[page 74]
We shall attempt here to draw a few lessons, pose a few more questions, and make some suggestions.
The Top Leadership of the SLL
First we address ourselves to the top leadership of the SLL - "the conscious elements among the leadership" to use their own curious phraseology - especially to Comrades Mike Banda, Gerry Healy and Cliff Slaughter. As we have said, we will be very interested in their response to this pamphlet and the questions which it poses. Here are a few more things for which they might like to account.
First, from the June 18th, 1968 edition of The Newsletter, which is, we think, our very favourite issue.
1. The following quotation from a report of a meeting of students at L.S.E. the previous Thursday requires comment:
"From the floor, Socialist Labour League Central Committee member Cyril Smith took issue with many of the things that had been said.
"The all-important question, he said, was how could the working class take the state power and establish socialism?
"The Communist Party opposed revolution, and they would not simply disappear from the scene. To defeat 40 years of Stalinist history and lead the working class to power required a party - science, philosophy and economics.
"In Britain we had perhaps 18 months in which to prepare for a struggle similar to that in France.
"Those who talked about struggling along pragmatically were missing out the central question - the building of this revolutionary party, which was the only way we could really draw on the experience of France."
2. The perspectives resolution published in that issue says:
"The Newsletter will be the means by which the League rallies and organizes the supporters and extends its influence. In every area we must have Readers' Leagues which will help us to extend the circulation and finances of The Newsletter, at the same time making it possible for the paper to be enriched by taking up every development in the working class as it arises."
The Newsletter had, moreover, been campaigning for some months for Readers' Leagues when it carried the advertisement which appeared in that issue.
Whatever became of The Newsletter Readers' Leagues?
3. That issue carries a report of a demonstration organised by the SLL in London on 16th June against the repressions in France. To use the words of the SLL's announcer, "another organisation" - unspecified (but in fact IMG) - took part in the demonstration. Neither the organisation's name nor even its existence is mentioned in the report. Specifically: a deputation of four was sent by the demonstration to the French Embassy; it included a representative of the other "organisation". The Newsletter's report lists only two YS members and Gerry Healy.
4. There appears in that issue an article "Gold price moves up as world money leaders meet", which contains the following paragraphs:
"One fact stands out from its (BIS's) report: nobody believes that the present two-tier system can last. Its continuation would only be 'feasible', it comments, if 'free' and 'official' gold prices remained roughly in line.
"Given a continued rise in gold on the open market the pressures towards a dollar devaluation are inevitable."
[page 75]
"Devaluation of the franc is near and this alone, in the present world situation, would be enough to spark off a European financial and economic crisis."
Curiously enough, this article is by Cde. Peter Jeffries.
May we suggest that those really responsible for all this nonsense account for it?
Turning reluctantly from that special issue of The Newsletter, let's go back in time. The date: 24th Oct. 1964. The place: probably Leeds. The scene: Cliff Slaughter is reading over an article, "Behan Crosses the Line", in that day's issue of The Newsletter. He wrote it himself: it's a book review, of "With Breast Expanded", by one Brian Behan, ex-Chairman of the SLL and ex-many other things as well. The article is one of the finest things Slaughter has written. But, we wonder, as his eyes pass over the following lines, does any doubt, any flicker of hesitation, about his present course cross his mind?
"There is little wonder that Behan does not say what his political programme (of January 1960) was. With the help of a few clippings from the 'Financial Times', he confidently predicted a serious economic depression by the autumn of 1960, a depression in which the workers would turn away from the Labour Party and seek a revolutionary alternative.
"We must, therefore, set ourselves up as an independent open revolutionary party to appeal to these disillusioned workers, he maintained.
"The (Socialist Labour) League rejected this sectarian nonsense at its conference in 1960. In the aftermath, Behan formed his 'Workers' Party', which has not been heard of since."
We cannot answer our question, of course.
But, what does Cliff Slaughter think NOW about HIS break from the Labour Party?
* * *
Now we must admit that we have little confidence in the ability of the comrades of the top leadership of the SLL to overcome their sectarianism, their habitual, lying and distortions, and return to Trotskyism. Some of the reasons may be evident from what we have said before.
