A despicable action

FOR over a decade there has been discussion as well as fierce controversy between the Trotskyist movement led by the International Committee and the revisionist groups clustered around the United Secretariat or the International Secretariat as it was previously known.

No matter how heated the dialogue became and no matter how much tempers were frayed, both sides strove to keep within the permissible limits of the discussion and tried to maintatin the traditional norms of conduct of the socialist movement.

By preventing the controversy from degenerating into a brawl both sides were able to discuss in a serious way and learn profitable lessons without inviting 'outside' interference. POLITICAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE This period has now ended. Not because of any provocation or stupidity on our part, but because the leaders of the Socialist Workers' Party of America have deliberately chosen to do so by an unprecedented and unconscionable action which could have serious legal repercussions on one section of the movement which supports the International Committee.

The action we refer to is the publication by the Socialist Workers' Party of a document called 'Healy Reconstructs the Fourth International' (with a preface written by Joseph Hansen).

This document, apart from giving a thoroughly false account of the Congress of the International Committee, tries at the same time to give the impression that the Robertson group and the Wolforth group in the United States were seeking affiliation and, or recognition by the International Committee of the Fourth International, a measure that is explicitly banned by the reactionary Voorhis Act of the United States.

In the past this law prevented the Socialist WorA STATEMENT BY THE kers' Party from participating in the leadership of the Fourth International. So long as it remains on the statute book Trotskyists in the United States cannot affiliate to the Fourth International and can do so only at the risk of going to jail.

Since neither of these groups sought recognition by or affiliation to the Third Congress of the International Committee we have no hesitation in denouncing and rejecting, in toto, the fabrications and innuendos of Hansen and Dobbs.

In passing we should like to remind these people that only 13 years ago similar allegations by Pablo's supporters in Britain was deeply resented and rightly denied by the same people who today resort to such sordid schemes to compromise their opponents.

Hansen cannot disclaim knowledge of this fact. In the face of this ruthless and most powerful enemy-U.S. imperialism-the least thing that Hansen and his co-thinkers could have been expected to do would be to demonstrate a common solidarity with their political opponents.

But they have chosen do otherwise. We think this is not merely deplorablewe consider it despicable and utterly unworthy of a communist.

(It is not for us to speculate on why these creatures did all this.) Was it out of factional malice or was it some baser instinct? We shall leave posterity to judge.

So far as the treatment which the pamphlet metes out to the representatives of the Socialist Labour League at the International Conference, it is legally libellous. iWe shall not hesitate to deal appropriately with the handful of United Secretariat agents who hawk it around the cynical fake-left in England.

What matteřs to us is the politics of Hansen and company. Having capitulated to imperialism on the Kennedy assassination and having sold out the anti-war movement it is not really surprising that they should act as finger-men for the State Department now.

This is the logic of capitulation in which one political obscenity follows another. This latest provocation constitutes a complete and irreversible departure even from revisionism and is, in this sense, the most damning indictment of their politics and morals. There is nothing more to say. 16/8/66 of To bring together Marxist Early History of the Communist Party of Great Britain A Socialist Labour pamphlet, 2s. 6d.