at the Central Committee meeting of February 7 1943¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter digest covers the Political Bureau’s official account of the expulsion of comrade G. Healy from the Workers’ International League (WIL) at the Central Committee meeting of February 7, 1943. The core narrative thrust is to justify the expulsion as a necessary, if belated, response to a long pattern of disruptive ultimatums and personalist behaviour by Healy, which had repeatedly been accommodated by the organisation in the hope of harnessing his energy. The document argues that Healy’s final act—announcing his resignation and intention to join the Independent Labour Party (ILP) during his own industrial report, on the grounds of personal inability to work with J. Haston, M. Lee, and E. Grant—was not a political defection but a culmination of chronic indiscipline.
Key claims are supported by a chronological catalogue of prior incidents. The first “resignation” occurred in early 1939 over a technical decision to change Youth for Socialism from duplicated to printed format, taken in Healy’s absence. A second followed in late 1939 while he was in Eire, where he resigned from the local group and threatened to join the Irish Labour Party to fight the organisation; he was expelled by the Irish group but repatriated without public denunciation. In 1940, a more serious breach occurred when Healy, as national organiser, used his position to press opportunist amendments to the constitution through local branches, reducing it to a federal basis, and then launched slanderous personal attacks when challenged. The document notes three further resignations on insignificant issues. The EC is depicted as having made every concession, refraining from public branding, in order to preserve Healy’s authority and utility.
The historical context is that of a small but nationally growing Bolshevik organisation, no longer a mere London local, whose leading members must conduct themselves as revolutionaries. The polemic is directed against personal opportunism and ultimatism as a method, which the document contrasts with the Bolshevik norm of raising political differences through proper channels. The expulsion is framed as a break with Bolshevism along the road of personal opportunism and political degeneration, or at best light-minded irresponsibility intolerable in a leading body. The decision was unanimous. The chapter thus functions as a disciplinary communiqué, defending organisational centralism against factionalism rooted in personal pique rather than political principle.