British Trotskyism, social democracy and the entry tactic: the experience of the 'thirties

DEMOCRACY AND THE ENTRY TACTIC:

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE 'THIRTIES

Discussion article

INTRODUCTION

early years British Trotskyists never numbered more than a couple of hundred people at most. To today's observer, their movement at first sight appears dominated by a bewildering series of splits, a myriad of different organisations and a dozen or so personalities who changed their allegiances almost yearly. Why then should revolutionaries bother to analyse the work they did! Didn't the '57 varieties' of Trotskyism of yesteryear wield influence than they do today, and, if so, what's the point of discussing them? The answer is simple. At present socialists claiming the mantle of Trotsky are entering the Labour Party in droves.

And today's 'entrists' don't simply justify their actions by invoking Lenin's recommendation (in 1920) that British communists should affiliate to the Labour Party; they also summon Trotsky in their defence. Because Trotsky advised his followers to enter the Labour Party 45 years ago, they argue, it's right to go in now.

One justification for working in the Labour Party today has recently been well made by the paper of the Workers Socialist Lacialist Organiser, In a polemic against the Socialist Workers Party's pamphlet The Labour Party: myths and realities - a lengthy SWP apology for outside the Labour Party - WSL member Stan Crooke takes issue with SWP leader Duncan Hallas for 'trying to prove that leftwingers in the Labour Party can make no significant impact and are wasting their time'.

Crooke says that labour leftwingers of Stalinist or social democratic persuasion have: Tailed not because they were in the Labour Party but because of their own political inadequacies, ultra leftist in the case of the people influenced by the CP, reformist in the case of the 'softs".

*Hallas says nothing about another sort of leftwinger: the Trotskyists in the Labour Party in the 'thirties.

It is true that Hallas says nothing about pre-war Trotskyism.

Yet Crooke 'says nothing' about the fact that pre-war Trotskyism failed to made a significant impact on the Labour Party. While Crooke may not want to ask why they failed, we do. Though Trotsky favoured the entry of revolutionaries into reformist organisations in the 'thirties, this does not imply we should favour it now. Indeed: It is because we cherish.. revolutionary traditions that w must vigorously protest against the view that by using one of the slogans of a particular historical period the essential conditions of that period can be restored. It is one thing to preserve the traditions of the revolution, to know how to use them for constant propa- 21 ganda and agitation and for acquainting the masses with the conditions of a direct and aggressive struggle against the old regime, but quite another thing to repeat a slogan divorced from the sum total of the conditions which gave rise to it and which ensured its success and to apply it to essentially different conditions.

"Marx himself, who so highly valued revolutionary traditions and unsparingly castigated a renegade or philistine attitude towards them, at the same time demanded that revolutionaries should be able to think, should be able to analyse the conditions under which old methods of certain slogans, astruggle could be used, and not simply to repeat A critical examination of the early phase of the British Trotskyist movement provides useful lessons for revolutionary communists today.

SECTION II

THE ORIGINS OF BRITISH TROTSKYISM

The international scene The British Trotskyists formed a particularly weak contingent of a movement which, though it arose worldwide, was generally weak itself. There are good reasons for this The Communist International was formed in the wake of unrest that spread through the workers' movement after the First World War. Inevitably a number of petit-bourgeois political currents gravitated towards it. This was even more the case with the International Left Opposition, the body Trotsky formed - as a faction of the CI - in 1930. Thus Trotsky's metaphor of 'cleansing' the ranks of the ILO was not a literary, but a political one.

The first two years of the ILO were marked by several important defections back to the camp of Stalinism. In Austria, France and Germany a number of leading figures in Opposition circles went over to the Soviet bureaucracy.

See 'Full circle', the next step, No 15, July/August 1981.

NH 'The point is to CHANGE it', Socialist Organiser, 30 July 1981. The new WSL is a fusion of the old one and the International Communist League. It is submerged in the Labour Party. 3 V I Lenin, 'Against boycott, Collected Works, Vol 13, pp39-40.

See L Trotsky, The International Left Opposition: its task: and methods', Writings 1932-33, Pathfinder Press, 1972, and especially pp55-6. 5 L Trotsky, 'Serious lessons from an inconsequential thing', ibid, pp91-3.

The British Opposition movement was less dominated by petit-bourgeois intellectuals, but it had other problems. In America and France, Trotskyism had emerged as a force to be reckoned with in 1928. In Germany, the United Left Opposition had been formed in 1930. In Britain, by contrast, Trotskyists were only expelled from the CP in 1932. Unlike James Cannon, Max Shachtman and Martin Abern of the American Opposition, the major figures in the CPGB's dissident 'Balham Group' - Reg Groves, Stewart Purkis, Harry Wicks and Henry Sara - did not enjoy key leadership Nor was this all, as the British Trotksyists thempositions. selves came to recognise: 'We need to take into account a factor which distinguishes the English Party from other European parties. In this country the struggle within the Communist International produced no conflict within the British Party. None of the documents of the Opposition was made available to English Communists. The Party leadership was able to stifle the discussion with ease and the English Party members' knowledge of the struggle of the Opposition was gleaned exclusively from the resolutions of the Party leadership. Here of course is expressed the political backwardness of the British prole- All these factors conspired to retard the development of British Trotskyism. It was not suprising, therefore, that the actual break from the CP was made largely unconsciously.

