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| Front page of Newsline, Oct. 30, 1985, reporting on Healy's expulsion |
by Alex Steiner
On September 17, 2024, David North
posted a review of a book by Aidan Beatty, The
Party is Always Right.
[1]
I am not at this time writing a
review of Beatty’s book. Nor am I going
to comment on the numerous criticisms of Beatty’s book cited by North. I may do
that in the future, but at this time I am only responding to a hysterical and
deranged outburst of slanders and threats launched against me by David North in
his review of Beatty’s book.
The first thing to be said is that the author of this book is Aidan
Beatty, not Alex Steiner. The
fact that I agreed to an interview
with Mr. Beatty and provided him with factual information
about the history of a movement in which I once participated does not make me
in any way responsible for its content.
It’s an obvious point but one worth repeating in the face of North’s
insinuation that all the people who were interviewed by Beatty were a pathetic lot of embittered haters who gladly conspired with him in trashing the reputation of a figure who North
considers a great revolutionary leader, namely Gerry Healy. To put some
historical perspective on these events it should be kept in mind that Healy,
who died in 1989, was North’s mentor and teacher until differences between
North and Healy emerged in 1982. North finally split with Healy shortly after
Healy was expelled from the organization he led for many years, the UK-based
Workers Revolutionary Party. Healy’s
expulsion came about when his sexual and physical abuse of dozens of female
comrades over many years was exposed. [2]
North is furious with Beatty for writing what he considers a one-dimensional
portrait of Healy as some kind a “monster” (his words). His point is that
Beatty failed to recognize that Healy was, in addition to his dark side, also a
great revolutionary leader prior to the 1980’s. (While North does acknowledge
that Healy degenerated politically and personally in his later years, he all
but ignores in his review the sexual and physical abuse inflicted by Healy.) By extension North also condemns all those who
were interviewed by Beatty. As North says,
The
testimony upon which Beatty’s oral history is based consists exclusively of
allegations made by Healy’s political enemies, and whose subjective hatred of
Healy is embedded in their repudiation of revolutionary politics decades ago.
Now whether we think that Beatty’s
assessment of Healy is fair or not, it should be obvious to anyone but the
willfully blind that North’s wholesale trashing of the dozens of people
interviewed by Beatty is the mark of a person who has long since abandoned any
notion of science, objectivity or fairness. North apparently feels that he literally
owns this history, as if it were a sacred script to which no one has a right to
contribute but him and his appointed proxies.
On the other hand, North thinks that any “unauthorized” contribution to
this history can only be made by “Healy’s political enemies, and whose
subjective hatred of Healy is embedded in their repudiation of revolutionary
politics decades ago.”
In a section of his review devoted
to the circumstances of the split with Wohlforth, North claims that the
information I provided Beatty was false and I was being deliberately
“dishonest” in presenting a distorted picture of the history of the Workers League
and the Workers Revolutionary Party because I am a “political renegade who
abandon[ed] and betray[ed] the ideals of …[my] youth” and I “developed a
pathological hatred of ...[my] former comrades.” That North descends into such hyperbolic
insults based on his amateurish attempts at psychoanalysis is a clear
indication of his own dishonesty and lack of objectivity.
North’s case that I was a
“dishonest witness” revolves around Beatty’s account of the events of August
30, 1974, and August 31, 1974, in which Tim Wohlforth, the long-time National
Secretary of the Workers League, was removed from that position and his
companion, Nancy Fields, was suspended. Beatty does make one minor factual
error in recounting those events when he writes that Wohlforth was
“expelled”. I had nothing to do with
that factual error.
In relation to those events, Beatty
writes,
The
WRP’s American sister party, the Worker’s League, expelled its own leader, Tim
Wohlforth, in 1974 when it was discovered that his partner, Nancy Fields, had
an estranged uncle who worked for the CIA. Wohlforth’s account of this is
genuinely disturbing (and is confirmed by Workers League member Alex Steiner,
who was also present): Healy’s accusations were produced during a stage-managed
move against Wohlforth at an international party meeting in Montreal. Allowing
tension to build over several days, Healy finally dropped his bombshell during
a marathon all-night meeting, when attendees were bleary-eyed and exhausted and
more liable to go along with Healy’s actions. [3]
What I “confirmed” to Beatty was not
that “Wohlforth was expelled”, as North insinuates, but that I thought that as far as the facts were
concerned of what happened on August 30 and August 31 Wohlforth’s account was
largely correct. And if you read
Wohlforth’s own account, he never said he was expelled either. Here is the relevant passage from Wohlforth’s
memoir,
I
will entertain a motion," it was Healy's voice again, "to suspend
Miss Nancy Fields from party membership pending a full investigation by a
control commission of her CIA connection and to remove Tim Wohlforth as party
secretary due to his failure to follow proper security procedures and therefore
endangering the world movement." "So moved." It was Mazelis, my
old friend and comrade. "All in favor raise your hands." The hands
went up, all of them. All eyes were upon Nancy and me. Then Nancy slowly raised
her own hand. My hand followed. I do not know why. It just went up in the air.
