May-June 1975
By Cliff Slaughter
May 29
Thursday May 29, 1975
To: Unified Secretariat/SWP
Dear Comrades,
On April 7, 1975, Joseph Hansen, one of the leaders of the SWP (USA), wrote an article in his weekly magazine Intercontinental Press entitled “Red Lion Square—where were the heroes of the WRP?” The following allegations were made against leading members of the Workers Revolutionary Party, British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International:
Has the WRP been infiltrated by agents of the Special Branch? What are the identities of those in the WRP who suggested the best course was to have nothing to do with the demonstration against fascism in Red Lion Square?
Didn’t this advice fit in with what the WRP admits—that “manipulation of the left played an important role in police preparations for June 15”? What are the names of those members who gave advice that played into the hands of the police and the capitalist state? Who are these “shadowy figures”? Why does the WRP remain silent on this? Why doesn’t it name those involved in this “sinister affair”? What is the WRP trying to cover up? Still another question must be asked. Is it possible that agents provocateurs like these are responsible for the campaign undertaken by the Workers Press of trying to follow up Scarman’s work, of even improving on Scarman in attacking the IMG?
The London Area Committee of the Workers Revolutionary Party, acting under the decisions of the Central Committee of the WRP, with G. Healy as general secretary taking the main responsibility, took the decision (not “advice” or “suggestion”) not to participate in the Red Lion Square demonstration; the same comrades were responsible for decisions not to participate in earlier, similar demonstrations, and also for the decisions not to participate in the 1968 Grosvenor Square demonstrations on Vietnam.
Joseph Hansen says, “These questions, we insist, must be cleared up.” We entirely agree.
Acting on the decisions of the Sixth Congress of the International Committee of the Fourth International, held in May 1975, the IC proposes to the Unified Secretariat the immediate setting up of a parity control commission (say three members from each committee) to conduct this investigation.
Any comrade from either side could be called as witnesses, or could if they felt it necessary give evidence. G. Healy will present himself for questioning before the joint committee if Joseph Hansen will do so as well. They would have the right to question each other and be expected to answer questions from members of the commission.
The Parity Commission should also declare itself ready to receive all evidence from members of the sections of the International Committee and of the Unified Secretariat concerning provocations, not only in relation to Red Lion Square, but on the whole period since and including the so-called “Tate Affair” of 1966. While recognizing that Joseph Hansen and the SWP are not affiliated to the Unified Secretariat for legal reasons, he is in political sympathy and we trust that he can be prevailed upon to cooperate.
Yours fraternally,
C. Slaughter
(for the International Committee of the Fourth International).
by Joseph Hansen
June 5
June 5, 1975
Dear Comrade Slaughter,
Your letter of May 29 has been referred to me for reply.
I would note, first, that the letterhead of the “International Committee of the Fourth International” is typewritten. Of course, this rump body may be so moribund as not to require a regular letterhead, it being sufficient for the comrade in charge to type one up on the rare occasions when he needs it. On the other hand, it may be an indication that the letter is not bona fide.
Secondly, the author exhibits rather surprising ignorance. He addresses the letter to the “Unified Secretariat” and not to the United Secretariat. How is this to be accounted for?
Thirdly, the signature of the author is an indecipherable hieroglyph. It could be a forgery.
These are small items. However, I am sure that your Central Committee, in view of its expertise in such matters, will acknowledge the necessity to be alert to seemingly insignificant clues like these. They can lead to identifying an agent planted in the organization by the police or the CIA. Just in case the letter is a fake, I am enclosing a photocopy of it. Perhaps it will help you to locate the police agent if it was written by one.
Unfortunately, the political line of the letter speaks for the conclusion that it is genuine. It coincides, for example, with the content and tone of recent articles in the Workers Press. Thus, taking the letter in that context, I would offer the following observations:
The sentences quoted from the article “Red Lion Square—Where Were the Heroes of the WRP?” were intended to illustrate the logical conclusions that follow from using the Healyite method of thinking, which is tainted with “subjective idealism.”
You used that method in attacking the International Marxist Group, the British section of the Fourth International, for participating in the demonstration against the fascists at Red Lion Square. Your method led you to conclude that in all likelihood police agents played a role in working out the policies of the IMG. However, if precisely the same method is used in weighing the WRP’s refusal to join in demonstrating against the fascists, equivalent results are obtained concerning the shaping of its policies. I thought I had provided a good illustration of this.
It is disappointing that you, as the leading methodologist of the WRP, did not recognize the point I was making. I am sure that almost everyone else in the left always saw it, although I admit that there are always some for whom it would be helpful to have a special typographical sign, such as a pointing finger, to indicate irony.
I recognize the honesty of your explanation that the WRP’s decision to abstain from the demonstration against the fascists was made by the top committees of the WRP “with G. Healy as general secretary taking the main responsibility.” However, in this explanation you proceed as an empiricist, disregarding what you would have found had you been searching for signs of “subjective idealism” in your top committees and in your general secretary.
Of course, I have no real quarrel with your empiricism in this instance. It is a fact—G. Healy’s decision was a consequence of his ultraleft sectarian line, as is universally recognized outside of the WRP and its sister organization in the USA, the Workers League.
In light of this, it is clear that the “Parity Commission” you call for could only ascertain (1) whether the top leader of the WRP is still on an ultraleft binge, as Comrade Cannon correctly called it, and (2) whether the sentences I wrote—and the charges you levelled against the IMG—constitute examples of the kind of conclusions to be expected from succumbing to “subjective idealism.”