Break-out in Balham The Balham Group first began to part company from the CPGB Central Committee in the run-up to the party's Eleventh Congress, held in Leeds in November 1929. Groves and the London district organisation together with Newcastle and Manchester, headed an attack on the CC for its tardiness in applying the CI's new, Third Period line. He was alteady disturbed by growind By August 1931, how Russian party control over the international movement'.

ever, he had rejected the Third Period and was in correspondence with American Trotskyists over forming a British section of the ILO. Contrary to their advice, he refused: we made it clear to the Americans that we were not prepared to set up a Left Opposition Group in Britain. We went along with them on much, such as the restoration of full inner-party democracy in the national sections, a dimunition of the Russian command of the Comintern, and a recovery of the communism of the founding fathers. And we were deeply shaken by Trotsky's powerful indictment of Comintern policy in Germany, based as it was on the formula that social democracy and National Socialism were varieties of fascism', or, in Stalin's words 'not opposite poles but neighbours"; by Trotsky's warnings of the disaster that would follow for workers in Germany, Russia, and throughout the world if that policy was persisted in; and by his call for a principled united front of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party to check and defeat the Nazis, All these things we would raise in the party and fight far, but as members, not outsiders.

Though reassured that the ILO itself intended to operate in the CI 'as members, not outsiders', Groves' resistance to moves towards some form of organisational independence In November, Trotsky advised his British followers to go independent. He also suggested that publishing the ILO's Labour Party in the Anglo-Russian Committee would be 'the point of departure for a British left wing'.

significant suggestion, given that Groves and his allies were by this time mostly motivated by disgust with the CPGB's hostile attitude to the Labour Party; but it was a point that was to be ignored. The Balham Group only began publishing at all in May 22 1932, and none of the nine issues of the duplicated broadsheet The Communist it put out contained an article devoted to the CPGB's earlier rieht-wing period (1925-27).11 had taken it on a different course. The MacDonald crisis of summer 1931 had prompted mass unrest and the Balham Group, less than a dozen strong but shortly to be joined by found itself, in the full knowledge of the Hugo Dewar, Central Committee, holding outdoor meetings all over south west London with the Tooting and Clapham branches of the Independent Labour Party.

During his visit to Britain in December 1931, Max Shachtman warned the Balham Group not to regard itself as being in purely a private fight with the leadership of the CP.

It was not a matter of Trotsky's arguments merely 'coming in handy', and attempts to not appear as Trotskyists would not stave off punitive measures from the Central Committee.

Shachtman proved right. Following criticisms Street throughout the spring on 1932 - over its trade union policy, its position on the rise of fascism in Germany and int rade incracy of thin the and overreates elect to - threatening letters the party secretariat began to be received. Despite the fact that the CP was already moderating its Third Period policies, it regarded collaboration between one of its most active branches and the ILP as dangerous. So when, in the summer of 1932, the Balham Group came out against the CI's support for the pacifist-led World Congress Against the King Street hacks seized their chance. On 17 August Groves and Wicks were expelled, and more expul- The Balham Group campaigned for readmission, paint.

ing the words Not National Socialism but World Revolution' outside the Latchmere Baths, Battersea, when the CP held its congress there in November. To no avail. After a short, ill-prepared struggle, what was now the British Group of the The work that wasn't done Almost at once the cracks began to appear. Wicks, Purkis and others attacked Groves for his conduct inside and outside the Group, 16 and more importantly for his rejection of the need to publish theoretical articles by the ILO.

They bluntly noted: 'The foundation meeting of the British Group was lamentably unconcerned with politics It was marked by a vigorous determination to get a Left Opposition Group set up in Britain at all costs; and also by the absence of any attempt to ensure political unity on the basis of a Left Opposition platform. ...It was everyone's duty to ensure that the meeting was united not only on personal grounds but on political: this was not done.

They observed that: The work of the British Group is hampered by the British party's almost complete ignorance of the substance and history of the Trotskyist controversy'.

This was something Groves himself conceded; but his view was that party members found: their difficulties and their first questionings of party policy when working in the unions, the factories, and among the unemupon ourselves the responsibility of ployed. ...When we took building a British Section of the Left Opposition we did not thereby form just a translation bureau.

