HEALY'S UNITED FRONT AGAINST REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISTS
By Henri Valin
The Liége demonstration of October 15, sponsored by the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes [the Belgian Young Guard Socialists] to protest against the American imperialist war of aggression in Vietnam and against the imperialist NATO alliance, was a huge success. Tsee World Outlook November 4.] With 4,000 participants, it was the biggest demonstration to date in Belgium against the Pentagon's escalation of the war. At the same time, it was the first truly international antiwar demonstration in Europe, bringing together a large number of foreign participants from Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Representatives of the American and Canadian antiwar movements were likewise present.
The Belgian bourgeoisie didn't like that demonstration at all. Two busloads of Dutch demonstrators -~ more than a hundred in all -- were stopped at a small town near the border and turned back by the gendarmes because one of the buses was carrying banners against NATO.
At Liége itself, the police tried to prevent the demonstration from starting out on the flimsy pretext that some of the banners carried by the demonstrators did not correspond with those that had been registered in advance.
The bourgeois press, which was compelled to grudgingly admit that the demonstration was a significant one -- the police gave 4,000 as the official number of participants -- tried to discredit it by depicting it as a "violent Communist demonstration," a "violent anti-American demonstration," and a "demonstration of Beatniks and Beatles."
The Belgian Social Democrats, who expelled the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes and who, since then, have been unable to assemble under their own banners more than a. few dozen sons and daughters of the top party bureaucrats, sought to ignore the demonstration. Then, caught by surprise by the size of the demonstration, they tried to brush it off as composed of "various kinds of pro-Soviet, pro-Chinese and _pro- ~Trotsky Communists."
. The truth : is that the latter characterization is not far from the truth. The Liége march was conceived and called as a broad united-front demonstration without excluding any youth organization willing to rally in behalf of two objectives: for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of u. S. troops from Vietnam; against the imperialist NATO alliance.
These two objectives were not chosen in an arbitrary way. Defense of the Vietnamese revolution is the central burning issue today for revolutionary socialists the world over. They must demonstrate in practice that they are the best and most effective defenders of the Vietnamese revolution. The Belgian revolutionary socialists have tried to do this..With this in mind, they called the Liége. demonstration on as broad a basis as possible, scoring a considerable: success.
Revolutionary socialists do not view the united front as an operation : in which participants slur over the political differences they have with each other. But they do conceive the united front as a genuine means of struggling for a common goal -political differentiation and clarification being achieved above all .through. discussion around the strategy and tactics.to be followed in order to best achieve that common goal.
“This does not hold, of course, with sectarians. For them a common goal does not exist at all; it is only a pretext for affirming and reaffirming what the sect is interested. in separate and apart from the united front. They turn out for. common demonstrations. only in order to...denounce the other participants and to try to drive them away. For them victory lies not in achieving a common aim but ‘in driving away. the other participants in the united front.
The classical example of this sectarian ‘concept of the united ‘front was provided. by "third period" Stalinism in Germany. Verbally the Stalinist. leaders of the German Communist party were not opposed to a united front with the Social Democratic workers against Hitler. But they insisted on their inalienable right in such united front demonstrations to denounce the Social: Democratic leaders as agents of. the bourgeoisie. guilty of the. murder of Communist workers. fo, . ff
These characterizations ‘were completely correst - in a historical ‘sense. But by
throwing them at Social Democratic workers who thought otherwise, and at the very moment when the most burning issue of the day was a common struggle by both Social Democratic and Communist workers against fascism, the Stalinist leaders systematically drove the Social Democratic workers away from the united front.
As a result, a real united front of common struggle against fascism could not be achieved between the two main sections of the German working class. The consequence of this failure to undertake joint action was Hitler's victory. Mankind paid‘ the’ heaviest possible price for Stalin's abysmal crime -- more than 100,000,000 dead.
To this day Healy, the head of the Socialist Labour League in England, has failed to understand the elementary lessons of that experience, explained by Leon Trotsky and the world Trotskyist movement again and again. Healy still conceives of the united front as a means of "denouncing" other participants and splitting the mass of militants. So when the British and French youth organizations under allegiance to him were invited to participate in the Liége demonstration, he carefully instructed them to proceed in such a way as to break up the united action. Defense of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 should be included in the banners, according to this line, since it would be certain to drive out all participants in the demonstration who have a different appraisal of that revolution than the one held by revolutionary Marxists. It would be especially resented by members and sympathizers of the Communist party.
Of course it is as correct and honorable today in 1966 to defend the Hungarian revolution of 1956 as it was in 1932 to defend Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg against the murderer Noske. But to carry banners on the Hungarian revolution ina united front demonstration for the defense of the Vietnamese revolution has exactly the same effect in 1966 as it had in 1932 to carry banners denouncing the "murderer Noske" and the "little murderer Zoergiebel" in united front demonstrations against the Nazis. It splits the united front, thereby endangering success in the struggle against the main immediate enemy on the main issue of world revolution today -- the Vietnamese revolution.
Healy's provocation was successful in 1966, just as Stalin's were in 1932. Under heavy pressure from their rank and file, the Belgian Communist Youth decided, in face of great reluctance on the part of the central leadership of the party, to participate in the Liége demonstration. Several hundred members of the Communist Youth showed up at the main rallying center. In Denmark and Germany, left socialist youth organizations succeeded in mobilizing dozens of Communist youth as participants in the first international demonstration in defense of the Vietnamese revolution. These youth were convinced, not without reason, that the official Communist parties are doing much too little in fighting against the dirty war conducted by U.S. imperialism against the Vietnamese people.