It was 2 A.M. and the meeting was over. [4]
Nor should it be any shock for
North to hear that I thought Wolfforth’s account of the facts in his memoir
were largely credible. Where his memoir described experiences of which I was a
part, they coincided with my recollection of those events. I said the same
thing some 15 years ago when I pointed to North’s own distortion of the history
of the Workers League. I wrote then,
In
his self-serving memoir, The Prophet’s
Children, Wohlforth provides a good description of the disorientation and
the sickness that had gripped the movement in this period [1973-1974].[5]
Whatever you may think of
Wohlforth’s behavior and subsequent political evolution, his factual
description of the events of the daily life of comrades in the Workers League
during this period is true. One example is the following selection from his
memoir,
Our
typical member worked a full day at his or her job and then, instead of going
home, headed for the party office, bringing a slice of pizza or a hamburger for
supper. Then, together with one or two others, the comrade would go to a
dangerous poor neighborhood to sell papers, knock on doors for subscriptions,
perhaps pick up half-a-dozen teenagers to hold a youth meeting, organize a
dance or basketball game or just to talk at great length and try to convince
someone to do something. Then it was back to the office to talk it all over and
finally head for home. Sometimes even at home the comrade would have to try to
keep awake to work up a small article for the newspaper. This wearying schedule
was not kept only one night a week, either; it could be every night! [6]
My comment about this passage was,
Although
Wohlforth somehow manages to avoid facing up to his own responsibility for this
disorientation [that led to such a destructive practice A.S.], his description
of the day-to-day toll this had on comrades is accurate enough. [7]
I also made the point that while
Wohlforth was being evasive as to his own responsibility for this state of
affairs, the main culprit was Healy since Wohlforth was only carrying out on
American soil what Healy was doing in the UK.
The daily life of comrades in the Workers League that Wohlforth
describes could have just as easily been written about comrades in the Workers
Revolutionary Party in the UK during that period. Behind what could only be
considered an abuse of the comrades in the U.S. and the UK was a false
perspective of the nature of the period. And this false perspective came from Healy
and the entire leadership of the International Committee. That perspective,
affirmed at various Congresses and resolutions of the ICFI and its sections,
was that we were then (in the 1970’s) entering into a period of civil war where
the immediate question of power would shortly be posed. It was therefore necessary for all sections
of the ICFI to be transformed into mass parties that could lead the working
class. With the exception of the WRP in
Britain and the group in Sri Lanka, all the other sections of the ICFI, in the
U.S., Germany and Australia, were small propaganda groups having no more than a
few dozen members that struggled to publish a weekly newspaper let alone dream
of a daily paper. Even the WRP only had
a few hundred active members and were hardly in a position to become a mass
party. The huge gap between the actual capabilities of these small groups and
the false perspective of the “objective requirements” to prepare for revolution and civil war created a frenzy of
pragmatic activism that resulted in many comrades burning themselves out.
Ever since the split with Healy in
1985 North has been embarked on a campaign to sanitize the history of the
Workers League and the International Committee from the period starting in 1970
until 1982 when North first challenged Healy. In North’s reconstructed
narrative, the crisis of the Workers League in 1973-1974 was solely due to the
destructive conduct of Wohlforth and his companion Nancy Fields. That was also
Healy’s version of events. This revisionist narrative artificially separates
Wohlforth’s activity – which was indeed destructive – from Healy’s leadership
of the International Committee. From the
premise that all that was wrong with the Workers League in 1973-1974 emanated
from Wohlforth and Fields it follows, according to North’s reconstruction, that
once Wohlforth was removed and a new leadership trained by Healy took over, the
Workers League was restored to a healthy existence having learned the “lessons”
of the struggle against Wohlforth. But
this fairy tale version of history flies in the face of the facts. The false
perspective under which the ICFI was operating in the period leading up to
Wohlforth’s demise continued afterwards.
As evidence, take the following excerpts from the Manifesto of the 7th Congress of
the ICFI in 1977, some three years after Wohlforth left the Workers League:
The
International Committee, because of its intransigent record in rejecting all
forms of protest and adaptation to bureaucracy represented by revisionism, is
now a pole of attraction to the revolutionary forces being thrown up in the
Middle East and Africa and in all the advanced capitalist countries. (p.4)
From proclaiming that it was “a
pole of attraction” to revolutionary forces throughout the planet, a statement
for which there was not a shred of evidence, the document went on to declare –
employing Healy’s pseudo-dialectical language - that all cadre of the ICFI now
bore direct responsibility for the success of the coming civil war,
Now,
the accumulated contradictions explode to the surface of the class struggle,
creating an unprecedented world situation requiring a revolutionary practice of
cognition able to abstract essential objective knowledge of the new content and
tempo of the revolution, a negation at a higher level of the revolutionary
period of October 1917 and the first five years of the Communist International.