Groves' concern to connect the formal theoretical positions of the ILO to the practical tasks of the day was well-founded. But his sneers about "translation bureaux' and his general behavjour displayed an anti-internationalist, illdisciplined spirit On the other hand his critics, while correctly concerned with the British Group's ideological

fragility, contributed little to overcoming this in the pages of The Communist. Thus the stage was set for further Rapid developments on the international front did not make internal consolidation any easier. In March 1933, the month of Hitler's victory and the collapse of the German Communist Party, Trotsky began to move to the position that the ILO could no longer work within the CI. By June, however, international working class reaction to the CI's betrayal in Germany was such that Trotsky could argue that the ILO should orientate itself towards the new organisations that had sprung up to the left of orthodox social democracy. What appeared as a tack in the direction of organisational independence for the ILO was succeeded by what appeared as a bold move towards close work with centrist groups. Then, in July, Trotsky called for a definitive break from the CI and the construction of a new International. In the space of four months the world situation had forced him to make major adjustments adjustments that were difficult for an inexperienced cadre in Britain to assimilate.

Trotsky's greetings to the British Group's new, printed monthly paper, The Red Flag, showed that he was aware of the political incoherence of his British supporters. He urged them to make a thorough assessment of the record of the 'A critical examination of the policy of the British Communist Party during the last eight or ten years constitutes a most important task in the education of the Left Opposition itself. You should study the official publications of the party throughout this period carefully, digest them, and reveal the party line on the main strategical problems: its attitude towards the Labour Party, the trade unions, the colonial revolution; the united front 'Along with the new printed publication, you have at your disposal a hectographed (excellently hectographed!) bulletin, Communist. It would be extremely desirable to devote the greatest possible space in this publication to an examination of the policy of the British Communist Party along the lines indicated above, and also to a discussion of controversial questions Opposition itself. While persistently striving to widen our influence among the workers, we must at the same time concentrate on the theoretical and political education of our own ranks. We have a loni and laborious road ahead of us. For this we need first-class cadres.

Trotsky's advice was not followed. The Communist devoted very few of its pages to the CP. This was a missed opportunity, for a rigorous critique of British Stalinism could have strengthened and unified the confused and disparate Trotskyists. This was a task of some immediacy. Of all the centrist groups on the international scene at the time the 22 So when, shortly ILP was the closest to world Stalinism.

afterwards, a section of the British Group entered the ILP the absence of a critique of Stalinism ensured that its efforts there had only a limited impact.

6 The 'Balham Group' at first merely meant the Balham branch of the CP. The term only acquired a different connotation after the expulsions by King Street. This point is made by John Archer in his PhD thesis Trotskyism in Britain: 1931-1937, Polytechnic of Central London, 1979. We would like to express our sincere thanks to comrade Archer for the personal assistance he has given us in our research for this article. His thesis represents a remarkable piece of research: in this article 23 quotations from the British Trotskyist movement of the 'thirties which are not accompanied by a reference in the footnotes derive from it. As Archer notes, Groves (1908- ) and Purkis (1885-1969) were on the London District Committee of the CPGB at the time of the expulsions and had written articles for Labour Monthly, 1929-30; but this was a far cry from being in the national leadership of the CP. Both had only joined in 1927. Harry Wicks (1905- ) had been elected to the Executive Committee of the Young Communist League in 1926 but had barely completed three years at the so-called 'Lenin School', Moscow, before the expulsions took place, even though he had disagreed with his Stalinist instructors on Trotskyism while there. Though he had joined the CP in 1921 and thus had a long experience in the communist movement, being on the EC of the YCL was not a top position. By 1929, at least, the YCL was 'almost non-existent": see Groves, The Balham Group, Pluto Press, 1974, p20. Groves and Wicks were employed by Russian Oil Products, which was part of the agencies. Purkis was a railway worker.

Henry Sara (1886/7- 1953), like Wicks, was a CP member of long standing: he was a lecturer, and the originator of the important Sara Maitland Papers (now held, like most documentary material on pre-war British Trotskyism, at the University of Warwick).

R Groves, 'The British Section of the Left Opposition of the Communist International: notes on the differences existing on EC', letter to the International Secretariat of the ILO 3 February 1933, in the Sara-Mattland Papers, MSS 15/3/1/28.

R Groves, op cit, p27. The 'Third Period' line denoted the view that social democracy was now "social-fascist' - socialist in words, fascist in deeds. L Trotsky, 'The British elections and the communists", Writings 1930-31, p347. 11 The Communist ceased publication in early 1934. Copies of it are held in the Sara-Maitland Papers, ) was in the Tooting branch of the CP, a member of NUSDAW and a delegate to both Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Councils.