When these CPers saw Healy's English and French banners in defense of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, they thought they had been tricked. After all, they had come to a united front demonstration on Vietnam, not a Trotskyist demonstration in solidarity with Hungary. So most of them left.
The October 22 Newsletter, published by Healy, true to its fundamentally sectarian nature, happily applauded it as a great victory that these contingents left and that the first international united front demonstration in defense of Vietnam was thus partially broken up.
But The Newsletter did not limit itself to that. It moved another notch in its escalation towards outright acceptance of the political and organizational methods of Stalinism by printing an outrageously falsified report of the Liége events.
On page 1 of the October 22 Newsletter we find the following paragraph:
“When the [British] Young Socialists who were carrying them [the banners commenorating the Hungarian revolution] refused to take them down, Germain's rather elderly young socialists called upon the assistance of the Belgian police to haul the Hungarian banner down.
And this "report" is followed by the following political’ conclusions:
"The Pabloites today are nothing more than the conscious agents of these bureaucracies, who, in turn, are tied hand and foot to the big capitalists.
"Since the police are the direct servants of capital, it was perfectly normal for the Pabloites to enlist their aid in the fight against revolutionary youth."
This leads to the final point in this chain of reasoning: "Mandel, Frank and the SWP (Socialist Workers party] were. exposed in Liége as handmaidens of imperialism..."
Now all the participants in the Liége demonstration heard the explanation, given publicly over the sound system by the leaders of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes before the demonstration. started out. This explanation made the following crystal clear:
(1). That the leaders of the Communist. Youth objected to the above-mentioned banners and. had asked the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes to have them removed, since they did not conform with the stated objectives of the demonstration.
(2) That the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes had asked the British and French Healyites to remove these banners in order not to break up the united front character of a demonstration in defense of the Vietnamese revolution.
(3) That when these attempts proved unsuccessful, due to the incurably sectarian character of the Healyites, the Jeunes_Gardes Socialistes agreed to leave the banners even if this meant that the Communist Youth would withdraw (which they promptly did).
(4) That when the police tried to intervene at this point, in order to play the role of "arbiter" in the dispute, they were firmly told by. the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes to mind their own business and not to interfere in an internal dispute among the demonstrators that was none of their business.
(5) That the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes then demanded of the police to permit the demonstration to proceed normally, with all the banners. present, including those that had been placed in. dispute.
“(6) That the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes had stated publicly -- a statement that was later repeated by the National Committee and published in the October 22 issue of La Gauche [The Left] that they would never agree to the police or anyone else forcefully removing any slogans in favor of the Hungarian revolution, slogans which they approved as. to content but considered ill-advised in this specific united front demonstration. |
To transform this clear second into the outrageous statement that the Jeunes
Gardes Socialistes sought to enlist the help of the police in order to remove the banners favoring the Hungarian revolution is an outright lie and political fraud.
But there is worse to come.
In the whole ‘history of the labor movement, the most bitter opponents of revolutionary socialism never fell so low as to call their political foes police agents or collaborators with the police. It was Stalinism, and Stalinism alone, that introduced these poisonous methods into the labor movement, using frame-ups, frauds, falsifications and where it had the power to do so, kangaroo trials, to. uphold these monstrous accusations.
Healy is now. openly staking his claim as heir to these Stalinist methods by advancing the criminal falsifications indicated above, by utilizing such vulgar smears as agents and collaborators of the police, handmaidens of imperialism, to denounce his political opponents. ;
In this, of course, he is not alone. There are avowed admirers and followers of Stalin who still continue to use the same method today. The Belgian weekly La Voix du Peuple [The Voice of the People], published by that self-acknowledged admirer of Stalin, Jacques Grippa, leader of the pro-Mao Communist party in Belgium, printed a whole page in its October 21 issue on the Liége demonstration, picturing it as an "anti-Communist" demonstration organized by a "united front of Trotskyists, fascists and policemen." And in order to support this preposterous allegation, they featured a crudely forged photograph on the same page!
The forger Grippa is an avowed Stalinist; the falsifier Healy is a self-styled. "Trotskyist," who imitates Stalinist policies and Stalinist methods more and more. The Liége business exposes him in his true colors -- part of a united front of slanderers against revolutionary socialists fighting for a united front in defense of the Vietnamese revolution... .
The use of such methods reveals complete political bankruptcy. Only people without the slightest confidence in their political arguments could stoop to using such methods as a substitute.
This sordid affair is not without a comic note. The editors of The Newsletter dabble on the same front page of their October 22 issue with statistics. They put the number of participants at the Liége demonstration at 3,000, the same as the police, who are notorious in such evaluations. (The organizers estimated 4,000 participants. ) The number of British and French Healyites who participated is set at 458 and 400 respectively. (The true figure for the French Healyites was 350.) Yet the editors of The Newsletter present the combined total of the two contingents as "half" and in another place "over half" of the demonstrators. (In reality they constituted hardly more than 20 percent.) It is not surprising that Healy, who has declared his own guerrilla war against any kind of objective truth, from the most elementary to the most scientific, should resolutely turn his back on simple arithmetic.
Healy concludes his article about the Liége demonstration by stating that "Trotsky, the most authoritative student of bureaucracy, would have been proud of Liege." For once we agree with him. Trotsky would have been proud of his followers, who succeeded in organizing the first international united front demonstration in Europe in defense of the Vietnamese revolution, and who rallied 4,000 youth behind that objective.
-As for the petty forgers who seek to smuggle Stalinist methods into the working-class movement under cover of a label of "Trotskyism," thereby discrediting and besmirching its good name, Trotsky would have advised his. followers to handle them with the contempt they deserve.