[p. 58]
A wide section of the British Labor party membership has vigorously protested the attempt of right-wing officials to proscribe and ban the Socialist Labor League and its newspaper, the Newsletter. Because of this, the one-year-old drive to expel the revolutionary socialists from the Labor Party and the unions has not gained much ground.
Unfortunately, however, a number of groups and individuals who call themselves socialists—including the leaders of the British Communist party—fell in with the witch-hunters. They violated the first principle of socialism which demands solidarity when the capitalist class or its labor henchmen attack any section of the workers' movement.
A particularly odious example of the violation of the solidarity principle was provided by the paper of the British Independent Labor party, the Socialist Leader. The ILP has made it a principle to stay out of the Labor party, which is the mass political organization of the workers and is based on the unions. But the ILP leaders have found no difficulty in combining their sectarian purity with the performance of dirty chores for the bureaucrats.
In an editorial March 7, 1959, the Socialist Leader declared: "We have never disguised our opposition to the Labor party. But if Transport House decides that it has had enough of the Newsletter group and kicks its members out of the front door or, for that matter, the back door, we shall not utter a word of criticism."
The Socialist Leader not only kept its word not to criticize the hounding of militant workers out of the factories, unions and party, it opened a campaign of slander on its own against the SLL and its leadership.
When Peter Fryer, one of the founders of the SLL, suffered a breakdown in the face of the witch-hunt, became disoriented and walked out of the organization, then turned up in the capitalist press making vague and unspecified accusations against the SLL leaders, the ILP solidarized itself with him—and with the boss-class press which eagerly exploited Fryer's "charges." The Socialist Leader printed article after article presenting matters as if the main problem facing the British socialists was not the witch-hunt against the SLL but some alleged "Stalinist methods" of Gerry Healy, the SLL secretary.
Now, the witch-hunt in Britain is not the exclusive concern of British socialists, it is also of great importance to revolutionary socialists throughout the world. In such a situation it is customary—and in fact obligatory—that Trotskyists in other countries take their stand on the side of the victims of the witch-hunt, even if they have no organizational ties with the latter or are in disagreement with them over certain aspects of policy.
Unfortunately, again, this hasn't been the case in the current witch-hunt against the SLL. As we have indicated before in the Militant, a Trotskyist group in Europe headed by Michel Pablo came dangerously close to aligning itself with the witch-hunters, when it apologized for the conduct of a grouping in the Liverpool unit of the Labor party, which had formed a bloc with right-wingers to bar support for the SLL. The motion the Liverpool group advanced protested bars and proscriptions in general—but without offering to defend the specific victims of the right-wing's drive to strangle party democracy.
We repeat what we have said before: we think it is Pablo's duty to defend the SLL against the witch-hunters despite any disagreement he may have with the SLL's policies. This, it appears to us, is elementary.
We think that in this instance Pablo might well follow the example of a group in the U.S. which has even greater differences with the SLL than he has. In the Feb. 15 issue of its paper, the Workers World party says:
"We feel that Comrade Michel Pablo and his co-thinkers made an unfortunate error in appealing to Fryer and his collaborators against the SLL. In our opinion the SLL leaders were on firm ground (despite their own wrong position on Hungary, etc.) in their recent conduct with the Fryer grouping. It goes without saying that we unconditionally support the SLL against the present witch-hunt of the Labor Party bureaucrats."
Certainly, Pablo, who claims far greater political agreement with the British Trotskyists than the Workers World people, can do no less than take a clear stand for the SLL in its fight against the witch-hunters. So far we have not seen a trace of such solidarity in any publication influenced by Pablo.