Appendix: Letter from Smith (USA) to Burns (England) 24/5/54

[p041] 36 We are proud to have expelled such a renegade from our movement. But even if we had made a mistake, what did you or Peng do at the time to correct us? You remained silent. Peng never raised this matter once at any meeting of the International Committee. You were hoping, in fact, to manoeuvre the ‘British’ as you describe them into a position of accepting your capitulation to Pablo and when this became impossible you have, of course, resorted to the old methods of slander. Of course, comrade Peng will serve you loyally within the international Pabloite organisation. We discovered in 1955 that he was serving the Pabloites loyally, when at one meeting of the committee we caught himself and his daughter L. taking documents from the committee to be handed over to the Pabloites. We reported this to comrade Dobbs when he visited us in 1958 but we, of course, have never taken any action against Peng. If the truth were known, despite his occasional contributions to your internal bulletins, Peng has been in close association with the Pabloites for a considerable period. We are not worried either way because we know that Peng and his ilk will never build a movement anywhere, in any part of the world. They belong to the sectarian and opportunist past of our movement and all they do now is to provide lessons of mistakes which the Trotskyist movement must not repeat. ’ By parading this man as a leader of the Chinese section in your internal bulletin, you are guilty of a fraud against the membership of the SWP. Recently we have read in The Militant that 100,000 people attended a May Day rally in Colombo. ‘The huge turnout,’ says The Militant, ‘was attributed to enthusiasm among the masses at the prospect of a united front between the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Trotskyist), the Communist Party and the MEP (a smaller group led by Philip Gunawardene).’ Here we go again. Just at the moment that you are splitting from the SLL and are reaffirming Peng as the leader of the Chinese section, you turn the attention of your membershipship towards ‘the great LSSP in Ceylon’. Of course, you remain discreetly silent about the proceedings at that meeting. You did not tell your membership that when the three left parties, that is the LSSP, the CP and the MEP, were discussing the preparation of the meeting Philip Gunawardene insisted that only political parties should be represented on the platform. His motive was simple and quite reactionary. He wished to exclude the Indian working class from being represented through their. trade unions. The LSSP to its eternal shame agreed to this farce. It must be remembered that in the past the LSSP was the only party in Ceylon to stand unconditionally for the equality of the Indian Tamil working class. It always sharply opposed Philip Gunawardene of the MEP, whose role at this meeting was utterly re- actionary. You remain silent about what Philip Gunawardene said. With a slip of the tongue he used the word ‘race’ FourTH INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1, 1965 instead of ‘nation’ and then corrected himself. His supporters in the audience shouted ‘No, not nation: race!’ All this time the LSSP sat silent on the platform. Here is the price for such unity. It is now freely admitted in the LSSP that the leaders are prepared to make real and large concessions on the question of parity of status for Tamil and Singhalese. This is the logic of the capitulation which has led them to support the capitalist government of Mrs. Bandaranaike. You should have told your mem- bership that N. M. Perera, Anil Moonesinghe and other leaders of the LSSP are practising Buddhists who worship regularly at the temples. Here is fraud No. 2 which you perpetrate on the membership of the SWP. Throughout the discussion on Cuba you have done your best to suggest that the SLL is opposed to defence of the Cuban revolution. In Britain and in Europe everyone knows, of course, that this is a lie. It is also well known to you. Our criticisms of the Castro regime have in no way prevented us from defending the revolution and we shall continue to do so with everything in our power in the future. But you are strangely silent about events in Cuba; events which you have other information on. ‘The Trotskyists are harassed. Leading people have been imprisoned sporadically for periods of time with no charges and no trial. An Argentinian comrade was deported. Their paper is semi-legal. They cannot get any publishing house to put it out. They claim a circulation of 1,000 in Havana, which is now their main centre, and say it is passed from hand to hand. They claim 100 members in Havana, _ of overwhelming proletarian composition, and rapid recruitment, especially since Castro’s speech after Kennedy’s Orange Bowl talk to Cuban counter- revolutionaries. This speech showed a_ clear departure from the usual militancy of Castro, and this was noticed by the Cuban people. ‘They cannot publish Trotsky’s works. Open forums cannot be held under a revival of a Batista ordinance which requires permission from the police which they can never get.’ May we suggest that your silence is needed in order to perpetrate fraud No. 3. Now you are busy building up the legend of Ben Bella. But everyone knows that the state in Algeria is a capitalist state and that Pablo is an employee of that state. It is also well known that Pablo now supports Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful co-existence. Perhaps he has learned from comrade Cannon’s defence of Khrushchev over the missile bases in Cuba last October. You do not really aid the Algerian revolution or revolutionaries. You simply build up a legend in order to give false comfort to the members of the SWP. Such is the method of pragmatism, openly extolled by Hansen. Cannon’s letter to your Political Committee in October 1962 hails Khrushchev’s action over Cuba as one that ‘will give the workers time enough to wake up’. But surely the role of the SWP as a revolutionary

