The following is a resolution adopted by the Socialist Workers Party National Committee on May 27, 1986, and released that day by Jack Barnes, the party's national secretary. The document reaffirmed long-standing policy that has guided the SWP since its founding. We print it in our editorial space because of its importance for the working-class movement.

Voluntarily talking with federal agents is incompatible with membership in the party, as is any other conscious act of collaboration with the FBI, Treasury Department, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) or other federal police agencies.

There is never a time when anyone in this country is legally required to engage in conversation with the FBI or any other cop agency. When a worker or any political activist talks with federal agents - other than answering questions in court or other legal proceedings - it aids the rulers' efforts to give the FBI and other political police agencies an appearance of legitimacy in intruding into areas where they have no business and engaging in other violations of democratic rights.

The goal of the cops in these circumstances is not to get you to say something "damaging" - it's just a bonus when that happens - but to establish and gain acceptance for their claimed right to engage in such interrogations. Their aim is to reinforce the lie that they are neutral - above classes and the class struggle - rather than agents of the class enemy. In this way they thus seek to reinforce one of the most elementary forms of class collaboration: actions by individual workers based on the illusion that the cops are neutral in the struggle between workers and bosses.

The government's policy is to have more FBI agents and other cops entering plants and singling out workers for interrogation, often on political or trade union grounds. This is an attack on democratic rights, as well as an attack on the union itself. It is part and parcel of the efforts of the rulers and their cops to get workers to accept as normal growing restrictions on "security" clearances, searches of individuals without cause and through such intrusive devices as "lie detector" examinations and chemical testing for drugs, and an atmosphere of suspicion aimed at working people who buy socialist publications or travel overseas to workers states or other countries whose governments come into conflict with U.S. imperialism.

The responsibility of all class-conscious workers, including those who are communists, is first of all to be clear in explaining what is occurring and to act along lines that will advance this understanding. For a member of the party to voluntarily submit to an interrogation by the FBI or any other cop agency is a political blow to the party's position in the labor movement and in the broader fight for democratic rights. This is true even when there is no security question directly posed. It is not enough for the party to take steps to protect itself against government stool-pigeons and collaborators; it must also protect itself against actions that undermine its integrity and discredit it in the eyes of thinking workers. Voluntarily talking to the FBI or other federal agents is one of those actions.

The party should be reeducated on this tradition and the appropriate party bodies directed to uphold the long-standing policy that such conversations with the FBI or any other cop agency are incompatible with membership in the party.  
 
 
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