Vereeken-considered a security risk by Trotsky in 1930s, but not by Healy today The gossip column of the Sunday Times of 15 August carried a regurgitation of the Workers Revolutionary Party's slanders against Joseph Hansen, the veteran leader of the American Socialist Workers Party. Ine charge this scribbler repeated in all seriousness is that oseon Hansen was and is an accom plice of the Stalinist GPU, was implicated in the assassination of Leon Trotsky, and has postured as a leader of the world Trotskyist movement for or a years.
No indication is given that this slander nas ever been chanenced, yet alone retuted by volumes or testimony FROM OUR THEATRE CRITIC ranging through various Trotskyist activThe Sunday Times made no attempt to verity us story, which was swallower whole from the Healyite hacks of the News Line. Indeed, one wonders whether the appearance of the article - coinciding as it did with a Workers Revolutionary Party public meeting allegedly called the death or trotsky -connected with the fact that Alex Mitchell, editor ot wews bine, wa: formerly a writer for the Sunday Times.
The Sunday Times, for its own reasons, is very pleased to print slanders ists to Ken Coates and Tamara Deutscher.
to commemorate was not un drag people off the streets to attenc the jamboree. On the balcony the world of entertainment sipped their camparis while the proteges went through their Healy's new show is a black farce -'The Trial of Joe Hansen', a re-run of the Moscow show trials staged in the thirties ov stalin.As Is usual In TuEs genre, the victim is framed before the trial so that everyone knows in advance that he is guilty. However, unlike Stalin, Healy himself chose to play Vishinsky's role as chief prosecutor.
His star witnesses are Harold Robins and Georges Vereeken. These people have been credoes trom nistory s more obscure sewers in order to drag Trotskyism through the gutter. As witnesses they have absolutely no credibility even to act as a fig leaf to cover Healy's naked break with Trotskyism. Yvny did Healy not explain that Trotsky himself considered Vereeken to be a security risk because in 1950 vereeken publicly attacked the Belgian section of the Left Opposition as counter-revolu tionaries? Trotsky then described VerTAKETH AWAY The Rule of Law' scored another notable victory earlier this month. Five senile judges, in the Eton and Oxford mould and nicely cushioned by company shares and the privileges of their cloistered world, decided that it was reasonable' for the Tory Council in Tameside to reintroduce grammar schools in the area.
The fact that the previous Labour Council's plans for comprehensive reorganisation were already being implemented was of no concern to these worthies. The fact that teachers and even the National Association of Head Teachers in Tameside opposed the Tories' plans was of no significance. The fact that no selection procedure could be found that was 'fair" even by normal 11-plus standards was ignored.
Mess Now, with only three quarters of the 240 grammar school places filled by 'suitable' candidates (and only a quarter of all places allocated to giris), the new Tory chairman of the Tameside education committee is blaming parents, nót his colleagues, for the mess.
What has been thrown up by the Tameside judgement is more than the willingness of the legal authorithide-bound Tory local authorities to the all too slow progress towards comprehensive education. The Court of Appeal and the Law Lords have shown once again that they will bend and twist the so-called law' in whatever way it suits their ruling class paymasters.
When the Clay Cross councillors Red Weekly 19 August 1976 Three of the noble lords (I to r): Diplock, Dilhorr who defied the Tories' Housing Finance Act were dragged through the courts they were left bankrupt and officeless. They had dared to defend the interests of the working class by resisting rent rises.
When the Tories of Tameside fought to put privilege before education they received the acRenee Short MP speaking at the protest meeting against the Select Committee report on 29 July and Salmon MICK GOSLING Moss claim of the same legal system. The cherished myth of the sovereignty of Parliament, supposedly putting power in the hands of the elected government of the day, was nowhere to be seen. The declaration of Labour education minister Fred Mulley that he would accept the highest court of the land' only served to underline the ineffectiveness of labourism in pushing through its own half-hearted reform projects.
Tameside will now become the battle-cry for every Tory bigot on local councils who wants to put education of the privileged few before the education of the vast mass of working class children. The revelation that the ultra-right National Association for Freedom - set up in the wake of the shooting of Ross McWhirter last December - had coughed up £4-6,000 in legal fees to help the Tameside Tories hardly came as much of a surprise. This "nonpartisan' and 'non-political' body is backed by such noteworthy "moderates' as Tory MPs Jill Knight, David Mitchell and Nicholas Ridley, Peregrine Worsthorne of the Sunday Telegraph, and Pinochet supporter Robert The lessons of Tameside for all those who are concerned with the education of working people's children are equally clear: it is only the teachers in the schools with the support of the labour movement as a whole who can push forward. the reorganisation of education not just to get comprehensive schools but to turn them towards meeting the needs of the working class child.
nurses and doctors who do not wish to perform abortions should be enshrined in law. It shows no concern, however, about the rights of women who want abortions but cannot get them because the doctors in their area object. The right of women to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancy is fundamental and must take precedence over the wishes of doctors.
The Select Committee has asked the Government to sponsor legislation to implement these proposals, but this does not appear very probable at the moment. However, the report is not Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Report)
likely just to fade away. Even if the Government do not adopt it, it may be used as the basis of a new Private Members i - Inc oroccour adopted by James White!
FEELING The 300-strong meeting in the House of Commons showed quite clearly the depur or teeing on this issuc. Joyce Gould cited as an example which should be taken up all over tne country the Labour women in Herefordshire who have set up a county-wide committee
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4 Teachers/Abortion •...AND LORDS