WRP Perspectives dodge basic issues ARITHMETIC

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REDGRAVE, RYDER, & "Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied; "and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."

Tai Cour Stalin The Draft Resolution on Perspectives presented by the leadership of the Workers Second Annual Conference on August 28th is a breathtaking essay in political fraud and evasion.

Virtually every one of its eight pages contains slanderous accusations - with neither details nor evidence - on the political work of the Workers Socialist League.

But what it does not contain is any assessment of the politics and practice of the WRP since its first "annual" conference (in December 19741) before which the opposition which later went on to found the ₩St was illegally expelled.

Nothing short of a book could refute in detail the slanders, insinuations and simple falsehoods with which this resolution is crammed.

INVITATION But any member or supporter of the WRP who takes seriously the invitation of the leadership to 'read, study and discuss' and 'propose amendments' to the resolution is in duty bound to take up at least the following issues:

1. The resolution claims:

"Our (the WRP's) work in building up our trade union factions and our industrial papers, and also the 'All Trades Union Alliance' must centre on breaking the unions from the state and fighting for democracy within the unions."

Why then did WRP Central Committee member Tom White stand for election to the class-collaborationist Ryder 'participation' committee in the British . Leyland Cowley plant (and get elected, with the support of the right-wing and the capitalist press, to the accompaniment of a violent national press witch-hunt against the WL).

DEFENDED

Why did the WRP defend his position when he was elected as an alternate member? And what has he been doing on this committee?

One direct result of the Ryder committees has been the drive to closure and sackings at Export Packing Services (Banbury) through the withdrawal of British Leyland contracts - after this was agreed on the Cars Council, the supreme "participation' committee.

Three or four hundred workers face the sack at the hands of a scab management-run structure to which a WRP Central Committee member *as elected with the full agreement of The WRP.

Is this how the WRP fights for "democracy in the unions? Why does the resolution contain not a word on this disgraceful action?

(For full details see Socialist Press of Nov. 26th, Dee. I0th and 31st., 1975).

RULE

Why have WRP members in union branches and Trades is joined hanc s with . the 515 and nght-v ing in railroading through the notorious TUE 'Rule 14' for Trades Councils, which forbids them to collaborate with any organisations whose policies are 'contrary to those of the TUC'? (For details see Socialist Press of March 24th and April 21st, 1976).

This rule will be used with a vengeance the moment any section of workers appeals for trades council support in a wage struggle which threatens to break the TUC-government 4%2% pay cutting poucy.

Trades Councils will be forbidden by rule to support such workers in struggle. Rule 14 is part and parcel of the truncheon with which the TUC bureaucracy seek to bludgeon the basic organisations of the trades unions into accepting pay cuts and keeping the Callaghan-Healey leadership in office.

What is the meaning of the WRP's verbal campaign to 'Force the Labour government to resign' when they join hands with the policemen who protect it?

"NOT PRAGMATIC"

3. The resolution claims that: ...the changes we have made in our Press and party organisation are therefore not pragmatic adjustments to changed political circumstances, but the highest point of the practice of cognition."

Possibly. But certain questions -never touched on in the resolution - remain to be answered.

The Workers Press was founded in 1969 as the political paper of the then Socialist Labour League. It collapsed early this year because neither the necessary funds nor the circulation targets could be met.

At the December 1974 conference of the WRP a membership of over 8,000 was claimed. But in the Mock ification (Lewis campaign to keep Workers Press alive, the utterly bogus character of this claim was proved.

The WRP could raise, in three months, neither a fund of a few pounds a head, nor circulation by less than one copy per member (taking their own targets) if the membership claim of December 1974 bore any relation to reality.

What has happened to these "members"? Why did the vast majority of them neither contribute to party funds nor sell the paper?

Were they ever, themselves, more than slips of paper signed up without a shred of political agreement?

Why does the resolution contain Miss Redgrave CBE, on not a word on the material development of the WRP cadre in the last year?

4. The character of the News Line, successor to Workers Press, raises a whole number of questions. On the Middle East issue it has given totally uncritical support to nationalist leadership of the PLO and Yasser Arafat including their dangerous 'appeals to Egypt s Sadat and to Brezhnev to 'mediate' in the Syrian-right wing war on the Palestinian and Lebanese workers.

Similarly it has carried not breath of criticism - but a great deal of praise - for the anti-communist Gaddafi regime in Libya (a regime which is known to give money to fascist organisations).

DISCUSSIONS

Why is this? Is this flagrant opportunism connected with the claims of the WRP leadership in aggregate meetings that they are engaged in 'political discussions' with the PLO leadership?

Is this why recent statements from the International Committee (Lewis Carroll, 'Alice in Wonderland') (the international 'front of the WRP) have omitted all mention of the need for revolutionary socialist parties in the Middle East states?

5. News Line has revived - and extended - the slanderous campaign against Joseph Hansen and George Novack, leaders of the American Socialist Workers Party, as being 'accomplices' of the Stalinist GPU since before the murder of Trotsky by Stalin's agents in 1940:

CANNON But the slander does not stop there. News Line has even quoted a [5E % Here le WAR Banda before the arbitrary expulsions of 1974. Why is this?

And why, while it strains every muscle to gag political discussion within the Trotskyist movement, does the WRP leadership permit News Line to carry paid advertisements for a pamphlet by a genuine Stalinist agent, Mr. Monty Johnstone, the British Communist Party's main professional slanderer of Trotsky?

Johnstone's Trotsky and World Revolution carries a preface which is mainly devoted to a dishonest attack on the WRP.

And it explicitly revives the old Stalinist slander that the Trotskyists and their supporters in the Spanish Civil War were doing the work of the fascists!

Yet it gets a block advertisement in the classified adverts columns of the News Line!

LEADING LIGHT

8. One of the leading lights of the WRP Central Committee recently wheeled out to repeat the slanders against Hansen and Novack is Miss Vanessa Redgrave, (see her 'Open Letter' in News Line of July 17th).

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Revolutionary Party for 'dis- cussion' leading up to their

YOUNG WORKERS

& WHITE- UNITE& FIGHT! FORCE