R Groves, op cit, pp41-42, 52. The ILP was still in the Labour Party at this stage. 14 The Balham Group favoured workplace-based organisation more than the trade unions as a means of prosecuting the class and invoked Lozovsky, chief of the Russian Red International of Trade Unions, in its defence, On Germany, i castigated the Central Committee for ignoring Hitler's advances, On Japan too it criticised the CC for neglecting the menace of war'; indeed it was because it joined with the Clapham ILP to form the influential South West London Anti-War Committee that King Street got so upset. On internal democracy, the Group opposed the appointment (as opposed to the election) of the London District Committee, called for discussion on Germany, and advocated the holding of a party congress as soon as possible. In addition, it came out in favour of local Trades Council initiatives over the unemployed rather than the CP-controlled National Unemployed R Groves, op cit, pp54-56, 59-60.

15 The CPGB had an equivocal attitude to implementing the Third Period right from the beginning: see H Dewar, Communist politics in Britain, Pluto Press, 1976, pp96-100.

Groves was accused of factional manoeuvres inside the Group, and of appending names of people he had not consulted to leaflets of the South West London Anti-War Committee. See 'Statement from members of the 1931-1933 Committee of the British Group of the Left Opposition', 18 April 1933, in the R Groves, 'The British Section...', op cit.

Though Groves attended an international meeting of the ILO held in Paris in early February 1933, he appeared to take a cynical attitude to the proceedings there. Archer, op cit.

'Centrism' denotes vacillation between Marxism and reformism.

21 L Trotsky, 'Greetings to The Red Flag', Writings 1932-33, 22 L Trotsky, 'The Stalinist turn', Writings 1935-36, p129.

SECTION II

THE FAILURE TO COMBAT THE ILP

Why Trotsky favoured entry One of the few positive political developments of the early 'thirties was the movement of left-wing workers away from social democracy. This gave rise to the formation of new, radical socialist parties in a number of countries. Trotsky wanted to ensure that the Left Opposition did its utmost to influence these: The International Left Opposition faces a new task: to accelerate the evolution of the left socialist organisations towards communism by injecting its ideas and its experience into this process.

There is no time to lose. If the independent socialist organisations remain in their present amorphous state for a long period of time, they will disintegrate. The Independent Labour Party, which left the Labour Party in 1932, was one such independent socialist organisation. It offered the British Trotskyists an important audience.

according to Trotsky, could complete its movement but, The ILP was collaborating with the Stalinists, reformism to revolution from an empirical to a theoretical basis'. To achieve this required 'a firm grasp of the revolutionary theory of the capitalist state, a correct evaluation of social and economic forces, adequate information of the movement of revolution and reaction outside Great Britain, and a definite plan of the revolutionary course within Britain - a plan flexible in detail but rigid in principle. It also needed a correct answer to 'the most important question of proletarian policy in Great Britain...the liberation of the workers from the reactionary influence of the trade union bureaucracy. Despite and because of their small numbers, their fear of malicious criticism of the Stalinists' and their feeling that the ILP might fall apart at any moment, it was the duty of all the British Trotskyists to enter it.

They had to try to transform its revolutionary majority into a truly Marxist party - even though it was mostly petit-bourgeois in social composition.

Trotsky argued that, because of an odd combination of historical conditions', members of organisations like the ILP were 'much more amenable' to the ideas of Bolshevism than the sections of the CI. In Britain the objective conditions had more than once pushed hundreds of thousands of workers towards the CP, but its leadership had been capable only of 'disillusioning them and throwing them back'!25 The ILP on the other hand was much more able to articulate the anti-capitalist sentiments of workers: it therefore became the target of Trotskyist activity in Britain.

The first of many splits Trotsky made his recommendation in September 1933. By this time the British Group, now titled the Communist League was about 40 strong, and largely working class in composition. It had branches in both Balham and Hackney, and was selling about 1000 copies of The Red Flag a month.

In the debate over entry into the ILP it became clear that a mainly consisting of younger, unemployed members in East London, favoured entry: if the tactic succeeded, it argued, the CL would be able to count its members in thousands in a matter of months'.27 The majority, which was more experienced and based mainly in South London, disagreed. In its view Trotsky was too sanguine about the quantity and quality of the ILP's members. It would be easier to influence it 'by leaflet, by and by lecturing to branches, and by joint disрарет, cussions' from the outside rather than by branch work on the inside. Dropping independent activity and stopping the publication of The Red Flag, as Trotsky suggested, would, the majority felt, 'be a definite loss in one direction for a probably gain in another 28 In addition, a quarter of the British Trotskyists were still in the CP, making transfer to the ILP difficult; entry would allow access to only three or four London ILP branches at most; and the ILP would be suspicious from the start.

In December 1933 the CL decided by 26 votes to 11 not to enter the ILP. The minority which included Denzil follow Trotsky's that it would advice, enter the ILP and be responsible to the International Secretariat of the ILO. The majority, which included Groves, Wicks and Sara, remained outside the ILP.

British Trotskyism had undergone the first of a hundred splits in a debate where political issues had been overshadowed by narrow tactical considerations.