[p042] DOCUMENT No. 4 organisation should be consciously to assist in warning the international working class of the pernicious and treacherous role of the Khrushchev Soviet bureaucracy in this present situation. The real reason why you do not want a serious dis- cussion over Cannon’s letter is that it would reveal the terrible political crisis inside the SWP. In refusing this discussion you perpetrate fraud No. 4. Of course you have no time for the ‘sectarian SLI’ Our comrades in the ranks and in the leadership fight day in and day out against reformism and Stalinism in the best traditions of the Trotskyist movement. But they do not yet speak to tens of thousands at public meetings like Ben Bella, Castro and the so- called Ceylon May Day meeting. In your eyes we are merely small, ‘ultra-left fry’. Our comrades took the leadership in the recent campaign against unemployment, organised and spoke to a mass meeting of 1,300, but this is small stuff. When our comrades deal powerful blows against the Social Democrats in the youth movement in the teeth of a violent witch-hunt, your correspondent T. J. Peters (a one-time leading SWP supporter who now writes like a retired liberal) speaks only of the great future before ‘British Labour’. We old-fashioned ‘sectarians’ believe that the Fourth International of which our organisation has always APPENDIX New York May 24, 1954 England Dear Burns, We salute the British comrades for their smashing victory over the Stalinist-supported Pabloites in the battle for control of the paper. Your fight has clearly been the bitterest and most complicated of any national struggle in the inter- national campaign to defeat Pabloite revisionism and liquidationism. In that struggle, which you eloquently described as a ‘political civil war’, the British Trotsky- ists stood the test of fire and emerged as a finely- tempered combat force hardened and toughened for the great class battles yet to come. Only a rank and file that is confident, alert, ener- getic, capable of sustained action and steadily growing in political stature could have provided the forces necessary for the victory. Only a leadership that is politically astute, skilled in strategic and tactical co- ordination, well grounded in the Trotskyist funda- mentals and capable of confidently maintaining combat initiative could have guided the rank and file to such a decisive triumph. Now that you have smashed the attempt to liquidate 37 been an integral part, offers the only alternative to the corrupt leadership of so-called ‘British Labour’. But Peters has no time for us. He, like you, has really seen the light. It took you some time. (As the saying goes ‘Those who come late to Christ come hardest.’) It is approxi- mately 12 years since George Clarke joined forces with Pablo and published the message of the infamous Third Congress in The Militant and what was at that time the magazine Fourth International. You failed to understand Pablo at that time, and then we had the split of 1953. Cannon hailed this split with the words that we were ‘never going back to Pabloism’. Until recently he has been a really stubborn convert to Pabloism. But at last you have made it. You now have allies all over the place, from Fidel Castro, to Philip Gunawardene and Pablo. We want to say only one thing and in this our congress waS unanimous. We are proud of the stand which our organisation has taken against such a disgraceful capitulation to the most reactionary forces as that to which the majority leadership of your party has fully succumbed. We have, however, the utmost confidence in the rank and file of the SWP whom we are sure will reconvince many of your leaders to break from this fatal course before it is too late. Yours fraternally, (Signed) G. HEALY National Secretary Socialist Labour League British Trotskyism, the momentum of your defensive struggle will carry over into a new dynamic drive to build up the Trotskyist cadre in the broader left wing of the mass movement. This seems already assured by the further crystallisation and politicalisation of direct periphery elements as reflected in the support you received in the showdown fight for control of the paper. Moreover, the paper will once again be on the beam politically, an effective instrument of which the comrades can be proud, instead of carrying the shame- ful pro-Stalinist line injected into it by Pabloite intrigue. Your victory also definitively refutes the false Pabloite claim to a majority in Britain. Coming on the eve of the Pabloite rump congress, this exposure of a Pabloite lie and this profound demonstration of Trotskyist strength brings important new weight to bear against Pablo’s whole international intrigue which he has sought to bring to a climax in his ‘June Assembly.’ To all the British comrades we say: Well done! Comradely yours, SMITH

[p043] 38 New York, N.Y. May 24, 1954 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, SUMMER 1965 TO ALL LOCALS AND BRANCHES: Dear Comrades, We are enclosing a report of the smashing victory won by the British Trotskyists in the fight for control of their paper. Once again this paper will appear as a hard-hitting 100 per cent Trotskyist organ delivering political hammer blows in the contest for leadership of the British mass movement. The bitter struggle for control of the paper dis- sipated all their funds and thus created a problem for them in getting out the immediate issues. Conse- quently they would appreciate payment in advance for the next bundle orders. Because ot the important political struggles now unfolding within the British Labour Party, we are sure the comrades will be more anxious than ever to follow events through the columns of the Trotskyist paper which the new editorial board pledges to keep a ‘lively, fighting, principled organ worthy of the great tasks it must perform.’ We therefore suggest that comrades who are in position to do so send us a five or ten dollar special contribution to help make sure we are able to get the paper quickly and regularly. Comradely yours,