(The following statement was issued October 29 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.]
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The October 21, 1972, issue of the Workers Press, the official organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League, carried a slanderous attack on Bala Tampoe, the general secretary of the Ceylon Mercantile Union. The author of the article, one Jack Gale, asserts that Tampoe is "known to have associated with the CIA."
Why should the imperialist spy agency want to associate with Bala Tampoe? Washington is certainly not preparing to overthrow the Bandaranaike regime— at least from the left. Gale offers no explanation. Nor does he explain what interest Bala Tampoe, who opposes both imperialism and the Bandaranaike regime, could conceivably have in associating with the CIA.
The author of the article indicates as his source of information only Edmund Samarakkody, a former tactional opponent of Tampoe. An investigation undertaken by us in 1969 showed that the slander was cooked up and put into circulation originally up and put into circulation originally by the former Trotskyists in Ceylon who betrayed the movement and accepted posts offered them by Bandaranaike, and who were under heavy fire for this from Bala Tampoe.
How did this bit of ancient garbage happen to finally end up gracing the pages of the Workers Press, which makes a great show of its repugnance for the former Trotskyists in Ceylon and all their works?
First of all because the technique of the "big lie" has been utilized with increasing frequency in recent years by the leaders of the SLL under the guidance of their general secretary, Gerry Healy, and this item looked particularly suitable for such use.
The smearing of Bala Tampoe, a leading Ceylonese Trotskyist, in this way is on par with the beating that stewards of the SLL inflicied on Ernest Tate, a leading British Trotskyist, while Healy looked on. Tate was "guilty" of hawking Trotskyist literature in front of an SLL public meeting. Tampoe scorned inducements to line up with the SLL.
These are signs, among others, of the deep degeneration of the SLL. Incapable of meeting criticism with reasoned arguments, the leaders of the SLL borrow from the arsenal of Stalinism — which also calls for labeling political opponents as "spies" and "agents" of foreign powers and subjecting them to physical assault.
The timing of the attack on Bala Tampoe is worth noting. Tampoe is one of the main attorneys for the defense of the young revolutionists of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, who are now being processed in the courts by the repressive Bandaranaike regime. Coinciding with this defense, various unions (among them the Cey- Ion Mercantile Union) initiated the first big action by the toiling masses of Sri Lanka since the "state of emergency" was decreed by Bandaranaike a year ago. This action was a nationwide, twenty-four-hour hunger strike. And the bank workers, in defense of their wage standards, called a strike in defiance of the coalition government composed of the bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom party, the reformist Lanka Sama Samaja party,
[Some 30,000 persons turned out for an antiwar demonstration in Paris October 15 called by the youth organizations of the Communist and Socialist parties. Although it was not one of the sponsoring groups, the FSI (Front Solidarité Indochine - Indochina Solidarity Front) called on its supporters to join the demonstration. More than 4,000 marched in the FSI contingent.
[At one point in the demonstration, the "defense guard" of the Alliance des Jeunes pour le Socialisme (AJS — AI- liance of Youth for Socialism, a group that claims to be Trotskyist) attacked the FSI contingent, clubbing a number of marchers and sending four members of the Ligue Communiste, French section of the Fourth International, to the hospital.
[The AJS is affiliated with the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI- Internationalist Communist Organization, a group headed by
Lambertists Attack Antiwar Demonstrators Lambertists Attack Antiwar Demonstrators and the pro-Moscow
Communist party.
All the reactionary supporters of the treacherous coalition regime rallied in support of its efforts to railroad the JP revolutionists to long terms in prison, to smash the bank workers' strike, and to keep the masses cowed.
This was when the Healyites found it necessary to make their contribution. They did not solidarize with the Trotskyist-led bank workers' strike. They did not solidarize with the legal defense of the young revolutionists of the JVP against the frame-up charges of the coalition regime. They did not solidarize with the hunger strike taken as a step toward arousing mass resistance to the abrogation of democratic rights in Sri Lanka.
Instead, the Healyites singled out the "main enemy" for their bucket of mud.
What does Healy hope to gain from this? Something of great importance to him. In view of the latest developments in Sri Lanka, curiosity in the ranks of the SLL over his real reasons for splitting from the world Trotskyist movement might become troublesome. A fast prophylaxis was required. Hence the poisonous article against Bala Tampoe and the Fourth International.
Pierre Lambert which considers itself the French section of the "International Committee of the Fourth International"). A split in the rump "International Committee" became public in October 1971, with the OC1 on one side and the Socialist Labour League (SLL) of Great Britain and the Workers League (WL) of the United States on the other.
[Flagrant violations of the norms of workers' democracy and the use of physical attacks on other tendencies in the workers' movement are nothing new for either side of the split "International Committee." In a number of instances, their acts of violence have been directed at members of the Fourth International. And while this latest assault is perhaps the most vicious, it has precedents in such incidents as the beating of Fourth International representative Ernest Tate by SLL goons outside a meeting in
London in 1966 at which SLL leader Gerry Healy was speaking.
[The following three items deal with the October 15 attack by the AJS. They appeared in the September 21 issue of Rouge, the weekly organ of the Ligue Communiste. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]