No match for the revisionists Inside the ILP the minority constituted itself as the Marxist Group. After a period of consolidation it announced its revolutionary intention of helping the ILP and, in November 1934, began openly publishing Bulletin of the Marxist Group in the ILP. By the time of the national conference of the ILP, held at Derby in Easter 1935, the Trotskyists' influence was at a peak. The MG had branches in East London, Clapham and South Norwogd, and - shortly afterwards - CLR James in But the MG failed to transform the ILP into a revolutionary party. Little more than a year later Trotsky urged his British followers to leave the ILP, which he condemned as a 'dying corpse' and join the Labour Party.

The MG was built on liberal organisational principles: it never limited membership to Trotskyists, and attempts to form an inner core of cadre committed to Bolshevik politics foundered. Moreover lack of organisational firmness was The MG could compounded by political confusion.

offer the members of the ILP a coherent political alternative to their leaders. It didn't even offer a critique of the ILP's reformist counter-crisis programme. Nor did it show that the ILP's programme was itself merely a variation of the Labour Party's programme of economic reforms.

In the mid to late 'twenties international social democracy went through an important transformation. The protracted economic crisis of the period and the dilemma between outright revolutionary methods of struggle and outright reformist betrayals meant that the programme of social democracy had to be revised. What emerged was a commitment to using the state to plan capitalism out of its difficulties and a lot of militant rhetoric about how the working class would benefit from this. In other words, what was an early version of the Keynesian-nationalist Alternative Economic Strategy of today. The ILP played a major role in shaping this strategy, a fact which the MG completely neglected. In 1926 the ILP produced a major policy document called The living wage. It argued economic crisis in Britain lay in the restricted consumption 24

of the working class and that the only way to overcome it was to establish family allowances and minimum wages in all industries. Firms which refused to pay such wages were to be nationalised and so was the Bank of England order to expand credit 33 economy and reformist measures was later adopted, different forms, by the TUC, the Labour left grouping known as the Labour Party itself. 34 by any section of the British Trotskyist movement. Even in the ILP, the very creator of British 'anti-crisis socialism', the MG did not oppose it.

What the MG did oppose were the positions the ILP leadership took on international issues.

In particular, it advocated workers' sanctions - blacking, etc - Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and attacked ILP leaders like Maxton and McGovern for their implicit reliance on League of Nations sanctions. This was necessary, but, as Trotsky noted, insufficient: 'On the question of the League of Nations, on the role played in it by British imperialism, and on the 'peaceful' policy of the Labour Party, the New Leader has perhaps carried the best articles in the entire labour press. But a single swallow does not make a spring....It is comparatively easy to take a 'revolutionary' position on the question of war; but it is extremely difficult to draw from this position all the necessary theoretical and practical considerations.

Yet this is precisely the task.

Like Trotsky, pre-entry issues of The Red Flag criticised the ILP for its preoccupation with forms of organisation like workers' councils, for its collaboration with the CPGB, and for its ambiguous attitude to the Stalinist Comintern and the prospective Fourth International; but they contained only one article on economic matters and no critique 36 Nothing changed of the reformists' economic perspectives.

with the MG's Bulletin. It castigated the pacifists for their unwillingness to 'dig themselves into the trade unions' and involve themselves in the class struggle. And it called on workers to be 'educated in the need not to rely upon ¿ protection" against fascism, but to defend them- But these revolutionary formulae remained largely abstract slogans. Without a clear analysis of the state socialist underpinnings of the ILP the MG was bound to run into trouble.

organisation: the Labour Party, 38 Confusion on the ILP, confusion on Labour For some time the MG upheld the classical tactic of the united front in relations between the ILP and the Labour Party. As late as December 1934, the Bulletin could argue: 'we support social democracy in order to destroy it', However by June 1935, in an internal MG document called Perspectives on the working class movement and the future of the ILP, Harber was nurturing illusions that the Labour Party could be democratised: "so long', he argued, 'as the Labour Party continues under its present form of organisation, there is no prospect of the rank and file giving any revolutionary The notion that it was possible to democratise the Labour Party and push it in a revolutionary direction had a long history on the British left.

came under its influence.

In the November 1935 General Election the majority of the MG reversed its earlier decision to vote Labour and withdrew critical support. This was in Trotsky's view incorrect, given that, despite its reactionary standpoint on Ethiopia and the impending world war, the Labour Party 25 was no more social-patriotic than it had been before.

It was also enough to make Harber, together with Ted Grant, Charles van Gelderen, and a sizeable minority of the MG quit the MG and the ILP for the Socialist League in the Labour Party, leaving James effectively in control. The 23 L Trotsky, 'The left socialist organisations and our tasks', Whither the Independent Labour Writings 1933-34, p55; 'An interview with C A Smith', ibid, Ppo1-2; 'The ILP and the New International', Principled considerations on entry', ibid, pp86-7; 'How to influence the ILP', ibid, p71; "The lever of a small group', L Trotsky, 'The left socialist organisations, ..', op cit, pp277- 8; Whither the ILP?', op cit, p56.