So it may be better for us, while calling on these comrades to mend their ways, to address those who will, in our opinion, most probably have to impose - in very difficult circumstances - a change of line on them, the rank-and-file and the sympathisers of the Socialist Labour League.
The Rank and File of the SLL
We believe that among those of these comrades who read this pamphlet the reaction will be roughly as follows. While they cannot help but be disturbed by at least some of the points we have raised, they will try to suppress those doubts. In particular, they will not raise them internally, either in branches or in documents. There are reasons for this; the main ones are, on the one hand, their party patriotism, on the other, the difficulty of raising anything within the SLL (1).
Nevertheless, we urge them to raise whatever has struck them most forcibly in our criticism. Discuss it with other comrades, rather than simply muse on it. Particularly those comrades who have joined the SLL since 1964 should try to raise the issues we have mentioned about the break from the Labour Party. In such a discussion, the issues of The Newsletter [p. 76] for that period are vital reading; comrades should endeavour to obtain those issues we have quoted, if only to check, as they should, that we have quoted accurately and honestly.
[1] We have little desire to go into the topic, which is hardly fit for public discussion, of the SLL's internal regime - though we will do so if challenged - so we refer only to Hansen's pamphlet.
At the same time as raising these questions, they should loyally carry out the work of the SLL. Much of this, we have tried to show, is pointless, or even marginally damaging to the interests of the working class, but they cannot expect a hearing within the organisation unless they fulfil their obligations to it. Moreover, the SLL has assembled in Britain a cadre of some of the best militants, who have been loyal and have stayed with the organisation. It has also assembled enormous material resources: the press, etc. It would be a tragedy and a catastrophe for the working class internationally if this cadre were to become demoralised and apolitical, if these resources were not to be used for the interests of the workers movement. Comrades of the SLL must not let that happen! They must impose - and we fear it will be an imposition - on their leaders a return to Trotskyism. These cadres and resources must not be wasted, must be used for building a Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain in the future!
Other Revolutionaries
Comrades of other revolutionary tendencies - particularly members of IS and partisans of the Fourth International - should also, in our opinion, play their part in forcing the SLL leadership to abandon its sterile sectarianism. Their role will be difficult: they will have to tolerate the most vicious unprincipled attacks in Workers Press and elsewhere. But they should not let this deter them.
First, they should reply to slanders in a calm, measured, reasonable way. At the same time, they should carefully note the nuggets of valid criticism occasionally to be found midst the dross.
Secondly, they should, whenever the SLL does something correct, impose on them the United Front from below. This applies, for example, to the Vietnam campaign they have just launched, and to a certain amount of their trade union work (even if the ATUA is "the trade union arm of the SLL" it is not entirely worthless).
* * *
In this connection - before discussing their turn on Vietnam - we should use the opportunity provided by their associated turn on the United Front to say the few more words on that topic which we promised earlier.
The second point Cliff Slaughter makes in his pamphlet on VSC about the United Front concerns freedom of criticism of other participants:
"At the VSC meeting...in August 1966, the chairman Ralph Schoenmann... prevented the secretary of the SLL (Gerry Healy) from speaking because he attacked Stalinism and warned of the need to fight against it.
"According to Schoenmann this violated the 'united front'.
"Now it should be said that Lenin and Trotsky always insisted that participation in a united front did not on any account signify the absolution of the political responsibility to criticize the other participants."
He then gives a quotation from Trotsky ("First Five Years of the Comintern", Vol. 2, p. 96.) to the effect that criticism is obligatory; his quotation is quite correct. He then goes on:
"And in any case, the Communist Party at this time opposed VSC as adventuristic and extreme!"
Now in our opinion we have already disposed, in Chapters 2 and 3, of most of this nonsense: the necessity for criticism does not imply that one makes the same speech, like a gramophone record, on every occasion. There remains Slaughter's point that the CP was not in the 'united front'.
Let's try to explain it to him, in words of not more than three syllables.
