Click on the headline to link to Parts Two and Three of this entry, The History Of British Trotskyism To 1949.
Markin comment:
On a day when the British monarchy is being celebrated ad nauseaum this entry is a welcome reprieve. Abolish the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state church-forthwith!
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL
The History of British Trotskyism to 1949
being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the University of Hull
by
Martin Richard Upham, B.A., M.Sc.
September 1980
PREFACE
Trotskyism has been neglected by historians excavating those ever more popular quarries the 1930s and 1940s. Their disinterest is my main case for devoting a full-length thesis to Trotskyist activity before 1949. It may be objected that Trotskyism was unimportant throughout my chosen period. But while it was certainly no major influence before 1949, even in the restricted area of the labour movement during that time, Trotskyism maintained activity and conditioned in part the behaviour of other movements and individuals who are thought fit subjects for historical enquiry. There is therefore a job of recovery to be done in order to establish whom Trotskyism affected and why. Yet there is, simultaneously, a larger question to pose: if Trotskyism was unimportant throughout, why was this so? There is no iron law of labour movements which inevitably permits communist parties to eclipse Trotskyism. In a number of metropolitan countries Trotsky received early and significant support from noted communist leaders. Since this did not happen in Britain where the communists themselves never gathered mass support, the historian must ask why. It is also necessary to allow for those occasions when Trotskyism passed out of the shadows into the floodlights: these moments have also been skipped, for the most part, by historians, and need to be put in their proper setting within the labour history of the time.
My claim to have undertaken original work rests chiefly on the lack of secondary material on the subject. The main lines of development of the Trotskyist movement laid down in this thesis I have derived from contemporary manuscripts and published material, and from conversations with participants. Invariably my investigation took me from a working knowledge of labour movement history into uncharted waters. Sometimes I floundered and occasionally I was misled by red herrings: at all events I had to make my own charts and I hope they will help others. Yet I do not seek to give the impression that there has been no secondary work at all. How do I relate to what has been written? The last five years have seen a spurt of scholarly interest in the non-communist left of the labour movement. Two theses on the I.L.P. have been written which span a period similar to that of this thesis and discuss Trotskyist influence on the party. [1] At the end of 1979 a thesis by John Archer was completed covering Trotskyist movements between 1931 and 1937. [2] Since I had at that time a first draft of my own thesis, I did not, on the advice of my supervisor, read Archer’s work. There has also been written a shorter bibliographical thesis on the Trotskyist press by Alison Penn which is a useful tool although it lacks absolute authority. [3]
Published work which discusses British Trotskyism in whole or part falls into two categories. There are the articles written by Brian Pearce under a variety of pseudonyms some twenty years ago, several of which have now been republished. [4] Pearce always went to the sources and unearthed many forgotten episodes or facets of better known events. Hugo Dewar’s Communist Politics in Britain (1976) is broader though less sure in content but only marginally concerned with the Trotskyists. Reg Groves has published his recollections as The Balham Group (1974), an invaluable memoir which yet leaves much unsaid. Harry Wicks has also written briefly of the early years of Trotskyism. [5] Wartime and the controversy over Military Policy (q.v.) have stimulated interesting articles in the socialist press. [6] Finally there have been accounts of the post-war controversies within the Fourth International arising from European economic recovery. [7]
Consigned to the not recommended category must be those squibs written by political activists in order to cancel out the past or to justify the present: I have responded to these by seeking to establish fact and demolish myth but they are mentioned in my bibliography.
It seems to me that the history of Trotskyism in Britain has a natural periodicity. There was no organised movement in the 1920s. The years to 1938 when the Fourth International was launched were in Britain years of survival and sectarianism. Toeholds were established but conditions were most unfavourable for the gathering of support. From 1938 to 1944 there was a contradictory development as the official British Section of the Fourth International splintered repeatedly and finally ceased to be a coherent political force, while an unofficial group, regarded as a pariah by official Trotskyist opinion, built the strongest position yet for the movement in Britain drawing to it some who were disaffected and others who were new. The process was thus simultaneously one of fission and fusion. 1944 to 1949 were years when the Revolutionary Communist Party declined as its perspectives collided with reviving capitalism and it was progressively debilitated by internal disputes. Just as in the 1930s, but now for quite opposite reasons, there were no major industrial conflicts and this absence blighted Trotskyism’s prospects. My argument is that the major influences on the British working class were established at the beginning of the 1930s while Trotskyism was still incipient. Only the peculiar political conjuncture induced by the war permitted Trotskyist growth. The end of the war brought a return to traditional political loyalties, the objects of which had not yet been tested to the full. There was simply no room for a strong Trotskyist organisation and all the characteristics accurately or unfairly imputed to it were secondary in effect to the brutal centripetal tendencies of the British labour movement.
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1. P.J. Thwaites, The Independent Labour Party, 1938-50 (University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1976); G. Littlejohns, The Decline of the Independent Labour Party, (University of Nottingham MPhil. thesis, 1979).
2. J. Archer, Trotskyism in Britain: 1931-1937 (Polytechnic of Central London Ph.D. thesis, 1979).
3. A.M.R. Penn, A Bibliography of the British Trotskyist Press (University of Warwick M.A. thesis, 1979).
4. See M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, 1975.
5. H. Wicks, British Trotskyism in the Thirties, International, Vol.1, No.4, 1971, 26-32.
6. W. Hunter, Marxists in the Second World War, Labour Review, Dec. 1958, 139-46; B. Farnborough (B. Pearce) Marxists in the Second World War, Labour Review, April-May 1959; D. Parkin, British Trotskyists and the Class Struggle in World War 2, Trotskyism Today, March 1978, 27-30.
7. Notably P. Jenkins, Where Trotskyism Got Lost, 1979.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis was begun as a piece of research in the Summer of 1972. In the eight years that have passed since then I have been helped in my research by a great many people. Whenever I needed it I have been assisted by my supervisor John Saville, who read critically whatever I wrote and made me a little less unscholarly than I originally was. It was he who was responsible for acquiring the Haston Papers, now lodged at the University of Hull, and who cleared the way for me to research them. Latterly, he carefully read my penultimate draft and his comments were always stimulating. I am deeply in his debt. Equally responsible for my research falling into the minority category of completed doctoral theses was my wife Chitra who encouraged me to take up anew a project which had all but lapsed and who transformed my scribbled first draft into clear typewritten pages. I also owe a huge debt to Sally Boston, Assistant Librarian of the University of Hull, whose responsibility it has been to classify the Haston Papers. She was heroic in coping with the arrival of a researcher so soon after they were deposited and helped me on countless occasions, sometimes at some personal inconvenience. To their names must be added those of Joyce Bellamy who put me to work to acquire the rudiments of scholarship on the Dictionary of Labour Biography even before my research officially began and from whom I continued to learn, together with those of David Rubinstein and other members of the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Hull with whom I have had many rewarding discussions.
Among the others who have helped me, especially in the early stages of my research, were such former and continuing activists as John and Mary Archer, Margaret Johns, Brian Pearce, Sam Bornstein, Sam Levy, Reg Groves, Harry Wicks, John Goffe, Ted Grant, Jock and Millie Haston, Roy Tearse and Sid Bidwell. My thesis would have had a very one-dimensional character without their help and – not infrequently – their hospitality. I have been most fortunate also in the help I have received from the staff of a number of libraries. Much of the early reading was undertaken in the Brynmor Jones Library of the University of Hull where I was able to feast off strong Labour and socialist history sources. I am grateful also to Richard Storey, Senior Projects Officer of the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, and his present and former staff on whom I often descended and demanded vast numbers of photocopies. This was of critical importance for one who had to work in his spare time. Special mention must also be made of Margaret Kentfield, Nick Wetton, and the staff of the Marx Memorial Library, an institution geared, in its opening hours and desire to place the minimum of obstacles between reader and source, to the needs of those who are not full-time students. I also worked at the L.S.E. library and that of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford, at the British Museum Reading Room and at its Periodicals Library in Colindale, at the Public Records Office and the Fitzwilliam Library, University of Cambridge.
In my first year of work I was maintained by the Social Science Research Council on the recommendation of the Department of Economic and Social History, University of Hull. In my second year I was fortunate to receive an award of equivalent value to that from the S.S.R.C. from the A.J. Horsley fund at the University of Hull. For a short time after the completion of that year I worked on a part-time basis for the Dictionary of Labour Biography under the direction of Doctor Joyce Bellamy and Professor John Saville of my department. After that I encountered the vicissitudes of completing this kind of work under part-time conditions, constrained by absence from easy access to a community of scholars and a good library and by being unable to devote the whole of my mind to the project. It was therefore of tremendous assistance that I should be granted by my employers, the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, a sabbatical leave of two calendar months in the Summer of 1980, during which time I was able to devote all my time to writing the penultimate draft. Mr. Bill Sirs, the ISTC General Secretary, showed no hesitation in granting me leave although my request came at a critical moment in the Union’s fortunes.
Finally I am deeply indebted to Carol Tarling who quickly mastered the intricacies of thesis lay-out and the almost unfathomable mysteries of my handwriting to present me with a finished product which is a pleasure to the eye.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Appendices
Note on References
I. Introduction: Trotsky and the British Labour Movement in the 1920s.
PART ONE (1929–1938)
II Organised Trotskyism to the Formation of the British Section (1929–November 1931).
III The British Section of the Left Opposition (November 1931–December 1933).
IV The Marxist Group in the I.L.P. (1933–1936).
V The Communist League and the Marxist League (January 1934–October 1937).
VI Trotskyism and British Responses to the Moscow Trials (1936–1938).
VII The Bolshevik-Leninists and the Militant Group (1934–1937).
VIII Unity (1936–1938).
PART TWO (1938–1944)
IX Applying the Military Policy (1938–1941).
X The R.S.L. in Unity and Disunity (September 1938–March 1944).
XI The Growth of Workers International League and its Industrial Agitation (1938–1944).
PART THREE (1944–1949)
XII The RCP and the Fourth International (1944–1947).
XIII Trotskyism in Practice (The RCP 1944–1947).
XIV Last Rites (The RCP 1947–1949).
XV Conclusion.
Appendices
Bibliography
List of Interviews.
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LIST OF APPENDICES
A. A Note on British Trotskyists and Spain.
B. Reg Groves and the Aylesbury Divisional Labour Party (1937–1945).
C. Articles in Workers International News While it was Published by Workers International League (January 1938–February 1944).
D. Peace and Unity Agreement (1938).
E. Industrial Programme of Workers International League.
F. Trotskyism and the I.L.P.
G. Programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
H. War Cabinet. The Trotskyist Movement in Great Britain – Memorandum by the Home Secretary.
A NOTE ON REFERENCES
In the footnotes to the text I have tried to reduce details in references to the minimum consistent with precision. Where possible details of references are given in full in the bibliography. There are no references to works published after 1979 at which date the first draft of the thesis was complete.
In the footnotes and in the bibliography the following abbreviations occur:
BSSLH: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History
Inprecorr: International Press Correspondence
JCH: Journal of Contemporary History
JSLHS: Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society
PQ: Political Quarterly
Unless otherwise stated in the bibliography, the place of publication is London.
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Introduction
TROTSKY AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE 1920s
The failure of Trotskyism to establish a presence in the 1920s is to be explained partly by reference to the character of the Communist Party of Great Britain and partly by the quality of British Marxism itself. Lack of interest in theory and the absence of intellectuals who would make major contributions to Marxist thought had already separated Britain from the Continent before 1914. [1] Detachment from ideological controversy was carried over into the infant CPGB, whose formation had been the subject of historical debate. [2] Respect for Trotsky as a revolutionary leader spanned the labour movement spectrum at the start of the decade. By the end it had narrowed to liberal and independent socialist intellectuals. The Communist Party, which had promoted him enthusiastically up to the middle 1920s turned, with the Comintern, away from him. For the Labour Party, twice in government, he was too revolutionary. Trotsky had support against both parties, but no organised following. The low level of Party life, incomprehension at the debate within the Russian Party and the Comintern, a lack of intellectuals among the membership [3], all might be urged as reasons why the Communist Party produced no Trotskyist opposition for nearly ten years. The Party observed the line from Moscow until the late 1920s when a combination of Comintern pressure and a rank and file revolt precipitated a leadership purge. Support for Trotsky came from outside the Party, from people who had stayed aloof from the attempt to build a Bolshevik Party in Britain or who had taken part and then left as individuals. [4] In neither case were they the people to organise a movement. Until 1930 Trotsky was left in Britain only with admirers.
No one in Britain in 1923 grasped the significance of the clash between the Left Opposition and the Russian Communist Party which burst into the open that year. In other countries there were fierce disputes within the Communist Parties over the critique advanced by the Opposition in its platform. [5] In Britain this did not occur. Lenin’s death in January 1924 physically removed from Russia an influence neutralised for some time. Since the battle between the Party leadership and the Left Opposition continued, pressure began to build up for national parties to declare themselves. The British Communist press, like the bourgeois press, was at first content to report. [6] This was, after all, not the first instance of debate within the Russian Party. Inprecorr, originating from Moscow, mirrored developments there more closely and, moreover, without a timelag. Trotsky’s views on the New Course were printed as well as those of Stalin and Zinoviev, [7] but Trotsky’s progressive isolation would soon be apparent. “Trotskyism” as an identifiable phenomenon was categorised as such by April 1924. [8] But the Comintern journal Communist International ran no campaign against Trotsky until the broad offensive after the General Strike, and he himself was still a contributor. [9] However, British representatives at the Fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924 endorsed the condemnation of Trotsky’s attitude by the CPSU. although no discussion in the CPGB had yet taken place. [10]
In November 1924 a definite lead was given in Inprecorr as Russian and foreign communists began to react to Trotsky’s The Lessons of October. [11] A sequence of rubbishing articles was begun which lasted until 6 February 1925. [12] Trotsky’s introduction to The Lessons of October only appeared after three months. No reader of Inprecorr could possibly doubt, after such a sustained onslaught, that this was more than an ordinary policy difference. The British Party reacted swiftly to the debates at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern. On 30 November, a party council approved the stand on Trotsky adopted there and in the CPSU. [13] Within a week Tom Bell had published the first authentic British article against Trotskyism. [14] Yet at this point the party leaders had not read The Lessons of October [15] and that certainly meant that the membership, in general, had not read it either. One exception was Arthur Reade, member of the London District Committee and business manager of Labour Monthly, who read German and had access to Comintern documents. He knew Trotsky’s views and expounded them at classes he gave to the Battersea Young Communist League. [16] He and several of these young communists attended the Party’s London aggregate meeting of 17 January 1925 to hear Andrew Rothstein and other speakers. When J.T. Murphy put down a resolution endorsing the Party’s condemnation of The Lessons of October, Reade moved an amendment from the London District Committee supporting the Opposition and regretting the haste with which the Party Council had taken a stand. [17] He was defeated with ten or fifteen votes in support. [18] But an attempt was made to delay the vote until the case for both sides had been put and this fell by only 81 votes to 65. [19] The meaning of these votes seems to be not an endorsement of Trotsky’s views by a minority of London communists, but a fairly widespread feeling that party leaders had been too eager to put themselves on record. England could join the triumphant list of countries where Trotskyism was completely isolated [20], but it was the manner rather than the ideas of the leaders which had occasioned protest. Yet Rothstein’s article of a week later suggests by its title more alarm among the party leaders after the aggregate than before. [21]
The introduction to The Lessons of October was published on 26 February 1925. [22] By then, however, the attack on Trotskyism had broadened out and stretched back in time. [23] Bell published Trotsky’s 15 January letter to the central committee of the Russian Party with a preamble arguing that its rejection proved the Party to be still a Bolshevik one. [24] He and Gallacher attended the extended plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, which met from 21 March to 6 April. [25] They took no part in the debate on theoretical matters, but in the eleventh session, devoted to Trotskyism, Bell followed Treint and Neumann in a speech composed entirely of slogans. [26] The British delegates supported a motion calling for a drive against deviations to be conducted by all parties. Back in Britain Reade had been suspended from the London District Committee of the Party following the January aggregate. He appealed, but was turned down by the Party Executive on 26 April. [27] Some time after this he left the Party and the country. Perhaps the first British Trotskyist had departed, apparently making little impression. The Seventh Party Congress of the CPGB met at the end of May, and Bell implemented the ECCI decision by moving a motion agreeing with the Russian Party Central Committee in its estimate of Trotskyism and the measures taken against it. [28] There was now published The Errors of Trotskyism by Bukharin and Kamenev, a reply to The Lessons of October, with an English edition introduction by J.T. Murphy. [29] It has been suggested that, even at this late date, the British Party leaders had seen only a summary of Trotsky’s book [30] and indeed this was what was published with The Errors of Trotskyism.
There would be no support for Trotsky from Party leaders when he was out of step with Moscow, though for more than a year he was to remain a legitimate figure with the British Party. With a minor manifestation of Trotskyism in the CPGB dispelled, support for the Opposition leader now appeared outside the Party. [31] The response to Lenin (1925) illustrated the point well. Reviewers in the Party press tended to regret Trotsky’s loss of form. [32] Communists writing in non-party publications were hostile. [33] The ex-communist M. Phillips Price was friendly, [34] and Frank Horrabin was able to enjoy himself over communist inconsistency. [35] This divergence was important now and later. Many of the independent Marxists around The Plebs met Max Eastman [36] during his 1924 stay in Britain following a twenty one months spell in Russia. Eastman had met Trotsky in Russia and witnessed the debate around Opposition criticism of the Party programme, details of which he must have passed on. In the spring of 1925 he published Since Lenin Died. [37]
Though formally disowned by Trotsky, Eastman offered a detailed account of the clash within the Russian Party during the last two years – the only one available. He analysed Lenin’s suppressed Will, with its celebrated member by member assessment of the CPSU Central Committee. He reproduced a passage on Trotsky from Lunacharsky’s Revolutionary Silhouettes. It was a definite and radical challenge to the prevailing version of recent events in Russia. [38]
The Communist Party was accustomed to speaking with authority about the Soviet Union. Eastman could be the butt of unqualified attacks. For tactical reasons Trotsky had disowned the book [39] and Party reviewers in Britain therefore took the line of separating author from subject. Arthur MacManus bracketed Eastman with Party renegades Price and Levy. “Under the guise of defenders of Trotsky” they were all attacking the Russian Party. [40] Jackson predicted that Trotsky would be furious at the way his name had been used. [41] Palme Dutt ridiculed the book. [42] The Party went to some lengths to separate Eastman from Trotsky which suggests considerable embarrassment. [43] The belief that Eastman’s account might be true and Trotsky deserving of sympathy surfaces only in the non-party press. [44] Support from outside the Party was a mixed blessing when it was offered by lapsed members. Nor did it provide any profound analysis of what had taken place in Russia: Postgate, for example, expressed the wish that the two factions might speedily be united and win success for the revolution. [45] A journal like The Plebs might be an alternate outlet for news, but was not likely to provide fundamental criticism of the kind Trotsky himself had offered in The New Course. He was defended as a revolutionary hero, not as a theoretician, [46] a point sometimes overlooked. [47] The communist press continued its attempts to clarify the status of Eastman’s book well into the summer. [48] After the controversy died, [49] the British Party seems to have been uncertain about Trotsky’s status. He could still be reviewed [50] but articles published were not on immediate issues. [51] It was only his decision to devote his next important book to Britain which brought him again to the attention of the communist press.
Though certain subjects were taboo, Britain was not one of them. [52] Where is Britain Going?, a sparkling polemic against British labour and trade union leaders and their gradualist philosophy was published in February 1926. It was published not by the Party but by George Allen and Unwin who attached a preface by Brailsford. [53] Where is Britain Going? was very much part of Trotsky’s case against Comintern policy. It appeared during a phase of the struggle in Russia between the Joint Opposition and Stalin and Bukharin. It did not handle roughly the British Party’s support for left wing figures on the TUC General Council, but Trotsky later wrote:
“The book was aimed essentially at the official conception of the Politbureau, with its hope of an evolution to the left by the British General Council, and of a gradual and painless penetration of communism into the ranks of the British Labour Party and Trade Unions.” [54]
It has been suggested that the British Party did not understand the book. [55] No other communist had written anything as relevant for the year of the General Strike, however, and it was well enough suited to the party mood after May for a second edition to be published. Trotsky confronted the entire working class leadership, left and right. His critics were the party’s critics, and he wrote as a party member. The CPGB could only rally to him.
Where is Britain Going? scattered its shot so widely as to stimulate many of its victims into print. Norman Angell was provoked into writing a full length book to show “the futility of revolution”. [56] For MacDonald, Trotsky was a pamphleteer not an historian, a devotee of theories not a slave to facts; he had concocted “an oriental riot of fancy regarding facts and events”. [57] Brailsford in his introduction to the first edition, had observed that the imprisoned CPGB leaders had been sentenced for the opinions expressed in the book. While allowing Trotsky force of argument, Brailsford did not believe his Russian approach would convince. Russell [58] allowed that Trotsky was “remarkably well-informed” on the politics of the British Labour movement, but considered that he was advocating an English revolution for Russian advantage. Lansbury [59] gave much support to Trotsky while defending himself. Transport Workers” leader Robert Williams, a former Labour Party Chairman, and yet another former communist, had been pilloried by Trotsky in the book for having “ratted”. Like Lansbury he had both to defend himself against Trotsky and to defend Trotsky against his critics. [60] Cleverly he pointed out that the charge of renegacy presented by Trotsky against him was advanced against Trotsky himself by the Russian leadership two years before. He recalled the persecution of Trotsky and the suppression of Lenin’s will:
“ ....those in charge of the machine were so afraid of the criticism of one who had rendered more service to the revolution than all of them combined that they deliberately suppressed it.”
The non-communist reviewers generally took the line that Trotsky did not understand the peculiarities of the English. Communist reviewers believed they detected another common factor in these reactions: hostility to the proletarian revolution. [61]
Through the reviews of MacDonald and, especially, of Williams, the fact of Trotsky’s downfall was kept to the fore in the labour movement press. The Communists, with their front rank leaders in jail and their attention on the imminent expiry of the coal subsidy showed no public awareness of Trotsky’s deeper purpose. [62] His book was a welcome friend at a critical time as Palme Dutt strongly underlined: “A challenge may safely be issued to the critics to name a single book by a single English author or politician, bourgeois or labour leader, which is as close to the essentials of the English situation as Trotsky’s book”. [63]
Dutt was not prepared to allow the critics a single point, not even disavowing Trotsky’s claim that the Liberal election victory of 1905 was partially a result of shock waves from the Russian Revolution of that year. Indeed, he continued,
The English working class has cause to be grateful to Trotsky for his book; and to hope that he will not stay his hand at this short sketch, but will carry forward his work of interpretation, polemic and elucidation, and elaborate his analysis further which is so much needed in England. [64]
It may be that the British party leaders were mostly dense in matters of theory. They had, moreover, no public guidance from Moscow, where it had first been published, as to the attitude they should adopt to Trotsky’s book. Trotsky’s polemic could only assist those more astute party leaders who were later to gain control of the party. The authority of Dutt and Labour Monthly was growing and both must have influenced the reading of Party members. [65] It soon became impossible to quote Trotsky as an authority, but that did not prevent borrowing from the theoretical arsenal of one who had been cruelly vindicated by events.
International developments soon impelled Stalin to decisive moves against the Joint Opposition in Russia. Repercussions in the CPGB could not fail to follow. The British crisis of 1926 was merely the current event on which Trotsky was honing his polemical scalpel to a fine sharpness. He returned to the subject several times in an independent way during the General Strike. He pressed especially for severance of the trade union connections established through the Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee established in 1923. Under the title Problems of the British Labour Movement some of Trotsky’s later thinking appeared in the communist press. [66] It was a sterilised Trotsky that was allowed into English, free of uncompromising references to the left members of the TUC General Council, with whom the Soviets retained a connection until 1927.
In July 1926 Stalin spoke of the British party as being one of the best sections of the Communist International. [67] He made it quite clear, however, that his commendation did not derive its inspiration from the party’s influence. It continued to gain members through 1926, even approaching 11,000, but then shrank. [68] Yet Britain had held the attention of the entire Communist International during 1926 and the setback of the General Strike had to have repercussions. In Russia Bukharin and Stalin increased their power, while measures were taken rapidly against the Joint Opposition. Criticism of Trotsky grew more strident. Those who had access to Inprecorr could follow the new Comintern leaders“ orchestrated attack. Articles in it were intended “for the widest possible publicity”. Dead disputes with Lenin were resurrected. Opposition prophecies of doom were refuted by reference to the greater size and more proletarian composition of the party. The Joint Opposition was deemed to be a Social-Democratic deviation, a theoretic consensus with Otto Bauer. Communist International, no longer Zinoviev’s organ, analysed the clash in the USSR, and attacked Trotsky by implication through Zinoviev and Kamenev. [69] Readers of Communist Review were treated to Bukharin’s lengthy treatment of the Opposition platform between September and December. The actual words of the Opposition leaders were available to British communists only through Inprecorr. [70] Dire warnings were attached that “Field Marshal” Trotsky wanted “to lead the opposition of all countries” and that the dissidents must choose between Lenin and Otto Bauer.
Problems of the British Labour Movement had been allowed to surface in the English pond, but the CPGB was anxious there should be no misunderstanding about where it stood. [71] On 9 August the political bureau adopted a resolution on the Discussion in the CPSU. [72] which rejected Trotsky’s call to sever the Anglo-Russian Committee and condemned Problems of the British Labour Movement. [73] It was still possible to discuss Opposition ideas [74] (those that were known), but the leading figures in Russia had little time left as party members. And in Britain even Opposition views on economics could be disregarded no longer. [75]
After 1926 it took a determined party member to discover details of the much abused platform of the Joint Opposition. Communist International carried no articles by opposition leaders during 1927, but kept its readers informed about their successive downgrading. Tom Bell reported to Communist Review on the fifteenth conference of the CPSU. but, while he witnessed the debate on Trotskyism and Trotsky’s own speech in it, he passed little on. [76] Those who read Inprecorr would know that the opposition platform was a major preoccupation of the conference. [77] Bell had spoken in the debate on the Opposition, but he was unwilling or unable to subject its ideas to any theoretical analysis. He condemned its factiousness and disloyalty however, and went on to reassure the Russian comrades:
Though our experience with oppositions is very limited (probably our time will come when we too shall have to deal with serious political oppositions) nevertheless, our experience, limited as it is, justifies our complete identity with the measures taken by the Party of the USSR to deal with its opposition.
Since there is little evidence to indicate any profound grasp among British communists of the Opposition platform, Bell’s support for Stalin rested on a narrow base. Smith, a colleague, attempted to shore him up with some purely British complaints of substance. He objected to Trotsky referring to the British Party as a brake on the revolution and complained that Lansbury, Plebs, and other Lefts were using Trotsky’s call for the exposure of left reformism:
... this group of liquidators, of renegade Communists, of Left elements in the labour movement, seize with joy on every attack which Trotsky makes upon the leaders of the Party and of the Communist International.
Comrade Trotsky’s policy is objectively helping these liquidators, while the article to which I referred was of direct assistance to them. [78]
The climax of the clash in the CPSU was ill-reported in the British communist press: only publicity from outside forced the party to deal with it in any detail. Trotsky’s own speech to the conference, and indeed Smith’s, was reported verbatim only in Inprecorr. What was more, the performance of the more left wing members of the TUC General Council during the General Strike could only nurture doubts which Trotsky was free to nourish. The pride of the British party was punctured. CPGB membership continued to grow after the General Strike but apparently went into a consistent decline from Autumn 1926 [79] which was not reversed until 1930. Factors in this decline were the effectiveness of Labour Party action against the National Left-Wing Movement a natural depression following the failure of the General Strike and growing sectarianism on the part of the Party itself. There were some in the Party who leaned towards intransigence, but their influence was increased by pressure from Moscow which was displeased with lack of progress in Britain and at loggerheads with CPGB leaders over the colonial question. [80] Malcontents lacked the strength to displace the Party leadership at the January 1929 Party congress, but this was accomplished with Russian support at a special congress in December. [81]
The staggered passage into what became known as the “Third Period” (following the years of revolution and then stabilisation), was accompanied in Britain by increased vigilance against Trotskyism. The honour of proposing Trotsky’s expulsion from the ECCI. In September 1927 fell to a British communist, J.T. Murphy. [82]
Murphy’s own Sheffield District telegraphed Moscow endorsing disciplinary measures against the Opposition leaders and called for action to further the struggle against war. [83] The Russian leaders were pleased and noted that the British party was innocent of Oppositionism. [84] When British delegates attended the Moscow conference of the Friends of the Soviet Union a fortnight after Trotsky’s expulsion from the CPSU, they took the initiative in moving a resolution (passed with one opposed), approving the measures taken against him for trying to set up a second party. Indeed they went further, and demanded “more severe measures”. [85] Inprecorr was deluged with anti-Opposition articles: “Trotskyism” was assuredly the issue of the hour. The British Party ventured into the field of theory. Jackson, who had written of Trotsky with such awe two years earlier, now discovered that the Opposition leader’s views on the danger of reaction were diametrically misplaced. It was, concluded Jackson, Trotsky himself, with Zinoviev, who represented the danger of Menshevism and Thermidor. [86] His colleague Gallacher developed the theme for an international audience. “In Britain every rotten reactionary, every reformist trickster, looks with hope to the Opposition’s; which statement he wisely left without explanatory footnotes, since Smith had been complaining the previous month that Trotsky handled the Left too harshly. [87] Gallacher’s claim that “every attack on the party by the Trotskyists was hailed with delight in the war mongering press of Britain” would have proved equally hard to sustain.
There were still traces of interest in Trotsky – pictures on walls, enthusiastic delegates to the Y.C.L. congress of 1928. [88]They added up to little. The parties had been warned that the exclusion of Trotskyism from the CPSU must of course, also result in “the end of Trotskyism in the Comintern”. [89] Rust reassured the international that Trotskyism had no following among “the active conscious sections of the workers”, [90] which verdict was confirmed. [91] Yet the new broad definition of Trotskyism, obscurely commingling with reaction, is to be gathered from his affirmation that the British Party had “tremendous duties” in the fight against it, especially since the Baldwin government led the Anti-Soviet bloc. [92] Stalin’s praise for the party gains in significance when the glassy smoothness of the British Party is compared to turmoil elsewhere.
The Communist press ground on about Trotskyism throughout 1928 and into 1929. Publicly it now presented Trotskyism as a non-communist current, supported by reaction and used (consciously or unconsciously) against the USSR. Original Opposition documents were rare. They were not being printed in Britain, and were only just becoming available in English through the efforts of American communists sympathetic to Trotsky. [93] The only exception (and this partial because of Inprecorr“s small print run), was the last letter of Adolf Joffe with its celebrated final words to Trotsky proclaiming that he had always had the better of the argument politically. But this was forced on the communists by publication in the Western press, and issued with a gloss. [94] Periodically, the Communist press would carry further material against the Opposition. [95] The stimulus would invariably be external, as when Rothstein took the opportunity provided by Eastman’s The Real Situation in Russia to reduce to rubble the Opposition documents of recent years. [96] The CPGB had survived the twenties relatively intact by making the right noises, but its hour was approaching. Manuilsky wondered: How does it happen that all the fundamental problems of the Communist International fail to stir our fraternal British Party? It is not that the British Communist Party does not pass resolutions or take a stand upon all important questions. No, this cannot be said. Nevertheless, one does not feel any profound organic connection with all the problems of the world Labour Movement. All these problems have the appearance of being forcibly injected into the activities of the British Communist Party. [97]
Trotsky intruded once more into British politics in the 1920s, this time over an issue which would not alienate the liberal intelligentsia but draw them towards him. He had arrived in enforced exile in Turkey in February 1929 and shortly began to cast around for a visa. The possibility of British asylum for him was first raised in the Commons under the Tories that same month. [98] He told the press that his favoured place of exile would be Germany but Britain did appeal since it offered a chance to revisit the British Museum. [99] He professed puzzlement that the subject of a visa for him should bring the House (of Commons) down in laughter. [100]
Before the second Labour Government was formed, Trotsky received several celebrities of the left in Prinkipo. Cynthia Mosley was one of them. She admired him greatly, though her esteem was not reciprocated. [101] Sidney and Beatrice Webb called on him in May 1929. They were not impressed by his arguments and disputed that the Labour Government was obliged to offer him asylum. [102]
The return of Labour to office in May 1929 provided an opportunity for Trotsky to cash his cheque of goodwill – or at least to discover the extent of his credit. Two fairly sustained efforts were made to secure asylum for him in Britain, one in the early, the other in the dying days of the Labour Government. Those who favoured his entry included Emrys Hughes who compared his case with that of Marx, and many ILP branches, who wrote to their Head Office urging his admission. [103] Perhaps in response the Party invited him to deliver a lecture at its party school. [104] Trotsky requested a visa of the British Consul in Constantinople and then, in early June, cabled MacDonald. He later wrote to Beatrice Webb and Snowden, and telegraphed Lansbury. [105] To the public he declared that he hoped, given asylum, to supervise the publication of his books in England and to pursue (social) scientific work. [106] What was more he had a special interest in seeing if “the difficulties created by private ownership can be surmounted through the medium of democracy”. Democracy which planned to overlap the greatest obstacles, he observed, could hardly begin by denying the democratic right of asylum. [107] An impressive list of celebrities of radical England spoke up for Trotsky’s right of asylum, but the Webbs (Sidney was now a minister), were crucial exceptions. Beatrice Webb wrote that those who preached the extension of revolution would always be excluded from the countries in view. As Caute remarks [108] she thus indicated her ability to miss the whole purpose of asylum. She also showed ingratitude for her reception by Trotsky when he was in and she was out. Of the major British papers, only the Manchester Guardian (which was to befriend him over the years) and the Observer supported his claim. [109] The Times believed his presence in Constantinople a ruse by arrangement with Stalin to screen revolutionary activity in Germany. [110] Other rumours abounded. There was a general disinclination to take at face value Trotsky’s protestations that his interest in British asylum was exclusively personal.
Magdeleine Paz had been among the 280 signatories of a January 1926 complaint to the Comintern about dictatorship in the PCF. [111] Later, her group Contre le Courant, was an early vehicle for the ideas of the Left Opposition in France. She now became the central organiser of a campaign to win Trotsky a British visa, and she it was who put to the government the strict conditions which Trotsky was prepared to observe, if admitted. [112] Clynes hesitated under the pressure and then in July 1929 came out against a visa for Trotsky. The government seems to have feared that his entry would provide difficulties for them, found his ideology distasteful, and worried as to whether, once in Britain, he might be difficult to expel [113], Clynes suffered “a chorus of frantic personal abuse” but he had no wish to jeopardise his relations with Russia and stood firm. Later he was to find solace for his rectitude in the verdict of the Trials. [114]
There was another attempt to raise the matter in the House in November 1929, but the second sustained effort to secure entry for Trotsky occurred in the spring of 1931. Ivor Montagu [115], who had met Trotsky in Prinkipo, employed George Lansbury as an intermediary to Clynes. One request was that Trotsky be allowed to change boats at an English port en route for Norway. [116] It is now clear that it was certain Labour ministers, rather than – as might have been expected the Liberal Party, which barred Trotsky. Samuel (who was related to Montagu), intervened repeatedly, as did Lloyd George himself. Keynes, Scott, Bennett and Garvin all urged the government to reconsider its decision. It is noteworthy that there was stronger support from Labour intellectuals at this time than there was to be later over the Moscow Trials. Laski protested to the government. Shaw wrote Clynes a lengthy letter, [117] and joined with Wells in composing two statements against barring Trotsky’s entry. Ellen Wilkinson added her name. But there was no success in this classic liberal issue. MacDonald, Clynes and Henderson overrode Lansbury’s protests in Cabinet. [118] Possibly they were still smarting from the treatment they had received in Where Is Britain Going? With only minority support, they may have felt their parliamentary position at risk. There might also have been a sense of insecurity in the labour movement. An astute cartoon by David Low in the Manchester Guardian depicted a supplicant Trotsky having the door shut in his face by the determined Clynes. “But I am an old friend of the House”, protests the exile. “Yes, that’s why”, comes the reply.
No Trotskyist movement emerged in Britain before 1930 due to meagre awareness of, and involvement in, the Russian and Comintern debates by communists and, perhaps, the small size of the CPGB Party leaders dealt uncertainly with Trotsky as an individual and as a theoretician unless they first received guidance from Moscow. The Where Is Britain Going? episode occurred because of lack of this guidance and also because nobody in Britain, and perhaps elsewhere, was equipped to give the CPGB such a boost. Trotsky’s standing in Britain, which was high at mid-1926, collapsed abruptly as a direct result of the new drive against Trotskyism in the Comintern.
Outside the Party, reactions to Trotsky separate into three groups. The Labour and Trade Union leaders had a conventional fear of him and their experience in 1926 and even in 1929 gave them no encouragement that he had changed from his days of power in 1917-23. The ex-communists admired him as a revolutionary hero and writer, but had no firmer grasp of the issues at stake in his decline than had the CPGB They had themselves left the Party for various reasons and had no following they could convert to “Trotskyism” had they even wished to do so. Liberal and Socialist intellectuals also admired Trotsky, but they had always rejected Bolshevism. Some of them, like the Labour and Trade Union leaders, had crossed swords with Trotsky in the past. Had the Communist Party of Great Britain recruited them in significant numbers [119] it is conceivable they might have backed Trotsky. Certainly they might have forced the theoretical issues. As it was they rallied strongly to him as an exile seeking a visa, far more strongly than they would in the middle of the 1930s when he was a more remote figure, communist influence more pervasive, and the world a more threatening place.
There were a number of British journals which, like The Plebs, stood for independent Marxism, but they had no distinct world view. Throughout the 1920s Trotsky and the Oppositionists were at work developing their world view without any British contribution. A semi-finished product was available by the time some British communists finally came over to Trotsky in the next decade. At the same time, because there was no British Trotskyism there was no alternative view available when the crisis finally arrived for the CPGB Party members had a choice of the leaders who had not done well to date or new leaders with Russian backing. Falling membership rolls indicate their choice. A Trotskyist current might have been able to win support for ending the blurred boundary between communism and the Labour left, without retreating into a sectarian steadfast. But no via media was advanced with authority in Britain, and it is difficult to conceive of avowed Trotskyists surviving as party members any more easily after 1926 than they did in 1932. Even the old leadership had made short work of Arthur Reade. In the end the weaknesses of the CPGB, must provide the main explanation as to why a following for Trotsky emerged later in Britain than almost anywhere else.
Notes
1. The link between Continental Marxism and actual revolutionary movements is discussed by P. Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, 1979, 1-21.
2. W. Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain (1969), presents the launching of the CPGB as an unnatural distortion. R. Challinor interprets the decline of the CPGB from 1920 through the decay or removal of its S.L.P. cadre: The Origins of British Bolshevism, 1977, 215-77.
3. N. Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, 1959, 22.
4. None of the most eminent of those who left during the early 1920s attempted to justify themselves at any length. Their views on the CPGB have to be gleaned en passant from articles in The Plebs and elsewhere. There was thus no domestic critique of the CPGB from within the Marxist tradition which might, as news of Trotsky’s fight in Russia became known, have become connected with the International Left Opposition. Marxism outside the CPGB receives masterly treatment from S. Macintyre, Marxism in Britain, 1917-1933 (Cambridge D.Phil., 1976).
5. The German, Polish and French Parties – all mass organisations – all came out for Trotsky before the Fifth (1924) Congress of the Comintern (J. Braunthal, History of the International, 2, 1914-1943, trans. 1967, 295, 296n). Leading figures who rallied to him now or later in the 1920s included Warski (twice General Secretary of the Polish Party), Cannon, an American leader, Nin, a founder and leading figure of the Spanish Party, and Bordiga, the Italian maximalist. In France, where the Party was initially stronger than the Socialists, Loriot and Souvarine, and Monatte and Rosmer from the Unions, all supported the Opposition (F. Borkenau, World Communism, Michigan 1962, 261-2). In Italy, Gramsci from jail criticised the Russians” preoccupation with domestic questions (F. Claudin, The Communist Movement, 1975, 116-7). Togliatti and Thorez, each destined for the General Secretaryship of a major party, privately approved the Critique of the Draft Programme of the Comintern, 1928 (I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed. Trotsky: 1921-1929, 1959, 444). There is a useful summary of expulsions from the world’s Communist Parties for Trotskyism in The Third International after Lenin, 1973, 282.
6. Labour Monthly, Feb. 1924; Communist Review Feb. 1924. This last is seen by a critic as a “fair presentation”, B. Pearce, Early Years of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce (eds.), Essays an the History of Communism in Britain, 1975, 173-4. Publication of these articles has been attributed to partial apprehension by the CPGB of what was happening in Russia (L.J. Macfarlane, The British Communist Party. Its origin and development until 1929, 1966, 92-3).
7. Inprecorr, Vol.4, No.12, Jan. 1924, 83-94. Macfarlane comments that Labour Monthly for March 1924 gave a Trotsky reply to Stalin’s accusations of factionalism “with obvious approval” (op. cit., 92).
8 Communist Review in that month ran the resolution of the thirteenth annual conference of the CPSU. condemning factional activity by the Opposition and classifying “Trotskyism” as a petty-bourgeois deviation. But the same journal could carry articles by Trotsky (Gorki on Lenin – Trotsky on Gorki, Dec. 1924, 381-6) and others which praised him:
He himself is a magnificent exponent of the conclusion to which he comes, namely that we must not wait for a bureaucratic “introduction” of the new order from on high, but must try and find in our every day conditions, the embryo forms and movements of the new order amidst the lumber of the old. (Trotsky on Culture, Communist Review, Nov. 1924, 355).
In each case, however, the theme of the article tended not to be of immediate political import.
9. The Philistine discourseth on the Revolutionary, Communist International, July 1924.
10. L.J. Macfarlane, op. cit., 93.
11. Ostensibly an autopsy on the bungled German insurrection of 1923, The Lessons of October developed the argument to embrace the role of Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1917.
12. The sequence began with How one should not write the History of October, a reprint from Pravda, and continued with contributions by Kuusinen, Bukharin, Stalin, Rykov, Kamenev, Krupskaya and Sokolnikov. From abroad, V. Kolarov (Bulgaria), the German Communist Youth CC, and Bela Kun joined in. Even Brandler and Thalheimer, now in disgrace, attacked Trotsky but a corrective article by Ottomar Geschke was attached to their views.
13. J. Klugmann, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Vol.2. The General Strike 1925-1926, 1969, 327.
14. The Truth About Trotsky, Workers Weekly, 5 December 1924. Bell recalled the Trotsky had criticised Party elder statesmen as early as December 1923 and claimed:
“needless to say the ideas of Comrade Trotsky found ready support from the bureaucrats and Nep-men ...”
He produced no evidence to support this assertion, however, nor did he show why this should be so from an exposition of Trotsky’s views. But he emphasised that the British Party was in line with the CPSU. endorsement of Comintern policy on Germany and Bulgaria and warned against splits.
15. L.J. Macfarlane, The British Communist Party, 92-3. Macfarlane argues that the swift British endorsement of the Soviet line pre-empted a purge. A purge was taking place in the Parti Communiste Français at this time (A. Treint, The Bolshevising Party Conference of the CP of France, Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.17, 240). Treint, who was to align himself with Trotsky in 1927, crowed that Trotsky had been ousted from his early popularity in France.
16. Arthur E.E. Reade was an Oxford student rusticated at the end of the war for his political activities (Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 November 1979).
17. This aggregate meeting of the London District membership of the CPGB joins with the District Party Committee in regretting the hasty vote of the Party Council in condemning Comrade Trotsky without full information: and this meeting at the same takes the opportunity to express the-London membership’s emphatic support both of the left wing’s minority fight in the Russian Party against bureaucracy, and equally of the Comintern’s struggle against right wing divergencies from Leninism in the French, Bulgarian and German sections (quoted in H. Wicks, British Trotskyism in the Thirties, International, Vol.1, No.4, 1971, 27).
18. Workers Weekly for 17 January 1925 gives Reade 10 votes out of 300. Reade claimed 15 out of 200 (J. Klugmann, History of the Communist Party, 2, 327).
19. J.D. Young and W. Kendall, The Rise of British Trotskyism, The New Leader, 7 May 1960.
20. Trotskyism completely isolated in the CP of Russia and in the Comintern, Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.7, 22 January 1925, 75.
21. C.M. Roebuck (Andrew Rothstein), Trotskyism – A Peril to the Party, Workers Weekly, 23 January 1925.
22. It appeared, without comment, in Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.16, 209-26.
23. Bukharin savaged Trotsky’s most distinctive theoretical contribution and asked, “Is it not clear that this ”permanent” question of a “permanent” theory is the ”permanent” contradiction between Trotskyism and Leninism?” (The Theory of Permanent Revolution, Communist Review, Feb. 1925, 381-94.)
24. Trotsky and the Party, Communist Review, March 1925, 446-56. Trotsky’s letter appears with the CPSU Central Committee reply.
25. Discussion on the Question of Trotsky, Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.37, 23 April 1925, 485-6.
26. J. Klugmann, History of the Communist Party 2 327n.
27. In 1929 Reade was back in politics, now as Labour prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North Berks. That year he clashed with Arthur Henderson at Party Conference over NEC vetting of election addresses (LPCR, 1929, 242). Reade later left the Labour Party to become a Parliamentary Candidate in Bristol for Oswald Mosley’s New Party. (Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 November 1979.)
28. J. Klugmann, History of the Communist Party, Vol.2, 327. The motion was identical with that passed at the London aggregate and received unanimous support (L.J. Macfarlane, op. cit., 140).
29 See C.M. Roebuck, Leninism and Trotskyism, Sunday Worker, 31 May 1925, a review of The Errors of Trotskyism, for an early attempt to depict Trotsky’s principles as a discrete philosophy distinguished by its views on the peasantry and the Party.
30. L.J. Macfarlane, op. cit., 140.
31. The suppression of Lenin’s Will was known to M. Phillips Price, a former M.P. and Party member, who dealt even-handedly with the struggle in Moscow (A Lion at Bay, The Plebs, June 1925, 238-41). Price may have heard about the Will from Max Eastman (see below), but he may not have known that it condemned Stalin (D. Caute, The Fellow Travellers, 1973, 86).
32. T.A. Jackson believed that Trotsky overdramatised and was lost without Lenin (Sunday Worker, 5 April 1925); A. MacManus thought Lenin lacked Trotsky’s “usual brilliance” and was “quite his weakest piece of work”. Trotsky ought, he suggested, to publish a real book on Lenin, not just fragments (Communist Review, May 1925, 35-41) .
33. M. Dobb, Lenin and Trotsky, The Plebs, May 1925, 184-91; W.N. Ewer, who worked closely with the communists and wrote frequently for Labour Monthly was spiteful in the Daily Herald and wrote in Labour Monthly of The Twilight of Trotsky.
34. Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 4 April 1925.
35. He pointed out that part of the poorly received Lenin had been published by Labour Monthly the previous year: (B. Pearce, Early Years of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce (eds.), Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, 1975 , 175) .
36. An American journalist, formerly an editor of The Liberator, and an early member of the CPUSA. For Eastman’s relationship with Trotsky, whom he persuaded to allow him to write his autobiography, see D. Caute, The Fellow Travellers (1973), 22. S. Macintyre discusses Eastman’s links with The Plebs in Marxism in Britain, 1917-33.
37. Published by the Labour Publishing Company.
38. It was not Trotsky’s account however. Eastman believed that he had failed to take the opportunity to lead Russia after Lenin’s illness. He anticipated later writers with his view that Trotsky “had no idea of political manoeuvring. He has nothing but a complete incapacity for it”.
39. Of necessity during the factional struggle, I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, 1959, 201-2 and n.
40. Since Lenin Died. More facts and fiction. (A Review of the latest Menshevik Diatribe), Communist Review, May 1925, 35-41.
41. Poor Trotsky, The Sunday Worker, 10 May 1925.
42. Labour Monthly (June 1925). See also Since Eastman Lies, Workers” Weekly, 8 May 1925.
43. The Sunday Worker considered Trotsky’s first disavowal to justify front page treatment on 10 May 1925. On 31 May it ran Eastman’s complaint at the treatment he had received in the communist press with Jackson’s defensive note. Trotsky’s second, less ambiguous denial appeared in full on 19 July.
44. R. Postgate, another ex-communist, defended Trotsky on the personal level but failed to see any deeper significance in Russian events (Why Trotsky Fell, Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 2 May 1925). M. Phillips Price drew on Eastman and reports now becoming available from Russia (A Lion at Bay, The Plebs, June 1925).
45. Eastman’s emphasis in his book on Trotsky’s personality had allowed MacManus to advise him to pay less attention to the psyche and more to the revolution.
46. R. Postgate and J. Horrabin, Trotsky’s “Comrades“, The Plebs, July 1925, 286-8. See also Gallacher’s reply in August.
47. See for example R. Challinor, The Origins of British Bolshevism, 1977, 273
48. In the International: Comrade Trotsky’s Declaration with regard to Eastman’s Book: Since Lenin’s Death (sic), Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.60, 30 July 1925, 833-4; Final Text of Trotsky’s letter on Eastman’s book: Since Lenin Died, Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.68, 3 September 1925, 1004-6. Eastman replied to his critics in Lansbury’s Labour Weekly for 29 August 1925 and rounded off the discussion with a well-written article in Plebs (A Response to Trotsky, Oct. 1925, 393-8) in which he attempted to explain Trotsky’s disclaimers.
49. In 1926 Eastman published two further books, Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth (reviewed in The Plebs, September 1926, 343-4), and Marx, Lenin and the Science of Revolution, a refutation of dialectical materialism which should have ended once and for all the belief that he was a Trotskyist (S. Macintyre, Marxism in Britain, 1917-33, 105-6). In 1928 however he had gathered round him a tiny group of Trotsky sympathisers simultaneously with the emergence of a Left Opposition within the CPUSA See C.A. Myers, The Prophet’s Army: Trotskyists in America, 1928-1941, Westport, Conn., 1977.
50. Charles Ashleigh discussed Literature and Revolution (Purges for the Highbrow, Sunday Worker, Nov. 1925).
51. The Spirit of Moscow (Sunday Worker, 21 June 1925) which appeared at the beginning of China’s revolutionary phase; The struggle for the Quality of Production, Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.81, 19 November 1925, 1235-6; Towards Socialism or Capitalism? The Language of Figure, I, Labour Monthly, Nov. 1925, 659-66, and II, Labour Monthly, Dec. 1925, 736-48. This last was the first introductory section of a work already published in Russia. Later sections, criticising Bukharin, were omitted without acknowledgement by Labour Monthly (B. Pearce, Early Years of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, op. cit., 176). Trotsky’s writings never appeared in the journal after this, though he was to be anathematized many times.
52. The history of the revolution was one. John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World, with its accurate portrait of 1917 and a commendatory preface by Lenin, was suppressed shortly after it appeared in February 1926. Those with copies were confronted by footnotes correcting Reed’s account and referring them to The Errors of Trotskyism (J. Braunthal, History of the International: 1914-1943, Trans. 1967, 244n).
53. See below. The first (Moscow) edition is dated May 1925. In September 1925 the book had appeared in the United States as Whither England? In October 1926 the CPGB brought out its own edition in which it dropped Brailsford’s introduction and replaced it by Trotsky’s own for the second German edition (dated 6 May 1926). For the diluting effect this had see B. Pearce, The Early Years of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, op. cit., 176-7.
54. My Life, New York, 1970, 527.
55. H. Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain, 1976, 65.
56. Must Britain Travel the Moscow Road? (1926). Angell claimed his book had been “a thumping success” in publishing terms (After All, 1951, 268).
57. Trotsky on Great Britain, The Nation, 10 March 1926.
58. Trotsky on our Sins, The New Leader, 26 February 1926.
59. Trotsky, Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 27 February 1926.
60. The Gospel According to Trotsky, Labour Magazine, March 1926. The Daily Herald reviewed the book on 10 February. All these reviews appear in G. Novack (ed.) Leon Trotsky on Britain, NY 1973.
61. T.A. Jackson: The Retreat Before Moscow, The Workers” Weekly. William Paul defended Trotsky against Angell and other critics unable to handle his “unanswerable case”, insisting that the course of the General Strike had confirmed Trotsky’s estimate of ruling class intentions. Trotsky would not have approved of Paul’s argument that gradualness comes after revolution and not before, evidence for which was the gradual building of a communist basis in Russia (Where Angell Dares to Tread, Sunday Worker, 18 July 1926). When he reviewed Towards Socialism or Capitalism?, Paul directly imputed this idea to Trotsky himself (The Path to Socialism, Sunday Worker, 8 August 1926). The last reply to Angell came curiously late in the year when J.T. Murphy studiously avoided taking a position on Trotsky’s book. (An Angel’s Dilemma, Communist International, 30 November 1926, 22-3). Much water had flowed beneath the bridge by then.
62. “The Party Press gave the volume high grades for brilliance and apparently could not fault it ideologically”, A. Calhoun, The United Front: The T.U.C. and the Russians, 1923-1928, Cambridge 1975, 170. When T.A. Jackson reviewed Bukharin’s Historical Materialism, he felt unable to do so without defending Trotsky against all critics, and notably Brailsford (Historical Materialism, Communist Review, May 1926,), 39-47). It is worth noting that the official history steers the reader through the party’s experience of the General Strike without mentioning Trotsky’s book once (J. Klugmann, History of the Communist Party, Vol.1, 1969).
63. R.P. Dutt, Trotsky and his English Critics, Labour Monthly, April 1926, 223-4.
64. loc. cit., 241.
65. The previous year Dutt had written:
“Thus the Left Trade Union leaders occupy at present the position, not only of leaders of the workers in the immediate crisis but also of the spokesmen of the working class elements in the Labour Party – it might almost be said, an alternative political leadership.” (The Capitalist offensive in Britain, Inprecorr, Vol.5, No.62, 6 Aug. 1925, 856).
This was the very thesis against which Trotsky fought. After the General Strike, however, Dutt reverted to a position to the left of the leadership. He repeated Trotsky’s later criticisms without acknowledgment (L.J. MacFarlane, op. cit., 157). In this period he gained the loyalty of younger party members who, like Reg Groves, were to become Trotskyists. See for example Groves’s retrospective of Dutt’s role in 1924-8 (The Red Flag, Aug. 1934).
66. Four chapters under this heading appeared in Russia. One of them was published in Britain (Communist International, No.22, 1926, 19-41).
67. The General Strike in Britain, Inprecorr, Vol.6, No.50, 10 July 1926), 816.
68. H. Pelling, The British Communist Party, 1975, 192.
69. J. Sten, Leninism or Trotskyism, Communist International, 30 Oct. 1926, 5-9. Attacks on the Opposition became frequent in the journal at this time.
70. Extracts from the speeches of Zinoviev and Trotsky to the plenum of the enlarged ECCI. in December were printed. See A New attack of the Opposition and After Zinoviev, also Trotsky, Inprecorr, Vol. 6, No.87, 16 December 1926, 1501-2.
71. It had already complained to the ECCI about Trotsky’s hostility towards it (I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, 223n and 269n).
72. Workers Weekly, 13 August 1926.
73. Yet amid all this, the last ungrudging reference to Trotsky’s role in 1917 appeared. Barret Robertson, The Life of a Red, Sunday Worker, 15 August 1926.
74. In 1926 or 1927 members were invited locally to approve the condemnation of the Russian Opposition by the CPSU. and the ECCI. Stewart Purkiss and Billy Williams, future Balham group members, abstained or opposed the leadership on the Russian economic question in their St. Pancras branch. Reg Groves himself abstained on the Russian economy and voted against the official resolution on China at a West London area aggregate (Reg Groves, The Balham Group, 1974, 16). ’No-one”, Groves records, “showed any surprise or concern over our attitude.”.
75. See Maurice Dobb’s hostile review of Towards Capitalism or Socialism? (Plebs, Oct. 1926).
76. 15th Party Conference of the CP of the Soviet Union, Communist Review, Jan. 1927, 428-34.
