Messengers of Qaddafi 2 (1977)

Workers Vanguard No. 174 (23 September 1977)

More from Healy, Messenger of Qaddafi

The Healyite Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) of Britain has intensified its year-long pandering to the despotic regime of Colonel Muamar Qaddafi's underpopulated but oil-rich Libya to new heights of shameless glorification following last month's brief military conflict between Egypt and Libya. The border clashes between Egypt and Libya represented nothing more than a power struggle for influence in the Arab East between two comparable bourgeois-nationalist regimes, which have consistently answered the democratic aspirations of both Libyans and Egyptians with savage repression. Neither side is deserving of support by socialists.

The WRP, now under the leadership of general secretary Michael Banda, seized on the conflict, however, to provide additional services to what it is pleased to revere as the “Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” the new Qaddafi-inspired name for Libya. Workers Vanguard first exposed the WRP's weirdly grovelling lauding of the Libyan dictator several months ago (see “Healyites, Messengers of Qaddafi,” WV No. 158, 20 May 1977). Since then the WRP's grotesque and fulsome support to Qaddafi has provoked widespread comment in the British left press, as well as in the London Manchester Guardian (16 August).

The WRP (formerly the Socialist Labour League) has a long history of political banditry and Stalin-style organizational methods. Following their hatchet job expulsion of the Spartacist tendency from the 1966 London International Committee (IC) conference, consolidating a rotten bloc of political convenience, the Healyites' cynical organizational methods found political expression a year later in cheerleading a classless “Arab Revolution,” and chronic tailing of Stalinist forces such as Ho chi Minh and the Chinese Maoist Red Guards.

The Healyite operation during the last decade has been built on the principles of a con game, with a central focus on milking high-income “angels” through gimmicky pretensions to mass influence. Combining internal intimidation of members with violence and slander against left opponents, including dragging them into the capitalist courts when convenient, the shrill tone of the Healyite fake “mass press” (Workers Press, News Line) recently reached a new height of witchhunting frenzy in filthy attempts to smear Joseph Hansen, spokesman for the reformist Socialist Workers Party, as an “accomplice of the GPU” in Trotsky's assassination. But the corrupt Healyite “method” of political banditry has reached a revolting nadir in the WRP/ IC's current fealty to the dictator Qaddafi.

Following the Egypt-Libya clash, the WRP Central Committee issued a statement giving full support to the “Libyan Revolution,” stating that “the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi would be a major setback for Palestine and for Africa.” “Unlike Sadat, the Colonel enjoys universal support amongst the Libyan workers and peasants,” the WRP Central Committee asserted (News Line, 25 July)-and perhaps there is a grain of truth here, since any Libyan who dared oppose the dictator would be swiftly thrown in jail, or worse!

The WRP organized a picket outside the Egyptian embassy in London on July 25, during which Banda and film actress Vanessa Redgrave personally delivered a letter of protest against Sadat to the ambassador. At a special meeting organized by the WRP in “support of the Palestinian and Libyan revolutions,” Banda made a lengthy speech repeating almost word for word the line of the Libyan government. The crowning glory of the WRP's efforts was a “joint communique” put out by the WRP Central Committee and an official delegation from the “General People's Congress of the Libyan Jamahiriya” – i.e., that fake body (which meets once a year) created by Qaddafi as a facade for his dictatorship. The communique (published in News Line, 10 August) hails former Egyptian leader Nasser and his “1952 revolution” which Qaddafi is asserted to be continuing, and praises Qaddafi and his “people's democracy” to the skies – that “people's democracy” whose slogan is “parties arc treason” and is pledged to “purge all the sick people who talk of Communism, atheism...” (New York Times, 22 May 1973)

This unsavory alliance is being trumpeted by the WRP press. Under the grandiose headline, “Unity of the British and Arab Revolution,” the Young Socialist (20 August), organ of the WRP's youth affiliate, introduces the, communique:

“An anti-imperialist alliance has been established between the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Socialist People's Libyan Jamahiriya which marks a milestone in the development of the world socialist revolution.”

It is indeed a milestone of sorts – but rather of the sordid and corrupt nature of the WRP, whose only hint of distance from strongman, Qaddafi, is a brief statement in their Central Committee statement of July 25 that,

“Colonel Gaddafi is not a communist and certainly not a 'puppet of the Soviet bureaucracy' as Sadat alleges, but hebelieves passionately in the struggle to liberate Arab and colonial people from imperialism. The Workers Revolutionary Party, despite ideological and political differences with Colonel Gaddafi [these are never specified [WV], unconditionally endorses his anti-imperialist views and pledges to defend his leadership against imperialism andits agents.”

