ENTOE SCENNE в тоссЕ Серас IA betueen the IMG and the Intermational unist League must have been perplexed as to the reason why the meeting book place. For as the discussion proceeded, ander the Chaurmanship of veteran Trotskyist Harry Wicks, it became clear that there was no common conception of how regroupment on the far left would proceed; not indeed, any evidence on the part of the ICL that they wanted any such regroupment to occur in the context of Brian Grogan, National Secretary of the IMG, opened the debate. ne aim of the IMG's debate with the Communist Party, he said, was to alert the vanguard to the dangers posed by this reformist organisation. As far as IS was concerned. the IMG considered that this organisation was a centrist obstacle to the building of a revolutionary party. The aim of the debate with the ICL, however, was to win them to the ranks of the Fourth International, 'not to expose their perfidy, or win odd individuals from PROGRAMME He said that a discussion about regroupment could only have positive results if it concentrated on questions of programme, not tactical questions. This point was driven home by Jonathan Silberman, who outlined the melod of Lenin and Trotsky in dealing with the questions of splits and unity in the revolutionary party.
Sean Matgamna, opening the debate for the ICL, compared the importance of the issue under debate to that of determining the tasks in relation to the FETLETTERS I've just been expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Party without any kind of charges being brought against me, and I think the way I was thrown out provides a pretty good illustration of the methods sed by Gerry Healy against all opponents - real or imaginary!
It started when I was at the WRP on centre recently. One member comolined that the government was carrying out Tory policies, as if to imply that it had ever been likely to do otherSoviet Union. He accused the IMG of rationalising the internal situation inside their own organisation, using the authority of Trotsky and Lenin.
Ian Macauley explained how the positions of the ICL had developed on the Fourth International. They had taken a position of critical support after the Fourth International had called for a political revolution in China. But they had felt compelled to change their position after the Fourth International had failed to call for political revolution in Vietnam. Sean Matgamna had previously explained that this was why they charactensee the rowm memanona! as Brandlerite-Deutscherite.
Peter Gowan (IMG) said that it seemed that the only programmatic difference was on the question of Vietnam and perhaps Cuba. The ICL drew from this the need to 'regenerate' the Marxist International. But if they were serious about regenerating the they're WaRPed!
of us in to see him, and threw the book at us for half an hour, calling us police provocateurs, enemies of the party, and every four-letter word he could think or.
The next morning I was told that Healy nad no intention of unrowing us out of the school or the party, he just wanted to shake us up. From then on the school proceeded quite smoothly, and nothing further happened of note until the last three days, when nobody came round to deliver the News Line.
This evening, however, a former member of the YS National Committee came to see me, and after a few brief words deFourth International', they should draw a balance sheet of that intention since 1972. They would find it was a negative One ing Vietnam as a shibboleth between the ICL and the Fl, they should be clear on the implications of their position. If the ICL took the absence of genuine organs of workers power as the reason for their call for revolution in Vietnam, then they should also have been in favour of a political revolution in the Soviet Union in 1920.
INSISTED John Hunt (ICL) insisted that questions such as their position of abstention on the Common Market vote, opposition to the slogan of a monopoly of foreign trade, and the question of how the slogan against them - like he did with Alan Thornett, and like he is now doing with comrades Joseph Hansen and George Novack of the Socialist Workers Party.
But enough of Healyism, there's a revolutionary situation in the offing. It needs a revolutionary socialist party based on Marxism to take the working class to power, and the only such party in Britain is the International Marxist Group. Let's go forward and build it! - M.W. (Cambridge). Tariq Ali (IMG) said that before erectof 'Recall the TUC' was posed were all today. principled questions, not tactical ones This last intervention, in particular, underlined the fact that there was no common point of departure for the discussion. The ICL's notion of the way in Juture issue TARIQ ALI and BRIAN GROGAN were among IMG speakers at debate with ICL was to confront the Fourth International with all sorts of criticisms - trom the tasks in Vietnam to tactics in the British trade unions - and to await answers. The IMG's intention was to distinguish between questions of programme and tactics, and then examine whether the differences in programme justified the separation of the ICL from the ranks of the Fourth International.
FRAGMENTED The significance of debates like this one, however, are considerable. Unless the contusion evidenced last week can be corrected, then there will be no possibility of overcoming the chronic fragmentation of the far left in Britain BARRY MUIR We will be running a more extensive article on the politics of the ICL in a