Gerry Healy HEALY MAY have been expelled, but Healyism still thrives in the leadership of the WRP. Neither can a leadership schooled in the WRP's particular brand of opportunism and catastrophism - basing its politics on the belief of some impending event which will change everything — be expected to make a decisive break with Healyism. Militants in the WRP who want to take the road away from the grotesque sect politics of Healy will have to come to terms with the whole history of the SLL-WRP current. It is a tradition which was flawed from the very Ever since its formation in the early 1950s, Healy's organisation - then simply known as "The Club' — has been based on incorrect political perspectives and the victim undemocratic practices. Its malformations date back to the crisis which beset British Trotskyism immediately after the Second World War. The united Trotskyist organisa- tion which existed then - the Revolutionary Communist Party — believed the war would be followed by a massive economic crisis and a weakening of Stalinism and reformism. But the prediction was not fulfilled. slump did not occur, and reformism in the working class was strengthened A collapse of perspective and a steady decline in membership are sure fire recipes for internal strife, and the RCP got its full International, No. 2. January/February 1986)
share of that. But none of the internal factions could explain what had gone wrong and there was no majority on what to do next.
In such situations people become suceptible to panaceas and cure-alls. Healy claimed to have the way forward. He forecast a gigantic slump, which would split Labour Party. Only an entrist group, he said, could take advantage of this. He combined his schema with demagogy against that faithfull old scapegoat - the 'petty bourgeoisie', which meant anyone who disagreed with him. He claimed that these elements, with their endless discussion and interminable bulletins, were paralysing the RCP and stopping it getting on with its work.
This denunciation of intellectuals struck a chord in sections of the ranks who had been attracted by the simplistic theories of Healy. Anti-intellectualism is in reality anti-theory, which is a deeply rooted tradition in British bourgeois society. And unfortunately it is a virus from which even the Marxist left is not immune.
'Since its formation Healy's
organisation has been based
on incorrect perspectives
Tand the victim of undemocratic practices.'
Healy's analysis combined with activism tactics, and this can either be done collective- finance the WRP ly or by individuals. Once the membership authority in leaders. happened in The Club.
Prior to 1953, as long as the British section stayed in the Fourth International, there was always the chance that with the aid of other sections a change of course could have been effected. But that was not to be. Healy in Workers Party led a split from the FI accusing its leadership of having 'gone soft on Stalinism'. This was really ironical.
For some years previously the Club': paper Socialist Outlook never used the woro 'Stalinist' once and studiously avoided criticism of the Communist Party. This was because on entering the Labour Party the group had found a different scenario than the one outlined in Healy's perspectives. The traditional social democratic left was almost non-existent, its leaders and most of its ranks had been won over by the apparently sweeping reforms of the 1945 Labour Government. The only left dissidents of any account were CP fellow travellers, and it was to these people Healy turned to build a left opposition.
The soft approach to Stalinism was dictated by Healy's need to make an alliance with this left. It was a practice which over the next 30 years was to become a constant feature of the organisation's politics. Later, when a left social democratic current did emerge around Bevan, Healy switched tactics, turning towards them and breaking from his old allies - Stalinophobia' became legitimate once more. Then The Club played down its criticisms of the Bevanites, and the members sold Tribune. Healy even informed one open-mouthed session of the central committee that: 'Michael Foot will
From the beginning the members were trained in opportunism. First The Club had subordinated its politics to get an alliance with the CP and its fellow travellers, then it did the same again, but next time to ally itself with the left reformists. It was thus not difficult in later years to make an alliance with the Arab bourgeois states in the Middle
When an organisation discards its political That is exactly what for financial gain it has slithered into the pit of corruption. As soon as money starts com-
than on apart to co the ratest or che HEATHROY WORKERS
ing in through the back door to pay for political favours, and its distribution lies in the hands of an individual - invariably justified on the grounds of security bureaucracy has got a firm social base. This is why Newsline 31 October 1985 asked Healy's supporters 'to explain why he secretly purchased a £15,000 BMW car and maintained a secret fund of £20,000 in liquid cash.' We can be confident that Newsline's revelations of flash cars and secret cashhauls is only the tip of an iceberg of malpractices.