Do these “differences” include the recent statement of the Libyan ambassador to Britain that, “If anyone can help find a solution to the Middle East problems, it is Britain” (Arab Dawn, March 1977)? Or does.it include a “difference” over the imprisonment of suspected Trotskyists in Libya? We doubt that the readers of News Line will ever know. The WRP is quite explicit in its allegiance. Its bookshop pushes copies of the Libyan embassy's propaganda brochure on Egypt entitled “The Truth,” which praises Libya's “self restraint and concern for Arab blood in the war.” The printer of this little brochure, interestingly, is the same obscure printer in Runcorn (rather far from London) used by many Healyite publications, including News Line.

While the WRP is wholeheartedly committed to Qaddafi, it is unlikely that the Libyan government's tolerance for even that most loathsome caricature of Trotskyism will be very long-lasting. There may be a certain limited welcome for such prominent personalities as Vanessa Redgrave in the mod, if slightly seedy, Libyan embassy today, which prominently displays a poster advertising Redgrave speaking on Qaddafism in its press suite foyer. But the heat of the “anti-imperialist” colonel's current desires are revealed in the March issue of the Libyan embassy magazing, Arab Dawn, which calls on the cover for “Rapprochement with Britain.” In the interests of this “rapprochement,” Qaddafi has alread ditched the Irish Republican Army. Arab Dawn (October 1976) published an interview with Qaddafi by Arnaud de Borchegrave of Newsweek, who asked, “What about your material support to the Irish Republcan Army?” To this Qaddafi replied: “Our relations with London and Dublin are improving rapidly, and we will soon be exchanging ambassadors with Ireland. The IRA chapter is behind us.”

When the WRP relationship becomes embarrassing to him, Qaddafi will inevitably also put the “WRP chapter” behind him as well. But the WRP will not be able to put behind it this record of crass corruption of revolutionary morality, its utterly revolting glorification of one of the more eccentric, megalomaniacal dictators of the 20th century. The real betrayal, if we can use a word implying a residue of integrity, is that of the Libyan foreign ministry, because the Tripoli government undoubetdly believes it has an important British daily presenting its views, just as in the period before World War II every second-rate power had their press organ in Paris. The venal Banda-led WRP has gotten itself a “good deal” - but not for long.

The WRP's fundamental character as political bandits and con men is well known. However, the WRP's unadorned press pimping for Qaddafi falls well outside the bounds of the working class movement. It is a shameless and shameful act, a truly terrible betrayal of the most elementary class principles. If the WRP can swallow Qaddafi, what other anti-working class forces within Britain itself might they not find it to their advantage to do a deal with?

Gerry Healy's Legalistic Underbelly (1975)

Workers Vanguard No. 81 (17 October 1975)

Gerry Healy’s Legalistic Underbelly

The British Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) of Gerry Healy has always eagerly sacrificed its every ostensible principle to the single-minded worship of its one real god: publicity.

Eschewing the laborious task of building an organization of revolutionary cadres and of patiently working to establish and deepen its authority among advanced workers, the WRP is characterized by overweening fondness for a high organizational profile 'and for publicity stunts which it thinks will dupe the working people into crediting the WRP with mass influence. Hence the WRP's strident crisis-mongering, its unreadable and unread daily newspaper, its concentration on the volatile youth who do not long remain with the organization but turn up for suitably impressive demonstrations, its penchant for celebrities. But the WRP's cynical flamboyance sometimes backfires and lately it has found itself on the receiving end of some much less welcome attentions, as a consequence of sensationalist and anticommunist coverage in the bourgeois media. On September 27 the British cops staged a raid on a WRP center in Derbyshire; they claim to have discovered, among other things, "nine .22 cal. bullets in a stairway cupboard (but no guns)" (Time, 13 October 1975).