77. Inprecorr, Vol.7, No.2, 6 Jan. 1927, 16
78. Inprecorr: Vol.7, No.4, 12 Jan. 1927. Smith was presumably referring to Problems of the British Labour Movement. Some years later Bell himself repeated the allegation that Trotsky called the CPGB “a brake on the revolution” (The British Communist Party: A short history, 1937). In fact no such expression occurs in the original or published versions of the article, though Trotsky’s main argument was the need for the utmost implacability on the party’s part in its dealings with left reformism, and he did warn that development of the party might lag behind development of the revolution.
79. Official figures of party membership, derived from a variety of sources, are given in H. Pelling, The British Communist Party. A historical profile, 1975, 192-321 .
80. Ironically J.R. Campbell, at the Tenth Party Congress of January 1929, warned the party delegation to the Comintern that their stand on the colonial question was receiving support from Trotsky (L.J. Macfarlane, op. cit., 209).
81. The detailed course of events can be followed in L.J. Macfarlane op. cit., 177-274. See also H. Pelling, op. cit., 36-53. Work is proceeding on the third volume of the official history of the CPGB which will cover this period. See also F. Borkenau, World Communism, Michigan, 1962, 334.
82. See Expulsion of Comrades Trotsky and Vuyovitch from the EC of the CI, Inprecorr, Vol.7, No.56, 6 Oct. 1927, 1250-1 and I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, 359-61. J.T. Murphy’s own account is to be found in New Horizon, 1932, 9 274-7. Murphy was to part with the CPGB in 1932 and was even to be loosely bracketed with Trotsky by communist leaders. But though no longer a party member he did not revise his views on Trotsky and continued to admire Stalin. See his Stalin (1944).
83. Inprecorr, Vol.7, No.57, 13 Oct. 1927, 1272.
84. The “Victories” of the Opposition a “World Scale’, Inprecorr, Vol.7, No.58, 20 Oct. 1927, 1287-8.
85. Inprecorr, Vol.7, No.66, 24 Nov. 1927, 1485.
86. Must Thermidor came in Russia?, The Communist, Dec. 1927, 262-9.
87. The Opposition – the Hope of the British Imperialists, Inprecorr, Vol.7, No.68, 1 Dec. 1927, 1534.
88. M. McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, 1953, 101, 121-2.
89. Communist International, 1 Feb. 1928, 52.
90. A.B., The International Countenance of Trotskyism, Inprecorr, Vol.8, No.9, 23 Feb. 1928, 196.
91. Britain is not among the countries cured of the bacillus in Trotskyism. Latest attack on the Comintern, Communist International, 1 March 1928, 106-111.
92. Yet the Comintern, in its debate at the Sixth World Congress, did not see fit to mention Trotskyism in the debate on the English question (Inprecorr, Vol.8, No.10, 25 Feb. 1928, 222, 249-54.
93. J.P. Cannon, History of American Trotskyism, New York 1973.
94. J. Yaroslavsky, The Letter of A. Joffe and The Philosophy of Decadence (Inprecorr, Vol.8, No.3, 19 Jan. 1928, 81-6).
95. In 1928 the party published a pamphlet under the title Where is Trotsky Going?
96. The Real Situation in Russia, Communist Review, April 1929, 200-212.
97. Inprecorr, Vol.9, 1929, 1140, quoted by Pelling, op. cit., 45.
98. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast. Trotsky: 1929-1940, 1963, 17-21, gives an account of Trotsky’s quest for a visa during 1929. See also My Life, New York 1970, 574-8 (14 March 1929).
99. Interview By The Daily Telegraph, 14 March 1929, Writings Supplement (1929-33), 13-15.
100. Interview By The Daily Express, 16 March 1929, Writings Supplement (1929-33), 66.
101. J. Bellamy and J. Saville, Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vo1.5, 158.
102. M. Cole, Beatrice Webb (1945). Deutscher dates the visit in April, but My Life gives early May.
103. C. Holmes, Trotsky and Britain. The “closed” file, BSSLH, Autumn 1979, 33. Hughes continued to be interested in securing a British visa for Trotsky years later, even suggesting that he should be given exile on a Scottish island (Forward, 25 April 1934).
104. My Life, 574. The invitation was sent on June 5.
105. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 17.
106. On 15 July 1929 he repeated his claim to be motivated only by personal considerations in a letter to The Daily Herald (Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 195).
107. Why I Want To Come To London, 11 June 1929, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 153)
108. The Fellow Travellers, 204. For contemporary comment, see Manchester Guardian, 19 July; Daily Herald, 22 July, 25 July, 1929.
109. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 20.
110. My Life, New York 1970, 568.
111. D. Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914-1960, 1964, 91. Caute traces the emergence of French Trotskyism on pp.89-92.
112. After 1929 Trotsky broke with Magdeleine Paz. He allowed her grudging credit for acting on his behalf over the English visa and for her part in securing the release of Victor Serge from the Soviet Union. He viewed Paz and her husband, however, as mere liberals (Trotsky to Serge, 29 April 1936 and 19 May 1936, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 660, 665).
113. C. Holmes, loc. cit., 33.
114. J.R. Clynes, Memoirs, 1924-1937, 1937, 116.
115. Ivor Montagu (1904- ) had, as a young man, admired Trotsky. Later he was baffled by the dispute between him and the Soviet leaders (The Youngest Son, 1970, 192, 339); in this, his autobiography Montagu omits any reference to his part in the asylum episode or to the visit he paid to Trotsky at Prinkipo in 1931. In view of letters from Trotsky, now published, it seems likely that Montagu was the British Communist, later famous for his orthodoxy, whose correspondence with Trotsky Deutscher described as a “thick pile” of friendly letters, though he claims his correspondence was not extensive (C. Holmes, loc. cit., 37n).
116. C. Holmes, loc. cit., 36.
117. Quoted at length in I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, op. cit., 17-18.
118. ibid., 20n.
119. M. Johnstone, The Communist Party in the 1920s, New Left Review, Vol.41, 1967, 47-63.
*******
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
II
ORGANISED TROTSKYISM TO THE FORMATION OF THE BRITISH SECTION
(1929–NOVEMBER 1931)
An organised Trotskyist group emerged in Britain late in 1931 stimulated by dissatisfaction with communist performance and growing awareness of Trotsky’s critique. The British Section of the Left Opposition emerged from the Communist Party, although there were others in Britain interested in Trotsky’s ideas. It crystallized relatively late, without great impact, and conditioned by the Communist Party from which it sprang.
The first meeting of the International Left Opposition gathered in Paris on 6 April 1930 without British participation. [1] Later in the year, however, Trotsky wrote of the “very promising ties established with Britain”. [2] In 1930 and 1931 the embryonic International had contact with three dissatisfied groups on the British left.
The first group included independent Marxists who were dissatisfied with the CPGB Among these was Dick Beech [3], with whom American Trotskyists corresponded as early as 1930. Beech knew a number of leading Continental communists who had come over to the Opposition. These acquaintances he shared with Jack Tanner [4], also formerly a party member. Others who were known to the Opposition included the photographer Clare Sheridan, then a close friend of Ivor Montagu, Flower, a Daily Telegraph journalist [5], and Ellen Wilkinson. [6] Pierre Naville, leader of one of the two French Opposition factions visited Britain in 1930 for talks with Beech. [7]
Beech, Tanner and Wilkinson all were trade unionists who had been Communist Party members. Ivor Montagu, who had remained a communist, but was not a trade unionist, had friendly relations with Trotsky at least up to the end of 1931 [8], when he was seen as “a very good comrade”. Also within the CPGB in 1931 were the middle class Freda Utley and the working class Margaret McCarthy, both of whom had witnessed in Russia the effect of the rout of the Left Opposition and silently favoured Trotsky’s views. [9] These names, or some of them, might have added lustre to the Opposition, but none of them joined it.
The second cluster of contacts consisted of those in the ILP and outside it, who had not been in the Communist Party and thought revolutionary politics had to make a new start. Sometime in 1929 and 1930, the Marxist League was formed, an independent revolutionary propaganda group. It was not large. Its leading figures were Frank Ridley [10], Chandu Ram [11] and Hugo Dewar [12], the organiser of the League. The League, as such, stayed independent of all parties and spent its time selling literature and holding open air meetings in Hyde Park, Tottenham Court Road and elsewhere. [13] In 1930 and 1931 it had contact with the Trotskyist Communist League of America. The CLA, to which Trotsky looked to help stimulate a British Opposition, invited Ridley to send reports to The Militant. The League sold this paper, together with American Trotskyist pamphlets, at its public activities.
In 1931 Ridley and Ram expounded the view that events were moving to a crisis in Britain. The National Government was the first stage of British fascism, which a reformist ILP (still within the Labour Party) and a sectarian CPGB were inadequate to resist. “It is socialism or starvation, communism or chaos”, argued Ridley. [14] There was little role for trade unions, since there was no scope for reform. [15] What was needed was a new party and a new (Fourth) International. In Autumn 1931, Ridley and Ram formulated theses on Britain. The country was at a transitional stage between democracy and fascism, ruled now by an “anti-parliamentary” government. Trade unions were ’imperialist organizations”, doomed to disappear now that the era of superprofits had gone. The Comintern should be entirely rejected, and with it the Communist Party of Great Britain. [16]
Trotsky was unimpressed. He expected an Opposition current to develop from within the CPGB When it did it would stand on the shoulders of Bolshevik experience. Ridley and Ram advanced theses for a Fourth International but they had made no struggle against Stalinist control of the Communist Party. “It would be very sad if the critical members of the official British Communist Party would imagine that the opinions of Ridley and Ram represent the opinions of the Left Opposition.” [17]
It would not do to declare the historical role of the Labour Party and the trade unions at an end. Nor was it possible to abstain even from a weakened communist party. If the few hundred Left Oppositionists remain on the sidelines they will become transformed into a powerless, lamentable sect. If, however, they participate in the internal ideological struggle of the party of which they remain an integral part despite all expulsions, they will win an enormous influence in the proletarian kernel of the party. [18]
Trotsky was speaking here of Germany, but he believed that in Britain also the Opposition would have to earn support by fighting false Comintern policies from within. An opposition which emerged that way would be more firm than one which drew facile, abstract conclusions, however willing it might be to engage in correspondence. [19] Ram expounded his and Ridley’s views at an Autumn meeting of the International Secretariat in Paris, [20] but found no support there or among the American Trotskyists.
Trotsky participated in a discussion in Turkey at which Marxist League ideas were aired. [21] The call to launch a Fourth International was not being made only in Britain. [22] And the belief that the situation was at crisis point reflected the views not of isolated individuals alone, but also of the CPGB, whose influence Trotsky believed he detected. [23] Those communists who were questioning this very exaggeration of the prospects for fascism by their party were disturbed at the views of Ridley and Ram and were reassured by the Americans.
“It was the unanimous decision of the International Secretariat that at present there is not an organisation in England that represents the International Left Opposition nor its International Secretariat.” [24]
This was thumbs down for the Marxist League. Hugo Dewar withdrew, dissenting from its view of trade unions [25] and prepared in practice to undertake the struggle Trotsky proposed. He joined the ILP in Clapham and then moved to the Tooting local of the CPGB [26] The Marxist League continued in being, and on 1 January 1932 launched a short-lived journal, The New Man. [27] Ridley later rejected the Fourth International when the International Left Opposition decided to launch it. [28]
It was from disgruntled members of the CPGB that the British Section of the Left Opposition was finally to be launched. Any dissatisfaction these future Trotskyists felt before 1930 however, was with the CPGB as it was before the eleventh (special) party congress of November-December 1929, at which leadership was transferred to a new more intransigent group. [29]
The Opposition was a London affair. Reg Groves [30], Stewart Purkis [31] and Billy Williams [32] had read Where Is Britain Going? and The Lessons of October before the General Strike. They worked together as members of the Clearing House Branch of the Railway Clerks Association in Poplar and were part of the influx of new recruits into the Communist Party immediately after the General Strike. [33]
By 1929 Groves and Purkis had worked their way up to the London District Committee, Groves serving as Assistant Organizer for most of 1929. Groves was a young turk pushing the party towards the new line being urged by the Comintern, though he was the only CPGB member invited to the Lenin School who refused to go. He had rejected the TGWU as a company union, and called for the political levy not to be paid in the GMWU. [34] He urged an end to the “old method” and called for a new leadership on the eve of the special congress. [35] Purkis wrote for the party press in industrial matters, [36] and was active with Williams in the St. Pancras local.
Henry Sara (1886-1953), the same age as Purkis, was moderately well known in the party. He was a former SLP member and wartime conscientious objector, who had not joined the CPGB at its foundation, but came into it following a trip to Russia. [37] He gave lantern lectures on his tour [38], had a taste, like Groves, for nineteenth century history and, uniquely among the future founder members of the British Section, he had participated in theoretical discussions in the party press. [39] He wrote with independent convictions, authority and, occasionally, an academic air. [40] In 1929, he stood as parliamentary candidate in the General Election for Tottenham South, an area where he was well known.
The fifth key personality from the early cadre of British Trotskyism was Harry Wicks [41], another railwayman, who had first encountered Opposition ideas at YCL classes in Battersea given by Arthur Reade and attended the aggregate of 17 January 1925. Wicks was part of the strong organization which the CPGB had built in Battersea in the 1920s, at the apex of which stood Shapurji Saklatvala a communist Member of Parliament. In 1927 Wicks, unlike Groves, accepted an invitation to join the Lenin School in Moscow. [42] He stayed there until 1930, attended the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern in 1928 and witnessed the final rout of the Opposition. He also met George Weston, a West London craftsman who backed Trotsky. Wicks returned in 1930 to find the CPGB isolated and its Battersea base in ruins. [43]
In 1930 the separate dissatisfaction of these five with the party became evident. Early in the year, Groves presented a series of complaints on the style and content of The Daily Worker launched on 1 January. [44] He began to contribute an information column, Workers Notebook, but editing of this caused disagreements as well. [45] Links between Groves and Purkis were reinforced through this clash [46] and also through an abortive attempt by Groves to join the Marx-Engels Institute that summer. [47] Meanwhile Sara, and to a lesser extent Purkis, clashed with the official line over two issues of theory. It was the year of Bukharin’s ouster from the presidency of the Comintern. Sara, not intimidated, supported Bukharin’s views on the effects of imperialism on competition at home and claimed, moreover, that Lenin endorsed them. [48] Purkis was implicated in passing, in the conflict between the party and Freda Utley over whether the working class of its own effort might achieve socialist consciousness. [49] Groves and Sara, members of the party agitprop committee, were by 1931 beginning like J.T. Murphy, another committee member, to make systematic criticisms of the party. [50]
Years later, Stuart Purkis recalled “we came together in 1930, brought together by agreement on the need for propaganda for the United Front”. [51] The marrying of disparate discontents into a Trotskyist critique occurred during 1931. Groves and Sara had seen the American Militant in London radical bookshops [52] and read Trotsky’s Autobiography, My Life (1930). Trotsky’s article Germany: the key to the international situation [53] had also been widely noted, the first English presentation of his case for a United Front of the mass parties of the German workers against fascism. By 1931 the Communist League of America had behind it three years experience in running an Opposition group against a more ferocious Communist Party than the British one, but in a more open political situation. [54] One of its responsibilities was to stimulate the creation of a sister group in Britain. When Groves contacted it about the regularity of supplies of Militant to Britain a correspondence began in which the CLA, tried to capitalise on its opportunity. [55]
For the Americans, Arne Swabeck [56] argued forcefully for the establishment of an Opposition group within the CPGB which would advance Trotsky’s critique of Comintern policy. [57] Groves was not convinced that discontent with the CPGB necessarily implied an alignment with Trotsky. Swabeck sought a fraction within the CPGB where a cadre might be built around criticism of the party line.
“Is it the desire of the Left Opposition to make any split? We believe we must say decidedly: No”. [58] To the British, who had not, in any case, “assimilated the litany of organised Trotskyism” [59], the prospects for making this critique and staying party members, appeared far less auspicious.
The British view diverged from that pressed upon them by the CLA. Groves and the others appear in 1930-2 as guardians of the new line proposed by the Comintern and its supporters at the special congress. They had played no part in the development of the ILO critique. [60] Unlike the CLA, they held that the party should not control the Minority Movement and that professional revolutionaries should not run the party. In the next year, they were to counterpose factory work to trade union work and thus make a mistake the CLA had been careful to avoid. [61] Following the August crisis, Groves foresaw a new 1926. He proposed Councils of Action and preparation for a new General Strike, fearful that the Left, as in that year, would again make the running in view of the failure of the Daily Worker to make the party’s role clear. [62]
The critics were now an identifiable entity. The “Balham Group” existed from some time in the later months of 1931 [63], though most of its members had been working in South-West London before that. From the end of 1930, Wicks, now returned to Battersea, was cooperating with them. Faced with the economies programme of the National Government, the Balham Group approached local ILPers, notably the Clapham branch, for joint resistance activities. This was a limited local united front and one tangible gain was Hugo Dewar, who split with the Marxist League and, effectively, followed Trotsky’s advice by coming over to the Tooting Communist local from the Clapham ILP.
In the Autumn of 1931, the Americans began to force the pace. They had noted that these South London communists, for all their reservations, were more solid in their support than the other British contacts. The proposal for a CLA leader to visit England for a lengthy spell had been under discussion earlier in the year. [64] In September Swabeck called on Groves to begin a definite group in Britain, albeit cautiously, and proposed a gathering of all CLA contacts to meet Albert Glotzer, who was about to visit Britain. [65] Glotzer [66], in fact, went first to Turkey, where he met Trotsky, and wrote again to Groves. In October another letter from America promised that Max Shachtman also would visit Britain. [67]
In November a meeting was convened in the flat of Flower at which Groves, Sara, Purkis and Wicks [68] agreed to establish a British Section of the Left Opposition. [69] Shachtman urged the need for someone to be sacrificed in order to dramatize the existence of the group, but both Americans argued against a split. There was unease at Shachtman’s suggestion, but agreement on the need to restore inner party democracy, reduce Russian influence and return to basic principles. It was later asserted that the Americans’ anxiety to establish a group overrode the achievement of political unity, that organisational steps were taken, but that the group remained a circle of friends. [70]
The plan was for Shachtman to visit Montagu, Ellen Wilkinson and perhaps others. [71] Nothing tangible emerged from this. A British Section constructed more widely from those with whom Trotsky and others were in contact, might have been a very impressive body indeed. [72] What actually crystallized was a tiny body which, like the young CPGB was entirely working class and had only made a limited critique of Comintern theory.
It is arguable that the Balham Group was a product mainly of domestic discontents. The prime movers were fairly well known to each other, they had a common industrial background, and many were concentrated in South London. Inevitably they were a group held together by personal as well as political ties. The political ties centred on dissatisfaction with the performance of the CPGB, first before the imposition of the new line at Leeds and after. But the Balham Group reacted to the impasse of the CPGB in its own way. By 1931, it is argued, it was closer to the “class against class” line than the party itself. [73] It rejected the catastrophism of Ridley and Ram, as had the CLA, yet it shared the belief that communist growth was imminent. But just as communist theory had in the CPGB of the 1920s largely been imposed from without, the new Oppositionists themselves were confronted with a mass of doctrine which they were expected to digest. Some of it, like the argument for the United Front, appealed at once, and those parts of Trotsky’s critique, of which the Group were aware, acted as a yeast on its development. Balham’s interests in Trotyskyism were not abnormal [74] but the immediate future was to reveal a mutual lack of confidence between it and the international movement.
Notes
1. This meeting, known as the preliminary conference of the ILO, elected a provisional International Secretariat and agreed to establish an International Bulletin. Representatives from France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Hungary, the United States, Czechoslovakia and a French Jewish Group attended. Groups in Russia, China, Austria, Mexico, Argentina and Greece endorsed the steps taken. (L. Trotsky, A Big Step Forward. Unification of the Left Opposition, April 1930, Writings 1930, 187-90, 419-20n.) There is a critical discussion of the early ILO in I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 57-60.
2. How the I.L.O. is Doing, 1930, Writings: 1930, 304.
3. Dick Beech was a former Wobbly who had in 1920 accompanied the British delegation to the first congress of the Comintern. He ran a book society which, inter alia, circulated Trotskyist material. He had contributed articles to the Militant of the Communist League of America. Beech corresponded with Trotsky up to the end of 1931 and helped the Trotskyist movement subsequently from time to time. He later became president of the Chemical Workers Union.
4. Jack Tanner was a foundation member of the CPGB, national committee member of the AEU, and a leading spokesman of the Minority Movement in the 1920s. He left the Communist Party and rose as a right wing spokesman to the presidency of his union.
5. Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979.
6. Trotsky gave Shachtman a letter of introduction to her the following year. (L. Trotsky, To Help in Britain, 9 Nov. 1931, Writings Supplement (1929-33), 99)
7. Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979.
8. Trotsky sounded him out about a new edition of Where is Britain Going? in that year. L. Trotsky to Shachtman, To Help in Britain, Writings: Supplement (1929-33).
9. Nov. 1931, 99. Both women watched the demotions and dismissals for political reasons which took place in Russia with incomprehension, a legacy perhaps of the lack of knowledge in the CPGB of the debate in the Russian Party. Freda Utley might have openly joined Trotsky in 1931 but was dissuaded by Bertrand Russell, with whom she was staying. (F. Utley, Lost Illusions, X1949), 11, 57;; M. McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, 1953, passim.)
10. F.A. Ridley (1897-) was a writer, secularist and historian who had left the ILP in 1930.
11. Chandu Ram (d. 1932) was an Indian law student and member of the London branch of the Indian National Congress.
12. Hugo Dewar ( -1980) joined the ILP around 1929.
13. R. Stephenson (ed.), The Early Years of the British Left Opposition, 1979.
14. F.A. Ridley, A Communist Party – The Problem of the Revolution in England, The Militant (NY), 31 Oct. 1931, quoted in R. Stephenson, op. cit.
15. “Therefore, when capitalism reaches that stage of decay when no further reforms are possible – and that stage is here now (witness the coal-mining industry) – the “raison d’etre” of trade unionism is gone. The end of trade unions as known at present is within sight”, (D.E.W. [Dr. Worrall?], Trade Unions and Revolution, The New Man, 1 Jan. 1932, 5).
16. The theses perished with other of Ridley’s papers during the blitz, but Trotsky quotes from them in his reply, Tasks of the Left Opposition in Britain and India, 7 November 1931, Writings (1930-31), 337-43. For factual data on the Marxist League, see A. Richardson, Some Notes for a Bibliography of British Trotskyism, dupl. (1979?), no pag.
17. Tasks of the Left Opposition in Britain and India. Some uncritical remarks on unsuccessful theses, 7 Nov. 1931, Writings (1930-31), 342.
18. ibid., 342.
19. L. Trotsky, Better to seek the Solid, 30 Nov. 1931, Writings Supplement (1929-33), 101-2.
20. Held in or before October 1931. (A. Glotzer to R. Groves, 27 Oct. 1931.) Here and on other occasions Ram used the pseudonym “Aggravaila” or “Aggar Wala”.
21. A. Glotzer to R. Groves, 27 Oct. 1931. Minutes were forwarded to all English contacts of the ILO.
22. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 43-4.
23. L. Trotsky to M. Shachtman, What Is Fascism?, 15 Nov. 1931, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 99-101. In 1929 the CPGB adopted a resolution that social fascism (i.e. the Labour government) was preparing the way for fascism, that the crisis was sharpening, and that “militancy and solidarity similar to the great days of the General Strike are being displayed”. Stimulated by the protracted social crisis in Germany, Trotsky was at this time developing his analysis of the conditions under which fascism might grow. In England, Fascism was not ruled out, but would grow only with difficulty because of the social weight of the country’s proletariat.
24. A Glotzer to R. Groves, 27 Oct. 1931. “Several fundamental questions”, Glotzer told Groves, divided the I.S, from the Marxist League and “the other groups in England”. Arne Swabeck conceded Groves’s complaints about Ridley’s article in The Militant, (A. Swabeck to R. Groves, 6 Nov. 1931), and told him that the CLA had been compelled to excise from Ridley’s article the view that the 1931 general election was the last Britain would have, (A. Swabeck to R. Groves, 24 Nov. 1931).
25. H. Dewar to P. Thwaites, 24 Sept. 1975, lent to author by Mr. Thwaites.
26. R. Groves, The Balham Group, 1974, 61.
27. A.M.R. Penn, (A Bibliography of the British Trotskyist Press, University of Warwick M.A., 1979, 22), was unable to locate any copies of The New Man. But Vol.1, No.1, 1 Jan. 1932 has survived and is located in the Watson collection of the University of Stirling. It was intended to publish the journal, which had eight pages, fortnightly. This issue contains articles by Ridley, D.E.W., [Dr. Worrall?] and “Caius Gracchus”. It continued the catastrophic theses of the League and offered to provide leadership of a revolutionary character, but made no call for a Fourth International.
28. See Below.
29. “One or two individuals were already moving towards an Oppositional position by 1929”, writes Hugo Dewar, (Communist Politics in Britain, 1976, 150). Reg Groves only appeared as a critic of the group now controlling the party in February 1930, however, though the London membership did have some independence of the Comintern supporters. (R. Groves, op. cit., 21-2; H. Wicks, loc. cit., 27-8.)
30. Reg Groves, (1908- ) joined the ILP as a youth in 1924.
31. (1885-1969).
32. E.S. ’Billy” Williams, (d. 1963).
33. R. Groves, op. cit., 12-16.
34. “Mondism” and our Industrial Party, Communist Review, July 1929, 409-14.
35. Like Murphy, he demanded a struggle against the “Right danger”, (Our Party and the New Period, Communist Review, Nov. 1929, 604-9). Groves was also corresponding with Dutt,(op. cit., 23). The interest Groves was to show in working class history was already in evidence in his Labour Monthly articles on Chartism.
36. He contributed to Labour Monthly on railway and Minority Movement problems on occasions in 1929 and 1930. He also obscurely challenged Dutt’s interpretation of the 1929 general election result, (Workers” Weekly, 23 Nov. 1929). He was expelled from the RCA for political activities and was joint editor, with Billy Williams, of The Jogger, a cyclostyled rank and file party bulletin.
37. For Henry Sara see R. Groves, op. cit., 19-20; R. Challinor, The Origins of British Bolshevism, 197), 142.
38. Sunday Worker, 11 Oct. 1925.
39. See The Class War, Communist Review, April 1926, 538-42. In 1927 Sara attended the Hankow conference of the CCCP in company with Tom Mann, on whose friendship he would still be able to call after breaking with CPGB (H. Sara to C.A. Smith, 14 Sept. 1937, Warwick MSS. 15/4/1/27).
40. Compare his Further Jottings on R.W. Postgate, (The Communist, (May 1928), 290-6) with Harold Heslop’s attempt the previous month to dismember the eclectic ex-communist.
41. Harry Wicks (1907- ) joined the party in 1921 with most of the Daily Herald League and helped form the Battersea YCL, and joined its national executive in 1926. (R. Groves, op. cit., 34-5).
42. R. Groves (op. cit., 19) argues the Lenin School had a harmful effect. A contrary view is put by S. Macintyre in Marxism in Britain, 1917-1933, 44.
43. This created a strong impression. Interview with H. Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979.
44. He proposed that the paper be reduced in size, that its articles be more educational, that more argument and less stridency be apparent in its pages. He was told in reply that reference resources were weak and that it was the application of policy, not policy itself, that was at fault. (R. Groves to Secretariat, 26 Feb. 1930; Daily Worker editorial board to Groves, 24 March 1930).
45. He resented alteration of his text without consultation and threatened to suspend the column (R. Groves to Secretariat, 22 April, 14 May, 30 May 1930). The Secretariat supported the Editorial Board in seeking a full text that it could defend (W. Rust to Groves, 1 June 1930; Secretariat to Groves (4), 8 July 1930).
46. Purkis had backed him against editorial changes (Secretariat to Groves, 8 July 1930).
47. Groves requested of David Riazanov, director of the Institute and biographer of Marx and Engels, paid work in London on its behalf. Riazanov countered with the offer of a post with the English Cabinet of the Institute in Moscow. Groves accepted but was barred by the British Party. (D. Riazanov to Groves, 30 March 1930; R. Groves to Riazanov, 13 April 1930; draft by S. Purkis of letter to Riazanov explaining the block, Warwick MSS.). Later Jane Degras filled a vacancy at the Institute (Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979).
48. He carried the controversy on Bukharin from The Daily Worker into the theoretical press. See his review of The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class, (Communist Review, Feb. 1930, 84-8) for which he was criticised by Rathbone and the Politbureau. For a discussion of CPGB reactions to Bukharin’s disgrace, see S. Macintyre, op. cit., 179-80
49. The Theoretician of “Left” sectarianism and Spontaneity, Communist Review, Jan. 193), 11-19. Groves relates the views of Utley and Purkis in The Balham Group, 30-1. For a discussion of Utley’s views and the impact on the party of the late availability in English of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? 1902, see N. Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, 1959, 167-71 and S. Macintyre, op. cit., passim.
50. Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979.
51. The Red Flag, Jan. 1937.
52. R. Groves, op. cit., 48, explains that he saw Militant and Labor Action for the first time at Henderson’s bookshop in March 1931.
53. Twentieth Century, (May 1931).
54. J.P. Cannon and M. Spector led about 100 communists out of the CPUSA of Jay Lovestone in late 1928, to which were added some intellectuals influenced by Max Eastman. The catalyst in the political evolution of Cannon and Spector from critics to Oppositionists had been the smuggling out of the Sixth World Congress, which they attended as delegates, of Trotsky’s critique of The Draft Programme of the Comintern. (J.P. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism, New York 1972, for the early CLA see J.A. Bobbins, The Birth of American Trotskyism, 1927-1929, U.S.A., 1973, C.A. Myers, The Prophet’s Army. Trotskyists in America, 1928-1941, Westport, Conn., 1977, 27-38)
55. R. Groves, op. cit., 46-7.
56. Arne Swabeck was a founder member of the CPUSA who became secretary of the CLA in 1932 and was a delegate to the Paris conference of the ILO, in Paris, February 1933.
57. A. Swabeck, To Our English Comrades, (n.d., 1931?).
58. A. Swabeck, ibid.
59. S. Macintyre, op. cit., 238.
60. In 1934 Groves wrote of the part he and other London militants had played in attacking the pre-1929 party leadership. They did so partly out of revolt against the previous policy with its merging of the Communist Party in the loose Labour Left and partly because the struggle begun by the London membership against bureaucracy in the party was taken up by the Comintern and used by it, as part of its war with the party’s own Right Wing. It must also be remembered that we know nothing of the struggle going on within the CL and nothing of the policy of the Left Opposition. Reg Groves, (Our Attitude to the Labour Party (draft), Warwick MSS, 2.
61. J.A. Robbins, op. cit., 76.
62. R. Groves to the Secretariat, 25 Aug. 1931; Daily Worker to Groves, 27 Aug. 1931; R. Groves to Editorial Board of Daily Worker 26 Aug. 1931, (Warwick MSS). The party secretariat refused to publish his letters, feeling that “the opening of a party discussion at the present moment is in no way desirable”. The assumption underlying Groves’s argument seems to be that economic developments would stimulate militant movements which Councils of Action would harness, a concept the party, perhaps influenced now by What Is To Be Done?, increasingly rejected, (S. Macintyre, The Balham Group, Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, B.R. 8-10).
63. Members included Reg and Daisy Groves, Cyril Whiting, Maurice Simmonds, Bill Pyne, Isabel Mussi, Steve Dowdall and Neil Dowdall, a number of whom had been in the party for some time, (R. Groves, The Balham Group, 1974, passim).
64. L. Trotsky to Shachtman, Will Help New Publishing House, 4 April 1931, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 78-9.
65. A. Swabeck to Groves, 29 Sept. 1931, Warwick MSS.
66. Albert Glotzer (1908- ) was a youth leader of the CLA.
67. A. Swabeck to Groves, 26 Oct. 1931, Warwick MSS.
68. H. Wicks, British Trotskyism in the Thirties, International, No.1, 1976. Groves, op. cit., 49, writes that Billy Williams was present. Also in attendance may have been Weston (alias Morris), who had been with Wicks in Moscow and not allowed back into the party on his return to Britain (Interview with H. Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979).
69. Though the Section seems not to have been recognised as such until the New Year, (R. Groves, (op. cit., 49)).
70. “The foundation meeting of the British Group was lamentably unconcerned with politics. It was marked by a vigorous determination to get an L.O. group set up in Britain at all costs, and also by the absence of any attempt to ensure political unity on the basis of an LO platform.” Statement From Members of the 1931-1933 Committee of the British Group of the Left Opposition, 18 April 1933, 1, Warwick MSS.
71. L. Trotsky to Shachtman, To Help in Britain, 9 Nov. 1931, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 99. Montagu had to be contacted discreetly, Trotsky advised, in view of his job connections with Russia.
72. The closed section of Trotsky’s archive was opened to the public on 1 January 1980. Folders 165-75 of the archive contain documents and correspondence on Britain (I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 530). Attempts to elicit any information about their contents before that date failed, though it is likely that they contain further information on Trotsky’s British contacts at this time.
73. S. Macintyre, The Balham Group, Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, B.R. 8-10. A good example is Groves’s insistence, during the dispute over Workers” Notebook, that the Congress would be incapable of carrying forward the struggle in India against the British, the very view advanced by the Comintern against the Old Guard in 1928.
74. J. Jupp, The Left in Britain, (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of London, 1956), 229.
******
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
III
THE BRITISH SECTION OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION
(NOVEMBER 1931–DECEMBER 1933)
In they two years after the formation of the British Section, the Trotskyists made modest progress. Six months aggressive presentation of their views led to their expulsion in the summer of 1932. This event had only a limited impact on the CPGB though the Trotskyists had a cadre within the ILP. For a year and a half they functioned independently of parties but with an ILP fraction. At the end of 1933, however, the organization split over the tactical issue of whether or not to commit itself entirely to entering the ILP.
In 1932 the CPGB began efforts to break out of its sectarian enclave. Under Comintern guidance the “January resolution” was drawn up rejecting the excesses of the previous year which, supposedly, arose from misapplication of the line. The Balham Group challenged the resolution on two points: its thesis that trade unions might be transformed into instruments of class struggle, and the absence of any guidance for work on Germany and the Far East. [1] Balham did not reject trade union work, but it believed the principal emphasis ought to lie on an approach to the shop floor. The unwisdom of making this its main charge was illustrated by coverage of the disagreement in the Daily Worker [2], and the tone of comments by communist leaders. It was in vain for Balham to protest that its objection was to the belief that unions might be transformed into instruments. of class struggle. [3] It was equally naive to cite Dutt and Lozovsky in support. [4] The party replied that Balham’s line was sectarian and hindering the work of the Minority Movement, and that it was not, in any case, carrying out factory work. [5] It was also relatively easy to put the record straight both about Dutt and Lozovsky [6]; with the passing of time the Balham Group began to be presented as an ultra-left faction which first deviated by its hostility to trade unions. [7]
Far more efficacious would have been a drive on the United Front, Trotsky’s main preoccupation of these years. The criticisms that Wicks, Groves and Sara were making of the leadership might have obtained a stronger echo had they hit at this weakest point. In May the first issue of The Communist, published not without misgivings [8], sensibly played to their strong suit by leading with Trotsky’s 1931 article, Germany: the key to the international situation. But while calls were made for a discussion on the January resolution, and for the convening of the party congress, it was its trade union appraisal which identified the Balham group.
Sharp attacks on the leadership by Groves, Wicks and Sara at aggregates in Battersea on 20 April and 30.May, together with the publication of The Communist as the journal of the British Section of the Left Opposition, inevitably brought down the wrath of the party apparatus. Sara, who had a separate dispute with the Daily Worker [9], Groves and Wicks were all condemned by the Battersea political committee of the party for underestimation of the party’s role, defeatism, social democratic practices and “unjustifiable and unsubstantiated attacks on the leadership”. [10] They continued as party members, however, pursuing unusual cooperation with the local ILP and gathering an anti-war movement in South-West London which had genuine support. Parting of the ways with the CPGB may have been delayed by the party decision to close the discussion on the January resolution, on 24 June.
It was the war issue which finally brought matters to a head. Balham had criticized the Comintern drive for the World Congress Against War which was to be held in Amsterdam later in 1932 with strong support from non-party intellectuals. In South West London, Balham was advancing a strong Leninist line. Trotsky was arguing that unity with writers such as Henri Barbusse implied pacifist concessions and that this approach was a substitute for a working class united front. [11] Pollitt and leading party members had seen The Communist and on 17 August they confronted Groves, Wicks and Sara, demanding of the first two that they submit to discipline. They would not commit themselves and were expelled. [12] When a majority of the Balham Group refused to disown Groves, it was liquidated. and surviving members left in a party branch covering the Battersea and Wandsworth area. Hugo Dewar was expelled soon after for his defence of the Balham line at his Tooting local. Stuart Purkis, who identified himself with Balham and The Communist was also expelled. [13] Twelve members of the dissolved Balham Group circulated a statement as widely as they could setting down what had happened [14], but the repercussions were limited. The only leader who departed around this time was J.T. Murphy and he left over an entirely unrelated issue, though attempts were made to construct a link. [15] The second issue of The Communist appeared in September and the group set about building itself up.
The Balham Group found itself outside the party, with less than a dozen supporters. It was classified as a Trotskyist faction but it had a strong foot in the camp of the “third period”. [16] It was criticised by the Americans for its trade union stand [17], but Trotsky approved its intention, after the expulsion, to continue to project itself as a communist faction. [18] It was to emerge that the British and Trotsky had a different understanding of what this meant. [19] The Communist remained the voice of the party members in exile. It even declared its interest to be confined only to those prepared to join the party. [20] Trotsky wanted the British to go as communists into the wider labour movement. The Balham Group sought to restore the Communist Party to health.
This was particularly so up to the time of the Twelfth Congress of the CPGB in November 1932. Chance convened this gathering in the Battersea Town Hall, heartland of so many of these first Trotskyists. They made a written intervention, but not a verbal one [21] and were denounced from the platform by Pollitt. [22] The absence of a significant response left little room for illusions about a fight back [23], although the tone of some distributed literature suggested illusions were still nourished at least in the breast of Groves. [24] The Communist [25] reflected that torpor in the CPGB, was created by the physical absence of opposition, right (defined as Horner and Hannington), and left. It added that sluggishness also arose from the resolving of disagreements by references to decisions of the Comintern as expounded by the Party Central Committee. This was an anticipation, in microcosm, of Trotsky’s argument for breaking with the German Communist Party when it did not analyse its own failure to prevent Hitler taking power [26], but not of the conclusion he drew.
What impact did the emergence of an open Trotskyist group have? The unavoidable answer is very little. The extent of communist attacks may reflect insecurity of the CPGB leaders at this time, however small the secession. Factors bearing on the reception the Balham Group received included the timing of the expulsions [27] and the issue over which they took place. [28] This may explain in part the disparity of Trotskyism in Britain and abroad. A consideration that must also be weighed is the phase of its fortunes the CPGB had sunk to by 1932. The expulsions caused no crisis within it and were barely noticed elsewhere. [29]
The turn of the year saw the British Section building up its independent activity. Most promising was the South-West London Anti-War Committee, where the Balham Group was represented through trade union and Co-op Party members and had even been unintentionally complimented by Robson, the local CPGB organiser. [30] Even at this point however, a conflict was evident between those who still looked towards actively reforming the CPGB, an approach reflected in Purkis’s Open Letter to Harry Pollitt, and those who followed the tactics of the Balham Group in more complete opposition to the party. At this time the Opposition numbered less than thirty, all of them in London. It had about a dozen contacts. About half the membership of the former Balham Group was within it and this was still the main base of activity. It had established an existence, though a regular press only came with this New Year. [31] Yet it was hampered by a semi-legal existence which created a dispute over future tactics.
Politically, the Opposition had begun the task of making available in Britain Trotsky’s own writings, notably on Germany, the issue of the hour. But this did not yet imply the integration of the British within the International Left Opposition. Wicks was present at the informal international gathering convened in Copenhagen during Trotsky’s lecture visit to the city in November 1932. Groves attended two days of the international pre-conference held in Paris on 4-8 February 1933. Neither visit led to a satisfactory discussion about the problems the British now faced. [32]
These problems centred on the intimidating disparity between the agenda set for itself by Trotskyism in Britain, and the forces available to it. This was to cause a severe tactical dispute which would in the end destroy the group. At the beginning of 1933 there were within the British Section not only the former members of the Balham Group and their associates, but also members of the ILP who supported Trotsky’s policy.
These ILP Trotskyists traced their provenance to the Marxist League and to the formation in 1930 of a faction within the ILP which sought to disaffiliate it from the Labour Party and make it a revolutionary organisation. This faction, the Revolutionary Policy Committee, later became dominated by fellow travellers of the CPGB At this time however, it was dissatisfied with the communists and open in its views. Its leading members were aware of the ideas of Heinrich Brandler, former general secretary of the KPD. deposed after that party’s failure to seize power in 1923, and also of the critique developed by Trotsky and the Left Opposition. Early members included Bert and May Matlow, Ernie Patterson and Sid Kemp. Harry Wicks had attended RPC conferences [33], which of course had only a semi-legal character. In 1931, Patterson and Kemp were, as members of the Clapham ILP, working with Reg Groves and the Balham Group in local campaigns against imperialist war. [34]
Disaffiliationist pressure actually led to the calling of an ILP conference to discuss the matter in November 1931, but it was cancelled in the belief that the secession of MacDonald, and the holding of the general election, might impel Labour to the left. [35] At a meeting of the Party’s National Administrative Council that month Fenner Brockway urged careful choice of the time for a split and the issue over which to break. [36] In the months to come his phrase “a clean break” was to dramatize a widespread feeling in the party that it must cut itself completely free of Labour if it was ever to make progress. [37] The April 1932 Conference of the Party did not pull out but brought to the fore the essentially secondary issue of Labour Party Standing Orders which were inhibiting ILP M.P.s from pursuing ILP – as distinct from Labour Party – policy. A special conference of July 1932 resolved to come out [38], and the ILP, set about cutting itself off not only from the Labour Party but from the labour movement in suicidally sectarian fashion.
Disaffiliation occurred over the relatively unimportant issue of the obligation of ILP M.P.s to observe Labour Party Standing Orders. It was also exceedingly ill-timed, since it occurred when the Labour Party was surrendering itself to just the kind of maximalist programme so many ILP members favoured. Instead of leading to the erection of a mass socialist base, the “clean break” was an almost total disaster. [39] Those RPC members who looked kindly upon Trotsky’s programme favoured it however as did the Opposition leader himself. [40] It was felt that the ILP might be won for revolution, but only if it freed himself from the reformist embrace. This belief on the part of Trotsky and some, of the Opposition was to become increasingly important in 1933.
Complex differences developed within the British Opposition during this year. Although there were now ILP members within its ranks, these debates were conducted largely by the ex-communist cadre. Were the members of the Opposition to content themselves with publishing the views of Trotsky or were they aiming more ambitiously to build up a new organisation? If the second, what were the tactical means to this end? Wicks and Weston (Morris) [41] seem to have favoured the view that the aim was to build up an Opposition group, perhaps through work in the CPGB. Purkis favoured advocating a critical but positive platform in communist circles. Critics of this second view saw it as merely a propaganda exercise. [42]
Should the British Section try and rival the CPGB in all spheres of activity? [43] This was a utopian aim for such a tiny group, even faced by a weakened Communist Party. Less ambitiously it could use its press to expound a revolutionary alternative to CPGB policy which might guide communists. Would that mean ceasing to publish Trotsky’s articles plus material on Germany and historical issues? [44] Davis, Purkis, Wicks and Williams came together to propose that the Opposition’s main tasks were to publish essential ILO documents, train cadres in Opposition theory, organize Opposition work in the CPGB and project general “Bolshevik-Leninist” propaganda at the mass organizations. [45] Typically of the discussions of this time, the authors blurred their priorities. [46]
Mixed in with this confusion was unease at the slant Groves, effectively the leader of the Opposition, gave to its work. His critics thought he made the wrong criticisms of communist policy and attacked its leaders too strongly. [47] The composition of the executive changed twice in the early months of 1933, first to increase Groves’s influence and then to reduce it. [48] Part of the problem was that the group had continued to function informally since its establishment and proper conferences had not been convened. On 18 June a gathering was held, (called variously a members” meeting and a conference), which had before it an ambitiously detailed constitution [49] and a national committee resolution specifying the group’s main tasks as: clarifying ideas and holding regular conferences; a continuous intensive campaign on the CPGB; paying attention to the left wing youth and especially the YCL; selling a minimum 1,000 Red Flags; publishing The Communist when necessary; participating more fully in the ILO.
The National Committee had followed Trotsky when the Opposition leader called for a radical reappraisal following Hitler’s seizure of power. [50] Trotsky advised that summer that if the Comintern failed to conduct an honest inquest on such a serious defeat it was moribund. He concluded that it was time to prepare a new international. The NC presented this view to the League with an individual gloss. It suggested that a discredited KPD leadership could not be entrusted with organizing illegal work under Nazism, that ruin of the USSR or Comintern collapse would signify the need for a new international. Trotsky had gone further by arguing that the time to rebuild had arrived already. With few exceptions however, the British Section seems to have accepted this turn [51], recognising explicitly that a new party was needed in Britain.
The British Section celebrated May Day 1933 with the first printed Trotskyist newspaper the country had produced, The Red Flag. [52] It did not normally report the work of the British Section. It was a propaganda vehicle, aimed at a revolutionary audience. The stress on Trotsky’s articles on Germany and (later) Austria reflected the interests of the International Left Opposition, though from July unsigned British articles begin to appear. [53] In the first three months of publication sales of The Red Flag advanced from more than 900 to nearly 1,250. Sales, which had been divided 3:1 in London’s favour were now more healthily distributed in the ratio of 7:5. [54] In the autumn however, The Red Flag entered a decline [55], perhaps as a casualty of the factional struggle.
In its short life the British Section of the Left Opposition achieved four publications which aspired to regularity. The Communist continued despite the appearance of The Red Flag, though there was discussion about retaining it for occasional needs. [56] For Discussion, the internal bulletin, appeared in sixteen issues up to 24 October 1933. [57] The League had also undertaken in August 1932, to supply Trotsky with clippings from the British press and in the autumn of 1933, it offered these to members as an information service under the title Excerpts and Summaries. [58] While a successful press was clearly essential, there was a tendency that such a small group might overreach itself. [59]
The life of the British Section of the Left Opposition was dominated, during the six months following the June members” meeting, by a radical shift in international policy and the implications of this for its tactics in Britain. From July 1933 Trotsky was urging the sections of the ILO to follow closely the evolution of new parties; which had in Western Europe split from social-democracy to the left. [60]
He next argued that the Comintern, generally, was beyond revival and that the orientation towards reforming it must be abandoned. [61] The National Committee of the British Section supported Trotsky’s views but interpreted them to prescribe independence without foreseeing the full tactical implications they carried. [62] The late development of Trotskyism in Britain scarcely left it time to learn the old perspective before it adjusted to the new.
The British example of a “Left Socialist Organisation” was the ILP. Groves was alive to developments within it but when called on to produce a guiding document proposed no special emphasis. [63] Calls for greater emphasis on the ILP came from Graham [64] and the Translators’ Group of the British Section. [65] From abroad Trotsky and the ILO began to exert pressure on the British to take up urgently work within the ILP. They were in closer and closer contact with it on the international plane and sought to group it with those other Left Socialist parties who were prepared to work for a Fourth International. The Declaration of Four was to be the link between the open work of the ILO and the more covert activities of its British members. [66]
On 19 August 1933 a plenum of the ILO unanimously resolved that its British Section should enter the ILP. Trotsky began at once to press the point in private correspondence [67] and devoted public space to discussing the fate of the party. [68] The ILP sent delegates to the conference of Left Socialist Organisations held in Paris on 28 August, but did not adhere to the Declaration of Four. [69]
Yet Trotsky met John Paton and C.A. Smith the next day and gained a favourable impression of Smith. [70] Time was to show that the ILO was not in fact homogeneous in regarding an ILP turn for the British Section, and the Declaration of Four as auspicious tactics. [71] This had implications for the development of debate within the British Section, but the IS pressure was unrelenting. Its case was that the Section must face not a declining CPGB, but the ILP, that it must help the ILP to become “the revolutionary lever influencing the masses of the Labour Party and of the trade unions”. There was a detailed difference between Trotsky’s view and that of the IS, which had formulated its own by amending an original proposal from Trotsky himself, but the general argument was the same. [72] On 5 September the IS repeated its plea, arguing that the race with the communists would fall to the swiftest and that a prolonged dispute would be a luxury.
The injunction “our comrades must actually enter the ILP and give full effort to building up the revolutionary element in this party” [73] did not meet with clear assent in Britain. Initially there was a failure to communicate clearly, due to a lack of direct contact. [74] As it became clear that the Communist League – as the British Section was known from late August 1933 – was faced with a firm proposal, it began to define its own tactical position in response. Publicly it recorded its interest in the ILP but did not elaborate a detailed programme for transforming it into a revolutionary party. [75] Privately it interpreted the IS proposal as further support for a perspective of achieving independence. [76] In its reply the National Committee of the Communist League challenged the impression the ILP had created abroad, dismissed the specific IS proposal for an outside presence, and suggested that apparent surrender of Bolshevik-Leninist principles to the ILP “would deal a serious blow at the prestige of the Opposition”. [77]
ILP entry was a major preoccupation of Trotsky’s during September 1933 when he made four separate contributions to the discussion, [78] combining public argument with private cajolery. His case to the ILP was that it must now break with Stalinism just as the Opposition had, but after a decade of struggle. [79] He first anticipated the objections of the CL. Independence, he suggested, must be striven towards but could not always be immediately achieved and there was, moreover, a desperate need to act swiftly to forestall Stalinist penetration of the ILP. [80] The Bolshevik-Leninists, he later urged, would be the conduit for Marxism into the ILP, the only means whereby that party’s further disintegration might be prevented. On 2 October 1933 he applied further public [81] and private [82] pressure. He analysed the position in the British labour movement as a series of potential levers. The tiny CL might shift the larger ILP. The ILP, in turn might move the Labour Party. ILPers would not abandon their party for an organisation forty strong but within its heterogeneous environment the CL might have great effect. He handled the practical arguments of the National Committee with only limited patience and clearly regarded the actual mode of entry into the ILP as a secondary question. [83] Salient points in his case were that penetration of the ILP should be for a brief period, aimed at recruiting the ’revolutionary kernel” (sometimes called the revolutionary majority) of the party, and that it was a viable proposition because the party was factionalised. The October-November 1933 issue of The Red Flag led with the Declaration of Four.
October also saw factionalism develop within the Communist League. It emerged that there was a minority on the national committee, which supported Trotsky’s view while initially having little of its own to add. [84] At a second attempt this minority tried to develop a case which centred on the responsibility of the CL to ensure that the ILP retained its independence (from Stalinism). [85] The earlier the disintegration of the ILP the greater the benefit to the CPGB. [86] A battle must therefore be fought, it reasoned, on the ground where Trotskyism was strongest – that of principle. Its most powerful argument however was a negative one: a challenge to the majority to demonstrate where prospects were brighter than in the ILP – and the best chance of winning the party lay on the inside. [87] When the National Committee replied, it was clear that they were on the defensive. The attempt to marshall concrete alternatives to ILP entry served only to reveal how threadbare the case for independence was. [88] The ILP, it was claimed, was best influenced from the outside, nor would its fate be settled in the short term. [89] The Communist League ought to continue with its fingers in several pies and not confine itself to the ILP. [90] Finally, either mode of entering the ILP would discredit the Communist League. Definite positions on the National Committee were established at its meeting of 5 October 1933 [91]; after that it was essentially a question of the membership delivering its verdict.
The decisive members” meeting was convened in London under the chairmanship of Groves on 17 December, with at least three quarters of the British Section in attendance. [92] On the proposal of Max Nicholls, the meeting endorsed the Declaration of the Four Parties (for the Fourth International) and called on the National Committee to detail how this might be implemented in Britain. [93] This decision put the Communist League within the movement of the Opposition towards the Fourth International; it now had to face the tactical recommendation of most of its international comrades.
The debate opened with speeches by Sara and Graham. [94] Sara moved the rejection of Trotsky’s proposal to enter the ILP, arguing that the Opposition leader valued it more highly than the League [95] and did not appreciate the technical difficulties of working within it. Allen, who formulated the Minority view was only repeating Trotsky’s opinions. Graham’s speech was a frank reply to Sara. [96] ILP members would be far more likely to join a Communist League which fought with it side by side. He developed the “split perspective” of working within the ILP, in anticipation of a break and rejected in advance the compromise proposal of the International Secretariat. Matlow it was who advanced the IS view that those who agreed on entering the ILP should do so and formally repudiate the Communist League. Once within the ILP, they could make themselves an organised fraction. Wicks, less realistically, urged the transformation of the CL into an open organised fraction [97] which would then join the ILP. If the ILP refused, he added, present policy should be continued.
There was thus four proposals before the membership. Sara had backing from Barrett, Hanton, “Oscar”, [98] for insisting on independence from the ILP The CL, they argued, and not this muddled party, would be the future new revolutionary organization. Minority spokesmen included Kirby [99], Worrall, Kaye, Nicholls and Harber. [100] who felt that the importance of a continued existence for the Communist League was not great. Wicks’s proposal, advanced on behalf of the Battersea and Chelsea groups of the League, received support from Dibden, Temple, Lee Bradley [101] and Rowlands. [102] They insisted that work in the ILP could not be efficacious without an organized fraction and differed also from the Minority in disbelieving that the party as a whole could be won.
Sara replied to the debate, restating his view that Trotsky undervalued the Communist League [103] and that the ex-communist members had taken a far larger step than had the ILP members because they had split with their party. His speech expressed the disquiet felt from the start by the leading cadre about aligning themselves with Trotsky. [104]
Only two votes were cast for Matlow’s compromise amendment, all the other 35 delegates voting against. The Battersea-Chelsea amendment was also lost, but more narrowly, with 10 in support and 14 against. The Battersea-Chelsea votes then moved almost entirely behind the Majority whose resolution was passed 26:11. [105]
Harber, for the Minority members now declared they were going to join the ILP, guided by a letter from the International Secretariat to Groves which had not been published. [106] Groves countered that the letter had been read at the NC [107] but Harber then proceeded to read its text to the effect that the Minority must be allowed to follow its own star.
By withdrawing from the meeting the Minority made its feelings clear. Then with only the Majority voting, Wicks and Lee Bradley were put on the National Committee in place of its Minority members. This separation in the voting procedure was the parting of the ways and the meeting closed.
There was a brief time for obituaries. The Majority referred to the weighty and decisive vote of 17 December. [108] In its view the Minority argument that organisational unity could not exist without policy agreement, could not be sustained for a tactical quarrel. As a general rule majority decisions had to be respected. If they did not prevail in the ILP fraction, there would be a split at the first disagreement. Prophetically the Majority warned:
We are aware of the difficulties that many of the sections have experienced from weakness on matters of this kind. The history of many opposition sections has been and still is one of continual factional struggles and breakways. One of the reasons for this is undoubtedly, (Sic) an absence, both internationally and nationally, of a leadership which has earned the respect of the members. [109]
The Majority made a final offer: let the Minority enter the ILP and make a formal repudiation of the Communist League. It could still work under the direction of the National Committee. Refusal must mean exclusion from membership. There is no record of any attempt to take the offer up.
So ended the first phase of British Trotskyism. It had been a brief marriage of very different experiences. In the end most of those who had not been in the CPGB remained in, or returned to, the ILP. The ex-communists opted for an open organisation.
