192. The British Trotskyists, led by Gerry Healy, who led the struggle against the degeneration of the SWP and its reunification with the Pabloites, played a crucial role in ensuring the continuity of the ICFI and the creation of new sections. But from the 1970s onwards, the SLL and then the WRP began to move further and further away from the Trotskyist principles for which it had fought. At the heart of this shift to the right was that British Trotskyists began to prioritize the building of their own national party over the struggle for the world socialist revolution and the building of a world party to lead it. The WRP leadership justified this on the grounds that party building in Britain would lead to the expansion of the ICFI. But this retreat from internationalism inevitably led to a growing national-opportunist orientation, cessation of the struggle against Pabloism and the abandonment of the Theory of Permanent Revolution. This degeneration, based on a middle-class milieu in Britain, found expression internationally, especially in the Middle East, in the form of an unprincipled political and financial adaptation to bourgeois nationalist regimes and movements.

193. In contrast, the American Trotskyists took a different path. The Workers League responded to the political crisis that led to the resignation of Tim Wohlforth in 1974 by directing its activity towards the working class and focusing on the history of the Trotskyist movement and the lessons of the struggle against Pabloism. This emphasis on the historical experience of the Trotskyist movement in the context of the objective development of world capitalism and the international class struggle emerged as the main political feature of the Workers League. The development of the Workers League after 1974, including through its leading role in the Security and Fourth International investigation, prepared it for the political struggle launched in 1982 against the national degeneration of the WRP.

194. David North, National Secretary of the Workers League, writing in the fall of 1982 on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Comrade Tom Henehan, expressed the basis for political differences with the WRP:

The real heart of cadre training is the conscious subordination of all who join the Party to the revolutionary principles through which the historical continuity of the Marxist movement is expressed. By ‘historical continuity,’ we have in mind the unbroken chain of political and ideological struggle by our international movement against Stalinism, Social Democracy, revisionism and all other enemies of the working class...

Revisionists and political charlatans of all descriptions invariably base their politics and policies on the immediate and practical needs of the hour. Principled considerations, i.e., those which arise out of a serious study of the history of the international workers’ movement, knowledge of its development as a law-governed process, and, flowing from that, a constant critical reworking of its objective experiences, are utterly foreign to these pragmatists...

A leadership which does not strive collectively to assimilate the whole of this history cannot adequately fulfill its revolutionary responsibilities to the working class. Without a real knowledge of the historical development of the Trotskyist movement, references to dialectical materialism are not merely hollow; such empty references pave the way for a real distortion of the dialectical method. The source of theory lies not in thought but in the objective world. Thus the development of Trotskyism proceeds from the fresh experiences of the class struggle, which are posited on the entire historically-derived knowledge of our movement.^[1]

195. In October 1982, North wrote a critique of Gerry Healy’s “Studies in Dialectical Materialism” and demonstrated that Healy’s presentation of the dialectic rejected materialism and returned to the subjective idealist philosophy that Marx had overcome in the 1840s in his critique of the Young Hegelians. North summarized his critique of the political evolution of the WRP as follows: “The ‘Studies in Dialectics’ has brought into the open a crisis that has been developing within the International Committee for a considerable period of time. For several years (in my opinion, this began in 1976 and only began to predominate in 1978), in the name of the struggle for dialectical materialism and against propagandism, the International Committee has drifted steadily away from a struggle for Trotskyism.”

In particular, North attacked the WRP’s opportunist relations with bourgeois national regimes in the Middle East, writing:

A vulgarization of Marxism, palmed off as the ‘struggle for dialectics’, has been accompanied by an unmistakable opportunist drift within the International Committee, especially in the WRP… Marxist defence of national liberation movements and the struggle against imperialism has been interpreted in an opportunist fashion of uncritical support for various bourgeois nationalist regimes.^[2]

196. North then explained that this had not developed overnight, emphasizing that the WRP had abandoned the building of ICFI sections in the Middle East and the Theory of Permanent Revolution:

The line of the IC is littered with unclarified questions:

a. The “alliance” with the Libyan Jamahiriya in August 1977;

b. The support of the Iraqi Baathists’ persecution of the Stalinists.

