Obituary: Jim Allen

MAY I correct the sanitised obituary you ran of Jim Allen [by Kenith Trodd, 6 July]? writes Brian Behan.

I met Jim Allen down a pit in the mid-Sixties. He was a full-time worker for the Socialist Labour League, of which I was Chairman. He ran a paper called The Miner. He was then and till he died a Trotskyist. He was no more a radical than my granny's cat.

Had he and I succeeded, we would have replaced an elected dictatorship by one-party rule. Class enemies would have been dealt with. The very media freedom that Allen exploited would have vanished overnight. Allen helped to perpetuate the religious myth that one fine day we would all wake up in a fully formed socialist society that would end all hate and fear.

He was much influenced by Gerry Healy, our general secretary (later expelled for sexual debauchery). Healy developed an anti-Zionist line. He wanted to beg money and influence from the Arabs. I objected, since I regarded the so-called Zionist conspiracy as a rerun of the old Protocols of Zion; ancient anti-Semitism used to justify pogroms. I was expelled for doing so.

Allen's play Perdition was simply an adaptation of this argument. It was foolish to ban it. The ban lent strength to a dying lie.