There was also a differential willingness to follow Trotsky’s advice and that of the International Secretariat. By the end of the discussion the Majority were speaking of both in very critical terms. They had not participated in the long struggle of the Left Opposition against Stalin, and they did not feel under compulsion of loyalty. Did Trotsky himself see more future for the ILP than for the Communist League as a revolutionary alternative? His writings underpin this accusation to a certain extent. Ironically, none other than Trotsky himself had criticised Stalin for expecting in 1926 a mass revolutionary current from left wing members of the General Council of the TUC rather than from the CPGB, and Minority Movement. The first split had come ominously soon. It occurred over an issue which history failed to resolve and was to bedevil Trotskyist politics for many years. The Majority’s darker predictions were borne out. This phase of Trotskyism in Britain has not been well treated. “This initial split took place without any thorough discussion or preparation, the factional lines running parallel to the personal alliances of the various individuals. [110]
But the Communist League spent quite a long time debating whether or not to enter the ILP: indeed Trotsky’s complaint was that they spent so long that crucial months were allowed to pass while the CPGB built up its influence. As for the second charge, which smacks of the folk-lore of the movement, it does seem to be true that no one changed sides during the debate, but this seems attributable to political alliances. Almost all those who were still or formerly in the Communist Party opted for an independent League [111], while those who had been won from nowhere or from the ILP set up the Marxist Group. The Communist League was an unconsummated marriage but it was politically and not personally dissolved.
WIL. was also to charge that it was the transition from critical circle to real organizing which ruptured the Communist League. Without doubt there was an element of posturing in the “independence” of Groves et. al., who seem to have hoped for an extended period in which they might develop a leisurely critique of the CPGB, but such opportunity was unlikely to arise. And it was in any case unlikely that they could make an original contribution to Opposition thought ten years after Trotsky had written the Platform of the Left Opposition.
Trotsky rebuked Ridley and Ram in 1930 for making a separate experiment from the Communist Opposition. Yet the Opposition made no headway in the CPGB and was forced out where it surfaced. Progress became possible only because the ILP existed, a confused ocean in which many exotic revolutionary specie could flourish. Was an error committed by discouraging Ridley and Ram? Surely not. The ILP of 1930 was not that of 1933. It was two years from its split with the Labour Party and did not then see itself as a revolutionary organisation. By 1933 the ILP, was in transition: to what destination turned on the strongest political influence. Trotsky foresaw working within it only until its fate was resolved. The intervention of Trotsky and the ILO had been decisive. Otherwise a minority with support short of a third of the Communist League could hardly have expected to survive. They had forced the issue at the time of the break with the CPGB and now did so again, though it seems implausible to suggest that international influence turned Trotskyism onto an unnatural path. [112] The work of building a viable British Section had scarcely begun when the split took place, reflecting the absence of a tradition of joint work among these dissident CPGB and ILP members and of a shared experience with international Trotskyism.
Notes
1. The Balham Group to the Secretariat, 1 April 1932.
2. The Vital Importance of our Work in Trade Unions, Daily Worker, 14 April 1932.
3. “The machinery remains cumbersome, reformist in structure, and useless for the waging of struggle under the new conditions.” (Balham Group to Secretariat, 12 May 1932, Warwick MSS).
4.Groves continued to admire Dutt for some years, and the Balham Group had called, not for a new communist leadership but for the introduction of new elements into the leadership, (Balham Group to Secretariat, 1 April 1932, Warwick MSS.). The illusion that some leading communists might back the Opposition took a long time to die (see below).
5. The Daily Worker, 14 April, 27 May 1932.
6. ibid., 9, 10 June 1932.
7. ibid., 7, 10 June. See also J. Shields, Economic Struggles and the Drive Into The Trade Unions, Communist Review (Dec. 1932), 57-23. But Purkis, who had been condemned the previous year for holding local industrial work in disdain, was still covering affairs in the RCA for the Daily Worker on 30 May.
8. R. Groves, op. cit., 58-9. This was the first public statement that the Left Opposition existed in Britain. Trotsky was to congratulate the British on such an “excellently hectographed” product, and indeed the typing and reproduction are superb.
9. He had been charged with spreading “pacifist stuff” for his view that the paper had overestimated the prospect of war (Secretariat to Sara, 13 April 1932; H. Sara to Secretariat, 16, 23 April 1932, Warwick MSS).
10. R.W. Robson (London District Organizer, CPGB) to Sara, 31 May, 13 June 1932;H. Sara to Robson, 7 June 1932 (Warwick MSS).
11. His case against the congress is set out in The Coming Congress against War, 13 June 1932, and Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at Amsterdam, 25 July 1932, (Writings, 1932, 113-7, 148-55). 2,200 delegates attended the Amsterdam Congress. Ten were Trotskyists but none of these were British (D. Caute, op. cit., 107).
12. R. Groves, op. cit., 66-9. Sara was suspended on 17 August, the same day,anticipating expulsion, he wrote for The Plebs an article defending Trotsky’s role in 1917 which J.P.M. Millar attempted to advertise in the Daily Worker. Sara was expelled a few days later. (J. Robson to Sara, 17 Aug. 1932; J.P.M. Millar to Sara, 3 Sept. 1932; H. Sara, Trotsky and the Russian Revolution, The Plebs, Sept. 1932, 196-8.)
13. His letter of affirmation to Harry Pollitt is given in full in R. Groves, op. cit., 86-90. See also L. Trotsky to Groves, After The British Expulsions, 6 Sept. 1932, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 149, for comment on Purkis’s estimate of Dutt, Pollitt and Burns as “men of outstanding gifts”.
14. To Our Comrades in The Communist Party From the “Liquidated” Balham Group, given in full in R. Groves, op. cit., 81-5.
15. L. Trotsky to Groves, 27 May 1932, (Warwick MSS.). See also the Daily Worker for 10 May 1932 where the political bureau alleged, “Murphy has left the line of the International and moved towards the camp of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyists, who have always denied the possibility of building up socialism in one country and continue to assert that the Soviet Union is an integral part of the world capitalist economy”. Shortly afterwards the theme was developed by Idris Cox, (17 May), the Scottish District Committee of the Party (18 May) and Hasleden (19 May). See also W. Joss The Expulsion of J.T. Murphy and its Lessons, Communist Review, June 1932, 298-301. For Murphy’s own case for trade credits and democracy within the party see Why I Left the Communist Party, Forward, 20 May 1932, where he condemned “the unthinking automatic way in which the party regime operates and churns out its approval of resolutions – a process against which I have constantly fought”. Ironically, it had been Murphy who moved the expulsion of Trotsky from the Comintern five years earlier.
The other leading figure who might have been connected with Balham was Bell, an irregular attender at Group meetings, who had been deposed with the 0ld Guard in 1929. (R. Groves, op. cit., 52). However Bell made a hostile reference to the emergence of Trotskyism with the Group in The British Communist Party: A Short History, 1937, 150.
16. Groves’s call for the introduction of new elements into the leadership (Balham Group to Secretariat, 1 April 1932, Warwick MSS) repeated the call he had made on the eve of the eleventh congress in 1929.
17. M. Shachtman to Groves, 17 August 1932. Shachtman warned Groves against falling into an ’ultra-leftist pit”, arguing that the International Left Opposition’s view of trade unions was unchanged from that advanced by the first four congresses of the Comintern.
18. L. Trotsky to Groves, After the Expulsion, 6 Sept. 1932, Writings: Supplement, (1929-33), 149.
19. On 27 May 1932, Trotsky had invited Groves to set down his views on the left of the ILP, now about to force disaffiliation from the Labour Party. Now, (6 September, above) he called for the devotion of “a great and growing part” of Balham’s forces to a speedy intervention in the mass organizations.
20. The Communist, (Sept. 1932), 1
21. Leaflets were distributed from the Left Opposition and from the Balham Group, and slogans painted on nearby walls. The Communist was sold. But it was thought wise for the Opposition delegates in the Hall not to speak (Groves to A. Graham [Chicago], 7 Jan. 1933).
22. Unlike others Pollitt did not link Murphy and Balham. Their defections were the removal of ’poisonous elements”, right and left. The Balhamites had the full Trotskyist line, he stated: socialism could not be built in one country; united fronts should be made with Social Democratic leaders; factory councils and committees should be built and unions ignored; and war could be prevented only in alliance with those helping war preparations. Pollitt made it clear that he know of Balham’s French and American contacts and alleged, ’if they wanted to raise genuine bona fide political questions in the ordinary way of communist discussion on a footing which was up and above board it would have been allowed”.
23. The Congress was “the most docile in the history of the party” (Groves to Graham, 7 Jan 1933).
24. “We were told that we were “quibbling”. Yet the party discussion has revealed acute differences within the leadership on this question, and has found R.P. Dutt defending a view very similar to ours”, An Appeal to Congress Delegates from the Balham Group, reprinted in R. Groves, op. cit., 92.
25. In its issue for January 1933.
26. “Only one valid objection to this writing off the KPD-MU could have been raised at the time: perhaps the party will save everything if, under the influence of the terrible defeat, it clearly and sharply changes its policy and regime, beginning with an open and honest admission of its own mistakes. On the contrary, the last sparks of critical thought: has been stifled” (The Fourth of August, Writings: 1932-33, 260).
27. Groves argues that the party leaders had to clear up Trotskyism before a party congress could be convened, and points out that pre-congress discussions were opened on the Monday following the expulsions (op. cit., 69). Wicks reverses this order of events (loc. cit., 29). A more general argument must be the time-lag of four years between Britain and the USA, and even longer between Britain and France, bringing a British following for Trotsky at a time when his wider reputation was in decline.
28. It has been suggested that the CPGB was anxious to prevent Trotsky’s critique of Germany becoming known (B. Pearce, British Communist History, M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce [eds.], Essays on the History of Communism, 138-9). In 1932 and 1933 criticisms of Trotsky’s views were published by the party: A. Thaelmann, On our Strategy and Tactics in the Struggle against Fascism, Labour Monthly, Sept. 1932, 583-90; R.F. Andrews (A. Rothstein), The German Situation, Labour Monthly, April 1933, 252-6.
29. Emrys Hughes, editor of the Glasgow Forward, first acknowledged the existence of organised Trotskyism at the time of the appearance of The Red Flag. He greeted it under the title Another Sect, but wrote: “... if the Red Flag could eradicate Stalinism from the working-class movement in Britain it would please many more than the adherents of the ‘International Left Opposition’.” (Forward, 9 May 1933) At the time of the expulsions however, Hughes argued that Trotsky had exaggerated Stalin’s policy setbacks and regretted that the two had not worked together (Forward, 16 April, 2 and 9 July 1932).
30. Groves to Graham, 7 January 1933. For the anti war campaign of the Balham Group at this time, in conjunction with the ILP, see R. Groves, op. cit., 72-6.
31. The January 1933 issue of The Communist was only the third to appear in eight months, but it now came out monthly. In May The Red Flag, British Trotskyism’s first printed paper was to appear.
32. Purkis criticised Wicks for not presenting accurately differing British views on how to approach the future, (For Discussion, 8, 6 July 1933). For Wicks’s involvement at Copenhagen, see Writings: 1932, 405-6n and Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 390, and I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 181-7. Groves recollection of the pre-conference is to be found in The Balham Group, 1974, 74-5. The pre-conference wished to hold a discussion about Britain but was constrained by the absence of written documents. Despite plans to convene a more representative gathering in July 1933 no conference was held until 1936.
33. Interview with author, 30 Nov. 1979.
34. R. Groves, op. cit., 60-2.
35. R. Dowse, Left in the Centre, 1966, 178. There were some grounds for this hope. In October Herbert Morrison, recently in the Cabinet, had written “Labour must move to the Left in the true sense of the term – to the real socialist left. Not the spurious left policy of handing out public money under the impression that we are achieving a redistribution of wealth under the capitalist system. That is one of the illusions of reformism”, quoted in B. Donaghue and T. Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, 1973, 183.
36. R. Dowse, op. cit., 179.
37. Later Brockway wrote that he was “not greatly excited over the disaffiliation issue” and placed first emphasis on the development of revolutionary policy, (Inside the Left, 1942, 239-40).
38. The hand of the RPC can be discerned continuously in the events leading to disaffiliation, and much care should. be taken over the suggestion that the loss of Clydeside ILP votes to the CPGB in the November municipal elections was an influential factor. (See J. Foster, The Industrial Politics of the Communist Party, BSSLH, Spring 1979, 57).
39. 653 branches at the July conference were reduced to 450 by November. One third of the Yorkshire branches and 128 of those in Scotland were lost. London however lost only one of its 89 branches and formed. most of the new ones (R. Dowse, op. cit., 185). London was the centre of the RPC.
40. The following year Trotsky wrote, “True, one can object that the ILP just recently broke away from the Labour Party, and that we evaluated this as a step forward. That is absolutely correct: And of course we are by no means suggesting now that the ILP go back into the Labour Party and submit to its discipline. Such a policy would be a complete betrayal of the revolutionary tasks facing the British proletariat.” After the British Municipal Elections, 14 Nov. 1933, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 323-4. Trotsky did add however that the ILP having established a separate identity, must turn towards the Labour Party and trade unions or disappear.
41. Weston had not been a founder member of the British Section but had joined by the summer of 1933.
42. For Discussion, 6, 20 July 1933. Purkis believed Wicks to have presented the differences this way at the Copenhagen gathering of November 1932. He believed that there were three positions within the League: that work should be confined to the CPGB (this he thought was held only tentatively); that work should centre on aggressive presentation of Opposition material, and the recruitment of Oppositionists to the CPGB; that the main task was to build a new organization which involved work within the CPGB (For Discussion, 6 July 1933).
43. An anonymous document Mass Work (3 Feb 1933) suggested such a course.
44. An anonymous resolution of the. time suggests devoting The Communist regularly to England and agitational articles, establishing the nuclei of firm Opposition groups, contacting the “Left Wing Youth”, and preparing a pamphlet setting down the views of the Left Opposition. It proposed deadlines for the appearance of The Red Flag, The Communist and bulletins.
45. Statement from Members of the 1931-33 Committee of the British Group of the Left Opposition, 18 April 1933, 1. No evidence as to the identity of H. Davis has been located.
46. An example of this is that an experiment issue of The Red Flag was produced probably in October or November 1932. Swabeck, when he saw it expressed disquiet that publication of this together with The Communist might tend to “diffuse the energies of a small group”. (A. Swabeck to Groves and Sara, 29 Nov. 1932, Warwick MSS)
47. The manifesto Even now they blunder, (Spring 1933), a collection of compromising quotations from CPGB leaders, was thought to have neglected to provide an explanation of the united front and therefore to be anti-party in content.
48. Davis et. al., loc. cit.
49. This constitution, several pages long, put a ceiling of 20 on local membership, though this would have represented half the national figure; it proposed a developed distinct structure, though there were no members outside London; and it recalled recent experience in the CPGB with its devotion of a whole article, (Article VII) to Organisational Democracy Safeguards (For Discussion, 6 June 1933).
50. Trotsky’s thinking can be followed in the articles KPD or New Party?, I and II, March 1933, Writings (1932-33), 137-40 and The Collapse of the KPD and the Tasks of the Opposition, 9 April 1933, Writings (1932-33), 189-97. He returned to the subject of a complete break with the Comintern and its sections several times that year.
51. The members were invited to submit statements on the proposition that a new party was necessary in Germany. Only the Battersea group and Purkis demurred. For the statements of the National Committee and Purkis see For Discussion, 24 May 1933, n.p.
52. Number One, Vol I, Sub-titled, Monthly Organ of the British Section, International Left Opposition. In June (Bolshevik-Leninists) was added to the sub-title.
53. In May The Red Flag carried Trotsky’s The German Workers Will Rise Again – Stalinism Never! on its centre pages, and in the June issue It is now the turn of Austria!. July brought a domestic contribution on the differences of Brockway and Pollitt over foreign policy, but also carried Trotsky’s A Letter on the Work of the British Section and The Problems of the Soviet Regime. One minor coup was the eliciting of a reply from Tom Mann to an open letter in The Red Flag for September 1933 calling on him to speak out for Chen Du Siu, a CCCP leader who backed Trotsky and was now in a Nationalist jail (The Red Flag, Oct.-Nov. 1933).
54. For Discussion, 28 Aug. 1933, n.p. The July Red Flag carried an impressive list of nine bookshops where it was on sale.
55. October’s issue appeared, late, as a joint issue with November – December’s issue did not appear at all.
56. The ninth issue of The Communist appeared on 6 January 1934, after the split in the Communist League, leading with Trotsky’s article A Letter to an ILP member. It is thought that circulation of The Communist reached 4-500 (A. Penn, op. cit., 86).
57. Sub-titled Internal Bulletin – British Section – International Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists). Some of these were double issues.
58. For Discussion, 28 Aug. 1933. After numbers 1 and 2, (September and October 1933) no more seem to have appeared despite the promise of No.3 “early in November”.
59. An August statement of the N.C. called for the raising of a £50 press fund. Late that month the League was considering further expenditure to produce The Communist. It also planned to publish a translation from the German by D.D. Harber of Oskar Fischer’s Leninism Versus Stalinism, a compilation of quotations.
b60. In The Left Socialist Organizations and Our Tasks, 15 June 1933, Writings: 1932-33, 274-8, Trotsky analysed such parties as the German SAP, and the British ILP, as centrists moving to the left and predicted that some Oppositionists would refuse to take them seriously.
61. See It is Necessary to Build Communist Parties and an International Anew”, 15 July 1933, Writings: 1932-33, 304-11. The article was published in For Discussion, 12 Aug. 1933.
62. In a statement dated 9 September 1933 the National Committee declared its intention to go further along the path of “independent action”, with the perspective of anew party. The Section now styled itself Communist League, a terminological change made also by the International Left Opposition, (see For Discussion, 27 Sept. 1933). First public evidence of this was The Red Flag for Oct.-Nov. 1933.
63. The national committee of 20 June 1933 instructed Groves to draw up a document on the ILP. His response noted that revulsion from the CPGB had led some ILPers to make a doomed attempt to turn their party’s revolutionary one. He proposed special Opposition material dealing with both parties, the formation of fractions within the RPC and “other ILP units” and joint activities with the ILP where possible. (Our Attitude Towards the ILP, 6 July 1933, For Discussion, 20 July 1933). A special committee of the British Section was established to watch the ILP.
64. W. Graham, Statement to the NC re the Resolution of 23 June on the ILP, 11 July 1933, For Discussion, 20 July 1933. Graham had been a member of the Hackney local of the CPGB for fourteen months to June 1933 when he was expelled for anti-party work and association with the Balham Group, (Red Flag, July 1933). Graham singled out the RPC as that part of the ILP deserving of special attention.
65. The New Content of the Slogan “Reform of the CPGB”, 3 July 1933, For Discussion, (3 Aug. 1933). It seems likely that D.D. Harber (q.v.) was a member of this group.
66. Trotsky noted in August that Inprecorr was already attacking the ILP for its association with expelled Trotskyists.
67. He told J.P. Cannon (and also Shachtman) the ILP was a young party led by “a few old men” which had executed “an enormous shift towards a revolutionary position”. The more established Americans had to help the British concretize their already good connections with the party. (The ILP and the British Section, 22 Aug. 1933, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 276-7) To Jacob Watcher of the SAP he wrote linking ILP hesitation over aligning itself with the Fourth International to its domestic fate. Entry of the British Section would create urgently needed pressure, he argued. “A few more months of vacillation and there will be nothing left of the ILP, but a memory”. (“As It Is” and “As It Should Be”, 26 Aug. 1933, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 283.)
68. His thrust was at the ILP conception of the united front (with the CPGB) and what he considered its vagueness on international issues.(Whither the Independent Labour Party?, 28 Aug. 1933, published in The Red Flag for Oct.-Nov.1933.)
69. The Declaration of Four, signed by the Independent Socialist Party (OSP) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, (both of Holland), the Socialist Workers Party (SAP) of Germany, and the International Left Opposition called for revolutionary forces to build a new international. The ILP never signed it, but the British Section. published it as The New International: a document of the Paris Conference, (Warwick MSS/15/3/1/15). For Trotsky’s high expectations of the Declaration of Four, see A Discussion with Pierre Rambert, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 287-8.
70. They travelled to meet Trotsky at Royan after the conclusion of the Left Socialist conference. Maxton, another ILP, delegate had originally intended to make the trip but had to return home. Smith’s account of the interview was published in The New Leader, 13.Oct. 1933. The circumstances of the meeting between Trotsky and the ILP leaders were to be recalled for forensic purposes by the Trotsky Defence Committee at the time of the Moscow Trials, (The New Leader, 9 April 1937). It has been suggested that Jennie Lee was also of the party, (I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 263). Smith was the ILP leader who most impressed Trotsky, (From A Letter of L.D., 3 Sept. 1933, For Discussion, 24 Oct. 1933).
71. Witte, leader of the Archio-Marxists of Greece and secretary of the ILO was despatched to inform the British of the IS proposal but appears to have communicated instead his own misgivings. (Comrade Witte’s Violations of Bolshevik Organizational Principles, 28 Sept. 1933, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 308-11.)
72. The distinction was that the IS, lead by Bauer its other secretary, believed two members should stay outside the ILP, and publicly maintain an independent press. Trotsky thought an external presence would lead to charges of factionalism being levelled by the ILP Suspending publication would avoid an occasion for expulsion. (From a letter of L.D., 3 Sept. 1933, For Discussion, 27 Sept. 1933. In Writings: 1933-1934, 71, this appears as How to Influence the ILP). Trotsky seems to have weighed the consideration that the articles published by the British would still be available in the American Militant.
73. L. Trotsky, To Jacob Walcher On the Declaration of Four, 21 Aug. 1933, Writings: Supplement (1929-33), 275.
b74. In Trotsky’s correspondence there is mention of proposed discussion on the ILP with a delegate from “the English Section” (ibid., 275). But the ILO plenum had already been held and this may be a careless reference to the impending visit of Smith and Paton. If so, then Trotsky had met no CL members since Wicks attended the Copenhagen gathering of late 1932. This may have made it easier for Witte to give the impression that joining the ILP was a proposal of individuals not a firm directive and even as Trotsky believed, to put the British into opposition, (Comrade Witte’s Violations of Bolshevik Organizational Principles, 28 Sept. 1933).
75. It was argued that the ILP, could staunch losses of membership on its right and its left, but only by standing for a Marxist policy. Abstract proclamations would prove no more efficacious for it then they had for the CPGB,(The Red Flag, Sept. 1933 ).
76. The arguments of Trotsky and those of the IS were held to be “irrefutable” by the CL National Committee on 12 September (Statement of the National Committee upon the Question of New Parties and a New International, For Discussion, 27 Sept. 1933).
77. Our Relations With The ILP, 5 Sept. 1933, For Discussion, 27 Oct. 1933.
78. How to Influence the ILP, 3 Sept.; The ILP and the New International, ( Sept.; Principled Considerations on Entry, 16 Sept.; The Fate of the British Section, 25 Sept. See Writings: (1933-34), 71-8, 84-7, 100. A further minor confusion was introduced into the debate when Trotsky wrote Principled Considerations on Entry over the pseudonym G. Gourov. It seems clear from For Discussion that the CL was unaware that Gourov and Trotsky were one.
79. C.A. Smith’s account of his interview with Trotsky appeared, late, in The New Leader for 13 October 1933. Trotsky advised Smith that the ILP, must retain its independence at all costs until it had become revolutionary which meant a transition “from an empirical to a theoretical basis” and, concretely, recognition that formation of the Fourth International was the task of the hour. In December Sara and other CL leaders were to allege that Trotsky, following his meeting with Smith, looked to the ILP rather than the CL. Though he later disclaimed it, he seems to have entertained some hopes of at least a section of the ILP leadership.
80. “Another couple of months and the ILP will have completely fallen between the gear-wheels of the Stalinist bureaucracy and will be lost leaving thousands of disappointed workers”. (Principled Considerations on Entry, Writings: 1933-34, 86.)
81. In a letter to The New Leader Trotsky corrected what he considered was a fallacious impression of the Paris Conference of Left Socialist Organizations given by C.A. Smith to The Daily Worker, (To Dispel Misunderstandings, 2 Oct. 1933, Writings: 1933-34, 123-4.)
82. When he had received the CL letter of 5 September Trotsky replied under the title of The Lever of a Small Group (Writings: 1933-34)
83. Trotsky favoured a public approach but considered that however it was achieved the CL, once in the ILP, would in practice be a faction with common discipline. In practice this was to take some time to achieve.
84. “H. Allen”, possibly a pseudonym for an American Trotskyist resident in Britain, advanced an argument leaning on the threat from the CPGB, and was much impressed that the ILP had broken with social democracy before Hitler came to power (The Struggle to Win the ILP from the control of the centrists, hand-dated 5 Oct. 1933, Warwick MSS 15/3/1/50 [1]). This document is incomplete).
85. H. Allen, F. Chalcroft, W. Graham, Statement On The ILP, 12 Oct. 1933, For Discussion, 24 Oct. 1933.
86. “The basic strategy of the Stalinists is to rob the ILP of its independence as a party in one way or another and to accomplish this task at the earliest possible moment, before these ‘Trotskyist objections’ have time to become more deeply rooted in the rank and file.” (ibid., Mi. 3)
87. Chalcroft, one of the authors, recorded his scepticism that the whole ILP could be convinced.
88. “All the many phases of work which have been possible through our independent organisation would also cease (in addition to losing the Red Flag and withdrawing fraction members from the CPGB – M.U.) and we should become a fraction, a very crippled fraction, in the ILP” (H. Sara, R. Groves H. Dewar and S. Dowdall, The Work In, And Relation To, The Independent Labour Party, n.d., For Discussion, 24 Oct. 1933.)
89. The majority believed that the decisive moment was far more likely to strike at the 1934 annual conference of the ILP at which time the Party’s National Administrative Council would have to explain the deterioration of relations with the CPGB.
90. It was claimed by the majority that a quarter of the CL was still working in the CPGB, and that a Scottish contact, not an ILP member, was selling the remarkable number of 300 Red Flags. It seems possible that this was Frank Maitland (q.v.), then running an Edinburgh socialist bookshop.
91. Jottings of one majority member for the meeting have survived: Notes for Discussion of ILP questions at National Committee meeting, 5 Oct. 1933, Warwick MSS, 15/3/1/49.
92. Near the end of the year there were 40-50 members of the Communist League (anon., On The ILP, n.d., Warwick MSS 15/3/1/18). 37 members participated in the final vote on 17 December. The meeting supported a proposal from Kaye that the majority and minority should both keep minutes.
93. The way had been prepared for this step by the National Committee which had asked each member for his or her views. No reply had been received from Williams, in whose residence the League duplicator was situated, and he now disappeared from the scene. There was controversy at the meeting over the views of Wicks, who had also failed to indicate clear support for steering towards the Fourth.
The meeting know of a report by Witte, joint secretary of the ICL, that Wicks and Purkis had both retained contacts with the Third International. But Witte was becoming discredited at this time, and while Purkis was to withdraw from the League the following year, Wicks continued to be a member. For Trotsky’s estimate of Witte, see A False Understanding of the New Orientation, 8 Oct. 1933, Writings: 1933-34, 127-8
94. W. Graham had been expelled from the Hackney local of the CPGB in June for criticising the party’s line on Germany.
95. (Majority), Minutes of Members Meeting, 3
96. (Majority), Minutes, 4-5.
97. (Minority), Minutes of the Members Meeting, 1.
98. A member of the Translators” group, possibly a foreign Trotskyist.
99. There is a conflict in the minutes as to whether or not he accepted the Minority concept of fractional work.
100. Dr. Worrall and Max Nicholls were former members of the Marxist League. Max Nicholls was a garment worker, then a member of the Hackney local of the CL. Denzil Dean Harber (1909-1966) went to the LSE in the late 1920s and took a degree in Russian Commerce. As a boy he taught himself Russian and he joined the CPGB, perhaps while at the LSE. In 1931 he travelled as interpreter with a Canadian journalist on a trip to Russia. He stayed there for three months and contemporaries recall his disillusionment on his return. He discovered the Russian Bulletin of the Opposition in bookshops, however, and made contact with the Balham Group. (Information kindly supplied by Mr. Julien Harber; Obituary, British Birds, 60, 1967, 84-6; interview with Mr. John Archer, Nov. 1973.
101. Lee Bradley, who like her husband Gerry had been a member of the Marxist League, was a member of the Chelsea local of the CPGB expelled earlier in the year.
102. A member of the Hackney group.
103. Sara alleged that Trotsky thought The Red Flag a mere reprint of the American Militant, (Minority), Minutes, (8). There is no definite evidence for this, but see above.
104. Problems of international organisation have never been LT’s strong point, (Majority), Minutes, 10.
105. Three absentee votes included in the Majority total, and two among the Minority, (Majority), Minutes, 11.
106. This letter has not been located.
107. The Minority had, seemingly, withdrawn from the National Committee, (Majority), Minutes, 11.
108. Draft Statement of the present Position of the Majority and Minority, 19 Dec. 1933, Warwick MSS, 15/3/I/52i, 1.
109. ibid., 1. This view was to be echoed from abroad.
110. WIL, Internal Bulletin, [Sept.? 1943], H.P., D.J.H., 14 A/8, History of British Trotskyism.
111. Allen was the exception. Dewar hardly counts in view of the brevity of his sojourn in the Party.
112. This is, of course, the thesis of W. Kendall in The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1917-21, 1969, an account of the early years of the CPGB.
*******
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
IV
THE MARXIST GROUP IN THE ILP
(1933-1936)
Trotskyists were present in the ILP in significant numbers for three years, Those who followed Trotsky’s advice to join the party were the least experienced of his followers in revolutionary activity. There was little prospect of converting the whole party into a following of the International Left Opposition and the Trotskyists were always weaker than the various advocates of joining the CPGB. After two years of working within the ILP, the Trotskyists ceased to advocate critical support for the Labour Party in the belief that the ILP was the only truly anti-war party. This hope was falsified and they left the ILP, as individuals and small groups throughout 1936.
Ten branches supported the Trotskyist line at the January 1934 conference of the London ILP. This represented the influence of thirty members of the secret Bolshevik-Leninist fraction which had been established [1], but not of those CL Minority members who were to join the ILP. [2] A handful of the fraction had some training in the Communist Party behind them, but many had known only the ILP. [3] The task they faced required great sophistication; they brought to it only part of what was in any case one of the weakest and least tested national sections of the International Left Opposition. They had to pioneer a trail. that the French, Belgians and Americans were to follow in the next two years. [4] Nor had they, in Trotsky’s view, started well. He fretted over the delay which occurred early in the year before there was a full entry into the ILP The Minority was holding back because of inhibitions over the continued activity of the Majority under the name Communist League. Trotsky urged it not to delay over practical considerations, but to repudiate the League and justify its split by energetic work in the ILP. [5] It finally took his advice and wrote to Brockway to ask if it could join as a group. When this was refused it announced the “liquidation” of the Communist League and those still outside the ILP joined as individuals. [6]
ILP interest in Trotsky had grown after disaffiliation. No party leader was ever a Trotskyist, despite accusations from the CPGB But the party did publish and review Trotsky [7], and the imprint of his thought is apparent on Brockway and other leaders. For his part, Trotsky used the ILP’s interest in him and the friendly relations he had developed with some leaders to put his analysis before the party membership. Throughout the presence of the Opposition in the ILP his prestige and thought were, arguably, its strongest weapons. [8]
Trotsky attributed the decline of the ILP after disaffiliation, a step he supported, to its decision to face not the masses but the CPGB [9] Being formless itself, representing no distinct idea, the ILP, was certainly in no condition to reform the Comintern. He was particularly savage with ILP oscillations between the internationals. [10] The ILP should stop seeking a formless unity for which there was no political basis. Otherwise it faced extinction.
Within the ILP communist influence was strong and grew up to 1934. The CPGB sought at first a united front with the ILP to be, followed by actual unity. [11] Up to sometime in 1933, the Revolutionary Policy Committee, while favouring a united communist party, still made criticisms of the communists. [12] In the next twelve months this began to change. The leaders of the CPGB, were sensitive to Trotskyist influence in the ILP [13] and to a certain extent had to engage in a rare debate with it in the party press. [14] The most rapid success achieved by the Communists was in the ILP Guild of Youth which declared for the Young Communist International at its Norwich conference in 1934. [15] But it was the party itself which was most promising to the CPGB.
The Revolutionary Policy Committee was to become an outpost for the communists. At first, however, it preserved its independence. RPC leaders hoped initially that the ILP would outstrip the CPGB as the revolutionary party of British Workers [16], and that was the motivation behind the drive to disaffiliate from the Labour Party. [17] In this period, with several of Trotsky’s supporters working within it, the RPC was, if anything, nearer to the Right Opposition of Heinrich Brandler than to the CPGB. [18] After the 1933 Derby conference of the ILP, the RPC began to aim at a united communist party. This objective was not shared by the Trotskyists on the Committee, four of whom resigned. [19] The RPC faltered, and then after Spring 1934 resumed activity steering closely towards the CPGB. It was noticeable that the party’s attitude towards the RPC underwent a change. [20] In December 1933 it was warning of Trotskyist influence in the RPC [21] and it set up the Affiliation Committee with the aim of rallying all those who were steering towards the CPGB. [22] After this hopes in the RPC were renewed and Cullen – plus to a lesser extent Jack Gaster – became a direct communist spokesman. [23]
It is impossible to make sense of Trotskyist behaviour within the ILP without allowing for the effects of communist policy. The ILP as a whole was drawn towards the CPGB because it apparently embodied the Russian Revolution and Marxist authority. Close cooperation in a united front was another matter and revolts in Glasgow, Wales and Lancashire were all traceable to association with the communists. The Trotskyists noted this, and some of them were to strive to appear as a loyal opposition within the ILP. And some ILP leaders, notably Brockway, found Trotsky’s thought a useful proof that King Street did not possess a monopoly of revolutionary wisdom.
The 1934 conference of the ILP at York was a disappointment to the CPGB and an encouragement to the Trotskyists. Trotskyists in the Holborn and Finsbury, South Norwood, Clapham and Islington branches all came together after the London divisional conference at the beginning of the year and formed a Bolshevik-Leninist faction. They called for an organisation which could advance a clear revolutionary line as an alternative to that emanating from the RPC and the NAC. [24]
It was clear that in the present state of the ILP there might be a response to such a stand even from those who did not consider themselves Trotskyists. At York, in the debate on international affiliation, the communist motion was rejected almost four to one and the RPC motion (putting conditions on affiliation to the Comintern) by nearly two to one. The Trotskyist motion called for direct support for the Fourth International and fell 20:137. The encouragement to be derived from this vote lay in comparing it with the thirty four votes cast for direct Comintern affiliation as advanced by CPGB, supporters. Moreover, when conference was invited expressly to condemn affiliation to the Fourth International. It declined to do so by 107:64.
This was an uncomfortable jolt for the CPGB. [25] Among the Trotskyists there was some elation. They had been led to believe that the ILP must come over to the Fourth International or collapse, a prognosis which determined that entering it must prove a short-term venture. Instead the ILP had vacillated on the Fourth International and survived communist encroachment. D.D. Harber concluded that it had been wrong to anticipate the party’s early demise, that a definite field of work remained open for Trotskyists. He counselled setting the target of a majority by the next ILP conference or even forcing an extraordinary conference if support grew sufficiently fast. The communists, he believed, would now withdraw. The Bolshevik-Leninists ought to support the NAC if it took disciplinary measures against communists and after that make the centrist NAC itself the main target of criticism. [26]
Harber deceived himself and others about the possibilities in the ILP. Communist withdrawal was eighteen months off; so was disciplinary action, and when it arrived it was not aimed only at the communists. There was also a tension among the Trotskyists as to the node of organisation they needed to achieve their ambitious end. They were able to use single ILP branches as activity and publishing centres, and would continue to do so. [27] Should they coalesce in a form to which others who were not Trotskyists, but supported particular Bolshevik-Leninist policies might be attracted? The idea seems to have been Harber’s [28], and his also was the belief that within the larger organisation the Bolshevik-Leninist fraction should be retained. In the Autumn of 1934 the larger organisation was established under the name of the Marxist Group in the ILP, and it began to publish a bulletin. But Group members were still protagonists, albeit critical ones, of the ILP, and they continued to sell the eclectic New Leader. [29] By this time Trotskyism was a recognised force in the ILP. It was the protagonist of a policy against war, of a mass united front and for the Fourth International. Like the RPC, whose principal antagonist it was, Trotskyism was strongest in London. Indeed Trotskyist influence in the provincial ILP can be seen only from 1935. In London the paper membership claimed by the Marxist Group, at seventy, was in excess of that of a year earlier, but the active membership was not much grown. [30] It was claimed that no new ILP members were recruited to Trotskyism after the CL Minority joined the party. [31]
The four London branches under Trotskyist control convened a meeting on 3 November to establish the Marxist Group. Sixty ILPers attended and vowed to transform the ILP into a “revolutionary party”. [32] This represented a new departure from the original aim of accumulating basic cadres. Having committed themselves to the ILP however, they had to turn it towards the Labour Party and trade unions: at present the ILP, under the RPC influence, was in their view engaged in “spasmodic anarchist stunts”. The concrete meaning of this lay first in a drive to make the ILP, work systematically in trade unions, and second, in an attempt to commit it to critical electoral support for the Labour Party except where the ILP itself had a greater following. Close attention to the trade unions was advocated by Bert Matlow [33], Sid Kemp [34] and Ernie Patterson [35], all members of the Clapham ILP. Bill Duncan of Islington, proposed that the ILP “support social democracy in order to destroy it” in elections [36], though his view was challenged by Max Nicholls who thought it possible there would be no more elections. [37]
At the Winter 1934 London divisional conference of the ILP the Marxist Group had behind it sixty or seventy followers, though the active number was less. The RPC, however, had ceased to be amorphous and remained strong in the division. It was powerful enough to take disciplinary action against six Marxist Group members. [38] The two currents clashed on the meaning of the united front and on other issues where the RPC reflected communist policy. [39] Matlow also attacked the division’s international resolution as “loose phrases strung together; the stock-in-trade of pseudo-revolutionaries”. [40]
Despite the presence at the forefront of the Marxist Group of Matlow, who was at this time close to international thinking, Trotsky was not impressed with the progress made. A full entry by the British Section in the summer of 1933 would, he thought, have changed the ILP. As it was he tended not to offer tactical advice to the Marxist Group for some time, though he was interested in entrism elsewhere. [41] Within the International Communist League debate on “entrism” began to shift to a discussion on the fate of the Ligue Communist for whom Trotsky was advocating joining the SFIO. Trotsky urged that all sections actively participate in the debate over the French turn, and some of his followers took his advice to the point of splitting with the movement. No British seem to have attended the crucial extended plenum of the ICL, convened on 14-16 October, however; there the leadership of the international movement resolved that new parties could not be built on abstract formulas but in actual circumstances. These included the emergence of parties breaking free of social democracy yet retaining their independence due to the “total loss” of attraction by the Comintern. [42]
From early 1935 the Marxist Group could have steered a course out of the ILP. While it had not greatly grown, the party itself was in decline. [43] Whatever attractions there were in the ILP were now rivalled by developments in the Labour Party whose younger members, like those of the SFIO, were now showing signs of life. The communists while turning the RPC back towards the ILP were already paying attention to developments in the Labour League of Youth, showing again that flexibility of tactics in which they were to outstrip the Trotskyists throughout the decade. [44] Some time early in 1935 Harber and Kirby slipped out of the ILP and began to work in the League of Youth and the Socialist League. [45] But the recruitment which had taken place in the ILP [46], together with the knowledge of Trotsky’s lengthy polemic with party leaders, was a powerful force pulling the Marxist Group back. Some time in the spring of 1935, the inner Bolshevik-Leninist fraction dissolved leaving only the Marxist Group. [47] And the Marxist Group’s existence was premissed on the belief that the ILP could be convinced of a revolutionary line. [48]
The Marxist Group issued a call for the like-minded to contact it in anticipation of the Derby conference of the party [49], due at Easter 1935. This may have been the means by which it broke out of London for the first time.
When the national conference convened, the Marxist Group launched its most forceful attack so far. In several debates it was chief rival to the RPC as a critic of the National Administrative Council. Matlow again it was who flayed the leadership for its vague policy statement on the crisis of capitalism. A full Trotskyist critique was set out in a series of amendments from Clapham, Holborn and Finsbury, and Finchley and Hendon, which he moved. Supported by Robinson and Marzillier (Islington) he clashed with both the NAC and Cullen of the RPC in his view that Russia’s trading policy tended to ease the capitalist crisis. Cullen’s speech was more of an attack on Matlow than a positive presentation of the amendments of the London Division, which the RPC controlled. [50] While neither the RPC nor the Marxist Group met with success in this debate, that did not necessarily imply total isolation. Robertson [51] failed by only one vote to carry an editorial board for the New Leader, a proposition which must have weakened Brockway’s grip.
But the tireless Matlow found no support from beyond the Group when he turned to the Method of the ILP. An even longer list of amendments moved by him included the name of the East Liverpool branch, a first swallow hinting at a summer of influence outside the capital. [52] Matlow took his stand on the need for systematic trade union work, compared with which street recruitment was of no value. Smith for the NAC was able to secure the defeat of all amendments with the argument that Matlow sought to concentrate on industrial activity to the exclusion of all other work.
As in industrial policy, so on electoral policy, the Marxist Group found itself not on the ultra-left but urging the ILP back into the labour movement mainstream. Marzillier argued for critical support for Labour candidates in the forthcoming election and advanced the slogan of a third Labour Government. The ILP, he suggested, would have to go through this struggle with the workers while working for disillusionment with “boss-class democracy”. This was too much for an old timer like Joseph Southall, and Robert Smillie of the Guild of Youth weighed in for the platform with the observation that critical support would mean the ILP sharing responsibility for the failure of the next Labour Government.
In the Danger of War debate, after Jennie Lee had clashed with Jon Kimche over allegations of vagueness in the NAC statement, Robertson and Robinson argued the classic Trotskyist analysis of the USSR. Robertson also challenged the long-standing partiality of the ILP for a general strike against war, which would not, he declared, be possible without cleaving to a new international.
The NAC had made no reference to the Fourth International in its international statement, a point Matlow seized upon. Gaster for the RPC observed that a Fourth International was indeed the logical end even of the NAC’s present connections with the left socialist parties. But the NAC knew where it stood, and C.A. Smith reminded the conference that it was the ILP itself which was the principal stumbling block to the Fourth International within the London Bureau. [53]
The Marxist Group intervention at the 1935 Derby conference of the ILP was a high point of Trotskyist penetration. It had managed to deploy its limited strength to best advantage at the conference by means of frequent speeches from its few delegates and a phalanx of identifiable Trotskyist resolutions on each subject. None of its positions was passed by conference, but it had attained status almost as a balancing force to the RPC This was Brockway’s view [54]: it suited him to contrast the “revolutionary socialist” view with communism and Trotskyism, both of which doctrines were supported only by factions resembling each other in their call for association of the ILP and the Labour Party. [55] The Communist Party also weighed up the Trotskyists against the RPC. While the Trotskyists never secured more than ten votes for their block amendments, they appeared to the communists to be boosted by the leadership of the ILP:
It is quite clear that a large section of the leadership is striving desperately to take the ILP back to reactionary reformism, and to this end are prepared to make an unprincipled – even if unavowed alliance – alliance with any elements – even the Trotskyists (sic) – who will aid them in the calumniation of the Soviet Union, the Communist International and the CPGB, and in breaking off the united front which even in its present limited form has already achieved so much in cementing the workers in their struggles. [56]
But Derby had also been a successful holding operation for the NAC. RPC support never passed forty votes against the backing of two-thirds of conference for the leadership. Cullen failed in his bid to be elected to the NAC. For the Marxist Group things were worse still: its best vote count was ten. The NAC felt strong enough to assert itself in the youth field and it was possible the measures against factionalism in the party might follow. [57] The Marxist Group line was to support measures against the RPC because that body was based outside the ILP. When Aplin, London Divisional Organiser, charged Cullen, Gaster and Hawkins with preparing a split, Joe Pawsey, editor of the Bulletin supported him:
“We must have no weakness, no hesitation to rid the ILP, of anti-working class elements.” [58]
At this point, in mid-summer 1935, the Marxist Group was still the clearest advocate within the ILP of a true united front with the Labour Party and electoral support [59], though the communist line, and therefore that of the RPC was now changing in that direction too. [60] But instead of following the logic of critical support for Labour into transferring its faction to the Labour Party it now adopted a kind of ILP patriotism and prolonged its stay.
This reversal was brought about by the crisis after the Italo-Abyssinian war and its impact on British politics. The corollary of the united front advocated by national communist parties from 1934 was the Comintern policy of League sanctions against fascist Italy to restrain it from a colonial war. This was the line of the CPGB and also, after its 1935 conference, of the Labour Party. But the ILP, and the Socialist League, while firmly against Mussolini’s colonial adventure, were conscious of the threat of war, sought to advance an independent view and advocated therefore a policy of workers’ sanctions against Italy. [61]
The policy of workers” sanctions was strongly urged by Brockway in The New Leader. When he echoed Lenin’s denunciation of the League of Nations as a “thieves kitchen” in which he would have no part, he was advancing a policy with which Trotsky agreed. [62] The view of the Fourth International was, uniquely, being advanced in Britain with authority on the main political question of the day. It was a great opportunity for the Marxist Group, strengthened by the confusion into which the RPC was thrown. [63] Within the Group, the best chance fell to C.L.R. James, now chairman of the Finchley ILP, the most prominent black in the party, indeed in British politics. [64] The party promoted him to the status of leading spokesman [65] and he used his status to advocate setting aside the League of Nations report and fighting not only Mussolini but also “the other robbers and oppressors, French and British Imperialism”. [66] He had a slightly individual approach to the issue, [67] and this together with his savage handling of communist inconsistencies probably increased his appeal to ILP leaders.
The question of workers’ sanctions introduced confusion into the RPC, and switched the Marxist Group into reverse gear. In the RPC Jack Gaster broke ranks and came out for Brockway’s policy on the League of Nations. [68] The Marxist Group had resolved on 20 October to oppose League sanctions and to call on ILP branches to motivate their response to the coming general election by reference to the imminence of war. War would destroy workers” freedom, sanctions led to war, Labour favoured sanctions and so the progressive features of its platform were now defunct: “Critical support cannot be implemented in the forthcoming election.” [69]
Opposition to war, the united front and the Fourth International had been the planks of the Marxist Group platform. One stand of the ILP had sufficed to overturn them. The Marxist Group argued for ILPers to be adopted wherever possible in the coming general election, that only anti-sanctions Labour candidates should get support, and indeed that if the pro-sanctions party kept control of the Labour Party the ILP should oppose all its candidates, demanding a general strike and direct recruitment. Workers’ sanctions had reversed roles in the ILP: the Marxist Group which had advocated ILP-Labour unity against RPC-CPGB sectarianism now found itself a recruiting sergeant for the ILP. And yet, while the conformity of the workers’ sanctions policy to Leninist principles cannot be challenged, the gloss put on it by the Marxist Group was sheer revolutionary posturing. Labour’s ability to issue a call for a general strike against war was in doubt [70]: how much more so was that of the ILP, which had no trade union influence at all?
The Trotskyists were supposed to have a militantly anti-pacifist line. And yet in 1935, and again in 1939, many British Trotskyists found themselves effectively endorsing pacifism by their argument that policy on war was the touchstone of all policy:
“The imminence of war must force us to concentrate our attack on the LP support of a war which will sweep away all democratic liberties The only basis for advocating critical support does not therefore exist.” [71]
For the Marxist Group the task was how to build “our” revolutionary party. A special conference of the ILP must be convened: it must aim to fight for power. This of course was not entrism but one hundred per cent commitment to the ILP Trotsky allowing that The New Leader had carried the best articles in the labour press on the crisis, advised that there was more to a revolutionary party than writing good articles. [72] There were dissenters in Britain too. Robinson charged that the new Marxist Group policy sprang from a misunderstanding of the united front:
“The ILP can adopt more progressive demands than the Labour Party bureaucracy, but this does not dispense with the need for a united front with the Labour Party.” [73]
Policies for workers were fine but Marxist Group and ILP policy cut them off from the workers. These workers did not make a distinction between Labour’s membership and its leaders. Robertson tried to puncture illusions about the ILP, pointing out that the NAC retained pacifist pretensions such as over the refusal of military service, in its letter to ILP branches of October 20. He also put Trotsky’s analysis of the ILP position before the party membership. [74]
But Robertson and Robinson were in a minority. The Group drew close to the NAC for six crucial months during which time Trotskyist forces in the ILP would have been valuable reinforcements for their comrades elsewhere. When five Group members voiced criticisms at an FSU meeting, the London division of the ILP, under RPC leadership, suspended them. Matlow was kept off the divisional speakers’ list. Another member was barred as organiser for a London area though nominated by his federation. When the party NAC intervened and rescinded the suspension, the Marxist Group triumphantly taunted the RPC for disloyalty: “let them join the party whose policy they are trying to carry out – the CPGB”.
This was what now happened: sixty three RPC members withdrew to join the CPGB [75], demoralised by failure. [76] Other RPC members remained within the ILP but seem to have achieved minimal impact. [77] The RPC walk out occurred at a special London divisional conference of October 26-27. There the Marxist Group scored success with the passage of a Holborn motion condemning peace councils and one from Clapham attacking Soviet patriotism. Generally, however, decisions of the conference were not clear cut. The debate on electoral policy split communists and Trotskyists. Gaster joined Aplin, the chairman of the London ILP on the Marxist Group platform; Hilda Lane, who supported the Robinson line, voted with Cullen and the RPC for critical support. [78] The Group backed Aplin’s nomination for the chairman’s post and called on the party to realise that it, and not the CPGB, had the future of the working class in its hands. [79] Outside London, Marxist Group influence in the Liverpool Federation had been strong enough to secure a special conference of the Lancashire division. Yet against protests from Marxist Grouper Reg Collins of East Liverpool, the conference was confined to a discussion on war. But Don James, another Group member, successfully seconded an amendment to a motion by Hicks of Stockport calling for revolutionary propaganda to be carried into the army [80], moved a further amendment urging the need to prepare for going underground, and called for work for the Fourth International. [81] He still failed to carry-the Marxist Group line against a divisional council resolution which urged critical support for Labour. [82]
C.L.R. James used his prominence over Abyssinia to launch himself into domestic issues. He predicted a mass swing to the left, a bourgeoisie that would act against Parliament and turn to fascism. [83] He was patronised by the leadership and Marxist Groupers could be found in a number of provincial areas. [84] Yet the secession of the RPC, far from clearing the way for the Group, merely opened the path for the NAC to put its own house in order. The annual London divisional conference rejected the Marxist Group critique of the London Bureau by three to one and passed by almost two to one an instruction to the NAC to disband all unofficial groups. [85]
From now until the Keighley conference, due at Easter 1936, there was a period of high activity for the Marxist Group. It aimed to sustain the revolutionary line over Abyssinia, which was now under attack from some ILP leaders who had remained pacifists. Abroad the International Secretariat was faced with a Marxist Group still in the ILP more than two years after it had been urged in for a short stay. The Group’s tendency to blur differences with Brockway and some ILP leaders was not shared by Trotsky who, in a series of writings, now again paid close attention to party affairs. [86] Some IS members were not as critical of the ILP as Trotsky, however, and there was some conflict as he now urged the Group to draw its ILP, experiment to an end.
Trotsky’s view was that the ILP still did not represent a clear alternative. It had split from the Labour Party primarily to maintain the independence of its MPs; its critique of Labour’s right wing leadership was hollow. If valid there was a duty incumbent on the ILP to enter the Labour Party and advocate a Marxist alternative. As for ILP electoral policy, Trotsky flatly opposed the line of the Marxist Group. Eight million Labour voters had not, he suggested, seen through Morrison and Clynes as Marxists had and it was therefore better to put them in power where their limitations would be apparent. ILP policy amounted to a partial boycott of Parliament when the party was in no position to overthrow it. Meanwhile it was still flirting with the CPGB, which had all the defects of the Labour Party with none of the advantages.
Trotsky was now urging close attention to the Labour Party, but the situation within the IS was now more complex than it had been in 1933 when ILP entry had first been mooted. The two IS secretaries now were Sneevliet, a Dutch signatory of the Declaration of Four, who was to part with it in revulsion from the French turn and Schmidt, an SAP leader and former London Bureau comrade of Brockway. Schmidt visited England in January to meet the Marxist Group and other Fourth Internationalists and Trotsky watched his dealings with some disquiet. [87] Schmidt advised staying in the ILP for a further period, and for a short time Trotsky did not advocate a break. [88] For some Marxist Groupers, however, there was no point in remaining in the ILP and in February they began to withdraw to join Harber in the League of Youth.
Others redoubled their efforts contrasting the Group with the “disloyal” RPC [89] and a drive on the Yorkshire Party [90] led to that division’s conference rejecting a ban on groups.
Trotsky continued to debate with the ILP ever more sharply. He argued the irrelevance of it considering its relationship with Labour, while it failed to build a revolutionary policy. While this continued, leadership would pass elsewhere, perhaps by means of the Right Wing employing left phraseology. Above all, there was a chance for the Stalinists, the most dangerous “radical phrasemongers” of all:
“The members of the CPGB are now on their bellies before the Labour Party – but this makes it all the easier for them to crawl inside.” [91]
Once within the Labour Party the communists’ revolutionary aura would allow them to pose as the left: only a clear and courageous ILP policy could prevent it. Trotsky delivered a prescient warning about the critical position of the Labour League of Youth; “Do not only build fractions – seek to enter”, he urged. The young were at once more easily confused by, yet suspicious of, attempts to drive them to a new war.” They would listen more easily to the Fourth International if it was there to speak to them. “The British Section will recruit its first cadres from the 30,000 young workers in the Labour League of Youth.” [92]
The ILP as a whole should sever its bogus united front with the communists but preserve the right to internal fractions. The success or failure of these clearly depended on leadership quality. He applauded the purging of communists as a sign that the ILP meant business. Until that was sure, such organisational measures might equally be used against the Marxist Group. But the main question was the international one: if it was honest the ILP would now come out in favour of the Fourth before its London Bureau fell apart.
On the eve of the Keighley conference, Robertson published another article by Trotsky from the Clapham ILP. [93] The interview carried a strong attack on the London Bureau which Brockway countered. [94] Trotsky had concluded that the idea of turning the ILP into a revolutionary party “must now be described as utopian”, and was talking – ambiguously – of “an independent perspective for the revolutionary party”. [95] His arguments for critical support had convinced at least the Marxist Group, which called for it at the Keighley conference, without success. [96] This lead to a series of defeats on the Parliamentary Reports [97] and on the establishment of fractions in the unions and the Labour Party. [98]
The setpiece conference debate occurred over Abyssinia. Brockway had indeed been ploughing a lonely furrow over workers” sanctions, and his line in The New Leader had been reversed by the National Council. [99] C.L.R. James, the party member most identified with this position, moved reference back, arguing that fighting capitalism at home was not some sort of alternative to this international stand. If the working class had taken industrial action to support Abyssinia, it must have led immediately to a conflict with the British bosses. Brockway justified his line with reference to the Derby decisions, and was supported from a far wider constituency than the Marxist Group was able to provide. McGovern summed up along neutralist lines, but was unable to prevent reference back by one vote. It may have been distaste for the Marxist Group which led conference to give to a Lancashire resolution endorsing the original New Leader line a bigger majority of thirteen.
But there was a warning sign when, in the private session, Aplin was able to carry overwhelmingly the banning of groups, against the opposition of Matlow and Goffe. Ominously they received no vocal support from the floor.
And the true significance of ILP policy was about to be revealed. The following day, Maxton and other party leaders resigned their positions because they could not accept the conference decision on workers’ sanctions. Alarmed, Brockway reopened the vote and this time the NAC stance was endorsed by ninety three to thirty nine: This was the critical moment. The chief reason for a continued Marxist Group presence had vanished. At least one participant believed it should have walked out of the ILP there and then. [100] Instead the Marxist Group persisted with the debate on the International but found little reward. Brockway, unrepentant, spurned a united revolutionary international formed from the small groups adhering to Trotsky, which would “from the heights of Oslo, form a new International”. This did not prevent Drew, a Hackney delegate, jeering at the NAC’s Bureau as “Trotskyism without a Trotsky” [101], but pleas by Matlow and James were overridden: conference knew the difference between Drew’s accusation and the real thing.
