Workers Vanguard No. 125 (17 September 1976)
Defend WL Against LA Cop Harassment!
Late last month a southern California court announced that seven supporters of the Young Socialists (YS), youth group of the Healyite Workers League, will stand trial October 13 for “dancing without a permit” at a Workers League office in Huntington Park, California. The outrageous charge was made following a police raid on a July 10 YS social attended by 11 persons. Five youths were arrested and all 11 given citations carrying $50 fines. (Charges against four of the youth who were under 18 years of age have already been thrown out of court.)
At 9:30 p.m., before the dance had even begun, two policemen entered the office without a warrant, scanned the literature on display, harassed the occupants and left.
Thirty minutes after their departure, three club-wielding policemen entered the office, again without a warrant, one of whom demanded to see a license for the office and threatened to shut down the premises on the spot if one were not produced at once. After being shown a license, he demanded to know whether the YS had a permit to hold a dance. When asked if it were illegal to hold a dance, he and the other two left, but not without muttering that any of those present living in Huntington Park could expect a police visit at their homes.
Shortly afterward, three squad cars arrived on the scene, with a fourth stationed down the street. The same three cops barged through the door, knocking over one person and threatening another with a felony charge and a $1,000 fine for touching a policeman.
Everyone was ordered to move up against a table, and five of those present were handcuffed and taken to the police station. The cops refused to show anyone a copy of the law under which the citations were issued and failed to inform the five who were arrested of their rights. One woman was struck on the side of the head, and one officer was overheard to ask his sergeant: “Can I choke this black bitch?”
This outrageous attack on an office of the Workers League must be understood as an attack upon the entire working-class movement. The Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth League and Partisan Defense Committee protest this cop harassment and demand that all charges against those attending the YS dance be dropped immediately!
The Workers League has requested that letters, telegrams and messages of protest regarding this incident be sent to: Mayor Herb A. Hennes. Jr. 6550 Miles Avenue, Huntington Park, CA 90255
Showing posts with label Young Socialists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Young Socialists. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Where is the Class Line in News Line? (1976)
Workers Vanguard No. 114 (17 June 1976)
Where's the Class Line in the News Line?
LONDON, May 6 – “At first glance it looks like the Daily Mirror,” writes the weekly London entertainment guide Time Out, comparing to the British equivalent of the New York Daily News and National Enquirer the Workers Revolutionary Party's latest desperate maneuver - a “popular” daily paper featuring big pictures, a “full racing card” and very little politics. The logo is indeed a deliberate imitation of that used by the sex-and-scandal British gutter press.
It looks like the Daily Mirror at second glance, too. The sympathetic article in Time Out notes, “despite appearances, The News Line is closely associated with the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party,” commenting approvingly that most of the WRP’s political views have been removed from the new publication. Most of the news is “straight” reportage; thus News Line reports without comment that General Carvalho is being run for Portuguese President, or that the Italian Communist Party has proposed a grand coalition.
The WRP's daily Workers Press folded in February (see WV No. 97, 20 February 1976). Evidently concluding that even the fake-mass Workers Press had been too political to gain a wide readership, the WRP has now staked its hopes on trying to compete with the bourgeois press on its own terms. The accent is on sensationalism: spy scares, government sex scandals; tidbits of “human interest.”
Even the sports news in News Line is banal. The racing tips are mostly carefully hedged predictions on favourites – and the track record so far is not outstanding.
Once again the WRP’s antics provide fuel for the opponents of Trotskyism. The introduction to an anti-Trotskyist polemic (by Stalinist Monty Johnstone) notes with glee that the WRP “had also bitterly attacked the [CP's Morning] Star for having changed its name from the Daily Worker – only themselves now to adopt one which has not the slightest hint of a connection with working-class traditions and aspirations.”
Desperation
The WRP took the opportunity in the interim between dailies to retire general secretary Gerry Healy, renowned for his political banditry and organizational thuggery, whose place has now been taken by the equally notorious Michael Banda. The Healyites’ organisational fortunes have continued to decline markedly, both in Britain and internationally. The WRP May Day march was claimed to have 2,000 participants, but WV observers counted at most 560, including a large number of children.
Perhaps in desperation, the Healyites have pushed their techniques of “mass recruitment” to bizarre lengths. For instance, the 1 May issue of the Healyite Young Socialist trumpets “200 Members Join Hull YS.” And how did the Hull Healyites “recruit” 200 new members to their Young Socialist branch?
Simple. They just held a disco (dance with records) and “everyone who attended the disco was signed up as a YS member”! Another article on the same page further amplifies the recruitment technique. It explains with an apparently straight face that at a YS “football rally” recently a discussion was precipitated by the arrival of a group of youth wearing swastikas. “In the end,” the article placidly concludes, “it was agreed that such signs could not be worn in a Young Socialists disco and they were taken off.”
By all rights the British ostensibly Trotskyist organisations who mourned the demise of Workers Press should be hailing its rebirth as News Line. If the closing of Workers Press was a “loss” as the International Marxist Group's Red Weekly said, surely News Line is a “gain”? And if, the Workers Socialist League (whose core was expelled from the WRP in 1974) was correct in calling the liquidation of Workers Press “A Blow to Trotskyism” then why is not News Line a “blow for Trotskyism”!
The WSL's assessment of Workers Press showed its failure to draw the proper balance sheet of Healyism, attacking only the organisational sectarianism of the WRP and not its opportunist political practice. The outstanding trait of the Healyite “method,” the pretense at a mass base (a “base” built on discos and not Marxism) was strikingly revealed in the failure of its “mass paper,” which never had any significant support in the working class.
