Documents 3 to 17 and 19 to 24 originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee
On Friday, October 30, the New York Local of the Socialist Workers Party held a public meeting to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the party, and combined this celebration with a wind-up rally in the New York municipal election campaign. A minority faction in the party, which had been carrying on a disloyal programme of sabotaging party work and party finances for several months, culminated this disloyal course with an organized boycott of the 25th Anniversary celebration in New York.
This treacherous, strike-breaking action constituted, in effect, an organized demonstration against the 25-year struggle of American Trotskyism, and at the same time, an act of objective aid to the Stalinists who expelled the initiating nucleus of American Trotskyism in October 1928.
The organized boycott of this meeting was, in effect, a demonstration against the campaign of the Socialist Workers Party in the New York municipal election.
All who participated in this treacherous, anti-party action have obviously consummated the split which they have long been preparing and have forfeited all right to membership in our party. Formally recording this fact, the 25th Anniversary Plenum of the Socialist Workers Party therefore resolves as follows:
1.The minority members of the National Committee who organized the boycott of our 25th Anniversary celebration in New York, namely: Cochran, Bartell, Frankel and Andrews,together with National Control Commission member Gold, are hereby suspended from the party.
2. All other minority members and alternates of the National Committee who fail to disavow and condemn the strikebreaking boycott of our 25th Anniversary celebration, are likewise suspended from the party.
3. The Local Executive Committee of Local New York is instructed to reorganize and re-register all members of the New York Local individually,~ excluding from membership all those who participated in the boycott of the 25th Anniversary meeting, unless they individually disavow and condemn it.
4. All other branches of the party containing members of the minority faction are instructed to take similar action. In any case where the majority of the branch refuses to do so, the loyal party members are instructed to withdraw and reorganize themselves as a loyal branch of the party.
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Last updated 17.8.2003