Trotsky’s reply to Brockway showed him at his most vituperative. [102] An inability to see more in the war than a struggle between two dictators displayed “the moral ompotence of pacifism”. But it was the reversal of the vote which incensed Trotsky most: Maxton, “putting the revolver of an ultimatum at the breast of the conference”, was no less dictatorial than Haile Selassie or Mussolini; and Brockway’s incorrigible centrism was illustrated by the higher value he put on Maxton’s chairmanship than on a principal policy plank. “That”, observed Trotsky, “is the fate of centrism – to consider the incidental seriously and the serious thing incidental.” He concluded that the ILP cause was hopeless and that the thirty nine firm delegates must seek ways of building a truly revolutionary party. [103]
Disagreements over what was the best next step after Keighley shattered the Marxist Group. It split three ways: those who thought that the ILP phase might usefully be prolonged; those who felt an independent organisation might now be launched with success; and those who, after Trotsky, believed the time was now ripe for entering the Labour Party.
Cooper, Pawsey, Ballard and Marzillier advocated the first option. Unity was the issue of the hour. The turn of the CPGB from sectarian opposition to the united front to unity at any price was permitting Citrine and others to use their slogans in order to sell an anti-working class policy. It was but a short step to conceding communist affiliation to the Labour Party, argued Cooper et. al. Trotskyism should oppose CPGB affiliation to the Labour Party on the grounds that it would create a powerful opportunist front [104]: correct propaganda about real unity would expose the communist drift as a betrayal. While the Marxist Group itself might eventually desire affiliation, it could only be on a principled basis and it would arise from present preparations.
Cooper and his colleagues believed mass work to be the task of the hour; their construction of mass work was involvement in the unions, factories and co-ops. Trade Unions ranked first in importance, and from them would be won the most active Fourth Internationalists. Even a short spell in the Labour Party (the only kind they would countenance) was permissible only within this framework. Gains in the Labour Party would be directed to the unions, so that a ready basis would be prepared for the political split from the Labour Party. The one part of the party where the “Bolshevik-Leninists” were obliged to work was the Labour League of Youth. But notwithstanding these ruminations about prospects in the Labour Party, Cooper felt the Group must continue in the ILP with a short term split perspective. A national campaign should aim at splitting off the best elements from the ILP leadership, (Cooper showed prudence in not filling in any names at this point). Failing an intervening crisis, the Group should leave at the next ILP conference. As for the “consolidated” Bolshevik-Leninist forces, if there was a chance of returning to the Labour Party, it would be impossible to ignore the presence there of others claiming to stand for the Fourth International. Cooper and his comrades stood for the amalgamation of all Bolshevik-Leninists at the time of the Marxist Group’s rupture with the ILP provided there was an agreement on a short-term Labour Party perspective and adequate provision for organising mass work. If the Marxist Group chose an immediate walk-out from the ILP, Cooper proposed an organisational break so that those who believed ILP work might still be fruitful could continue. The rest could join the other Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party. Thus was the seed sown in December 1933, beginning to sprout weeds.
There was in fact a laughable disparity between the imposing list of tasks drawn up by Cooper and the size – even the potential – of the Marxist Group. In one document he proposed the drafting of all available forces into the Labour League of Youth, that Marxist Group members be the most active ILPers, the building up of the ILPs skeletal fractions in the unions, and, altogether, “concentrated, ceaseless, wholehearted activity”. It seems unlikely that Marxist Group membership exceeded fifty at the time of the Keighley conference: the Cooper document gives the impression that he had an audience of thousands.
The second group gathered around C.L.R. James, for whom some sort of party position remained open even after Keighley. He was still able to write to The New Leader. [105] He was in touch with publishers and was to be the first British Trotskyist to make a substantial theoretical contribution. But James’s energies had been sparked by the ILP, line on Abyssinia: now, as Trotsky had observed, the serious was trivial. Without an anti-imperialist stance the ILP was a meaningless arena. Yet the Labour Party was more repellent still.
A document of this period [106] has survived, which may have expressed James’s own views. It analysed the Communist and Labour Parties and found the only movements of note among the ILP left and the Labour League of Youth. “Of political groupings the ILP, alone moves towards a correct revolutionary line.” The author conjured up the fantasy of expulsions from the Labour Party, with the victims moving towards the ILP – the reverse of what was actually happening. In the Labour Party, Trotskyists (“theoretically equipped workers”) would be used by the bureaucracy against the communists. Rather than repeat there the experience of being used by Maxton it was better to stay aloof. The author proposed no single party commitment but Fourth International Groups which would bisect partisan boundaries. This grandiose perspective flowed from a gross overstatement of Marxist Group strength. The author believed it was one-third of the active London ILP membership and an important influence in the North-West. He reeled off an impressive list of branches that the ILP could not afford to lose: this in turn meant that the Marxist Group could do anything it liked. Such a struggle could not be waged in the Labour Party, the officialdom of which was much more entrenched. Objections to joining it were: that unlike the French socialist party it was at a low level of political life; that the fight within it would be on organisational and not political grounds; that Group members would become embroiled in routine non-political activity; that Labour Party work easily led to neglect of the unions; that the Group would be too weak to prevent a mass exodus of the best militants from Labour – the cream might pass the group by; that Labour Party entry would be misunderstood by the “leftward masses” as a move to the right or dishonest; finally, that membership could easily lead to opportunism, along which road Groves and Harber were considered to be travelling already.
These were objections in principle to membership of the Labour Party: they would apply at any time. The whole drift of Trotsky’s argument in the thirties was that this sort of ideological baggage was too crushing a burden to be carried by the small groups who followed him. A sense of proportion was entirely absent. Who were these “leftward masses” who would misconstrue a move to the Labour Party by the Marxist Group? Certainly not the ILP, now shrunk to a fifth of its former size. Nor the CPGB whose members were opposed to Trotskyism wherever it surfaced. And the Labour Party “masses” would surely not be repelled because Trotskyists joined their party; it marked a step towards them, not away. Indeed it was the right wing, not the left, who sought to keep revolutionaries out.
A lingering love for the ILP pervaded these lines. Their author proposed a split at the next conference, in the event that the party failed to adopt a minimum programme. Leaving the ILP intact, he argued, would be to permit the continued existence of a dangerous rump. Abandoning a smashed ILP would mean carrying a large body of sympathisers.
The third strand of the rope comprised those who were for entering the Labour Party, and joining Harber who was already there. They had the inestimable advantage of support from Trotsky himself, who ridiculed any “independent” posturing. The Marxist Group was so tiny that its policies were barely noticeable in any case. “A few hundred comrades is not a revolutionary party.” [107] Their job was to oppose reformism within the mass parties. Debating whether or not to support communist affiliation was an irrelevant luxury while one was isolated from the mass party. And the mass party was the Labour Party. Clinging to the ILP was ridiculous. Its best members would leave in any case, and the time spent on them might be passed more profitably with the hundreds of potential Labour Party recruits. [108] “We are” observed Trotsky, “too generous with out time”.
Trotsky advised the group to pick an issue that would have a wide impact and break with the ILP on that. Not the dispute over fraction rights in the party but “a political issue comprehensible to the broad mass of workers”: the committal of it to the Fourth International thesis perhaps, or even ILP affiliation to the Labour Party.
Trotsky impatiently flicked aside any hairsplitting about methods of joining the Labour Party. Whether as a faction or as individuals the important thing was to get in. Once there the Bolshevik-Leninists would establish themselves by their attacks on centrism, not by their critique of the leadership. That, like raising the banner of the Fourth International, could wait until their footing in the Labour Party was more sure.
Of course, re-entry into the Labour Party brought again to the surface relations with others aligning themselves to the Fourth International. Trotsky stood for unity. He urged that every effort be made to merge with Groves and Dewar in order to utilize the Red Flag, now appearing again after an eighteen month silence. Resistance to unity by Groves and Dewar would result in their members joining the Marxist Group, now in the Labour Party. Failure to obtain access to the Red Flag might mean a new Marxist Group paper in the Labour Party, or the launching of a “Lenin Club” independent of all parties which would also have a paper. But again, in the case of the Lenin Club, Trotsky insisted that it must be an organisation for all Bolshevik Leninists.
Harber and CLR James attended a conference of the ICL on July 29-31 1936 at “Geneva” [109] with two observers. [110] Conference discussed Britain and concluded that the existence of three groups was a luxury since no “apparent political divergencies” divided them. [111] Geneva was not neutral on the tactical issue however. It passed a resolution regretting the absence of the Marxist League, and its failure to submit a political statement, and insisted that the Marxist Group once and for all transfer its interests from the ILP to the Labour Party and the League of Youth. The ILP, declared the resolution, was not a good base from which to conduct the trade union work proposed by Cooper, and it set up an impenetrable barrier between the Bolshevik-Leninists and the mass youth movement: “It is necessary to understand not only when it is fruitful for the revolutionary Marxist to enter a reformist or centrist organisation, but also when it is imperative that they leave it and implant their movement and ideas in other milieu”.
A surprising concession was made in the resolution to the Marxist Group which was virtually invited to launch a journal, The Fourth International [112] the reception of which by the ILP would speedily convince them to leave. But a caveat was attached even here in the form of a warning of the dangers of the Group being without a clear perspective for so long.
Back in the ILP a party plebiscite had confirmed the second decision of Keighley on workers’ sanctions. This drew a definite ceiling on the growth potential of the Marxist Group. Within the Group support was growing for pulling out. [113] Passage of the Geneva resolution and the pace of events in Britain led to the first national meeting of British Bolshevik-Leninists being convened for 11 October. [114] The day before, a Marxist Group gathering met to debate further its internal differences. At the Marxist Group meeting, C.L.R. James proposed that all Bolshevik-Leninists should join in one independent central organisation. Since this would still be small, faction work would be undertaken, but loyalty would be to the centre for whose sake recruitment would be made. This centre would issue the independent journal of the Fourth International. [115]
Cooper and his allies claimed an equal commitment to unification. Unlike James they set their tactical proposals in a political perspective. It was a pre-war period and, moreover, one in which the proletariat had regained its confidence internationally. The Bolshevik-Leninists’ task was therefore to wield a mass influence with minimum restraint on speech and action. Militancy was at present expressed largely on the industrial plane; its political reflection was pale, except in the Labour League of Youth, which “offers great opportunities for the Bolshevik-Leninist group to gain the leadership”. The Socialist League was a petit-bourgeois trend in which the Trotskyist position need be stated no more. The CPGB, was prepared “to crawl still further” towards the union bureaucracy to achieve Labour Party affiliation. The ILP appeared revolutionary by comparison with the Labour and Communist Parties, but was disintegrating organisationally and drifting towards political futility: there was a danger that its membership would, by stages, be stampeded into the popular front. Here was the kernel of the Cooper case. He believed the ILP, was a hindrance to the development of Trotskyism, but its decline did not necessarily mean extinction. Simply pulling out might allow the best elements to rally round the leadership leaving a potentially dangerous centrist party like the German USPD, or the POUM in Spain. [116]
“Any split-perspective must be aimed at the decisive smashing of this party. In the process of splitting the best elements must be won against the leadership and for a mass exit.” [117]
For Cooper great freedom of action was still possible in the ILP, whereas Labour Party activities could only be generally left. It was the unions and the Co-ops which offered the chance to pursue political demands. Cooper reiterated his conclusions drawn earlier in the year: work should be centrally coordinated; all available forces should work in the unions; all available forces should also be drafted into the Labour League of Youth, but Labour Party involvement should be of a short term character preliminary to launching an open revolutionary party. As for the Marxist Group in the ILP, all its members must work for “a short term split perspective”. Those who did not feel they could do so should leave and join the other Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party.
The third position was that advanced by Collins, whose interview with Trotsky on tactics in Britain had been circulated during the summer. [118] He had been denied minority representation at the joint conference due to take place the next day, despite the preponderance of the full Marxist Group vote.
Collins’s paper was a precis of Trotsky’s replies to his interview. He only added that the Marxist Group’s theoretic acceptance of the need one day to leave the ILP was avoiding the issue. An umbilical cord tied them to the ILP. Meanwhile European revolutionary developments were preparing a similar pattern in Britain, and the communists were meeting with great success in their unity campaign and penetration of the Labour League of Youth. No justification remained for staying within the ILP, which was not a mass party but a small propaganda machine. There was no longer even the excuse that the ILP line was the most nearly correct of all parties, since Maxton was beginning to slide towards a popular front. The urgent need was for a break with the ILP within a few weeks.
In this discussion on 10 October, it rapidly became clear that James was proposing a complete reshuffling of members between the groups. Essentially he and Cooper rejected Labour Party entry whether for immediate independence or for an extended stay in the ILP; they were united in their opposition to the view expressed by Trotsky and by the International Secretariat, which James had heard at Geneva.
Those broadly on this side of the argument questioned Trotsky’s grasp of the organisational structure of the labour movement in Britain. Had he had greater authority among British Bolshevik-Leninists the discussion might have been constructively resolved. As it was all sorts of discontents surfaced. Liverpool (Don James), Islington (Collins) and Glasgow were not prepared to stay in the ILP any longer. Matlow, now in the Labour Party, was quoted to the effect that the Marxist Group had become integrated in the ILP Don James observed that internal life had ceased within the group: no bulletin had appeared since before Keighley, when the group should have been preparing to split.
Harber, like Matlow, was already in the Labour Party, and attended this preliminary meeting as a fraternal delegate. He claimed that the fecundity of the Labour Party was illustrated by the growth of his LLOY group in London from six to sixty since February 1936. Twelve were old Bolshevik-Leninists, thirteen from the Marble Arch group [119] and the rest new recruits. But those who had stayed in the ILP rested on a majority in the Group. A Don James amendment to C.L.R. James’s resolution, putting the Geneva resolution position was lost eight to thirteen, and C.L.R. was also proof against an amendment to his statement from Cooper calling for a continued commitment to the ILP. This fell ten to thirteen. James’s original resolution was passed eleven to ten, and Cooper’s full statement was also carried in amended form, thirteen to eight. This left the Marxist Group in rejection of Trotsky’s view and the urgings of the International, with James’s resolution as the basis on which it would approach the other two groups the following day.
11 October saw the first broad gathering of the Trotskyists since December 1933. Thirty nine Marxist Group delegates were present and twenty six from the Labour Party group (the “Bolshevik-Leninists”, those largely in the Labour League of Youth). The Marxist League sent three delegates and there were “fraternal delegates and unattached comrades” in attendance as well. The Marxist League’s attitude was that the widest possible diffusion of Bolshevik-Leninists was desirable. This view was no surprise, being essentially a restatement of the Communist League, majority view. The League believed itself free of blame for the division of forces in Britain but also held that some degree of cooperation might now be achieved. To the Marxist League the present discussion oscillated between false parameters. Taking “a purely formal decision” between the reformist Labour Party and the centrist ILP did not raise the Bolshevik-Leninists’ status in the eyes of the advanced workers. Rather than appear like splitters the Marxist Group ought to set out its programme and seek to win the ILP to it. Agitation around the demand for the Fourth International might be a bridge across which local Labour parties could become involved. Abandoning the ILP for the Labour Party because it did not support a Fourth International was asking to become a laughing stock.
The League went further: it believed the time for exclusive work in the Labour Party was coming to an end. Growing collaboration of the Labour Party with the government would drive the workers leftward [120], possibly in the direction of a new revolutionary party comprising the left, the League of Youth, and the ILP. To achieve this there was required simultaneous pressure from within the Labour Party and the ILP. A concerted drive by the Bolshevik-Leninists would bring the creation of the new revolutionary section nearer.
The Marxist Group was governed by its decisions of the previous day. It would work towards unity along the lines proposed in some detail by C.L.R. James, but it would simultaneously intensify its ILP activities in order to speed up perspectives.
After the Marxist Group, the Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party represented the most sizeable force. Essentially they were a fusion of Roma Dewar, and her associates who had published the Youth Militant [121], and those members of the Marxist Group who had already joined the Labour Party. They reported sixty members in London, forty of whom were in the Labour League of Youth, plus small groups in Norwich and Sheffield. [122] Sales of Youth Militant had more than trebled from their March total of 250. The Bolshevik-Leninists clearly believed their own rapid growth in 1936 stemmed from the opportunities offered by the Labour Party. Part of the strength of this group was that it stood on the Geneva resolution. It was able to complain that its attempts to fuse with Groves had been unavailing; a joint EC with the Marxist Group had functioned however and guided common activities such as trade union work and agitation over the Moscow Trials. [123] The Bolshevik-Leninists now went further, and offered to co-operate on the basis of the James resolution from the Marxist Group.
The three groups, as represented at the meeting agreed to appoint two representatives each to form a central coordinating committee. The CCC would oversee each faction’s journal and keep them as supplements rather than competitors; it would produce a regular bulletin; it would draw up joint plans and theses to be presented to separate aggregates and a delegate conference.
While the national meeting went on to discuss Spain and the Trials, unity was felt by all concerned to be the main achievement. They were cruelly deceived. After the meeting the Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party reflected belatedly on why the Marxist Group had passed the Cooper paper with its ILP perspective. They decided to reject organisational fusion until there was some definite agreement on tactics; they also condemned the Marxist League for still being unprepared to enter an immediate fusion. The Bolshevik-Leninists declared themselves ready for fusion with any Fourth International Group which could reach agreement on tactics on the basis of the Geneva resolution. Since it was precisely the Geneva resolution which divided the groups, this was disingenuous.
While the Bolshevik-Leninists pulled away from the Marxist Group, the Group itself changed. On 15 November C.L.R. James, with the support of Ballard (who earlier had backed Cooper) convinced the Group to break free of the ILP. [124] There should be, it resolved, an independent organisation of the Fourth International in Britain. Factions might be permissible, but they would be subordinate to the main task of establishing a separate identity. There was to be an immediate split from the ILP with the aim of launching the Fourth International. [125] On 21 November the Group informed the Bureau for the Fourth International of its decision, and set about: preparing the next issue of Fight! as an independent paper.
The Marxist Group’s rapid shift did not please the Bureau. At a 13 December meeting it declared the decision for “independence” invalid: it rested solely on a sixteen to six decision of the London group to reverse a vote taken only four weeks earlier; there was no fundamental discussion involving all members; no balance sheet had been drawn up. The decision of James and his comrades to opt for leaving the ILP tacitly confirmed the Geneva resolution. The Bureau still found it reprehensible since no honest accounting of the ILP experience had been made, and particularly since James’s continued presence in the party had contributed to the decay within the group which was now advanced as a reason for leaving. Departing in this way started the independent group on false premises: “instead of repairing the damage you will greatly increase it”.
James’s predicted numerical reinforcement had not materialised. Cooper’s anticipated mass withdrawal had not occurred. The Marxist Group had, in six months, recruited no-one and lost half its members. No member of the ILP was likely to follow such a group into isolation; some might well opt for the nascent Labour left however. [126]
And there was a further ground for criticism. The impromptu split from the ILP would not only have negative impact, but it would also obstruct the fusion of all groups deemed a necessity by the Geneva-conference. James rejected fusion. The Bolshevik Leninists were growing rapidly with a principal aim “to inoculate British youth against the Stalinist plague”, that is, to prevent a repetition of the events in Spain or Belgium. Fusion would strengthen the serum; but fusion was now impossible.
Meanwhile important developments were unfolding within the Labour Party, where a left analogous to that of the French and Belgian Socialist Parties was crystallizing:
“Only someone politically blind could fail to see that the Bolshevik-Leninists, protected by the growing opposition coming from the radicalised worker masses demanding democracy in the Party contains enormous possibilities of development.” [127]
The Bureau impatiently swept away James’s pretensions. The split of this left wing away from Labour would not lead to it falling in behind the tiny Marxist Group: “It is only in the closest contact with this Left Wing, it is only as active members of this Left Wing, that you will obtain sufficient possibilities of influencing it, to win the revolutionary part of it for Bolshevik-Leninism. From outside, you will be regarded as impotent and hopeless sectarians, who fear contact with the masses, but who want to impose themselves on the masses from outside as sage counsellors.” [128]
The Marxist Group offer to help the Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party was in reality no help, declared the Bureau. The Labour Party Fourth Internationalists were “severe opponents of this over-hasty independence” which could only harm them by contagion. And in any case practical experience argued against the feasibility of such joint operations.
The Marxist Group was, concluded the Bureau, most likely to cultivate sectarian and opportunist tendencies within itself which would fasten on personal clique politics. It was already “full of personal bitterness”, unlike the Fourth Internationalists in the Labour League of Youth. In practical terms therefore the Bureau called for a new decision by the Marxist Group recognising the opinions of these who had voted with their feet by joining the Labour Party. There should be a constituent conference of all of those who recognised the authority of the Geneva conference to create a single homogenous organisation. The majority view of the English Bolshevik-Leninists must prevail: anything less than a majority would not automatically enjoy relations with the Secretariat.
Before the view of the Bureau reached Britain, the Marxist Group had taken irrevocable steps. The second issue of Fight! was not the product of cooperation with the other factions but a plain appeal for an independent presence. On 16 December the first open meeting of the Group declared itself as an independent party for the Fourth International.
Some years later Trotsky reflected on the Marxist Group experience:
It seems to me that our comrades who entered the ILP had the same experience with the ILP, that our American comrades made with the Socialist Party. But not all our comrades entered the ILP, and they developed an opportunistic policy so far as I could observe and that is why their experience in the ILP, was not so good. The ILP remained almost as it was before, while the Socialist Party is now empty. [129]
And yet the American Trotskyists came out of the Socialist Party much strengthened and ready to form the SWP. The Marxist Group made progress for nearly two years and no serious accusations of opportunism could be levelled before autumn 1935. Nor was the ILP largely unchanged: by 1936 it was a shrunken shell and replaced as an alternative to Labour by the Communist Party. [130] But the Marxist Group failed in the objective of winning the whole ILP and even in the lesser one of splitting a large portion away. Nor can the limited success of the CPGB be attributed to Trotskyist intervention. The best that can be claimed is that Trotskyism did not become extinct, that the existence of an alternative Marxist critique was maintained which the communists sometimes had to challenge. But the chaos in the Marxist Group during 1936 demonstrated again the preoccupation of Trotskyists with internal and secondary tactical disputes while great events were taking place.
Notes
1. A.B. Doncaster et al. to the International Secretariat, ICL, [April? 1939], HP, yJH 5/2.
2. See below. H.N. Brailsford thought a hundred Trotskyists had joined the party (A. Weisbord to Sara, 22 Oct. 1934, Warwick MSS 15/3/1/60). This is a not uncommon overestimate of the membership of a revolutionary group anal may also reflect the extent to which ILPers and Trotskyists shared ideas.
3. This seems to be true of Max Nicholls (who later moved to Glasgow), Bert Matlow, Arthur Cooper, Tony Doncaster, John Archer (known in internal documents of the Trotskyist movement as “Barclay” or P.J.B.) and Hilda Lane. Lane had in June 1932, as Chairman of the ILP Women’s Committee, led the walk-out from the Labour Women’s Conference. Harber and Graham had briefly been in the CPGB. Allen, and C.L.R. James (q.v.), whom they were soon to meet, were foreign.
4. “Boring from within” a Social Democratic party became known in Trotskyist circles as entrism. Before that following a prolonged debate in the middle of which the French Trotskyists entered the SFIO, it became known as the “French turn”. The arguments deployed by Trotsky in favour of the French turn in 1934 were all anticipated in his writings proposing entry by the Communist League into the ILP. It is singular that the official historian of the Fourth International should ignore the British experience and speak of the French turn being “subsequently extended” to other countries. (P. Frank, The Fourth International, 1979, 52-4.)
5. The Minority had written to the IS, on 5 January and to Trotsky on 7 January. Trotsky’s reply of 23 January indicated that the Minority had complained of the continued links between the Majority and the International, had criticised an IS draft of a declaration disclaiming the League, had dismissed the Majority as incorrigible and asserted the existence of differences in Britain other than those on the merits of joining the ILP. Trotsky advised,
“At this moment you should forget the existence of the majority of the section, enter the ILP and develop energetic activity. Then all the difficulties will be solved by themselves.” (Differences With The British Minority, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 442-3.)
6. The New Leader, 23 March 1934. Brockway reported that former CL members would be allowed in as members if they respected party policy and the ILP constitution. As for the Fourth International, this would be discussed at the forthcoming conference, (The New Leader, 23 March 1934). The CL Majority wrote to Brockway that it still existed but no confirmation of this was printed, (Interview with R. Groves, 23 April 2980). The statement misled Dowse (op. cit., 192).
7. It was the ILP which published his Copenhagen lecture on the Russian Revolution, albeit with an introduction by Maxton, which Trotsky challenged, (Trotsky on Maxton, The New Leader, 25 Aug. 1933). See also the interview with him, Can Comintern be reformed?) (The New Leader, 13 Oct. 1933). Joseph Kruk, in his review of The History of the Russian Revolution for the ILP praised the book’s “studied Marxist objectiveness” and lamented Trotsky’s exile as “the greatest of revolutionary tragedies” (The New Leader, 8 July 1932, 20 Jan. 1933).
8. On his return to the editorial chair, Brockway expressed the hope that all shades of opinion might flourish in the Independent Labour Party, welcomed the discussion on Trotskyism and thought it would be a disaster only if a split resulted (The New Leader, 29 Dec. 1933) .
9. Cardinal Questions facing the ILP, 5 Jan. 1934, Writings (1933-34), 186-90.
10. Having broken with the Labour Party, and therefore with the Labour and Socialist International (LSI), the ILP grouped around itself other ex-social democratic parties in the International Labour Community (IAG), later to be known as the International Revolutionary Bureau of Socialist Unity (IRBSU) or London Bureau. This was a repetition, on a lower plane, of developments in the early 1920s, and the Trotskyists, borrowing Lenin’s scornful appellation of the time, referred to the London Bureau as the “two and a half” international. Trotsky pointed out that through the IAG, the ILP was aligned with the Norwegian Labour Party (moving towards the Second International) and with the SAP (of Germany) and the OSP (of Holland) which were moving towards the Fourth International, while in Britain it was holding discussions with the CPGB, i.e. the Third International.
11.CPGB influence in the ILP had a lengthy provenance. In the late 1920s the Young Communist League had hoped to poach Guild of Youth members and precipitate that organisation’s collapse (W. Rust, The Derby Conference of the ILP Guild of Youth, Inprecorr, Vol.8, No.31, 7 June 1928, 579). Five years later Pollitt prodded the YCL along the path which would give its sympathisers a Guild majority the following year (The Tasks of the Congress of the YCL of Great Britain, Inprecorr, Vol.13, No.26, 14 June 1933, 584). The CPGB, was uneasy at the RPC slogan of a “United Communist Party” though it sought unity in action. Its treatment of the ILP was generally combined with attacks on those who opposed this course, whom it portrayed as an amalgam of Right-Wingers and Trotskyists. (J.R. Campbell, New Opportunist Arguments Against the Communist International, Inprecorr, Vol.13, No.33, 28 July 1933, 730-1). An extreme of CPGB worry and distaste for the ILP is shown in Gerhard, The Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain, (Communist International, 15 March 1932, 155-64).
12. The RPC up to 1933 published a paper entitled Revolt, no copies of which have been located. But its relations with the CPGB as late as the York Conference of the ILP may be gauged from the fierce criticism it suffered at that time from Pat Devine, (Annual Conference of the ILP, Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.24, 20 April 1934, 614-5).
13. Pollitt told the Thirteenth Plenum of the ECCI of “the Trotskyist Group of petty-bourgeois and student elements without any mass influence or connections”, he had watched at the Derby ILP, conference of 1933 (On the United Front in Great Britain, Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.5, 30 Jan. 1934, 129-39). Pollitt’s fears led him to exaggerate by putting the Trotskyists on a par with the NAC and Elijah Sandham’s supporters. Gallacher showed that criticisms of communist hostility to a united front were beginning to hurt when he warned that the inevitabilism of some of his comrades was giving openings to “Trotskyists and other counter-revolutionaries”, (On the United Front in Great Britain, Inprecorr. Vol.14, No.18, 19 March 1934, 463) See also Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.25, 23 April 1934, 646).
14. Notably in Controversy, the internal discussion journal launched in 1933 under the editorship of C.A. Smith. Controversy began publication with a Trotsky article raising CPGB suspicions that it was intended to obstruct closer relations between the parties.
15. On the National Committee there were many opposed to a close association with the CPGB, but no Trotskyists. Guilders had met young Trotskyists however at a gathering of youth sections of parties which had attended the August 1933 Paris conference, convened in Laren on 24 Feb. 1934. (For the Laren conference, reconvened in Brussels on 28 Feb., see Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 893-5.)
Following the Norwich vote, Guild representatives travelled to Paris with John McGovern MP to meet the delegates of the Young Communist International. They were urged to abstain from a “new splitting international” organised by the Trotskyists, indeed, this was a condition for joining the YCL. The watchful McGovern refused to believe that Trotsky was a counter-revolutionary, (Young Workers Advance 1934, the agreed verbatim report of the Paris negotiations of May 5/6 1934. The ILP finally intervened to prevent the passage of the Guild into a YCL merger.
16. Associated with the RPC at this time was Dr C.A. Smith, who had met Trotsky, a pacifist who had fought Dulwich and the New Forest, the second as one of the last ILP candidates approved by the Labour Party. Smith’s path was to cross with that of Trotskyism many times during the 1930s. Leaders of the RPC were C.K. Cullen, (q.v.) and Jack Gaster, a Jewish solicitor and son of a famous rabbi. Brockway worked closely with the Committee for a time. ILP leaders knew of the RPC machine before disaffiliation but were inhibited from acting against it by Maxton’s “supreme tolerance”, (J. Paton, Left Turn, 1936, 392; see also R. Dowse, op. cit., 180, though he makes no international parallels and tends to treat the RPC as monolithic).
17. Dr. C.K. Cullen, an East London doctor and former NUWM activist, elected unopposed as first chairman of the RPC in March 1932, wrote of the reference back of an insufficiently revolutionary NAC motion at the 1932 annual conference:
“This was carried by a good majority. No mention of the reason for the reference back was made in the Daily Worker. Why, I wonder? (Or perhaps I don’t.)
Can it be that the Daily Worker really does fear that the ILP is becoming revolutionary after all? An innocent would think than a revolutionary party would welcome the accession of another big group to the revolutionary movement even if it hadn’t reached the 100 per cent purist revolutionary outlook on tactics.” (Daily Worker, 11 April 1932)
18. Supporters of Brandler had speedily taken over the SAP, a small German party evolving like the ILP away from Social Democracy. In the United States, Jay Lovestone, ousted from the leadership of the CPUSA with similar policies to Brandler and Bukharin, represented for a time, a parallel trend. For the American Revolutionary Policy Committee, see D. Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States, Princeton 1967, 164-5, 172, 178.
19.H, Edwards and J. Pawsey, The Organic Development of the Marxist Group, Marxist Group Bulletin, 4, April 1935, 3. Edwards, Pawsey and Matlow were three of those who resigned, to be drawn increasingly towards Trotsky’s analysis of the failure of communism in Germany. This ILP loyalty was to be an important factor for the future of Trotskyism.
20.In March 1933 Labour Monthly had warned “the rank and file of the ILP must look past Maxton and Gaster if they-wish to find the true path” (quoted in R. Dowse, op. cit., 187). The 1935 Derby conference saw the CPGB writing of the RPC in friendly fashion, (R. Bishop, The ILP Conference, Inprecorr, Vol.15, No.18, 27 April 1935, 479-80).
21.See remarks of W. Rust in On the United Front in Great Britain, Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.15, 5 March 1934, 381-2. To this period belong the nominations by Gaster of Brockway to replace Paton as national secretary of the ILP, and the phase when the RPC “innocently imagined that if it could take over the ILP it would supersede the CPGB as the British Section of the Comintern”,(R. Dowse, op. cit., 253; B. Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, Cambridge 1977, 79).
22. The ILP Affiliation Committee arose from communist dissatisfaction at RPC inability to answer attacks by ILP party leaders. For its manifesto see the Daily Worker, 16 Dec. 1933, and for its policy see E. Whalley, Towards the ILP Easter Conference – Trends in the ILP, Labour Monthly, March 1934, 90-6. The CPGB seems to have hoped that the Derby 1933 conference vote, against an NAC recommendation, for ILP–communist cooperation would speedily be followed by unity, but this was not an immediate perspective of the RPC (H. Pollitt, loc. cit., 135).
23.The Marxist League and the RPC were not the only formations which attempted to rival the CPGB from the left while eschewing Trotskyism. Richard Rees and J. Middleton Murry turned the literary journal The New Adelphi into an ethical Marxist magazine. From 1931-2 a debate on communism was held in its pages. Murry resigned the editorial chair, joined the ILP, campaigned for disaffiliation and debated from the left with the CPGB. Among those who assisted him was F.A. Ridley, (Marxism, History and a Fourth International, The New Adelphi, May 1932, 494-502), who may have seen it as a replacement for The New Man. The Daily Worker refused articles from Murry. In 1934 Murry left the ILP with Elijah Sandham to form the Independent Socialist Party and the political bent of The New Adelphi declined from this date. (See: The New Adelphi, passim; R. Dowse, Left in the Centre, 1966, 188-9; B. Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, Cambridge 1977, 221-2).
24. H. Edwards and J. Pawsey, loc. cit., 3.
25. Communists had noted little support for Trotskyism in the ILP during the winter of 1933-34, (J. Shields, The Issue before the ILP Conference, Inprecorr, Vol.14, no.19, 23 March 1934, 487-9). After York the party concluded that ILP oscillation between the two and a half and four internationals had allowed some branches to go over openly to Trotskyism. The ILP was “becoming a breeding ground for open counter-revolutionaries”, (P. Devine, Annual Conference of the ILP, Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.24, 20 April 1934, 615).
26. D.D. Harber, The present position in the ILP and how we should react to it 1934 (Warwick MSS).
27. Action ILP, Leon Trotsky on Centrism, 1934; E. Robertson (q.v.) Holborn and Finsbury ILP, Conversations with Trotsky, Nov. 1935; Islington ILP, L. Trotsky on the ILP Leadership 1936. Leaflets were also produced by Trotskyist-controlled branches from time to time.
28. ibid., 3.
29.When the Islington ILP, published the ICL declaration France is now the key to the situation (Writings: 1933-34, 238-44) as France’s Turn Next: For The Fourth International, it added that a new revolutionary party was not necessary since the ILP, on a Marxist basis, could play that role.
30. A.B. Doncaster et. al. to the International Secretariat, ICL (April? 1935), HP, DJH 5/2. The comparison is between the positions at the time of the 1934 and 1935 winter conferences of the London divisional ILP.
31. ibid.
32. J. Graham, The Meeting of November 3rd, Bulletin of the Marxist Group, 1, 15 Nov. 1934, n.p.
33. Towards A Correct Revolutionary Party, ibid.
34. Kemp, one of the original Clapham ILP, contacts of the Balham Group called for the abandonment of the party policy of unofficial committees and for the unions instead to organise the unemployed and enforce compulsory membership (Our Work in the Trade Unions, Bulletin of the Marxist Group, 2, 1 Dec. 1934, 4).
35. Patterson, a NUDAW member who was to stay with the ILP until the end of the decade had, at the York conference, criticised the London division stand on trade unions and its failure to involve itself in recruitment drives. See also his article Our Leaders, Marxist Group Bulletin, 4, April 1935, 3.
36. Towards a Correct Electoral Policy, Bulletin of the Marxist Group, 2, 1 Dec 1934, 2.
37. Prepare The Fight Against Fascism, ibid., 6-7.
38. J.L. Robinson, Gasterism Mis-States A Policy, Bulletin of the Marxist Group, 3, Jan. 1935, 4.5. John Robinson was a member of the Finchley and Hendon ILP and the author of the most able contributions to the Bulletin.
39. The party itself discerned RPC, Trotskyists and “others” as the recognisable political forces at the conference, The New Leader, 22 Feb. 1935. The RPC had begun a new drive within the party, on Pollitt’s advice, to win it for the Communist International, (J. Mahon, Harry Pollitt, 1976, 203). This left it vulnerable to enquiries as to why, if it considered the ILP so imperfect and the CPGB so sound it stayed with the one and not the other, (J.L. Robinson, ibid.). As for the “others” in London, if they voted together they outnumbered either faction and a Hampstead resolution outlawing unofficial groups from holding office fell at the divisional conference by only four votes, (The New Leader, 22 Feb. 1935).
40. The New Leader, 22 Feb. 1935.
41. Entry, he told the French, was not a principle but an opportunity. Only ICL ideas could resist in the SFIO a disintegration which had occurred in the ILP (The Stalinist And Organic Unity, 19 July 1934, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 505.)
42. The Present Situation in the Labour Movement and the Tasks of the Bolshevik-Leninists, Documents of the Fourth International, New York 1973, 61-2.
43. One of the interesting features of the first half of the decade is the inverse relationship between the ILP membership and that of the CPGB. In 1931, its last complete year in the Labour Party, the ILP claimed 21,000 members; in 1932, the year of disaffiliation, 16,773. By 1935, this figure had shrunk by almost three quarters helped by sectarianism towards the trade unions, Labour Party and Coops, association with the communists and the act of disaffiliation itself. The CPGB on the other hand claimed 2,724 members in June 1931 and 7,700 in July 1935. Both sets of figures are unreliable, but the trend is clear, (R. Dowse, op. cit., 193; H. Pelling, op. cit., 192).
44. Olive Bell had noted in the summer of 1934 that the Labour Party, like the ILP, was beginning to encounter demands from its youth for organisational independence, (The Leftward Development of the British Youth Movement, Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.33, 8 June 1934, 890-I). That winter T. Harvey praised the “big breakthrough” by the League into united front activity, (Inprecorr, Vol.14, No.59, 24 Nov. 1934, 1590-1).
45. Two young South African Group members, Sid Frost and Ted Grant, seem to have raised the possibility of Labour League of Youth work in Spring 1935, but stayed in the ILP. Harber and Kirby withdrew early in the year, however, though they continued in connection with their erstwhile comrades of the Marxist Group, (AB Doncaster et al., to the International Secretariat, [CL, April? 1935], H.P., D.J.H. 5/2).
46. The most illustrious of those recruited to the Marxist Group was Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901- ), a Trinidadian writer and cricketer who came to England in 1932 as a constitutional radical. That year, while living at Nelson and playing cricket in the Lancashire League, he published chapters of his The Life of Captain Cipriani as a pamphlet under the title The Case for West-Indian Self Government (1932). Neville Cardus offered him a post as a cricket correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, which he kept for some years. For James’s political evolution see Ivor Oxaal, Black Intellectuals Come to Power, 1966, 66-7 passim and James’s own collection of essays, The Future in the Present (1979). See also Brockway’s portrait of James in Inside the Left, 1942, 326.
47. Attempts were made to revive it from time to time, (A.B. Doncaster et. al., ibid.).
48. A declaration of belief in this thesis was part of the membership form, though the Standing Orders (HP, DJH 5/5, n.d.) required copies of minutes and discussion papers to be sent to the International Secretariat.
49. Bulletin of the Marxist Group, Jan. 1935.
50. The New Leader, 26 April 1935.
51. “Robertson” (Earle Birney, 1904- ) was a Canadian journalist and member of the Canadian Workers Party living in England.
52. In the debate on the International Statement of the NAC, support for the Fourth International came from Kingston, another new area.
53. The New Leader, 26 April 1935.
54. Reflections after the ILP Annual Conference, The New Leader, 3 May. 1935.
55. Brockway at this time easily slipped into that third periodism the RPC, like the CPGB, had abandoned. The third Labour Government might come about, he conceded, but the ILP need not help it:
“One might as well say that because Oswald Mosley realises that the failure of a Third Labour Government will give him his chance, that the British Union of Fascists should support the Labour Party at the next election!” (ibid.)
56. R. Bishop, The ILP Conference, Inprecorr, Vol.15, No.18, 27 April 1935, 479. Bishop complained that the RPC seemed abstract theorists because they were, like the Marxist Group, based in London. This may have been an attempt to explain why Cullen had failed to gain an NAC place in elections at the conference.
57. Maximum membership age of the Guild of Youth was cut to twenty one and the Guild subjected to conference decisions. The IBRSU ended cooperation with the Trotskyists following a sharp polemic against it by Trotsky himself (Revolutionary Youth. A Break with the Trotskyists, The New Leader, 30 Aug.1935).
58. Notes of the Month, The Bulletin of the Marxist Group, 5, June 1935, 1-2.
59. F. Marzillier, The United Front Tactic of the ILP On The Electoral Field, ibid. Marzillier argued that the ILP and the CPGB had a futile approach to elections, the former by its absentionism, the latter by stressing only the reactionary side of the Labour Programme.
60. At the Seventh Congress, Dimitrov guided the Comintern to the united front, recognising that experience – notably in France – was pushing it that way. Pollitt did not criticise the change but warned that support for Labour in Britain would be different from that extended to its first two governments (Communist International, 20 Sept. 1935, 899). Changes in the Comintern policy had been brewing for two years, certainly since the spontaneous coalescence of French Socialists and communists against an attempted fascist coup in February 1934. For united front policy see F. Claudin, From Comintern to Cominform (1975), who goes so far as to suggest on pp.124-5 that the Comintern was not dissolved at the time of the Seventh Congress because it was feared the Fourth International might benefit thereby.
61. For Socialist League policy see The Socialist, 1936 passim, and chapter five, below.
62. Trotsky had some reservations, for which see The ILP and the Fourth International: In the middle of the road, Writings: 1935-36, 69. He also later called Brockway’s policy a lucky hit.
63. For Brockway’s policy see The New Leader, passim and Inside the Left, 326. The split in the RPC is described below.
64. James was at this time writing for The Keys, journal of the League for Coloured Peoples, and his prestige among blacks in Britain carried him in 1936 to the editorial chair of International African Opinion, journal of the International African Service Bureau, which George Padmore had founded.
65. With Maxton and Brockway he addressed an audience of 1,200 at the Memorial Hall in early October and from then on was a popular speaker.
66. Is This Worth a War?, The New Leader, 4 Oct. 1935; The Game at Geneva, ibid., 18 Oct. 1935.
67. James thought Litvinov, the Soviet foreign minister, had to observe League policy, (The Workers and Sanctions. Why the ILP and the communists take an opposite view, The New Leader, 25 Oct. 1935). Litvinov’s behaviour was contrasted by James to that of the CPGB which, he claimed, would have supported workers” sanctions a year earlier. The ILP, he asserted implausibly, would remain true to the principles of Lenin.
68. B. Matlow, A Criticism of the London Division’s Statement on the Abyssinian Situation, Marxist Bulletin, Oct. 1935, 4.
69. B. Matlow, ibid.
70. The revulsion of Ernest Bevin and other trade union leaders at the call for industrial action against war by the largely middle-class leadership of the Socialist League was one facet of the reversal of Labour’s policy at its 1935 annual conference, (see R. Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism, 1961, 224-6).
71. Elections and the Coming War, loc. cit., 6.
72. The ILP and the Fourth International. In the Middle of the Road, 18 Sept. 1935, Writings: 1935-36, 64-9.
73. The Marxist Group’s Third Period, loc. cit., n.p.
74. Writings: 1935-36, 69. Robertson visited Trotsky with Ken Johnson, another Canadian, in Norway in November 1935. On his return he published conversations with Trotsky and Once Again the ILP: An interview with Leon Trotsky, Nov. 1935, from his party branch in Holborn and Finsbury. The second interview is also reprinted in Writings: 1935-36, 69-73.
75. D. McHenry, The Labour Party in Transition, 1931-1938, 1938, quoted in S. Hornby, Left Wing Pressure Groups in the British Labour Movement, 1930-1940 (University of Liverpool M.A. Thesis, 1966, 70). Gaster and Cullen went on to some prominence in the CPGB, Gaster as a member of the London district committee and LCC member for Stepney in 1946. Eric Whalley, of the Affiliation Committee, was killed in Spain 1937.
76. C.K. Cullen, The Revolutionary Policy Committee and the ILP, Inprecorr,Vol.15, no. 59, 9 Nov. 1935, 145, 147-8, and Why We Broke With the ILP, Labour Monthly, (Nov. 1935), 741-6. Cullen blamed the ILP for standing candidates against Labour, but did not recall the identical policy of the CPGB in 1931.
77. Twenty three RPCers remaining in the ILP conferred after the withdrawal of the main body and decided to battle on against Trotskyism and the “semi-Trotskyism” of the NAC (Communist Unity, Dec. 1935, 10). Like Cullen this jump also identified RPC failure with the neglect of organisational for political duties.
78. Marxist Bulletin, 25 Nov. 1935, 2.
79. M. Nicholls, The Dis-United Front, ibid.
80. The amendment was a specific rejection of pacifist refusal to serve. Under a party directive all conscriptable members would join the army.
81. But the Marxist Group did not feel able to sign the Open Letter for the Fourth International, an updated version of the Declaration of Four, issued in July 1935. Trotsky proposed that they should instead state their policy in a letter to ILP leaders, (The Open Letter and the ILP, Autumn 1935, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 616). For the text of the Open Letter, which argued inter alia that a Labour victory in the general election would precipitate civil war and the consolidation of reaction, see Writings (1935-36), 16-20.
82. Electoral Policy, loc. cit., n.p.
83. “Honest” Stanley in a fix, The New Leader, 27 Dec. 1935; Baldwin’s Next Move, The New Leader, 3 Jan. 1936. Brockway thought James’s view “interesting”, but gave full publicity to a speaker’s tour he made of South Wales mining areas.
84. John and Mary Archer had been in Liverpool, and later in Leeds and Durham respectively; John Goffe (1917- ), an ex public school boy who had been introduced to the Bloomsbury ILP and Marxist Group by Tony Doncaster, now was in Sheffield as a steel industry trainee manager. From this base he visited Guild of Youth and party branches in Yorkshire. Earl Robertson, like James, had spent time in South Wales, and Nicholls and Robinson were in Glasgow.
85. The New Leader, 7 Feb. 1936.
86. The ILP and the Fourth International, 18 Sept. 1935, Writings; (1935-36), 64-9; Once Again the ILP, Nov. 1935, loc. cit., 69-73; on the eve of the conference he returned to the subject with Open Letter to an English Comrade, 3 April 1936, Writings:(1935-36), 73-5.
87. “I would like to underline the fact that Schmidt is tied by a long friendship to the head of the ILP, and that he has perhaps a certain uneasiness, not to say mistrust, towards our friends as “sectarians””, (Schmidt’s Trip to England, 19 Jan. 1936, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 639)
88. Trotsky had originally drawn up a plan with Robertson and another to issue a manifesto of the Group for signatures prior to a split, (The Dutch Section and the International, Writings: 1935-36, 41).
89. “P.J.B.” (untitled manuscript), 10 (15?) Sept. 1935, H.P.
90. “The RPC disrupted the party not because they were an organised group, but because they were under orders from the CPGB. A Marxist Grouper is first and foremost a loyal and hardworking ILPer”, (J. Goffe) et. al., Letter from M.G. members to (ILP) members, 6 March 1936, H.P.
91. Once Again the ILP. An interview with Leon Trotsky, Nov. 1935, Writings (1935-36), 71.
92. Trotsky also developed the concept of “illegal work” in mass organisations. “You do not enter a reactionary trade union and cry “I am a revolutionist”” (ibid., 72).
93. Open Letter to an English Comrade, 3 April 1936, Writings (1935-36), 73-5. The Clapham edition carried the revealing overprint “For Sale to ILP Members Only and Circulation Within the Party”.
94. Where Trotsky Goes Wrong, The New Leader, 20 March 1936.
95. Remarks For An English Comrade, 8 April 1936, Writings: Supplement 1934-40, 653.
96. A resolution calling for critical support was attacked both by those who wanted a Labour Government and those who did not.
97. Margaret Johns failed to obtain reference back after being rebuked by Maxton.
98. Arthur Ballard it was who called for the ILP to “assist the leftward and moving elements against the reactionary leadership”.
99.The NAC stuck to a pacifist line and believed workers should take no part in the war.
100. Interview with M. Johns, Oct. 1973.
101. The New Leader, 17 April 1936.
b102. On Dictators and the Heights of Oslo, Writings: 1935-36, 22 April 1936, 75-6. As he remarked, he did not live in Oslo, nor was that capital situated on the heights.
103. ibid. See also Our Kinds of Optimism, 27 April 1936, Writings Supplement (1934-40), 684-5.
104. “Once inside the Labour Party, it will grow and become a mighty ally of the “Labour Lieutenants of Capitalism”. There it will be a thousand times more dangerous and difficult to crush.” (Unity and the C.P. affiliation to the LP, Warwick MSS 15/4/1/14, n.d.)
105. Fighting for the Abyssinian Emperor, a letter of July 1936.
106 Bolshevik-Leninists and the ILP, Warwick MSS 15/4/1/7. n.d.
107. Interview by Collins, Summer 1936, Writings: 1935-36, 76.
108. “In any event, the suggestion of a time limit such as the next annual conference of the ILP in April is incomprehensible to me. The European situation is developing so rapidly that history will not wait for the ILP conference.”, ibid.
109. This conference, like that of 1938, was held in a Paris suburb. For security reasons the venue was referred to as “Geneva”.
110. The Marxist League was invited, but failed to attend “for material reasons”. Harber would have participated in the Youth conference with which the main conference concluded on 1 August, and at which a report from England was given. The Youth conference adopted the FI Youth theses and elected a new Youth Bureau of nine.
111. None of the three groups was allowed to be the British Section, yet all three stood for the Fourth International. Conference only devoted a small amount of its time to Britain. For the main theses and resolutions of the conference, see Documents of the Fourth International, New York 1973, 84-152.
112. This was to appear as Fight, with For the Fourth International beneath the masthead. See below.
113. Leigh Davis and Starkey Jackson argued for a majority of the Group to enter the Labour Party, Socialist League and League of Youth, leaving a small independent organisation outside. Within the Labour Party all Bolshevik-Leninists ought to fuse, publish a paper and set the objective of a short term split (The Role and Tasks of the British Bolshevik-Leninists, Sept. 1936, H.P., D.J.H. 5/3). For awareness that the wisest step would have been a split a Geneva, see Anon., Towards a New Revolutionary Party, [Sept. 1936], HP, DJH 5/1. This author argued for a full and open conference to turn all Trotskyists towards the Labour Party.
114. That weekend the Marxist Group, in collaboration with the other Trotskyist factions launched Fight: For the Fourth International in response to the invitation of the Geneva conference. The first issue of this newspaper sold 1,800 copies.
115. The account which follows is drawn entirely from For Discussion (Internal Bulletin of British Bolshevik-Leninists), 28 Nov. 1936, MSS 15/4/1/15, the only account of the meeting extant.
116. Trotsky had urged the tiny Spanish Bolshevik-Leninist Group to join the leftward moving Socialist Party of Largo Caballero. They rejected his advice, unifying instead with the left nationalist group around Joaquim Maurin to form the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity, (POUM).This party achieved significant support among the working class, notably in Catalonia up to the time of its suppression after the Barcelona events of May 1937. But the absence of Trotskyism from the Socialist Party facilitated a communist entry far more extensive that that carried out in Britain. In 1935, the whole Spanish Socialist Youth, which the previous year had invited the Trotskyists to join them, declared for the Third International. The communists were eventually to become the most powerful political force in the Republic, but the POUM was to disappear. For a contemporary Trotskyist appraisal see F. Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain (first published New York 1937, 1975 ed.).
117. A. Cooper et al., Tasks of British Bolshevik-Leninists ibid., 7.
118. Trotsky had emphatically supported the thesis, advocated by Matlow, that there should be immediate entry into the Labour Party. Cooper’s views on the matter had, he thought, “no relationship to Marxism at all” (Interview by Collins, Summer 1936, Writings (1935-36), 76-7).
119. A loose association of those prepared to sell Fourth International literature in Central London. See Chapter VII.
120. This idea is developed by Trotsky himself in Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay.
121. See Chapter VII.
122. Total membership was claimed to be around eighty with fifty contacts.
123. See Chapter VI.
124. For Discussion, 28 Nov. 1936, 18.
125. The decision for independence was taken sixteen to six at a meeting of London members of the Group.
126. James had written to Brockway declaring the intention to withdraw and form a separate organisation. Brockway circulated his branches on 5 December 1936 estimating that only thirty members of the ILP would be involved, mostly in London but possibly in Liverpool too. (Jupp, op. cit., 233-4; The New Leader, 11 Dec. 1936).
127. Declaration of the International Bureau For the Fourth International on the subject of the English Marxist Group, 13 Dec. 1936, 4.
128. ibid., 5.
129">129. Fighting Against The Stream (a conversation in Mexico with an English Fourth Internationalist [C.L.R. James], April 1939) Writings 1938-9, 150n.
130. Even in October 1936 however the communists were still concerned about a possible Trotskyist takeover of the ILP. See R.P. Arnot’s fears in London Monthly, quoted in B. Pearce, The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials, in M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, op,cit., 225.
*******
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
V
THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE AND THE MARXIST LEAGUE,
JANUARY 1934–OCTOBER 1937
The Communist League did not remain long outside all parties. By the middle of 1934 discussions were taking place about joining not the ILP but the Labour Party, and it quickly entered that autumn. Within the Labour Party it rediscovered access to a South London following and found a ready platform in the Socialist League. For a time it ceased to be an identifiable faction, but began again in 1936 as the Marxist League, principal exponent of Trotskyist views and opponent of the Unity Campaign from within the Socialist League. The demise of the Socialist League in 1937 ended effective activity despite attempts to replace it, and the Marxist League dissolved that October.
The Communist League complained to the IS, that the December 1933 split flouted majority rule. In a sharp reply it was told that respect for majorities had to be earned and that there were international as well as national boundaries to them. [1] The IS further considered the CL narrow in outlook and experience [2] and effectively withdrew official status from it. [3]
The split was a blow, as eleventh hour concessions by the Majority indicated. Yet the CL was now free of pressure from an international body in whose grasp of British affairs it did not have complete confidence. Events were to give some support to the argument that the CL rather than the international was in closest touch with affairs in Britain. When the new national committee met early in the year it held a broad discussion about entrism [4] and showed awareness of Labour’s rising fortunes and the importance of this for Trotskyist growth: the Communist League would have to be part of the movement to put Labour back in power. [5]
The CL view was now that the fragile eggs of Trotskyism could not be entrusted only to the leaky basket of the ILP. Indeed Dewar and Groves were coming to believe that of the internationals only the second looked likely to revive. [6] The Red Flag perceived a strong link between the fortunes of social democrats everywhere. Most notably the great Labour victory in the LCC elections of March 1934 was connected with the decision of socialists in Vienna to mount armed resistance to Dollfuss. [7] The CL strongly backed Labour in the elections. To communist criticisms it replied:
Actually the result of the election was a striking confirmation of the opinion previously expressed – “that the anger of the workers against the National Government would find its expression at the present stage, through the Labour Party: that the policy of contesting any or every constituency would only result in the further isolation of the revolutionary movement.” [8]
Like Harber in the ILP at this time Groves was sensitive to Labour’s revival. The Red Flag even argued that a rising vote indicated an industrial upswing also. [9] The League was becoming scornful of any activities outside official movements. It admonished communist fondness for rank and file organisations [10] and scorned the ILP, for turning towards the CPGB rather than the Labour Party and trade unions.
