal.

Stalin's "theory" of building "socialism in one country" was a rationalisation of his own national chauvinist position, and a repudiation of Lenin and Trotsky's internationalist stance of fighting to further world revolution even if necessary at the expense of revolution in your "own" country.

'Peaceful coexistence' And Stalin's search for forms of "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism was to lead him to direct the Communist Parties-particularly after 1934-into increasingly parliamentarist forms of politics-to the extent today where mass CPs in Italy, Spain and France as well as other smaller CPs openly repudiated the Leninist call. for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and pursue a brazenly reformist political course.

This bureaucratisation within the USSR and political degeneration of the Comintern were both fought at each stage by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition and later by the forces of the International Left Opposition.

It is on the basis of their struggle to hold high the banner of proletarian internationalism against the betrayals of the reformist Second International and against the Stalinists who took over and eventually dissolved the Third International that the Workers Socialist League bases its programme and perspective today.

Heritage In the fight to reconstruct the Trotskyist Fourth International as the world party of socialist revolution the WSL struggles alongside our comrades in the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee. We stand by the revolutionary heritage of Marx, Engels. Lenin and Trotsky, the first four congresses of the Communist International, and the founding documents of the Fourth International of 1938.

From this standpoint we extend our May Day greetings to the millions of workers and peasants in struggle against imperialism and against Stalinist repression on a world scale-and look forward to the building of mass revolutionary parties in every country of the world to carry through the struggle for proletarian power and a world federation of socialist states which alone offers a future of peace and prosperity to the vast majority of the human race.

By John Lister

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SOCIALIST PRESS. Thursday April 1981 HELEN FLACI . of Leicester

----- pull-quotes -----

In today's mass unem- ployment, it is appropri-

legal reduction of the work- ing day to eight hours as well

Estadir I LINGLIVE THE I INE toris mre