Under these circumstances, it is superfluous—and ridiculous—to set up a “Parity Commission.” The evidence is already public knowledge, open to inspection by the entire working-class audience.
I note your indication that you are willing to reconsider the stand you took in the beating of Ernest Tate by stewards of the Socialist Labour League in 1966. If you mean this in good faith, you could hardly do better than to begin by making a public self-criticism, particularly over having followed up the beating by taking legal action in the bourgeois courts against the victim.
An additional indication of good faith would be restitution of the money that you wrung from the Socialist Leader and Peace News in retaliation for their having printed correspondence from Comrade Tate protesting the beating he had received.
Another welcome move would be a public apology for the violation of proletarian morality involved in using the bourgeois courts to penalize working-class publications in such a matter.
On one question, I think an inquiry might prove fruitful; namely, the circumstances of your general secretary’s hunt for CIA agents in the Workers League and his disruption of the leadership of that organization.
As to the practical side of such an inquiry, the difficulties of selecting an impartial and competent commission might prove insuperable. However, if you would like me to become involved in trying to overcome these difficulties, I am sure I could be prevailed upon to cooperate.
Fraternally yours,
Joseph Hansen
by Cliff Slaughter
June 21
June 21st 1975
United Secretariat/SWP
Dear Comrades,
The International Committee rejects completely the reply by Joseph Hansen (dated June 5th 1975) to the proposals contained in our letter of May 29, 1975. Behind the lame excuses about “irony” and the facetious jokes is a cowardly and unprincipled evasion of the vital issues involved.
The purpose of Hansen’s reply is to resist at all costs an inquiry into the urgent questions of provocations and security in the Fourth International which inevitably come to the fore because of the rapid development of the revolutionary crisis. Instead of accepting a procedure well known in the traditions of our movement, in order to create the conditions in which the cadres can be educated and trained in an objective manner, Hansen’s reply seeks above all to make it possible to keep on living in the swamp of unsubstantiated slander and innuendo. Indeed his letter simply repeats the allegations he has made in the past. Here once more is the accusation by Hansen, published in Intercontinental Press June 16th, 1975:
Has the WRP been infiltrated by agents of the Special Branch? What are the identities of those in the WRP who suggested that the best course was to have nothing to do with the demonstration against fascism in Red Lion Square? Didn’t this advice fit in with what the WRP admits—that “manipulation of the left played an important role in police preparations for June 15”? What are the names of those members who gave advice that played into the hands of the police and the capitalist state? Who are these “shadowy figures”? Why does the WRP remain silent on this? Why doesn’t it name those involved in this “sinister affair”? What is the WRP trying to cover up? Still another question must be asked. Is it possible that agents provocateurs like these are responsible for the campaign undertaken by the Workers Press of trying to follow up Scarman’s work, of even improving on Scarman in attacking the IMG?
Hansen’s talk of irony is deception and evasion, to allow him to continue with more of the same kind of thing. How can any comrade in the Trotskyist movement permit such allegations to have currency, and not be checked and examined, under conditions where, for example, the Australian section of the United Secretariat was infiltrated, to the top leadership, by the police agent Wechsler, and where the SWP has been subjected for many years to large-scale and intensive FBI surveillance?
Hansen’s allegations arose immediately out of security questions raised by sections of the IC, and particularly the WRP, as a result of the Scarman tribunal on the Red Lion Square demonstration. The IC is proposing that all the implications for security of the Red Lion Square demonstration are investigated.
Central to this particular investigation is the conduct of Hansen himself. He not only invented the slander of police infiltration of the WRP, in order to cover up the collaboration with the capitalist judiciary of a leading IMG member, he also chose to defend the conduct of the IMG, even though for his own factional purposes he had severely criticized the Ligue Communiste (French Section of the United Secretariat) one year earlier, for walking into a similar police trap. Hansen has not replied in his press on this matter. It is urgent that the whole of this question be examined with complete objectivity by the whole movement.
The position of the IC on the “Tate affair,” resurrected by Hansen in his reply, is the same as on Hansen’s new accusations. He repeats these lies and slanders, knowing them to be such, only for the purpose of escaping the responsibility of an answer on the questions we have raised. The “Tate affair” was set up and utilized in a campaign of provocation and character-assassination directed especially at Comrade G. Healy. As we have already stated, we are for the whole of this affair being investigated by the parity commission, with the right of any comrade in the movement to submit material and for those principally involved to be able to question each other.
The question of security in the Fourth International, not only at this moment but in our past history, now assumes great importance, and for this reason we of the International Committee, along with the Workers League (USA), who are in political solidarity with us, will bring before a parity commission all material relevant to the security inquiry set up in relation to Wohlforth and Fields.
To continue with the methods exemplified by Hansen’s reply is to deliberately perpetuate a situation in which clarification of urgent political questions by the revolutionary cadres is obstructed, and this is the very worst kind of historical irresponsibility to which anyone claiming to give leadership in the revolutionary movement can descend.
To persist in this method is to create the conditions in which the forces of the bourgeois state would be able to sabotage and attempt to break up the Trotskyist movement. We urge the United Secretariat and the SWP, and the Trotskyists everywhere to come forward immediately and support the IC proposals for a parity committee of three comrades from each side to begin work as soon as possible, and for all comrades in the movement to have access to this commission on all questions concerning provocations and security in the Fourth International.
Yours fraternally,
C. Slaughter
(for the IC of the Fourth International).