Comrade Slaughter, there are two types of 'United Front': 'From Above' and 'From Below'. VSC was a 'united front from above' of certain groups [p. 77] and tendencies, which did not include the CP. But it was a 'united front from below' with many CP members. And that was good, for three reasons: 1) Because we wanted to build a mass movement against the war in Vietnam, and therefore wanted as many CP rankers as possible. 2) Because the joint work with CP members gave us the chance to discuss with them and win them from the CP and Moscow line (rather than just to shout abuse about it). 3) Because both building a movement and affecting their rankers pressured the CP leaders to also join the united front from above.
Now we have the assurance of Workers Press (see below) that the first reason is OK. No doubt we both agree the second is OK. Why was the third OK? For two reasons. 1) Because the CP joining the united front from above would, provided we were careful, help to build the mass movement (which was, and is, good). 2) Because a change in the line of the CP leadership would provide a further item to use against them with their rankers.
So why was what Comrade Healy did wrong?
Because, it drove the CP rankers, still having confidence in their leaders to some extent, out of the mass movement.
Because, it thereby deprived us of the chance to criticise their leaders in the course of joint activity.
Because, it gave the CP leaders an effective excuse to use - whether or not it was a good excuse is not the point - with their ranks, for not joining the united front from above (and their joining was good, provided we were careful).
That is why it was totally wrong for Cde. Healy to do what he did.
That is why he should have had the sense to observe the united front.
Of course, that does not imply he should not have made his criticisms of Stalinism, elsewhere, in his own meetings, in his own press, even within the VSC under certain circumstances if he had stayed with it.
Having, we hope, 'clarified' - to use one of his favourite words - Cde. Slaughter on that particular question, let us look at his latest turn on the united front, or, more generally, on the question of cooperating with the CP.
One of his more profound pronouncements on the subject was an article in Workers Press of 28th Oct 1969, entitled "Grovelling Before Stalinism" (which is itself, we are elsewhere informed, "Prostrate Before Wilson"), criticising Bob Purdie of IMG for an article in the Oct '69 International. Slaughter's article is well worth quoting:
"(Purdie) says in passing that the Communist Parties have not 'as yet' broken from the Stalinist theoretical heritage, thus implying (??) that they are on the road to doing so.
"Indeed he says later that:
'...the (Communist) Party as a whole could be moved towards co-operating with the Trotskyists and other tendencies in work of immediate value to the British workers or the world revolution.'
"Here is the crux of the matter! Purdie will say: 'Co-operation on particular issues does not contradict the view that they are tied theoretically to Stalinism'.
"But what is this 'theory'? Can it be that without abandoning the Stalinist 'theoretical heritage' the Stalinists will carry out actions 'of immediate value to the British workers or the world revolution'?
"Here the worst kind of double talk is used to express counter-revolutionary revisionism."
So we can evaluate Slaughter's 'theory' in the light of this quotation, dealing with what, on his own admission, 'is the crux of the matter'. As we have explained, it is possible to collaborate with CP members, or the CP, in actions "of immediate value to the British workers or the world revolution". What is more, we had thought that Cde. Slaughter understood this.
For example, Tim Wohlforth, writing in the magazine Fourth International of which Cliff Slaughter is an editor, endorsed Trotsky's 1940 suggestion that the SWP offer the CPUSA an electoral united front. In a more recent struggle, the SLL sought, without concealing differences, to co-operate with the CP during the red-baiting in the ETU, in order to defend the whole left, [p. 78] which was in the interests of the British workers. Another example - Cde. Slaughter informs us somewhere or other that Ho Chi Minh, the leaders of the Vietnam Workers Party and of the NLF, are all Stalinists - yet the SLL advanced the slogan: Victory to the NLF! Which would seem to be as near to co-operation as they could have got in the circumstances.
Worse yet, on 9th May 1965 The Newsletter headlined the slogan: Arm the Vietcong! Arms for the Stalinists! If just to talk of co-operating with them is "double talk used to express counter-revolutionary revisionism", what is it to suggest putting guns in the hands of "the Stalinists"? Assuredly [2] they will use them to mow down the revolutionary workers and peasants of Vietnam....
