THE
HEALY SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION
By Henri Valin
The Liége demonstration of last October 15 still continues to be discussed among vanguard youth organizations and militants all over Europe. The Jeunes Gardes Socialistes, under whose auspices the march of more than 4,000 members of working-class and youth organizations from many European countries was staged in Belgium against the imperialist aggression in Vietnam and against the international imperialist NATO alliance, have now called for a conference in February of progressive youth organizations in Europe in order to consider ways and means to better coordinate such struggles.
The impact of the Liége demonstration on the youth in the East European workers states and the Communist youth organizations in Western Europe was such that the official Moscow daily Pravda thought it advisable to print a photograph of the demonstration in its issue of October 21 together with a favorable caption, although it did not disclose to its readers the identity of the sponsors or the nature of the British contingent they photographed.
The World Federation of Democratic Youth, led by pro-Moscow Communist parties, made a lame attempt at parrying inquiries from its members as to why it had not taken the initiative in organizing international actions and demonstrations in support of the Vietnamese revolution and against the U.S. imperialist aggression in Vietnam. It issued an appeal for a stepped up solidarity campaign with the Vietnamese people which was published in the November 14 issue of the French Communist party daily 1'Humanité.
‘The tiny pro-Chinese sects represented the Liége demonstration as a combination of "Trotskyists and facists," and the Belgian pro-Mao paper La Voix du Peuple [Voice of the People] even ran an obviously faked photograph to “prove" its charge. The headline on this article was “Trotskyists, fascists and cops 'fraternally' mix in an anti- Communist ‘demonstration. '"
Aside from them, the only attacks in the international labor movement against the demonstration have come from the ultraleft British sect, the Socialist Labour League headed by Healy, and its French followers.
Their method of attack, like that of the Belgian pro-Maoists, echoes the methods used by Stalinism -- slander, forgery, repetition of brazen lies.
Thus in the January 7 issue of The Newsletter, the official weekly of the SLL, Gerry Healy, the national secretary of the organization, in speaking of the leaders of the Fourth International in Europe, of the Socialist Workers party in the United States, says the following:
"Since the Hungarian Revolution personified the struggle of the international working class against bureaucracy, it was only natural that these running dogs of Stalinism and social democracy should resent the appearance of a banner defending that Revolution on the October 15 demonstration.
"It was only natural that they should call for the police to have the banner removed so that a tiny handful of Stalinist youth would be placated."
Did the leaders of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes call in the police to haul down the banner of the Young Socialists in defense of the Hungarian Revolution?
; At this late date, Healy is still repeating a lie that was exposed immediately after the demonstration. Let us recall the facts in this unsavory matter.
The October 22 issue of The Newsletter carried the following statement:
"When the [British] Young Socialists who were carrying them [banners commemorating the Hungarian Revolution] refused to take them down, Germain's rather elderly young socialists called up the assistance of the Belgian police to haul the Hungarian banner down. "
This statement was nothing but an outrageous lie, used as "proof" for the slander that the organizers of the anti-imperialist demonstration at Liége were just "handmaidens of imperialism" (this choice epithet appears in the same article).
As was to be expected, such a falsification provoked a vigorous reaction. In its issue of October 29, the Belgian left socialist weekly La_Gauche, with which the
Jeunes Gardes Socialistes are closely linked, exposed and denounced the slander. On November 1, the national secretary of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes sent a letter to the National Committee of the British Young Socialists in which he asked this body to repudiate the lies published in The Newsletter concerning his organization and stating that until this was done the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes were breaking off all relations with the Young Socialists and would not invite them to the next projected conference of progressive youth organizations in Europe which the JGS was sponsoring.
No revolutionary socialist interested in advancing support for the Vietnamese Revolution is going to sit at a conference table with people whose contribution consists of calling him a "police agent" or a "handmaiden of imperialism" and who fabricate "proofs" to bolster such slanderous epithets.
Healy's response was to add new lies to the old one. The Newsletter printed the following in the November 12 issue:
"We went to Thiry [national chairman of the JGS] to ask him about the order of the march and instead of answering this question he began to demand that our banner on the Hungarian revolution should be taken down. Our reply was that there could be no question of this.
"He then said that in that case we would not be part of the march. I replied that as we, together with our French comrades of Revoltes, made up more than half the march, we were really not concerned about his permission.
"At this stage two men who had been standing by Thiry, and who were unknown to us, intervened. They said that they were police officers and they should make it clear that if we were not part of the official march, we would not be allowed to march.
"We replied that we had been officially invited by the Belgian Young Socialists to the march and that we were therefore officially part of the march. Thiry then intervened and repeated that if we persisted in keeping the banners up, we would not be recognised by him..."
