Don't let Healy discredit dialectical materialism!

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AS TWO Trotskyists who managed to smuggle ourselves into the recent WRP "41st Anniversary of Trotsky's Death" rally, we would like to clarify and expand on your report of this event in Socialist Organiser no. 50, The Secret Policeman's Ball' We listened closely, but have no recollection Healy "telling us that the world was the centre of the universe" or the other formulations in that paragraph. Omitting his various tangential lapses, Healy's speech had two main components:

Firstly, á formally correct assessment that neither the bureaucracy of Moscow nor the TUC can ultimately offer any delence against ine Reagan/Thatcher reaction.

Secondly, drawing on contributions made by his acolytes of the American Workers' League, he adumbrated a further level of attacks on the USFI and the American SWP in particular, implicating them directly in the murder of Tom Henehan several years ago, as part of a world-wide joint conspiracy of the FBi, the KGB, and the revisionists' Murder Two large WRP booklets have already claimed to have implicated the late Joseph Hansen in the murder of Trotsky in 1940. This latest rally marked the launching of a new thick paperback entitled 'Security and the Fourth International' = no doubt not the last of its genre. This paranoiac conspiracy theories serve as the central "political' pole of the Healy sect.

The Workers' Socialist League leaflet distributed outside attacked "what they the WRe laughably call dialectical materialism' that the WRP peddles" , and the Socialist Organiser article derided Healy's going on about 'dialectical materialism'.

In the context of polemics, this is inadequate without spelling out the difference between Marxist philosophy as a guide to analysis and action, as opposed to Healy's elaborate abstractions that can only obfuscate politics.

This could inadvertently provide ammunition for the WRP misleadership to write us off in front of their membership as being revisionists who attack dialectical materialism' , and this familiar theme could be dredged up in the context of the WRP's current law suit.

Spectacle

The WRP rally was a familiar spectacle, with its ritual ejections, platform demagogy without a single contribution from the floor: only the membership has been changed to protect the guilty.

Officials

The programmed film did not materialise, and demonstration to the American Embassy in protest at US warmongering against Libya was tailed by Libyan officials.

This "tail that wags the dog' is likely through its generosity to preserve the deathmask of Trotskyism that is the WRP well beyond natural expectations. Therefore a careful assessment will be necessary for an unfortunately long time to come.

T.S. (WSL member)

B.P. (SO supporter)

London Healy I'D LIKE to take issue with John O'Mahony's article 'Behind the byelection' in Socialist Organiser of August 27, which contrasts with and completely negates his very positive front-page article, '31,000 say smash H-Block' In the article, he says that Owen Carron's victory is good news for the H-Block campaign, but then implies that it has disadvantages because the polarisation which it creates in the two communities is a backward step for the Irish working class.

agree that the election are taking into consideration victory increases the polarisation developing from the hunger strike struggle, but we must recognise that the polarisation is inevitable. If the hunger strike is won there will be further polarisation which could well escalate to a civil war.

Comrade O'Mahony bemoans the fact that the main parties in the election ran campaigns that could only appeal to the votes of their own community. Well, of course - the election was on one issue, on whether you supported the H-Block hunger strikers or Margaret Thatcher!

Comrade O'Mahony says "Fermanagh/South Tyrone full time officials are using the rule book more and more. I do not need to go into the rule book with any deep observations, except to quote the infamous Rule 11, Clause 19 which reads: "Any member violating any working rules, registration or bylaws, disseminating false statements or any rumour which tends to depreciate the organisation, its officers, or any section appertaining to the union, or circulating any business of the union to unauthorised persons without authority, or who is guilty of other forms of misconduct shall be fined a sum not exceeding £10 or otherwise dealt with by the branch or authorised committee of the union as may be deemed fit."

In other words it you