Trotsky misread the revolutionary potential of the ILP. Writing from afar and lacking any direct contact with the class struggle in Britain, his overestimation of it was understandable, In the 'thirties the ILP was very radical; the propaganda contained in its paper, the New Leader, had more in common with today's Socialist Challenge or Socialist Organiser than with the pre-wat Labour left. On international questions the ILP often took an anti-imperialist stance far to the left of the CP.

27 N Allen, 'Statement on the ILP and the possibility of transforming it into a Marxist party", Sara-Maitland Papers, MSS 15/3/1/18, 5 October 1933.

'Notes for discussion of ILP question at National Committee meeting', 5 October 1933, in ibid, MSS 15/3/1/49 Denzil Harber (1909-1966) had joined the CP in 1929, visited the Soviet Union, been appalled at what he had seen and joined the ILO in 1933. He had read Russian at the London School of Controversy, discussion organ of the ILP, June 1934, p10.

C L R James (1901- ) was born in Trinidad and worked for the Manchester Guardian as a cricket correspondent, 32 L Trotsky, 'The Dutch Section and the International', Writings P366; Interview on British problems', ibid, p377.

33 See B Pimlott, Labour and the left in the 1930s, CUP, 1977, 34 See S Norton, 'On the road to war', part 2 of the series The war and the working class', the next step, No 9, January 1981, on the TUC, and S Norton, 'Slump socialism', part 3 of the same series, the next step, No 10, February 1981, on the SI and the Labour Party 35 L Trotsky, "The ILP and the Fourth International', Writings 1935-36, p134. 36 See The Red Flag, issues 1-6, May October/November 1933, and particularly No 5, September 1933, in the Sara-Maitland Papers. 37 See Bulletin of the Marxist Group in the ILP, issues 1-7, 3 Navember 1934 - 25 November 1935, and particularly No 2, December 1934, 38 Trotsky too tended to underestimate the importance of fighting the plans' of left social democracy for overcoming the capitalist crisis. He correctly assessed the reactionary content of these plans but ignored the influence they could have on a demoralised and insecure working class. As a result he advocated forcing the left reformists to implement them and exposing their vacillations when they failed to do so. See 'Revisionism and planning', Writings 1933-34, p194, and also The Belgian dispute and the de Man plan', Writings 1934-3 213; 'From the CGT's plan to the conquest ol power', ibi Pp230-31; and 'Once again, whither France?', Leon Trotsky on France, Monad Press, 1979, p109.

See M Freeman, 'A Labour Party for our time', the next step, 39 No 15, July/August 1981. 40 'Once again on the ILP', Writings 1935-36, p198. Trotsky also noted that the ILP's London division only gave critical support to Labour Party candidates who opposed League of Nations sanctions. In his view this provoked the illusion that the pacifist Labour left was superior to the social-patriotic Labour right. Ibid, pp198, 200.

British Trotskyists had split again - and once more it was over a tactical question.

In The present position in the ILP and how we should react to it, written for the internal consumption of the MG just after Easter 1934, Harber had said: It is essential that comrades (especially newer comrades) should read not only the writings of Leon Trotsky on current problems, but also the basic works of Marx and Lenin. We cannot hope to work successfully in the ILP so long as the majority of our comrades are not ciear on questions of theory?

Unfortunately the MG paid only lip-service to theoretical development. It could not provide a critique of the ILP's domestic policies and its analysis of reformism was weak and one-sided. As a result it vacillated over critical support for the Labour Party, split on the issue, and then went into decline. Unchallenged from within, the ILP survived long enough for James and his comrades to stay in it long after Trotsky had urged a break. Meanwhile the focus of the British Trotskyists shifted to the left of the Labour Party.

There too, however, they made only temporary gains.

