A reply to Peng Shu-tse by Frank Williams Once again - the Ceylon betrayal

World News Round-up BELFAST RIOTS "HE autumn issue o • the 'Internation Socialist Review' published by the Socialist Workers Party of the United States contains two articles attacking the Socialist Labour League.

The first is written by E Germain who defends the line of the Pabloite Unified Secretariat in relation to the betrayal by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party majority in Ceylon. The second article is written by Peng Shu-tse, and it is called an 'Open Letter to Gerry Healy, the Man on the Flying Trapeze'.

The publication of these articles marks a change in the policy of the Socialist Workers Party which since the summer of 1963 has been to avoid any discussion with the Socialist Labour League, public or otherwise.

Peng and who he represents We can only express our pleasure that the deadlock has been broken, especially since it is obvious that our exposure of the role of the SWP and the Pabloite Secretariat in relation to Ceylon is responsible for this change of heart. Here we will take up the article of Peng Shu-tse, whilst later issues of the Newsletter will deal extensively with Germain.

Peng Shu-tse is a man who virtually does not represent anybody but himself. In 1954 he broke from the Pabloites together with the leaders of the Socialist Labour League and the Socialist Workers Party. Two years later he was discovered assisting a close relation of his taking documents from a meeting of the International Committee so that his relation, who was an undercover Pabloite, could hand them over to Pablo.

Between the split of 1953 until the SWP returned to the Pabloite fold in 1963, Peng Shu-tse acted as a kind of double agent. When he was instructed by the International Committee, rital wrote articles vaguely critical of Pabloism, whilst still managing, behind the scenes, to retain his toehold in the Pabloite camp.

He was most unhappy during the period when there was close collaboration between the Socialist Labour League leaders and the Socialist Workers Party and yearned for an opportunity to drive a wedge between these two organisations.

Peng the irremovable senator' When the political differences began to widen Peng ran as fast as he could to the aid of the revisionists within the SWP who have adopted him ever since as a kind of political house dog.

He barks at opponents when he is told to and wags his tail in a disgruntled sort of way when asked to be quiet. It is so long since Peng Shu-tse has been an active member of an organised revolutionary party that he has completely lost touch with reality. Trotsky used to describe such people as the 'irremovable senators.

This is the sad side of the story. In his early years, like Cannon and the SWP, he helped to educate some cadres for the Trotskyist movement. Due to the forced isolation of the movement in the United States and the changed situation in China, Cannon and Peng utterly failed to develop Trotsky's teachings in relation to the problems facing the Fourth International and the international working class. This is the root cause of their degeneration as Trotskyists.

No criticism of de Silva-Perera leadership Marxist theory can only be developed through the active daily struggle to build revolutionary parties. This involves constant efforts to find a road to the working class in a way that will attract fresh forces to our movement and train these forces to lead and build the revolutionary party.

For at least 15 years Peng has had absolutely no experience of this kind of work. To him the Socialist Labour League is some kind of ghost-like organisation which is as remote as the daily happenings on the continent of Asia.

During the era of the Colvin de Silva-N. M. Perera leadership of the Ceylon party, he was their most enthusiastic advocate. He had not a single word of criticism to make of them. He just did not want to know what was going on in Ceylon and for that matter did not care.

In his political struggle with the SLL he constantly reaffirmed the legend about the great mass party in Ceylon. But now the scene has changed. Without batting an eyelid Peng Shu-tse voted for over 500 members to be expelled from the Ceylon Party last July.

Peng and the SLL The SLL has emerged as the strongest single party of Trotskyism in any country of the world. Its cadres have repeatedly inflicted defeats on the most powerful right-wing bureaucracy in the labour movement in Western Europe.

They do not require a big explanation about Peng Shu-tse. They know him as a Pabloite and they know what the Pabloites do in the British labour movement. Whenever there is a fight in the trade unions, in the Labour Party or in the youth movement, they line up solidly with the right wing against the SLL. Just as in the case of events in Ceylon, Peng does not want to know about this.

'Let me ask,' he says, "just where and when have you ever "fully" supported the left wing (Ceylon).' Please give us an itemized list of your declarations' We might just as well ask 'where have you been sleeping during the past four years, Peng Shu-tse?' In 1959, when Doric de Souza, at present a leader of the revisionists, visited London, we insisted so strongly on the course of betrayal that they had undertaken, that he broke off political relations with us. We did the same with Colvin de Silva.

The Newsletter published a declaration opposing the overtures towards coalition which were then gathering support in the Ceylon party.

In 1963, when a prominent leader of the LSSP revolutionary wing visited London early in June, we not only pledged him our fullest support but urged upon him the necessity to prepare for a split.

The IC and Ceylon In July 1963, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to which we are affiliated, published the following extract on Ceylon, in its Manifesto "Twenty-Five Years of the Fourth International':

"The most instructive example of opportunist degeneration, assisted, if not inspired, by Pablo, is the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in Ceylon. In 1954, at the time of the split in the Fourth International, the leaders of this party took an equivocal position.

(Yet only a few months prior to this a minority advocating a Pabloite policy split from the LSSP. The leaders, however, refused to draw any political conclusions from this split.)

In return, Pablo actively encouraged the opportunism of the L.S.S.P. leaders who today have replaced their revolutionary pretensions with the most servile crawling before bourgeois parties and regimes. In 1960, the L.S.S.P.

be it noted, was prepared to form a coalition government with Mrs. Bandaranaike and the bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

These leaders are petty-bourgeois charlatans masquerading as Marxists. If anyone doubts it let him read the Transitional Programme on the tasks of the International and contrast it with the policies of the L.S.S.P.

