It is hard to square a circle
Spartacist incoherence re: Robertson, Logan & Vicky circa 1973
The “glasnost” policy recently introduced by the new leadership of the Spartacist League has created ripples among those who identify with the Revolutionary Tendency/Spartacist League of the 1960s and 70s led by James Robertson. In this connection, on 21 August a Facebook group named the “Cannon Club” headed by longtime SL supporter John Holmes (and someone named Martin) notified us that they were lifting the ban on BT members, as well as the New Zealand-based IBT headed by Bill Logan.
After this shift by the Cannon Club, BT supporter Alan Gibson and cde. Holmes had a series of exchanges on the decline of the once-revolutionary SL, focussing on the show trial and expulsion of Bill Logan in 1979.
John Holmes [21 August]
Comrade Gibson, I’m messaging you to let you officially know that the former policy of the Cannon Club to not allow members or supporters of the BT and IBT to join is ended, indeed it was ended a good while ago. At this point, the only left organization barred from the Cannon Club is the Northite WSWS, due to its anti union scabbery. All others are welcome. Some individuals are barred on an individual basis, due to crimes they have committed. One such is William Logan. s/John H. and Martin, moderators, Cannon Club. PS: this is a private communication, but you are free to forward it to anyone you please.
Alan [24 August]
Comrade Holmes:
Thank you for notifying us that our excommunication from the “Cannon Club” has been lifted. I would be interested if you could shed some light on why it was lifted (and why it was imposed in the first place). As far as we are concerned nothing has changed on our side.
We do not agree that the WSWS is not worth engaging, despite their profoundly mistaken position on unions. We regard them as a legitimate part of the left and workers’ movement and we are just as happy to talk to them as the various confused leftists who view the Chinese deformed workers’ state as “imperialist.”
We took up the question of the accusations against Bill Logan in our commentary on the SL-IG debate last January. It is perhaps significant that no one from either of the sponsoring groups objected to his participation in that event. Our statement addressed the nature of the Australian SL under Logan between 1972 and 1977:
“In our 1982 founding declaration we commented:
“’Logan was undoubtedly guilty of running a grossly abusive regime—but the nature of the abuse in his Australian operation was only a linear extrapolation of the internal regime of [James] Robertson’s American section. How else can one explain the fact that none of the SL/US cadres who lived under the Logan regime blew the whistle?’”
“None of the in-transfers from the US complained for the simple reason that life in the SL/ANZ under Logan was not so very different than what they were used to in the American parent group. In August-September 1974, an authoritative international commission met in the SL’s New York headquarters to evaluate complaints about the Logan regime lodged by John Ebel, a recent recruit who had previously belonged to the Australian affiliates of both the Hansenite and Mandelite wings of the United Secretariat. The commission gave Logan’s regime a clean bill of health. Four and a half years later the Ebel commission was consigned to the memory hole, as SL supremo James Robertson brazenly recycled many of Ebel’s complaints—including the handling of Vicky, a young woman pressured to consider having an abortion—in the indictment against Logan at his 1979 show trial.
“The Spartacist leadership’s disingenuous claim to have been entirely unaware of Vicky’s treatment and other goings-on in far-off Australia, is shredded by evidence contained in their own two volume ‘Logan Dossier’ (2007) as we documented in ‘On the Logan Show Trial.’ The SL compilation includes a 6 March 1973 letter by Logan to Robertson reporting that after ‘Vicky discovered she was pregnant by ‘mistake’” it had ‘proved impossible to get her to have an abortion’ (‘The Logan Dossier,’ v1 p57). We outlined the essential features of the Logan frame-up in a recent letter to an IG contact.”
This is all a matter of fact which perhaps you, Martin and any other comrades administering the Cannon Club have not had the chance to recently review. We hope that after doing so you will be prepared to acknowledge that James Robertson and the rest of the top leadership of the SL/US shared responsibility for the abuse underway in the Australian Spartacist League during the 1970s and exonerate “William Logan” as well.
Comradely,
Alan Gibson
For the BT
John Holmes [24 August]
It was lifted as it seemed silly to have a ban on the BT and IBT after the Spartacists had had a debate with them which IBT’ers participated In. As to why we banned the BT and IBT in the past, that was due to Logan’s ancient crimes and the BT and IBT’s continuing willingness to defend him. My particular reasoning on my attitude to the BT/IBT, which Martin shares, is well explained in our discussion on Trainspotters. It was not at the prompting of the SL, Martin and I are supporters not members, we are not under democratic centralism, so we make our own decisions on that. Perhaps the Spartacists might disagree with our decision to continue banning Logan, but that is their business.
