February 1-2, 1986
The Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League recognizes that:
The two resolutions of the WRP Central Committee of January 26, 1986 repudiating the entire history of struggle waged by the Fourth International since 1940, and the ICFI since 1953 are a declaration of split from the ICFI and a turn to “regroupment” with revisionist forces which have broken with Trotskyism.
The resolutions are the necessary outcome of the persistent opposition of the majority of the WRP leadership to the fight waged by the IC to reestablish the British section on the fundamental principles of Trotskyism following the split with Healy.
By its repudiation of the October 25, 1985 ICFI resolution, with which it only agreed at the time for purely tactical reasons, the majority of the WRP leadership has joined the Healy rump group in refusing to recognize the political authority of the ICFI as the leadership of the world party of socialist revolution.
The response of the WRP leadership to the degeneration under Healy has not been to launch a struggle to overcome the revisionist political line and anti-internationalism which led to that degeneration but to openly fight for the liquidation of Trotskyism, reflecting the deepest needs of the British ruling class.
The growing crisis of the Thatcher government, fueled by the collapse of its economic strategy in the wake of the oil price war, brings forward the necessity for the creation of centrist organizations falsely claiming to represent the Fourth International to head off the radicalization of the working class which will accompany the return of a Labour government.
The WRP leadership proposed to organize this centrist regroupment through a discussion with all those who claim adherence to the “Transitional Program” but who have in fact repudiated all its principles.
The call by the majority of the WRP Central Committee for a discussion on the history of the Fourth International is completely fraudulent because it has already declared that the Fourth International no longer exists.
The majority of the WRP Central Committee is a petty-bourgeois nationalist clique heading extremely rapidly to the right. Having repudiated the entire history of the Fourth International since 1940, it will soon draw the conclusion, as other centrists have done before, that the Fourth International should never have been founded.
Twenty years after the split with the Robertsonites, who concluded that the Fourth International had been destroyed by revisionism and had to be reconstructed, the majority of the WRP Central Committee has arrived at the same positions.
The problems of the Fourth International, particularly in the postwar period, arose above all from the fact that imperialism, with the deadly assistance of Stalinism and reformism, was able to retain power in the major metropolitan countries.
The prolonged postwar boom, a product of the deliberate retreat by imperialism before the strength of the working class, meant that the struggle to educate and train a cadre took place under enormously difficult objective conditions.
But Trotskyism was not destroyed. Its continuity was the successful struggle by the ICFI against Pabloite revisionism in 1953 and 1963.
When these same liquidationist pressures exerted themselves in the WRP, forces came forward within the International Committee to fight them. This struggle ensured that in the split with Healy all the gains of the previous struggles were taken forward and the continuity of the ICFI maintained.
The SLL Central Committee declares:
1. Total opposition to the resolutions carried by the WRP Central Committee on January 26 repudiating the struggle by the ICFI for the continuity of Trotskyism and rejecting the political authority of the ICFI.
2. The International Committee of the Fourth International is the historically formed leadership of the world party of socialist revolution. Outside the ICFI and its sections “there does not exist a single revolutionary current on the planet really meriting the name.”
3. Full support for a thorough-going discussion on the history and principles of the Trotskyist movement in order to rearm its cadre but total opposition to a discussion on whether the ICFI exists.
The SLL Central Committee calls on the ICFI at its next world congress to expel from its ranks the 12 members of the WRP Central Committee who voted for the January 26 resolutions.