[p. 57]
New York, N.Y.
Dear Comrade Pablo,
I received your letters of February 29 and March 23. I must offer my apologies for the delay in replying. We have been very busy trying to keep up with the opportunities which have been opening up for us in connection with the presidential campaign.
We found your letter disappointing since it offers nothing concrete that could help heal the breach now existing between the factions in the Fourth International. In the Militant we raised publicly the question of the advisability of a change of policy on your part toward the British Trotskyists; i.e., of your joining in supporting them against the witch-hunt. You evade this. Instead of indicating agreement with our suggestion that you change your policy, you propose that we drop public discussion of the matter and meet with you in private to discuss-something else.
You tell us again about your concern to achieve unification of the Fourth International. As you know, the Voorhis law in this country prevents us from adhering to the Fourth International or any grouping of it. But we have a deep fraternal interest in its welfare. The unification of the International was one of our main considerations in raising the question of your policy in Britain which seems to stand in the way of unification.
You say in your letter that you have much to discuss about the policy of the British Trotskyists. We do not deny your right to disagree with them, or to ask for a general discussion of their policy. That's your democratic right as it is of any other member of the world Trotskyist movement. No doubt the British Trotskyists would welcome a fraternal discussion of their experiences and problems. But that is not what is in dispute. At issue is your failure to support the British Trotskyists against the witch-hunt. Instead you have been conducting factional maneuvers, the main consequence of which is to put your own faction in an ambiguous position on a most elementary issue—class solidarity in face of a reactionary attack.
Naturally, we are not against talks if these will facilitate unification of the Fourth International on a healthy basis. We can hardly be accused of a negative attitude on this in view of the initiative which Comrade Cannon took to propose unification of the Fourth International on a parity basis, a suggested solution which you rejected. In the case of the talk which you now propose, however, we fail to see what useful purpose it could serve in the absence of a change in policy toward the British Trotskyists.
I would like to emphasize how puzzled we are by your course in Britain. We do not see anything in the public political positions of your faction that should prevent you from solidarizing with the British Trotskyists. You find no difficulty in supporting dissident Stalinists when they are attacked by the Kremlin; you find no difficulty in supporting nationalists, as in Algeria, under the attack of imperialism; why can't you support the British Trotskyists when they face a combination of witch-hunters that includes right-wing bureaucrats of the Labor party, centrists of the ILP stripe, assorted neurotics, professional red-baiters and the prostituted capitalist press?
Fraternally yours,
Joseph Hansen
Airmail