As for the WSWS, are they a part of the workers movement? I suppose so. However, they also are advocates of scabbing. Personally, as a veteran of the typographical union, I take very personally North’s ownership of a non union printing plant that most certainly did not do union label printing!
And no, having been in the SL during Logan’s crimes, unlike among others the current leadership of the ICL, I have no intention of changing my opinion of Logan, or my opinion that Robertson can’t be blamed for what he did. I do recall [SL leader] Vincent David stating at the British debate with the BT that nobody even challenges the fact that Logan was guilty as charged of serious crimes against the workers movement.
Alan [1 September]
John,
Thanks for getting back. Clearly the central issue is whether Bill Logan bears all the responsibility for the mistreatment of the members of the SL/ANZ in the 1970s when he led the section. We have never disputed his role in running what we characterized in our 1982 founding declaration as “a grossly abusive regime.” But it is simply not true that “Robertson can’t be blamed for what he [Logan] did,” given the amount of information the New York leadership had about the goings-on in Australia, including the most egregious case—pressuring Vicky, a young woman comrade, to terminate her pregnancy. In Logan’s 6 March 1973 letter to Robertson (The Logan Dossier, v1 p57) he reported that it had “proved impossible to get her to have an abortion”.
In a January letter to an IG contact we observed:
“The case against Logan was based on the claim that: ‘What Logan did to the Australian comrades first emerged at a national gathering of the SL/ANZ in January 1979.’ https://web.archive.org/web/20230927090410/https://icl-fi.org/english/pamph/logan/preface.html [Logan Dossier, v1 p5 – https://bolsheviktendency.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Logan-Dossier-V1-pgs-5-and-57-001.pdf] But that is a lie—Logan had been cleared by the 1974 investigation [held in the SL’s New York headquarters in the summer of 1974 in response to John Ebel’s complaints about life in the SL/ANZ which included how Vicky was treated]. The obvious corollary is that Logan’s responsibility for the abuse of the young Australian comrades was shared by the entire SL leadership (including both Robertson and Norden).”
As you know the case against Logan hinged on the assertion that prior to January 1979 the leadership of the Spartacist tendency had no idea of what had gone on in the SL/ANZ. But Logan’s letter to Robertson in March 1973 and the proceedings of the 1974 Ebel commission prove that Robertson et al were well aware of all the essentials years earlier. You cite Vincent David to the effect that “nobody even challenges the fact that Logan was guilty as charged of serious crimes against the workers movement”—but this sidesteps the simple fact that the documentary record proves that the SL leadership knew about what had transpired and therefore shared responsibility. I think, however difficult it may be, you need to acknowledge this. It is not a matter of “changing [your] opinion of Logan,” but rather of Robertson’s culpability.
As for the WSWS, you may recall our 2008 article exposing David North’s role as “CEO of Grand River Printing & Imaging (GRPI), a multi-million dollar business in Michigan”. The SEP’s opposition to trade unions is indeed scandalous, but it is no worse than the support for “democratic” capitalist restorationist forces proffered by various “Trotskyists” who mistakenly characterise the Chinese deformed workers’ state as “imperialist”. I think that, as a rule, it is far more useful to engage with and expose the mistakes and betrayals of ostensible revolutionaries rather than seeking to ban or muzzle them.
Comradely,
Alan Gibson
John Holmes [1 September]
Obviously, the decisions of the 1974 trial were erroneous, Logan pulled the wool successfully over the trial body, and over Robertson and Norden. This is not to their credit, but does not demonstrate that they had any real conception of what Logan was really up to in far off Australia. However, this by now is literally half a century ago, so although I personally find Logan’s participation in debates deeply distasteful, as the leader of a left organization with a point of view, formally speaking, not very different from that of the Spartacists half a century ago, I can understand why the Spartacists have decided to turn the page and not worry about whether Robertson knew or did not know about Logan’s crimes that took place literally before some of the current leaders of the ICL were born. As I was around at the time and was actually a member of the SL at the time, I feel differently.
