No Lessons in Anti-slander Meeting

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PAPER OF THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE BITAIN itoes.

in LaDes While no political lessons ould have been learned by * 800 people from numerus groups and tendencies ho attended, a number of pecial awards should be tade to the cast which ppeared in the meeting landers" organised in ondon the IMG last by eek. i Some form of peace prize PRESS * • LI • 22 . 24 EST OF1 6 aques.. 12 issues. 24 isgues.. 1 would like to take out Press. I would like NAME.

ADDRESS SOCIALIST EUROPE 6 issues..

12 issues:

24 issues:

THE WORLD a subscription to • issues, I enclose : should be awarded to the representatives of the various diverse tendencies who sat on the same platform and diplomatically avoided any serious reference to their deep-going differences throughout the two-hour meeting.

OSCAR

And an oscar for the portrayal of the role of the injured innocent should go to Gerry Healy of the Workers Revolutionary Party, whose floor performance completely dominated the proceedings - despite the fact that he spoke not a word.

.£1.50 •£3.00 .£6.00 acialist : £1.15 Mandel in full flight.

The immediate pretext for the meeting was the slanderous campaign launched by the International Committee of the Fourth International (led by Healy) which alleges that Joseph Hansen and George Novack, veteran members of the US Socialist Workers at the time of the assassination of Trotsky in 1940 and have consciously covered up the role of the GPU in the Trotskyist movement.

The Workers Socialist League has of course consistently denounced these slanders, and has put them in the context of the sectarian degeneration of the WRP itself under Healy's leadership.

But the IMG decided to go much further and use the issue to bring together a showcase for the so-called "United Secretariat" to which they are affiliated and of which the SWP is the American sympathising section.

SHIPPED IN As a result, both Novack and the SWP's new NC member Tim Wolforth were shipped in from Mandel, the reader was brought over from Brussels, and his old enemy Pierre Lambert of the French OCI (which is at present outside the USFI but trying to get into the club) was persuaded to make the trip across the Channel; all came to smother their differences in an evening of Healy-baiting and self-exhoneration from the platform of the meeting.

Unfortunately none of them seemed able to give an even remotely political account of Healy's degeneration to sectarianism.

MENTAL STATE

Wohlforth pointed out that a madman is one who cannot face up to the world; Novack, too, questioned Healy's mental state; and Mandel only stopped briefly to denounce "this little fool" "this scoundrel" before. moving on to his sales pitch for the USFI.

For each speaker to have to reduce such serious political questons to this frivolous superficial level indicates the deep-going divisions and problems which prevent any of them examining questions of political method, their own dubious practice in the class struggle.

A welter of words and plenty of meaty attacks on Healy might seem to stave off these issues for one night - but resolve no problems whatever.

Anyone who had gone to hear an answer to any of the charges made by the IC would have come away distinctly dissatisfied.

• NOT NEW While Novack devoted a certain amount of time to general aspects of the IC's allegations there was little that could not be found in the written material already circulated by the SWP and IMG.

But throughout the speeches Healy waves his notes asking to speak. Healy's visual imitation of an honest quester for truth was immaculate. He laughed with Novack's jokes and Mandel's ridicule. He made no move to interrupt or disrupt.

Indeed as Mandel finally wound up, and Healy rose to his feet in silence and held up his hand to request the right to speak one might almost have forgotten that the WRP has the unenviable reputation of running the least democratic the workery public meetings in known opponents even from attendance, and not hesitating to use force and even the police where necessary to back this up.

RIGHTS But after he had sat silently through two hours of personalised apolitical abuse there was however considerable feeling in the hall that Healy, despite this record, should be allowed to say a few words - that the democratic rights the WRP deny every other tendency should be nevertheless extended to them.

Chairman Tariq Ali strongly opposed this and eventually carried a vote that Healy be not allowed to speak.

The meeting thus ended on a note of division - despite the craven efforts of the platform.

The WRt, crumbling in every area, succeeded in stealing the show from under the noses of the USFI.

Nobody learned any political lessons, but an entertaining evening was had by many.

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