JACK CLEARY reviews last Friday's "Newsweek' Trotskyism is no conspiracy!

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JOURNALISTIC expeditions to explore the life forms to be found in the neo-Trotskyist archipelago might in certain circumstances result in some positive contribution to science and enlightenment.

It is after all true that most of the inhabitants of the archipelago at any given time know little about the real history of it, especially of their own part of it, or of why the fragmentation occurred. Many have little notion of how their own islet relates to and compares with the others: quite frequently one tribe believes that their cousins on the nearest atoll go around carrying their heads under their arms, pray to the devil, and exist to indulge in the most foul and repugnant political practices.

We should not be resentful at interest shown in our movement and our ideas. We should welcome it if it is honest and political. The Trotskyists - and especially the young Trotskyists - would benefit from the results of accurate scientific study of their own movement and from serious criticism of its ideas and history.

That's not what we get from the media, though!

Most often the wellfinanced expeditions especially those mounted by the popular press and TV - are merely in search of sideshow freaks and examples of outlandishness to 'illustrate' their prejudices and convince the readers and viewers that Trotskyists are an alien species - and that they should be treated as such.

Friday's Newsweek programme was no exception, though it tried to assume Alan Thornett the form and manner of fair reporting. It promised to portray exactly how a small Trotskyist group works, and focused on the Workers' Socialist League in Oxford.

It began with seeming objectivity by presenting Leon. Trotsky's ideas, summarising the 1938 Programme, and quoting key bits of it. But it quickly became clear that the point was to present Trotskyists as people whose basic political ideas committed them to the politics of manipulation and: deception.

The demands of the programme (sliding scale of hours, etc.) were presented as demands cleverly designed to be unattainable while seemingly being reasonable, and thus for use by secretive groups to manipulate and dupe honest trade unionists and Labour Party members who would not know what was reaily going on or what was 'behind' it all.

In fact, of course, the text of the Transitional Programme itself insists that it is not a complete programme, and Trotskyists, publicly explain what they are about and what their they spell out their own full socialist programme while at the same time fighting in as broad a front as possible for limited objectives and demands.

They rely not on manipulation but on the logic of the class struggle to propel the working class forward once it begins to rouse itself into struggle, where it can learn more in a week than propagandists - not to speak of manipulators and conspirators - would teach in decades.

Newsweek, however, needed this view of Trotskyist manipulators to help it present its picture of conspirators in the Labour Party. The Oxford Workers Socialist League was presented as completely secretive and underground. Yet precise figures were cited for WSL members trying to undermine the Oxford Labour Party.

Where did the figures come from? Presumably from the right wing and hysterically anti-Trotskyist faction in the Oxford Labour Party which has been regularly rebuffed by the NEC of the Labour Party and is now forced to reinstate Ted Heslin. The programme may help them whip up a new spate of witch hunting.

The programme's intention was signalled clearly - and its level of journalistic integrity was accurately summed up - by the way it used photos. Dramatically blurred and seemingly blown-up photos were projected to create an impression of intrepid sleuths getting rare mugshots of people described as leading WSLers when they popped their heads out of their burrows.

One was " Ted Heslin, alleged to be a member of the National Committee of the WSL. Another was Alan Thornett, who must by now vie with Tariq Ali for the record of being the most photographed nonfilm-star Trotskyist in history!

But it helped to concoct the desired image of mystery and conspiracy and molesmanship.

Witches

The WSL was presented as a deadly threat to the Oxford Labour Party, which deserved to be purged. The latter point was made for the Oxford Labour Party, and for the Labour Party nationally, none too subtly by one Roger Rosewell, who gave prize exhibition of ratmanship.

He was asked by the interviewer how Trotskyists would deal with dissent such as the Labour Party is now experiencing. Looking like Lavrenti Beria, Mr Rosewell told of his own experience as an SWP hatchetman, expelling people left right and centre without giving them rights to reply or appeal, under the general guideline, 'You'll get no bourgeuls justice here, comrades' This, said Rosewell with a little smirk of self-approbation, was typical of Trotskyists.. and a good model of how all Trotskyists should be treated.

Who is Roger Rosewell? He is an Oxford SDP councillor, formerly a leading member of the SWP, who is now hiring himself out as an expert on Trotskyist witches, how to recognise them and how to deal with them.

Ten years ago the SWP ceased to be a democratic organisation when it outlawed serious internal dissent, expelled the then Trotskyist Tendency opposition, and destroyed the possibility of an alternative political line to the incumbent leadership emerging.

Rosewell had himself been a dissident, but had let himself be bludgeoned into line by the faction around Tony Cliff. Thereafter he acquired a welldeserved reputation as a cynically vicious hatchetman as the organisation degenerated and became increasingly undemocratic.

In 1974 he broke with the SWP(IS) and tried to get a well-paying job as an unelected full-time union official. (He had previously held such a job with ASTMS). Failing in this, he gravitated towards Frank Chapple, was reported to be writing the official. history of the EETPU, and has followed Chapple's political logic into the SDP. • SDPer Rosewell's message to the viewers was that the Labour Party encouraged and gave cover to sinister Trotskyist conspirators who gained by presenting themselves innocuously as Labour Party members.

Inat was plainly the THE LEON TROTSKY 30p from Socialist Organiser, 28 Middlı Lane, London N8 message of the programme and the point of the exercise. It was more pressure on the Labour Party for a witch-hunt, and was itself a freelance SDP/ media private effort in Oxfurd.

The programme - to which no possibility of reply in the same media exists - was one more proof that the labour movement needs to mount its own expedition, to explore the subterranean archipelago of wealth and privilege and direct self-interest that is in monopoly control of the mass media in capitalist Britain today.

We need to take the media into public ownership under conditions that will guarantee free access.

It is the Oxford SDP that will benefit if the rank and file labour Right responds to the cue given it by Roger Rosewell, courtesy of Newsweek. And not the least interesting of the information that remains to be brought to light when the labour movement opens the books and accounts of the media is the facts of its links with the SDP - which it has fostered, boosted, and promoted. calls for stronger Public Order laws. 'Help on Arrest' schemes, and criticises the 'law and order brigade' on the grounds that 'their policies have neither prevented the disturbances nor cured them - they have merely aggravated the situation' But can society be chang ed without disturbances' Do we want to 'prevent and 'cure' or rather to give them : clearer form and aim?

The only occasion the labour movement is mentioned is when the Left is criticised for making significant organised intervention within the police' vides the a papily thro La paltry quarters of a page on the trade unions. Thus the vital issue of the undermining of working class solidarity y racism in the trade un ins is not taken up Yet its pinpointed the Asian workers strike committee after the Imperial Typewriters dispute of 1974: 'When the unions fail in their duties to black workers, they must chal!enged to stand up for their rights.

'The union is an organisation of all gardless of race, colour sex. Right now 'the trade union movement functioning as a white man's union and must be challenged. In challenging this we believe in the unity of the working class "This unity must be solidly established in deed and not only in words. It is the main task of the trade union movement to create this The importance of class solidarity in disputes such as Imperial Typewriters and Grunwick, and the practical experience of black and white unity on the picket lines and in the fight against unemplo ment, must be recognised and linked to the need for labour movement defence against racist attacks and a fight against immigration and deportation not as a favour to blacks but as practical activity in the interest of the working class

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Socialist Organiser no. 70 January 28, 1982 Page 14

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aim is. The Trotsky- ists do not manipulate:

TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM FOR REVOLUTION