"There is not and there cannot be a place for it in any of the People's Fronts. It uncompromisingly gives battle to all political groupings tied to the apron-strings of the bourgeoisie...

The International Committee is confident that the many hundreds of devoted Communists in the L.S.S.P.

will successfully reaffirm the principles and programme of the Fourth International and purge the party of revisionism and the revisionists.' Betrayal is prepared It would have been preferable if Peng Shu-tse had not barked on this occasion but merely wagged his tail. The record of political struggle against the Ceylon revisionists by the Socialist Labour League is well known to everyone intimately connected with the world movement.

The SLL claims that the leadership of the Unified Secretariat assisted the revisionists to capitulate to Mrs. Bandaranaike. Here again briefly are the facts.* 1. In a communication to the LSSP early in 1960 Pablo and Germain agreed that it was possible 'to permit practical noclash agreements with the SLFP', the party of Mrs. Bandaranaike. It was this compromise which encouraged * A full analysis is now contained in the pamphiet Ceylon: The Great Betrayal obtained from the Socialist Labour Lague, price 1/3d., post free. N. M. Perera to make the following statement to the party. before the 1960 election:

Concretely the L.S.S.P.

party will have to take the following steps. First of all enter into a no-contest pact to fight the forthcoming elections. In the campaign itself to declare our readiness to support the formation of an S.L.F.P. (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) government.

This must not be hedged about with conditions otherwise we will weaken the forces ready to rally round an alternative government. Secondly, steps must be taken to bring about a programmatic agreement with the S.L.F.P. with a view to forming a joint government.' This statement was sent to Pablo and Germain in Paris who did not make the slightest criticism of it.

The full text is contained in the pamphlet 'Ceylon: The Great Betrayal'.

2. At this time the LSSP began to change their position over the citizenship rights of the Tamil workers. This led to the break-up of the Lanka Estate Workers' Union which was /under their control. Neither Pablo nor the Secretariat made the slightest criticism about this betrayal.

3. The United Left Front, apart from the LSSP, consisted of the Communist Party (Moscow wing) and the MEP, the party of Philip Goonewardene. Both of these parties at different times supported coalition with Mrs. Bandaranaike. In other words, two-thirds of the so-called United Left Front was politically in her pocket. When the platform for this United Left Front came up for discussion, the citizenship rights of the Tamil workers was again raised. At first, Peng, now a member of the Unified Secretariat, criticised the tendency of Perera and de Silva to capitulate on this question but they then found a formula which enabled them to find a way out.

On July 1, 1963 (after the unification), they wrote to Leslie Goonewardene, Secretary of the ISSP? as certainly an improve- agreeing that the final draft ment' and that 'we recognise that there is nothing wrong in the principle of negotiations between India and Ceylon on the subject'.

This is almost identical with the formula of Harold Wilson, right-wing leader of the Labour Party, in his support for the Tory Immigration Act.

He stresses that the future of immigration into Britain should be matter of consultation between Commonwealth governments.

Of course, the Socialist JUST OUT: A SocIALIST LaBOUr LEAGUe CEYLON: The great betrayal Containing: • Two reports from Ceylon by G. Healy dealing with the background and developments behind the Lanka Sama Samaja Party Coalition and the role that the United Secretariat in Europe played in this betrayal.

A statement by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Complete resolutions submitted by the three tendencies represented by the LSSP Congress of June 1964. • Correspondence from the International Secretariat to the LSSP. Price 1/-. Obtainable from 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4. Labour League does not oppose a United Front struggle between parties of the working class on specific issues, but that is not what was involved in the United Left Front in Ceylon.

Peng helps provide cover for coalition What was involved there was that Perera, de Silva and Goonewardene were using it as a cover to prepare for the coalition. Peng and the so-called Unified Secretariat in Paris provided the cover all along the line for such a policy.

They prevented a discussion from taking place inside the Secretariat and the groupings around their movement early in 1964, by instructing their followers along this line:

'However, the United Secretariat feels that it would be wrong for it as a body representing the movement as a whole (sic) to brush aside the declarations of the majority of the L.S.S.P. leadership and refuse to grant them the time needed. to. prove in action the sincerity of their stand in relation to the United Left Front and the good faith of their assurances.

Peng Shu-tse supported this proposal. The record is there for all to see and we will later publish a symposium of the main documents outlining the relationship between the Paris Pabloite Secretariat and the LSSP leadership over ten years.

Peng and allies discussion Pen Shu-tse spreads the legend that the SLL broke away from • Hourth internationa We did nothing of the sort.

In September 1963 to the Pabloite Secretariat suggesting that we should immediately commence an international discussion with a view to holding a world conference and unifying our forces in October 1964.

This was refused by Peng Shu-tse and his allies on the grounds that international discussion would endanger the which, as we have seen, assed which, as we have seen, assisted the Ceylon revisionists.

The Socialist Labour League wanted to place the Ceylon issue as item number one for international discussion. Had our proposals been accepted there is no doubt that the present revolutionary wing of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party would have been greatly strengthened and the revisionists weakened.

Next issue: Why Peng Shu-tse and Cannon can no longer be considered Trotskyists.

GEYLON The great betrayal Two reports fron Ceylon by C. Healy * Crispa