Dear Tom,
We have been giving careful consideration to the situation in the World Trotskyist movement over the past three weekly meetings of our Executive Committee. Our conclusions are as follows:
a) The basic methodological differences between ourselves and Pablo remain and have not been eradicated despite the favourable objective situation. We should be completely clear on this score, and under no circumstances seek to minimise them. That could lead to serious miseducation.
b) From his activity in Britain, its seems most likely that he visualises Grant and his small group as a source for a future faction in our ranks. We are not kindly disposed towards this especially with the bitter experience of Lawrence on our mind. It took us a long time before we were able to overcome this edition of Pablo's "experiments."
c) We are in agreement on the necessity for testing out this unity mongering, on a fifty fifty committee basis provided there is ample time for an international discussion which should proceed, as far as we can conduct it, under the best possible atmosphere. Either way we do not have anything to lose.
One of the things which greatly disturbs us is the deterioration in Ceylon. Colvin de Silva and Perera were here a few days ago and made no effort to see us. We learned that they were defending their policy on Chou En-lai and attacked us as sectarians. There seems to be a definite movement away there and this could of course be very important for the future. In 1954 they were with us fairly solid politically but now they are heeling over towards Pablo. Here is an extract from a report submitted to our E.C. by one of our comrades who spoke to an English Pabloite.
"Bornstein told us that Colvin visited him on March 20. Colvin R. de Silva told him that he has recently received a letter from Comrade G. Healy 'asking him to make specific demands to the Chinese delegation.' Colvin stated that when he finished reading the letter he burst out laughing and thought that 'Healy is mad.' Bornstein said that he has seen the letter and agreed with Colvin that the demands contained in the letter were not only infantile but impossible at this stage because, as Bornstein puts it, the Stalinists are in process of change for the better and that it was possible, Bornstein added, for the Stalinist leadership to learn from their own terrible experiences; and that to make such demands would impede the democratisation of the C.P. in China."
[p. 32]
This reference here is to a letter I wrote to Ceylon along the lines of the Militant Editorial, so you can see the problem. I hope to write J.P.C. in a few days, I am terribly busy at the moment.
Warmest regards,
Jerry