Newsline attempt to refute SO comes out WHITER THAN WHITE!

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2282388888333080008000080088 TWO replies in Gerry Healy's and Tom White's Newsline (Saturday 20th and Monday 22nd) have conspicuousiy failed to answer or even to refer to any of the questions that I raised in last week's Socialist Organiser.

Since then Tom White has been nominated as a candidate in the election for the TGWU convenor of the Cowley Assembly Plant.

In response to a campaign in Newsline against the from Tom White's record in the plant, showing that he is in no position to criticise Fryer.

1. That Tom White stood for election for the participation committees in 1975, an action which was defended of Newsline).

2. That Tom White and inquiry into productivity on the Princess track (which was opposed by the workforce, and led to the victimisation of a young Asian worker).

3. That Tom White was on Reg Parsons' (extreme right wing) recommended list of deputy convenors for the December 1975 plant 4. That Tom White resigned " from the 5/293 branch committee during the campaign to defend - the Cowley 9, and wrote to the TGWU officials denouneing the other 8 as being guilty of breach of rule.

The Newsline has nothing to say about these four serious allegations against the WRP's candidate for convenor of the plant.

In fact, the embarrassingly weak reply (reprinted inset) is the best proof that Healy and White have no answer at all.

Saturday's article says no more except to confirm (in advance of the nominations) that Tom White will be standing.

Healy is reduced to a few fatuous and tactually wrong points about the. Oxford Labour Party, like the assertion that Alan Thornett has applied to join it. The Oxford Labour Party would be the first to confirm that no such application has ever been made. Not that Alan Thornett has much choice in the matter, given the atmosphere in the Oxford party in the recent period.

Sectarian stance

The left has been fighting for the reinstatement of those expelled or blocked by the right wing. The WRP has never been part of that fight. The sectarian stance of the WRP means that seither Healy nor White have the slightest idea what is going on inside the Oxford Labour Party or any other Labour If Healy wants to criticise Fryer's involvement in the Labour Party, it shoula be trom the point of view of what Fryer does, what policies he supports, not that he is a member!

Healy should drop the smokescreen and answer the questions I have raised.

In fact, much more could be said about Tom White's record, since his record becomes an issue now he is aspiring to the leadership of the plant.

For example: last year PAGE 2 The News Line Monday THE 'Socialist Organiser' is weekly paper specially caterir Labour Party: right-wing members of the Oxfor an was Even to one Bill Peters an concocted a set of distortions abou the history of British Leyland':

Mir Alan Thornett who has applied to join the Oxford Labour Party so Bob Fryer, who has been accepted member by that party.

The article calls the Workers Revolutionary Party a right-wing party. when everybody knows that it would be hard to find a more discredited right-wing Dody than The importance of the article is doesn't say. not in what it says but in what it the WRP distributed a leaflet in the Assembly Plant which implied that Alan Thornett was working in the plant as an agent of Scotland Yard. Tom White at first expressed reservations about the leaflet, but was then pulled into line and began defending it.

If Healy is prepared to sink to lies of that sort about other people, he should not object when some of the truth begins to be told about Tom White.

BILL PETERS that its publication is timed for the election to decide the Cowley convenorship.

importance to the aforementioned 'Bill (Thornett) Peters' whose man though he does not admit it in the article. recent unfortunate. behaviour in the factory. censor an important letter from the factory. the stewards to their members in were dropped and others were rephrased in a form more acceptIt grossly violated the stewards Healy ratching right to communicate freely on members.

News Line on Tuesday, February 9, Is completely ignored by 'Socialist Organiser' '. Instead, Mr Fryer is fraudulently presented as the Cowley! workers' rights at And Bill (Thornett) Peters' hopes he can get Bob Fryer elected much appreciated by the Cowley Fryer will persuade the right-wing Thornett as a loyal member, which Oxford Labour Party to accept le certainly will be.

Cowley workers will soon have heir own opportunity to give a an be left in their hands. erdict on Mr Fryer so the matter As for Thornett, he is just lving hut the torna 1878 restricted the activities of the German socialists and forced many into emigration. This emigration brought a number of anarchists, most importantly Johann Most, to America. Now, again, Marx and Engels correspondence turns to attacking the anarchists for the way in which terrorism turns its back on the mass movement.

Marx and Engels first referred to the reformer Henry George in a letter of 1881. By 1886 Engels had received several requests to write a critique of George's cranky scheme to emancipate mankınd by nationalising land. His responses to these requests hammer out again and again his concern with the real struggles of the workers and their need to establish a distinct working class party.

To Sorge, Engels writes: 'The Germans have not understood how to use their theory as a lever which could set the American masses in motion; they do not understand the theory themselves for the Marx League in England, which he brackets together with America in terms of the lack of political development of the working class, of having 'no time to concern itself with the living movement that is taking place in front of its face.

The same theme is taken up again in the famous letter from Engels to one of his translators, Mrs Florence Kelly Wischnewtzky: "For whole large class, there • IS no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical and so contemptHous of theory as then Americans (than) . . . to learn by one's own mistakes.

This collection of letters is shot through and through with Marx's and Engels excitement at the progress ot the real workers Struggle and their impatience with all narrow-mindedness and rigid doctrinairism. Above all it is a document of exhuberant energy and optimism.

Of course, it would be betraying the whole approach of Marx and Engels if one were to read the letters and just repeat its ideas without thought to changing situations.

Above all, it would be fatal if today, after roughly a century of labour bureaucracy and eighty years of the Labour Party - both brokers for imperialist and class collaborationist ideas within the working class — we gave so generous an evaluation to the contribution of reformists and radical quacks.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday Dear S.0, 25,

----- pull-quotes -----

current convenor, Bob Fry- er, I posed four questions

Newsline supported a joint management/ participation

te back-sc COMMENT