Communist League advice did not rest upon underpinning official activities. Part of its argument about the orientation of the NUWM was that within the mainstream the movement would have to broaden its political outlook. Yet at least until the middle of 1934 the Communist League was still issuing ultimatums to the labour movement. When the ILP-CPGB drive for May Day brought forth only a limited response, it concluded:
“ it drives home the very real and urgent need for the assembling of all left: wing (sic) and revolutionaries behind the banner of the Communist League, as a step towards the establishment in this country of a new fighting party of the British workers. [11]
In the pages of The Red Flag a critique of the ILP and the communists, similar to that of the Marxist Group, is made. But the CL was in an inferior position to make it since there was no reason why it should be able to participate in debate. [12] Until the Communist League entered the Labour Party after the summer, it lacked a positive direction for its work and its energies were apparently diffused in several directions.
Internally, League affairs were not happy. Groves thought the national committee “very feeble” and functioning as a collection of factions rather than as a national body. [13] The League’s main strength was the two strong locals of Balham and Chelsea, though there were several smaller local groups. [14] It had a definite asset in The Red Flag [15] and continued to turn out its distinctively produced leaflets on issues of the hour. [16] But there is no evidence of significant growth by the League [17] in its phase of standing apart from all parties, although it had survived against predictions. [18]
The League’s international standing was uncertain. It had lost official status but was still part of the ICL. It continued to campaign for the Fourth International yet apparently took no part in gatherings of that body. [19] It was approached by Albert Weisbord, whose Communist League of Struggle had split from the American movement [20] but continued in correspondence with Trotsky. [21] Perhaps a prime catalyst of continued loyalty to the ICL was the League’s growing interest in social democracy, which was paralleled by the thinking of Trotsky and the International. [22] The Red Flag policy of faithfully publishing the writings of the Opposition leader now brought it the reward of articles which supported its own inclinations. [23]
Yet this did not imply monolithic support in the Communist League for Trotsky’s views. The publication of War and the Fourth International [24], a manifesto which decisively wrote off the Comintern and the Labour and Socialist International and anticipated the Transitional Programme of 1938 in its catastrophist predictions, provoked a minor crisis. War and the Fourth International, together with Trotsky’s urgent appeals for unity in France [25] had the effect of predicting an immediate decision between fascism and revolution. In Britain, Lee Bradley demanded clarification as to how an immediate perspective of civil war accorded with CL support for the return of a Labour Government. Since the Fourth International was so weak it needed to gather strength before it could bring the social crisis to a head. [26] If anything, this marked a misconstruction of War and the Fourth International, since its author was also forcefully advocating entrism by the French, Belgian and, soon, the American Trotskyists. Trotsky’s argument was that the case for a united front against fascism was best advanced from within a mass party. The League as a whole rested strongly on Trotsky’s analysis of fascism in Germany [27] with its powerful call for unity, but communism was about to dish Trotskyism en passant by moving towards a united front.
Growing League interest in the Labour Party culminated in entry into the Balham and Tooting D.L.P. in the summer of 1934. [28] In July of that year dissident members of the Labour League of Youth were urged not to be enticed out of it by the YCL, but to stay in the Labour Party and build a mass base. [29] Within the League several drafts were made of statements of immediate intent. One by Hanton startlingly concluded that the League should concentrate on the ILP. [30] This was rejected for Groves’s draft, a frank statement of entrist purpose. In its printed version [31] the CL stated it would work loyally in the Labour Party. A new Labour Government would, it believed, be seen by most workers as “ the path to emancipation” ; whether it would be a Government of real advance would depend on the success of the left in obtaining commitment to a socialist programme and unity of the labour movement. The present National Government was seen as the last strong popularly elected parliamentary administration of the bourgeoisie. Without labour action, fascism would quickly loom.
Groves spelled out the implications in a gloss. [32] The time had come, he suggested, to draw conclusions from 1934 discussions on the Labour Party. There must be an end to internal wrangles and spasmodic street activities. In their place must come systematic fraction work in the Labour Party: this would be the prime means of recruitment to the CL. For the time being, the League would have to settle for the establishment of a national base, an objective less ambitious than launching the Fourth International. [33] This last argument was not confined to Britain and was vehemently opposed by Trotsky. [34]
In the Left Socialist Parties there had been great interest in the programme of the Opposition. But horror at Hitler’s ability to take power had in the CL view, led the mass of people to hurry into ill-conceived unity [35]: new alternatives to the major parties had been by-passed and the Fourth International had not been built. It was still needed, “now more than ever” , but until the time was ripe a road to the masses must be found via their day-to-day concerns. Some workers had understood the meaning of recent defeats, and it was to them that The Red Flag would address itself. [36] The task was complicated by the new advocacy of a united front by communists. [37] The call for such an alliance had been a cardinal principle of Trotskyism. Now it was dished by Stalin and Thorez. But the CL critique of suspending criticism within a united front could still be made.
The CL turn towards the Labour Party is a rare instance from the annals of British Trotskyism where joining or leaving a larger party did not cause a split. Participants recollect that they had a following immediately they joined the Labour Party. Those who were well-known figures in their locality (Wicks in Battersea, Groves in Balham) started with an advantage. In Wimbledon, Henry Sara was short-listed for a parliamentary candidature. [38] Groves was actually selected as delegate from the Balham and Tooting division to the 1934 Labour Party conference with near unanimous backing, though he was in the end barred by the NEC. [39] The division’s membership almost trebled in the immediate aftermath of the League moving in. Also on the wider stage, Wicks was now able, as a Labour Party member, to secure a delegate’s place at a conference summoned by the London Trades Council, from which body he had been excluded for many years.
The NEC did not prevent the League entering the Labour Party. It was of course tiny in comparison to the CPGB, the main preoccupation of those whose responsibility it was to watch infiltration. The previous year the Labour Party had published The Communist Solar System, a forceful rejection of communist tactics. It may well be that Morrison, its author and hammer of the left throughout the decade, had his own reason for turning his blind eye to the Communist League. [40]
The Red Flag appeared in a new series in November, more of a magazine than a, paper and carrying trenchant criticisms of the united front as proposed by the communists. [41] It turned out to be the first and last of the new series. Having marched-back into step with the International Communist League, the British seem to have marched away again. For more than a year, until the start of 1936, there is no evidence of internal life inside the CL. Possibly the loss of a paper which could only claim a limited impact in any case was considered only a small sacrifice for securing a place inside the Labour Party. [42] Additionally it could be argued that new arenas of work were opening up. The CL was aware of communist penetration of the League of Youth [43], but its main interest was the Socialist League.
In November 1934, the Socialist League, which had achieved an important impact on Labour Party conferences, resolved to turn itself into a “mass organisation” . [44] This was fortuitous for the CL which must also have been aware that Trotsky was still considered legitimate in this sector at least. [45] The CL established a Balham and Tooting branch of the Socialist League in time for it to move resolutions at the League’s Bristol Conference.
The CL arrived in the Socialist League [46] at exactly the right time to advocate to a willing audience the case which came most naturally to it: the need for an industrial drive. One Balham and Tooting motion declared trades councils “local unifying centres of the Movement” ; the other called for a drive to commit trade unions to Socialist League policy. [47] Locally the Balham and Tooting branch campaigned against the Unemployment Assistance Act. The Socialist League was trying to transform itself from an association of middle class radicals into a movement with a working class base. Groves and his colleagues were uniquely placed to make efforts in this direction. Perhaps as a result of rapid success in the Socialist League the Communist League as an identifiable faction ceased to exist. Its 1935 influence is apparent in the activities of Groves who was speaking on League platforms from May and in the autumn published a pamphlet on the importance of trades councils on the League’s behalf. [48]
The relationship of the Communist League to organised Trotskyism, never unambiguous, progressively dissolved. The negative meaning of joining the Labour Party was that it felt no confidence in establishing a separate organised presence. An attempt to link up with Harber who abandoned the ILP for the Labour Party early in 1935 foundered on Harber” s objections. [49] What the ex-Communist Leaguers established during this year was a current of opinion rather than a disciplined fraction.
By the autumn Groves had advanced to a position of prominence within the Socialist League. He became one of the most regular contributors to The Socialist Leaguer and its successor The Socialist, ably contrasting the rightward trend of communism with the leftward trend of socialism. [50] When the League, like the ILP, adopted the workers” sanctions line on the Italian invasion of Abyssinia [51], he was prominent in its mobilization against war. [52]
At this time a remarkable opportunity was presented to the Trotskyists with the ILP and the SL, both still organisations of some account, advocating a line on the issue of the hour of which they could approve. Yet their forces were divided between these two organisations and the League of Youth, and no common campaign was launched. United Trotskyist activity did not take place until a year later, at the time of the Moscow Trials, and by this time the arch-enemy, the CPGB, was far deeper entrenched. Not only had tactical differences led to a diffusion of the weak Trotskyist movement, but they had led also to some adaption by the respective factions to the organisations which they were working. In that autumn of 1935, the Marxist Group was projecting the transformation of the ILP into a revolutionary party, a thesis explicitly rejected by the Communist League. [53] Groves and his comrades meanwhile mounted no systematic criticism of the Socialist League.
In 1936 they made a new attempt to pull together their support. A bulletin was launched in the name of the “Marxist League” , its main content two articles from the pen of Trotsky. [54] Its editor, Hugo Dewar, recognised the sea change which had occurred in communist policy since The Red Flag had ceased publication in November 1934 and promised that the paper would now reappear. New Comintern policies, he suggested, had wrongfooted the Trotskyists, who must now make a critique from the left instead of the right. [55] 1936 brought an inquiry from Trotsky as to the progress made in the Labour Party and seeking an exchange of information. There seems to have been little awareness in the international of what was happening in Britain, but Trotsky knew enough to inquire whether members had been lost from “the opportunist adaption to the party apparatus.” [56] He may have had in mind Groves, who in 1936 was a favourite speaker at Socialist League rallies and its authority on trade union affairs. [57]
The new Red Flag appeared in May as the “organ of the Marxist League” . It noted how the policies against which it had campaigned previously were now abandoned, and that “the battleground for the creation of the new revolutionary leadership is, at present, within the organised labour movement” . Within this entrist perspective, albeit qualified, The Red Flag promised a propagandist contribution towards policy, the building of a strong left wing and “the presentation and application of revolutionary Marxism” . The paper promised to maintain contact with groups abroad working for the same purpose. All this came without a word about Trotsky and the Fourth International, but the Marxist League was alive, as was Trotsky himself, to developments within the Labour League of Youth. Conflicting political groupings had combined at the League of Youth conference to carry demands for autonomy against NEC opposition. The Marxist League thought futile the perspective of “a quick, snap division and the subsequent dragging out of a small section” , a slap on the wrist for Harber’s Bolshevik-Leninists. As for Advance, its campaign for organisational independence was belied by its political dependence on reformism. Turning to the other arena of Trotskyist activities, the Marxist League had few kind words for the ILP, whose conference had shown itself willing to throw over pacifist policies but not the leaders who advocated them. ILP opposition to the bankrupt second and third internationals focussed on the London Bureau, but that body, by refusing to come out for a new international, condemned itself to swing between the other two. Yet The Red Flag had nothing at all to say, in this its first issue of the new series, about its own theatre of operations, the Socialist League, although it was the only Trotskyist journal in regular printed publication during 1936. It gave Trotsky’s writings regular publication, something they had not had in Britain since the paper’s first series. [58] There remained from 1934 a propaganda tone, concentration on issues of history and theory, and zeal to debate with communist policy. [59] The paper was strong on the need to retain rights of criticism within the united front [60] and on the developing revolutionary situation in Spain.
Grove “s progress within the Socialist League – London area secretary from September 1935, London Region representative on the National Council from September 1936 [61] – tended to outdistance the others. None of them seem to have obtained League positions, though Jack Winocour [62] wrote for The Socialist – Hilary Sumner-Boyd had his hands full as business manager of The Red Flag and, the following year, as secretary of the Trotsky Defence Committee. Hugo Dewar was the organiser of the League, and Wicks and the more distant Purkis were busy on trade union matters. [63]
Without The Red Flag that summer no Trotskyist analysis would have been made in printed form at all of the Moscow Trials and the revolution and civil war in Spain. There were many papers in the labour movement which did not swallow the Stalinist line on either, but none could be relied upon to put the Trotskyist view. In September The Red Flag tried to relate the two issues by a novel argument that those being purged in Moscow were the most enthusiastic protagonists of assistance to the Spanish workers. But this was during the non-interventionist phase of Soviet policy; when that came to an end it was politically far more difficult to argue against Russia, seemingly the only friend the Spanish workers had. The Red Flag sought for Spain the independent working class policy that had received support during the Abyssinian crisis. Trade Union action was advocated to bar supplies to the rebel forces and those countries. backing them, to “stop the press lies” and obtain provisions for the Republic from the Cooperatives. [64] In the early phases of the war, The Red Flag was searching for a Marxist policy. Its opposition to the Popular Front principle was already set down. But it parted from Trotskyism in its failure to keep an independent distance from the POUM in Spain. It published a resolution of that party” s central committee, hailed the party’s growth and declared:
“ Upon the rapid evolution of POUM Central Committee into a Bolshevik Party depends the fate of the Spanish Revolution. “ [65]
The POUM was not a Trotskyist party, though there were Trotskyists within it. It had close relationship with the ILP (its sister party) and the Socialist League. [66] The Red Flag might be expected to be among POUM’s few defenders in Britain, but it failed to make simultaneously the standard Trotskyist critique of the party’s “centrism”. It commented “many of its (the POUM’s) friends have criticised it because it made so many concessions to the demands of the other parties”. In fact the POUM had, from September 1936 to the time of its ejection on 16 December, been a member of the Catalan coalition government, a popular front of the very kind to which The Red Flag was so strongly opposed, [67] and the orthodox Trotskyist denunciation of this was fierce. [68]
The personal position of Groves, if not that of all members of the Marxist League, was strong as the projected Unity Campaign began to build up in the autumn. Groves joined the National Council of the League as representative for its London Region in September and was to be for once in a position to mount an effective rather than a propaganda opposition to the communist version of a unity pact. He also bade fair to be the League’s chief pamphleteer with two more contributions during 1936. [69]
But the Marxist League did not cover Socialist League affairs at all: effectively it pursued the very policy of suspension of criticism for which it attacked parties to the Unity Campaign. Nor did the Marxist League use its paper to expound a policy on immediate issues for which it might hope – to capture the-Socialist League. Of the trouncing of the left at the Edinburgh conference, The Red Flag wrote,
It is only the lack of organisation and the confusion created by the Communist Party’s retreat from revolutionary Marxism that has prevented the creation of a powerful militant movement within the unions and the local Labour Parties. With a correct policy and leadership such a movement could transform the political situation in this country. [70]
But what would this powerful militant movement be? An improved Socialist League? And if so, what improvements needed to be made within it? These questions remained unanswered. Curiously the League considered that its support had grown to the point where it might consider breaking away [71] though lack of distinct policy meant it had not put its backers to the test. To the other groups it spoke of the possibility of the “existing left in the ILP, a considerable section of the youth and of the discontented rank and file, and the ILP” blazing, through a breakaway, the trail of a future revolutionary party. Seemingly the Marxist League foresaw the Socialist League breaking away en bloc: it would have a rude awakening.
The first and last big political division within the Socialist League came not from inside but from outside. During the closing-months of the year secret negotiations between the leaders of the ILP, CPGB and Socialist League led to the signing of a Unity Agreement. [72] There is no doubt that the accession of the Socialist League, a Labour Party body, was the crucial step for the ILP and the CPGB, both of whom were outside. Rumours abounded in and out of the League that a pact between the parties was under preparation. It is remarkable that Groves should have been absent from the vital meeting of the SL executive on 20 November 1936 which approved the agreement [73], and that The Red Flag should fail to appear during the three critical months during which the fate of the League was decided. [74] When Groves and the paper joined battle in January 1937, the issue was already resolved.
A better organised Marxist League, and one moreover which had fought every inch of the way on SL policy in 1936 might, arguably, have had substantial backing against Cripps when the terms of the Unity Agreement became known in December. More important still, the Marxist League was propagandising against the Socialist League when it was divided from other Trotskyists over tactical issues, a damaging example of disunity which did not pass unnoticed. [75] The January 1937 Red Flag led with an open letter to Fenner Brockway by the hand of Stuart Purkis. [76] It reminded the ILP leader that Trotskyism had a consistent record on the united front and argued that seeking a split over a constitutional issue was not the way to achieve it. Purkis implied strongly that Brockway’s attacks on Trotskyism were not unconnected with the negotiations to launch the Unity Campaign [77]; and enquired how parties so divided over Abyssinia, the Trials, the Comintern line and Spain could possibly unite. [78]
This attack, well-argued as it was, fell almost completely beside the point. Why should The Red Flag take on Brockway? It had no members in the ILP. Was Brockway’s involvement in the Unity Campaign in some way less important than that of Cripps? There was no critique of the role Cripps had played in negotiations, even though there was ample room and opposition was growing strongly. [79] The best prospect of torpedoing the Campaign was to concentrate all strength at the point of attack: the leaders of the Socialist League. By its silence The Red Flag could only have sent messages that it considered all was well. [80]
When Groves acted, he apparently did so as an individual, not as a member of an organised faction. He circulated all SL branches with a confidential letter against the agreement in January 1937, and a copy of it came into the hands of The Daily Herald who published it. [81] The special conference of the Socialist League convened on 16-17 January 1937 to consider the executive proposal did endorse it but only against stiff opposition. It was done on a minority vote, fifty six to thirty eight with twenty three abstentions [82], and there were doubts about the validity of the majority. [83] Two days later the agreement was signed. The appearance of Groves’s letter in the Herald led to a strong attack on him by John Strachey in The Daily Worker [84] but the battle had been lost. Movement by Transport House against the Socialist League because of its support for the campaign was predictable and predicted. Threats culminated in a March decision by the NEC to proscribe League membership.
After the event an effort was made to rally those who wished to continue the work of the Socialist League inside the Labour Party. A bid was made in May 1937, at the annual conference of the League, to repudiate the agreement and maintain an active independent League. Its Hendon Branch argued for keeping the agreement and the League, but withdrew to give a straight vote between the ML amendment and a recommendation from the leadership to dissolve the League. Conference voted by fifty one to ten to dissolve and thereby pre-empt expulsions of individual members. [85] An important platform for mounting a non-Stalinist critique from within the movement had been destroyed. [86] It was now Labour or communism. [87]
The Trotskyists’ best hope was to gain support from within a thriving organisation. Launching a new one was entirely a different matter. The SL had been born of the maximalist wave of 1932, when all leading party members sought to make their distance from MacDonaldism by espousing undiluted socialism. In 1937 this type of rhetoric was found predominantly on the right wing while the left and the communists had shifted to seeking any form of coalition, however broad, which might dislodge the National Government. [88]
An intended replacement for the Socialist League was launched in June, one month after the decision to dissolve. [89] The Socialist Left Federation seems never to have exceeded 100 members. [90] The leading cadre of the Marxist League, Sara, Wicks and Sumner-Boyd were all involved, and Groves was chairman. There was some non-Trotskyist involvement, with the secretaryship falling to the ex-communist Margaret McCarthy, who had sympathised with Trotsky in the early 1930s. [91] But she and a handful of others did not make an army. Nor could the largely unemployed membership hope to match Cripps’s financial support for the SL. The SLF held meetings, buts its executive proceedings were perhaps most notable for bitter clashes between Groves and D.D. Harber, who sought to swing it behind the line of Militant. [92] Harber’s strivings for a Trotskyist front did not appeal to Groves who sought to keep non-Trotskyists within it. It mattered very little, as the SLF died in the New Year after achieving little impact.
The factional clash at the SLF merely illuminated the continuing division of Trotskyist forces. The Marxist League had failed to send delegates to the pre-conference of the International Communist League convened in July 1936 [93] but was sufficiently moved by the (“Geneva”) resolution on Britain to send three delegates to the national meeting of Bolshevik-Leninists on 11 October. [94] It had attempted to unite with Harber in 1935 when he joined the Labour Party from the ILP. Attempts were being made in 1936 by Marxist League members, and notably Wicks, to gather the factions together round a strong Trotsky Defence Committee. But the Marxist League was resistant to the Geneva resolution, and especially its emphasis on Labour Party work. The only tangible gain of the national meeting was a commitment by all participants to set up a national coordinating committee in response to Trotsky’s suggestion of a Lenin Club to ensure cooperation. [95]
The ML viewed the existence of a separate Bolshevik-Leninist group in the Labour Party as impossible to justify and a fault not of its making. [96] The Bolshevik-Leninists themselves saw the ML by its presence in the Labour Party as closer to the Geneva resolution with its emphasis on concentration of forces within Social Democracy than was the Marxist Group, which was in late 1936 leading an independent existence. [97] Spurred by the crisis surrounding the Unity Campaign the Bolshevik-Leninists approached the Marxist League for a meeting to discuss joint activity. The Marxist League, however, insisted on the presence of the Marxist Group since it placed far less value than did the Bolshevik-Leninists on tactical agreement over the need to be within the Labour Party. [98] The meeting of all three on 14 February 1937 failed to solve any problems. [99]
Still separated from the other groups by tactical differences and personal antipathy, the ML faced 1937 without even a base for activity. The Red Flag appeared sporadically after February [100] and was published for the last time in October 1937. Differences developed within the League. Groves had perhaps ceased to believe in the need for an organised Trotskyist faction. His rapid advance within the Socialist League may have been due to this as well as to his undoubted ability as a propagandist. In April 1937 he had become prospective parliamentary candidate for Aylesbury, where he was the following year to fight an important by-election. [101] After years of sectarian politics he, and also Hugo Dewar, put value on the Socialist Left Federation, a body which kept them in touch with people outside the factional struggle. [102] They had enough support behind them in October for agreement to be reached on dissolving the Marxist League and putting an end to The Red Flag.
The history of the Communist/Marxist League is a lesson in the damage brought by disunity. It had capable members who lacked sufficient flexibility and sense of proportion to seize an opportunity provided by the ILP in 1933. Their political independence led them to see that in 1934 there were greater prospects in the Labour Party and especially the Socialist League. But just as the ILP Trotskyists lacked the CL leaders’ greater organising ability, derived from a communist training, so they in turn lacked sufficient members to turn the tide their way in the SL. Worse still they proved unable to keep in being as an organised fraction and insufficiently firm in their politics to withstand the pressure of an unaccustomed environment. It is possible that greater firmness in 1935 and 1936 might have led to action being taken against them by the Labour Party apparatus or even the Socialist League. As it was they were unable to rally a majority against Cripps when it really mattered. They had failed to unite with Harber’s Bolshevik-Leninists in the League of Youth. They lacked a long term perspective of working within the Labour Party. It is therefore difficult to see what alternative they had to dissolution in October 1937, though external events were to haul them back into the British Trotskyist mainstream.
Notes
1. The IS Reply To The British Majority, 23 Jan. 1934, Writings Supplement, 1934-40, 440. In 1947 when a split over entry also took place the International again backed a Minority and there was a reversal of roles with an international leadership acting against established leaders in Britain.
2. This reference to the CPGB background of many in the CL was not absolutely correct since there were ex-Marxist League members among them. It could also be argued that by its desultory fashion of joining the ILP the Minority had shown itself devoid of that very communist quality, organisational discipline.
3. ibid., 441. Trotsky’s draft of this letter was refashioned by Bauer with the chief effect of explicitly taking away British Section status and conferring sympathising status on both Majority and Minority, ibid., 892n. The League shortly concluded that struggling for status in the ICL was “a losing battle”, (Warwick MSS, n.d., (Jan. or Feb?] 1934).
4. Notes for guidance at this meeting under the title Our Attitude to the Labour Party have been located. There are two drafts: one – apparently the earlier – is dated 20 Jan. 1934 (Warwick MSS).
5. Labour’s electoral revival of the early 1930s is discussed by C.T. Stannage, The East Fulham by-election, 25 Oct. 1933, Historical Journal, Vol.14, 1971, 165-200 and R. Heller, East Fulham Revisited, J C.H., Vol.6, No.3, 1971, 172-96. See also M. Ceadel, Interpreting East Fulham, in C. Cook and J. Ramsden (eds.), By-elections in British Politics, 1973, 11839 and The Red Flag; (Jan. 1934).
6. R. Groves to Sara [Feb.? 1934].
7. The Red Flag, March-April 1934. The CL detected a feeling of hope in the labour movement in 1934 as a result of these struggles (interview with H. Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979).
8. ibid.
9. In its January 1934 issue.
10. The Red Flag presented rank and file trade unionism as the result of false political perspectives: economic recession, it argued, meant a weaker not a stronger movement. New unions or workers’ councils meant only isolation. Even the usefulness of the NUWM was doubted: the TUC or Trades Councils could develop far more impressive agitation over unemployment. Yet NUWM success was due if anything to resistance by its leaders to King Street directives See H. McShane and J. Smith, Harry McShane: No Mean Fighter, 1976, 215, passim. For the NUWM generally, W. Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 1918-1936 (1977, first published 1936).
11. The Red Flag, May-June 1934.
12. Will the ILP Break at York, The Red Flag, March-April 1934. The article argues that the “nerveless hands” of ILPers must save their party and turn it to the Fourth International.
13. R. Groves, Warwick MSS, [Jan. or Feb.?] 1934. Hugo Dewar was secretary of the NC, which was seven strong.
14. L. Bradley, untitled Warwick MSS (n.d.). Bradley, a member of the Chelsea Group brought onto the NC after the split, proposed a tighter, more centralised structure and made severe criticisms of the League’s failure to intervene effectively at a recent Conference of Action.
15. The Red Flag failed to appear in December 1933, and in the new year sometimes came out in point issues.
16. See below and also the leaflet Five Communist Reasons for Voting Labour, an early attempt at Labour Party orientation, issued during a 1934 by-election at Hammersmith North.
17. High spots in 1934 were the recruitment of five expelled Croydon communists and three from Tottenham (The Red Flag, Oct. 1934).
18. The Red Flag, May-June 1934. On 3 May, Stuart Purkis resigned from the League. No reason was given in his letter of resignation but he had dragged his feet at the time of the turn away from Communist Parties a year earlier. Purkis now concentrated on trade union activity rising to the position of executive member of the RCA and president of the St. Pancras Trades Council. He continued to assist his comrades from time to time, notably during the Moscow Trials.
19. No-one from Britain attended the ICL, plenum of October 14-16 1934. Only Harber and Kirby joined the extended plenum of the following spring.
20. Albert Weisbord (1900-77) expressed disquiet to Henry Sara about the role the IS had played in the December 1933 split in the Communist League and called for an international congress of Opposition groups (A. Weisbord to Sara, 6 June and 9 July 1934, Warwick MSS 15/3/1/54 and 55). The Red Flag contented itself with announcing in its April-May issue that a plenum of the ICL was to thrash out the British problem.
21. In July Trotsky wrote to all the British groups seeking their attendance at a proposed international conference where a British Commission comprised of “our best international comrades” would with their help determine perspectives. [Trotsky] to [British groups], n.d., Warwick MSS. This may have been an early attempt to convene the conference which actually met in July 1936.
22. Trotsky had now concluded that the trade unions were the most important field of work and that ̶the ILP, in this respect, is becoming more of a handicap than an aid”, ibid. In the late summer of 1934 the French Bolshevik-Leninist group entered the SFIO, not without internal anguish, but under pressure from Trotsky.
23. “V”, The French League and the Socialist Party, The Red Flag, Nov. 1934. This was a compression of two articles from Trotsky which urged the French turn. They were pseudonymous because of the conditions attached to his presence in France.
24. Writings (1933-34), 299-330.
25. France is now the Key to the Situation, March 1934. Writings (1933-34), 238-44. The article appeared under the title For the Fourth International in The Militant (New York), 31 March 1934.
26. L. Bradley, untitled manuscript, (1934), Warwick MSS
27. See Forward Against Fascism, a leaflet forbiddingly sub-titled “a Thesis for Labour Youth”, July 1934, Warwick MSS 15/3/1/56. See also Groves’s review of Fascism and Social Revolution by R.P. Dutt, a book which loaded the blame for Hitler taking power on “social fascism”. Groves wrote: “Fascism derives its support from the middle classes and from the lumpen-proletariat. Social Democracy is based upon the workers. Parliament is the main arena of Social Democracy and the workers’ organisations upon which it rests.” (The Red Flag, Aug. 1934)
28. In July 1934 The Red Flag commended the division’s resolution to Labour’s annual conference though it needed “clarification in a number of important details”.
29. See Forward Against Fascism.
30. W.G. Hanton, Draft for Immediate Programme, 17 Aug. 1934, Warwick MSS 15/3/1/59.
31. A leaflet printed on both sides, 1934, Warwick MSS.
32. Statement to all members concerning the present policy of the League and its International, 23 Aug. 1934, Warwick MSS 15/4/2/12.
33. He argued that the reawakened interest of the IS in social democracy was “a striking justification of the stand we had made many months ago, and a tribute, although possibly unintended, to the political sense of the majority comrades” (ibid., 4). While the majority had the previous year proposed a diffusion of energies it had not suggested the concentration on the Labour Party that was now proposed.
34. See for example To Comrade Sneevliet on the IAG Conference, 26 Feb. 1935, Writings (1934-35), 187-95.
35. “We can see now that, whilst, as a result of our work, the reasons for Hitler’s victory and the defeat of the workers’ organisations were made clear to scores, perhaps hundreds, (the mass) either drew back in confusion or pressed forward for a hurried consolidation of the workers’ ranks, irrespective of political ideas or party divisions” (The Red Flag, Oct. 1934).
36. It would speak to “revolutionary Marxists”. In the autumn the enlarged plenum of the ICL declared not an independent party but an instrument for creating them. (The Present Situation in The Labour Movement and the Tasks of the Bolshevik-Leninists, Oct. 14-16, Documents, 61-2).
37. One account of the development of Comintern policy, with particular reference to events in France is in J. Braunthal, History of the International, Vol.2, 1914-1943, 415-46.
38. Interview with H. Wicks (30 Nov. 1979).
39. He was replaced at the last minute by J.N. Pyne, a former Balham Group member. In a speech seconding the reference back of a passage on the united front in the NEC report, Pyne accused the executive of not being serious in its call to boost Labour Party membership since it did not welcome the adherence of a CL repelled by dictatorial communist methods, (LPCR (1934), p.135).
40. Morrison might never have quoted British Trotskyists against the CPGB, but he did use Trotsky himself in this way to rebut left critics of the SPD’s part in failing to prevent Hitler coming to power:
“ Trotsky himself has criticised the Communist International for its handling of the situation, and Trotsky is right and Miss Wilkinson is wrong.” (LPCR (1933), 221)
Morrison was to be well informed about Trotskyist movements in Britain for a decade. He may have appreciated that only an ex-CPGB member like Groves would be well equipped to handle such arguments as those of Dutt. See Groves’s lengthy review of Fascism and Social Revolution, The Red Flag, Oct. 1934.
41. It carried sixteen small pages, poorly laid out.
42. Trotsky himself had considered it fair exchange for ILP entry during the debate of the previous year (see above).
43. The Red Flag, Nov. 1934.
44. B. Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, Cambridge 1977, 91.
45. The editor of the SL journal Socialist Leaguer was Frank Horrabin who had defended Trotsky in the 1920s. The journal thought Trotsky’s History “the authentic voice of the proletarian revolution” early on, (Oct.-Nov. 1934, 77) and a year later H.H. Elvin in the course of an otherwise favourable review of A Handbook of Marxism regretted an excess of Stalin and the absence of Trotsky (The Socialist, Nov. 1935, 6).
46. CL members were by no means the only ex-communists drawn to the Socialist League. J.T. Murphy, a contemporary evacuee, was first League secretary. His successor William Mellor had, like Frank Horrabin, briefly been a party member in the early 1920s.
47. Socialist League, Third Annual Conference, preliminary agenda.
48. Trades Councils in the Fight for Socialism, Sept. 1935.
49. After this a tacit division of labour developed between Harber and Groves. Harber did obtain the position of West London Sales Leader for the Socialist Leaguer in May 1935 (see June 1935 issue), but nothing significant resulted. The base of Harber became the Labour League of Youth. The Communist League had a slim interest in youth work via Socialist Youth, a paper launched by the SL. But this had only a limited impact. An informal and personal link between the two factions existed in the person of Roma Dewar, younger sister of Hugo, who had launched the duplicated Trotskyist journal Youth Militant in the Labour League of Youth.
50. After the French Socialist Congress, The Socialist Leaguer, July/Aug. 1935, 214.
51. Somewhat unfairly to the ILP, Daniel Waley finds the SL the principal upholder of the anti-imperialist, anti-sanctions view, British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War, 1975, 25-6.
52. The League launched an anti-war campaign in September 1935, centred on area conferences. Groves was the secretary of the London conference held that month and a week later was elected to the area committee at an aggregate meeting.
53. The Red Flag, Oct. 1934.
54. Marxist Bulletin, Jan.-Feb. 1936. No further issues have been located.
55. “This, (the dropping of sectarian policy by the Comintern) together with ... the special position our group holds in the organised workers” movement more than justifies our re-entry into the sphere of publication.” Dewar went on to imply that The Red Flag had last appeared in Feb. 1935; in fact it ceased publication in November of the previous year. His expressed hope of re-establishing contact with erstwhile readers of The Red Flag is an admission that the League had effectively been liquidated in 1935.
56. Warwick MSS, 15 Jan. 1936. The letter was not addressed but contextually would appear to have been destined for a member of the Marxist League. It consisted of a list of questions which it undertakes to consider on a private basis.
57. The ML handled trade union matters more confidently than the other two factions, but at this date it had an unimpressive record by comparison with the American Trotskyists, who had led two important strikes. For the New York hotel workers” strike, led by B.J. Field, who was a CLA member for its first weeks, and for the Minneapolis teamsters” dispute, see C.A. Myers, The Prophet’s Army, Westport, Conn. 1977, 63-4, 82.
58. There is at least one Trotsky article in each of the early Red Flags of the new series, including his comments on Stalin’s interview with Roy Howard (May), extracts from his introduction to the second French edition of In Defence of Terrorism (June-July); an article on Spain (September) and an extract on the peasantry from The New Course (Jan. 1937).
59. A lengthy critical review by Wicks of Ralph Fox’s Lenin under the title Some Notes on the History of Bolshevism appeared first as a serial in The Red Flag and then as a pamphlet in 1937.
60. See Henry Sara’s review of William Gallacher’s pamphlet Pensioners of Capitalism, where great play is made with the reversed communist stand on the united front.
61. B. Pimlott, op. cit., 218n. This was a significant achievement in the London-centred League.
62. Spain has Lighted a Torch, (Oct. 1936). The article was a strong argument against coalition with bourgeois parties. Winocour, who wrote for The Red Flag under the pseudonym Bill Commoner, was an American who returned to the United States in 1938. I am grateful to Mr. Harry Wicks for this information about Winocour’s pseudonym. The SL was always attracted to a class analysis of the Spanish struggle, see its manifesto A Workers’ or a Fascist Spain? (1936), Warwick MSS 15/3/8/227, ii.
63. Purkis was president of the St. Pancras trades council. He helped over the Trotsky Defence Committee from the outset and contributed to The Red Flag after the Unity Campaign was launched in January 1937. Another contributor to the paper, probably pseudonymous, was Jack Glasgow.
64. The Red Flag, Sept. 1936.
65. Who Leads the Fight for Workers” Party in Spain?, The Red Flag, Oct. 1936.
66. It was linked to the ILP through the London Bureau, while the Socialist League published a bulletin on its behalf in Britain.
67. The paper’s claim that it “defends POUM when even its closest allies in Britain remain silent for their own fractional advantage”, was an effective riposte to the ILP, but also perhaps a concession to feelings within the Socialist League. The Bolshevik-Leninists accused the Marxist League of supporting POUM’s “opportunist policy” by organising distribution of the POUM bulletin, (E.C., B/L Group, Statement to the Bureau for the Fourth International, 29 Dec. 1936). In February 1937 The Red Flag advertised the Red Aid Fund of the POUM
68. See F. Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, New York, 1974, 112-20. Morrow’s book was published first in 1936.
69. East End Crisis!(1936), 6p., was an anti-fascist pamphlet aimed at the Mosleyite offensive in London. It made a standard Marxist analysis which blamed exploitation on class not race and its intensification on increased competition in a dwindling market. British financiers backed Mosley so that divided East Enders might be rendered helpless before them, suggested Groves, and proposed combination of workers against sweating, bad housing and the Means Test. Arms and the Unions (1936), 12p., called for the maintenance and extension of trade union organisation in the face of rearmament.
70. In its October 1936 issue.
71. “The time is approaching when that support will have to be organised independently and openly”, (ibid.). At the meeting of Bolshevik-Leninists on 11 October the League declared it now believed the time for exclusive Labour Party work to be coming to an end, (A Short Statement from the Marxist League to the delegates from the Youth Militant Group and the Marxist Group, 11 Oct. 1936, Warwick MSS 15/4/1/13).
72. The background to this agreement can be followed in P. Seyd, Factionalism Within the Labour Party: The Socialist League 1932-1937 in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds.) Essays in Labour History, 3, 1918-1939, 1977, 219-224. See also B. Pimlott, op. cit., 94-7, which absorbs the treatment in his earlier article The Socialist League: Intellectuals and the Labour Left in the 1930s, J.C.H., Vol.6, No.3, 1971, 35-8. More general are M. Foot, Aneurin Bevan, 1, 1897-1945, 1966, 169-210 and F. Brockway, Inside the Left, 1942, 264-75.
73. P. Seyd in A. Briggs and J. Saville, op. cit., 229n.
74. After a six page issue in October, The Red Flag did not come out until January 1937, when it carried a strong attack on the Unity Agreement by Stuart Purkis.
75. Trotsky Defence Committee members met Fenner Brockway on 27 November 1936 for a broad discussion. On 4 December The New Leader carried an article, What Price Unity?, in which Brockway sharply condemned Trotskyists as destroyers not builders. This was of course the moment of the split of C.L.R. James and the Marxist Group from the ILP to attempt an independent existence.
76. For which he borrowed Brockway’s title What Price Unity?.
77. Brockway had been sharp not only in The New Leader but also in A New United Front, Controversy, Dec. 1936.
78. The Red Flag carried an editorial note declaring some differences with Purkis” s views, though no details were given. Purkis’s concession that Brockway had fought for the right to maintain criticism within the United Front may well have caused disquiet.
79. See below.
80. The decision of the SL executive on 20 November had been that the League would make a campaign with the CPGB even without ILP involvement (P. Seyd in A. Briggs and J. Saville, op. cit., 220). This made The Red Flag line even more fatuous. It was remarkable that even in the New Year no analysis was made of Cripps’s role in the steps which were to lead to the dissolution of the SL. The nearest it came was a warning in February 1937 that the course of events would punish those who lent themselves to communist falsehoods.
81. The Daily Worker (18 Jan. 1937) named Groves as the source of the leak and accused him of “opposition to any attempt at building the unity of the working class movement in Britain”. Groves wrote to the paper that he supported a united front but that he objected to “sacrificing the Socialist League’s position in the organised Labour Movement without sufficient advantage to the revolutionary left in return”.
He went on to argue, like Purkis, against suspension of the right to criticise, reasoning:
No revolutionary fears an open discussion of policies. The Communist Party enforced this kind of agreement precisely because it was preparing to put over a campaign designed not only to destroy a handful of Trotskyists in this country but to destroy revolutionary socialism generally.
The Daily Worker printed only part of Groves’s letter. The full text appeared in The Red Flag, Feb. 1937. The Red Flag had always opposed the suspension of criticism in a united front. See “W.H.”, The United Front in Britain and France, Oct. 1934.
82. B. Pimlott, op. cit., 97.
83. M.S. Davidson of the Manchester Socialist League argued that the agreement had been negotiated without their mandate, that vital information had been withheld from branches until the day before the conference, that some branches were not represented at the conference, and that others who did attend broke their mandate, (letter, New Statesman and Nation, 30 Jan. 1937).
84. John Strachey wrote:
The fact that Mr. Reginald Groves, the proponent of Trotskyist views in the Socialist League, was, on his own admission, willing to make desperate attempts to stop the conclusion of the recent unity pact, and that it was through his efforts that the Daily Herald was given the full particulars of this pact, is a serious instance of this activity. (i.e. Trotskyist willing ness to collaborate with Labour’s right wing – M.U.) (Daily Worker, 22 Jan. 1937.)
That he had revealed details of the pact was a new accusation against Groves. He countered the earlier one of leaking his circular letter by suggesting, perhaps tongue in cheek, that “a disloyal branch secretary” might have been responsible (The Red Flag, Feb. 1937). J. Jupp, with his belief that Groves repeated arguments advanced by League officials, seems to reflect the Strachey view (The Left in British Labour 1931 to 1941, Univ. of London, M.A. thesis, 1956).
85. R. Bishop, The Socialist League Suspends Activities, Inprecorr, Vol.17, No.22, 22 May 1937, 517. Bishop refers to “a small nest of Trotskyists” who opposed this tactical move backed by the CPGB, but others opposed dissolution as well, including the absent Brailsford (Pimlott, op. cit., 104-5).
86. “The net result of the Unity Committee’s activities was a further weakening of the moribund ILP, to the benefit of the CPGB, and the dissolution of the Socialist League. Thus vanished the only body within the Labour Party offering some possibility of revolutionary socialist propaganda against the policy of the party itself and of the communist “cells” within it.” (H. Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain, 1976, 111-2.)
87">87. B. Pearce, The Left in British Labour (author’s unpublished manuscript), 9-10.
88. This evolution is well illustrated by the development of Tribune, which effectively replaced The Socialist, into a fellow-travelling journal immediately before the war, (M. Foot, Aneurin Bevan. A biography, Vol.1: 1897-1945, 1966. (See Appendix B.)
89. The New Leader, 18 June 1937.
90. This was the belief of Don James who, as a Militant group member in 1937 challenged its involvement in the SLF. (See Chapter VII, below.)
91. P. Seyd in A. Briggs and J. Saville, op. cit., 230n. Though repelled by Trotskyists she had met in Glasgow sometime after she resigned from the CPGB, McCarthy came to be intellectually convinced of Marxist League policy, (M. McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, 1953, 258; M. McCarthy to Sara, 27 Jan. 1938, Warwick
92. Interview with R. Groves, April 1980. For Harber’s view and that of the Militant Group, on replacing the SL , see the discussion on the Socialist League at Minutes, London EC, [Militant Group], 20 Feb. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2A/4.
93. “For material reasons”. British Trotskyists may have met Shachtman and Muste as they passed through Britain on their way to Geneva, (L. Trotsky to Muste, How the Conference Was and Wasn’t Prepared, 17 July 1936, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 698-703).
94. For Discussion, 28 Nov. 1936.
95. ibid. Trotsky had suggested the Lenin Club in the Interview by Collins, Writings (1935-36), 77.
96. A Short Statement from the Marxist League to the delegates from the Youth Militant Group and the Marxist Group, 11 Oct. 1936 (Warwick MSS 15/4/1/13).
97. For the views of the Bolshevik-Leninists, see Chapter VII.
98. It reasoned that the need was to draw together all those who stood for the Fourth International rather than make decisions for or against the Labour Party or the ILP, ibid.
99. See Chapter VIII.
100. It came out in three issues after this date, perhaps chiefly deserving attention for the way it put before British readers statements from the POUM revealing the murderous course of events in Barcelona. See especially its issue for May-June 1937.
101. See Appendix
102. Dewar explained his views to the fusion conference of 27 Feb. 1938, (RSL , Internal Bulletin, 1, April 1938, 14-15.). He flatly opposed any attempt to transform the SLF into a Trotskyist body.
******
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
VI
TROTSKYISM AND BRITISH RESPONSES TO THE MOSCOW TRIALS,
1936-1938
The Moscow Trials offer a plateau from which to observe the limited progress of Trotskyism in the 1930s. There was more criticism of the Trials in Britain than is generally appreciated, but this was outweighed by the heavy pressure of official opinion and strong communist influence. The period covered by the three trials and the Generals purge (August 1936 to March 1938) was one of dramatic political developments: nearly two years of civil war in Spain and of the popular front government in France; the march of Hitler, first into the Rhineland and into Austria; the progressive reversal of Labour’s earlier opposition to rearmament; the move of the bulk of the Labour Left and the communists from a working class united front to support for a popular front and then a peace alliance.
In such a world as that of the years before 1939, there was a disposition on the part of many to seek unity, in alliance with the Soviets abroad, and all available forces at home, in the face of a mounting fascist threat. This made easier the efforts of British communists to secure acceptance of the verdict of the trials, however bizarre in style and content. Russia, it seemed, was the only hope [1], and it took more than eighteen months of trial and “plot” finally to alienate liberal opinion.
It has been argued that the trials were less controversial in Britain than in America because of Trotskyist weakness and lack of support among the intelligentsia, because the Spanish Civil War diverted attention, and because “influential” press reporting accepted the official line. [2] Without a doubt, concern over the menace of fascism and war, the central political controversy of the day, was far more immediate in Britain than in the United States. It was to be suggested that the Trials themselves weakened Soviet Russia, considered the main bulwark against fascism. But more difficult to resist was the argument that it was Trotskyism, all-pervasive, nebulously defined, which caused disunity in the battle against reaction. The Trotskyist case that the Soviet economic systems must be supported but not its political regime was difficult to carry. Indeed, in the west, the opening of the first trial marked the moment when communist parties were no longer prepared to concede to Trotskyists a legitimate place in the labour movement from which they might advance their critique.
Early in 1936, Trotskyists in the Labour League of Youth were being relatively gently handled. Communist sympathisers had withdrawn by then from the ILP, but the emnity between them and the Trotskyists did not approach the pitch of later years. In the Socialist League, Groves and Marxist League members did not face accusations of being agents of counter-revolution. As for the intellectual world, destined to be most scarred by the trials, it was still possible for writers to be reviewed on the merit of their work. [3]
Trotsky himself was closely observing Soviet affairs. In May 1936, he observed from his Norway exile that Stalin was facing a greater threat than before, but that his methods, and those of Yagoda, the GPU chief, had been refined. [4] Even he cannot have expected anything as grotesque as the trials. When they began he immediately bent every effort toward debunking the charges cascading upon him from Moscow. He had time to rush out several statements to the press [5] and, crucially, to call for an investigation by the world’s labour organisations, or better still their leaders. Within days however, Soviet diplomatic pressure led to him being placed effectively under house arrest and then suppressed by a legal gag which prevented him replying to the charges. [6]
Some of Trotsky’s early opinions appeared in Britain. His 15 August statement, Let Us Know The Facts, in reply to charges rehearsed by the Tass Bureau, was printed by The New Leader with Tass’s comments. [7] He also told the News Chronicle that the trials were “one of the biggest, clumsiest and most criminal plots against world opinion. [8] Emrys Hughes in Forward, and – initially – Fenner Brockway also supported his call for an international commission of investigation to which he would present evidence. [9] This demand became refined to a call for an international working class inquiry into the first trial, which was backed by the Spanish POUM and the London Bureau. [10] Finally, The Red Flag, at that moment the only Trotskyist journal in regular publication, also published Trotsky’s statement of 15 August with a call for resolutions to be sent to the Labour Party NEC, the TUC General Council and the Norwegian government. [11]
But while all this provided an input into the labour movement, it was of very limited importance compared with the general press. It might only have been the Daily Worker which headlined a report Shoot the Reptiles!, but there was a general disposition to take the trials as Moscow intended. The News Chronicle did sound a note of editorial doubt, but A.T. Cummings, its reporter, was impressed by the confessions of the defendants. The other daily paper to sound a sceptical note was the Manchester Guardian, which had carried occasional articles by Trotsky during the 1930s. Support for Trotsky in the right-wing press was widely commented by communists. [12]
In a hostile atmosphere, the British Trotskyists faced their sternest test. Success would not only vindicate Trotsky but confirm their right to be part of the labour movement. Some early efforts were made. A crowd of 2-300 gathered in Hyde Park on 31 August 1936 to call for an international investigation and support Trotsky’s right of asylum. [13] On 9 September the first indoor meeting against the Trials was held. But the British Trotskyist movement was at a low ebb. Marxist Group members were dribbling out of the ILP into the Labour Party where they had not yet hardened into a coherent faction. The Marxist League, though small, was advancing in the Socialist League but it was, of all the British factions, the most distant from Trotsky, who had advised his British supporters to struggle against Groves. [14] None of the three British groups was in a position within social democracy even comparable to that obtained by the American Trotskyists, who entered the Socialist Party on the very eve of the first Trial. Divided, and lacking in influence, the British Trotskyists were not well placed for a fight against the odds.
Each British group turned its meagre propaganda resources over in part to putting Trotsky’s case against the Moscow charges. But so isolated were they before the first Trial that the key to success palpably lay in mobilising liberal and radical opinion on Trotsky’s behalf. In the United States and in France, where defence committees were also to be established, there was a non-Stalinist sector within the “left” intelligentsia including numbers of writers at one time associated with Trotsky. This was much less the case in Britain and the Trotskyists had to create a favourable atmosphere if they were to make progress.
The British Defence Committee was primarily a product of work undertaken by the Marxist League. Harry Wicks approached the Marxist Group about the possibility of forming one soon after the August trial. [15] A provisional committee was established, but it led only a precarious existence during the rest of the year. [16] After several other declined to act as provisional secretary [17] the position fell to Wicks. He set about circulating left celebrities to gain their backing for an appeal for an inquiry. [18]
The response was not encouraging. In 1929-31 Trotsky’s had still been a name to conjure with in Britain. By autumn 1936 his appeal had palpably shrunk. A changed world political context made unity a far more seductive call at the later date, and the Communist Party, no longer at its sectarian nadir, was incomparably better placed to put it out.
Kingsley Martin was asked to lend his name. He had initially found the August trial wholly unconvincing, though he failed to report that the Norwegian government had imposed silence on Trotsky by judicial means. He argued that the trial helped Conservatives, Transport House and opponents of the popular front. Following letters to the New Statesman from communists and other supporters of the trial, his condemnation became more cautious, focussing on the need for a national explanation and the insubstantiality of confessions which lacked corroborative evidence. [19] He felt there was a plot but believed the Trials argued widespread discontent in the USSR. Privately he told Purkis an inquiry would be a good thing and he would be pleased to discuss it in the New Statesman if it was proposed “by responsible people”. [20] He would not associate himself with it however since his partisanship would then inhibit him from joining the discussion.
D.N. Pritt, KC, M.P. for Hammersmith North and a close adherent of communist policy, predictably refused to sign. [21] He had been present in Moscow during the August trial and pronounced it judicially fair. His verdict was given wide coverage in the British press, and he was shortly to write the introduction to WG Shepherd’s pamphlet, The Moscow Trial. [22] Trotsky believed Pritt’s presence in Moscow at the time of the trial to have been more than a coincidence [23], though the Norwegian gag made him unable to express this view publicly. [24] When Pritt saw the coverage given the Trials by Emrys Hughes in Forward, he broke off a longstanding friendship. [25] Hughes, who had been friendly – if occasionally mocking – towards Trotsky over the years, gave over much space to his defence and ridiculed the August Trial as “crazy stupidity”. Yet the Trotsky Defence Committee seems not to have been aware of the potential of this unsolicited friend who was engaged that autumn in an extended debate with Zelda K. Coates of the Anglo-Russian Friendship Committee, a persistent apologist for the trials. [26] Its contact with Hughes apparently dates only from late 1937, by which time the game was won and lost.
Fenner Brockway was under instruction from the ILP executive not to sign the appeal [27] but he told Wicks he might be allowed to examine documents from the Trial with other prominent persons with the intention of publishing a report. [28] This came to nothing, though he was informally helpful in providing Wicks with a list of intellectuals likely to prove amenable and making suggestions. [29] But he would prove the biggest obstacle within the London Bureau to backing the inquiry campaign.
In the Labour League of Youth, the Militant Group was embroiled in an increasingly bitter fight with the Advance faction led by Ted Willis; the Marxist Group was in the process of severing all connections with the ILP, and in December 1936 it publicly declared its independence. None of the Trotskyist groups had a significant trade union following. It is not therefore surprising that the best source of support for the provisional committee late in 1936 came from the milieu of the Socialist League, now approaching the climax of its tense relationship with Transport House.
On 1 December 1936, the Manchester Guardian published A letter from the Provisional Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky over the signature of H.N. Brailsford, Frank Horrabin, Conrad Noel, Fred Shaw, Rowland Hill, Eleanor Rathbone and Garry Allingham, as well as those of Groves, Wicks and Purkis. [30] The letter protested at the continued legal gag on Trotsky in Norway and called for an international inquiry. Wicks’s hope was that this would break the ice and lead to better things. [31] It was misplaced. This was a moderate list and even so it was to prove impossible to maintain. [32] By the same date the Americans had gathered Norman Thomas, Dewey, Eastman, James T. Farrell, Dos Passos, Sydney Hook and Suzanne La Follette. “Surely”, asked The Red F1ag ’there are in Great Britain sufficient forces to strengthen the work of our own Defence Committee?“
The answer was in the negative. It has been argued that the reason may lie in the split within the British intelligentsia not between Stalinism and Trotskyism, but between commitment and the lack of it. [33] But an intellectual who was aware only of the broad issues of war or peace, fascism or democracy, was likely to-see only hairsplitting in Trotsky’s cause. And yet some of the blame for the lack of initial impact must also lie with the weakness of the Trotskyists themselves. Rousing the intellectuals was of prime importance, as Sedov insisted. Yet C.L.R. James, the most eminent of the Trotskyists intellectually, played no central role in the committee, failing to attend its meetings and preferring to counter the Trials through his new paper Fight. The proletarian character of the early Trotskyist movement in Britain might be seen as an advantage. But the Americans gained crucial assistance from their acquisition through their 1935 fusion with the American Workers Party of A.J. Muste, of an impressive layer of intellectuals who were to prove their worth the following year. [34] And starting with some of the intelligentsia made it far easier for the Trotskyists in America to recruit more.
At the end of 1936 the Provisional Committee had little on which to congratulate itself. It had failed to persuade numbers of celebrities of sufficient prestige that Trotsky’s cause needed their support. It had organised few public activities. “The most successful work on Trotsky’s behalf had been done in the pages of Forward by Emrys Hughes, with whom they were not in contact. [35] Since 1935 Forward had appeared in a London edition and was circulated by Herbert Morrison’s Labour machine in the capital. Morrison, hammer of the communists, had his own, more traditional, reasons for taking an interest in the trials, [36] but his attitude confirms the way that labour movement critics of Moscow increasingly could be found only among the opponents, right and left, of the projected popular front. [37]
It is scarcely a surprise to learn that the dying weeks of 1936 saw the British Trotskyists engrossed in faction-fighting which left little space for a sustained effort to lift the Trotsky Defence Committee. [38] The papers of the factions, and notably the Red Flag and Fight, were each devoting space to arguments against the trials but they were mutually estranged over essentially secondary tactical questions. Success might have drawn them together, but it now became clear that even the ground they thought they had gained was slipping. Brailsford, whose backing for the 1 December letter had been taken as indicating adherence to the Provisional Committee, withdrew when this construction was put on his signature in the American press. [39] He had vacillated for some time, airing in public the inner anguish many others must have felt who wanted to criticise the Soviets. [40] The Militant group at least saw the importance of drawing together in view of the events of January 1937 [41], and regular meetings of the Defence Committee seem to have occurred in the New Year.
