HEALY SCORES ANOTHER "TRIUMPH" OVER ERNEST TATE
In previous issues we have reported how Ernest Tate, a Trotskyist, was beaten up in front of a Socialist Labour League meeting held at Caxton Hall in London on Noven— ber 17. We have also reported how Ernest Tate refused to call the cops, preferring to register his protest with organizations in the socialist and labor movement. For instance, he wrote a circular letter in which he gave his impression of what happened in front of Caxton Hall and fixed the responsibility on Healy.
Healy's reply to this was to go over the letter in hope of finding formulations that could be utilized in the bourgeois courts in a shyster lawsuit. He hired attorneys to open proceedings. Solicitors' letters were sent to Tate and to two working-class newspapers that had published Tate's letter, the Socialist Leader and Peace News.
The two working-class papers, which have no large sums at hand to fight shyster lawsuits in the bourgeois courts, felt it best to print formal retractions and pay the "costs" demanded by Healy -- 10 guineas in each case.
We now come to Healy's latest "triumph" over Ernest Tate. In the December 17 Newsletter, under the heading "Apologies," Healy reprinted the two formal retractions. Almost identical in text, they obviously show the fine touch of the SLL's great legal brain. First they refer to having published a letter by Ernest Tate in which he accused "Mr. Gerry Healy, National Secretary of the Socialist Labour League, of having instigated several of his supporters to assault and prevent him from selling literature outside Caxton Hall, where an SLL meeting was being held."
Then the two formal retractions, which are really choice examples of such instances in the bourgeois system of jurisprudence, print the alibi provided by the SLL's wily expert in this field: "We have been informed that Mr. Healy asked a steward to clear the pavement in front of the entrance of the Hall so that passengers alighting from coaches would not be delayed in getting to the meeting; that he did nothing to prevent Mr. Tate or anyone else from selling literature; and that others were selling literature at each side of the entrance without interference." Both retractions then "sincerely apologise to Mr. Healy for having published the suggestion that he employs violence or seeks to curtail freedom of expression.
And the beating inflicted on Ernest Tate? Not a word outside of the reference in these two formal retractions. Not a whisper yet in The Newsletter! Like resorting to the bourgeois courts, you see, clearing the pavement in front of a meeting is routine for the SLL. Particularly clearing the pavement of the one person among "others" selling literature who happens to be offering the pamphlet, Healy "Reconstructs" the Fourth International. That pamphlet really obstructs traffic...