Just as opportunism led the WRP into its" unprincipled alliances with the bourgeois states, SO did its catastrophic politics strengthen the bureaucratic regime Catastrophism is not without a base on the chance to catapault into the leadership of the mass struggle and bypass all the awkward intervening stages that have to be gone through if a wide based Marxist movement is to be built in Britain. The impending end of the capitalist order calls for strong leadership and frenetic activity at the base. After all, if Armageddon is down the road that is hardly the time for the ranks to be bothering about discussion. Instead the time has come to treble the sales of the paper, mortgage the house to finance the revolution - via the WRP treasurer of course - and denounce all those petty bourgeois groups which do not understand the police state is nigh, or that Thatcher is going to introduce a Bonapartist state that very day.
'When a political organisation discards its
political principles for an expedient alliance it has slid
into political degeneracy.
When it does that for financial gain it has slithered into the pit of corruption.'
Such a regime with its emphasis on the immediacy of the revolution cannot brook any opposition, either within the organisation or without. Its sectarian party building tactics have no room for criticism — it delays action in a period of 'great crisis' and challenges the idea that the WRP is the sole agency of revolutionary change. The members are there just to carry out the line, whilst the other leaders are there to organise the members along the line of Healy
This messianic concept ceded the ultimate power and decision making to Healy, who in turn ensured that his lieutenants had no independence from the political line and the apparatus which he controlled
Those leaders who refused to tolerate such a regime joined the long list of 'police spies', 'CIA agents' and 'members of MI5'. Such a method innoculated the members against Marxist critics of the WRP. Over the years the deviations of opportunism and bureaucratic practice have worsened to such 1O an extent that they became a built-in part of
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the structures and daily life of the WRP. Healy's sexual abuse of women comrades only mattered when politics reared its ugly head — ie when a new clique inside the leadership decided it was time Healy went and it took over. Significantly these leaders cannot explain their years of silence over ¿ Healy's crimes against the membership and against the interests of the working class and the oppressed groups. Only an organisation which had learned nothing about women's rights, and that had not only ignored but attacked the womens movement as a 'petty bourgeois deviation', could have allowed its general secretary to rape and abuse women comrades. 'Once the membership put aside the "petty bourgeois indulgence" of discussion and debate, the more they vest all authority in leaders.'
But we must remember that the present leadership of the Slaughter grouping almost without exception was trained in the Healy school. Like Nikita Kruschev, who denounced the crimes of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, so he could get the mantle of Stalin off his shoulders and take over the succession, so do Slaughter et al want to rid themselves of the mantle of Healyism in order to inherit his organisation.
The disease of the WRP is terminal. It will either go into oblivion or at best be reduced to a small isolated sect on the sidelines. The leaders who for years justified the politics of Healy, were often the leaders who acted as guards at the Summer Camp show trials? They are by their past practices and training incapable of building a healthy, democratic Marxist movement. For those rank and file members who want to build such a movement there is no alternative to breaking away from the WRP. They should join in the attempt to construct a united democratic Trotskyist movement in Britain, which can take its place in the ranks of the Fourth International. Footnotes 1 Staliniphobia means to put the emphasis on the fight against Stalinism above the interests of the class struggle. During the Vietnamese War of Liberation, the most urgent task was to build solidarity with the people of Vietnam in their fight against imperialism. Healy's group, then named the Socialist Labour League, left the Vietnam Solidarity Committee because of its alleged failure to denounce Stalinism, thus weakening the anti-imperialist struggle. This does not mean that Marxists should give up their criticisms of CP policy, but it does mean anti-Stalinism must not be used to undermine united working class action. 2 Robin Blick and David Caldwell writing in the Nere Statesman tell how at the SLL Summer Camp of 1966 Healy held a show trial of some of its leaders. One of the defendants was a long-time member Bob Shaw who 'Healy kicked and knocked backwards onto the ground... Shaw simply picked himself up and resumed his seat to endure further beatings.
International, No. 2. January/Februan 192*
Scab trade unionism is coming especially from the women's Gormley in defiance of a national vote
The