Now let us say, we don't understand Cde. Slaughter's 'reasoning' on this point. We admit it. Does he believe it is impossible ever to co-operate with Stalinists on anything? If so, he is revising the position of Trotsky... and of Wohlforth and the SLL itself. So he should state his position explicitly, and explain why such co-operation is no longer possible. We had supported his demands and proposals on Vietnam and the ETU in the past, and still think that was correct. Were we, in fact, dupes of Slaughter's "counter-revolutionary double-talk"?
If, at the end of October, we had regretfully reached that conclusion, we would have had some surprises coming to us. For on the front page of Workers Press of 16th Dec. 1969 we find the text of a letter (dated 10th Dec. '69), sent by the YS to the YCL and reproduced under the headlines:
"Stop Wilson's Visit to Washington
"LET'S UNITE
"YS propose united action to YCL"
So we would have had to do another mental somersault. For most people would regard "LET'S UNITE" as...a proposal for co-operation -"united action"- in the interests of the world revolution. And we would have had to conclude either, that this was counter-revolutionary double-talk from the SLL, or that things had changed rather drastically during the previous six weeks.
Now the YCL rejected [3] the proposal, in our opinion incorrectly. But, by refusing to debate Trotskyism with the YCL, by ultra-left attacks on the CP ("Stalin Lives! in today's CPGB", etc, etc), the YS-SLL have, without any doubt, provided the YCL leaders with a perfect excuse to present to their members. On the other hand, suppose the YCL had accepted the invitation to unite: Cliff Slaughter would have been rather embarassed. For he would have had to explain, not just counter-revolutionary "double-talk", but also, presumably, counter-revolutionary actions, collaboration with the enemy who "must be destroyed".
Of course, we don't accept one word of this nonsense Slaughter has been coming out with. We wait with interest to see what his next articles will have to say.
We should also mention that the latest issues of Workers Press we have seen begin a campaign, undoubtedly urgent, against the TUC General Council's proposals to attack union democracy. On their past record, we doubt
"We find it a little difficult to comprehend your call for 'unity'. Gerry Healy said in February 1969:'When we talk of unity with an opponent organization it is to get rid of that organization, we are in arms against you...'
"Therefore we are not sure if you are still connected with Healy's Socialist Labour League or whether he had retracted that statement or if there has been a complete reversal of policy." whether [p. 79] the SLL will use correct tactics in this campaign, and we can't help wondering where their PC was on the 24th October, but the campaign is in principle correct, and we clearly, explicitly [struck through in the original] state that we wish it success.
[2] It is, of course, true that the Vietminh leaders in 1945/6 did use arms for that purpose. The Editor of The Newsletter knew that in 1965. Is there, in 1970, some reason which did not exist in 1965 for supposing that the NLF leaders will repeat that? If so, when did the new evidence appear?
[3] The correspondence between the YS and the YCL was reproduced in Workers Press of 3rd Jan 1970. Unfortunately, it seemed to us that the YCL won on points. Although Sheila Torrance took a whole page to reply to the YCL, she somehow managed to avoid answering the following challenge by their secretary:
And now let's examine the latest, unbelievable turn on Vietnam which we have already refered to.
The Latest Turn on Vietnam
This began quite quietly and peacefully some months ago when, in news reports, Workers Press (18th, 21st, 25th Oct '69) endorsed the October 15th anti-war demonstrations in the US. But this was a bit strange coming from the SLL, and Les Evans pointed it out in an excellent piece in Intercontinental Press ("An Ultraleftist Endorses the Anti-War Movement", 17th Nov 1969).