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The Healyites may believe, as reformists explicitly posit, that the British legal structure ("bobbies" without guns, for instance) is god-given and eternal, or that the armed fist of the class enemy is reserved for faraway places like Palestine or India (or, most distant of all for the Healyites, Ireland).
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The English press had splashed the "red menace" of the WRP across a goodly number of pages, assisted by the "true confessions" of an embittered former WRP supporter (English left and ex-left circles crawl with unregenerate cynics and other graduates of Healy's school of political banditry and Stalinist organizational methods, who have taken refuge in "softer" groups, apolitical demoralization, or worse). Actress Irene Gorst's tale of her alleged grilling by WRPers who accused her of working for Special Branch (Britain's counterpart to the FBI) got front-page coverage in the 28 September 1975 London Observer.

The Healyites' well-deserved reputation for browbeating their members - as well as their apocalyptic and increasingly paranoid political style - facilitated the media's scandal-mongering campaign. But what really made the "Red House" affair front-page material was the prominence of its participants. The WRP was hoping to become a household word by capturing a clique of entertainment personalities, the best known being Vanessa Redgrave. It was the defection of one of these hoped-for shortcuts to fame and fortune which catapulted the WRP into the headlines.

Squirming Toward Respectability

In response to the threat of repression, the WRP has crawled for cover. A recent issue of the American Healyite press (Bulletin, 7 October) has printed a declaration by the WRP baldly promising the bourgeoisie that "If anyone in the WRP was found to have a firearm, they would be expelled at once." We certainly defend the WRP against this recent police raid on its premises. But a Marxist defense against red-baiting and witch-hunts has nothing in common with the dive the WRP is taking.

Marxists do not engage in mock-terrorist sabre-rattling. There would be nothing objectionable about putting forward a critique of petty-bourgeois adventurism. in the context of explaining the strategy of preparing the mass of the toilers to resist the onslaughts of brutal reaction which the capitalists will unleash in when their stranglehold on society is challenged by the revolutionary action of the class-conscious workers. But for self-styled Trotskyists to issue gratuitous guarantees of toothlessness is disgraceful.

Marxists are not terrorists. But so often, "anti-adventurism" is found to dovetail with anti-Marxist reformist legalism. When the U.S. Socialist Party expelled Big Bill Haywood in connection with its 1912 "anti-sabotage referendum," what was really involved was a ruthless political purge of the left wing. Marxists are not gun nuts but neither do we run around disarming worker militants.

The Healyites may believe, as reformists explicitly posit, that the British legal structure ("bobbies" without guns, for instance) is god-given and eternal, or that the armed fist of the class enemy is reserved for faraway places like Palestine or India (or, most distant of all for the Healyites, Ireland). But we would remind the WRP of Lenin's adamant view that the proletarian who does not know the use of arms is a self-willed slave.

For Marxists, the idea of a pacifistic bourgeois state is a criminally dangerous illusion which virtually invites the capitalist class-to say nothing of ultra-rightist extremists-to attack the workers movement with impunity. The WRP rips up the core of Lenin's teaching in State and Revolution with the same touching faith in a high-minded, benevolent bourgeois state that the Socialist Workers Party manifests when it calls for the American armed forces to protect blacks.

The English left milieu makes much of the third-period sectarianism and obtrusive organizational beastliness of the Healyites as a convenient horrible example justifying its own pervasive squishy-soft chumminess. But the W RP's cringing rush for respectability is not a new or isolated phenomenon. The surface super leftism of the Healy group has never been much more than skin deep.

In 1966, the Healyites found themselves widely scandalized on the left for the exercise of their usual practice of physically intimidating political opponents, in this case Ernie Tate of the English United Secretariat group. To silence Tate's protests, the Healy organization ran to the bourgeois courts to sue Tate under Britain's harsh anti-libel laws, then explicitly justified and generalized this criminal crossing of the class line. Healy's International Correspondence (6 February 1967) defended the use of the courts against opponents within the labor and left movement, putting forward the bourgeois state machinery as the proper arbiter to defend revolutionaries against expulsion-minded union bureaucrats or "slanderous" criticism by fellow leftists.

The WRP's sanctimonious pacifism in the attempt to deflect provocation today is not different in kind from the panicky piety of the SWP in 1963, when Farrell Dobbs dashed off a telegram of condolences to the widow Kennedy following the assassination of America's chief imperialist executive. Healy has always relished the SWP's embarrassment over this-revealing display of reformist cowardice.

The current gutless "defense" by the notoriously ultra-"hard" WRP against the threat of repression may come as a surprise to impressionists, but Marxists have always recognized the grovelling opportunism which lurks at the core of Healyism. This incident reveals the legalistic underbelly beneath the brittle ultra-left veneer of the WRP.