[p. 162]
London
December 8, 1953
Dear Comrade,
The history of our international is a history of struggle and sacrifice — first to hammer out and defend a programme against all varieties of revisionism, and then to battle against sectarian and opportunist currents who have continually tried to bar the way to the penetration of the living working class movement by our sections.
This is not the first time that our movement here in Britain has been split over the issue of the defence of the international organization and the penetration of the mass movement which this involved. The WIL attempted it in 1938 and Haston again in 1947 — but never have we witnessed such a rapid, unprincipled, and utterly criminal split from the international as that which has recently been prepared and consummated by the Cannon-Burns-Bleibtreu tendency.
In the U.S., Cannon threw out the supporters of the international on the flimsiest of pretexts and then, contemptuously brushing aside all opportunities for settling his hitherto undeclared political differences within the international, has publicly declared war on the leadership and the policy of the international and called for a split in our international on the eve of its most decisive tests.
In Britain, Burns — who similarly refused to make known his political differences and to discuss them within the international — carried through the same brutal operation against the supporters of the international and endeavoured to seize the press in order to turn it into an anti-internationalist rag from which to denounce the ideas and the policies of the movement Before there had been a single discussion in the ranks in Britain, and against the declared opposition of a majority of the party members, this petty little bureaucrat, Burns, attempted to remove all the supporters of the international from their posts on the press and hatched a public provocation to carry this through.
But this rotten operation failed completely — thanks to the firmness of the comrades concerned and thanks to the loyalty to the international of the great majority of the British Section.
[p. 163]
All this mad haste to tear down all that five years of fruitful work has built up has a deep underlying reason. Just as the middle class opposition fled from the international in 1940 over the question of the defence of the USSR — a split which the Old Man correctly characterized as "a capitulation to capitalist pressure" — so today in the U.S. another tendency led by Cannon has similarly capitulated to the pressures which American Imperialism has unloosed to condition the workers for World War Three against the Soviet Union.
In their scanty documents, the Cannonites have already shown their utter demoralization and pessimism before the perspectives of the coming world revolution and the political rag bag of this clique has been borrowed by Burns and incorporated into his all-time masterpiece of confusion "The Struggle Against Revisionism."
Comrade: This contemptible faction of Burns-Cannon which fled from the ranks of the international, not waiting even to present its political differences to the coming World Congress, has now not surprisingly united with every dissident and sectarian current to form an "international of refugees from the mass movement."
Such a course has been tried before and has always broken down because of the irreconcilable contradictions and antagonisms which sectarianism breeds. These people who cannot accept the discipline of the international are invariably petty despots within their own little circles. Their usual fate is to end up as high priests of dried-up cults — and this Burns clique will be no different.
The Burns group has demonstrated that it can build nothing, it can only tear down what has already been created. Its political funeral is assured. Devoid of any perspective, deprived of a press, without the great majority of the members of the section, and now expelled from the international — this pitiful grouping can only maintain the semblance of organization for a short time to come on the basis of the most abominable lies and slanders against loyal internationalists. Right now they are displaying their natural aversion to all forms of mass work by conducting a despicable "campaign" among the readers of the paper to secure the reversal of recent attempts to penetrate with the paper deeper into the mass movement. In this also they will fail and fail miserably. There will be nothing left of this pretentious Burns outfit very soon — for surely its tiny handful of supporters will inevitably begin to question the sectarian course they have been dragged along to support.
I write this letter to you because you and others may still believe that Burns represents the official section. He does not — he has been expelled for his open support of the foul attempt by Cannon to split our international.
Now that you know the truth, comrade, I am sure that you will condemn Burns and Cannon and condemn also the contemptible conspiracy they have tried to hatch within the international. I appeal to you, as a loyal internationalist, to stand by the international and its only British section. Stand by its perspectives, its policy and its work we have jointly helped to create and carry through against many difficulties in the past five years.
We are holding a National Conference on Saturday the 12th December. If you want to preserve the international against the splitters and deserters, if you recognize that without the international we are as nothing in the coming titanic world class battles, there is a place for you at our conference. You do not have to be in complete agreement with every dot and comma of the I.S. documents for the 4th World Congress for you to place yourself in our ranks. We are not a monolithic, Stalinist organization. We are based upon the principles of democratic centralism. There is all guarantees for democratic working out of policies. In their haste to run out of the international Burns and company have refused to avail themselves of this democratic procedure, and thus proved themselves totally bankrupt politicians.
Comrade: Join the British Section. Attend our conference. Contact the loyal internationalists in your area for the time and place. Long live the International!
Fraternally,
The IEC member for Britain
On behalf of the British Section