At this level all the intervening developments of counter-revolution and the
struggle against Stalinism are subsumed, cancelled and overcome at the same
time. (pp. 6-7)
There are also indications in this
document of the gross capitulation to bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism that
mark this period of the International Committee. For instance, it takes the
following swipe against the Socialist Workers Party,
To
this disgusting mockery of socialism and proletarian internationalism the
Socialist Workers Party apologists of imperialism have added an even viler
parody. They have openly sided with the malicious State Department inspired
campaign against the revolutionary Cambodian regime, depicting it as a
government of ‘mass murderers’… (p. 24) [8]
The reference was to the Khmer
Rouge regime of Cambodia which was responsible for one of the worst genocides
of the 20th century against its own people. While it might be correct to point
to the attempts of the State Department to manipulate public opinion about
Cambodia, to call this regime of mass murderers “revolutionary” is nothing
short of nauseating.
So while it is true that Wohlforth
failed to face up to his own responsibility for the disastrous disorientation
of the Workers League in that period, it is also true that David North has
always sought to airbrush this period of the history of the Workers League and
blame everything on Wohlforth, thereby absolving Healy and the perspective of
the International Committee of any responsibility for this calamity. He did that in what passes for his “official”
historical narrative of the Workers League, ‘The Heritage We Defend’ and
he continues that trope in his review of Beatty’s book.
North’s account is also guilty of factual
errors that are far more serious than Beatty’s. He writes,
Steiner
arrived at the camp with a substantial number of former Workers League members
on the afternoon of August 30, 1974. A meeting of the National Committee was
then held, at which Healy asked that the committee entertain a motion for the
readmission of all these former members. The motion was adopted unanimously,
and the reinstated comrades were warmly welcomed. They then left the camp and
were not in attendance at the subsequent meetings of the National Committee.
Now the meetings North recalls took
place 50 years ago almost to the day, but I still recall them vividly.
North’s account of these meetings is a bare-faced lie. The group of
returned comrades, which included me, were actually in attendance at the
meeting where we were re-admitted into the party. When that meeting began, we
were asked to stand a few feet outside the area where the meeting was convoked
in view of the fact that we were not yet members with a right to attend the
meeting. But as soon as the vote to re-admit us was taken, we were invited in
to join the remainder of the proceedings.
And North’s statement that we “then left the camp and were not in
attendance at the subsequent meetings of the National Committee” is simply
false. We returned to our hotel rooms after that meeting, but we also returned
to the camp the next day and participated in the meeting of the National
Committee where the vote was taken to suspend Fields and remove Wohlforth as
National Secretary. When I was
re-admitted as a member the previous day I was also reinstated as a member of
the National Committee and so was able to participate in the debate and the
vote to suspend Fields and remove Wohlforth.
To provide a taste of the
atmosphere of this meeting, I distinctly remember the gleeful look on Healy’s
face as he said, “It’s Christmas!” as if he was about to take a bite out of the
unfortunate roasted pig with the apple in its mouth laid out on the dining room
table. At the time I did not understand
Healy’s reaction but years later it
became clear to me that Healy took sadistic pleasure in bringing down Wohlforth
in front of the party members that Wohlforth had led for more than a decade. To be honest I
was also happy to witness Wohlforth’s downfall. So were the vast majority of those
participating in that meeting. It was a natural reaction to the abuse we
suffered, personally and politically, at the hands of Wohlforth and
Fields. That abuse resulted in 50% of
the members of the Workers League leaving in a period of less than a year. But it was not a thoughtful and objective
reaction. Had we stopped to reflect on the causes of Wohlforth’s behavior we
would have naturally had to ask what the role of his mentor Healy was.
Thus, when North says that,
In
fact, Steiner was not, and could not have been, present at the National
Committee meetings of August 30 -31.
…he is lying.
So much for North’s statement that
I am a “dishonest witness”.
But this bit of prevarication is
small potatoes when it comes to North’s next malicious slander against me.
He writes,
Beatty
reports that I “was blessed with cultural capital, as well as raw economic
capital.” [p. 138] His main informant for this inquiry into my family is Alex
Steiner, whose political hostility is seasoned by personal animosity and
subjective jealousy. The FBI will appreciate Steiner’s services as an informer.
Beatty nowhere says that I was his
“main informant” for information about North’s private life and North gives no
indication why he thinks that is the case.
