February 3, 1986

The Young Socialists National Committee (majority) is completely opposed to the social-chauvinist and anti-Trotskyist line of the WRP Central Committee majority leadership.

We reject the two resolutions passed by this same “leadership” at the “Central Committee” meeting on January 26, 1986 which amounted to a declaration of a split with the International Committee of the Fourth International and continued and deepened the nationalist degeneration of our Party under Healy.

The greatest crime of the Healy leadership was the abandonment of Trotskyist principles embodied in the Theory of the Permanent Revolution, the cynical abuse of the ICFI under the guise of “developing the British section” and the bloody betrayals of the international working class.

The rejection of the working class as the revolutionary force in society and abandoning the fight to build revolutionary Trotskyist leadership on a world scale, allowed Healy’s grotesque attacks to emerge and go unchallenged.

It was on this basis, the refusal of the then pro-Healy minority to subordinate to the ICFI as the World Party and accept its authority, that Healy and his supporters were expelled from the International Committee.

They have continued their attacks on the IC by working inside the sections to break them up and politically destroy the IC as the World Party.

However, their actions are now being given political credibility by the same anti-Trotskyist and nationalist methods of the WRP Central Committee, in particular Cdes. Slaughter and Banda who have also been working within IC sections to break up the International Committee.

It confirms our analysis that the split within the Party leadership was between two right-wing factions and took an organizational form only. Had the Party leadership had its way, Healy would be quietly in retirement somewhere (probably writing books on “dialectical materialism”), the demands for control commissions silenced with the Party never knowing the truth and the International Committee an appendage of the WRP. That is the line which was being taken by the CC—such is the unprincipled nature of our “leadership.”

It was the membership who refused to let the issues be silenced, who took decisive action in the fight for Trotskyism and demanded answers, inspired by the invaluable work undertaken by the American Workers League in making a political analysis of the degeneration of the Party.

The WRP CC under the leadership of Cdes. Banda and Slaughter now try to hide their own roles in the revision of Trotskyism and the theoretical “cover” which they provided for Healy, by whipping up nationalism and social-chauvinism within our Party.

The Young Socialists National Committee led the fight to expose Healy and his politics. We will lead the fight to expose the group of anti-Trotskyist renegades who now pose as the leadership of our movement.

We condemn the slanderous attacks which these “leaders” have made on our youth movement, equalled only by Healy, and their support both verbally and physically for the Runcorn comrades who refuse to print our paper and now are to join the CC in censoring it.

We salute the role of the ICFI in exposing the complete political degeneration of both Healy and the Banda-Slaughter faction, and their decision to suspend the Workers Revolutionary Party from the International Committee.

Faced with a total political division between the WRP and YS leadership, the YS National Committee is left with no alternative but to take these basic, fundamental differences to the International Committee of the Fourth International if our youth movement is to survive and flourish.

• Stand in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International!

• Expose and defeat all revisers of Trotskyism—both inside and out of the WRP!

• Build the Young Socialists and the International Youth Committee of the Fourth International!

• Forward to the Trotskyist World Party of Socialist Revolution!

Young Socialists National Committee