Letter on S.A.L.

An article entitled "A True Life Confession Trots Eat Shit" appeared in Salient of 21/4/71. This article purported to be the "inside story of the Socialist Action League as told to Salient" by a former member of the League who (a) made a loan to the League of $80 (b) contributed $4 a week to party funds (c) spent weekends typing and mailing at "H.Q." and (d) resigned the week after "Harry North." As I am the only person who conforms to each of these particulars, twisted though they are, I conclude that the writer wished to give the impression that the article was told to Salient" by me.

I have at no time been connected with any article appearing in Salient, nor would I wish to do so as I consider that the present editor is a bloody prick, devoid of manners, good taste, literary ability and elementary standards of journalistic ethic, and it would seem unlikely that any former member of Socialist Action would wish to be associated with such shit (the editor or the article) either.

The latter part of the article presents a Stalinist viewpoint peculiar to a certain member of the English Department whose knowledge of "Scientific Socialism" (Marxism to you) is largely confined to Friedrich Engels' "Condition of the Working Class of England in 1844" which, however excellent it may be as reading for students of Charles Dickens, hardly qualifies him as a Marxist.

Although I have left the Socialist Action League I remain in general agreement with the revolutionary transitional programme of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky.

Like some crap from the John Birch Society Monthly the article is a lying twisted fabrication from begining to end; a dirty fucking smear, which can only be of grave disservice to the New Zealand revolutionary movement as a whole, and which says little for the Leftist posturing of the editor of Salient and others connected with its concoction.

John Trezise