BEHAN NAILS CAMPBELL’S ‘ANTI-COMMUNIST’ SMEAR

Two and a half years ago Brian Come and hear Behan, as a member of the Communist Party executive, heard John Gollan and George Matthews admit that they had known that Dr. Edith Bone had our case been imprisoned in a Hungarian jail.

Far from raising the roof to secure the The Socialist Labour League’s May Day release of this old communist they never meeting in Hyde Park begins at 3 p.m. on even told their own executive. Sunday. This revelation is made by Behan, a Speakers include: Brian Behan; Hugh member of the Editorial Board of The Cassidy, former Federation steward at the Newsletter, in an open letter to J. R. CampShell-Mex site; Peter Fryer, Editor of The bell, editor of the Daily Worker. Néwsletter; Gerry Healy, provisional national secretary of the Socialist Labour Scurrilous statement League; Ian Lamb, London busman; and The occasion of the letter is a reference Vivienne Mendelson.

by Campbell to the Socialist Labour League in last Saturday’s Daily Worker.

Campbell described the League as ‘an Another protest anti-communist,- Trotskyist organization whose activities tend to divide and disrupt the Labour movement and play into the at the ban hands of the Right-wing’. ‘In making this most scurrilous statement you advance not one shred of proof,’ writes With only one vote against, the general Behan. ‘If we are the same as IRIS then council of the Tottenham Labour Party has it is your duty to arm the working class protested ‘in the strongest terms at the with facts.’ action of the NEC in proscribing the _ Recalling Gollan’s and Matthews’s admisSocialist Labour League and The News- sions, Behan asks: ‘You were at the letter’ and demanded ‘that this ban be meeting. Do you not think there might be immediately withdrawn’. some connexion between these things and the fight waged by Trotsky against Stalin?’

Unlike the Trotskyists, Stalin and his disciples, and the leaders of the British Communist Party, have brought discredit on the world communist movement.

‘It was not Trotsky but Khrushchev who sent greetings to that butcher Krupp.’

Behan declares that the Socialist Labour League’s programme has as its core the mobilization of the working class in a united struggle to end the H-bomb and ‘The hostility of the Right-wing reformists towards our paper and organization is well known. What your readers have to consider is why there is no difference between your attitude to us and that of the Right-wing.

Proposal evaded ‘What you really fear and are desperate to prevent is that our programme will attract to our ranks all those members of the Communist Party who want to break from Stalinism and fight for socialism.

“You know that we have proposed to the Communist Party that we should unite in a common campaign to end the bans in the movement. Your reply can only be interpreted as an evasion of this proposal.

‘I would ask all your readers to ignore the continued slanders and unite with us in a common struggle against the Right-wing.”