Over the past year, the WRP (Workers Revolutionary Party)has led a scurrilous campaign of lies and slander against veteran Trotskyists Joseph Hansen and George Novack. They have been accused, in Healy's kangeroo court, of acting for almost 40 years as accomplices of the GPU and of Icriminal negligence' in Trotsky's death.
More recently, the WRP leaders have decided to escalate their campaign by scheduling public rallies throughout the country. Only last year, a London meeting, ostensibly to commemorate Leon Trotsky's death, was turned into a show 'trial! where ".. veteran Trotskyist Georges Veereken" was turned out, among others, to provide fresh evidence against the accused.
it may, at first sight, appear strange that the WRP leaders should be more concerned to 'hound' leading socialists like Hansen and Novack than to take up such key issues as defence of the Irish freedom struggle. The answer is not, however, as The WRP has, over the years, suffered some dramatic set-backs, In 1972, its sister organisation in France (the OCI) split the 'International Committee'. More recently, leading figures of the WRPIs co - thinkers in the USA and Australia have broken with Healy and moved towards the Fourth International.
In Britain itself, it was only last year that 200 trade unionists were expelled from the WRP for rejecting Healy's sectarian politics and demanding the right to think for themselves. They later formed the WSL.
This increasing isolation and fragmentation of the WRP - under the political pressure of the Fourth International - has been a growing threat to the WRP's leaders. They have replied to it by the only method they know: by launching a slanderous personal attack upon their opponents in attempt to immunise their dwindling ranks against the possibility of contagion. Such an attack is -quite clearly - rooted in Stalinist 'frame - up' methods.
Hansen and Novack, who have fully answered the charges against them, are not of course the sole victims of Healy's frame-up methods. Tim Wholforth (who left the WRP's sister organisat -ion in the USA) was denounced for being a 'CIA agent! and Alan Thornett, who led the opposition within the WRP, was accused of being a 'police The systematic campaign launched against cdes Jo Hansen and George Novack is, however, the most frightening example of what can happen when factional abuse replaces political polemic.
By indulging in these methods, Healy not only brings discredit upon the WRP but upon Trotskyism itself. The Guardian, for example, defined the campaign as an "internal witch-hunt" among the "eternally squabbling" Trotskyist groups. The good name of Trotskyism is, obviously, far from the minds of the WRP slander - experts who, both in their sectarian political line and organisational methods, abandonned Trotskyism a long There is increasing evidence, however, Healy's use of the big liel against his political opponants is losing its effect. Below we reprint a statement - fully endorsed by the LSA - which totally condemns these methods.
The signatures on it represent a wide spectrum. Included are a number of tendencies and individuals who, while disagreeing among themselves, are united in defending free dialogue among working class organisations and opposing the use of "frame-up' tactics borrowed from the traditions of Stalinism.
We would single out the support of 5 former secretaries and guards of Leon Trotsky; pioneers of the early Trotskyist movement such as Arne Swabeck; leading Trotskyist figures today such as Ernest. Mandel, Hugo Blanco and Pierre Lambert and other fighters for free discussion -Ken Coates and Tamara Deutcher.
The wide-spread repulsion for Healy's frame-up methods the world over implies that his desperate campaign is bound to fail. The technique of the big lie is dead.