10. During the six years in which the IC has conducted work in the Middle East, there has not been a single statement in which class relations in that area of the world have been analyzed. There has not been a single article in which the development of the working class has been analyzed. For all intents and purposes, the Theory of Permanent Revolution has been treated as inapplicable to present circumstances.

12. As for Iran, the greatest revolutionary upheaval in the colonial world since the events in China, the International Committee has produced not a single critical analysis since February 1979.

13. Out of all the pragmatic day-to-day shifts there is beginning to coalesce a political tendency that has a definite Pabloite taint. Thus, we find in a statement of the WRP Political Committee, dated December 11, 1981:

“But Gaddafi has politically developed in the direction of revolutionary socialism and he has shunned the palaces and harems of some other Arab leaders.

 “For this reason he has become the undisputed leader of the Libyan people and his name is now synonymous with the strivings of the oppressed in many countries.” (News Line, December 12, 1981)^[3]

197. As a clear sign of advanced opportunism, the WRP responded by suppressing criticism of the Workers League and attempting to isolate it. In response, the Workers League decided in early 1984 that the time had come to challenge the WRP’s political degeneration and developed a more comprehensive critique. North, in a letter to WRP General Secretary Mike Banda dated January 23, 1984, wrote “… we are concerned that the International Committee is now in danger of losing the gains of its many years of principled struggle,” adding: “… we are deeply troubled by the growing signs of a political drift toward positions quite similar—both in conclusions and methodology—to those which we have historically associated with Pabloism.” He emphasized that “The International Committee has for some time been working without a clear and politically-unified perspective to guide its practice.”

Rather than a perspective for the building of sections of the International Committee in every country, the central focus of the IC’s work for several years has been the development of alliances with various bourgeois nationalist regimes and liberation movements. The content of these alliances has less and less reflected any clear orientation toward the development of our own forces as central to the fight to establish the leading role of the proletariat in the anti-imperialist struggle in the semi-colonial countries. The very conceptions advanced by the SWP in relation to Cuba and Algeria which we attacked so vigorously in the early 1960s appear with increasing frequency within our own press.^[4]

198. North defended the political independence of the working class and the Theory of Permanent Revolution, while highlighting the limitations of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), one of the most radical examples of national liberation movements, and articulating the objective foundations of its subsequent political evolution:

As Marxists our starting point in making political analysis is never the conscious intentions of political leaders; it must be the class forces they represent and the logic of the class struggle of which their actions are a necessary expression. The policies of Arafat inevitably reflect his class standpoint as a petty-bourgeois nationalist. He is maneuvering not only between different bourgeois regimes within the Middle East but also between the opposing class forces within the Palestinian movement. However great his personal courage and heroism, Arafat’s policies cannot provide an answer to the great historic problems of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination…

Our calculations, if not Arafat’s, are always based on an estimate of class forces and the potential of the working class for revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie… Our strategical goal should always be the mobilization of the working class — supported by the peasantry — against the bourgeoisie in each and every Middle Eastern country.^[5]

199. In his Political Report to the ICFI on February 11, 1984, North placed the differences with the WRP in the context of the International Committee’s unrelenting struggle over the previous three decades to resolve the crisis of revolutionary leadership, stating:

This has been a history of struggle against all those forces—Stalinist, Social Democratic, and Pabloite—through which the working class is subordinated to the bourgeoisie. The International Committee is based upon the traditions and principles established through the political, theoretical and organizational struggles of all previous generations of Marxists—and the way in which this continuity of the IC with these previous generations has been developed is through the struggle against every variety of anti-Marxism that has emerged within the workers’ movement, especially within the Trotskyist movement itself.^[6]

200. Emphasizing the need to examine the entire development of the ICFI in the previous decade, North criticized the unprincipled relations developed by the WRP in the Middle East:

In July of 1977 the WRP signed an alliance with the Libyan Jamahiriya. Relations were then developed with the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party of Iraq. It is clear that by mid-1978 a general orientation toward relations with nationalist regimes and liberation movements was developing without any corresponding perspective for the actual building of our own forces inside the working class. An entirely uncritical and incorrect appraisal began to emerge ever more openly within our press, inviting the cadres and the working class to view these bourgeois nationalists as “anti-imperialist” leaders to whom political support must be given.^[7]

201. The WRP shifted from the Trotskyist perspective of the ICFI’s February 12, 1979 statement on the Iranian Revolution to uncritical support for the Islamic Republic. That statement made these points:

The truth is that the masses were moved by CLASS questions, not religious ones.

However, in the absence of an organized revolutionary leadership and because of the cowardly class-collaborationist policies of Iranian Stalinism in the Tudeh party, Ayatollah Khomeini and other religious leaders of the Shi’ite sect have been able to establish a virtual political monopoly on the opposition forces...

The policies of Khomeini reflect the contradictory and equivocal nature of the bazaar merchants and other elements of the Iranian native capitalist class and petty-bourgeoisie...

But they cannot and will not challenge capitalist state power in Iran ... The Stalinists and centrists of all varieties will oppose the strategy of advance to the socialist revolution in Iran, on the grounds that the revolution there is first and foremost a bourgeois revolution, i.e., a revolution for democratic demands to abolish feudal and semi-feudal oppression and permit the free development of national capitalism and democracy.

They will say it is ‘sectarian’ to advocate policies for the working class which are independent of and opposed to the bourgeoisie.^[8]

202. North criticized the abandonment of this position and the fact that Savas Michael-Matsas, leader of the Workers Internationalist League (WIL), then the Greek section of the ICFI, went to Iran through the WRP and glorified the bourgeois Islamist regime. North wrote:

No further class analysis was ever made of the development of the Iranian Revolution. Our line came to consist simply of unconditional support for Khomeiny, despite the mounting persecution of every single left-wing organization in Iran. In the absence of any Marxist analysis of the development of this revolution, an obviously non-Trotskyist and revisionist line began to find its way into our international press—most notably in the articles written by Comrade Savas following his trip to Iran, which occurred in the midst of arrests and trials of Tudeh Party leaders.^[9]

203. The Workers Revolutionary Party refused to discuss the differences raised by the Workers League. Instead, it issued threats to sever relations with the Workers League if it persisted in its criticisms. This unprincipled and opportunist course had, ultimately, devastating consequences for the WRP. In 1985, shortly after the defeat of the one-year-long miners’ strike, a crisis broke out inside the WRP, which quickly led to its break with the International Committee and its complete destruction. The WRP’s crisis created conditions where the critique undertaken by the Workers League could be discussed within the entire International Committee. Prior to this, sections were either not informed of the Workers League’s critique or confronted such organisational pressure and political provocations that a serious study of the critique was not possible. In the autumn of 1985, delegates of the Australian, Sri Lankan and German sections met with David North in London and supported the critique made by the Workers League. A minority also emerged within the WRP, led by Dave Hyland, defending the International Committee and Trotskyist principles.

204. In turn, the Greek and Spanish sections of the ICFI, following the path of Healy’s national-opportunist degeneration, rejected the political authority of the ICFI and broke away from it. As the ICFI explained in How the Workers Revolutionary Party Betrayed Trotskyism 1973-1985, published after the split:

The ICFI sought to provide a principled basis for resolving the crisis within the Workers Revolutionary Party. But first it had to deal with problems within its own ranks. The Greek and Spanish sections had organized a separate factional meeting in Barcelona on October 21, 1985 and declared that they would recognize no authority inside the ICFI except Gerry Healy. He alone, they claimed, had the right to call meetings. Thus, they refused to attend. By October 23, 1985, a majority of the IC sections were assembled in London. They correctly analyzed that the source of the crisis within the WRP had been the opportunist repudiation of Trotskyist principles and its refusal to subordinate itself to the International Committee.^[10]