Tim Wohlforth, the American epigone of Banda-Healy-Slaughter, wrote a reply in Bulletin (1st Dec '69). He takes Evans to task for alleging that the SLL-WL had endorsed the anti-war movement. They hadn't; what they had done was to take "a turn towards more direct involvement in the mass demonstrations". He doesn't really square this up with an article by the Bulletin's present editor, back in the 14th July issue, which stated "This (don't ask us -TW) is why the Workers League opposes the present anti-war movement, its pacifist slogans and its endless demonstrations". But he does really get down to belaboring Evans, who "is forced to carry out a subterfuge...(to take) quotes from Lenin's writings of 1902. This is a complete hoax - one, by the way, used by the Communist Party to justify its popular front policies". (Emphasis added)
And why is it a complete hoax? Among other reasons, because "the quotes come from an early period in Lenin's development", and "Lenin did not come to a full understanding of the permanent revolution ... until April 1917 and thus his early writings express some confusion precisely on this question of democratic demands". (Emphasis added)
That's Tim Wohlforth's verdict on the "early writings" of Lenin which Evans quoted. Which early writings? Well, Wohlforth doesn't tell his readers. In fact Evans quoted from "What is to be done?", which we thought was a sine qua non for the SLL.
This unacknowledged repudiation of one of the Marxist classics was only a foretaste of even stranger things to come.
For the next stage was when, after months of quiescence on Vietnam, the SLL launched (in Workers Press of 25th Nov '69) a petition and demonstration against Wilson's proposed visit to Washington; a one day strike was later added to the list of proposals. This campaign was, of course, correct in principle, and we were pleased to see International and Socialist Worker support it, and that the IMG and IS participated. But if the initial announcements were surprising, we were to be astonished not long after.
For, after all the lies, slanders and attacks on the VSC, we read - in Workers Press of 23rd Dec '69 - the following words, under the headline "US SOLDIERS SHAME 'LEFT' MPs" and the by-line of Michael Banda:
"Defying the juggernaut of US imperialism and the threats and sanctions of the hated military-police dictatorship of Thieu and Ky, 500 people, including many US servicemen, are planning to celebrate Xmas in a unique, but appropriate, way by staging a 'Peace Happening' in the John F. Kennedy Square in Saigon on Christmas Eve."
"Although the objectives of this movement remain purely pacifist and do [p. 80] not go beyond calling on both sides (sic) (Banda's not ours - TW) to stop fighting permanently at Tet - the Vietnamese New Year beginning on February 5 - the fact remains that US soldiers on active service will be demonstrating against the hated war under the noses of the US military high command."
[3] (continued) It seems tragic that the YCL should be able to score such points - for no suggestion was made by the YS that the quotation was inaccurate - off a revolutionary organisation. Postscript: in the next round (31st Jan '70), no adequate answer is produced either.
We were amazed. The SLL endorsing a pacifist demonstration? A 'Peace Happening'? Of 500 people? What about the demonstration of 75,000 in London demanding victory to the NLF? Had the SLL suddenly discovered - for we agree with their comments - that a developing movement, even if the ideas of the participants are confused, may be supported if its content is anti-imperialist? No explanation was offered ... that day.
But we were not alone in our amazement. The unfortunate members of the SLL seem to have been a little surprised. At least, that is the most likely explanation for the strange sight of the issue of 24th Dec. carrying an Editorial endorsing the Editor's main article in the preceding issue:
"Just Another Protest?
.....
"Yesterday's Workers Press led on its front page with an article by editor Michael Banda on the 'peace' demonstration - which will be supported by American GIs - planned to take place tomorrow in Saigon.
"'The growth of pacifistic moods in the army', the article stressed, 'as Lenin pointed out in the First World War, is only the first step towards a more belligerent attitude to the commanding staff of the army and its own ruling class.'"
"On the surface, the presence of a dozen American soldiers on a peace demonstration in Saigon may seem a small thing.
"But, taken in line with the recent 'moratorium' marches in the US itself, their decision reflects profound changes in the American working class's attitude to the war."
Now we regard this as a somewhat undignified position for the SLL to have got itself into. Of course, this demonstration is in Saigon, the other was in London. But we hope, comrades of the SLL, that you can come up with some sort of explanation.
For in the next issue of your paper, comrades - that of 27th Dec '69 - the editorial is: "Vietnam is the Touchstone".
We agree! Comrades of the SLL, you are right!
