CHEEK!
{The following article has been translated by World Outlook from the November 29 issue of Voix Ouvriére, a socialist newspaper published twice a month in Paris. The article deals with some incidents that occurred at a meeting in Paris November 4 at which Thomas Gerard Healy, general secretary of the Socialist Labour League was the featured speaker.
(The incidents were referred to in the November 12 issue of Healy's paper, The Newsletter, as follows: "Last Friday's meeting was not a public meeting for conflicting opinions....The Pabloites and Voix Ouvriére who, despite their differences, had. united in a new anti-Trotskyist coalition, attempted to provoke incidents at the meeting. These, fortunately, did not get very far. They demanded the right to speak at 11:30, when the meeting was closed. The chairman refused them."
[Voix Ouvriére, as will be seen, offers a different account. It should be added that the Voix Ouvriére group deserve to be heard on anything concerning Healy and the Socialist Labour League. They were the recipients of nothing less than a special invitation to participate in an international conference sponsored by Healy last April. The general secretary of the SLL counted on them to constitute a basic part of an international grouping he is attempting to build. The Voix Ouvriére report on the astounding violations of democracy at that conference and why they had no choice but to walk out is included in the pamphlet Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International which has been placed on the list of literature that members of the SLI are apparently forbidden to read. As reported in recent issues of World Outlook, Ernest Tate was seriously beaten by a gang when he sought to sell this pamphlet and International Socialist Review in front of an SLL meeting in London... --
[The original title of the article in Voix Ouvriére is "Un certain culot!" which we have translated as "Some Cheek! "]
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At a recent meeting held by the OCI [Organisation Communiste Internationaliste] and Révoltes, the sergeants at arms beat and threw out a mémber of the JCR [Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire] who wanted to take the floor because his organization had been attacked and reviled throughout the meeting.
The sergeants at arms also set upon distributors of Voix Ouvriére.
We have not mentioned this matter up to now, although we are of the opinion that these methods can only injure the Trotskyist movement as a whole, because we felt that it involved irresponsible actions committed by young comrades who confused extremism with political intransigence and the combativity required in fighting the class enemy with bluster inside four walls and victories without any risks and therefore without any glory. -
But Information Ouvriére [a small bulletin edited by Pierre Lambert, one of Healy's French followers] has come out with an account of this in which they accuse us of having deliberately provoked the incidents.
We already knew that these comrades took liberties with the truth, despite the fine name of their rarely printed monthly [La_Verité (The Truth) is notorious for the irregularity of its appearance], a name which they are really not worthy to use.
Now they have become brazen.
No, these comrades are decidedly not taking the road of reconstructing the Fourth International, whatever they may say or think.
They claim that we are in a common front with the militants of the JCR and the PCI (Fourth International) [Parti Communiste Internationaliste, the French section of the Fourth International]. This is politically stupid but that does not seem to bother them. The truth is that what we want and what we hold to is that all the Trotskyists should maintain cordial and fraternal relations even if the political polemics are extremely sharp. It is the opportunists who feel the need to express their differences by raving or resorting to blows. When you have confidence in your ideas, you don't need such exhibitions which would be disastrous for any organization having a genuine audience.
TEXT OF A LETTER FROM