The rest of this account in The Newsletter deals with the British Young Socialists' own private negotiations with the police and has nothing to do with the subject.
Two things are to be noted in this account: (1) It does not claim that the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes called in the police. It in fact confirms the truthful report which appeared in World Outlook of November 18, that the police intervened on their own initiative.* (2) The account does not confirm the claim of the October 22 Newsletter that the police were called "to haul the Hungarian banner down," although the author seeks to make up for this by alleging that the JGS "were quite happy to have the police do it for then."
These admissions, which actually expose the lie in the October 29 issue of The Newsletter, are utilized to offer a new version; namely, that a parley occurred between the Young Socialists, Thiry and the police. In other words, the first lie is patched up.
The fact is that when the police intervened, the political secretary of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes, George Dobbeleer, told them to mind their own business and to let the question of the banners in the march be decided by the organizers of the march themselves. The police thereupon withdrew.
As we now learn from The Newsletter, they withdrew; but the representative of the Young Socialists negotiated with them privately.
This was of no concern to the JGS so long as the police did not intervene in discussions they engaged in with other participants in the demonstration; and in fact the police did not intervene again.
The account in the November 12 Newsletter thus confirms the following four points of fact printed in the November 18 World Outlook:
"(1) That the leaders of the Communist Youth objected to the above-mentioned banners and had asked the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes to have them removed, since they did not conform with the stated objectives of the demonstration.
*The presence of police officers near the head of demonstrations is a common custom in Belgium as it is in most bourgeois democratic countries. ;
"(2) That the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes had asked the British and French Healyites to remove these banners in-order not to break up the united front character of a demonstration in defense of the Vietnamese revolution.
"(3) That when these attempts proved unsuccessful, due to the incurably sectarian character of the Healyites, the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes agreed to leave the banasa) even if this meant that the Communist Youth would withdraw (which they promptly did).
"(4) That when the police tried to intervene at this point, in order to play the role of ‘arbiter' in the dispute, they were firmly told by the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes to mind their own business and not to interfere in an internal dispute among the demonstrators that was none of their business."
In their November 26 issue, the editors of The Newsletter made an interesting concession. They published an article by Aileen Jennings defending the course of the Young Socialists at Liége which does not so much as mention the intervention of the police or the lie that they had been called in by the organizers of the demonstration. The article is a polemic that tries to justify the sectarian policies of the Young Socialists. As part of her argument she quotes as follows from the official statement of the National Bureau of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes which appeared in the October 22 La Gauche. Referring to the Young Communists (we indicate in brackets errors or omissions in The Newsletter's translation):
_ "They had shown [stated] their agreement with the slogans of the demonstration but found themselves confronted with an unforeseen [unexpected] situation [at the assenbly point itself], Yser Square. The Young Socialists held up [unfurled] a huge banner for tto] the glory of the Polish and Hungarian revolutions of 1956.
"The Belgian Communist groups [group of Belgian Communists] threatened to leave [withdraw] then if the banner was not removed.
"We were in a delicate situation.
"On the one hand, we could not tolerate unforeseen banners [banners not agreed upon] among the official slogans [objectives]; on the other hand it was not possible to remove the banner [these banners] without unleashing a [pitched] battle. Basically, even if we had used means to remove it, we would never have wanted to remove such a panner. [Basically, even if we had had the means to do it, we would never have been willing to remove such a banner.]"
Let us emphasize the last sentence, which even in its garbled form, was the first indication readers of the Healyite press had of the true attitude of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes: "Basically, even if we had had the means to do it, we would never have been willing to remove such a banner."
This, as we have seen, has not prevented Healy from continuing to repeat his first lie, alleging that the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes called the police "to haul the Hungarian banner down."
Grasping at anything that might be twisted into a semblance of "substantiation" of the slander, the November 19 issue of The Newsletter quoted from a letter by Pierre Le Gréve, a socialist member of parliament in Belgium, which was published in both the October 29 and November 5 issues of La _ Gauche. According to the author of the item in The Newsletter, Sheila Torrance,le Gréve's letter is a bald attempt to justify the "right to call in the police." ,
Since this letter has been distorted in this way, it is necessary to include it in the record. Here is the full text:
"TI expected to find in La Gauche a report of the Liége demonstration underlining its positive aspects but which would also seek to account for certain errors for which the organizers bore no material responsibility. They run the risk, however, of being charged with moral responsibility for these errors if they don't clearly disavow them. The unsigned article,* appearing to speak in the name of La Gauche, however, which was published on page 12, was disappointing.