Moreover, the Healy tendency's degeneration into anti-Trotskyist political banditry occurred many years before the expulsion of the WSL. The disorientation of the WSL, and its leanings towards rightist conciliation of the Labour Party, are shown in its insistence that the WRP should never have stood candidates against the Labour Party – at the same time as the WSL insists that the WRP had enough mass support among advanced workers to sustain a daily paper! You cannot have it both ways.
The liquidation of the Workers Press removed a barrier in the fight to create a Trotskyist Party in Britain. The News Line is a last wild gamble that will not succeed. The hoped-for advertising, which was supposed to provide the financial support for the new paper that would enable it to succeed where Workers Press could not, has not materialised, with only a handful of theatres and bookstores taking out classified ads. The modest fund drive goal of £4,000 a month was just barely reached in the first month, and the needed circulation of 30,000 copies a day will not be reached on newsstand sales. The new paper, having effectively liquidated such political face as the WRP has, will carry general secretary Banda and his gang of political bandits down to disaster.
Where's the Class Line in the News Line?
LONDON, May 6 – “At first glance it looks like the Daily Mirror,” writes the weekly London entertainment guide Time Out, comparing to the British equivalent of the New York Daily News and National Enquirer the Workers Revolutionary Party's latest desperate maneuver - a “popular” daily paper featuring big pictures, a “full racing card” and very little politics. The logo is indeed a deliberate imitation of that used by the sex-and-scandal British gutter press.
It looks like the Daily Mirror at second glance, too. The sympathetic article in Time Out notes, “despite appearances, The News Line is closely associated with the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party,” commenting approvingly that most of the WRP’s political views have been removed from the new publication. Most of the news is “straight” reportage; thus News Line reports without comment that General Carvalho is being run for Portuguese President, or that the Italian Communist Party has proposed a grand coalition.
The WRP's daily Workers Press folded in February (see WV No. 97, 20 February 1976). Evidently concluding that even the fake-mass Workers Press had been too political to gain a wide readership, the WRP has now staked its hopes on trying to compete with the bourgeois press on its own terms. The accent is on sensationalism: spy scares, government sex scandals; tidbits of “human interest.”
Even the sports news in News Line is banal. The racing tips are mostly carefully hedged predictions on favourites – and the track record so far is not outstanding.
Once again the WRP’s antics provide fuel for the opponents of Trotskyism. The introduction to an anti-Trotskyist polemic (by Stalinist Monty Johnstone) notes with glee that the WRP “had also bitterly attacked the [CP's Morning] Star for having changed its name from the Daily Worker – only themselves now to adopt one which has not the slightest hint of a connection with working-class traditions and aspirations.”
Desperation
The WRP took the opportunity in the interim between dailies to retire general secretary Gerry Healy, renowned for his political banditry and organizational thuggery, whose place has now been taken by the equally notorious Michael Banda. The Healyites’ organisational fortunes have continued to decline markedly, both in Britain and internationally. The WRP May Day march was claimed to have 2,000 participants, but WV observers counted at most 560, including a large number of children.
Perhaps in desperation, the Healyites have pushed their techniques of “mass recruitment” to bizarre lengths. For instance, the 1 May issue of the Healyite Young Socialist trumpets “200 Members Join Hull YS.” And how did the Hull Healyites “recruit” 200 new members to their Young Socialist branch?
Simple. They just held a disco (dance with records) and “everyone who attended the disco was signed up as a YS member”! Another article on the same page further amplifies the recruitment technique. It explains with an apparently straight face that at a YS “football rally” recently a discussion was precipitated by the arrival of a group of youth wearing swastikas. “In the end,” the article placidly concludes, “it was agreed that such signs could not be worn in a Young Socialists disco and they were taken off.”
By all rights the British ostensibly Trotskyist organisations who mourned the demise of Workers Press should be hailing its rebirth as News Line. If the closing of Workers Press was a “loss” as the International Marxist Group's Red Weekly said, surely News Line is a “gain”? And if, the Workers Socialist League (whose core was expelled from the WRP in 1974) was correct in calling the liquidation of Workers Press “A Blow to Trotskyism” then why is not News Line a “blow for Trotskyism”!
The WSL's assessment of Workers Press showed its failure to draw the proper balance sheet of Healyism, attacking only the organisational sectarianism of the WRP and not its opportunist political practice. The outstanding trait of the Healyite “method,” the pretense at a mass base (a “base” built on discos and not Marxism) was strikingly revealed in the failure of its “mass paper,” which never had any significant support in the working class.
Moreover, the Healy tendency's degeneration into anti-Trotskyist political banditry occurred many years before the expulsion of the WSL. The disorientation of the WSL, and its leanings towards rightist conciliation of the Labour Party, are shown in its insistence that the WRP should never have stood candidates against the Labour Party – at the same time as the WSL insists that the WRP had enough mass support among advanced workers to sustain a daily paper! You cannot have it both ways.
The liquidation of the Workers Press removed a barrier in the fight to create a Trotskyist Party in Britain. The News Line is a last wild gamble that will not succeed. The hoped-for advertising, which was supposed to provide the financial support for the new paper that would enable it to succeed where Workers Press could not, has not materialised, with only a handful of theatres and bookstores taking out classified ads. The modest fund drive goal of £4,000 a month was just barely reached in the first month, and the needed circulation of 30,000 copies a day will not be reached on newsstand sales. The new paper, having effectively liquidated such political face as the WRP has, will carry general secretary Banda and his gang of political bandits down to disaster.
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