"All those who seek to sustain the Government in office must accept the bankers' cuts in principle — not in their entirety -but in principle.' The speaker? Norman Atkinson MP, the Labour left-winger' who has challenged Callaghan year in, year out for the Treasurership of the Labour Party. A doyen of the Tribune Group of MPs. In a speech earlier this month in his Tottenham constituency gey borough where Labour councillors are for the moment refusing to implement the cuts — Atkinson spelled out with admirable clarity the 'dilemma' of the Labour lefts.
Unwilling to challenge the Government's policies head-on by voting against them in Parliament and mobilising action outside, they are caught in the right-wing trap: vote against the Government and you will bring it down. 'But such action would make little sense', said Atkinson, "because if Labour won the election it would be taken as an endorsement of the bankers' policies and would mute the left for a long time to come If, on the other, Labour lost it would mean at least two and a quarter million unemployed, because the Tories have already confirmed that they would introduce expenditure cuts of that order.' Atkinson's only remaining fig-leaf is the belief that the Government has a secret no-go level of 1.6 million unemployed. - which covers most of the Harinservices against the effects of the eeken as la reactionary tendency in our ranks' (emphasis in original in Trotsky's Writings, 1933-34)
As for Harold Robins, he has a much more auspicious history as the captain of the quard when Trotsky was murdered However, in speaking to the Sunday Times he seems to have forgotten tha the other guard who overpowered Trotsky's assassin with him Was.. Joe Hansen. He also describes Natalia Sedova, in 1940, as 'dying from cancer.
He now accuses Hansen of being the cancer of the Trotskyist movementa movement he broke from to follow Healy's ever decreasing number of follow ers in the States.
In its death agony it is appropriate that Healyism links up with these veteran opponents of Trotskyism Their activities only give aid and succou to those who did perpetrate the murder or rotsky - ine stalinists and men armed agents in the GPU.
Marx was tond of saying that history repeats itself - the first time as tragedy. the second time as farce. As Healy tries to prop up the crumbling edifice of the WRP with the organisational methods of Stalin, branding every political opponent as conspirators of the Special Branch or CIA, one can only wonde how long this not very amusing farce will continue to run.
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Natalis did not die until 1962l FARCE