*Le Gréve is mistaken. The article was signed by the National Bureau of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes. The layout of the article, however, created some confusion.
"Here is what should have been said, in my opinion, about the appearance of slogans that had not been agreed upon: 'We disavow an act that consists in introducing into an antimilitarist, anti-imperialist and anti-NATO demonstration, called in behalf of unconditional solidarity with the Vietnamese people, slogans that have nothing to do with the aim of that demonstration.'
"This was the case with the slogan concerning the events of 1956 in Budapest. Nothing would have prevented you from then adding that you were in agreement with the opinion inspiring that slogan but that a mere slogan does not permit sufficient differentiation between the attitude supporting the movement of the Hungarian workers in favor of workers councils, which is our attitude, from the anti-Communist exploitation which the reaction has tried to wring out of it.
"The principle should have been recalled that it is impermissible in a united front demonstration for certain participants to arrogate to themselves the right to impose slogans which a participating tendency considers inadmissible. Differences have never been resolved through provocations but through discussion. Having made this clear, no one could have blamed the JGS for not having used force or -- still worse -- for not having called for the use of force, in order to impose respect for the decisions that had been reached in good faith. It would have counteracted the impression among the demonstrators who finally withdrew that they had been taken in."
Of this letter, only the last paragraph was cited by The Newsletter and not in a faithful translation. Still even there it is quite clear that Le Gréve is defending the JGS for not having used force and for not having called the police. He is defending them against critics who maintain that they_should have called the police. These critics included the leaders of the Belgian Communist Youth who withdrew from the march. Le Gréve's own criticism is that the JGS should have explained more clearly afterward why they were opposed tactically to introducing into this demonstration the slogan concerning the Hungarian Revolution, while agreeing with the general appreciation of the 1956 events represented by the slogan.
It needs all the cheek and cynicism of a Healy to transfer this clear statement into its exact opposite; i.e., a statement -- to use the words of the November 19 Newsletter ---which "justifies your right to call in the police"!
Only a Stalinist-type bureaucrat with monumental contempt for his own followers could think he could get away with utilizing the very words with which Le Gréve confirms that the JGS did not call in the police and did not want to call in the police as "proof" that they did the opposite!
Is Healy's slander the result of a wrong impression or was it deliberately concocted? Consider the following:
After the demonstration October 15, a big mass meeting was held. The next day a joint discussion among the vanguard youth organizations took place. At both gatherings, representatives of the Young Socialists were present. Also present were their allies, the French group "Révoltes."
The Young Socialists, conducting themselves in a correct and disciplined way, made all the political points they had a mind to make. The Révoltes group also made all the points they cared to present, but they behaved in hooligan fashion, shouting and interrupting other speakers and making a spectacle of themselves.
Yet in neither gathering did either the Young Socialists or Révoltes mention so much as once the charge that the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes had "called upon the assistance of the Belgian police to haul the Hungarian banner down."
Surely this was the time and place to confront the perpetrators of the alleged crime with this grave accusation! ;
The fact that it took Healy and his French allies an entire week to come up with this charge is a good indication that it was conceived and hatched in the editorial offices of The Newsletter. ,
“The whole sordid affair can be epitomized in the following dialogue:
Healy: The JGS called upon the assistance of the Belgian police to haul the Hungarian banner down.
JGS: That's a downright lie. We did not call the police in. Your banners were not hauled down. We would never remove by force -- or still worse ~- call in the police
to remove a banner with which we are in fundamental agreement even if we thought it ill-advised to introduce it into a united-front demonstration for the defense of the Vietnamese Revolution.
Healy: But the police were there and intervened didn't they?
JGS: Of course the police were there, as they are at all public demonstrations in Belgium. But they intervened on their own initiative as you yourself now admit. As for us, we at once told them to mind their own business. That ended the matter.
Healy: But didn't your adult leader Pierre Le Gréve justify your right to call in the police?
JGS: He did nothing of the sort. From the letter which you yourself quote it is clear that he specifies we did not call in the police and he justifies our right not to call the police and says that nobody could have blamed us for not calling the police provided we made our stand clear on the questions of principle and tactics involved.
Healy: Anyway your leaders are handmaidens of imperialism and their line is such that it comes natural for them to call in the police...
The pattern echoes the one followed by the Stalinists in the day of the crude GPU frame-ups. At the first big Moscow trial, for instance, three defendants were accused of having met Trotsky's son, Leon Sedov, in Copenhagen in 1932 in order to get "terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. One of the defendants, Holtzman, actually confessed having met Sedov in the vestibule of the Bristol hotel in the Danish capital. This was the only tangible link which the prosecution advanced at the trial to "prove" that the defendants actually did have links with Trotsky and his movement.