In fact Beatty in a footnote cites his major sources as various
publications, some from Trinity College which relied on information provided by
North himself! [9] In any case, I could not have been Beatty’s
“main informant” for the information he reproduces since I never knew most of
those details about North’s background in the first place. Of course I had some general knowledge of
North’s background given our work together over the years, i.e. his upper middle-class upbringing, the
importance of classical music in his family, his years at Trinity College,
etc., but I certainly knew nothing about the name of his grandfather or the
fact that his father died when he was three! I’m sure I knew less about North
than other members of the Workers League.
And what is it about any of the information Beatty cites, all of which
is part of the public record, that North finds so threatening?
It is also odd that of all the
people North earlier characterized as, “Healy’s political enemies … whose
subjective hatred of Healy is embedded in their repudiation of revolutionary
politics decades ago” I am the only one that North specifically names - falsely
– as the source of Beatty’s information about his private life. Does this have something to do with the fact
that my colleague Frank Brenner and I have written dozens of essays over the
years exposing the fact that North and the organization he heads, the
International Committee, is a sectarian outfit hostile to the working class
that has been spectacularly unsuccessful in building a movement? [10]
Finally, I must ask, why would
North use the manufactured lie that I am Beatty’s “main informant” about his
private life to insinuate that I am or could be an FBI informer? North has been around the movement long
enough to know that insinuating without any evidence, that someone is or could
be a police agent is one of the worst things you can do. It goes beyond mere
slander. You are in effect jeopardizing that person’s physical safety by
creating suspicions about whether they are informants. He knows perfectly well that saying someone’s
name in the same sentence as “FBI informer”, even if you don’t explicitly
accuse that person of being an FBI informer, puts a target on their back,
especially in this day of social media where every rumor is exponentially
amplified.
Inside his party North is
completely intolerant of any criticism or opposition, and anyone who raises
differences is expelled. (For a recent example, see the statement by Samuel Tissot, Anatomy of a sect: ICFI expels a leading member of French section. )
It isn’t surprising that a leader who operates that way will lash out with
hysteria and slander when faced with external criticism. But this latest
slander linking me to the FBI is a new low, the verbal violence of a political
thug.
[2]
The charge of Healy’s abuse of comrades was investigated by a
Control Commission of the Workers Revolutionary Party whose findings ratified Healy’s
expulsion. See the account published by Norman Harding, a
rank and file member of the Workers Revolutionary Party who presided over the
Control Commission, Staying Red: Why I remain a socialist, Chapter
16,Uncovering and Overcoming the Horror: 1984 TO 1986, https://stayingred.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/16.pdf
[3]
Aidan Beatty, The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry
Healy and British Trotskyism, Pluto Press, London, 2024, p. 62.
[4] Tim Wohlforth, The Prophet’s Children: Travels on the
American Left, Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1994, p. 245.
[6]
Wohlforth, op. cit., p. 223.
[7] Steiner, op. cit., p. 65.
[8] Manifesto of the 7th Congress of the International
Committee of the Fourth International: May 21-28, 1977, Published by the
International Committee and printed by Astmoor Litho Ltd, Runcorn, Cheshire,
U.K., 1977.
[9] Beatty, op. cit., p. 204. Text of Note
9:
The
information on North/Green’s early life is taken from: ‘Open Semester Program’,
Trinity Reporter, Vol. 1, No.
6, January 1971; Trinity Tripod, 28 January 1969; ‘“I Personally Am
Very, Very Dissatisfied With American Society”: College Students Decry
“Passivity” of the Past, Defend Today’s Activism’, Trinity Alumni Magazine,
Summer 1968 https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/musicshow/david-waghalter-green/6877784; ‘I. Waghalter, 68, Long a Conductor’, New
York Times, 8 April 1949; Waghalter, Toni [Obituary], New York Times, 1 December 1964; https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/beatrice-waghalter-green-geb-1913-857929.html ; information on Trinity itself is
taken from Peter J. Knapp; Anne H. Knapp. Trinity College in the Twentieth
Century: A History (Hartford, CT: Trinity College, 2000).
[10]
For Steiner and Brenner’s
comprehensive analysis of North and the International Committee, see Marxism Without its Head or
its Heart
and The Downward Spiral of the
International Committee of the Fourth International. The reader can also find a list
of the key essays on the theory and practice of the International Committee up
until June 2018 referenced at the end of my essay, The Gutter Politic of David North. For a first-hand account of the
authoritarian internal practices of sections of the ICFI, see Samuel Tissot’s
report of his expulsion from the French section of the ICFI, in Anatomy of a sect: ICFI
expels a leading member of French section. Tissot’s account also sheds light on the dishonest
picture painted by the World Socialist Web Site of the French section of the
ICFI as a fighting force within the French working class. In reality this
“section” consists of no more than a dozen members who have not been able to
recruit a single person since it began its existence several years ago.
