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WOHLFORTH TRIES TO BRAZEN IT OUT
Some Comments on a Curious Way of Defending Healy in the Tate Case
By Joseph Hansen
last November 17, Ernest Tate, an internationally known Trotskyist active at present in furthering the work of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the International War Crimes Tribunal, was set upon by a gang at the entrance of a public meeting sponsored in London by the Socialist Labour League, an ultraleft British organization that claims.to be Trotskyist. Ernest Tate was so severely beaten that he had to be hospitalized. The beating was administered by stewards belonging to the SLL and took place in the presence of the national secretary of the group, Thomas Gerard Healy. The beating was administered to prevent Tate from offering socialist literature to persons entering the hall. The literature included copies of the International Socialist Review and a pamphlet, Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International.
The National Committee of the Socialist Workers party sent a protest November 21 to the National Committee of the SLL, demanding that they at once place their national secretary on trial for his part in employing physical violence against a political opponent in the socialist movement, that they publicly condemn such hoodlum tactics, expel all those involved,. and immediately ‘assure all workers organizations in Britain that measures had been undertaken to prevent any repetition of such criminal assaults on workers holding ‘political views differing from those of the SLL.
Farrell Dobbs, national secretary of the Socialist Workers party, sent copies of this letter to the organizations sharing the political views of the SLL and asked them to make public statements indicating their positions in this matter. The request was addressed to Pierre Lambert of Informations Ouvriéres in Paris, Tim Wohlforth of the American Committee for the Fourth International in New York, and James Robertson of the Spartacist League in New York.
Instead of responding, all four organizations remained silent. Healy then com-— pounded the outrageous scandal of the beating inflicted on Ernest Tate. He opened legal proceedings against his victim and against two working-class newspapers that published a letter from Tate describing the circumstances of his being beaten by the SLL stewards and charging Healy with responsibility for the attack.
The Newsletter, the organ of the Central Committee of the SLL, then sought to bring down a curtain of silence on this unsavory business by publishing the following notice in its December 3 issue: "The issues raised in the Nov. 2lst letter by Farrell Dobbs, Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, about what happened at Caxton Hall on the night of November 17th, we cannot discuss at this stage for legal reasons." The notice was remarkable for its modesty in the usually flamboyant Newsletter. The sevenline notice appeared at the bottom of page 3 and did not even have a headline.
The Political Committee of the Socialist Workers party again wrote to the National Committee of the SLL, calling their attention to Healy's second violation of the most elementary norms of conduct in the labor movement; i.e., in effect calling the cops against the very victim of the beating inflicted by the stewards of the SLL in the presence of the national secretary of the organization. [See World Outlook, December 23, 1966, for the text of this letter.] The Political Committee of the Socialist Workers party appealed to the SLL National Committee to act on the recommendations already sub-— mitted to them concerning bringing Healy up on charges and expelling all those involved in utilizing physical violence against workers holding political differences with the SLL.
As in the previous instance , Farrell Dobbs sent copies of this letter to Pierre Lambert, to Tim Wohlforth and to James Robertson, asking them to take a public stand on the issues involved.
Spartacist, which is edited by James Robertson, responded in its January-February issue. It took an honorable stand, denouncing the use of physical violence against other currents in the labor movement. The statement included.a reaffirmation of the "political similarity between the Spartacist League and the SLL" and-the group's political differences with the Socialist Workers party. Of special interest was the inclusion of fresh testimony as to the antidemocratic nature of the SLL. The statement ended by calling for a "workers. inquiry" to expose Healy, “this fraud who disorients and corrupts the Trotskyist fextel by posing as a revolutionary leader." [See World Outlook, February as for the text.
Tim Wohlforth has now responded to the two letters addressed to him by Farrell Dobbs. The February 13 issue of the Bulletin, edited by Wohlforth, carries a statement issued by the "Political Committee Workers League." [See page 216 of this issue of World Outlook for the full text.]
The statement represents a decided shift from the previous position of the Bulletin, indicated by a box in the December 19, 1966, issue which read: "The issues raised in the Nov. 21st letter by Farrell Dobbs, Secretary of the Socialist Workers. Party, about what happened at Caxton Halli on the night of November 17th, we cannot discuss at this stage for legal reasons. ~~ Dec. 3 Newsletter." Alert readers will note that the stand taken by the Bulletin was not widely divergent from the one taken by the Newsletter. The Bulletin was, however, somewhat bolder.. Instead of page 3, it put the notice on page 1. It placed a heavy border around the box and it used a somewhat sensationalistic headline: "LEGAL REASONS."
Just why "legal reasons" prevented the bold and fearless editor of the Bulletin from reporting the beating inflicted on Ernest Tate was left unexplained at the time and it still. remains unexplained in the statement. Equally baffling is the reasoning that led Wohlforth to conclude that after all no legal reasons actually prevent him from taking a stand in this case. Perhaps he came to the conclusion that the American colonies are no longer subject to the British courts. Or it may be that Healy decided that evasion of the issues was not paying off and that Wohlforth's brains were needed to get him and Informations Ouvriéres off the hook.
Wohiforth, it is clear, thought the whole thing through and saw where Healy had pulled some real boners. The statement is designed to rectify things. Healy's denial of guilt in indicating to his stewards that they should beat up Ernest Tate is an instance of this. When Tate publicly charged that Healy was guilty, Healy utilized this as the legal pretext for running to the courts of Her Majesty the Queen. The letters sent out by the solicitors hired by Healy cited Tate's testimony as the basis for legal proceedings, and it was because Healy appealed to bourgeois jurisprudence on this count that two newspapers which had published Ernest Tate's charges made the formal retractions demanded by Healy and paid the legal costs he also demanded. Wohlforth brushes aside the fumbling course taken by Healy. Not only does Wohlforth concede Healy's guilt, he defends in principle Healy's "right" to have his political opponents in the labor movement beaten up whenever he feels such action is called for!
As a defense of the use of physical violence in answering arguments advanced by other tendencies in the labor movement, Wohlforth's statement is probably unique aside from the precedents to be found in the Stalinist movement when the GPU sought to justify the use of violence against "TIrotskyites" and other political dissidents.
As outlined by Wohiforth, the criteria to be used in deciding who should be victimized follows the same grim precedent. These criteria exist solely in the warped mind of the head of the cult, in this case the warped mind of the tinpot despot who serves as the national secretary of the badly degenerated SLL.
Perhaps the strangest twist in Wohlforth's statement is that even after going so far as to defend and advocate the use of violence in polemics with other tendencies in the labor movement, the author cannot quite screw up enough brazenness to defend Healy on resorting to the bourgeois courts. It is too gross for even this boneless political contortionist to swallow in one gulp. And so his statement breathes not a word about Healy's monstrous action of rushing to the class enemy for help against Ernest Tate. However, Wohiforth indicates that he will eventually manage to down this, too, for he approvingly cites the fruits of the solicitors' letters served by Healy; namely, the formal retractions printed by two working-class newspapers (although he does not mention the cash fines levied by Healy).
As a final curiosity, it should be noted that Wohlforth, embarrassed at indicating that his statement is in response to two letters sent him by Farrell Dobbs, gives his statement the form of a denunciation of James Robertson for taking a public