ERNEST TATE BEATEN BY SQUAD AT SLL MEETING
London
An attempt to revive the methods made notorious by Stalinism in the thirties appears to be underway in England. This time it is being done by the leadership of the Socialist Labour League, an ultraleft sectarian organization that makes the fraudulent claim of being "Trotskyist."
The latest incident was the brutal beating of Ernest Tate, an internationally known Trotskyist who has been active in London in the work of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the International War Crimes Tribunal initiated by Bertrand Russell. He is the manager of Pioneer Book Service, the major supplier of Trotskyist literature in England.
Ernest Tate was distributing literature in front of a meeting sponsored by the Socialist Labour League at Caxton Hall November 17. The items he was selling included the International Socialist Review and a pamphlet Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International.
Six young toughs jumped Tate, smashing his glasses and bringing him down to the pavement. In commando fashion they. continued to kick him, aiming at his genitals, kidneys and head, until pulled off by horrified spectators. Tate had to be hospitalized.
Witnesses stated that they recognized the assailants as members of the Socialist Labour League. Thomas Gerard Healy, the general secretary of the organization, appeared to be supervising the action personally.
Nothing like this has been seen in the radical movement in England since the thirties when Stalinists physically assaulted Trotskyists to prevent them from speaking their views and selling their newspapers. In those days, the Stalinists tried to rationalize their gangster attacks by slandering the Trotskyists as counterrevolutionaries.
The attempt to revive Stalinist methods was preceded by comparable slander in the Healyite press aimed at prejudicing members of the Socialist Labour League so as to prevent them from reading material such as that provided by the Socialist Workers Party and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
A particular target has been the pamphlet Healy ."Reconstructs" the Fourth International, which includes a series of