Wrp Fingermen Hide Behind New Smokescreen

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:100:2 WRP top fingerman, Healy "It is a law of political cliques that their frenzy increases in direct proportion to their disintegration"

So begins a major attack on the Workers Socialist League published on April 25 in Newsline, paper of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP).

The irony is, of course, that the words are far more apt for the WRP itself than as a description of our movement.

WRP leaders, plainly worried at the number of WRP members and supporters in several areas that have been drawn into discussions with the Workers Socialist League, and at their own inability to answer the political criticisms we have made of their positions, have decided to try yet again to whip their membership into a frenzy of hostility based on outright lies and slander against the WSL.

Hoary old lie

The content of the Newsline article which purports to answer our leaflet distributed outside the WRP's Lambeth eve-of-poll meeting, centres on two main themes-one old, one new.

The article begins by retailing the hoary and discredited old lie that in breaking from the sectarian method of the WRP leadership and fighting for a return to the method of the Transitional Programme, Alan Thornett and the founders of the Workers Socialist League sought a "cover for their own adaptation to the Labour and trade union bureaucracy"

This laughable claim, which nas never at any point been substantiated either from the published material of the Workers socialist League or from our continued practical struggle against the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracy during the three and half years as an org more absurd in points that were leaflet.

Spelling out the complete refusal of the WRP to carry out a serious fight within the labour movement for the policies and the method of the Transitional Programme, our leaflet contrasted their position to the principled record of the WSL.

We highlighted the fact that: "Our record of struggle in British Leyland's Cowley Assembly Plant, and the support gained for our policies, have incurred the wrath of the TGWU bureaucracy, which has launched McCarthyite witch-hunt designed to remove the newly-elected leadership in the factory.

Deputy convenor Alan Thornett is threatened with expulsion from the union, Frank Corti and Tom White are threatened with a life ban on union office, and six others, including Bob Fryer, also face the disciplinary action of the TGWU kangaroo court"

Why should such drastic measures be taken by the bureaucracy to silence us if we are really guilty of "adaptation to the Labour and trade union bureaucracy"? The WRP is tactfully silent on this.

No answer attempted Nor do they attempt to answer the question raised in the leaflet:

"What has the WRP done to fight these victimisations? What perspective has the WRP to resist the attack?

The answer is that been done bar the word in News/ine.

A conference was held sponsored by 130 leading TGWU anisation, is even the light o f the made in the WSL Refusal to fight nothing has occasional members-convenors, stewards, branch officials-which resolved to fight back.

Yet the Newsline only attacked this campaign and gave credibility to the TGWU bureaucrats. A two-page article implied —without a shred of evidencethat the nine victimised men included provocateurs whose 'grotesque adventures' opened the door to attacks.

This came at a time when the TGWU bureaucracy was completely unable to scrape together a case.

In other words the WRP was reduced to the role of fingerman for the bureaucracy."

In reply to these grave charges -based on the actual practice and published material issued by the WRP-Newsline had absolutely nothing to say!

Opposed to campaign The WRP remains scandalously opposed to the very successful Cowley 9 defence campaign - which has had an impact deep into the union. And WRP leaders have refused to retract their slanderous statement on the issue.

Such a position must be a severe embarassment to a movement claiming to be 'Trotskyist'.

The WRP seeks a way out, attempting to conceal its own, actual, capitulation to the TGWU bureaucracy by accusing the WSL of (completely imaginary) sympathy for the Callaghan "Reading Thornett you would think that Trotsky was in favour of treacherous social democratic governments like the one headed by James Callaghan"

We publicly challenge Newsline to produce one instance where they claim WSL publications have declared in favour of a treacherous social democratic But more to the challenge them to point to ever one single instance where a WRP member has led any serious fight for any of the demands of the Transitional Programme within the trade union or Labour movement.

Programme of action

We have always insisted, against the wild rhetoric of the WRP, that it is not enough simply to denounce social democracy, Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism: it is essential to fight for a programme of action through which workers can learn in practice the treachery and inadequacy of their existing leaders, and thus recognise the need for the construction of a Trotskyist Pary • In our leaflet we pointed out that in Corin Redgrave's two-page message to voters in Lambeth there was not one demand that could be taken up and fought for in practice in the workers' movement.

Instead the • WRP continues with its abstract call to "nationalise all land, banks and industry without compensation under workers control"-a demand which, as Trotsky points out, requires a general revolutionary upsurge to achieve.

