Rally Against Healy Slanders

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On Friday 14th January an international platform of speakers, most of them once prominent in the leadership of the Fourth International will defend Joseph Hansen and George Novak, veteran members of the American Socialist Workers Party against che slanderous allegation of the International Committee of the Fourth International that they are "accomplices of the GPU"

The IC, led by Gerry Healy of the British Workers Revolutionary Party, claims that Hansen and Novak were "criminally negligent" • at the time of Trotsky's assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940.

They further allege that in an attempt to protect themselves Novak and Hansen have "covered up" •the role of the GPU in the Trotskyist movement.

We have made quite clear in several extensive articles in Socialist Press our opposition to the accusations made by the WRP and the fraudulent attempts of the IC to establish an international 'inquiry' into the "indictment"

But it is our opinion that no further practical purpose can be served by participating in a meeting where we would not be permitted to make a political assessment of either the IC or the USFI of which the SWP is the American sympathising section.

We feel that Healy's slander campaign is only a part of a much deeper-going crisis within the world Trotskyist movement as a whole and can only be understood as such.

In our view the answer to this is not to dash to relieve one symptom but to confront the disease of disorientation which flourishes not simply within the IC but within all the main groupings internationally calling themselves Trotksyist.

It is for this reason we have consistently called for an inter -tonational aiscussion on ine development of political crisis within the post-war Fourth International, particularly in relation to the various splits and divisions that have occurred in the movement.

Only on this basis can a principled footing be established for the reconstruction of the Fourth International and a clear struggle for democratic centralism against all forms of abuse, including slander and frame up.

This, of course, does not mean that we are opposed to joint meetings under any' circumstances. In the struggle against the class enemy joint meetings may well serve a useful purpose.

Indeed, only recently the WSL initiated a joint meeting with the IMG addressed by a representative defence of entitical STonesthe detence of of political prisoners in Argentina.

We regard such defence as an essential principle. But we regard January's rally as a source of more confusion than clarity. For this reason we will not take part.