As for WSWS, as a former printer, I feel deeply about North. He is a capitalist and the class enemy. I don’t know what he bought stock in when he sold his printing plant, which due to the advance of printing technology was probably no longer a profit center, but if he bought stock in Amazon, that could help to explain his opposition to workers voting to unionize Amazon in NLRB elections. Your expose of North in 2019 was very far from the first.
Alan [5 September]
Hi John:
Thanks for getting back. You wrote:
“Obviously, the decisions of the 1974 trial were erroneous, Logan pulled the wool successfully over the trial body, and over Robertson and Norden. This is not to their credit, but does not demonstrate that they had any real conception of what Logan was really up to in far off Australia.”
I agree that the results of the 1974 investigation into John Ebel’s complaints about the abusive and overly intrusive character of the Logan regime were indeed “erroneous.” Not because anyone had wool pulled over their eyes, but because Ebel’s charges were dismissed and Logan’s actions were condoned. This was not because of a lack of information. In a document dated 4 August 1974 (cited on pages 6 and 12 of the official September 1974 “International Control Commission Report on John E.”) Logan brazenly responded to all charges, including the “invasion of comrade John’s privacy” (surreptitiously reading his private correspondence) and pressuring Vicky to foster her child:
“If the same choice were before him, John would have found it more important to bring up his own child than to make a revolution. As he said to Vicky on the night of Saturday 20 July ‘I’d never allow any child of mine to be adopted.’ The comrade had attempted to make an idealistic distinction between politics and some particular intimate personal sphere in which the party has no business whatever.”
—“The Case of John [E.],” 4 August 1974
We appended a lengthy excerpt from Logan’s document to our 2008 review of the whole episode (“On the Logan Show Trial”). I ask you to read it over and consider whether the sanctimonious claims made by Jim Robertson et al four and a half years later to have been completely unaware of what was going on in the SL/ANZ are credible.
I also suggest you click the link I included to Logan’s 6 March 1973 letter to Robertson from Volume 1 of the SL Dossier in which he described Vicky as being so subjective and stubborn that: “It proved impossible to get her to have an abortion.” Is it not obvious that, far from concealing what he was up to, the eager 24 year-old SL/ANZ chairman kept Robertson fully informed? You say that although the Spartacists don’t “worry about whether Robertson knew or did not know about Logan’s crimes that took place literally before some of the current leaders of the ICL were born,” you have a different attitude. I think they should take an interest in this question and, after careful investigation, they should do the right thing—as they did regarding the COINTELPRO slanders against us. You note that as an SL member at the time you “feel differently.” You presumably accepted Robertson’s claims to have known nothing prior to January 1979; but now, with access to the documentary record that proves he was not being truthful, you should also do the right thing and correct your position.
Comradely,
Alan Gibson
PS: The article on North’s business activity I sent you a link to was published in 2008, not 2019.
This was the end of the politically substantive exchanges. An attentive reader will note Cde. Holmes’ repeated failure to comment on Logan’s 6 March 1973 report to Robertson regarding Vicky and her pregnancy. This is because the letter, reprinted in the ICL’s 2007 compendium on the case, completely refutes the claim that Robertson et al had no idea of the nature of the SL/ANZ regime prior to January 1979. For a detailed analysis of the entire affair see “On the Logan Show Trial” which we published in 2009.
On 11 September Alan advised John that:
“we are thinking that the question is of sufficient general interest, particularly now as the milieu of people in and around the historic RT/SL tradition is in motion, that our exchange should be posted. We regard the Logan trial as an important moment in the decline of the SL.”
John replied that he had no particular objection to publishing the exchange, although doing so would demonstrate our “obsession with ancient issues from half a century ago on which you are dead wrong, but which it is long past time to turn the page on.” We are happy to “turn the page,” but this is perhaps best done after establishing who in fact is “dead wrong.” The new Spartacist leadership recently did so in relation to several long-standing slanders against us; and we hope that they also review the Logan trial which we consider to be an important episode in the political degeneration of the international Spartacist tendency.
To repudiate the core proposition of the 1979 show trial is not to exonerate Logan, but merely to acknowledge that his 6 March 1973 missive to Robertson signifies that the most egregious transgressions in the SL/ANZ occurred with the knowledge and tacit approval of the leadership of the Spartacist League/US.