1937 brought with it the second Trial. Unlike previous key events in Russia involving the Opposition, there was this time no shortage of information. It was a question of interpretation not discovery. There was an extensive and factual coverage in The Manchester Guardian throughout January. [42] The letter page of that paper provided a fascinating mixture of responses to the Trials. In its columns could be read the views of Dr. Steinberg, a Menshevik who even-handedly attested the isolation of Stalin’s regime and the eager desire of the opposition for war; of Joan Beauchamp, an apologist; of A.J.P. Taylor, no longer a party member, who commented on Lenin’s “infallible gift” for choosing counter-revolutionaries as his closest associates, and asserted that the achievements of the Revolution would survive Stalin and socialists cease to be Stalinists. [43] On the same day as Taylor’s letter was published, Low’s cartoon portrayed Hitler equipped with a shotgun on an “anti-world revolution expedition” unaware that nearby his quarry “the Trotsky Policy” had been buried. The Manchester Guardian, of course, was no more fond of “the Trotsky Policy” than anyone else, though this did not prevent Moscow being sufficiently stung by its coverage and publication policy [44] to allege Trotskyist sympathies among its staff [45], and denounce its as a “fascist-speaking trumpet”. Pat Sloan, presenting himself somewhat coyly as “an Englishman who has lived in the USSR for five years”, replied to Trotsky and Sedov. He disputed that Zinoviev and Kamenev were leaders of the Revolution and pursued the argument that Trotsky’s analysis of the nature of the regime necessarily led to belief in the need to use force to overthrow it. But “YZ”, a Menshevik, called for an independent court, and concluded than the charges would discredit the Soviet dictatorship more than the Opposition. [46] D.N. Pritt marched toward the sound of gunfire on 5 February. His case was not a model of jurisprudence. Contacts between Germany or Japan and the Trotskyists should surprise no one familiar with diplomatic methods, he argued, and anyway (echoing Sloan) forcible overthrow followed necessarily from Trotsky’s political estimate of the Stalin government. [47] He detected, however, a reluctant move by British opinion towards acceptance of the genuineness of the Trials, and he clinched his argument with this question:
“If it were not so why would the government have introduced the November 1936 constitution, a relaxation of the power of the Executive, and the increase of individual freedom?” [48]
More perceptive was the letter of “a former member of the Comintern Executive” which appeared the same day. “If the Nazis (not the Trotskyists) had wanted to show the world the rottenness of the whole Stalin regime they could not have improved on the two great Moscow Trials.” This writer cautiously predicted a move by Stalin in a German direction, the very crime of which Trotsky and his associates had been accused.
Communist polemics against Trotskyism accelerate from 1936. [49] Trotskyism, a pamphlet by many hands appeared in 1937, as did a pamphlet by Marjorie Pollitt entitled Defeat of Trotskyism. The Daily Worker and Labour Monthly were busy. To counter this the Trotskyists had only their own papers, cruelly dubbed “miserable little rags” by Orwell. Yet in the labour movement there was a debate about the trials. Advance in 1937, Controversy (until the communists withdrew from it), Forward, The New Leader and The Plebs all gave space for the expression of different points of view, sometimes by Trotskyists. This did not sustain Trotskyism, but it certainly contributed to the eventual disenchantment of liberals and non-aligned socialists with the Soviets. [50]
The second trial was simultaneous with critical events in Britain. The Unity Campaign was launched in January 1937, and a chain of events begun which would lead to the voluntary dissolution of the Socialist League in May. Hopes were high, but the communists had extracted as a price for cooperation, that criticism of the Soviets be suspended. Cripps, in the eye of the storm, rebuffed an approach from the Defence Committee. Horrabin, of whom much might have been expected, turned down a request to preside at a February meeting in a letter at once warm and frank:
“I sympathise very much indeed with its object, but I feel that the success of the Unity Campaign may mean a great deal to the Movement here, and I ought not to prejudice it by any individual action which might cause friction. Believe me, I have thought this over seriously before replying.” [51]
Brailsford, who had been sympathetic the previous year, now refused to send a letter to the Memorial Hall. Despairing Wicks informed Dewar that their efforts looked likely to be fruitless. “Sumner” was convinced that the Unity Campaign prevented ILP and SL leaders offering any help. [52] He wrote in March:
“Unlike the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky, which contains some of the best known leaders of American thought, the British Committee has remained a small body. We are doing our best to enlarge it”.
The American Committee was able to convene a rally 7,000 strong at the New York Hippodrome on 9 February to call for an international inquiry.
The next day a British audience of 500, at the Memorial Hall, heard Sidney Silverman [53] and Garry Allingham [54] with Socialist League and Trotsky Defence Committee speakers making a further appeal for an international commission. Silverman, the main speaker, scorned the notion of a Trotsky-Japanese link, and stated that the exiled leader, and not Stalin, was Lenin’s heir. YCL members disrupted the meeting, but it backed the call for an investigation into the charges. [55] The following week a further meeting was held, this time by the Friends of the Soviet Union, under the chairmanship of Victor Gollancz. James, Purkis and Matlow were invited to put their view of the Trials from the Platform. The Manchester Guardian reporter felt that James had made out a ’rather stronger” case than Purkis. Pritt added his weight to the views of Gollancz. This appears to have been one of the few cases where a debate took place about the Trials on equal terms. [56]
The Memorial Hall meeting was a financial success though dogged later by a misunderstanding typifying inter-group relations, when, through an oversight, the name of E.L. Davis of the Militant Group was not advertised with those of other speakers. [57] Among the active workers for the committee was May Matlow [58], of the Militant group, who seems to have undertaken much of the typing. Wicks, Sara, Dewar and Boyd [59] commonly attended meetings. Groves seems never to have come, but Purkis was a stalwart. From the other groups Alexander and Jackson might appear for the Militant, but the Marxist Group apparently went its own way. When Harry Wicks pleaded excess of work and resigned the secretaryship in March 1937, it was Hilary Sumner-Boyd who, on Dewar’s proposal, replaced him. [60] One of Sumner’s functions was to circulate Trotsky’s articles to the British press. His success in 1937 was limited and he had none at all with his own articles on Spain. [61] Forward, the New Statesman and the Manchester Guardian did publish his letter of 27 March pleading for affidavits pertaining to Trotsky’s movements during the past seven years and for funds, but the response was negligible. [62] In March 1937 the committee began arrangements, on the request of Erwin Wolf [63], for sworn statements to be made by Maxton, C.A. Smith and John Paton concerning their visits to France in 1933, when the last two had met Trotsky. [64] Wicks also had to draw up a statement concerning his visit to Copenhagen in 1932. [65]
ILP attitudes towards Trotsky fluctuated. They were not as close to espousing his cause as the communists alleged. The New Leader had publicised the withdrawal of his correspondence rights [66], and Brockway attempted to gather what he saw as an impartial commission with French, Scandinavian and American personnel. [67] But during the Unity Campaign the party distanced itself from Trotsky by attempting to occupy a kind of middle ground on the second Trial: “We acknowledge that we cannot answer the doubts raised by the Trial – neither the evidence given by Radek on the one side, nor the questions put by Trotsky on the other.” [68]
While. the ILP urged the Soviets not to implement the sentences passed at the second Trial before an international commission had met, it also refused until that time to join Trotskyists in declaring the Trials to be frame-ups. [69] When the composition of the Dewey Commission was first announced, the ILP found it impressive. On 21 May 1937, however, Brockway announced that the London Bureau would not back the Commission since it had been set up through the efforts of the American Trotskyists, who were partisan. He urged an investigation which would deal not only with Trotsky’s charges, but also Stalin’s and which, moreover, would be a political inquiry. Trotsky exploded, dubbing Brockway “Mr. Pritt No.2”. [70] To him the the whole value of the Dewey Commission” lay precisely in the political differences he had with its members. [71] There were no Trotskyists upon it as Brockway and Martin were to claim.
The Committee never shook itself free of internecine quarrels. It was primarily the Marxist League which provided the impetus for activity: it also produced the two secretaries. The Marxist Group was interested in Trotsky’s case, but considerably less so in the Committee, which its representatives attended only rarely. [72] Yet the Marxist Group was holding meetings of its own on the subject of the trials. [73] Relations were no better with the Militant Group, as Boyd observed: “The Committee has to contend with so many obstacles, above all the United Front, that it is very difficult for it if it does not receive regular collaboration from the three Trotskyist groups in this country.” [74]
It did not help matters when Erwin Wolf communicated with Britain through May Matlow and not the secretary of the committee. [75] Lack of coordination also showed up when the Committee made arrangements to print Trotsky’s Hippodrome speech simultaneously with a Militant Group deal to import the American edition in bulk. [76] Possibly it was lack of success which contributed to the fractions atmosphere at committee meetings – though a plausible case could be constructed in reverse. At the end of April 1937 there was a sharp disagreement over whether the Bulletin should be a vehicle carrying news of successes (at home) or information (from abroad). As secretary, Boyd was responsible for its content and the dispute was resolved in a sound British way – by the appointment of May Matlow and Jackson to make with him an editorial committee of three. [77] Marxist Group cooperation did not increase markedly, despite occasional attendance at Committee meetings by Ballard. Committee publications seem to have been sold only by the Marxist League. [78] These were not great in number. Only two issues of the Information Bulletin appeared and they reveal narrow interests and participation. [79] The accounts for May-July 1937 [80] indicate a considerable operating deficit. Another aspect of Committee work was contact with the United States, the main centre of activity. There was hope of obtaining the services of an English socialist for the Dewey Commission. Sumner proposed in early April that George Novack be urged to invite Morrison or Sydney Silverman to join it. [81] Later that month the Committee decided to approach Pritt and Collard to attend. [82] The proposal foundered later in the year through shortage of cash. [83]Sumner also made appeals for cash to help finance the Dewey proceedings [84], but it seems unlikely that large amounts were forthcoming.
Criticism of the trials did not break through in the Left Book Club machine. Ivor Montagu, who admitted his earlier pilgrimage to Prinkipo wrote important articles in Left Book News, conveying the sentiments of the trials. He urged young men not to be seduced by Trotsky’s magnetism as he himself had been in 1931. Trotsky was now desperate, he explained, because of the impregnable strength of the USSR. Even in this journal Montagu did not feel obliged to treat critics of the trials seriously. [85] An outraged Dewar complained to Gollancz, but was told that the journal could not carry “all points a of view”, being constrained by space. Montagu’s writing, Gollancz thought, had justified itself. [86] The Red Flag asserted that Gollancz had received letters of protest. [87] It called on all local Left Book Clubs to raise the matter and secure “freedom of opinion inside the Left Book Club and in the pages of the Left News”. Yet when the Defence Committee circulated twenty four Left Book Clubs it drew no response. Sumner had to use The Red Flag to challenge Montagu and showed that he had misrepresented Trotsky by quoting him out of context. [88]
Things were not greatly different at Left Review, which supported the trials and was impatient of doubts. T.A. Jackson uncritically reported the proceedings and declared that Trotsky had behaved to Stalin just as he had to Lenin. [89] Earlier in the year, the.willing Pat Sloan had savaged Gide’s chronicle of disillusionment, Back from the USSR. When a further volume of Gide, Afterthoughts on the USSR, had been printed, Warburg placed a provocative text in an advertisement for it in Left Review, challenging communists to read a view opposed to theirs. [90] John Strachey, like Montagu, admitted to having been impressed by Trotsky in the past. He claimed his mind had been changed by Trotsky’s reversal of views on the united front: he just opposed whatever Stalin said. The united front was in fact a supreme example of consistency in Trotsky’s thought, but this did not shake Strachey’s conviction, by the time of the second trial, that Trotskyists had to be driven out of the working class movement. [91]
Controversy over the Left Book Club list was to reach a climax late in 1937, but even before then there was disquiet. The Left Book Club by no means confined itself to communist writers, but it published no critics of Stalinism, particularly if they stood on the left of the labour movement. In April, J. Allen Skinner floated in the New Statesman the idea of broadening the Club and, in particular, of snapping its exclusive ties with one publishing house. An ensuing correspondence broke evenly between supporters and opponents of the idea. [92] By the middle of the year the idea of a rival book club had gained ground [93] but it seems to have faded later. Orwell’s belief that “the central stream of English literature was more or less directly under communist control [94] for the three years before the war, has been challenged by a contemporary [95] but CPGB influence was enormous during the period of the Trials.
Kingsley Martin’s puzzlement and scepticism about the trials is less interesting than the correspondence which it stimulated. Dudley Collard, Roy Pascal and Pat Sloan, (especially the third), wrote adding correctives to his doubts. After wobbling, Martin declared in 1937 that he would not take sides until he saw the evidence presented to Dewey [96], though he doubted the impact of the Commission in view of the presence of Trotskyists upon it. [97]
Martin had at least met Trotsky, though he was shaken by his vehemence. [98] Had he known Trotsky’s view of the encounter he might have been more shaken still. [99] Martin’s treatment of Orwell later in the year was appalling [99] and it is hard to see why he believed Trotsky thought his journal one of the few honest and genuinely radical papers. [100]
The communists were not content that writers should not support Trotsky: all trace of doubt about the Trials must be expunged. Brailsford had done more than most writers were prepared to do by signing the 1 December 1936 statement. After he retracted that, he floundered in public confusion in Reynolds News. In the summer of 1937 Palme Dutt drubbed him in The New Statesman: Lenin’s and Stalin’s enemies were the same “bourgeois press, Independent Labour Party, Liberals, etc.”. When Brailsford sought cover by reference to his record in support of correct causes, Dutt showed his concern about the left, not the right:
“But cannot he see that these services, so far from mitigating the danger when he comes out from time to time on the enemy side, can only make such an attack more serious? [101]
Strachey and Spender, both much closer to the party than Brailsford, had their knuckles rapped for unguarded remarks. [102]
Within the Committee, Sumner fought hard for a heterogeneous front [103], arguing that a paragraph should be inserted in a Committee circular, explicitly stating that support did not involve endorsing Trotsky’s politics. [104] He was under pressure from Sedov, whom he met in Paris in March 1937, to achieve a broad committee. [105] In search of it Alexander was commissioned to secure the adherence of F.A. Voight and David Low. [106] But no one who was not in some way connected with the Trotskyist movement ever attended Committee meetings. Only five intellectuals replied to an April 1937 circular letter from Boyd, and of these Llewellyn Powys alone agreed to join the Committee. [107] Brockway, who had proved informally helpful, was prepared to collaborate with the Dewey inquiry but would give no undertaking to endorse it. [108] Trotsky deceived himself as to the ease with which the Defence Committee might progress. Once the investigation was begun, he told Sumner, “the truth will reveal itself almost as automatically as a natural force”; a favourable shift in United States opinion would also facilitate the work, he suggested. [109] In the summer the Committee again approached a number of socialist celebrities. Shaw had not ceased to admire Trotsky, but thought his appearance before the Commission would be a mistake. He should stick to pamphlets, where his enemies were at his mercy. [110] The Webbs of course declined [111], H.G. Wells wavered but then decided against joining in. No real progress was made.
In the autumn, the Unity Campaign collapsed. Communist attacks on the POUM, sister party of the ILP, had not ceased in Britain or elsewhere. In Spain they were now reaching murderous levels. The suppression of the POUM, has been linked with the Trials as the cause for the campaign’s collapse. [112] Contemporaries like Martin in 1936 [113], and Laski early in 1937 [114], had both warned of the danger presented by the Trials to a British popular front. The October 1937 Bournemouth conference of the Labour Party had made it clear that there would be no participation from that quarter and Morrison had taken the opportunity to contrast a united front with a popular front. Despite this decisive setback the idea lived on in different form. Together with a still more immediate threat of war, which brought an increasingly desperate search for any alternative to the National Government, it was enough [115] to set a firm ceiling to any further progress by the Trotsky Defence Committee.
Publishing was a theatre in which pressure on rivals and critics of the CPGB, was strong. Trotsky does not seem to have had difficulties over bringing out his own books. He was a marketable commodity, even for the bourgeois houses. In 1937 British publishers released The Stalin School of Falsification and The Revolution Betrayed. [116] In the first part of 1938 he signed contracts with Nicholson and Watson for Stalin. [117]
Deutscher [118] held that the title of The Revolution Betrayed had more impact than the argument of this, arguably Trotsky’s major book. Maxton, who was always interested in what Trotsky wrote, felt there would have been no talk of betrayal had Lenin still been in Moscow. [119] Tribune commissioned Pat Sloan to review the book with, presumably, the intended results [120], but Fight thought “no such piece of social analysis had been produced since Lenin died in 1924. [121]
1937 saw also the publication of World Revolution, dedicated “to the Marxist Group”, the major historical-theoretical contribution from these islands to the Trotskyist canon. It was a massive tour-de-force reviewing the “rise and fall” of the Comintern up to 1935. Perhaps most interesting in its account was the concentration on Lenin’s key role in 1917 and later: James was one Trotskyist not in awe of the leader of the Fourth International. Trotsky himself thought World Revolution good but detected “a lack of dialectical approach, Anglo-Saxon empiricism and formalism”. [122] To Orwell the book was “very able”. [123] Brockway, James’s former patron, who had introduced him to Frederic Warburg, thought it “will influence substantially the thought of the time” but criticised Trotsky and his followers for seeing only the mistakes of Russia and the Comintern. [124] Emrys Hughes prescribed World Revolution with Back from the USSR as the antidote to Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan. [125] For The New Statesman, Postgate could find no errors of fact, and considered it “badly needed and likely to excite more anger than anything yet published this year.” [126]
The Communist press was certainly not pleased to see the book, but they did not ignore it. [127] Within the Trotskyist movement no theoretical criticisms of James were made [128], though there was scope in his account of the events of 1917.
In November, the British Committee announced publication of The Case of Leon Trotsky [129], being his case to the Dewey Commission. Brockway for once was positive: the book showed the evidence so far lay with Trotsky. [130] Hughes projected the book less forcefully than might have been expected. Martin, having read the proceedings of the trials as well as this volume concluded “the one court heard only the case for the prosecution, the other court only the case for the defence” In a statement probably reflecting the views of many, he wrote:
“The more closely I follow the present controversies about the USSR, the more convinced I am that the only honest attitude for a Socialist is to give general, but critical support to the one country in the world which has adopted a planned socialist economy”.
He continued,
“The Socialist’s duty is to watch the tendencies at work in the USSR with the closest and most critical attention and to be outspoken when they appear to be directed away from the ideals that the USSR set out to realise.” [131]
The Case of Leon Trotsky was published by Secker and Warburg. Frederic Warburg was refused an advertisement for it in Left Review, a ban which, he observed, was “striking at reason itself”. [132] J.P.M. Millar gleefully ran The Left Book Club’s Suppressed Editorial in The Plebs in November 1937 [133], as a counter to Left News. Yet Left Review did allow J.R. Campbell to review the book whose advertisement it had refused. [134] In the years before the war non-communist writers on the left would have been lost without Warburg. His 1938 list included not only The Black Jacobins by James but also The Conquest of Power by Albert Weisbord, Ethel Mannin’s Women and the Revolution and The Jesuits by F.A. Ridley. [135] So books of unorthodox Marxist inspiration were available, if not as well publicised as orthodox left works. It was not then for this reason that Trotsky’s works had a “minimal influence”. [136] More to the point is the meagre output of the Trotskyists themselves: C.L.R. James alone was an exception, and his work was known. [137] But most compelling was the general perception on the Left that the central issue of the time was one between a national government which given a choice between Stalin and Hitler would choose Hitler, and a popular front (later a “peace alliance”) of all those opposed to it. The Trotskyist view that unity should be a principle within and not beyond the working class movement could easily be presented as sectarian hair-splitting.
The Trotskyist press was small and tended to be spasmodic. [138] Those with access to it could read regularly Trotsky’s replies to the charges and critical articles by British and foreign Trotskyists. But Emrys Hughes was also a strong friend of Trotsky’s cause, even at the cost of his friendship with Pritt. [139] In view of his early stand the Committee seems to have dilatory in making contact with him. When they did he was helpful, inviting Sumner to use the pages of Forward to address an open letter to Pritt and Collard on the eve of the third trial. [140] He told Sumner that he was in complete agreement with the Dewey verdict and that neutrality was “impossible” in so great an historical controversy. To a London meeting he declared:
“It is the duty of all socialists whether Right or Left to stand fearlessly by the truth always. That is why in this particular controversy I am on the side of Comrade Trotsky.” [141]
The Committee would have had more to show for it had they given Hughes the attention they gave Brockway. Their relationship with The New Leader editor had finally dissolved in an acrimonious correspondence with Sumner. [142] Yet curiously it was the third (Bukharin) trial of March 1938 which finally led the ILP, to make up its mind. In the dock were some of those who had levelled accusations against Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1936. The New Leader called for an end to the Trials and on Jay Lovestone’s suggestion wrote to Stalin to protest. [143] Hughes maintained his policy of enthusiastic and independent criticism to the end. From December 1937 his arrangement to publish Trotsky was in evidence [144] and a long debate with stalwarts like William Gallacher and Zelda Coates stretched through to spring 1938. [145] Trotsky also had the occasional opportunity still to give his views to the capitalist press, [146] which indeed continued to cover the trials. [147]
The third trial was almost exactly contemporaneous with the Anschluss, which coincidence muffled the impact of Bukharin’s appeal. [148] By the time it took place, the News Chronicle, which had thought they would end in February 1937, was disenchanted. [149] The Manchester Guardian had, of course, always allowed criticism. The New Statesman thought the third trial “even more appalling” than the others and was puzzled at Kremlin unconcern at the effect it had on outside opinions. Its tone was now frank incredulity rather than the scepticism of the previous year. The change was noted by the active army of fellow travelling and communist correspondents whose letters now had the tone reserved for Forward. Albert Inkpin, now of the Friends of the Soviet Union, told Martin that all the bitterest enemies of the USSR would applaud his Diary! But Martin pertinently enquired, “What Soviet hero dare we praise today? Who is tomorrow’s carrion?” [150] Yet recoiling from the bizarre trials left Martin no more favourably disposed towards Trotsky. He still believed there was no value in Trotsky’s oppositionist movement and he felt forced to believe in an extended plot.
Disillusionment with communism may not have strengthened Trotskyism [151], but it did fatally weaken the popular front in Britain. [152] Russia’s image was harmed but the belief of some Trotskyists that they were put centre-stage as a result was quite misplaced. Communist dissidents questioned Marxism per se rather than moved to the left. [153] While firm Trotskyists were toughened by the experience, the older cadre of British Trotskyism shifted from the centre of activity about this time, perhaps not coincidentally. And at least one prominent Trotskyist, Arthur Ballard, lapsed from the movement because of the trials. [154] At this distance it might be easy to ask, with Shachtman,
“Who can believe that the men who literally taught the Russian proletariat the difference between Marxism and terrorism should now, under the workers” state, have taken up (in company, moreover, with Hitler and Himmler!) a weapon which they had rejected even in the struggle against Tsarism?” [155]
But they did believe it, or at least did not strive strenuously to disbelieve. As for the purveyors of the big lie, there were few limits to what they could now say. A choice morsel from a virulent feast is J.R. Campbell’s Labour Monthly article Munich. [156] The “servile grovelling” of Maxton and McGovern before Chamberlain on his return was evidence in the ILP of Trotskyist fifth column activity he declared. Impatient of nice distinctions between Trotskyism and the ILP, he asked if any British Communist would have been given the freedom allowed McGovern to tour Germany? It was now possible to say more or less anything about Trotsky and the Trotskyists. Reuben Osbert pioneered new psychoanalytic territory in 1938 with his discovery that Trotskyist theories were a mask for personal ambition [157]; this was why the unstable, unhappy, neurotic types on trial in Moscow abandoned their theories so easily. Trotsky and Zinoviev might have been inspiring figures in 1917, but ’other tasks became necessary later”. The 1936-7 trials, he concluded, showed that many of the leaders of the Russian Revolution were “akin to Fascist leaders in the subjective factors”. Such books were a threat to the already precarious existence of Trotskyism in the labour movement. [158] Strachey, writing after the cycle of trials was concluded, thought no one who read the various reports would not be “wholly convinced of the authenticity of the confessions”. [159] Trotsky might pose the unanswerable question, “if all the key positions were occupied by Trotskyists who submitted to me, why, in that case is Stalin in the Kremlin and I am in exile?”; it was a debate, however, not of truth with untruth, but of hugely unequal political forces. We can reflect, with Hugo Dewar,
“There can be little doubt that they (the communists – MU) did finally succeed in diverting the attention of left-wing opinion and those others whom they courted from the essential issues raised by the trials, and in persuading a very large body of public opinion that Stalin’s policy was right.” [160]
Inevitably, the work of the Trotsky Defence Committee suffers by comparison with its counterpart in the United States and, to a lesser extent, that in France. Why was this? Clearly the Americans gained strength from fast work. They had broadened before the end of 1936 to embrace an impressive galaxy of intellectuals [161], so much so that Trotsky called for the inclusion of more workers in the committee. By this date the British had only a dull list of adherents to offer and were to prove unable to retain them all. But this begs the question of why this early success was possible. In this respect the Americans had made a crucial break-through within the intelligentsia by their fusion with the American Workers Party in 1935. In the end, a number of intellectuals gained thereby became alienated from Trotskyism, but they retained a respect for Trotsky and their influence in 1936-38 was critical. A second vital factor bringing success in America was the presence from June 1936 of the entire Trotskyist movement within the Socialist Party. The trials were a live issue in the party and one reason for the willingness of Norman Thomas and others accepting the Trotskyists into membership. Finally, the Americans had from 1937 a positive immediate domestic focus for their work in the gathering of the Dewey Commission, whose impact on public opinion was strong. For the Americans, this was more than an intellectual debate. They actually doubled the size of their party in their short stay in the SP, the most successful entrist experiment ever conducted by Trotskyists.
The British were fully aware of the importance of a broad committee, but their efforts were not fruitful. Intellectuals had not rallied to Trotsky during his battle with Stalin in the 1920s. Indeed intellectuals did not come to communism in significant numbers until the 1930s after Trotskyism had been routed. They could feel no continuity with an earlier experience they had not shared. And they came to communism, or to belief in the need for a united or popular front, because of the threat of fascism and war, immediate. geographically and in time. “Unity” had necessarily to be a more powerful rallying cry in Europe than in the United States. If British writers and intellectuals doubted the trials, it did not imply support for Trotsky. Sturdy Anglo-Saxon empiricism kept them aloof from another totalitarian ideology, particularly one which had put on such a poor showing in its short life. Had the Trotskyist movement scored one direct political success, had it, for example, kept the Socialist League out of the Unity Campaign, things might have been different, but it was worsted at every stage.
In France, the threat of fascism was more immediate still, and the country had a far stronger Communist Party. Trotskyism had appealed to some intellectuals since the 1920s however. In 1936 the Pazes were available and Victor Serge had been released from Russia. France was also the home of the International Secretariat, the centre of the world Trotskyist movement. Sedov, Trotsky’s son, was an important figure within it and the chief organiser of evidence to be presented to Dewey from Europe. Yet it is thought that the Trials did “not materially alter the balance of opinion on the French extreme left” ... even after the Barcelona events. [162] The French Trotskyists were just as fractious as the British and certainly no more successful in their entry work within social democracy. The significance of the popular front was an immediate matter in France where the fate of the Blum government was linked to that of Spain. In Spain the Trotskyists were physically liquidated or driven out; in France their influence declined; in Britain a definite limit was drawn to their growth. Only in America was the campaign against the Moscow Trials a bridge to progress. There, in the view of Shachtman, the anti-Trials campaign of Trotskyists split the radical intellectual world wide open. It happened nowhere else. [163] In Britain especially, there was enough diversity on the left to prevent the Communist Party version carrying all before it [164], but communism’s loss, given that third parties had survived, was not Trotskyism’s gain.
Given the balance of forces on the left in mid 1936, there was no question of the Trotsky Defence Committee decisively discrediting the Trials. Something less than that would have counted as success. It has to be recorded, however, that the sense of malaise many liberal and socialist intellectuals felt by 1938 was traceable not to the Committee’s efforts but to the grotesque spectacle of medieval witchcraft trials in what was supposed to be the world’s first socialist State. A depressing codicil to, the Trotsky Defence Committee was a letter to the International Secretariat just before the Bukharin Trial. In it the three British groups, so fractious in other respects, united to condemn Lee and his group for publishing Workers International News and, as a pamphlet, the summary of Dewey’s final report, “without the permission or even the knowledge of the Trotsky Defence Committee, and without mentioning the Committee on the title-page of the pamphlet”. [165] It is lamentably significant that the three groups were able to avoid fractiousness only in their condemnation of a fourth. After Wicks and James had spoken on the Dewey Commission on 4 March 1938, little further activity seems to have been organised.
Notes
1. “When reports of labour camps and rigged trials and forced confessions came through, it was easy to dismiss them as yet another example of capitalist hostility”, Ted Willis, Whatever Happened to Tom Mix? l(190), l
2. N. Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, 1959, 47-8.
3. In Writers under two flags, (Left Review, Feb. 1936, 228-30), Charles Madge felt able to review Problems of Soviet Literature, a symposium which included essays by Bukharin and Radek, without any gratuitous cuffs.
b4. The Spiciest Dishes are Still to Come, May 1936, Writings (1935-36), p.109.
5. Notably To the Public Opinions of the Workers of the Whole World, 4 July 1936, Writings (1935-36), 35-7.
6. After August 1936, Trotsky was effectively silenced for four crucial months, the time remaining to him in Norway before his removal to Mexico at the end of the year. His enforced silence clearly helped the Trials with their stunning verdicts to gain credibility. His fate was for this time in the hands of his followers in the West.
The shifting attitude of Norwegian Social Democracy towards Trotsky, changing from warm comradeship and hospitality when he arrived from France in 1935, to frigidly forcing him out, is chronicled imaginatively by Isaac Deutscher in The Prophet Outcast, 1963, 292-355.
7. Trotsky Accused and Trotsky Replies, The New Leader, 21 Aug. 1936.
8. (Interview), 26 Aug. 1936.
9. The New Leader, 28 Aug. 1936. The London and Southern Counties divisional council of the ILP also supported the inquiry call “without associating itself with Trotsky’s views”.
10. Reported by Brockway in The New Statesman, 19 Sept. 1936.
11. With Dewar’s account of the events leading to his confinement, Fascists and Stalinists Hound Leon Trotsky, The Red Flag, Sept. 1936.
12. No study of the attitude of the Tory press in Britain has been undertaken.
13. Fight, 10 Oct. 1936. A delegation sent to the Soviet Embassy did not gain entrance.
14. Interview by Collins, Writings (1935-36), 77.
15. Dewar to Wicks [Jan.? 1937].
16. Only Wicks and another turned up for a 16 October meeting. Not more than three meetings could have been held in 1936, (“Charles Sumner” to C.L.R. James, 10 March 1937). The University of Hull papers contain no minutes of meetings before 1937.
17. One who declined was Stuart Purkis, who had parted with the League in 1934, since which time he had devoted himself to trade union affairs, rising to the executive of the Railway Clerks” Association and the presidency of the St. Pancras Trades Council. He was to be a stalwart of the committee, the only active participant not a member of one of the Trotskyist groups, (S. Purkis to Dewar, 12 Oct. 1936).
18. The first circular from the Trotskyist movement was of Trotsky’s reply to Tass to which was appended a petition to the Norwegian government over the Norwegian gag, over the name Judith Walters (n.d.,Warwick MSS. 15/3/1/75).
19. The New Statesman and Nation, 22, 29 August and 5 September 1936.
20. This presumably meant people who were not Trotskyists (Kingsley Martin to Purkis, 15 September 1936).
21. D.N. Pritt MP to J. Walters, 17 Sept. 1936. He took the opportunity, in declining, to correct her account of the trial.
22. This pamphlet of the Anglo Russian Parliamentary Committee explained that Trotsky was a bad organiser and had not in fact organised the 1917 revolution, (B. Pearce, The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials in M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, 1975, 221).
23. Two Crooked Lawyers, 1 Feb. 1937, Writings a Supplement (1934-40), 729. In later years Pritt continued to believe that reactions to the trial were a straight index of friendship or emnity to the USSR There had been “tragic abuses” during the Stalin period but the trials were not among them, From Right to Left, 1965, 108-115.
24. In “Socialist” Norway, Writings (1935-36), 129.
25. Emrys Hughes to “Sumner”, 15 Feb. 1938.
26. See for example Forward for 12 Sept. 1936.
27. F. Brockway to Dewar, 22 Oct. 1936. Dewar sought to allay his fears by expressing the hope that an authoritative committee might be built.
28. H. Wicks to Denise Naville, 29 Nov. 1936. Denise Naville lived with Trotsky’s son Leon Sedov, the coordinator of the European Trotskyist anti-trial drive. Wicks may have addressed the letter to her for security reasons.
29. One of which was the possibility of taking action for libel against communist and fascist papers. Though Brockway undertook to obtain a legal opinion it was Wicks who approached Arthur Reade, now a prosperous lawyer for advice. Reade thought the odds were stacked against success but was prepared to make the attempt, given solicitor’s instructions. He made it plain, however, that while he considered Trotsky as “the most superb warrior in the cause of the working people in modern history”, he had no sympathy for the Fourth International. Wicks knew of his association with the New Party and was interested only in his legal advice (A.E.E. Reade to Wicks, 2 Dec. 1936; author’s interview with Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979). Reade did, however, write to The Times and The Spectator supporting Trotsky.
30. It also appeared in The New Leader for 4 Dec. 1936 and in the January 1937 Red Flag.
31. Wicks to Naville, 29 Nov. 1936.
32. Brailsford and Horrabin, the two signatories best known in the labour movement were to curtail their support. Rowland Hill, the Bradford Trades Council president, and Conrad Noel, Christian Socialist and Vicar of Thaxted, were minor figures. There was no one on the list with a major reputation outside politics which makes a strong contrast to the position in the United States.
33. S. Samuels, English Intellectuals and Politics in the 1930s, P. Rieff (ed.), On Intellectuals, New York 1969, 242. There was certainly no English equivalent of Partisan Review, (J. Gilbert, Literature and Revolution in the United States, J.C.H, Vol.II, No.2, 1967, 161-76).
34. For the work of the American Committee, J.P. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism, New York 1973, 241; C.A. Myers, The Prophet’s Army, Westport, Conn. 1977, 133-7; Shachtman’s powerful polemic Behind the Moscow Trial (New York 1936) clarified by the context of its thesis just how much assistance the American Trotskyists received in the work from their presence in the Socialist Party. (Shachtman’s book was first published in Britain in 1971.)
35. For two years Hughes engaged in a running debate with Zelda K. Coates of the Anglo-Soviet Friendship Committee over the form and significance of the Trials.
36. He thought the Trials one reason for the rebuff suffered by the communists at the Plymouth TUC (Forward, 19 Sept. 1937).
37. Into this category also would fall the Independent Socialist Party, ILP dissidents whom Elijah Sandham had led out in 1934 in protest against working with the communists. The ISP welcomed the idea of a commission but advised against a meeting in Manchester, its base, unless success was certain (ISP to Trotsky Defence Committee, 9 Dec. 1956 and 5 March 1937).
38. Wicks recorded this as a constraint in his letter to Denise Naville of 29 November 1936. He confided to May Matlow that the stature of the Committee was at risk in view of the failure of other Trotskyists to send in material and complained of “a complete absence of cooperation” (letter of 31 Dec. 1936).
39. Reynolds News, 4 April 1937. Sumner wrote to the paper’s editor on 8 April to try and limit the damage, arguing that the Committee was not partisan but existed to achieve an international inquiry. This was an honest statement of intent, but simply did not square with Committee composition.
40. Brailsford was impressed by the fact of confession, yet thought the guilt of all save Stalin not “plausible history” (Moscow Trial must not shake our Faith in Russia, Reynolds News, 7 Feb. 1937.) The Reynolds postbag was dominated by critics of Brailsford’s misgivings.
41. They proposed common action with the Marxist League because of the advent of the Unity Campaign.
42. “...of all the liberal and radical newspapers, ... the most cogent and compelling in its scepticism”, J. Saville, May Day 1937, in A. Briggs and J. Seville (eds.), Essays in Labour History, 1918-1939, 1977, 266.
43. The Manchester Guardian, 2 Feb. 1937.
44. On 25 January 1937 Trotsky’s cable replying to allegations made at the Trial was printed in full. The following day his second cablegram appeared, as did a denial by Erwin Wolf of the IS that Piatakov had ever made an alleged visit to Trotsky in December 1935. An article by Sedov was also published. Trotsky’s denunciation of the Trials was printed by the Daily Express, also on 26 January. Trotsky had arrived in Tampico, Mexico, on 9 January 1937 and was able to reply point by point to the charges made against him in the second Trial.
45. C.L.R. James was, of course, one of the paper’s cricket correspondents.
46. The Manchester Guardian, 3 Feb. 1937.
47. This line of reasoning was much in favour, as is shown by the letter from William Rust to The Manchester Guardian on the same day. Dudley Collard, a Fabian lawyer and author of another pamphlet upholding the trials, refined the argument to explain Trotsky’s plans as desperate measures born of knowledge that he would get no support in view of “the rapid progress toward general prosperity”, (The Manchester Guardian, 5 Feb. 1937).
48. Central to Marjorie Pollitt’s pamphlet, Defeat of Trotskyism (Dec. 1937), was the argument that the Soviets, if they were unsound, would not dare to introduce a new constitution. This was a popular argument among defenders of the Trials as the pages of Forward and The New Statesman and Nation testified.
49. One publication remarkably uninterested in the Trials and Trotskyism was the internal organ of the CPGB, Discussion, which appeared from 1936 but never matched Controversy for interest.
50. There is an extensive discussion of the reactions of many fellow-travellers to the Trials in D. Caute, The Fellow-Travellers, 1973, 86, 115-26.
51. Horrabin to Wicks, 26 January 1937.
52 “Sumner” to Bertrand Russell, 10 March 1937. Once Russell had helped secure the release of a political prisoner he allowed the Committee to use his name but made it unmistakeably clear that none of his time or money would be at its disposal.
53. Sidney Silverman had concluded as early as September 1936 that a Trotskyist plot with the Nazis against Stalin’s life was impossible, (E. Hughes, Sidney Silverman: Rebel in Parliament, 1969, 60).
54. A member of the London Area Council of the Socialist League, wartime Daily Mirror journalist and later Labour MP for Gravesend.
55. The Manchester Guardian, 11 Feb. 1937; Fight, Feb. 1937; Sara and James were on the platform, (J. Saville, May Day 1937, in A. Briggs and J. Saville, op. cit., 284n). With the establishment of the full committee, Harry Wicks, the provisional secretary, was succeeded by Hilary Sumner-Boyd (q.v.). Reports of the contributions by Silverman and Groves also appear in The Star, 11 Feb. 1937.
56. The Manchester Guardian, 18 Feb. 1937. The previous day John Paton, no longer an ILPer, had, in a long letter to the paper’s editor, drawn on his personal acquaintance with Trotsky and familiarity with his ideas to dispute salient points of the prosecution case.
57. Minutes of the Trotsky Defence Committee, 19 Feb. 1937.
58 A Marxist Group member and wife of Bert Matlow, who had her own links with the International Secretariat in Paris.
59. Hilary Sumner-Boyd (1910-76) was born in Boston, Mass., and educated privately there and at Christ Church, Oxford. He spoke Greek, German, French, Turkish and the Latin languages. His father had known John Reed and Trotsky appears to have been acquainted with his mother. He was business manager of The >Red Flag, of the Marxist League and his flat at 238 Edgware Road, a centre for League activities (The Times, 18 Sept. 1976; L. Trotsky to Sumner, 21 May 1937, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 738; Interview with Harry Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979).
60. Minutes of the Trotsky Defence Committee, 5 March 1937. Boyd took the name “Charles Sumner” in committee work, as it was felt the name of its secretary should not be one which appeared on The Red Flag (“Sumner” to C.L.R. James, 10 March 1937). He also occasionally used the pseudonym A. Boyd. On 16 April “Hausa”, and on 30 April “Raja Rao” attended the Defence Committee. Possibly both were foreign Trotskyists.
61. The Manchester Guardian editor wrote “we do not think, however, that the Manchester Guardian can fairly be criticised for having closed our pages either to Trotsky himself or to his sympathisers during the last few years”, and declined Sumner’s articles. Only late in the year and in 1938 did the most willing Labour journal editor, Emrys Hughes, start to have exclusive articles from Trotsky for Forward. Sumner had played a part in ensuring that he would not have to pay Trotsky royalties (Writings (1937-38), 177).
62. He did receive an invitation from G.T. Hudson, Fellow of All Souls and secretary of the Thursday Lunch Club for Oxford Socialist Dons to address the club (G.T. Hudson to Sumner, 18 May 1937).
63. Erwin Wolf (1902-1937), a Czechoslovak refugee, was Trotsky’s secretary in Norway. He made the request under his pseudonym of Braun to May Matlow. Later that year Wolf fell into the hands of GPU agents in Spain and was never seen again.
64. Minutes of the Trotsky Defence Committee for 19 March 1937.
65. Sworn declarations were made by the three late in April 1937 but unfortunately they arrived in America too late to be useful (C. Sumner to Brockway 1 May 1937).
66. In its issue for 20 Nov. 1936.
67. Trotsky’s removal to Mexico in December frustrated this effort, (Inside the Left, 1942, 258-9).
68. The New Leader, Jan. 1937.
69. The Scottish ILP expressed disquiet at the new trial, following a heated controversy at its conference of January 1937, (Forward, 30 Jan. 1937) but Carmichael, on behalf of the NAC, told the National Party Conference at Easter that “the evidence at present available is inadequate to reach a final judgment”, (The New Leader, 2 April 1937).
70. An article of 6 March 1937. Brockway published it with his reply. The Tragedy of Trotsky restating the impartiality argument in The New Leader for 3 Sept. 1937. Sumner analysed Brockway’s attitude in The Case of Leon Trotsky, Information Bulletin, 2, July 1937.
71. The Dewey Commission was formed by an initiative of the American, British, French and Czech defence committees in March 1937. It was established to stage a counter-trial which was held in April, and that year published two volumes of evidence, The Case of Leon Trotsky and Not Guilty! Deutscher’s account of the Commission proceedings is in The Prophet Outcast, 371-82.
72. A Marxist Group delegate was present at only one of the eight committee meetings up to 5 March 1937 (“Charles Sumner” to C.L.R. James, 10 March 1937).
73. This matter was discussed, though no action was taken, at the Defence Committee meeting of 5 March.
74. “Charles Sumner” to C.L.R. James, 10 March 1937.
75. Minutes of Trotsky Defence Committee, 19 March 1937.
76. The speech is known under the title I Stake My Life: Shaw was to be asked to write an introduction to the English edition which never materialised due to imports of the American edition undertaken by Sid Sandel, Militant Group literature secretary and English agent for Pioneer Press, the New York Trotskyist Publishing House.
77. Minutes of Trotsky Defence Committee, 30 April 1937.
78. “Neither in the meetings of the committee, announcements of which have been regularly sent, nor in the selling of its publications, nor in the production of its Bulletins has the committee received the least help from the Marxist Group.” (C. Sumner to Ballard, 16 July 1937.)
79. And, perhaps, attacks on the wrong people; see Sumner, The Case of Fenner Brockway, Information Bulletin, 2, July 1937. Elsewhere in the same issue were a review by Sumner of The Revolution Betrayed and World Revolution and an article by Hugo Dewar, The G.P.U. in Spain. It has been suggested that there were five Information Bulletins (A. Penn, op. cit., 117).
80. Warwick MSS.
81. Minutes of the Trotsky Defence Committee, 2 April 1937. Silverman was chosen at the next meeting.
82. Minutes of the Trotsky Defence Committee, 16 April 1937.
83. The Dewey Commission was prepared to have a British member, but could not finance the visit, (Suzanne LaFollette, secretary of the Commission, to Sumner, 29 July 1937).
84. Warwick MSS.
85. The USSR Month By Month: The Trial, Left Book News, Oct. 1936, 123-8; The USSR Month By Month: The Guilty, Left Book News, April 1937, 326-32.
86. [Victor Gollancz] to Hugo Dewar, 17 Oct. 1936.
87. It quoted only one instance however (The Red Flag, March-April 1937).
88. The Red Flag, May-June 1937.
89. Left Review,April 1937, 116-8. When a second edition of his Marxism and History was projected Jackson was reduced to trying to remove Trotsky and Bukharin from the reading list, (R. Challinor, John S. Clarke, 1977, 77-9). Neither Left Review nor Left News told their readers that the “transcript” of the trial was not a full one.
90. Left Review, Sept. 1937.
91. J. Strachey, Trotskyism, Daily Worker, 22 Jan. 1937.
92. One enthusiast was Frank Horrabin, who had earlier suppressed his inclination to support Trotsky. Frederic Warburg, head of Secker and Warburg ran a provocative advertisement capitalising on the correspondence in The New Statesman for 15 May.
93. Skinner claimed the backing of Brockway, W.T. Colyer, Ernest Fernybough, Horrabin, Arthur Creech-Jones MP, J.P.M. Millar, John Parker MP, Reginald Reynolds, Sydney Silverman MP, and others, (ibid., 12 June). On 7 May Reginald Sorenson wrote to defend the idea from a right wing point of view. In his broad The Left in Britain, 1931 to 1941, Jupp justifies Left Book Club selectivity by reference to an alleged absence of alternative socialist writing, but Warburg’s lists confound this belief. An interesting post script is the letter by “Critic” (Kingsley Martin?) to Forward, 25 June 1938. For Skinner see J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds.), Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol.5, 198-9.
94. Inside the Whale and other essays, 1967, 32. Orwell was never a Trotskyist. He thought their papers “miserable little rags” and held Trotskyism one of “the ruthless ideologies of the Continent”. It was the ex-Trotskyists Burnham and Souvarine, rather than Trotsky himself, who inspired 1984 and Animal Farm (William Steinhoff, The Road to 1984, 1975, 32-3). Orwell did sign the Breton-Rivera manifesto Towards A Free Revolutionary Art, which Trotsky endorsed (The Collected Essays, 1, 1971, 416).
95. George Woodcock suggested that those younger poets who began to write in the later 1930s were anti-Stalinists of one or other kind (The Crystal Spirit, 1970, 198). T.S. Eliot, whom Woodcock quoted as an exception contradicting Orwell’s charge rejected Animal Farm on behalf of Faber and Faber in 1944, apparently for political reasons (W. Steinhoff, The Road to 1984, 116).
96. The New Statesman and Nation, 10 April 1937.
97. ibid., 22 May 1937. This belief, which Brockway shared, was of course false (see above). N. Wood describes the “critical independence” of The New Statesman with useful references, in Communism and British Intellectuals, 1959, 49-50.
98. The New Statesman and Nation, 10 April 1937. Martin told his readers that Trotsky’s anger made him think there might be something in the Moscow charges.
99. It was Martin’s defence of Pritt which enraged Trotsky, who described the interview publicly as ’rather piquant” but privately believed Martin to have been drunk and to have attributed instability to him because his condition had been apparent (Opinions and Information, 12 May 1937, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 736-7).
100. He would not print two articles by Orwell, who had earlier respected the New Statesman’s coverage, on the situation behind the lines in Spain, nor a review by him of Franz Borkenau’s The Spanish Cockpit. For a discussion of his motives see C.H. Rolph, Kingsley, 1973, 225-30. See also Spilling the Spanish Beans, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, 1971, 305.
101. Editor, 1968, 232-4.
102. The New Statesman and Nation, 24 July 1937.
103. ’Charles Sumner” to Noel, Shaw, Hill, Rathbone and Allingham, 10 March 1937. He also informed them that Ethel Mannin, as well as Russell, was now of their number. She was a writer who had joined the ILP, in 1932 and whose articles on Russia were admired by Trotsky (Schmidt’s Trip to England, 19 Jan. 1936, Writings Supplement (1934-40), 639-40). For an example of her analysis of the Soviets see The New Leader for 17 Dec. 1936.
104. Minutes of the Trotsky Defence Committee, 19 March 1937. Wicks, May Matlow and Jackson backed him, but Dewar, Purkis and Hilda Lane favoured an approach to working class organisations.
105. ’Charles Sumner” to K. Alexander (2 April 1937). Sumner reported Sedov’s views to the committee on 2 April. Sedov and Trotsky seem to have differed on this point: Trotsky reproached the Americans for failing to involve workers in their Defence Committee (I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 367).
106. Minutes of Trotsky Defence Committee, 2 April 1937.
107. Minutes of Trotsky Defence Committee, 30 April 1937.
108. Brockway to Sumner, 9 April 1937. Sumner’s sharp reply, dated 1 May 1937 sarcastically inquired just how far collaboration went.
109. Trotsky to Sumner, 21 May 1937, Writings: Supplement (1934-40), 738.
110. Letters to the British Committee dated 20 June, 21 July 1937.
111. Beatrice Webb told Madame Halevy on 1 September 1936 that testimony had to be accepted in law as conclusive evidence in view of the lack of stability in Russia, (The Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Vol.3, N. Mackenzie (ed.), Pilgrimage, 1912-1947, Cambridge 1978).
112. See M. Foot, Aneurin Bevan, 264, and B. Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, 81.
113. The New Statesman and Nation, 22, 29 Aug. 1936.
114. British Labour Comes to Life, The Nation (New York), 20 Nov. 1937.
115. For the electoral facet of the Popular Front case see M. Foot, op. cit., 242-3.
116. Published by Faber and Faber.
117. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 445n. As late as 28 September 1933 Trotsky had hopes that Gollancz, who had published The History of the Russian Revolution (1930) might bring out his Lenin (and that Arthur Ransome might edit it), ibid., 260n.
118. The Prophet Outcast, ibid., 321. J. Jupp, on the other hand believes it made an impression (The Left in Britain, 1931 to 1941, 6.).
119. The New Leader, 11 June 1937.
120. D. Caute, The Fellow Travellers, 158.
121. Though it thought a lack of references might prevent Trotsky’s text moving hardened sceptics (Fight, Aug. 1937.).
122. On the History of the Left Opposition, Writings: 1938-39, 61-2.
123. Time and Tide, 9 Oct. 1937, from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, 1971, 320-2.
124. The New Leader, 16 April 1937. Brockway’s dismissal, in his review, of the Trotskyists as ’the merest trifling sects” stung James into replying the following week that the Fourth International, though small, still constituted a threat.
125. Forward, 15 May 1937.
1126. The New Statesman and Nation, 8 May 1937.
127. R.F. Andrews, Leninism Trotskyified, Left Review (1937), 291-9.
128. Hilda Vernon for Youth Militant thought it filled “a considerable gap in revolutionary literature”. Harry Wicks, who had assisted the author in his work was asked in a non-sectarian gesture by Fight to review it in May 1937. In the United States, the Trotskyists had their own press, Pioneer, which they used to bring out World Revolution in 1937.
129. Warwick MSS 15/4/1/17 (I).
130. The New Leader, 26 Nov. 1937.
131. The New Statesman and Nation, 6 Nov. 1937. The following week Sumner wrote that Dewey was examining not only verbal evidence but documents as well, and that factual errors in the Moscow case had been decisively established. But the same issue also carried a letter from Randall Swingler who thought there was a distinction between criticism and destructive attacks, and that “this line separates us both from Dr Goebbels and from Leon Trotsky”.
132. The Plebs, Dec. 1937, 298. Warburg wrote to The New Statesman, 6 Nov. 1937 and The New Leader, 5 Nov. 1937. In the Statesman he declared: “We must all fight for liberty against fascism but we need not all fall in behind the communist steamroller”. It was revealed early in 1938 that the communists had stopped advertising in Controversy.
133. See also F. Warburg, An Occupation for Gentlemen, 1959, 201-2, 250.
134. Trotsky’s “Explanations”, Left Review, Dec. 1937, 685-8.
135. The relationship between Warburg and unorthodox intellectuals of the Left is discussed in Ivor Oxaal, Black Intellectuals came to Power, 1971, 70-1. See also F. Warburg, An Occupation for Gentlemen. The story of Orwell’s difficulties with Homage to Catalonia are well known and representative enough, though Orwell later came to feel that he had marred the book by being soft on the Trotskyists (Why I Write;, The Collected Essays, Vol.1, 1971, 29).
136. G. Werskey, The Visible College, 1977, 180. Werskey devotes negligible attention to the Trials though it is remarkable that scientific inquirers did not raise questions about Russia.
137. Communist historians, at least, read The Black Jacobins, (E. Hobsbawm, The Historians Group of the Communist Party, M. Cornforth (ed.), Rebels and their Causes, 1978, 23).
138. The Red Flag was more regular in 1936 than in 1937. Fight began publication late in 1936 but appeared fairly regularly in 1937. In February of that year the printed Militant appeared and it came out monthly.
139. The Red Flag and Fight gave the strongest coverage. Among The Red Flag articles were Trotsky’s Traducers (Oct. 1936), The Novosibirsk Trial (Jan. 1937), and some of Shame! in March-April 1937. Fight discussed the Report of the Proceedings in the Case of the Zinoviev-Trotskyite Centre in April 1937 and in July 1937 printed an extract from Trotsky’s opening speech to the Dewey Commission. His closing speech appeared the next month.
140. C. Sumner to Hughes, 15 February 1938
141. From a letter to be read out at an Essex Hall meeting, 25 February 1938.
142. Of which the last shot was F. Brockway to Sumner, 7 February 1938. Hughes’s correspondence with Trotsky and related papers are held at the Hardie/Hughes Collection, National Library of Scotland, MS Dep. 176, Box 1, File 4.
143. Stalin – Stop!, The New Leader, 11 March 1938; The Times, 10 March 1938. Brockway had now concluded that the Stalin-Trotsky clash sprang from a fundamental conflict between the economic and political structures in Russia: the absence of workers” democracy, he decided, was the root cause (Inside the Left, 1942, 260). When Not Guilty!“, the second Dewey volume, was published he concluded, “of the evidence against Trotsky I will say only that in every case where it could be tested it has been conclusively disproved” (The New Leader, 11 Nov. 1938).
144. See Trotsky’s Forward articles, Cain in the Kremlin (11 Dec. 1937), and other contributions on 15 January, 16 April and 20 August 1938.
145. Forward, 18 and 25 December 1937 and passim. See also the exchange between Charles van Gelderen and Gallacher, 22, 29 January 1938. W.P. and Z. Coates published The Moscow Trial, which included two speeches by Stalin, a 1937 pamphlet for the Friends of the Soviet Union.
146. Behind the Moscow Trials, Sunday Express, 6 March 1938.
147. This was notably the case with the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.
148. J. Saville, loc. cit., 268.
149. Although A.J. Cummins’s direct coverage had been favourable to them an early editorial had expressed doubts and by late 1937 Cummings himself was writing of “Trotsky-crazy Russia”.
150. The New Statesman and Nation, 12 March 1938.
151. George Orwell for example became disillusioned far earlier than his contemporaries, but though he used Gollancz to stop attacks by the Daily Worker and denounced communism as a counter-revolutionary force he never became a Trotskyist. Similarly, the development of the Labour League of Youth was stunted, but Trotskyism did not significantly grow, (T. Willis, Whatever Happened to Tom Mix?, 1970, 185).
152. J.F. Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 1969, 236-7; Inside the Left, 269; B. Jones, The Russia Complex, 1977, 24-6.
153. The 1930s recruits to the party had no background in its history, (W. Kendall, The Communist Party of Great Britain, Survey, no.1, 1974, 118-31).
154. Interview with Harry Wicks, Nov. 1979. Ballard resumed connections with the ILP and wrote for The New Leader on colonial affairs from 1938. He was a delegate to the ILP annual conference in 1939.
155. Behind the Moscow Trial, 1971, 7. Trotsky’s In Defence of Terrorism, in which he opposed individual terror, was republished in 1938.
156. “Left”, Socialism and the Crisis: A study in Fifth Column Activity, Labour Monthly, Nov. 1938, 690-8.
157. Writing under the pseudonym R. Osborn, Osbert devoted a whole chapter of The Psychology of Reaction (1938) to the dark forces of the id which created Trotskyism.
158. The culmination of communist attacks on Trotskyism was J.R. Campbell’s full-length Soviet Policy and Its Critics (1939), in which the author, who quoted from British Trotskyists as well as those abroad, sought to demonstrate that Trotskyism was the source of all streams of criticism which confuse and weaken the working class.
159. He accepted the whole farrago of links between Trotsky, Hitler, Yagoda and Bukharin but his article, unlike his books, did not rest on a single quotation, Topic of the Month: The Soviet Trials, The Left News, July 1938, 885-91. In 1936, however, he had shown himself far more fastidious than others. See The Theory and Practice of Socialism, 1936, 431-2.