SECTION III

THE FAILURE TO COMBAT LABOUR

Revolution via a fresh party After the Communist League minority had for the ILP in December 1933, the CL majority began to move towards the left of the Labour Party and the newly-formed Socialist League. Retaining its name and The Red Flag, it at first applied the united front tactic to the Labour Party in a classical fashion. In a leaflet put out on the occasion of the spring 1934 byelection in North Hammersmith, the CL said: We must place the Labour and trade union leaders in the position where they must fight or reveal their impotence to their followers. We believe that they, like their German counterparts, will not fight. The majority of the organised workers are of the opinion that they will fight. There is only one way to show who That is why we are prepared to support the Labour cand- However at about the same time Groves, after the London County Council fell into Labour hands, took a rather different view. He argued that loyal Labour Party workers had to keep 'a closer watch on, and a firm grip of' their leaders, and that the party had to be 'equipped anew by the establishing of a new leadership' ('not in the formal sense, but by securing everywhere groups of workers to whom the rank and file will increasingly look for guidance'). As for indicating that Labour would not fight, Groves did no more than refer to the doubts workers had on this 42 In effect Groves was calling for what, earlier, Harber had only hinted at: the democratisation of the Labour Party as a means of bringing about revolution. In October 1934 the CL clearly stated its new-found conviction that a Labour government could bring socialism: While not concealing its conviction that the British capitalists will not surrender their power without serious resistance and while constantly urging preparation to break that resistance, the League is assisting to bring about a Labour government.. [and]...to secure that the Labour Party is pledged, in definite terms, to carry through when returned ameliorative measures for immediate relief; the removal of all anti-working class legislation and to measures 26 which will lay the foundation for the socialist transformation, the nationalisation of the banks and the main industries, with workers' control, within a specified period; the reorganisation of the armed and police forces on a democratic basis, placing socialists in key pod the fren ball subject pe Hos within the are Monarchy For Lenin and Trotsky the purpose of the united front tactic was to reveal to the masses the inability of their leaders to fight for socialism. The CL, on the other hand, never mentioned this. It was inadvertently strengthening the socialist credentials of the Labour Party.

After October 1934 The Red Flag ceased publication: it reappeared in a new series on 1 May 1936 as the organ of the Marxist League - a loose association of Groves, Wicks, Dewar and other members of the old CL majority. By then Harber was in the Labour Party, which was undergoing a major revival. There was no love lost between Groves and Harber, who had been on different sides in the original CL split. Harber had just formed the Bolshevik-Leninist Group in the Labour Party, and was publishing Youth Militant in the Labour League of Youth (forerunner of today's Labour Party Young Socialists); and it was his group that was The most substantial document produced by the B-LG was written - for internal consumption - in September 1936.45 Because it is probably the most comprehensive document of British Trotskyism in the 'thirties, it is worth quoting at length. Titled 'On the work of the Bolshevik- Leninists in the Labour Party', it shows that the B-LG had still to follow through the logic of Harber's earlier hints about democratising the Labour Party: 'As Bolshevik-Leninists we enter the Labour Party for one reason alone - to make contact with the masses of politically conscious workers and to gain supporters from among them for the formation of a Marxist party and a Fourth International. We can have no illusions as to 'capturing' the Labour Party, and transforming it into a Marxist party. Our task is to win from Transport House and reformist ideology as many workers as possible within a certain period of time. 'A minimum requirement may be stated, namely that within a year some hundreds of Labour Party workers are ready to form with us a new party when the moment comes. If a year's work by a group reaches less than this, then the step of joining the Labour Party has failed to bring the necessary results.'

The document then goes on to deal with a problem that the British Trotskyists persistently ignored - reformist ideology: Careful work requires accurate knowledge of the difficulties ahead. The main difficulties are here outlined.

In the first place there is the reformist ideology of the rank and file of the Labour Party, deep and widespread, combined with that empiricism which makes for contempt of theory and neglect of To deal with refor mist ideology, it is important to know when to approach the minds of reformist workers 'obliquely', that is in a tactful manner, and when to employ shock tactics' with a blunt presentation of a problem. ...There are two dangers here... One is that too much tact takes the edge off an argument....The other ..is that too blunt or too aggressive presentation of an argument repels reformist workers irrationally, and closes their minds to our ideas.' And there it stops. Two paragraphs, one about its strength, the other about the need not to be too soft or hard about it - this was the sum total of the Trotskyists' analysis of reformism. They were back where they started, They had siogans and demands aplenty, especially on the CI's Popular Frontism and the danger of imperialist war. But they had no independent outlook on the substance of Labour Party politics.

Three splits sideways, three steps back Trotsky urged the MG to enter the Labour Party in July 1936. He saw the growth of the Socialist League, the Labour left of the time, as an indication of the potential for raising revolutionary politics. In November 1936 a national meeting of the three Trotskyist organisations in Britain was held; but it failed to overcome the divisions in the Given the general confusion on Labourism common to all three groups it was not surprising that unity on a prinproved impossible. Unity on another basis, however, soon proved forthcoming. Without any accounting for its past history, the MG left the ILP. After Socialist chief Stafford Cripps capitulated to the Labour Party leadership on the question of war and dissolved his organisation in May 1937, the ML went into decline; eventually, in the summer of 1938, its leading members Groves, Wicks, Dewar and Sara the Revolutionary Socialist League, Joined the MG to form Meanwhile the B-LG continued on its own way. In July 1937 it changed its name to the Militant Group and began to publish The Militant (Youth Militant became incorporated in this). At its August 1937 national conference it was joined by Jock Haston and Gerry Healy from Paddington and Bradford respectively. In November 1937 it changed its name again to the Militant Labour League; but no sooner had it done this than, in December 1937, about a third of the organisation, including Grant, Haston, Healy and Sid Bidwell walked out after an obscure quarrel with Harber Haston and his comrades formed the Workers International League and published Youth for socialism and Workers International News. They refused to go along with what was left of Harber's group when, at the instigation of James Cannon and the International Secretariat of the newly-formed Fourth International, it fused with the Revolutionary Socialist League late in 1938. The RSL split in a matter of months, James and his old MG comrades refusing to enter the Labour Party and establishing Workers Harber & Co resuming Militant, reviving Youth Militant and staying in the Labour Party as the MLL.

