...a centrist attempt to give reformist politics a revolutionary cover."
Week after week, the Workers News calls for the A.L.P. to expel Hawke and Keating. This commentary explains the origins of this impossible demand. It cements the demise of Healy's British section into the sad history of the Fourth International's decomposition.
Much has been written by the In�ternational Committee of the Fourth International about the de�generation of their British section under Gerry Healy's leadership. It boasts that its internationalism defeated Healy's British chauvin�ist nationalistic deviations. Why did it take a revolutionary inter�national twenty years to over�come? Why was there no record of any opposition to serious betrayals from any section of the ICFI? Its Australian section, the Socialist Labour League will claim the ICFI won through in the end and is continuing its glorious tradition of internation�alism.
Works such as Dave North's book The Heritage We Defend and the issue of Fourth Interna�tional (the ICFI theoretical jour�nal) called How the Worker's Revolutionary Party Betrayed Trotskyism, 1973 - 1985 skip over one particular episode of ICFI history - Healy's work in the British Labour Party around the paper Socialist Outlook. This omission is neither trivial nor accidental.
Labor Party orientation had its basis in the late forties when the secretary of the International Sec�retariat, Michel Pablo, argued that there was a "new world reality" in which he predicted "centuries of deformed workers' states". His conclusions were explicitly liquidationalist. He called for revolutionaries to oper�ate "from inside these tendencies to amplify their left centrist ripening and to contest for leader�ship". This required them "not to come out as Trotskyists without a full program - not to push for�ward programatic and principled questions".
In Britain there was no left centrist current in the Labor Party so one had to be created. Pablo recommended an orientation to the left reformist Aneurin Bevan. The Healy tendency crystallised within the Revolutionary Com�munist Party (the `40's British Trotskyist organisation) and in 1947 was directed by the Interna�tional Secretariat to join the Labor Party. Next year they established their paper Socialist Outlook which included on its editorial board Member of Parlia�ment Tom Braddock.
Socialist Outlook was virtually uncritical in its attitude to Bevan. BEVAN GIVES THE LEAD WORKERS WANT went one headline. Only through the defeat of the Right and its policies will a real Labour government be elected was its general thrust. It did not demand the Left expel the Right. It did not demand socialist policies. It adapted to the Bevanite left as it was. Bevan's lauding continued even after he became Minister for Labour and jailed workers.
A key component of Pabloism was, and remains, adapting to Stalinism. Socialist Outlook did that too. Articles were uncritical of the Tito bureaucracy and the Maoists in China.
In 1953 the Healy tendency, the Lambert tendency in France, the U.S. Socialist Worker's Party (which could not affiliate) de�clared themselves the Interna�tional Committee. They made orthodox criticisms of the Inter�national Secretariat and Pablo. Did this change the practice of Healy and Socialist Outlook? Not one iota! The same old Bevanite refrain continued. The Labor Party leadership eventually prohibited Socialist Outlook but in no way did Healy and his cronies press the issue. No one got expelled. Healy instead sold Tribune, the overtly moderate reformist Left Labour newspaper published by a group of MPs, including Tony Benn. Healy's supporters helped establish the Campaign for Nuclear Disarma�ment via the Labor Party. It was then, as it is now, a popular front. In 1961, Gerry Healy and sup�porters established the Socialist Labor League. Entirely oranisationally separate from the Labour Party, it was the predecessor to the Workers' Revolutionary Party. Its liqui�dation was not as gross or as blatant as Socialist Outlook Its main slogan was A LABOUR GOVERN�MENT PLEDGED TO SOCIALIST POLICIES. The slogan's initiator, Michel Pablo saw it as part and parcel of his grand plan to liquidate Trotskyism.
The Socialist Labour League was always a centrist attempt to give reformist politics a revolutionary cover. To sound revolutionary it would call for a general strike. But the general strike was only linked to the election of a Labour Govern�ment "pledged to Socialist poli�cies". They'd call for a new leadership but all their de�mands, such as nationisation, would remain within a re�formist framework.
The International Committee have never given a full and Marxist analysis of Healy's role in the Labour Party be�cause it would challenge its au�thority. At no stage can it be said to constitute the continu�ation of Trotskyism. For a start, it was not a consistent interna�tional tendency. Even while formerly united, the SLL, SWP and OCI held different public positions. George Novack, for example, openly advocated Marxist humanism. The ICFI did make orthodox criticisms of Pabloism. But its gross devia�tion since 1973 has shown that this is simply not good enough.
From 1973 this deviation has been accounted for in Interna�tional Committee publications. They involve selling out to such world leaders as Gaddafi, Khomeini and Hussein of Iraq. They include betraying Iraqi Stalinists to the bourgeois Baath government, costing them their lives. These are extremely serious betrayals. "But our inter�nationalism overcame them and defeated the nationalist devia�tion" is what the ICFI chorus. The reality is there is no record of any serious opposition within any of the sections of the ICFI. It was, simply, not a revolution�ary International.
By covering up the history of Socialist Outlook, the ICFI tries to legitimise rotten tactics and opportunism to give itself ortho�dox credentials. The demand currently raised by the Socialist Labour League in Australia FORCE THE LEFT TO EX�PEL THE RIGHT WING FROM THE ALP has its origin in the Healytie orientation to the British Labour Party. The SLL hangs on to this demand. The difference between the Left and Right within the ALP is of no consequence to the working class. The SLL is demanding the re-orientating of the working class back to a bankrupt reac�tionary party in the name of a
non-existent faction fight. It is the Left that initiated the Accord and Australia Reconstructed. Both of these the SLL consider reaction�ary. We agree. The point is to attack the Left outright - not merely because it accommodates Hawke and Keating.
Some readers may think the SLL's past is inconsequential and what counts is what they're doing today. It values its record despite this critical section being glossed over. Such views show contempt for history and are at variance with Trotskyism. Trotsky's views were succinctly expressed by his secretary, N. Braun (Erwin Wolfe): "The Commune people preferred to present a full balance sheet and they thus proved their bureaucratic dishonesty. Such methods are intolerable in our ranks. A revolutionary organisa�tion which surpresses its own past or tries to lie about its seri�ous mistakes or crimes has no future. It will never be the party of the proletariat and the party of world revolution."
This gaping omission from ICFI history is alone sufficient to expose the authority of the Inter�national Committee. Members and supporters of the Socialist Labour League should demand a complete balance sheet. If they fail to get one - draw up their own. They'll seriously conclude that the ICFI in no way, organisationally or politi�cally, represents the continuity of Trotsky's Fourth International.
*emphasis as in the original: N. Braun
The Mass Paper. Appendix 1 to L. Trotsky
The Crisis in the French Section
published by the Communist Tendency P.O. Box 119 Erskineville. 2043