160. The Moscow Trials, Encounter, 1962, 93.
161. James T. Farrell organised an early committee to win right of asylum for Trotsky during his incarceration at Hønefoss.
162. D. Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914-1960, 1964, 127.
163. In The Prophet’s Army, 1928-41, Westport, Conn. 1977, C.A. Myers quotes from Shachtman’s unpublished reminiscences.
164. J. Saville, May Day 1937 in A. Briggs and J. Saville, (eds.), Essays in Labour History, 3, 1977, 264-70.
165. “C. Sumner” to the International Secretariat, 6 Feb. 1938. Sumner sent copies to Trotsky and Sedov.
*********
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
VII
THE BOLSHEVIK-LENINISTS AND THE MILITANT GROUP
(1934-1937)
The “Bolshevik-Leninists” in the Labour Party worked in the political area with the greatest potential for Trotskyist growth in the 1930s: the Labour League of Youth. It took two years for them to concentrate in the LLOY, and they thus lost their best chance to rival communist sympathisers on equal terms, They were also hampered by arguing a tactical case for which it was difficult to obtain support. In 1937 communist pressure on the League became more intense and a debate between Stalinism and Trotskyism took place, with Trotskyism on the defensive. The Bolshevik-Leninists gained sufficient backing to pass beyond exclusively youth work, but remained confined within Labour Party boundaries. This circumscribed growth. Differences of style among the Bolshevik-Leninists, now known as the Militant Group, maimed their organisation at the end of 1937.
Within the Labour League of Youth there was throughout the 1930s a strong desire for autonomy and widespread political criticism of the party’s leadership. The League was small in 1934 when Ted Willis, a Tottenham Leaguer who had moved to the left and Roma, younger sister of Hugo Dewar, combined in opposition to Labour’s Peace and War policy at its 1934 conference. Willis successfully moved rejection of the League of Nations and a call for the formation of anti-war committees by ninety to seventeen. [1] There were at this stage no definite factions either of communism or Trotskyism [2], though CPGB interest in the League was growing. [3] It was possible for Dewar and Willis to collaborate in a small unofficial journal Youth Forum. [4] During 1935 and 1936 communist influence grew on Willis and other leading activists within the League. The Trotskyist presence hardened with the departure from the ILP, for the League of Youth and, (initially), the Socialist League of Stuart Kirby [5] and D.D. Harber early in 1935. [6] It seems no definite faction was formed at once but in October of that year with Roma Dewar, they published Youth Militant, a duplicated journal. [7] Two months later a group of London League members led by Ted Willis launched the duplicated Advance with an initial print run of 500. [8] Around these journals rival factions would crystallize.
1936 was a critical year for the League of Youth. Within its ranks there was mounting resentment at the NEC policy of curtailing political debate. [9] Defenders of the official position were few and on the defensive. [10] Youth Militant supporters, six strong, formed themselves into the “Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party” in February of that year. [11] At that time they controlled the League’s London Advisory Committee and were selling 250 copies of their journal. [12] They shared with Advance an intransigent opposition to a memorandum from the National Executive which sought to restrict League activity to social matters. But whereas Advance favoured a merger with the Young Communist League to form a mass youth movement, Youth Militant argued for a breakaway from the Labour Party and the establishment of .an independent League. [13] In the Spring months of 1936, Advance gained ground against Youth Militant in the London Region. Youth Militant was unable to transform its position on the Advisory Committee into strength at quarterly conferences. [14] Advance carried its views forty-two to sixteen at the first of the year against not only the Bolshevik-Leninists, but others of different persuasion as well. [15] The League met in national, conference at Manchester that summer. There was only one dissenter from a South Tottenham resolution condemning the memorandum. Roma Dewar was returned to the National Advisory Committee as its only Trotskyist [16], but a narrow majority backed unity of the left parties. [17] Following the Manchester decisions the YCL approached the League of Youth to propose a YCL-LLOY merger. [18]
Through 1936 the Bolshevik-Leninists built up their support in the League of Youth. Sales of Youth Militant more than trebled to 800 by October. [19] In the same period they grew from six to sixty members, mainly by recruiting people new to Trotskyism. Forty of these were within the League of Youth. [20] Harber attended the youth conference of the ICL of 1 August 1936 following the international pre-conference. The youth conference resolved that the Fourth International could be built only by a resolute struggle against the Second and Third Internationals and the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Youth Organisations. [21] Taken with the “Geneva” resolution and Trotsky’s writings, this was a strong inducement for assembling all personnel in the Labour League of Youth. Some former Marxist Groupers came over to the Bolshevik-Leninists following the debacle at the Keighley conference of the ILP. [22] On 11 October 1936, twenty six Bolshevik-Leninists attended the national meeting of the groups and put a strong line based on the Geneva conference. The Marxist Group conference of the previous day effectively marked off those ILPers who were now prepared to join the Labour Party. [23] In the autumn Don James and two others came over from the Liverpool ILP. [24] The Bolshevik-Leninists also encountered a loose association of dissident Marxists who sold Trotsky’s pamphlets and the American Militant in Hyde Park and at Marble Arch. They were inducted before 1936 was out. [25] Against these accessions had to be balanced the failure to achieve a modus operandi with the Marxist League [26] although both it and the Bolshevik-Leninists had an interest in each other’s field of work. [27] But Bolshevik-Leninists had played some part in launching Fight as an FI journal in October. [28]
The Bolshevik-Leninists, (who from summer 1937 became known as the Militant Group), operated within what became known as a “split perspective”. They intended, like all other Trotskyists who in these years joined larger parties, to leave with the foreseeable future. Hopefully, this break would be made with an enhanced membership. [29] But the corollary of aiming at a breakaway was that the entrists and not the party apparatus would decide the timing. It therefore became vital that they should not be compromised by unconstitutional activities before they had sufficient opportunity to gather support. This was not a new problem: it had preoccupied members of the Marxist Group in the ILP. Some of them were now among the Bolshevik-Leninists and fear of premature expulsion was to be a steady influence on their behaviour. The Bolshevik-Leninists knew they had to establish a separate identity and give the appearance of intending a permanent Labour Party presence. [30] For the moment they had strong backing from Trotsky and the International in their stress on party activities. The International Bureau, when it rapped the knuckles of C.L.R. James for an ill-considered departure from the ILP, endorsed the Bolshevik-Leninists” fear that an outside group for the Fourth International would compromise them. [31]
Thus while the Socialist League, with communist support, confronted the Labour Party apparatus virtually courting expulsion, the Labour League of Youth, also with communist support, backed away from a clash and restrained its demands. [32] Trotskyism. found itself arguing for the Socialist League to stay within the party and the Labour League of Youth to come out, though in both places it opposed the imminent Unity Campaign. [33] Youth Militant rejected the Advance policy of local fights against the memorandum and proposed an independent League. [34] Although Advance was to weaken its resistance to the memorandum, it was Youth Militant which had the more difficult case to argue. Its strategy was less concrete, more speculative, and as well as the contemporary spectacle of the doomed Socialist League, there was the salutary example of the fate of the ILP to hold up as a warning of what happened to those who defied Transport House. [35]
In 1937 there was far more sourness than before in the debate within the League. The change of mood coincided with increased communist bitterness towards Trotsky and his followers arising from the first Moscow trial of August 1936 and the development of the revolution in Spain. It turned on the different reactions of the two factions to the decision of the Edinburgh conference of the Labour Party to uphold the NEC memorandum. Ted Willis and Advance concluded that the battle against it had failed to rouse youth and ascribed this failure to introspection and deadlock in the London area where three papers other than theirs circulated. [36] From this time they discouraged the projected YCL merger and advised against the split policy of Youth Militant, described as “throwing in the sponge”. Youth Militant persisted with its policy of fighting for an independent League and became principal advocate of defying the NEC. [37]
With the Socialist League decision to join the Unity Campaign three discernible groups within it were left with the problem of how to react. As well as the Marxist League and the Militant Group (who had five SL activists) there were those like Margaret McCarthy and Garry Allingham who had no group. Within the Militant Group a speedy dissolution of the Socialist League was anticipated and a proposal by Harber that it seek a merger with these “centrists” was discussed [38], Had his proposal been adopted and the attempt met with success it is possible that a step away from isolation, similar to that taken by the Communist League of America in 1935, might have considerably enhanced Trotskyism’s clout. [39] But there is a depressing significance in discussion of merger with these individuals rather than with the Marxist League. On the Trotsky Defence Committee [40] and in the SL it was clear that membership of the Labour Party was practically the only thing these two factions had in common. But the Militant Group did feel keenly the need for common Trotskyist action in face of the Unity Campaign and its January initiative led to the meeting of all factions on 14 February 1937.
Youth Militant’s circulation was 1,600 in February and it had established contact with 70 Leagues [40], but a February 1937 gathering of the Leagues showed it to be on the defensive. In the spring it printed its programme for youth, a platform intended to revive the League and prevent membership loss to the YCL or Mosley. The League was faced” with the NEC memorandum. To capitulate meant extinction; to reject meant dissolution. Youth Militant proposed that the League should take its own organisation into its own hands and build a mass base. It would then seek affiliation to the Labour Party (from which it would sever no ties in the interim) as an autonomous unit. The programme provided by Youth Militant was for the most part a standard Trotskyist analysis of imperialism, the danger of war and the rise of fascism. Its immediate demands were for a total rejection of all activities connected with war preparation – rearmament, industrial conscription and exposure of the League of Nations; for resistance to fascist advance not by employing state forces but by use of workers” defence corps; for industrial action to prevent arms being sent to suppress colonial movements; for the right of all working class parties to affiliate to the Labour Party; for the closed shop, industrial unionism and the forty hour week; for a labour movement campaign against the embargo on arms for Spain and the banning of volunteers, and for an international commission of enquiry into communist allegations against the POUM. [41]
On 4 April 1937, the London Leagues met and condemned Youth Militant by a majority of three to one. It had committed a tactical error by condemning a summer campaign projected by Advance as a non-political concession to the requirements of the memorandum. In February a Youth Militant supporter called for a League conference to be summoned. [42] The National Advisory Council of the League, dominated by Advance supporters, shortly moved to convene an unofficial conference. Youth Militant criticised the nature of its arrangements [43] and insisted that a healthy youth body could only be built outside the party. [44] The conference, it predicted, would decide if there was to be “a Revolutionary Socialist Youth Organisation, or ... a pale and feeble imitation of the Young Imperialists?” [45] The debate between Advance, (assisted by the YCL), and Youth Militant grew increasingly sharp. Indeed from the time of the second Moscow Trial of February 1937, there is little to choose between YCL attacks and those mounted by Advance on the Trotskyists. [46] Programmatically they were accused of lining up with the bourgeoisie and the gutter press over the Trials, with Transport House and The Times over the Unity Campaign and with the POUM against the Spanish Government “objectively aiding the fascists”. [47] When the unofficial conference convened at Whitsun 1937, it upheld the Advance perspective for League growth and trounced the Trotskyists on Spain. Conference was held in London, the base of Advance and provider of more than seventy five per cent of the delegates. [48] The debate on Spain occurred simultaneously with the Barcelona uprising. Emergency resolutions were allowed and Sid Bone and Charles van Gelderen put forward the case against suppression of working class parties. In a tumultuous debate delegates’ indignation was restrained only with difficulty and a different resolution was carried by acclamation. [49] Trotskyist strength among the delegates did not rise above a dozen votes on any issue. [50] It can only have been potential rather than present Trotskyist appeal which sparked the vituperation of YCL and Advance attacks on Youth Militant after the conference. [51] Spain [52] and the unofficial conference marked off a phase in the development of the League of Youth and a stage in the growth of the Militant group as well. [53]
Youth Militant did not pull out of the League after Whitsun, but the group felt its limited opportunities in the youth movement rivalled by Labour Party potential. Carriage of the Advance programme by the LLOY, meant “complete oblivion of the League as a political. organisation”. The only hope was felt to be links with the Socialist Left fighting for party democracy. [54] Youth Militant supporters were to have a hand in launching the Socialist Left Federation in June 1937 though this initiative came to little; Advance on the other hand did lead the League to a spell of rapid growth even with its less ambitious orientation. When the 1937 Labour Party conference reinstated Willis, his paper and the NAC with official status their prestige as people who had argued that a modus vivendi might be reached was much enhanced. [55] Youth activities by the Trotskyists continued but they never passed the strength reached by the time of the Whitsun conference. [56] They retained control of some London Leagues and even expanded, but their own coverage of their activities reads as a catalogue of defeats. At quarterly conferences of the London Leagues they were steadily and depressingly voted down. [57] It may have been this impasse as well as lack of money which led to the absence of a delegate from Britain’s Trotskyist Youth from the August 1937 meeting of the International Youth Bureau. One attempt to concretise the Trotskyist alternative was a startling proposal that the LLOY should merge with theYCL That body had no enthusiasm for it and Advance, which had itself moved in this direction a year earlier, now opposed the plan. [58] The Trotskyists stayed within the League of Youth but felt they now had outlets in the Labour Party itself. The last Youth Militant for the time being [59] offered model resolutions for submission to party conference that autumn. In July 1937 the duplicated Militant [60] absorbed the printed Militant to give one printed monthly. [61] Under the editorship of E. Starkey Jackson, with assistance from Margaret Johns, the Militant was a less introverted paper which dropped its knockabout lampoons of Willis et al. for a broader appeal. It had some claim to being the best paper yet produced by British Trotskyism and was certainly the first to appear with consistent regularity. But it is arguable that the change from a youth paper was made late [62] and certain that the Group had not yet shown it could transcend mere commentary on union affairs. [63]
Militant’s real drive was towards Labour Party change. It insisted – quite wrongly as it turned out – that the only hope for the League of Youth was as part of the movement for democracy now accelerating within the party. This was a time when defeats for the Divisional Labour Parties led them to rally and secure constitutional success in their drive for expression within the party. [64] The first printed Militant declared:
We therefore call far the immediate creation of a left-wing organisation which will include all Labour Party workers who are willing to struggle for a revolutionary programme and leadership, an organisation which can offer to the workers a clear socialist alternative to the policies of treachery and despair of the existing leadership. [65]
For a time the Militant Group hoped, like the Marxist League, to fill the vacuum with the Socialist Left Federation, formed by twelve Labour Party members in June. Led by a Bureau of seven, whose members included Groves and Harber, it managed some initial growth. Militant’s hopes were to be dashed, but it did take the opportunity here and elsewhere to explain its conception of unity in opposition to that in the name of which the Socialist League had sacrificed itself. [66] Because of willingness on either side to engage in war, Militant’s shots were aimed equally at right and left, [67] with the League of Nations singled out for particular attention.
By August 1937 Militant had established a national identity. Its paper, whether in its youth or adult incarnation, was probably the best known Trotskyist journal and certainly the chief organ of the movement within the Labour Party and the League of Youth. Circulation was still below 2,000 although it was known that it could pay on a 3,000 print run. Militant was to make an admirable break with Trotskyist tradition by appearing monthly for several years. Members were separately organised not only in eight London areas but also in groups in Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull, Glasgow, Norwich and Leicester. Membership was in double figures in London and Liverpool. It was still overwhelmingly a Labour Party group, though ILP members had been retained in Liverpool, Glasgow and elsewhere. [68] When delegates gathered in London for the annual conference on 1-2 August 1937 they had every reason to believe they had established the most stable organisation yet in British Trotskyism’s chequered history [69] and certainly that they had convened the most representative gathering to date. Yet the same conference revealed that different local groups were operating in different ways. Some were working secretly and presumably not selling papers at all. The August conference was confronted by an executive resolution, moved by Harber, which called for the setting up of a front organisation to advance most of the Bolshevik-Leninist programme in the Labour Party. It would not, he suggested, call for the creation of a new party and the Fourth International. So long as the Bolshevik-Leninists continued as a disciplined group within it, steering towards a split, centrist degeneration like that shown by the ILP and the Socialist League could be prevented. During the debate there was some unease. After all, there had been a vacuum at the heart of the Marxist Group in the experience of some of those present. [70] Harber’s proposition for such an organisation to be set up was carried easily, but the majority for keeping a Bolshevik-Leninist faction in being was far narrower. [71] This debate overlapped a tactical dispute over whether or not to enter the Socialist Left Federation. The Liverpool Group proposed staying clear of “centrism” which, moreover, it believed to be very weak in this case. Jackson explained the EC fear that ignoring it might isolate the group from the left of the old Socialist League and permit the emergence of new centrist currents. Before he carried the day [72] there was the expression of much misgiving. Essentially the Liverpool/EC clash on the SLF was over timing, since the decision to set up what was to be the Militant Labour League was already made and the whole group would give up the SLF in September. Once again however, the important and the unimportant had been inverted. It was true that Militant was easily the premier British group, but the moment for maximum impact in the Labour Party had been six months earlier. Militant had managed a leaflet to the special conference of the Socialist League which had decided to join the Unity Campaign, but, as Jackson reflected:
When the SL capitulated to the Stalinists we were unable to capitalise (on) the situation because of our unpreparedness. At that time we had five members in the SL. [73]
In the trade unions the Militant Group was doing practically no work. This was a general weakness of Trotskyism in the 1930s. For this particular group it might be disastrous because, as Davis observed, when the intended split from the Labour Party took place, trade unions would be its lifeline. Of course the split perspective maintained for the Labour Party was not applied to the trade unions: Trotskyism had no time for “red unionism”. But when discussion took place at conference there was a revealing confusion between rank and file organisation and strike committees and all references to disputes were clearly made by observers. [74] Two months after conference trade union activity extended only to the semblance of an AEU fraction [75], a foothold in the NUR [76] and the Musicians’ Union [77] and a presence (shared by the Marxist Group) on the Metro Council of the Shop Assistants’ Union. [78] When a comparison is made with the capable industrial workers the CPGB had within its ranks, this was poor. John Goffe, a management trainee, was industrial organiser. An attempt was made to improve matters in November with the decision to promote joint fractions with the Marxist Group in the AEU, SAU, and NUC. [79] When, following workers” sanctions, policies over Abyssinia and Spain, the Trotskyists proposed blacking war supplies for Japan in 1937-8, they lacked the influence to make the policy stick and the policy’s fortunes varied with communist interest. [80]
The August conference was noteworthy, finally, for the introduction to the Militant Group of four recent arrivals from South Africa, best known of whom was Ralph Lee, a Trotskyist well known in the Johannesburg labour movement. [81] They had given up hope of further progress in South Africa although they had played a leading role in some industrial struggles. On Haston’s proposal, all four were made members of the group but they took no part in the proceedings and for the time being proposed no new departures.
The decision to set up its own front organisation within the party did not mean that the Militant Group had given up the Socialist Left Federation. Faced with the historic decision of the Parliamentary Labour Party not to oppose the arms estimates Militant declared:
Here too is an opportunity for the newly formed Socialist Left Federation to win its spurs by showing the workers how the capitulation of Cripps and Co. to the Communist Party has inevitably led to the desertion of the socialist anti-war struggle. [82]
War was the paramount issue for all Trotskyists, a prime source of their hostility to the Unity Campaign. They did not believe action by capitalist countries, however presented, or by the League of Nations, could be progressive or a means of keeping peace. It would lead instead, he believed, to a new imperialist conflict. Hence their distaste in the autumn of 1937 for League sanctions against Japan: this would lead to a war not for democracy but for plunder. [83] But while Militant could see no difference between Attlee and Morrison and Cripps and the CPGB in view of their common willingness to countenance a war, it was not sure everyone else had grasped the point.
The only reason why the minority and the communists do not openly support the arms plan is because they do not “trust” the National Government to carry out this line in a sincere manner. If the interests of British Capitalism demanded a temporary alliance with France or the Soviet Union this opposition would collapse immediately ... [84]
In Militant’s view resting on imperialist alliances was a false policy: it was the working class which could prevent war. The paper criticised the SLF, for condemning the right and not the left for this folly. It committed itself to pushing the Federation [85] and applied as a body to join it. Refused, it took up an invitation to its members to participate on an individual basis. As a result it now found itself in difficulties on its right and on its left. It clashed bitterly with the Marxist League and Groves, who believed that the SLF should not be made into a Trotskyist body for this would narrow its appeal. [86] Militant sought to become the official organ of the SLF and the Group took factional steps to bring this to pass. [87] Clashes occurred every month at SLF bureau meetings, without Groves’s domination ever being challenged. On 23 September 1937 the SLF. called on Militant to cease publication and rally all forces behind the broad body. [88] “But Militant concluded that the Marxist League had parted from Bolshevik-Leninism [89] and in October disappeared from the SLF. Within the Group there was disquiet at these efforts, notably in the Liverpool Group, led by Don James. On 18 September it resolved not to, implement the SLF, tactic; a week later it stopped selling Militant which, it claimed, was giving one third of its space to SLF affairs. [90] The Liverpool Group was suspended on 9 October 1937 just before the Militant leadership as a whole itself despaired of the SLF and turned away from it. Militant now launched its own front organisation against war, the Militant Labour League, and in November 1937 printed eight pages for the first time. The League was the public presence of the Group in the Labour Party. Group members were active in other organisations [91], but it was the Labour Party which really interested them. MLL members were expected to be in the party, membership of which was considered to be a badge of political understanding.
In the autumn of 1937 the Militant Group had behind it a year’s steady activity, but it could not claim the kind of progress which would make possible a strong Trotskyist impact. Increasing emphasis on the Labour Party conflicted with the extravert inclinations of the former Hyde Park group, which had dwindled almost to nothing before it was reinforced by Ralph Lee and his comrades from South Africa at the August conference. There was some awareness within the Group leadership that activities around their paper were too much confined [92] but it was the revived Paddington Group which really pioneered street and canvassing sales. [93] Ralph Lee joined the National Committee in September in recognition, it seems, of his ability and energy. The Paddington Group worked on its local YCL as well as the League of Youth and began to recruit from its outside activities. [94] There is no evidence in 1937 of actual political disagreements between Paddington and the rest of the Militant Group. [95] Its internal regime was . considered a model by the centre. On the resignation of K. Alexander from the executive, Haston was elected to the vacant position. [96] There was a minor clash over the centre’s ban on the issue of an anti-fascist pamphlet, but the partisans here bissected the December split. And when stylistic criticisms of Militant were made the response of the Group was to place Ralph Lee and Richard Frieslich on the editorial board. [97]
The worm in the apple was a series of rumours which reached Militant Group leaders in October 1937 about the record of Ralph Lee, and about which they received confirmation in the second week of November. [98] Lee was accused of calling out 300 Bantu workers in February on a hopeless issue and of leaving for Europe in the middle of the strike. Money collected for the strikers” benefit was also said to be missing. Even before the rumours were confirmed, Group leaders had acted upon them. [99] Lee himself was only informed of them late in the day and the assurances given him of confidential treatment were false. [100] A special executive of 13 November, from which Harber and Jackson were absent, unanimously recorded its confidence in Lee. The next day the matter surfaced lengthily at a General Members’ Meeting, where Lee charged that the Group was under control of a bureaucratic-clique who feared loss of control to him. Jackson, Harber and others had admitted they had handled the affair badly, but protested no evil intention. It was Lee who stated that the group was faced with a split over whether or not the leadership should be expelled. At the conclusion of discussion the meeting resolved by only one vote to take the soft option of reducing Harber, Jackson. and van Gelderen to probationary membership. [101] It then proceeded to elect a new executive which included neither Lee nor them. But when this executive met on 20 November it considered correspondence from parties to the quarrel, including a letter from Harber, Jackson and van Gelderen claiming their suspension as full members to be unconstitutional. This argument was upheld and, on Haston’s proposal, the new executive dissolved itself in favour of the old! [102]
The discussion over Lee, which seems to have occupied the whole Militant organisation for two months reveals little sense of proportion. In their letter to the executive Harber, Jackson and van Gelderen spoke of it being the “only revolutionary group”. A letter from Harber to Betty Hamilton, (a French member of the Central branch who had backed Lee), talked of only fifty functioning members in London, ten of whom were on the EC. [103] One group member who tried at least to understand how such a minor affair could gain this importance was Michael Tippett, who detected a residue of the “low political and moral level of the past” (by which he meant the Marxist League and the Marxist Group). Those longest in the movement, were, he thought, the most likely to be drawn into personal recriminations. Exhibitions like those at the General Members” Meeting, which he had not attended, would be “unthinkable in a group of comrades that felt the living revolution as at all imminent”. Tippett thought the situation was worsening and called for a new leadership, free of suspicion. [104] Another explanation was volunteered by Hamilton who thought group members were recruiting their personal friends rather than working in the wider movement. [105] Tippett’s fears were confirmed in December. Camille (Klement) the IS secretary expressed alarm at the “bad internal situation” in the group [106], and the centre was deluged with letters from members levelling (and occasionally retracting) charges. Frieslich and Lee failed to attend editorial board meetings; Lee [107] and Haston [108] refused to turn up at the executive. Tippett at least attempted to generalise [109], but it is impossible to dissent from the lament of K. Alexander who had witnessed two months of strife and frenzy from afar:
I sign for the translation of all that labour power into the more fruitful channels of work in the Labour Party. [110]
On 19 December 1937, a GMM heavily condemned splits and called for adherence to Group decisions. But Lee and his supporters insisted on the expulsion of the officials who had mishandled the affair. When this did not happen they withdrew. [111] Tippett and Hamilton, nominated for the vacant EC places, refused to fill them. There is some evidence that Lee himself anticipated independent activities and he and his supporters certainly began at once to seek outside backing. [112] The Militant Group set in train its cumbersome expulsion machinery. [113] A few days later the Central Group withdrew, and on 16 January a majority of the North Group ended its participation in the main organisation.
Jackson believed Lee intended “a publishing centre independent of the Groups” [114], and the Marxist Group joined him in protesting at such a project. Workers International News, the first theoretical journal of British Trotskyism had been under discussion on the Militant executive, but it now became Lee’s flag-bearer. He and the others were expelled formally on 17 February 1938 [115], and faced the united opposition of the other groups. [116]
The split was formalised the following year by a letter from nineteen former Militant Group members to the Group. [117] Much of the letter was concerned with the Lee affair, but what seems to have rankled most within it was the failure of the group majority to curb a leadership “untrustworthy, incapable, irresponsible and dishonest”. The letter also alleged that the confidence of the signatories in the Group had been “long undermined” by the way it functioned [118], that the Lee affair was a symptom. The failure of the membership to replace its leaders is thus presented as a last straw. Politics, however, did not intrude into the list of indictments. The Militant Group countered that there was no evidence of this alleged long degeneration, that it was being produced ex post facto. In its view it was Lee who had a degenerate history as the letters from South Africa suggested, and who had now split from “insane egoism”. [119]
The “Lee split” was not the first in British Trotskyist history, but it was to be the most controversial. [120] Previous splits had all been difficult to defend since they had in each case occurred over a tactical difference. This split was also difficult to defend since no political differences emerged at all. It can only be explained by a personal clash and divergence of style. The Militant leadership had crystallized during 1937, not a long period for a stable cadre to hang together. Lee and his comrades represented a different political tradition and Lee in particular had a talent for the vivid or cruel phrase. Had Militant been progressing rapidly in the later months of 1937, factionalism would have taken root only with far greater difficulty. What also lay behind the split was a growing emphasis on exclusive Labour Party work by the Group and its leaders, while Paddington was a marriage of two extravert experiences. Group leaders and Paddington foresaw a different path to growth, and by the empirical test of results it was the second which would be most successful in the next ten years.
In 1938 the Militant Group attributed the failures of Trotskyism in 1937 to “the weakness of our forces and their dispersal in several organisations”. [121] This empirical verdict could be applied to the whole decade, but it does not provide a full explanation. Certainly a full Trotskyist mobilisation in the Labour League of Youth in 1934 or 1935 might have radically altered that movement’s subsequent history; at the very least communists and their sympathisers within the League might have been counter-balanced. But the Trotskyist appeal was vitiated by forces beyond its control, notably the flexibility of communist policy and the international campaign against Trotsky. The communists also showed themselves able to adjust their tactics at every stage. The Militant Group seemed by contrast to be arguing an abstract strategy for pulling young people out of the Labour Party, and it involved communist co-operation which would certainly not be forthcoming. Although the organisation established by 1937 was superior to its predecessors it did not represent an impressive alternative to the other political movements of the time: it showed an unhealthy preoccupation with the activity of its Trotskyist rivals, and an overweening fear of the Labour Party apparatus. These features blunted its cutting edge and contributed to an atmosphere where a split which was to have far-reaching consequences could take place.
Notes
1. Advance, April 1938; J. Cleary and N. Cobbett, Labour’s Misspent Youth, (P), 28 July 1979, 6.
2. However, Trotsky believed that there were three groups in Britain as early as July 1934 (L. Trotsky to H. Dewar, July 1934, Warwich MSS).
3. O. Bell, The Leftward Development of the British Youth Movement, Inprecorr, Vol.14, no. 33, 8 June 1934, 890-I.
4. N. Cleary and J. Abbott, op. cit., 6.
5. Kirby was a minority spokesman during the debate within the CL of December 1933. Sometime after this he left Britain for Japan, returning later to pursue an academic career (Interview with J. Archer, Nov. 1973).
6. They withdrew individually, a step they later considered a mistake. Others with whom they were in contact with the ILP also were interested in the League of Youth, (A.B. Doncaster et. al., to the International Secretariat, ICL ([April? 1935], H.P., D.J.H. 5/2). Both Harber and Kirby attended the IS plenum of spring 1935.
7. Beneath its masthead the journal proclaimed itself “the first result of a Committee of Young Socialists in Organised Youth Movements” (A. Richardson, op. cit.).
8. Advance was printed from June 1936.
9. For the running battle between young Labour Party members and the National Executive see J. Ferris, The Labour League of Youth, 1924-1940 (University of Warwick M.A. thesis, 1977), and Z. Layton-Henry, Labour’s Lost Youth, J.C.H., Vol.11, 1976, 275-308,
10. Arthur Peacock, editor of The New Nation, the official League journal, gave his account in Yours Fraternally, 1945, 18-26.
11. Statement by the Bolshevik-Leninists Group to joint session of British Trotskyists, For Discussion, No.1, 28 Nov. 1936, 15.
12. Advance, April 1937; ibid. The NEC memorandum reduced the League’s age to twenty-one and forbade it to discuss policy.
13. J. Ferris, op. cit., 108 and passim; Advance, Nov. 1936. For the memorandum, see LPCR (1936).
14. On many occasions the London Advisory Committee was deadlocked five to five (letter from Ernest Harrison, Advance, Aug. 1936).
15. At conference and on the NAC Roma Dewar was accused of making “unity with reactionary elements”, ibid.
16. J. Ferris, op. cit., 94.
17. Youth Militant, April 1937.
18. For the merger proposal of John Gollan, YCL national chairman, see Advance, Aug. 1936. Gollan cited as proof of the worth of his proposition the merger of socialist and communist youth in Spain and their imminent fusion in Belgium. These were the very developments that most alarmed Trotsky and increased the urgency of his plea for concentration in the League of Youth.
19. A Short Statement, loc. cit.
20. ibid.
21. Youth And The Fourth International, Documents, 108-112,
22. Among those stimulated by the “Geneva” resolution and the Interview with Collin” were John Goffe and John Archer (P.J.B., 1910- ), two Yorkshire activists (Interview with J. Goffe, July 1974).
23. After this Marxist Group conference Max Nicholls, Bert Matlow and John Robinson entered the Labour Party. E.L. Davis and Starkey Jackson, who were to take leading positions, came over in September 1936. Davis had been introduced to Trotskyism by Margaret Johns, whom he met at a union meeting. Jackson was an ex-communist.
24. This branch was to grow to eleven members by August, retaining one Harry Cund, as an official of the ILP who had not been asked by that party to leave, (Militant Group 3, Minutes of National Conference, 1-2 Aug. 1937).
25. It effectively became the Paddington branch of the Bolshevik-Leninists by 1937. Most prominent among its tiny membership was Jock Haston (1912- ), a former seaman and steeplejack who had left the CPGB in disagreement with its line on Germany (J.P.M. Millar, The Labour College Movement, 1979; interview with J. Haston, July 1973; J.H. to [members of the Club?] 10 June 1950, H.P., D.J.H., 158/111).
26. Each organisation blamed the other for this. For the Marxist League, see Chapter V. The Bolshevik-Leninists claimed they had made a number of approaches to the Marxist League for unity.
27. At the time of the Unity Campaign there were claimed to be five followers of the Militant in the Socialist League. The ML was involved with the Socialist Youth Committee, an outgrowth of the Socialist League, which tried unsuccessfully to gain support in the League of Youth during 1936.
28. Interim Reply of the EC, Militant Group, 5 Aug. 1937, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.] 1937, 2.
29. See R.W., On the Work of Bolshevik-Leninists in the Labour Party, Sept 1936, Warwick MSS 15/4/1/10. R.W., who did not show great knowledge of Labour Party procedure, foresaw establishing independence from the party, within a year of joining, with a following of hundreds of workers.
30. R.W. advised his readers not to act as “wise strangers” or declare their future exit from the rooftops (ibid.). Trotsky had also remarked that one did not enter the Labour Party and declare “I am a revolutionist” (see above).
31. The Bolshevik-Leninists launched a duplicated paper, Militant, in February 1937. Its circulation was below 500 (Minutes, 20 Feb. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2A/4). On 13 December the Bureau wrote of the Bolshevik-Leninists, “they declare that an independent group outside could only cause them harm because they would in that case be regarded as agents of an alien organisation”, (Declaration of the International Bureau). By 1939 Trotsky had apparently moved away from this view. See note to Fighting Against the Stream, Writings: 1938-39, 150n.
32. From late 1936 Advance campaigned for building up membership within the Labour Party, a policy the League of Youth endorsed on 8 May 1937. Meanwhile Challenge was made into a weekly journal in the effort to build up YCL membership too (J. Ferris, op. cit., 107-8). Ferris attributes LLOY resistance to the memorandum to pressure from leading League members being due to pass twenty one in 1938. Communist advice was now that the League of Youth should turn its back on “splitters” and devote itself to youth activity “and not only to a fight against the LP Executive”, (W. Cohen, For Discussion, Dec. 1936, 7; Z. Layton-Henry, Labour’s Lost Youth, J.C.H., 11, 1976, 283). There was some communist bewilderment at the change in YCL policy to opposition to a merger, (For Discussion, Nov. 1936, 32).
33. F.L. Brown, Advance, March 1937.
34. Youth Militant, Sept. 1936.
35. Advance, March 1937: this example was given by Ted. Willis. The influence of the CPGB on Advance during 1937 is marked: Gollan, Sloan and R.P. Dutt all wrote articles for it that year.
36. Advance, Nov. 1936.
37. A third policy proposal of this time was that of Bob Edwards of the ILP Guild of Youth who projected all three youth movements as obstructed by their parties and recommended unity between them, ibid.
38. Minutes, London EC, 20 Feb. 1937, H.P., DJH. 2A/4.
39. In 1935 the CLA fused with the American Workers Party of the Rev. A.J. Muste. This merger took place outside a social democratic milieu however.
40. Minutes, London EC, 20 Feb. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2A/4.
41. Youth Militant, April 1937.
42. S. Bone, Advance, Feb. 1937, advised one to free the League of Labour’s “throttling control”.
43. Under the arrangements, two resolutions, both submitted by the NAC, were to be the only ones tabled. One effectively yielded to the memorandum, the other committed the Leagues to a campaign around Labour’s Immediate Programme. Local Leagues could only table amendments. Youth Militant threatened a shadow agenda.
44. To remain in the party is to commit suicide, to end the League as a political organisation. The only road for the League is to part company with the party for a while, to form an independent Socialist Youth organisation, with its own programme. Having developed a programme on a political basis, the Socialist Youth organisation could then apply to the L.P. as an autonomous body, retaining its right to discuss policy and its right to call national conferences and elect its own Executive body. On this basis only can the League go forward (Youth Militant, April 1937).
45. Youth Militant, May 1937.
46. To Advance they were “middle class types” with a disruptive record. It declared there was no place for them in a living movement “as there is no place for boils on a healthy human”. They produced no concrete proposals, only “monotonous talk of splitting” (Advance, March 1937) .
47. ibid.
48. 130 out of 170 delegates came from London but the capital had only one fifth of total LLOY membership of 3,500, (Youth Militant, June 1937). Of course London was also the chief base of Youth Militant itself which controlled branches at Stoke Newington, East Islington, Peckham and Golders Green.
49. Willis, Harry Rigg and Alec Bernstein spoke for the Advance majority deploring the “treasonable role of the Barcelona insurgents”, Advance (June 1937), Youth Militant (June 1937).
50. “Carried with twelve votes against – carried with twelve votes against – this is the story of the conference as far as voting was concerned”, A. Bernstein, Advance, June 1937.
51. John Gollan at the YCL annual conference declared “these people have been sheltered too long in the hospitable ranks of the League of Youth. These people must be driven out of the working class youth movement for the enemies they are”. Conference passed a resolution, “Drive Out the Trotskyists” which insisted expulsion of the Trotskyists was a pre-requisite for unity (Youth of Britain Advance, 1937, 31-2; See also J. Gollan, What Next for Youth Unity?, 1937, 13). The NAC of the League of Youth was aware that Trotskyism was being suppressed within the Socialist Youth of Belgium and France (Advance, May 1937). The next month Bernstein informed Advance readers that “the link up between the Trotskyists and the Fascists is shown clear for all to see” and called for Roma Dewar, Van Gelderen, Fred Emmett, Ken Alexander and Bone to be cleared out as wreckers.
52. Only in the ILP was there a comparable debate between followers of the communist and Trotskyist lines. Space was also given in Advance for June 1937, but see A. Marwick, Youth in Britain, 1920-1960 Detachment and Commitment, J.C.H., Vol.5, No.1, 1970, 49 for the handling of Spain by youth movement papers.
53. Fight for June 1937 declared its opinion that the LLOY would rapidly decline if Youth Militant did not increase its influence, a development it thought unlikely.
54. Youth Militant, June 1937.
55. Advance, Oct. 1937. Outside the Trotskyist movement there seems to have been little comment on the modification by Advance which had allowed the NEC to come to terms with it.
56. Youth Militant sellers covered the Battersea conference of the YCL This may have encouraged Gollan to urge young people to “expose the wrecking aims and activities of the Trotskyists” in his YCL pamphlet What Will London’s Youth Do? (1937), quoted in R. Black, Stalinism in Britain, 1970, 110.
57. The 27 June 1937 conference heard delegates from Trotskyist branches at East Islington and Peckham. Paddington, East and West Islington had resolutions on the agenda. Trotskyist views on unity and workers” sanctions against the Japanese were crushed at the autumn conference (Militant, Oct. 1937).
58. J. Jupp, op. cit., 223-4.
59. This was the issue for June 1937.
60. Militant was launched as a duplicated monthly on 15 January 1937.
61. The Militant, sub-titled “(Incorporating Youth Militant) Organ of the Militant Group in the Labour Party”.
62. The democratic ferment among Labour Party members had been commented upon by the International six months earlier, (Declaration of the International Bureau, 13 Dec. 1936. For the successful campaign of DLPs to increase constituency representation on Labour’s NEC, see B. Pimlott, op. cit., 123-38.
63. See Bus Militants Expelled, of August 1937, with its list of propagandist “warnings”. Only in October 1937 did the paper report participation in an actual struggle, that to organise a Croydon engineering firm. The author, John Goffe, was an apprentice manager in Sheffield.
64. A meeting of DLP.s after the crushing of the Left at Edinburgh in October 1936 led to agitation which resulted in the constituency section being expanded from five to seven seats, (B. Pimlott, op. cit., 112-5). Militant welcomed the extension of the constituency section on the grounds that this part of the party was more sensitive to the mood of the masses than “the bureaucratically controlled trade unions”. But little improvement was foreseen since celebrities like Cripps and Mellor were more likely to secure election than members of the rank and file.
65. Militant, July 1937.
66. Militant condemned in August 1937 the unity programme which “consisted of piffling reforms and contained no more radical demands than can be found in the Immediate Programme of the Labour Party”. Its conception of unity implied temporary agreement on specific issues by labour movement organisations, and it had available the precepts of early Comintern congresses for support.
67. “The Communist Party and its henchmen of the “Unity” bloc are using this confusion in order to foist policies on the workers which, although they are trapped out in left-wing phrases, in actual fact are every whit as reactionary as those of the Labour bureaucracy” (Militant, Aug. 1937). The alternative policy can be seen in resolutions on Spain which Militant influence had brought on to the 1937 Labour Party conference agenda: Fairfield (Liverpool) called for a workers’ boycott of arms and goods for Franco; East Islington sought a workers’ republic in Spain.
68. Militant Group, Minutes of National Conference, 1-2 August 1937, 1-3.
69. The success – and failures – of the Militant Group must be attributed in large measure to the leading cadre which it had established. D.D. Harber was the dominant political influence within the Group and E.S. Jackson, its secretary. With E.L. Davis and Margaret Johns, they remained its leading figures to the end of the decade.
70. K. Alexander was also aware of the difficulty the Americans had experienced.
71. The first point was carried forty eight to thirteen with one abstention the second thirty eight to twenty with one abstention. (The Militant Group, Minutes of the National Conference, Aug. 1-2, 1937). The Liverpool Group favoured having no secret faction and merely using the Militant Labour League which was the name the front organisation was given.
72. By a vote of forty to eighteen on the EC report, ibid., 8.
73. ibid.
74. ibid., 9-12.
75. Minutes of Executive Committee, 9 Oct. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/6.
76. Sydney Bidwell was on the London District Council of the union and assistant secretary of his branch (Minutes of G.M.M., 14 Nov. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/7).
77. Principal activist was Michael Kemp Tippett (1905- ) a Royal College of Music graduate who taught French at Hazlewood until 1931. He then entered adult education in music, working for the L.C.C. and the Royal Arsenal Cooperative education departments. Tippett had worked for a time with the Marxist League and Marxist Group and was now the organiser of Socialist International Press, a translators’ group service formed on an IS initiative on 1 March 1937, (Who’s Who, Statement of MT, 8 Jan. 1938, HP, DJH – 2A/ 100).
78. Each group had one member there in 1937.
79. Minutes of Executive Committee, 27 Nov. 1937, Har. P.
80. Militant, ILP and CPGB all called for a ban on munitions to Japan in October 1937 and the NUR Executive was deadlocked on an embargo motion. Some action was taken on. the docks. In 1938 however, the CPGB ceased to support the policy (B. Pearce, Stalinists and Blackshirts, The Newsletter, 19 Nov. 1960).
81.Ralph Lee, Millie Kahn (1913- ), Richard Frieslich and Heaton Lee (1916- ) left South Africa in June. On arrival, Lee met Trotskyists from different organisations but several meetings with Harber convinced him to join Militant (Interview with E. Grant, Jan. 1973). His induction was later considered by Jackson to be a great mistake since the only information to hand about Lee was that which he himself had provided, (E.S. Jackson to South African Trotskyists, 30 Dec. 1937, H.P., 2B.3.15). Ralph Lee had been a communist since 1923 and had risen to the executive of the South African party. Possibly it was in 1930 that he left it and joined the International Workers Club, modelled on the Cape Town Lenin Club, which was not Trotskyist but interested in the Fourth International. He was a pioneer Trotskyist in Johannesburg, advancing Trotsky’s views in the Club and one of the founders, with Millie Kahn, of the Workers’ Party of South Africa (Johannesburg branch). After a 1935 split these two rebuilt the branch. He helped organise the Bantu laundry workers, who struck in 1934 and, through the revived Workers’ Party, the African Metal Trades Union in January 1937. His record led the Metalworkers to ask his help when on 23 February they embarked on a strike which they abandoned, defeated, ten days later, (Sapire to Militant Group, 21 Feb. 1938, H.P., 2B.3.26; Anon., Report on R. Lee, reports on metalworkers and laundry workers disputes in Fight, May 1937). Heaton Lee, who was no relation to Ralph Lee, was a mining engineer who had met Ann (Angel) Keen, a non-political South African Jewess, on the boat to England. She became politically convinced and joined the Trotskyist movement the following year. In Johannesburg the other three had also known Ted Grant, who had travelled to England in 1934 or 1935. This strain of South African Trotskyism should be distinguished from that in Capetown in the English speaking division, whence Charles van Gelderen, his brother (who remained there), and Millie Matthews hailed (Interview with. M. Haston, July 1973; interview with A. Keen, 30 July 1974). For a communist impression of the South African Trotskyists in 1936, see G. Hardy, Those Stormy Years, 1956, 228-36. More detached is H.J. and R.E. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950, 1969, 503-4, 508-16.
82. Militant, Aug. 1937.
83. Militant, Sept., Oct., 1937.
84. Militant, Sept. 1937.
85. By printing membership forms for the SLF in its pages, ibid.
86. Interview with R. Groves, April 1980.
87. In September 1937, it resolved to recruit to the SLF, only those sophisticated workers who were ready for it, to form new SLF. branches under its own control, and to make Jackson its faction. organiser, (Militant Group, [EC] Minutes, 19 Sept. 1937). The aim was to win an SLF majority.
88. Militant, Oct. 1937.
89. Minutes of Executive Committee, 9 October 1937. This same month the Marxist League dissolved itself thus bearing out Militant fears. It wrote that the Bureau included those “who, by their weakness and vacillation contributed to the defeat of the left wing in the Socialist League” (A. Dean, SLF Leaders Sabotage Left Wing, Militant, Oct. 1937).
90. Minutes of Executive Committee, 9 Oct. 1937.
91. Margaret Johns was secretary of the Co-op political council in St. Pancras; both the Militant and Marxist Groups had members on the Islington Co-op political council in 1937. Margaret Johns also joined the London Labour Party executive in November of that year.
92. Jackson had told the August conference that a Labour Party sales base for Militant was too narrow and advised that an outside drive should be mounted.
93. Only one or two groups had contributed to the increased sales recorded in the autumn (Minutes of GMM, 12 Sept. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/5; 10 Oct. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/6; 14 Nov. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/7).
94. It claimed these had led to the disbandment of the Paddington YCL (Minutes of GMM, 12 Sept. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/5). In November it took control of the Paddington League of Youth (Minutes of Executive Committee, 11 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9c). Among the recruits made around this time was Gerry Healy, another ex-communist seaman, encountered in Hyde Park sales.
95. None of its members had dissented from approval of the EC report to the August conference which included, inter alia, the SLF tactic they were later to condemn.
96. Minutes of GMM, 10 Oct. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/6.
97. ibid. The Group also prepared local supplements to Militant (Minutes of Executive Committee, 11 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9c).
98. The source of them was Charles van Gelderen’s brother in Cape Town. Charles van Gelderen reported confirmation to Jackson, the Group secretary, on 11 November.
99. When Sid Sandel, Group literature and secretary and British agent for Pioneer Press was forced to resign due to failing eyesight, it was proposed to replace him by Millie Kahn who had been agent for Pioneer in South Africa. Pioneer raised no objection to Kahn, but it was Margaret Johns who, after a slight delay, replaced Sandel. Kahn lived with Lee and the doubts about him inhibited Group leaders from letting Kahn have the post. She was finally approached only after the eruption of the affair had led to the suspension of Harber and Jackson, (Jackson to Pioneer Publishing Association, 4 Oct. 1937; Pioneer to Jackson, 14 Oct. 1937; Jackson to Pioneer, 26 Oct. 1937; H.P.,. D.J.H 28/2; Minutes of Executive Committee, 20 Nov. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/7.)
100. Jackson informed Lee of the rumours verbally, gave him a copy of the 11 November letter, then wrote to him on 12 November. He told him not to be inhibited in his activities and that the accusations were probably Stalinist fabrications. Jackson added that Harber and van Gelderen alone were privy to the charges, but they certainly reached Johns, Goffe and Archer, who also relayed them to IS member “Camille” while in Paris as an observer at the PSOP conference, (van Gelderen to Jackson, 11 Nov. 1937; Jackson to Lee, 12 Nov. 1937; Lee to Archer, 16 Nov. 1937; Archer to Lee, 19 Nov. 1937). At a special executive of 13 November Lee obtained confirmation that knowledge of the charges had leaked out, (Minutes, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/7).
101. Minutes of GMM, 14 November 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/7., In December these minutes were challenged by Frieslich, Haston, Healy and Grant as distorted to show Lee in an unfavourable light.
102. Minutes of Executive Committee, 20 November 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/7. Haston later explained that his motivation was that this second step logically followed from the first, (Minutes of Executive Committee, 27 November 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9a).
03. D..D Harber to Hamilton, 25 November 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9a.
104. As from the Central Group, 26 Nov. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9a.
105. B. Hamilton to Harber, 8 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2B/3/7.
106. “Camille” to Jackson, 5 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9b.
107. His attitude was thought not “Bolshevik” by the Group leaders.
108. Haston was protesting at the minutes of the 14 November G.M.M. and declared he no longer expected objective records of meetings, (Minutes of Executive Committee, 11 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H.2a/9c). He charged that the manoeuvres of Harber et al. had “a deep political significance” (J. Haston to the Militant Group, 12 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9c). What this might have been is a mystery.
109. M. Tippett [to the Militant Group], 11 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9c. Tippett linked the Lee affair to the suspension of the Liverpool Group and concluded that in the face of war those anticipating illegal or semi-legal work would have to look elsewhere for leadership.
110. K. Alexander to Jackson, n.d., H.P., 2B.3.33. Alexander was the only opponent of Lee in the Paddington group. During the affair he was out of the capital.
111. The withdrawal took place early in the meeting during discussion on matters arising from the minutes of the November G.M.M. They may have just pulled out of the meeting, (Interview with E. Grant, Jan. 1973). Group leaders believed they were leaving the Group, (Comments of E.C. on Statement of Former Members of Paddington, Central and North Groups, [March?] 1938, H.P.). Tippett, who was well-disposed towards them, believed they should have followed the meeting through, (Statement of Comrade M.T., 8 Jan. 1938, H.P. 2a/10a). Everyone who accompanied Lee was from his own Paddington group, (E.S. Jackson to [South African Trotskyists], 30. Dec. 1937, H.P. 2B.3.15).
112. In October Lee had written to Camille (Klement) of the International Secretariat concerning the founding of a Marxist theoretical journal in England, (Statement of P.J.B. (Leeds), 8 Dec. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/9b). A pilot issue of Workers International News appeared on 18 December, a day before the final meeting and regular monthly publication of it from 1 January 1938 (although the January and 18 December issues are similar) argues more than twelve days preparation. Lee obtained the participation of former Marxist Leaguer Hilary Sumner-Boyd, and with other Paddington group members he approached disenchanted Advance followers in the East End with whom the local Militant group had been in contact (H.P., D.J.H., 2B.3.16).
113. This existed as a result of a Paddington proposition introduced at the time of the disciplinary action against the Liverpool group. It amounted to a national consultative referendum on expulsions.
114. E.S. Jackson to Sapire, (Johannesburg Group), 17 Feb. 1938, H.P., 2B.3.25.
115. E.S. Jackson to Lee, H.P., 2B.3.25.2.
116. C. Sumner to IS, 6 Feb. 1938, (See Chapter VI).
117. To the Militant Group, 10 March 1938. Signed by K. Chapman, F. Clifford, T. de Moor, B. Fisher, R. Freislich, B. French, T. Grant, J. Haston, B. Hamilton, G. Healy, D. James, K. Kemshead, M. Kahn, H. Lee, R. Lee, T. Mundy, H. Ratner, M. Tippett, E. Truman.
118. There had been a clash in September 1937 over the suppression of an anti-fascist leaflet by the leadership, but leading Group figures were ranged on both sides over the issue. As the Group pointed out in its reply, there was no record of objections by Haston or Lee, both of whom were members of the leading bodies.
119. Comments of E.C. to Statement of former members of Paddington, Central and North Groups, [1938], Warwick MSS
120. Nor has the controversy died. See the account in M. and J. Archer, Notes on Healy’s Role in Early Days of the British Trotskyist Movement, Intercontinental Press, 10 May 1976, 772-5.
121. Militant Group, Statement on Fusion with the RSL, 27 May 1938, R. SL, Internal Bulletin, 3, (July 1938), 4.
*******
PART ONE
(1929-1938)
VIII
UNITY
(1936-1938)
In the two years from 1936 to 1938 British followers of the Fourth International made their most sustained effort to date to achieve a united body which might have some impact on events. There were many difficulties on the way. Those pressing hardest for unity were outside the Labour Party and therefore in living contradiction of the “Geneva” resolution. Those within the Labour Party were opposed to unity which did not resolve tactical differences. These objections were partly overcome by the intervention of the International which sought to pressurise an unready British movement into its own timetable for unity. The result was an inherently unstable British Section and confirmation of the pessimistic forecast made by WIL, the only group to stay aloof.