Sooner than answer this well documented political challenge on the • WRP attitude to the Trotskyist programme, the Newsline article moves hastily on to the second theme-that of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Extravagant

Here they feel they are on home ground for the most extravagant slanders:

"The Workers Socialist League the imperialists and the Zionists are united in attacking the PLO's right to represent the Palestinian people ... • claims Newsline.

And as if this were not enough the anonymous author proceeds to falsify the text of our leaflet:

'The Workers Socialist League leaflet even includes a veiled reference to the Fatah commando operation in Haifa-Tel Aviv on March 11, when it accuses the WRP of 'betraying Trotskyism' by giving 'uncritical support to the means used by the PLO"

Did. the WSL leaflet refer-in however 'veiled' a way-to the commando raid? No, not in the least! Rather we concentrated on the political line of the PLO leaders:

"Without a serious programme for the working class no amount of marches will bring the overthrow of capitalism.

Such a programme demands the building of Trotckvict lastar the political independence of the working class in every struggle.

But here a look at the WRP's much-vaunted position on Palestine shows that it has abandoned this task.

The Workers Socialist League unconditionally supports the PLO fighters in their legitimate fight against Zionism and imperialism, including the Arab bourgeois leaders who collaborate with imperialism.

But it is a betrayal of Trotskyism to give uncritical support to the means used by the PLO or to the PLO leadership.

The PLO policy of calling upon bourgeois Arab leadersincluding even Sadat-is the surest way not to defeat Zionism and its allies. Bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalist leaders cannot lead the revolution to victory.

Nor can Trotskyists accept, as does the WRP, that the PLO is the sole representative of the Palestinian masses.

The WRP, in refusing to call for a Trotskyist party to lead these struggles in deceiving its Palestinian and Arab supporters into believing that there is a shortcut around this crucial fight.

It opens the door for future betrayals by the PLO leaders."

For Trotskyists, such a statement is self explanatory. But the WRP have nothing but contempt for thie Trotskyist position on this issue. Newsline announces that:

'We are proud to take our stand alongside the PLO and its leadership and to denounce the enemies of the Palestinian RevoluWRP General Secretary Banda tion as apologists for imperialism and Zionism"

This PLO leadership, to which the WRP is clearly giving its explicit and uncritical political support, includes of course Yasser Arafat.

But far from being universally seen as a principled leader of the Dolacticin Palestinian liberation fighters shrewd observers in the Tory press as the policeman assisting 'the United Nations forces in their task of quelling Palestinian resistance in Southern Lebanon.

The Sunday Telegraph of 27 April reported that Arafat had sent in troops from the Palestine Armed Struggle Command to arrest Abu Daoud and other Palestinian militants who have been carrying on the armed struggle against both Israeli and UN invaders.

Arafat's Command, the Telegraph continues "has developed into the military police force of the Palestinian guerrilla organisations"

This "military policeman" was featured in radio broadcasts on Friday calling on the Italian 'Red Brigades' to release Christian Democrat leader Aldo Morounder conditions of the most extreme witch-hunting of the left by the Italian bourgeois state.

Arafat added his personal weight to this witch-hunting by branding the kidnapping as a "tragedy" • and asking the guerrillas to free him "for the sake of democracy and Mr.

Moro's family"!

Quite clearly the "future betrayals" anticipated in the WSL leaflet are not all that far off.

The WRP must make position plain. Does it believe that social revolution in the Middle East can be accomplished, without the construction of a Trotskyist Party, under the leadership of the PLO?

Does it even believe that the PLO has spontaneously become a Trotskyist party?

If so, then the WRP has clearly broken from Trotskyism and reverted to the crudest positions advocated by Pablo in the late 1950s.

If they do not believe this, then we can only view the WRPs sycophantic and completely uncritical support given to the PLO leaders as the most despicable opportunism, based not on the objective requirements of the Palestinian masses, but the subjective manoeuvres and requirements of the WRP leaders.

Further articles in Socialist Press will be needed to chart the continuing political degeneration of the WRP.

But it is clear that the current confusion within that party's ranks and the political bankruptcy of the leadership will mean that every attempt to challenge these positions will be met by the usual barrage of insults, distortions and inappropriate jibes.

It is to be hoped that serious WRP members will penetrate this imnlocrroan

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SOCIALISI PRESS, Wednesday 10 May, 1978 INDUS REAL

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