April 5, 1954
Dear Smith:
[I] am enclosing a copy of a statement that our minority here gave us at our meeting last Wednesday. Appended to it is a short comment that went with it to members of our tops.
We are approaching a showdown here. Upon the presentation of this statement I am confident that the minority expected that we would expel them. I have never thought that they would go through a convention and thus give formal recognition to the fact that they are the minority and on the basis of full discussion. But we are strangling them with democracy. The get-together is planned for next weekend. If we had a formal statement of break from them we would be in favor of its postponement. In fact there is a bit of a mix-up here with our Western friends it doesn't look like we are going to get much representation. Tonight I am hoping to get some definite word from our minority so that we can call off the convention and can arrange it more to the satisfaction of ourselves. We will go through with it however no matter what inconvenience should they appear to be going to stick along with us right up to and into the convention. We think this necessary from the point of view of the international.
The majority is solid and overwhelming. We have been winning the fence sitters slowly and steadily till now the lines are very hard drawn. The minority is down to a hard core of 5 here in Toronto, a couple in Windsor and one in Montreal. The majority has Toronto two to one, Vancouver unanimously, and all the outside points that we have heard from. The only important point that may still be on the fence is Prince Rupert but last correspondence showed him swinging our way. Of course it is always a tendency to write off persons you lose, they were no good anyway, and usually this is true when the lines have been drawn clearly in discussion as they have in this dispute. But there is no question that we have come out of this well. The majority comrades have grown considerably. You would have been pleased to have heard how they handled Ernie Mazey. Somewhile back we had agreed to hear Murray and some one of the Cochranites. As time went on I was for saying to hell with it but the majority of the comrades thought in the interest of winning the one waverer left in Toronto that we should go through with it and we did. Mazey left here pretty well squashed.
The maximum strength of the minority is 8 and it is by no means a homogeneous group. On the whole it is composed of the weakest elements that we had. One of them is a non-political type who formally speaking should be on a leave of absence but he has been resurrected by the minority. The Windsor duo are a husband and wife combination, very demoralized, persons who have had practically no contact with the center and who also wouldn't be on the 'books if we had operated in a more formal basis. These two have long been friends of Joe Rose, long after the rest of the minority condemned him utterly. Another is a new comrade who is with the minority solely on a personal basis. McAlpine is the only real Pabloite. Fitzgerald and Wilson are the only two with any real ability and do represent a loss to our movement—however one that despite all our efforts could not be prevented. Fitzgerald will be deserting them within the next few weeks by going to Europe for a year or so. Wilson has long been a Stalinist conciliator — Clarke called him one not long ago to his face —Pablo with his trick formulations has really disoriented this comrade and he doesn't know what he knows. At a recent discussion they suggested to one of us that they had 48 percent of the Eastern part of the party. They have developed the happy faculty of just writing off the West where they have no one. The other day another one of them told a comrade that they had more than that... and he started to enumerate a couple of sympathizers in Montreal and added into it Joe Rose and a couple of friends that he has. When they pull the pin it may well be that Pablo will be circulating information to the effect that they are the majority of the Eastern section if not the entire section. But there will not be the slightest truth in such claims. They are a splinter of a splinter. The only effect that their defection will have will be a certain financial loss. However we have more contacts around us at this juncture than we have had for years and not only will completely recover in short order but go forward.
[p. 189]
The Canadian experience has been a sort of test tube experiment. Our minority never tired of telling us how the Italian International Committee supporters remained in the Italian group despite the fact that the majority came out for the Pabloite IEC. We agreed to go through a long serious detailed discussion with our minority which would be resolved at a convention. As the discussion proceeded they attempted to keep it on the organizational plane; we finally forced it on the political plane. As we proceeded to clear the air and win the majority of the party they commenced to balk at a convention. When the convention was inevitable and they were faced with a clear and indisputable rejection of their line they announced their decision to refuse to be a part, even as an objecting minority, of the decisions of the convention. The whole process should be of considerable interest to other sections which are still going through the experience. At our last Toronto meeting one of the comrades took time to patiently demonstrate through a liberal use of quotations that the Pabloite line was not at all the line adopted by the IIIrd World Congress. They had always been hammering that our views were a rejection of the Illrd World Congress, representing its decisions as something engraved in stone as imperishable guides for evermore. But at this meeting they turned around — proclaiming that the IIIrd WC decisions were not sacred, that they were necessarily revised by subsequent plenums.
Should we be faced with the formal split within the next few days I will certainly write you all the details — in fact in such a way as to be suitable for publication. If we have to go through with the convention to get it I will send you a detailed report of the convention. I hope you received a copy of the document, "Two Years of Entry." I would be interested in knowing what you comrades think of it. Of course it could do us irremediable harm should it fall into the wrong hands.
Fraternally, Kane
I might add that we here are in complete agreement with the tactical demands that you make on Pablo. We have been following this line since Germain opened the door for them and JPC developed this line in his excellent letter to Leslie Goonewardene. We were also highly satisfied with the way you handled the Kane letter and are agreeable to it appearing in an IB. I will inform everyone of the excellent developments you report in your letter to us. I assume from your Lora letter that you now have a suitable address.
The attached statement was presented to the Toronto group meeting Wednesday, March 31, 1954. It was presented on behalf of 8 persons in the Canadian group (Fitzgerald, McAlpine, Ford, Dale, Houston, Wilson and D and J).
Immediately following presentation of the statement the Toronto group passed a motion designating the action of the minority as profoundly disloyal —the vote was 8 for, 4 against.
The majority referred to in the statement is the entire membership of the Vancouver group and a two to one majority in the Toronto group plus strong support in the membership at large. The minority is composed of 5 persons in the Toronto group and three persons in other Eastern points.
This statement that the minority refuses "to be a part, even as an objecting minority," to what forces in the Canadian group have stated they intend to press for at our convention to be held next week is probably without precedent in the annals of the socialist movement. It is a crude attempt on the part of a minority to blackmail the convention into submitting to its will with the threat that it will split the party.
It goes without saying that no Bolshevik group would submit to such an outrageous threat. Speaking on behalf of the minority Fitzgerald stated that should the convention decide to commit the Canadian group to the International Committee, which the majority considers contains the forces in the Fourth International that are fighting against Pabloite revision of our doctrine, the minority would immediately constitute itself the Canadian section of the Fourth International.
STATEMENT OF POLICY
The faction that has been organized by the Canadian supporters of the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International, to defend the unity of the Trotskyist movement against the Cannonite splitters and the political program of our movement as expressed by the Third World Congress and the main line of the documents submitted by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International for discussion at the Fourth World Congress, and is presently called "the Minority Faction of the Canadian Section wishes to make the following announcement of a decision taken by our Fraction.
Despite every effort on our part to keep the party on the correct road politically and loyal to the Fourth International and to persuade it to send delegates to the forthcoming Fourth World Congress it is now painfully apparent that the Canadian Cannonites presently called the Majority Faction are determined at all costs to deepen the split initiated by the Cannonite section of the New Zealand leadership.
This is clearly revealed by two motions before a convention called for early in April, one from Vancouver the other from Toronto, which call for affiliation to the so-called "International Committee" and the steps taken by the Canadian Cannonites to cut-off financial support to the IEC and the decision they have taken not to raise the levy for the World Congress.
Our Faction remains loyal to the principles of revolutionary Marxist internationalism — the fundamental concepts of Trotskyism. We refuse to be a part, even as an objecting minority to any actions which would strengthen the hand of Cannonism in its struggle to destroy the Fourth International around which are rallied the overwhelming majority of the forces of world Trotskyism.
March 29,1954