In a letter to the WIL Central Committee on November 9, 1985, after the Greek section led by Savas Michael-Matsas declared that it would recognize no authority other than Healy and refused to attend the duly convened ICFI meeting on October 25, 1985, the IC delegates expressed their concern that the organization would “split with the IC on an unprincipled basis.” They emphasized that “Such a split by you would constitute an enormous betrayal of the International and the Greek working class.”^[11] The letter called on WIL members to reject “the anti-internationalism which led to the refusal to attend the October 25 IC meeting” and made the following prediction, which was soon to be confirmed: “If not, the WIL faces destruction as a Trotskyist party.”^[12]

205. On October 25, 1985, the ICFI issued a statement regarding the expulsion of Gerry Healy, as well as a resolution concerning the crisis within the British section. The resolution identified the source of the political crisis in the “prolonged drift of the WRP leadership away from the strategic task of building the world party of socialist revolution towards an increasingly nationalist perspective and practice.”[13] The ICFI decided that “The re-registration of the membership of the WRP on the basis of an explicit recognition of the political authority of the ICFI and the subordination of the British section to its decisions”^[14] would be required.

206. The ICFI provided a striking example of a Marxist approach in its resolution after examining the sexual abuse allegations against Gerry Healy. The ICFI emphasized that Healy’s expulsion did not deny his political contributions to the struggle against Pabloite revisionism in the 1950s and 1960s, stating:

In fact, this expulsion is the end product of his rejection of the Trotskyist principles upon which these past struggles were based and his descent into the most vulgar forms of opportunism.

The political and personal degeneration of Healy can be clearly traced to his ever more explicit separation of the practical and organizational gains of the Trotskyist movement in Britain from the historically and internationally grounded struggles against Stalinism and revisionism from which these achievements arose…

Those like Healy, who abandon the principles on which they once fought and who refuse to subordinate themselves to the ICFI in the building of its national sections must inevitably degenerate under the pressure of the class enemy.

There can be no exception to this historical law. The ICFI affirms that no leader stands above the historic interests of the working class.^[15]

207. The ICFI delegates refused to be utilized for the nationalist purposes of the competing WRP factions. They insisted that a political recovery of the WRP from its crisis was possible only to the extent that it returned to the principles of the ICFI and accepted the discipline of the international movement. With the exception of the internationalist minority led by Hyland, no faction was prepared to do so. Mike Banda and Cliff Slaughter, who had fallen out with Healy, shared his opportunist and nationalist perspective and sought to avoid any examination of the political causes of the WRP’s crisis.

208. On December 16, 1985, the International Committee received a report from an International Control Commission that it had formed to examine the political and financial relations that had been established by the WRP with various bourgeois national regimes in the Middle East between 1976 and 1985. This report established conclusively that the WRP had entered into political relations that betrayed the principles of the Fourth International, while keeping these relations hidden from the ICFI. The International Committee voted, over objections of WRP delegates representing the Slaughter and Banda factions, to suspend the WRP from membership in the international organization. This resolution was supported by David Hyland, who represented a substantial section of the WRP membership that was in political agreement with the International Committee.

209. On February 8, 1986, the WRP held a rump congress from which all supporters of the International Committee were excluded. This political travesty marked the definitive end of the WRP as a Trotskyist organization. The main document prepared for this congress was an anti-Trotskyist diatribe composed by Banda, entitled “27 Reasons Why the International Committee Should be Buried Forthwith and the Fourth International Built.” Within months of writing this document, Banda repudiated his nearly 40-year association with the Fourth International and proclaimed his admiration for Stalin. As for the WRP, its various factions disintegrated one by one. Within less than a decade, Slaughter and other former leaders of the WRP were heavily involved in the US-NATO operation in Bosnia. The only viable political tendency in the British organization that was to emerge from the collapse of the WRP was that led by Hyland, which upheld the principles of the ICFI. This tendency established the International Communist Party in February 1986, the forerunner to the present-day Socialist Equality Party, the British section of the ICFI.