Unfortunately for the frame-up artists, it turned out that there was no "Bristol" hotel in Copenhagen in 1932. To this exposure of the frame-up, which | resounded throughout the world, the forgers responded: "But there was a Bristol café.
This only got them into deeper difficulties. First, the Bristol café didn't have a vestibule. Second, Sedov was able to prove that at the time he was supposed to be meeting with Holtzman in the nonexistent vestibule of the nonexistent hotel, he was not even in Copenhagen.
With imperturbable cynicism, the apologists for Stalin's crimes retorted: Who cares about the Bristol hotel, the Bristol café, a café with a vestibule or a café without a vestibule? The Soviet Union is in danger; “objectively" the Trotskyists. are counterrevolutionaries, so you have to support the Moscow trials.
This is the school which Healy has now adopted as his own. The unfortunate thing is that Healy still thinks it worthwhile to masquerade as a "Trotskyist. "
In accordance with the logic of such methods, Healy has provided evidence of a strong inclination to proceed beyond mere slander in dealing with opponents with whom he is. at factional odds.
In Paris November 4 at a meeting organized by his French followers to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, Healy was featured as the main speaker. He spent most of his time berating factional opponents, including the Jeunesses Communistes. Révolutionnaires, a group of Communist youth militants who were expelled’ from the French Communist movement because of revolutionary opposition to Khrushchevism. When some of them sought the floor to answer the slanderous charges levelled against them and against the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes in relation to the Liége demonstration they were handled very roughly by the Healyite stewards.
Next came the severe beating administered November 17 to Ernest Tate at the entrance to a meeting sponsored by the Socialist Labour League in London. Tate was selling socialist literature, including copies of the International Socialist Review and the pamphlet, Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International. In the presence of Healy hinself, a gang, recognized by witnesses to be members of the SLL, set upon Tate and beat him so severely that he had to be hospitalized. Healy's excuse for this use of force against. a Trotskyist was that the SLL stewards were clearing the pavement.
When Ernest Tate sent copies of a letter to various British left-wing publications, in order to protest this use of force, which is completely alien to the revolutionary tradition, he promptly received a letter from Healy's solicitors threatening to drag him before the bourgeois courts! Tate had dared to accuse him of responsibility
for the beating...
In addition, Healy sent solicitors' letters to two left-wing publications that had published Tate's letter, threatening to drag them into the bourgeois courts unless they immediately published formal retractions and paid him costs.
Thus has Healy demonstrated how things turn into their opposites. In his version of what happened at Liége he slanderously accused his opponents in the world Trotskyist movement of calling "upon the assistance of the Belgian police to haul the Hungarian banner down." Within weeks he himself was running to the bourgeois courts to bring the bourgeois law down on a Trotskyist because he dared to protest being the victim of force employed under Healy's direction!
And why does Healy do this? Because he is caught in the logic of blind, dead-end factionalism. He is in deathly fear that the ideas and arguments of the world Trotskyist movement, which he is incapable of meeting in reasoned argument and debate, will spread among the members of the Socialist Labour League. Therefore he seeks in his own way to block this development and to poison relations with the world Trotskyist movement.
The use of physical violence to prevent militants or tendencies in the labor movement from voicing their opinions publicly, is a characteristic of fascism. It was introduced into the labor movement by the Stalinists. In the end, coupled with their disastrous policies, it resulted in their almost total isolation in the labor movement and their being regarded as moral lepers by the rest of the working class.
The democratic right of any group of workers or any tendency of the labor movement to publicly advance its views in an effective way, however abhorrent they may be to us, is a basic right emphasized by Lenin in State and Revolution as one of the reasons for the superiority of proletarian over bourgeois democracy. The Trotskyist movement has defended this principle and this right under the most difficult conditions against fascists and Stalinists alike. It will continue to do this against anyone who violates it, including those who debase the good name of Trotskyism with their despicable methods.
We do not doubt that many members of the British Young Socialists and the SLL genuinely want to build a revolutionary-socialist party and that they joined because they thought they had found the Trotskyist movement. Sooner or later they will ask themselves: Why does Healy resort to organizational methods characteristic of Stalinism? Doesn't this dishonor the SLL and give it a most evil reputation throughout the Labour movement? Why is Healy so afraid of workers democracy and the free flow of ideas if he has any confidence in the strength of his own positions?
In endeavoring to find rational answers to these questions they will inevitably find themselves turning in the direction of the world Trotskyist movement and away from Healy's insistence upon keeping the SLL in national isolation, committed to the aber