CONCLUSION

By the outbreak of the Second World War the British Trotskyist movement was in fragments. It is difficult to identify political issues of any substance at the roots of all its splits. However the real failure of British Trotskyism was not an organisational one. All the Trotskyist groups failed to evolve a critique of the programme of the Labour Party.

recognised this failure at the time: we have had difficulty in England', he said, 'with advocating a Labour government with the necessary reservations. 49 British Trotskyism failed' in the 'thirties because it could not develop a coherent alternative either to radical reformism (the ILP) or to left-reformism (the Socialist League). But matters do not end in 1939, for the legacy of the preceding years is very much with us today. Post-war Trotskyists have never examined the contribution that the entry tactic made to building a revolutionary party. They have posed te pragmatic question of whether or not new recruits can be won, but that is about it. Worst of all entrism has become an end in itself. Even when sections of the radical left quit the Labour Party in the 'sixties they did so merely to enter new organisations - the students' movement, CND, or the women's movement.

became a substitute for building an independent revolutionary party. 27 In practice the tactic of entrism has developed into a strategy. Moreover, the blurred boundary between entrists and entered has found its reflection in political diffuseness on the part of the former. Today, Labour Party entrists serve as a radical contingent of the Labour left. Whereas Trotsky ridiculed those who thought that the Labour Party could be democratised, Socialist Challenge, Socialist Organiser and Militant preach this prejudice every week.

The interpretation the old British Trotskyists put on entrism - and, indeed, on the united front - has left its imprint on the radical left. Of course we cannot blame Groves, James, Harber and others for radical left politics today. But unless we settle accounts with the past we will not go forward in the present. The struggle for Trotskyism in the 'eighties is also a struggle against the British Trotskyism of the 'thirties. 41 Five communist reasons for voting Labour, leaflet, spring 42 "Vienna and the London elections', The Red Flag, Vol 1, No 8, March-April 1934, pl. 43 "The Communist League and its immediate programme', The Red Flag, Vol 1, No 11, October 1934, p4.

44 Of the three Trotskyist organisations operating in Britain, only Groves' ML refused to send a representative to the 29-31 July 1936 First international conference of the Fouth International, Though at this time the ML called for 'Marxist leadership' in the working class, it repeated the old nostrum of economism, that 'such a leadership.. arises out of the day to day struggles of the workers'. To the old CL's October 1934 programme it now appended the need to compel the Labour Party in the House to give more aggressive voice to the demands of the workers and to press for the organisation of the unemployed by the TUC": see 'Aims and objects of the Marxist League', duplicated sheet, in the Sara-Maitland Papers, MSS 15/4/1/5.

In October 1936 Harber reported the situation in Britain as follows: the B-LG was selling 800 copies of Youth Militant an issue, had 60 members in London and small groups in Norwich and Sheffield. The MG had 40 members in London and more in Liverpool, Glasgow, the North East, Yorkshire and South Wales, and sold 1800 copies an issue of its organ, Fight for the Fourth International, The latter was published almost monthly from October 1936 to November 1937.

Sara-Maitland Papers, MSS 15/14/1/10. The author is Robert Williams, whose identity is unclear. Archer does not mention the do cument. Williams identified the 'second great obstacle' to the spread of the B-LG's ideas in the Labour Party as the bureaucracy in Transport House, He went on to observe: 'We are obliged to fight the bureaucracy mainly in the local parties, and there constitutional procedure and routine business are the strongholds of the local bureaucrats... Routine business is a favourable method by which local bureaucrats avoid controversial political questions; meetings are often filled up with details of socials, dances, whist drives, sports days and petty municipal questions....They are in fact an expression of the real nature of the Labour Party, which is primarily a vote-catching and dues-collecting machine, canalising the class feelings of workers into channels of futile parliamentary procedure'. This last point was certainly to his credit. Williams concluded: We seek unity but not unity with blinkers on, It is Transport House that is threatening to split the party through collaboration with Tories. We shall join with those who prefer to split away in the direction of socialism, rather than unite in support of the James Cannon helped here. The RSL was also joined by the Edinburgh branch of the De Leonist Revolutionary Socialist Party (a remnant from 1921); this consisted of workers who had come to Trotskyism by their own efforts following the victory of fascism in Germany Archer gives an account of the details of this.

C L R James to Trotsky, 'On the history of the Left Opposition?, Writings 1938-39, p266.

"The ILP and the Fourth International', Writings 1935-36, p142,