October 26, 1985

The Workers Revolutionary Party, British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, has been split in two by the anti-Bolshevik, unconstitutional and wrecking actions of the general secretary, Michael Banda [sic] and his academic attorney, Cliff Slaughter.

They have deliberately conspired to whip up a lynch mob atmosphere in sections of the party to frame and expel the founder-leader of our movement, Comrade Gerry Healy.

The chief instruments for this attack are an unscrupulous smear campaign against Comrade Healy and an attack on dialectical materialism spearheaded by D. North of the US Workers League.

Both attacks have failed: Comrade Healy’s record as founder and builder of the International Committee of the Fourth International and of the Workers Revolutionary Party are matters of objective historical truth.

We reject with contempt Banda and Slaughter’s conspiracy to drive him from the party, and are proud to proclaim him as a members [sic] of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

Banda-Slaughter and their clique no longer represent the traditions of the Trotskyist movement. They have definitively broken from the principles of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

They have rejected dialectical materialism in favour of subjective idealism; violated the constitution flagrantly and replaced it with rank and fileism, freedom of criticism and rule from below; and set out to destroy the party, the Young Socialists, the News Line, the first daily Trotskyist newspaper in the world, by capitulating to social democracy and the “new reality.”

But they cannot destroy the Workers Revolutionary Party, its theoretical foundations and its practical achievements in the working-class movement. It will go forward on the basis of:

1. Upholding democratic centralism embodied in the party’s constitution.

2. Fighting for the resolutions of the 7th Congress of the Workers Revolutionary Party and the 10th World Congress of the ICFI.

3. Training a cadre in the working class and youth in the dialectical materialist method.

We call upon all members of the Workers Revolutionary Party to rally to the fight for these Marxist principles as the only guarantee of building the party of socialist revolution.

SIGNED:

Sheila Torrance, Richard Price, Corin Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Alex Mitchell, Ben Rudder, Simon Vevers, Ray Athow, Frank Sweeney, John Eden, Claire Dixon, David Oatley.