For almost a year the Workers Revolutionary Party, the British group headed by Gerry Healy, has conducted a vicious slander campaign against the Socialist Work- er of the American ers Party of the USA and two of its veteran leaders, Joseph Hanson and George Novack. Healy and his followers in various countries have published articles and pamphlets, held public meetings and testimony to substantiate distributed leaflets and posters accusing both men of 'criminal negligencel in Trotskyls assassination and of being 'accomplices less innuendos, of the GPU', alleging that they have covered up crimes of the Soviet pollce and shielded its gentes frame-up.
They also insinuate that Hansen colluded with the FBI. By implication, their charges likewise dishonour James P Cannon, foundmovement, as well as Trotsky and Healy and his associates have not brought forward the slightest probative evidence, documents or libelous accusations against Hansen or Novack. The script of their polemic is fabricated out of basegratuitous suppositions and outright lies that do not have any political foundation in fact. They constitute a political
The specific allegations have been exposed and refuted point by point in articles by various organisations and individuals printed in Intercontinental Press, which can be consulted for extensive information.
The records of Hansen and Novack as political figures and writers are well known to us and to many others the world over. Both have been continuously active for more than 40 years as prominent members of the American Trotskyist movement and as supporters of the Fourth International. It is especially odious that they have been singled out and falsely accused of aiding Stalin's assassins, since they devoted themselves to protecting Trotsky's life during his last exile in Mexico.
The signers of this statement feel obliged to speak out in defence of Hansen and Novack, and the Socialist Workers Party, against the smear campaign impugning their integrity.
But there is more to the matter than that. We are concerned about the practice of such disruptive methods in the workers! movement. They are not new. The Mencheviks maintained that Lenin was a paid agent of the Kaiser. Later Stalin accused Trotsky of being an agent of the Ge: "apo. Marxists and civil libertains have, from the first, repudiated these frame - up techniques employed by the Stalinists against their political opponents & critics. Anyone else who resorts to them must be opposed. Otherwise, the struggle for socialism, which includes the honest presentation of conflicting views, becomes discredited.
We call upon the leaders of the Workers Revolutionary Party & their followers to cease their scurrilous attacks. They discredit the authors, not the accused. We further ask others who share our position that frame-ups have no place in the socialist move -ment to add their voice of protest and public condemnation to ours.