[p. 26]
Dear Comrades,
Recently we had the pleasure of extending a warm welcome to a delegation from your organization who came to England to "exchange opinions" and see for themselves the work which our organization was doing in this country.
Your delegation through Comrade Livio expressed the opinion that they had come to England on a "fact finding" mission and that they had no position on recent developments connected with our struggle against the right wing reformist bureaucracies of the Labour Party and the trade unions. Your delegation had ample opportunity to question leading members of our organization and it attended a meeting of our Executive Committee where several aspects of our work were discussed.
We accepted your delegation in the firm belief that it was a genuine attempt on the part of comrades in your group to examine objectively the work we were doing in England and to ascertain our opinions on problems concerning the international movement.
We find it hard to contain our disgust, when only two days after your delegation returned to Italy a document violently attacking our organization and the International Committee arrived in England from your International Secretariat (of which Livio is a member). The authors of this document attack our work in England without in any way ascertaining the facts about this work, other than information supplied from garbled factional sources, from allies of Pablo—who on the Liverpool Trades and Labour Council abstained from voting against the decree of the right wing which proscribed our organization and banned our newspaper. It is from "freedom fighters" such as these that the International Secretariat derives its information.
Regretfully, we are forced to conclude that Comrade Livio was not really interested in "facts" about our work in England, because he must obviously have known that such a document was already prepared and ready for dispatch. For how could Livio want "facts" when he had already accepted the spurious facts of the Secretariat? Ironically this fresh attack from Pablo emerges at a time when the hostility of the capitalist press in England and of the right bureaucrats reach a new crescendo of fury against the Socialist Labour League. We recall how Pablo constantly helped the Stalinist Lawrence in his attacks against us in 1953-54. From the Lawrence-Pablo split we emerged far stronger than ever before. Today we are proud to record that there are more Trotskyists in our organization than in the whole of Europe. Before long we shall have even greater numbers.
[p. 27]
Accompanying this attack on our organization and the other sections of the "International Committee" is an extract from a stolen document reporting a meeting which took place recently in Canada. It is not, as the authors suggest, a meeting of the "International Committee" on January 3rd and 4th. From this stolen document, the International Secretariat attempts to derive some factional satisfaction, just as in the case of the Cannon-Tom [Sam Gordon] correspondence, which was stolen by their faction in the 1953 fight. History will before very long show that these unscrupulous methods will rebound upon those who use them, as they have done in the past.
The British Section of the Fourth International will continue its efforts to unify on a principled basis all those Trotskyists who have a genuine desire for such unification. We ask the Italian comrades to seriously ask themselves how is it possible to have such a reunification on the basis of stolen documents, threats of reprisals, and fake requests for "facts" when those who have made the request have already made up their mind about the facts? These are the traditional methods of Pablo and Stalinism.
The Italian comrades should have no illusion as to what will result from this open declaration of war against our section. Pablo and his International Secretariat have now shown their real hand. All the talk about "unity" is a manoeuvre and a smokescreen behind which Pablo has been hoping to destroy the forces of orthodox Trotskyism since 1953.
We are sorry to record that the visit of your delegation seems to us to have been engineered as another step in this chain of attacks. We sincerely hope that you will reconsider the mistaken position and join with us in condemning these latest actions of Pablo as a most serious blow against the reunification of the International Trotskyist movement. The reply of our section to Pablo's lies and slander against it will be sent to you very shortly.
[salutation missing]