(The following article is reprinted from the Nov. 14. 1985, issue of Combate, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (L.CR), section of the Fourth International in Spain. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.J
Last Wednesday, November 5, readers of El Pats [a major big-business daily| came across a surprising headline on page six: "Fight over funds of the British Trotskyist party.
In order to make sure that the "news" would not go unnoticed, it was placed in a box and illustrated with a photo of Vanessa Redgrave.
The wire service report that followed would overwhelm the desires of those who love tempestuous emotions: the extraordinary actress and eccentric political activist had hidden an old man in her house. Gerry Healy, the former general secretary of the British WRP [Workers Revolutionary Partyl, who was accused by the new party leadership of "sexual deviations" for having seduced at least" 26 young members. But in reality the heart of the matter was a struggle over the party's property, worth some 345 million pesetas [US$2.2 million].
In the hands of Mario Vargas Llosa, all this could give rise to a second volume of Historia de Mayta. The reference to the Peruvian novelist is not an idle one because, as is well known, Vargas Llosa is a fervent defender of the literary "lie," understood as the writer's right to manipulate real facts as he chooses in the service of his literary and political objectives. This method can be used to write good or bad novels. But applied to the press. it results in pure and simple yellow journalism.
A sordid story
For those who know a little bit about the old factional histories of the Fourth International, this sordid story is not hard to understand. Gerry Healy was one of the main figures of the 1953 split, the most serious in the International's history. The majority of the English section of that time remained with him.
And this was the origin of one of a proliferation of internationalist currents led by "strongmen" in the Trotskyist crisis of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. the socalled "wandering in the wilderness." The current is called "Healyism," and in Spain it includes a group called the LOC [Communist Workers League].
"Healyism" is characterized by being a true exemplar of a sect. Its principal quality, therefore, is paranoia. Not only the "consciousness" of being surrounded by enemies, but also viewing those who are the closest as the worst enemies, and seeing anyone who does not share the sect's points of view as necessarily an agent of the bourgeoisie or the KGB, or an obstinate "sexual deviate," or all those things at once:
To take one example, "Healyism's" main and virtually only political activity in recent years has been to spread the story that Trotsky was murdered by the main leaders of the Fourth International of that time, who "obviously" were agents infiltrated by the Stalinist KGB.
What must be taking place now in the "British WRP" is a gang war to gain control over not just the property, but especially the "power" in the sect.
Not only is the story depraved, it is above all insignificant. The sect must have little more than 100 members and is only known because of the Redgrave family's membership within it.
Trotskyism and sects
That El Pais has provided a prominent report of this history is due to the general criteria it uses to deal with everything that exists to the left of the Communist parties. It remains silent or distorts any influential. positive activity. whether by the Mexican PRT [Revolutionary Workers Party], the English SWP [Socialist Workers Party|, or the Italian DP |Proletarian Democracy|. while emphasizing the obscure episodes of any sect, which are served up as an "example" of the marginality and degeneration of the far left.
Asserting that this "WRP" is "the British Trotskyist party" can only be due to great ignorance or bad faith. In the extremely complex panorama of the far left in Britain there must be a dozen groups that call themselves "Trotskyists" and many others calling themselves "Stalinists," or "Maoists," etc.
But there are only three significant organizations: the so-called Militant" current, the SWP, and our comrades organized around the newspaper Socialist Action. These organizations have very different lines and may be right or wrong on different questions. But they are present in the important struggles that take place in Britain, often with real influence. from the miners* strike to Greenham Common [antimissiles demonstrations]:
Naturally these organizations may have internal problems of varying degrees of seriousness. But they do not have the type of morbid histories that the international editors of the "independent press" enjoy. Well then, good luck to them and to those who might believe in them.
One final point. As we have repeated many times, "Trotskyism" — viewed as a "movement" or as a "program" that would encompass all the groups and currents that in one way or another call themselves "Trotskyists" - does not exist.
What do exist are organizations of revolutionaries, reformists, and sects. And within cach category there are diverse programmatic and ideological reference points. There is no question but that the histories of the
"Trotskyist" sects are obnoxious and sometimes create problems.
But we have absolutely nothing in common with them. When we call ourselves Trotskyists, we are referring to the continuity of a communist struggle that confronted Stalinism and today seeks to build, together with the other revolutionary currents, a new international communist leadership. Nothing more, nothing less.