But, comrades, fifteen months ago in London there took place a demonstration for the victory of the NLF. It had been called for by the Vietnamese. It was witch-hunted by the police and by the press. Yet 75,000 marched.
Where were the comrades of the SLL on the 27th of October 1968?
So we can only regard the Workers Press, when it says on 30th Dec '69:
"A powerful movement in Britain against the war will give new strength and confidence to many others to speak out and act as these heroic soldiers and Vietnamese have done",
as one of the most hypocritical, revolting spectacles we have ever seen!
As for the article's conclusion:
"Much now depends on our campaign to stop Wilson's visit to Washington",
it is beneath contempt.
* * *
We have tried to criticise, as severely as they merit, various aspects of the theory and activity of the SLL. We think we have raised a number of questions which should be answered.
So we should, before summing up, mention the main merit of the SLL.
In our opinion, this is that it saw, far more clearly than any other tendency, the turn in the strategy of the employers to attacking the working class, with the collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy, by means of pro productivity [sic] deals. Where the SLL is probably strongest in the factories - at BLMH, Cowley, Oxford - none have gone through. Moreover, all other tendencies, and many militants, have been warned by the SLL's campaign [4].
[4] The SLL does not have a serious way of fighting productivity deals
[page 81]
But we must draw to a close. So let us sum up our critique of the SLL:
1. To judge from their press, they do not know what is going on;
2. The demands which they pose are total demands, which are not going to be accepted by the masses, and which obstruct the building of a movement through which the consciousness of the masses could move forward;
3. Their press and spokesmen lie about the Fourth International, about their own history, and about other revolutionaries;
4. They drag Marxist theory through the mud in the name of developing it;
5. They stand back from the mass movement, while purveying ultra-left nonsense in their press;
6. They have, by their own criteria, scabbed on the Vietnamese revolution;
7. Consequently, they are a disgrace to the name of Trotskyism.
Trotsky, however, disowned antics like theirs in advance. For if we change 'rostrum' to 'newspaper-kiosk' and - since 1963 - 'International Secretariat' to 'United Secretariat', does not the following description sum up the Socialist Labour League?
"The sectarian looks upon the life of society as a great school, with himself as a teacher there. In his opinion, the working class should put aside its less important matters, and assembe in solid rank round his rostrum: then the task would be solved.
"Though he swear by Marxism in every sentence, the sectarian is a direct negation of dialectical materialism, which takes experience as its starting point and always returns to it. A sectarian does not understand the dialectical interaction between a finished programme and a living (that is to say, imperfect and unfinished) mass struggle. The sectarian's method of thinking is that of a rationalist, a formalist and an enlightener. During a certain stage of development rationalism is progressive, being directed critically against blind beliefs and superstitions (the eighteenth century!) But rationalism (abstract propagandism) becomes a reactionary factor the moment it is directed against the dialectic. Sectarianism is hostile to dialectics (not in word words [sic] but in action) in the sense that it turns its back upon the actual development of the working class.
"The sectarian lives in a sphere of ready-made formulae. As a rule, life passes him by without noticing him; but now and then he receives in passing such a fillip as makes him turn 180 degrees around his axis, and often makes him continue on his straight path, but......in the opposite direction! Discord with reality engenders in the sectarian the need constantly to render his formulae more precise. This goes under the name of 'discussion'. To a Marxist, discussion is an important but a functional instrument in the class struggle. To the sectarian it is a goal in itself. However, the more he discusses, all the more do the actual tasks escape him. He is like a man who satisfies his thirst with salt water: the more he drinks, the thirstier he becomes. Hence the constant irritability of the sectarian. Who slipped him the salt? Assuredly, the 'capitulators' of the International Secretariat! The sectarian sees an enemy in everyone who attempts to explain to him that an active participation in the workers' movement demands a constant study of objective conditions, and not haughty bulldozing from the sectarian rostrum. For analysis of reality the sectarian substitutes intrigue, gossip and hysteria."
We cannot say more.
[4] (continued) (BLMH Oxford is an exception, which unfortunately may be coming to an end). But, partly stimulated by the League's concentration on the issue, the IS seems to have worked out a good approach.