Fight appeared on 10 October 1936 in a sixteen page issue appended to which was a four page supplement on the Moscow Trial. It led with a statement on the need for a new international and launched an attack on Brockway who – unlike Maxton, it was felt – knew the right course and shunned it. It carried an interview with Trotsky, and much other material on the Trials including a document of the Geneva conference. Right from the start Fight ran advertisements for The Red Flag and Youth Militant. This brotherliness originated in joint control of the paper by the Marxist Group and the Bolshevik Leninists in the Labour Party. The paper’s statement of intent declared:
We, the Bolshevik-Leninists of Britain, whether we are in the Labour Party, ILP, Co-op or Trade Union, will fight with the workers ... [1]
Around the time of the first trial the Marxist Group had worked closely with the Bolshevik-Leninists. There had even been a joint executive formed from the two to control whatever ILP union factions were under Marxist Group control. [2] At the national meeting of 11 October a Central Co-ordinating Committee was established for all three groups. It met twice more in 1936, but then lapsed for a time. [3] Chief obstacle to regular functioning was the blurring of the decisions taken at the October national meeting by the sudden decision of the Marxist Group to withdraw from the ILP, motivated by that party’s decline since its Keighley conference. The Marxist Group informed the National-Administrative Council of the ILP, that it would withdraw and call on all revolutionaries to join it. [4] On the eve of the launching of the Unity Campaign the Group held its first meeting, began to imitate the action of a full-blown party [5] and made its counter proposals for unity. [6] By February 1937 it had pulled out of the ILP
A Marxist Group outside all parties had implications for Trotskyists elsewhere. Independent existence had been adopted in defiance of the Declaration of the International Bureau. Joint control of Fight ceased at once, since the Marxist Group majority on the editorial board imposed its view. [7] The rapid shift in Marxist Group policy is difficult to explain. The Bolshevik-Leninists attributed it to middle class influence, but this cannot be empirically sustained. [8] It shivered a not overlarge organisation into three fragments. [9] There were international parallels to the step now taken by the Marxist Group and knowledge of them helped reinforce the reaction of other Trotskyists. [10] The Bolshevik-Leninists, for whom presence in the Labour Party was the Ark of the Covenant, were naturally inclined in favour of the Marxist League, though they differentiated between Groves and Dewar and its other members. But the League had concluded by late 1936 that the time for exclusive Labour Party work was nearing its end and when it looked for unity it was the Marxist Group, not the Bolshevik-Leninists, which interested it. [11] The Bolshevik-Leninists, known from January 1937 as the Militant Group, not unreasonably concluded that new efforts to achieve unity were not likely to be efficacious. They were larger than the other two groups put together; there were many workers among their members; they were moving out of a purely youth milieu: they considered that they now had a case for recognition as the British Section of the international movement. [12]
The International Bureau did not move this far but it did encourage the Bolshevik-Leninists to build pup the strongest organisation they could. By a December 1936 declaration it had called for a conference of those of the country’s Trotskyists who accepted the Geneva resolution. [13] The Militant Group reacted along slightly different lines, with a February call for unity with the Marxist League on the basis of the Geneva resolution. [14] All three groups had members at the national meeting of 14 February 1937, convened in the presence of Braun of the International Secretariat. [15] The Militant case for unity in the Labour Party was countered by a Groves-Wicks bid for unity of all three factions. Braun seems to have endorsed the Militant approach, by opposition to an early split from the Labour Party, though he expressed reservations on its youth line. [16] He concluded that little progress was likely to be made towards fusion and encouraged it to concentrate on its own work. [17] It was ironic that the two groups closest in their tactical views should in practice be so bitterly divided as were the Militant Group and the Marxist League. [18]
Yet it is impossible to understand their actions or those of the Marxist Group except in the light of a deeply held conviction that every possible step must be taken to rally the workers against war. [19] Militant propaganda against the Unity Campaign was galvanised by the certainty that the Left and the CPGB would accept a war for democracy. Fight insisted that every form of war preparation must be opposed: war could be supported only when Britain was in the workers’ hands. All of them were haunted by 1914 when socialist leaders in every country had yielded to a chauvinist mood. During the years immediately before the war this lent their writings an abstract slant as they fought old battles. It was a sense of approaching war which led the Marxist Group to seek independence from the ILP, even at the risk of expulsion from the international movement. [20] The new party had to be built:
Do not hesitate, do not put it off. Above all do not be disconcerted by the fact that we are not a large organisation. Particularly we appeal to old revolutionaries, disillusioned by the crimes and treacheries of the Stalinists. Everyone who comes makes us larger. [21]
Repetitive appeals of this kind did not make a strategy for producing a powerful Trotskyist movement. They flew in the face of Trotsky’s own pleas of 1933 and 1936 for a sense of proportion, but they were also an anticipation of the 1938 decision to launch a Fourth International in the hope of holding the revolutionary forces together. James shared an international illusion that successive labour movement defeats left workers looking for an alternative. Hence Fight had the tone of a paper merely drawing attention to the obvious. The Labour Party, it declared, would only bring disillusionment. “The sooner this happens the better. To be disillusioned with Labour Party reformism is the first step to revolutionary clarity”. [22] When confronted by the London Busmen’s Strike, Fight observed that the behaviour of the LPTB and union officials “occasions no surprise”. “The mere substitution of, say, Bevin by Papworth would achieve nothing”, it warned. [23] Fight and the Marxist Group did not deceive themselves that they were a party. But they believed that coming disaffection from established parties would lead people to look for one [24]: the Fourth International had to maintain an independent presence so that it could be found. Other Trotskyists, engaged in entry work, had, in Fight’s view, a futile task. The ILP had reached the limit of its leftward swing in early 1935. “To think that the ILP, as a party, can be won for revolutionary Marxism, is, in fact, not to think at all”. As for the Labour Party, a Trotskyist presence within it was usually justified by reference to the presence of the masses: Fight expressed great scepticism as to whether this was indeed where they were. It also felt that earlier objections to being separate from all parties were no longer valid. Trotskyism was better known in 1937 than in 1932 and the capitulation of the Comintern more abject than before. Advanced workers searching for international socialism would not find it “hidden away in the rotten archives of the Labour Party”. They were also moving away from Stalinism. On these doubtful arguments was predicated the Marxist Group case for independence. [25]
The existence of the Marxist Group was an invitation to other Trotskyists to realign. It had personal links with some Marxist League members, perhaps made easier by the departure of former Group members who had been in the Communist League minority for the Labour Party. [26] It was also pursuing a policy of publishing Fourth International documents and seems to have consciously followed a tactic of regroupment. In July 1937 discussions between the Trotskyists began again, precipitated by a call from the Group at its half-yearly conference for an aggregate of all Bolshevik-Leninists. But this did not imply an altered view by the Group of the need for an open identifiable Fourth International fraction:
The methods of a fused group can be none other than the maintenance of an independent platform and propaganda allied to correct fraction work in the mass organisations. [27]
In its view the Marxist League and Militant Group were making sacrifices in the Labour Party in return for access to potential which was less than that available outside the party. Not surprisingly Starkey Jackson of the Militant told the conference that there was little basis for cooperation. He was unmoved by a Group offer to canvass in local elections. This was no less likely, he thought, to jeopardise a Labour Party presence than it would have been six months earlier. [28] Militant perceived, not surprisingly, that nothing essential had changed. It decided to abstain from the Central Co-ordinating Committee until that body’s affairs were covered by a definite remit. [29] It was prepared to continue cooperation with the, Marxist Group over such activities as the Trotsky Defence Committee or the Committee for the Defence of the POUM. It did not, however feel able to speak on public platforms as this would invite “premature expulsion from the Labour Party”. Tactics were as important as principles and it saw no reason to change them. It foresaw only limited possibilities for cooperation. [30] Militant’s preference was still for unity with the Marxist League since both were operating in the Labour Party sphere. It had experienced little encouragement in response to its advances [31], and saw only limited value in joint meetings with the others unless they were to assist joint work in the Socialist Left Federation. Morally its position was strong. It continued to feel it was pursuing the line of the Geneva conference resolution; Braun had on his February visit advised consolidation of its own position, rather than fusion, as a main immediate task; in g the summer it had convened what it felt was the most successful Trotskyist conference to date. [32] It was more entrenched by August than it had been at the National Meeting of February 1937. If offered joint fraction work where it and the Marxist Group found themselves in the same organisation, but declined all joint activities which would compromise it within the Labour Party. It agreed to a swap arrangement for all three papers and went so far as to propose phased publication so that a new Trotskyist paper appeared at fortnightly intervals, with each – if it wished – carrying articles from members of other groups. [33]
But there was more interest in the Marxist Group initiative [34] in the Marxist League, which did not operate in the Labour Party within a long term perspective. Marxist Group interest in a combined drive within the SLF had some appeal when the League discussed it at a members” meeting of 23 July 1937. The Marxist League did not consider that all Trotskyist activity should take place within the Labour Party. It had recognised, for example, the importance of work within the ILP Nor did it concede to the Marxist Group that revolutionary questions were subordinated to immediate issues: the problem was to relate immediate issues to the struggle for workers’ power. Like the Militant Group, the Marxist League immediately perceived the Marxist Group’s fusion proposals to consist essentially in the addition of a Labour Party fraction to its independent presence. Its counter-proposal was a committee composed of three members of each faction to meet monthly, arrange joint meetings and monitor the work of the two groups and the League. After six months, during which all three factions would refrain from public attacks on each other, “concrete proposals for fusion” would be submitted. [35] The CCC met on 12 August 1937 and Starkey Jackson there proposed a joint meeting of “ the groups. This should have been decisive since Militant’s objections were the most deep-seated. But the Militant executive withdrew Jackson’s proposal after they saw the editorial in the August Fight, which attacked the presence of revolutionaries in the Labour Party. [36]
The Marxist League had continued to publish The Red Flag on an occasional basis, and also to put out Trotsky’s writings. [37] Its members persisted with the Socialist Left Federation. But in October 1937, the Marxist League officially dissolved itself and suspended publication of The Red Flag. Some time later a majority of former ML members gathered and considered the overall position of Trotskyism in Britain. They set up an ad hoc committee and approached the Marxist Group for fusion. Late in January 1938, a joint commission was established with three members from either side and it was this body which drew up a political statement and constitution which each party then discussed. The political statement called for “a strong centralised independent organisation (to) be built on the platform of the Fourth International”. The problem of where to be in the short term had been resolved in favour of a body separate from other parties, though the new body would aspire to organise workers in the established organisations. There would eventually be a revolutionary party under whose discipline militants in reformist and centrist parties would work:
This would end the situation which confronts many today of being the “left” critics, who, as time drags on, soften and adapt themselves to the so-called “long perspective” of protracted work in the reformist organisations which is a renunciation of the task of preparing the revolutionary party. [38]
Clearly this fusion was a conscious rebuff to the chosen method of The Militant. The renunciation of abstract discussion in small. closed circles however, might have been applied to all three factions. There was thought to be some ground for optimism in differentiation in the Labour Party which the policy of Cripps and the communists during the Unity Campaign was thought to have delayed: there were now “signs of the emergence of a militant opposition on the crucial issue of war”..
On the eve of their fusion, the Marxist Group and the Marxist League joined the Militant Group in united condemnation of Lee. The occasion of their formal protest was the Lee group’s action in starting publication of Workers International News:
Each of the existing groups wishes to dissociate itself entirely from this enterprise; deplores the attempted creation of a fourth Trotskyist “group” in this country; and objects particularly to the impression given by Lee’s journal that it represents and is under the patronage of the International Secretariat. [39]
Sumner-Boyd, the author of these lines, had been a participant in the first two issues of Workers International News, but now informed the IS that he had formed “an erroneous impression” of WIN’s object and policies and ceased collaboration. Lee, complained the united British groups, would run the journal as a personal vehicle and not submit to discipline. He had also published, in pamphlet form, the summary of the Dewey Commission’s final report.
But collaboration against Lee was not enough to break down all barriers. The Marxist Group and the former Marxist League members were alone the active parties to the projected fusion. The Fusion Conference convened on February 17 1938 with Henry Sara in the chair. Wicks introduced the discussion, arguing that the standing distinction between those in and those out of the Labour Party could be overcome. There would be an independent organisation with more successful fraction work in the mass parties. He quoted the Communist Party as proof that this duality was viable. Two years in the Labour Party had been, for the Marxist Leaguers, a “bitter experience”. With the party moving towards war, there was no organisation or paper which represented the policy of Trotskyism. [40] They needed an “open voice, an unambiguous and revolutionary paper”. The discussion revealed that the protagonists of fusion had not achieved unanimity. Cooper argued that the statement blurred differences over the Left Federation. Frost proved him right by categorically rejecting work in that body, and Lane pointedly enquired what the attitude of the Federation was to the Militant Labour League. Sumner-Boyd only went some limited distance towards meeting these objections with his argument that there had to be some organisation such as the SLF in order to provide a platform within the Labour Party. There were, effectively, three attitudes towards the Labour Party: Jackson, a fraternal visitor from the Militant, expounded the standard entrist case; the Marxist Group had no time for any kind of contact with the Labour Party; the former Marxist Leaguers were largely in agreement but still favoured participation in the SLF What should also be stressed is that the cause of the new intransigence towards the Labour Party was its slide towards support for a putative anti-fascist war. In the end CLR James put it as the view of the commission that those within the SLF should attempt, in their near future, to evaluate their experience within it. Only then could a decision be made. After the conclusion of discussion Jackson indicated that the Militant Group was quite prepared to discuss fusion of the MLL with the SLF Hugo Dewar, however, one of those who had remained aloof from the fusion made it clear that he saw the prime task as building up the SLF, that the independent group was secondary, and that “we” (he and Groves presumably) were not prepared to see the SLF made into a Trotskyist organisation. [41] With one encouragement and one warning in its ears, the Fusion Conference elected a central committee of seven and took the name Revolutionary Socialist League. [42] The RSL affiliated at once to the Bureau for the Fourth International.
The RSL did not conceive itself as starting from scratch:
We do not need to create all our cadres. The work of the Communist Party in its early days has not been without results. [43]
There were, it argued, thousands of disillusioned revolutionaries around who had been alienated by the Trotskyist analysis, but the Trials had opened their eyes. This was an expectation carried over lock, stock and barrel from the Marxist Group. Fight, cheaper and livelier than before, became the official paper to tap the mood. [44] The RSL took on an aggressive propagandist plan of public meetings. It was the last great era of the open-air gathering [45] and with unemployment high, a speaker could still draw a crowd. The RSL, launched on an independent tactic, had to put an emphasis-on direct appeal and ran a summer campaign of open-air rallies in London, Sheffield and elsewhere. [46] Some members were picked up by this method, but the sought-for thousands never materialised [47], and some time in the summer the RSL had to give up an asset unique among Trotskyist groups, the tiny premises from which C.L.R. James worked in Grays Inn Road.
The Militant Group faced 1938 without its most dynamic branch but this was not a fatal blow. It retained a national framework. The Militant Labour League had been launched and Jackson had felt confident enough to tell the February 1938 Fusion Conference that roots had first to be sunk in the Labour Party before independence could be achieved, and to underpin his argument with Trotsky’s 1933 thesis on the ILP. [48] He and Harber, Lee Davis, Margaret Johns, John Archer and John Goffe held together as a leading cadre. Militant continued to appear regularly and, though the organisation lost members to WIL, it gained some too.
In what had been its main field, the Labour League of Youth, expansion was blocked. In 1937 there had been a limited debate between Trotskyism and Stalinism in Advance; in 1938 there was none. [49] The 1938 conference of the League marked no advance from the previous year. [50] But the Militant did not now rest mainly on its youth presence. It subordinated its other activities to the MLL since it seemed likely that the approach of war would bring with it illegality. Militant knew it could not prevent war and would only make limited progress during a war. Its hope therefore was to dig in deeply within the Labour Party, a body it tended to equate with the mass movement. The Group resolved therefore to prepare for illegal conditions and resist adventurist pressures which might lead to premature separation:
Naturally our work in the Labour Party in wartime will be severely limited, but outside it will be completely impotent. [51]
Like the Marxist Group’s foray into independent life, the MLL was intended to provide a rallying point against war. It was a front for the Militant Group itself and at no time achieved an independent existence. [52] One reason would be the.decline in Labour Party activity immediately before the war, just when it was becoming an exclusive preoccupation of the Group [53]; another was that the MLL was working in a somewhat competitive market. During the initial months of its life the Socialist Left Federation still existed: later there were the Socialist Anti-War Front and the No-Conscription Fellowship. [54] All three of these bodies had more appeal to non-Trotskyists who were opposed to prevailing communist policy. But while this might be explained partly by the willingness of Groves and his comrades to blur their differences with pacifism, the MLL itself did not put a full Trotskyist line. The programme adopted by its first conference contains transitional demands similar to those advanced by the Founding Congress of the Fourth International in September 1938, but there is no reference to the International or Militant’s belief in the need for a new party. [55] Without these two statements of principle, however necessary it may have been for tactical reasons to drop them, even the MLL appeared as an anti-war organisation. And yet the MLL argument was expressed in undiluted Leninist terms. The clash between democratic and fascist powers was presented as a distinction between satiated countries and those with colonies. [56] The real enemy was at home, it argued, but only the working class could overthrow it. That was why a popular front or peace alliance had to be rejected, for it politically disarmed the working class and made it easier for capitalism to go to war. [57] Like the Group, the MLL campaigned for a “Third Labour Government” and its speakers at local meetings demanded a special party conference to change Government foreign policy. [58] There was no prospect of this taking place, but Transport House began to watch the League. [59]
Outside the two main groups there were in 1938 three other factions who identified themselves with the Fourth International.
(1) Workers International League:
Following the split of 19 December 1937, the Paddington branch of the Militant Group took steps to secure its position. It made efforts to convince other group members to join it, with some success. It maintained its distinctive style of street and public paper sales, while continuing to be active within the Labour League of Youth. It may also have been the first Trotskyist faction in Britain to cover strikes on a regular basis. Most remarkably of all, the group set itself the task of “re-forming of the ranks of revolutionary socialism”. On 1 January 1938 it began publication of Workers International News, the first theoretical journal of the Trotskyist movement in Britain. [60] Early editions showed an attempt to put right a perceived deficiency in the movement’s performance by putting some of Trotsky’s prolific output into print. [61] After a few months original articles began to appear, though by then WIN’s loyalty to publishing Trotsky had laid it open to the type of criticism levelled at the 1933 Red Flag.
What was Paddington’s purpose? The controversy over their intention at the December 19 GMM can never be resolved. Very quickly eight members of the Militant Group resolved to establish a new body, the Workers’ International League. They later saw themselves as having made a conscious break with 1930s experience. [62] Regroupment was an early success as WIL had within its ranks members of three different Militant Group branches, as well as the brief adherence of Hilary Sumner-Boyd. [63] During 1938 it made considerable efforts to contact provincial branches: had there not been tangible discontent, it would have met with less success. Its energetic youth work built a local base [64], though it did not launch an agitational journal until September. [65] By the time of the second fusion of Trotskyist groups in July 1938, Workers” International League had thirty members. [66]
(ii) The Revolutionary Socialist Party:
In Scotland a faction of the Socialist Labour Party, itself little more than a shell, split away in the early 1930s and evolved towards the Fourth International. [67] Taking first the name International Socialist Labour Party and then the Revolutionary Socialist Party, it published a journal The British Revolutionary Socialist [68] at slightly irregular intervals. It had an Edinburgh office and most members lived in the city, though others were scattered in Glasgow and Yorkshire. [69] Leading members included the Taits, a family with a background in De Leonism, and the pamphleteer Frank Maitland. [70] The RSP, rested on outdoor meetings and had no interest in Labour Party work. Though its concerns had been largely Scottish the RSP approached the ILP in 1937. [71] When the ILP rebuffed it, it turned towards the Trotskyist movement. It wrote to Trotsky and contacted his British followers in London. [72]
(iii) The ILP fraction
Those who had not followed CLR James out of the ILP attacked the party leaders” centrism and propagandised for the Fourth International up to the eve of the war. Their activities were based on the Clapham ILP, and its bookshop, a Trotskyist centre throughout the decade. There was support from Militant Group members in Liverpool, who had stayed in the ILP. [73] At the 1937 annual conference of the party, Ernie Patterson, with few backers, pressed the case against the Unity Campaign, attacked the Trials and demanded the formation of the Fourth International. [74] Only when, with the backing of the London Division, he deleted from the official resolution on resistance to war, qualifications on party support for colonial revolts, did he meet with success. [75]
As one of the ILP’s rare trade union activists, Patterson found space in The New Leader and used it with some skill. [76] He also held a place on the party’s London Divisional Council. In 1938 his assault on the popular front, morally strengthened by knowledge of the fate of the POUM in Spain, had the backing of Jack Huntz and CA. Smith, but still fell. In the debate on Labour-ILP relations, he argued strongly for a limited united front but rejection of reaffiliation. Smith again supported him and his plea fell narrowly by forty-nine to fifty-five. [77] The following year Patterson reversed his view on affiliation and was part of the majority which carried it. Apart from his activities, Trotskyism had little to show in the ILP after 1936 though attention continued to be paid to the tiny, but lively, Guild of Youth. Future Trotskyists within its ranks included Sydney Bidwell, Sam Bornstein and Ted Fletcher, who that year succeeded the late Bob Smillie as chairman. Trotskyist influence was nevertheless not confined to the efforts of those who remained active within the ILP. In Controversy, the journal launched by the party in October 1936 for discussion purposes, Trotsky and British Trotskyists were published, and there were occasional written debates between them and members of the CPGB. [78] Controversy tended to confirm continued communist suspicion of the ILP as a Trotskyist breeding ground.
It had been thought at the time of the February 1938 fusion that the conversion of a majority of former Marxist Leaguers of itself constituted a strong argument with which to approach the Militant Group anew. After reflection the RSL Central Committee rejected this course in view of the entrenchment of positions. It was only the growing threat of war which led it to extend a further invitation to unite. Open preparations for war, it argued, compelled revolutionaries to reappraise their tactical line. The RSL suggested that in the event of war, it would be disastrous if Trotskyists were not united. Since the Militant Group’s Labour Party presence was not intended to be permanent, just when would it be brought to an end? It argued that gains could not be made of an order which would justify an extended stay. Against the possibilities within the Labour Party had to be set the foundation of a party which could act with tremendous effect on the various disjointed groups and individual Trotskyists and neo-Trotskyists who exist in this country in many thousands. This was somewhat sanguine, and limited in its impact by the admission that a united group would number 200. [79]
The postponed first conference of the Fourth International was planned for 1 September 1938. This meant new pressure on countries where the Trotskyist movement was divided to pull together. The IS intervened in Britain to condemn the Lee split as being “on a basis devoid of all political meaning” [80] (though it called on Militant publicly to clear Lee’s name from any calumny). [81] All British groups, it declared, had to make self-criticism and prepare for unity. The SWP was deputed to meet all groups standing for the Fourth International and prepare “an objective statement of the position of the various groupings in order that the next international conference can settle the English question on the basis of precise proportions”. [82] The Militant Group had derived great security from its belief that it was applying the Geneva resolution, but it had failed to secure official British Section status and its position was weakened since the IS resolution put priority on unity and not tactical agreement. Militant dropped its argument that different tactics meant different organisations, but insisted that the main field of operation had to be the Labour Party. It told the RSL in May 1938 that a fusion was acceptable provided those in the Labour Party did not have to associate themselves openly with the outside body. Within the Labour Party they would continue to put the Trotskyist programme but remain mute on the need for a new party and the Fourth International. The SLF and MLL, could be unified on the MLL programme [83]: within the Labour Party they still suggested the main thrust of Trotskyist activity must be to try and wrest the leadership of left wing workers from the communists. Thus, argued the Militant Group, there should be the open organisation, (the MLL), within which there would be a disciplined group of Bolshevik-Leninists steering for a split. No time limit could be set upon the experience. The weakness and division of the Trotskyists had prevented them taking advantage of the first left swing at the time of the Unity Campaign, but a new opportunity approached. Trotskyism would not, it argued, be in a position to offer alternative leadership on the outbreak of war: its aim should therefore be to hold together. There could be no assumption that war itself would be the signal for a split from the Labour Party: that would depend on what had been achieved by then. The existence of an open Fourth International Party, of whose use to it Militant was still unconvinced, was the price for securing unity of all Trotskyists now in the Labour Party. The outside body would have a limited propaganda role: and must avoid masquerading as a party. Conceding its continued existence was the limit of compromises the Militant was prepared to make. [84]
Militant had pledged itself to the IS work for unity. [85] In June 1938 it was approached by Harry Wicks, acting secretary of the new RSL urging it further in this direction. [86] The plan was to convene a conference and thus implement the IS declaration. Invitations would be sent, he reported, not only to the RSL and the Militant Group, but to Don James’s dissidents in Liverpool, to the RSP, to the WIL and to the Leninist League. [87] Militant agreed to a conference but demanded the exclusion of WIL and the Leninist League, which its Glasgow members knew. Its counter-proposal was a fusion of itself with the RSL. [88] This offer was turned down and Militant’s worries about the Leninist League scorned. [89]
Some time in July 1938, J.P. Cannon, a leader of the American Socialist Workers Party, then at a zenith of influence [90], arrived in Britain as midwife to the merger. [91] He met each party to the project separately to persuade them to come in. His immediate object was a unified delegation to the imminent Fourth International conference. Only in WIL’s case did he meet the membership and not just leading figures [92] but he secured the agreement of all except the Leninist League to take part in a conference. He did not, however, dispel WIL’s doubts about the possibility of fusing such different factions into one.
The National Conference of Bolshevik-Leninists gathered in the New Morris Hall on 30-31 July 1938, with Sara again the chairman. It had before it papers from the RSL, RSP and WIL. It seems that the Militant, which was to dominate the new body, did not submit a document. The RSL argument was familiar: “the policy of confining our work to that of a fraction within the Labour Party is calculated to sow the most dangerous illusions among the workers”. After the debacle of the Socialist League there was suspicion of left wing movements. Neither the SLF nor the MLL had met with success in 1938. If the ILP reaffiliated, these two would be reduced to insignificance; but if the ILP was in the Labour Party, a dangerous rival to the Fourth International would be removed. Militant had argued that a split would be justified only by the prospect of establishing an alternative leadership. But, countered the RSL, there could be no such outcome without a clear break with the Labour leaders over the war question. The Transitional Programme was now to hand with supporting quotes for such a thesis. It also tilted the argument towards independent rather than entrist activity. Indeed the shift in the approach of the international from support for the Militant to encouragement of unity via the RSL seems to have been decisive.
The limited progress which the Revolutionary Socialist Party had met in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and elsewhere in Scotland was, like the RSL’s early experiences, empirical proof that independence could work. It claimed to have attracted a larger crowd than the Labour Party or the communists in Edinburgh to its May Day rally. The RSP submission to the conference rested upon a De Leonite interpretation of British history in the twentieth century – “the long struggle of the workers to break away from the Labour Party”. The RSP had no time for entry work. “Never must the revolutionary banner be lowered in capitulation to such a party.” A political crisis had arisen which a new party must meet; on the industrial field there was “a spontaneous movement of the masses ... of the utmost significance”. An independent party was needed to marry the two. If it could it would catalyse a revolutionary mood before the war; if this proved impossible it would work by every means possible for the defeat of British capitalism, even if by then it was in alliance with Russia. [93]
The WIL recognised that all groups united in seeing the epoch as one of imperialist crisis and decay. They differed on “how to overcome the present exasperating isolation of the revolutionary elements from the broad masses”. [94] The RSL, claimed WIL, made ineffective criticism from outside which could yet be damaging. Revolutionaries could not abandon the Labour Party. Politically awakening workers would just pass through it unless there were revolutionaries present around whom they might gather. While Labour at present was weak, it would grow, and its current feeble condition could give revolutionaries extra weight [95] and influence in the short run on which they might capitalise in the long. Nor did presence in the Labour Party mean submersion, as WIL’s own active life had shown. WIL dismissed the MLL and the SLF, each less likely to provide revolutionary support than an ILP returned to the Labour Party. Within that party it urged all groups to organise “full strength at the point of attack”.
No minutes of the conference have been located. The proceedings unfolded under the influence of Cannon’s prestige, knowledge of the approach of the Founding Conference and also Lee’s bitter phrases. [96] The final agreement [97], though drawn up by Cannon, was more in the nature of a British compromise. It set up one organisation, the Revolutionary Socialist League, to run all activities, funds and property and to engage a full-time secretary. This much was to be expected. But whereas the main emphasis was to be placed on Labour Party work “in the next period”, members fully active outside the party were not required to join. [98] A publishing house was to be established to run a Fourth International journal fused from Fight, Revolutionary Socialist and Workers International News. The Militant would continue to appear as an agitational paper published by the MLL There would also be an internal bulletin for all comrades every two months. While everyone was to sell the Fourth International journal, there was no explicit clause enforcing sales of Militant on those outside the Labour Party, and it is difficult to see how such sales could have been achieved. The agreement allotted five executive places each to the RSL and Militant Groups, to the RSP and WIL went two apiece. After six months a national conference would elect a new executive. During that time the parties pledged them selves to “liquidate” past conflicts, collaborate harmoniously, and impose Fourth International discipline on disrupters. The final stage of unification was to be ratification of the agreement by the member ship of all parties to it and a general aggregate meeting of all members. When each group had elected its members to the unified executive, that executive would elect delegates to the imminent World Congress.
The RSL, RSP and Militant signed the Peace and Unity agreement. But the WIL refused, despite repeated appeals from Cannon, to take part, resting on the argument that there could be no true unity until experience forged it. [99] There was support for this view outside its ranks [100], but most seem to have genuinely believed that they had conquered the debilitating weakness of the 1930s. The unified Executive Committee elected Harber (Militant), Maitland (RSP), and C.L.R. James (RSL) as its delegates to the coming conference. Sumner-Boyd was also to attend as a consultative delegate, and he took one of the sets of minutes. WIL sent with Harber a statement that it stood on the Geneva resolution, that the controversy over the Labour Party had been fudged in the new RSL, that individuals were effectively left to work where they wished. WIL argued that as the organisation implementing the Geneva resolution it ought to be the official British Section. Failing that it requested sympathising a status and offered collaboration with the RSL in all shared fields. [101]
The “Geneva” conference [102] to found the Fourth International lasted for one day, 3 September 1938. Thirty delegates from eleven countries attended. [103] With difficulty a majority had been assembled to consummate the swing away from the Comintern begun after the German debacle of 1933 by launching a new international. Unifications in Britain and Greece, facilitated by the approach of the Conference now were quoted as auspicious signs:
These two steps symbolised for the conference the growing integration of our international movement made possibly by our whole past course, which was based not on the concept of superficial, temporary, and deceptive advances but on the concept of the process of revolutionary selection which alone leads to the creation and victory of the tempered revolutionary party. [104]
In Britain there was no political disagreement, only the tactical clash over the Labour Party. The International had determined upon “a definite roll-call of our forces” and looked at Britain in that light. [105] In fact there was no opposition among the British groups to the launching of the Fourth International [106]: WIL in particular identified itself with this cause right from the start. Nonetheless, the Statutes made it clear that there could be but one section of the Fourth International in a given country. Cannon argued that the recent British fusion demanded the recognition of two places on the IEC and James and Harber were elected to fill them. A discussion on Britain followed. Conference resolved to offer Lee a hand of friendship, but if he rejected it to fight him. Clart argued for a conciliatory approach in view of the strength of the RSL’s position. [107] Nevertheless, WIL was unambiguously condemned. It was held to have been established and maintained for purely personal reasons:
Under these circumstances it is necessary to warn the comrades associated with the Lee group that they are being led on a path of unprincipled clique politics which can only land them in the mire. [108]
The following day the new executive of the Fourth International met. It was this body which discussed the Lee group in detail. Shachtman, supported by Cannon, argued against sympathetic affiliation for WIL on the grounds that its action showed it moving away from the Fourth. Cannon thought WIL akin to Molinier’s organisation [109], but on a lower plane. Maitland spoke forcefully against WIL [110], but James and Harber joined in only to assent to the proposed resolution, which the IEC then went on to pass. [111] The International Youth conference passed a guiding resolution on the – English Youth Movement, moved by Gould. [112] It expected the situation in the Labour Party League of Youth to develop in favour of the Trotskyists and proposed concentration there with work in the YCL and Guild of Youth from within the League of Youth. Achievements there in the past year were thought meagre, not only for objective reasons but because of inefficiency. As a remedy, a certain amount of specialisation was proposed: as many as possible should concentrate on youth work and compose a youth section of the RSL Note was also taken of the “nascent” youth apprentices movement [113] and the RSL youth was thought to have a great responsibility to steer towards it. [114]
On his journey back to the United States, Shachtman had further discussions with the British including the WIL. There was no tangible result. The first important development after the conference was the loosening of the cadre which had dominated the British movement during the middle of the decade. Sumner-Boyd who had been present at all important developments since 1936 left almost at once for an academic career in Turkey. [115] James, reduced in effectiveness by a stomach ulcer, left, perhaps without warning, in early October 1938 to join the SWP in the United States. [116] Some time during the year Jack Winocour also departed for America. [117] This had the effect of weakening the RSL half of the fusion. [118] Those that remained from the RSL side felt that there had to be action to make a reality of the agenda set by the Transitional Programme adopted by the Founding Congress. [119] But they were confronted by a political environment more hostile than before. There was no widespread movement against the coming war and what the Trotskyists had to say about it was less effective for the impact of the Trials. [120]
Unity had thus come late and in most unfavourable circumstances for all the optimism of the Transitional Programme. It was also to be shortlived. Unity was achieved because many in Britain genuinely desired it and because differences were felt to be relatively unimportant in the face of approaching war. If the International Secretariat had stood firm on its 1936 Geneva resolution and its statement in December of that year, unity could not possibly have come about. But the IS never made the Militant Group, the faction in Britain operating its policy, its official British Section. It only conferred this status on the fused RSL, which resulted from the Peace and Unity conference of July 1938. This was a hasty affair arranged within an international timetable, not one which suited the natural course of events in Britain. The only group in Britain to perceive this clearly was the Workers” International League which would have, no part of it. The next six years were to vindicate its abstention and prove the International’s condemnation of it a wild misjudgment.
Notes
1. Fight, 10 Oct. 1936.
2. Bolshevik-Leninist statement to Joint Session of groups, 11 Oct. 1936, For Discussion, 1, 28 Nov. 1936, 15.
3. Statement to the Bureau for the Fourth International from BL Group in the Labour Party regarding the fulfilment of the Geneva Resolution on the question of the Unity of the British Groups, 29 Dec. 1936.
4. In the view of the Marxist Group the ILP had fudged on Abyssinia, the Popular Front, the Trials and Spain. The leadership was “a body of political manoeuverers without vision or principle” (Towards the New Workers’ Party, Statement to the ILP NAC from members of the former Marxist Group, Fight, 12 Dec. 1936).
5. The Marxist Group was proclaimed as an independent force at a public meeting on 16 December 1936.
6. The Marxist Group analysis of the Unity Campaign was rather more concrete than that offered by the other Trotskyists. If there was agreement between the ILP, CPGB and Socialist League, it asked, why were they not all in one party? There were differences and they could not be blurred:
The Marxist Group will therefore not apply to join this bloc as outlined by the ILP and it warns the workers that no ultimate good will come of it. The CP will swallow the majority of the Socialist League and half of the ILP for its counter-revolutionary policy. The ILP, will capitulate entirely to the CP or run for shelter into the Labour Party. (Fight, Jan. 1937.)
7. The Bolshevik-Leninists had sold the first (10 Oct.) issue of Fight but withdrew from any contact with it after this to avoid embarrassment in the Labour Party (EC, Bolshevik-Leninist Group in the Labour Party, Statement to the Bureau for the Fourth International, 29 Dec. 1936, 3).
8. In opting for independence C.L.R. James, chairman of the Group, had the support of Arthur Ballard, its secretary, who was a Croydon carpenter, Jock Milligan, a building worker and Karl Westwood. The charge of middle class influence is levelled in EC of the Bolshevik-Leninist Group, Statement to the Bureau, 4.
9. Arthur Cooper (who had voted with James on 15 November at the crucial London meeting of the Group), Frederick Marzillier and Ernie Patterson stayed within the ILP These three were all Londoners, but they were thought to have more support among provincial Marxist Group members than among those in the Capital. They were a minority sufficiently sizeable to retain fraction status within the Marxist Group, though this seems to have meant very little. Cooper, at least, left the ILP later. A third part of the Marxist Group was identified as the former members of the Communist League minority, all but one of whom now joined the Labour Party.
10. There was strong hostility within the International Communist League to entering social-democratic parties. Joining the ILP provoked no crisis outside Britain, but the French turn followed by that of the Belgians was denounced by many leading figures. When the Americans entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the dispute was extended. C.L.R. James was in touch with Creme who belonged to the Canadian followers of B.J. Field, who had split from the CLA during his leadership of an industrial dispute in 1935. Whatever the significance of this and other contacts in terms of influence, James argued along similar lines to those of Bauer against the French turn and Hugo Oehler against the American turn. The views of Oehler, a veteran labour organiser, who split from the CLA in 1935 are well expressed in his remark at an October 1934 Plenum of the League:
In fact, French, Belgium, (sic) and British entrism were disasters (and) because of excessive organic unity, virtual capitulation. (quoted in C.A. Myers, op. cit., 16)
11.Wicks may have joined the Fight editorial board early in 1937 (A. Cooper to Wicks, 25 Jan. 1937. This information is crossed through in the letter). He was also collaborating with James on World Revolution (1937). It was to be the League which secured the Group’s attendance at the February 1937 national meeting against Bolshevik-Leninist inclinations (see below).
12. Additional arguments they deployed were that they were the only group in Britain following international recommendations, and that conferral of official status would hasten the disintegration of the other two, a process already underway, (EC, Bolshevik-Leninist Group, Statement to the Bureau, 5-7).
13. Declaration of the International Bureau for the Fourth International on the subject of the English Marxist Group, 13 Dec. 1936, n.p., kindly lent to author by Mr. John Archer.
14. Minutes B/L Group Secretariat, 13 Feb. 1937, H.P., D.J.H. 2a/3a.
15. “Braun” was the pseudonym of Erwin Wolf (1902-37) secretary of the IS until his murder in Spain, probably by the G.P.U., late in the year. The initiative for this meeting came from the Militant Group who sought a common approach to the Unity Campaign. Interim Reply of the EC, Militant Group to the Marxist League, 3 Aug. 1937, in Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.] 1937.
16. These are likely to have been misgivings about its campaign for early independence for the League of Youth (Secretary, London Group, [Militant Group], Report to Provincial Branch on Joint Meeting, 14 Feb. 1937, H.P., D.J.H 2A/3B).
17. Statement of the Executive Committee of the Militant Group on Inter-Group Relations, 20 Aug. 1937, in Inter-Group Relations, [Sept] 1937.
18. The Marxist League never sold Youth Militant but did put efforts into a short-lived and narrowly based Socialist League journal Socialist Youth, of which, suggested Militant, it had control. The League also circulated the POUM bulletin in England. The irony that two groups who vehemently opposed the Unity Campaign could not themselves unite, passed without comment.
19. Without this sense of time running out, it seems unlikely that the Marxist Group would have made its rapid turn away from the ILP This explains the willingness of Cooper to reverse his earlier view and move into independence. Other prominent members of the Group with ILP connections were Arthur Ballard, the Croydon carpenter who had once run the Strand ILP bookshop with Jon Kimche and was now Group secretary, and Jim Wood, who was married to Audrey Brockway.
20. This threat was scarcely veiled, see the concluding words of Declaration of the International Bureau, 13 Dec. 1936.
21. Fight, April 1937. Nevertheless, the Marxist Group had Labour Party members. One of them, “PT”, spoke at the Fusion Conference of 27 February 1938 (RSL, Internal Bulletin, 1, April 1938, 11).
22. Fight, July 1937.
23. ibid.
24. James, with his relatively wide reputation, had an appeal to those of other parties and of none. The years immediately before the war were intensely productive for him. He published The Black Jacobins, a study of the Haitian slave revolt of Toussaint L’Ouverture, in 1938 and the following year translated Boris Souvarine’s Staline. His later fame as a theorist of nationalism in developing countries was anticipated in his last years in Britain by his pivotal position in the London community of black radicals. He was editor of International African Opinion, the journal of the International African Service Bureau, of which George Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah were members. Padmore’s wife had acted as James’s secretary during the writing of World Revolution.
25. This argument can be followed in Fight throughout 1937, and especially in its August issue.
26. Harry Wicks assisted C.L.R. James with World Revolution (1937) and had helped him as early as Minty Alley, a novel written while the Marxist Group was still in the ILP (Interview with H. Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979). Wicks was also a member of the Fight editorial board in 1937 and, as first secretary of the Trotsky Defence Committee, in contact with all groups. His Notes on the History of Bolshevism (1937) were drawn up with help from D.D. Harber whom he would encounter in the British Museum.
27. Statement of Marxist Group from its half-yearly conference, 11 July 1937 (Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.] 1937, 1). The Group’s favoured sectors for joint fraction work were certain local co-ops, union branches, trades councils and the Socialist Left Federation. There was not unanimous support within the Marxist Group for its interest in the SLF objections were raised – and sustained – by Bill Duncan and Hilda Lane (see below).
28. Marxist Group Proposals for Joint Work, 28 July 1937, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.]1937. Other suggestions included were a central London meeting on Stalinism and the Colonial Struggle and a system of exchange sales for the three group papers.
29. ibid., 4-5.
30. Interim Reply of the EC, Militant Group, 5 Aug. 1937, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.] 1937, 2.
31. Interim Reply of the E.C., Militant Group to the Marxist League, 3 Aug. 1937, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept] 1937, 3-4.
32. The August 1937 Militant Group conference is described in the previous chapter.
33. Statement of the Executive Committee of the Militant Group on Inter Group Relations, 20 Aug. 1937, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept]. 1937.
34. Statement to the ML from the Marxist Group, Marxist League, Information Bulletin, 20 July 1937, Warwick MSS 15/4/1/16.
35. Marxist League Reply to the Marxist Group and Proposals of the ML, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.] 1937, 2-3.
36. Reply of the EC, Militant Group, to Proposal of Co-ordinating Committee for Joint Membership Meeting to Discuss Perspectives, 27 Aug. 1937, Inter-Group Relations, [Sept.] 1937.
37. In attractively designed cyclostyled editions it brought out Of Those Who Forget Their ABC and A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker concerning the United Front of Defence (Warwick MSS 15/3/1/70 and 71).
38. Political Statement, Revolutionary Socialist League, Internal Bulletin, April 1938, Special Number, 2.
39. “Charles Summer” to International Secretariat, 6 February 1938.
40. Militant presumably did not qualify because it did not call for the Fourth International or for an independent revolutionary party.
41. For the record of the debate, see RSL, Internal Bulletin, 1, April 1938, 8-15.
42. This name may have been suggested by a desire to attract radical former members of the Socialist League.
43 C.L.R. James, Revolutionary Socialist League, Fight, April 1938.
44. Sub-titled, “(Organ of the Revolutionary Socialist League affiliated to the Bureau for the Fourth International)”. It appeared every month until July 1938, the month of the second merger, when shortage of funds stopped it coming out.
45. R. Barltrop records the SPGB’s attempt to rally support by open air meetings in The Monument (1974).
46. One of the speakers used was Hugo Dewar, who had not participated in the February 1938 merger. Apart from the Marxist League cadre, there were within the RSL Cliff Stanton, Ivor Cresswell, Rowlands and Bradley (whose connections stretched back to the Communist League).
47. On the eve of the second fusion the RSL claimed a fifty per cent increase in membership since the first, (RSL, On The Necessity for an Independent Bolshevik-Leninist Organisation in Britain, 24 July 1938, National Bulletin, H.P., D.J.H., 2A/12A/ 3-4). Other fields of work open to the RSL were the trade unions and co-ops. Its members intervened in the Men’s Guild of the Co-operative Movement, but were unable to prevent support for the peace alliance launched by Reynolds’ earlier in the year from sweeping on. Fight recorded in May 1938 that the communists, formerly “uncritical and subservient lackeys of the Labour Party”, now rejected resolutions for a Labour government in favour of a peace alliance.
48. RSL, Internal Bulletin, 1, April 1938, 12.
49. There were denunciations however. Willis and Bernstein warned delegates to the approaching annual conference that the Trotskyists would put amendments which, if accepted, would put the stamp of impossibility or unreality on its programme (Advance, March 1938). Their views were echoed in a warning from Gollan that Trotskyists would “hinder and disrupt” the development of the League of Youth into a mass force and “confine it to an oppositional movement” (Defend The People, Easter 1938).
50. Fight (April 1938) noted few had rallied to the Youth Militant proposal of a campaign against conscription. The New Leader (11 March 1938) saw its delegates as “small, hopelessly outnumbered”.
51. The Group and the struggle against War, passed by the Political Education Committee, 30 March 1938 (National Committee, 9 April 1938).
52. The first national MLL conference claimed 150 members, not a large number though greater than that of the SLF Margaret Johns, editor of Militant, told it that there was a print run of 2,000 monthly, not greatly in excess of its circulation as organ of the Militant Group. The MLL branch structure – six in London, seven in the provinces – resembled that of the Group, (Report of the first National Conference of the Militant Labour League, (1938), H.P., D.J.H. 3/2).
53. Constituency membership in 1937-39 was: 447,150; 428,826; 408,844 (LPCR, 1979).
54. At its first annual conference the MLL spoke of continued work with the SLF and “considerable influence” within the SAWF, (see below, Report of the first National Conference).
55. ibid.
56. Manifesto of the Militant Labour League, [1938], (published by “J.D. Parry”, probably a pseudonym).
57. S. Jackson, “Peace Alliance” – The Road to War (1938). Jackson presented Ernest Bevin and Harry Pollitt as divided only on tactics, the one representing British capitalism, the other the Soviet bureaucracy. His alternative was a Third Labour Government.
58. Manifesto of the Militant Labour League.
59. A.L. Williams, (Leeds party agent) to J. Middleton, 14 Oct. 1938; H. Atkinson (London District Organiser) to Middleton, 18 Oct. 1938, (Middleton Papers, Labour Party Head Office).
60. Sub-titled “Theoretical organ of the Workers International League”. The priority this small group gave to theory contradicts the received wisdom about them as primarily an activist group not at home in the realm of ideas.
61. Beginning with GPU Stalks Abroad. Open letter to all working class organisations, (WIN, 1 Jan.1938, 1-3), the journal published thirteen articles by Trotsky in its first nine issues.
62. [WIL document on the history of Trotskyism], [Autumn?] 1943.
63.The Paddington, North and Central branches. Sumner-Boyd had, like other Marxist League members, been left without an organisation following its October 1937 dissolution. While the majority of former ML members regrouped, Boyd seems to have believed Lee’s purpose not to be a new group but only the establishment of a journal. He contributed an article, Stalin the Assassin, to the 1 January 1938 issue and collaborated on the second. On 6 March, however, he informed the IS that his cooperation had ended, (see above).
64. On 15 April, an eight page magazine, The Searchlight, was published from the Paddington League of Youth over the name of Gerry Healey (sic). Only Vol.1, No.1 has been located.
65. Youth for Socialism, see below.
66. Interview with E. Grant, Jan. 1973.
67. The historian of the SLP, Raymond Challinor does not trace this postscript to the party (The Origins of British Bolshevism, 1977).
68. Later the Revolutionary Socialist, (1d monthly). Numbers 10, 11, 12 (July 1934, August 1934 and January 1935), are deposited at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.
69. In 1934 and 1935 the Revolutionary Socialist reported some support in England. The Leeds branch of the Militant Group encountered RSP members in Fitzwilliam, Yorks. in 1937 and found them ultra-left, presumably in their attitude to the Labour Party.
70. Principally W. Tait, the organiser, though A. Tait was also active. Maitland had written for The Plebs (History – which made Scott unnecessary, vo1.26(1934) 44-5) and was the author of several pamphlets including Holidays with Pay (1938), 7p.
71. The RSP applied for affiliation but was rejected by the ILP’s NAC on 10 August 1937 (J. Jupp, op. cit., 244). It had attended congresses of the London Bureau though it had never been an affiliate. ILP rejection came about from fears that the RSP was already under Trotskyist influence.
72. The RSL informed it that a unity conference of British Trotskyists was imminent and this naturally increased RSP interest. Frank Maitland helped bridge the gap between the two with his article The Antics of Forward, Fight, (Aug. 1938); (W. Tait and F. Maitland, Statement of the RSP, 23 Dec. 1938, in WIL document on history of Trotskyism, [1943], 9).
73. These included Cund, of Kirkdale ILP, who had a full time party post.
74. The New Leader, 2 April 1937; R. Bishop, The Independent Labour Party in Conference, Inprecorr, Vol.17, No.16, 10 April 1937, 380-1. Bishop argued that while most organised Trotskyists had pulled out, “the leadership has taken over Trotskyism as its ideological stock-in-trade”. It may be that Trotsky’s thinking did inspire Brockway from time to time, but he had no respect for his movement, dismissing it as “the merest trifling sects” (The New Leader, 16 April 1937).
75. The New Leader, 2 April 1937.
76. See his fantasy of a Pollitt speech in the House of Commons, I dream about Harry Pollitt, The New Leader, 13 Aug. 1937.
77. The New Leader, 22 April 1938.
78. The rareness of such occurrences has been commented upon by J. Saville, in his article May Day 1937, loc. cit., 268. Among the articles of interest in Controversy are H. Sara, Communist Party History, Sept. 1937; “Communist”, Six Questions to Trotskyists, and C.L.R. James, Reply to ”Communist”, Feb. 1938; L. Trotsky, The Communist Manifesto Ninety Years After, April and May 1938; S. Hook, The U.S.S.R. Frame-Ups, May 1938; and L. Trotsky and P. Sloan, The Soviet Purge, July 1938. Sara was Controversy’s reviewer for Japan’s Gamble in China for which he adopted a detached style. When he reviewed Harold Isaacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (1938), he was less restrained (The New Leader, 21 Oct. 1938). The book had an introduction by Trotsky and Sara criticised Isaacs for failing to follow the evolution of his thought.
79. C. Summer, secretary RSL, to Militant Group, 22 April 1938, Internal Bulletin, 3, July 1938, 1-2.
80. Resolution of the International Secretariat on the R.L. affair, Beginning May 1938, H.P., D.J.H. 2B/4/I. The IS described the WIL as “a new, minute, independent, so-called ‘Trotskyist’ group” and declared unity in Britain to be the most crucial task of the hour.
81. Jackson, van Gelderen and “J.S.V.” were charged with the main responsibility for poor handling of the Lee affair. The charge of misappropriating funds was branded “pure calumny” by the IS though it made no comment on other allegations concerning Lee’s activities there. The Militant Group declined to publish a statement clearing Lee’s name on the grounds that the matter was only of narrow interest and that Lee had not used WIN for the purpose. (Militant Group to the IS, 19 June 1938, H.P., 2B/4/2.)
82. Resolution of the International Secretariat.
83. If Groves’s “bureaucratic control” prevented amalgamation, then the RSL members in the SLF must join the MLL This organisation was recognised as the Trotskyist faction, and Militant better known than The Call (see below).
84. From the Militant Group, 27 May 1938 (RSL, Internal Bulletin, 3, July 1938).
85. Though it expected more from the I.S. on what it considered Lee’s factional course (Militant Group to IS, 19 June 1938, H.P., 2B/4/2).
86. RSL, Internal Bulletin, 3, July 1938, 7.
87. A Glasgow-based group, followers of Hugo Oehler who had opposed on principle the French turn and the proposition to enter the American Socialist Party. In October 1935 the Oehlerites had been expelled from the CLA for violation of party discipline by publishing their own journal. They then formed the Revolutionary Workers’ League.
88. E.S. Jackson to RSL, 9 July 1938, ibid., 9.
89. C. Summer to the Militant Group, 14 July 1938, ibid., 11-12. Naturally an open faction like the RSL would be less concerned than one in the Labour Party about a third less than ten strong which opposed Labour Party membership in principle. But within the RSL itself there were also doubts about the catholicity of the invitation to the forthcoming conference, (W. Duncan, Fusion and CC Muddle, 14 July 1938, H.P., D.J.H., 13A/3).
90. When the CLA left the Socialist Party of America in mid 1937 it took this name.
91. It was a sign of the times that Cannon, following the recent murders of Trotskyists, was carrying a gun (Interview with E. Grant, 3 Jan. 1973).
92. The WIL convened a meeting of its full membership, thirty strong and all in London at this point (Interview with E. Grant). He met only the leaders of the Militant Group (Interview with M. Johns).
93. Revolutionary Socialist Party NEC, The Revolution in Britain, National Bulletin, [July] 1938 (sep. pag. 1-7).
94. Contribution by Workers’ International League to the Discussion on the Tasks of Bolshevik-Leninists in Britain, June 1938, H.P., D.J.H. 5/1, 1.
95. At the present moment the right wingers search for a stick with which to beat the Stalinists who threaten to tear the machine from out of their hands. They do not hesitate to publish selected articles by Trotsky in Forward and to quote from the Trotskyites. Only from within the Labour Party is it possible to extract a price from the bureaucracy, forcing it to acknowledge the revolutionary content of Trotskyism instead of merely utilising the anti-Stalinist aspect of its revolutionary programme (ibid., 4).
96. Lee referred to the pre-conference negotiations as a French bedroom farce; he called the factions Kilkenny cats, tied by their tails, fated to fight for evermore (Interview with John Goffe, 1974).
97. For full text, see Appendix D.
98. It was this clause in particular which was to attract the objections of WIL. Nor was WIL the only critic. In 1941 the Left Fraction (q.v.) opposed the concession of minority rights in an agreement it construed as based on Labour Party work (Brief Notes on the History of the Left Fraction, 2). The Socialist Workers Group (q.v.) declared that the fusion “took place under pressure from the international and left unsolved the burning question of the ‘Labour Party perspective’” (For the Building of the British Section of the Fourth International, 30 April 1941, H.P., D.J.H. 7/1).
99. [WIL document on the history of Trotskyism], 5.
100. Two RSL members, Bill Duncan and Hilda Lane were unhappy that fusion could take place without resolving disagreements over the SLF In their view working within a “centrist” organisation was a very different matter to setting one up, (W. Duncan, Fusion and CC Muddle, 14 July 1938, H.P., D.J.H. 13 A/3). Some months later the RSP wrote “the Unity agreement was more of an organisational than a political document. Unity was achieved without preliminary discussions on the various national and international issues”, (Letter and Statement of the RSP (Edinburgh) and reply of Executive Committee, [Jan.? 1939], 7 H.P., D.J.H. 13 A/6.)
101. Statement of Workers’ International League to the International Congress of the Fourth International, 1938, [August? 1938], reprinted in [WIL document on the history of Trotskyism], 7-8.
102. Held in reality at the Rosmers’ home in the Paris suburbs. Geneva was a subterfuge used for security reasons.
103. Shachtman was chairman and the joint secretaries were Sumner, Hic and Gould. The published minutes are Sumner’s.
104. Review of the Conference, Documents, 160. Growth in “England” (though the RSP was surely included) was quoted with that in the USA as evidence of fruitful activity by the International Secretariat. The figure of 170 members given for England does not appear fanciful.
105. It was faced not only with unifications in Britain and Greece but also with the withdrawal of Vereecken and Sneevliet. The Poles constituted a loyal opposition within the conference (I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, 419-29).
106. James argued against delay, refuting Shachtman’s argument that the launch had been delayed in 1936 by hope of convincing the centrists (Documents, 298). He was the chief British participant. Like Harber he was at his second conference. With seven others he interviewed observers from the PSOP and the POUM; he argued that the KPD collapse of 1933 was a conscious policy; he moved an amendment from the RSL Central Committee to the slogan of the right to work in the Transitional Programme, seeking the insertion of Keir Hardie’s phrase, “work or full maintenance”. When Russia was discussed James defended the progressive nature of the Soviet economy against Craipeau but anticipated his own split from the Fourth International by joining Shachtman in resisting a precise characterisation of the Russian bureaucracy.
107. Documents, 302. In Harber’s record it was James who made this adjustment.
108. [Fourth International], On Unification of the British Section, [Sept. 1938], Documents, 270. WIL was accused of not even making a statement though it had sent an appeal with Harber, (see above, 265)
109. Raymond Molinier was the leader of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste, one of two warring factions which comprised the French Trotskyist movement. The International Conference of 1936 had expelled Molinier for use of funds to maintain hegemony in the French Section. The Founding Conference declared the ranks of the FI open to PCI members but not to Molinier (Documents, 262-4). Cannon’s comparison seems to have been intended to draw a parallel between the personal roles of Molinier and Lee.
110. Described as a “vicious attack” by WIL, [WIL document on the history of Trotskyism], 8.
111. This paragraph is based on Harber’s minutes of the executive meeting, [RSL], Report Of International Conference [Sept.? 1938], (Warwick MSS.). According to the RSP a misunderstanding of the conference arrangements, (which were shrouded in secrecy), led to Willie Tait, Harber and van Gelderen missing the main conference, (Letter and Statement of the RSP, loc. cit., 6). Tait may be in error for Maitland, but neither this, nor van Gelderen’s presence has been confirmed.
112. Gould (often known in the International as Anton) was a youth leader of the SWP. and was to be youth representative on the resident I.E.C. established in the United States after the outbreak of war.
113. There had been strikes among apprentices in 1937, in which the CPGB had intervened.
114. Resolution on English Youth Movement”, D.D. Harber, Report of International Conference, 1938, 1, Warwick M.S.S., 21.
115. He began teaching at Robert College, Istanbul whence, until his death, he made a deep impression on Turkish intellectual life. He wrote the definitive Strolling through Istanbul, collected the works of Turkish artists and “effectively created the modern Turkish theatre”, (The Times, 18 Sept. 1976).
116. The SWP’s black membership was negligible and Cannon, during his visit, invited James to undertake a lecture tour of the States. James informed Starkey Jackson, the new RSL secretary of his impending departure in September. One of his last acts before leaving was the Manifesto of The African Service Bureau, whose call for inter-racial unity against imperialist war was endorsed by the MLL (Militant Oct. 1938; I. Oxaal, Black Intellectuals Come to Power, 1971, 71,.117. Interview with H. Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979.
117. [NOTE MISSING]
118. Harber also moved out of London about this time to take work as a CIS agent in Eastbourne. As an asthmatic he would expect also to improve his health in the sea air (Information from Mr. J. Harber).
119. “The strategic task of the next period – a pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda, and organisation – consists in over coming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard.” (The Transitional Programme. The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International, reprinted in Documents, 182).
120. At least one Trotskyist, Arthur Ballard, became disillusioned with the movement after the third trial and C.L.R. James was unable to persuade him to remain active (Interview with H. Wicks, 30 Nov. 1979). Ballard appears to have rejoined the ILP shortly after this. He began to write for The New Leader on colonial affairs and opened a regular column, In the Empire late in 1938 which he used on 9 December to review The Black Jacobins. At the 1939 annual conference of the ILP he moved a Hampstead/Hounslow/Wimbledon resolution on subject peoples which was carried with NAC support.
