The working poor

  June 7, 2011 by Michael Roberts

 There’s a new book just out called Chavs: the demonisation of the working class by Owen Jones (see Amazon, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Demonization-Working-Owen-Jones).  I have not read it and will try and review it in another post.  In the book, Jones apparently argues that the media and the British elite have demonised the working class into feckless criminals and tasteless layabouts who live on rundown council estates, hardly work and live off benefits.  Chavs is a word used to describe these sort of people by the media.  Jones attacks this media concept often espoused by the so-called chattering classes at their dinner tables, but also accepted by many people who in reality are working class themselves.

Indeed, the political leaders of the ‘left’ like Ed Miliband, the British Labour leader and a broad spectrum of ‘liberals’ in the US have completely dropped the term ‘working class’ from their vocabulary.  For them, above is an elite of top bankers, lawyers, billionaires etc and below, there is the underclass who do not work for a living.  In between, it is not the working class, but ‘the middle class’.  There is  no working class any more.  Moreover, the middle-class is being “squeezed” by a pincer movement of the rich not paying their taxes and the underclass getting all the social benefits, paid for by a middle class that is taxed too much.

But this characterisation of modern society is just as much a myth as describing the working class as all chavs.  So where is the working class?  The Marxist definition remains the best guide.  Marx defined classes in society not by their income or wealth, or by their lifestyle or cultural tastes, but by their relation to the means of production in an economy.  Simply put, if you owned a business, you were in the capitalist class; if you had to make a living by selling your labour for a wage or salary, you were in the working class.

Of course,there is some devil in the detail.  Most large capitalist businesses are ‘owned’ by thousands of different shareholders who may not get much in the way of dividends or income from their shares.  And many wage-earners may also get bonuses or shares from the profits of a business.  But when analysed, this does not really alter the Marxist definition.  The majority of shares in most large businesses are held by other large institutions (banks, pension funds, other companies).  These cross shareholdings reduce the power and ownership role of individual shareholders to company annual meetings where they are outvoted.  In reality, we can define those in the capitalist class as anybody who can live off the profits from buying and selling shares in companies or from the dividends or interest they receive.  Those in the working class can be defined as those who cannot do so, even if they have some shares and must depend on their salaries to survive.

So how big is the working class and who are they in a modern society like that of the UK or the US?  If we take from the population of a country those of a working age (say 16-65 years), then we can exclude about 10% as being members of the capitalist class (as owners) or at least so tied to that class that they might as well be (top managers, traders, judges etc).  Then we can exclude those who don’t work for a living.  That’s about 20% who are full time housewives (they are still mainly women) or students.  Of course, many of these live with workers; but they are not workers in the capitalist economy.  Then there are about 10% who are unemployed, perhaps permanently, because they are disabled, sick or part of an underclass.  So that leaves about 60% of those of a working age (labour participation rates in the OECD are about 65%).  This is the working class. Many are highly educated even to a university standard (although not most) and many are highly skilled.  So the working class includes the bulk of what is called the middle class.  Indeed, surveys show that the majority of this working class (even the unskilled or without qualifications) would not define themselves as such in any way.

What are they doing?  Well about 10-15% are in the public sector, doing jobs in the health service, local and central government, education, social services, public corporations and agencies.  The other 45-50% are in the private sector.  In the UK, they will be in the financial sector (banks, insurance companies etc) ; many are in business services (either as doctors, lawyers, accountants or mostly as their back-up staff); a huge number will be in the retail sector.  The large food chains are the biggest private sector employers in the UK and then there are the high street shopping chains, the internet operations etc.  And there are still around 15% in manufacturing.  In the UK, they will be in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, auto and engineering, food processing  plants (not owned by the British) etc.  There are also a sizeable number as media and culture workers (TV, radio, graphic designers, advertising staff, film etc)  And then there are the construction and mining sectors, fishing and farming.  A large and growing sector is in communications (telecoms, mobile phones computer support, call centres etc) and transport (rail, bus, lorry and van drivers).

This is where the working class is.  And they are mostly not middle class, if that term is meant to imply either above average incomes or a university education and culture to go with it.  The average annual income in the UK is about £26,000.  And that means there are more than half of workers who earn less than that because it is a mean average, taking into account top earners (ie over £100,000 a year etc).  Most earn less than the average because they may work  part time and or are in less skilled jobs.

That the majority of the working class is ‘poor’ may be something they would not admit to – but it is a fact.  Take the very latest report from the UK’s TUC called Britain’s Livelihood Crisis (see attached pdf) .  It makes devastating reading.  Many people in middle and low income jobs have barely seen any improvement in their incomes over the past 30 years.  While those at the top have become very rich, the disappearance of many middle-paid, skilled occupations and an ongoing squeeze on wages has led to a poorer, more divided Britain . In 2006–08, nearly 3% of the population had zero or negative wealth (defined as all household goods and possessions including cars and owner-occupied houses after deducting financial liabilities), while 10% had less than £7,390. The richest 10% was more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10%!   Low income workers have seen their pay rise by 27% in real terms over the past 30 years but rises for the top 10% of earners have been four times higher.  The TUC found that bakers’ wages had actually fallen by 1% in the last 30 years, while they fell 5% for forklift truck drivers and 3% for packers and bottlers in the same period.  Some unskilled and semi-skilled jobs now pay little more in real terms – and in some cases less – than they did in the late 1970s.

Low pay is now the chief cause of poverty, with the proportion of poor children in working households standing at 61%.  There are almost twice as many people now earning a third less than the median compared with 1977.   And many workers on low and middle incomes are in white-collar employment (while their parents were more likely to be skilled or semi-skilled manual workers).   Despite a much more educated workforce, significant numbers have stagnated in income terms. Indeed, despite often being relatively less well paid than the jobs of the past, and being relatively menial in nature, many of today’s ‘middling jobs’ require much higher qualifications than their equivalents a generation ago.

Chavs may be an abusive demonisation of the working class, but equally demeaning is being part of the ‘working poor’.  Take some of the comments on Amazon after reading another book on low pay jobs where the ‘middle class’ author decides to take low-paid work to live as an experience reminiscent George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. 

“The author having furnished her flat then had to find herself a job as soon as possible knowing she had little money in reserve and would have to give up receiving benefit long before she was paid for her first week’s work. This to me highlighted a major problem with the low paid – that gap between stopping benefit and being paid for your work. People doing the jobs at the bottom of the scale will usually not have savings to tide them over such a gap and bills have to be paid.  I felt her comments about spending more than she would earn for a week at the hairdressers or on a meal out served to point up the difference between the middle class and the poor rather than being patronising. The rest of the book contains descriptions of her various low paid jobs – packing cakes, working in a school kitchen, working as a hospital porter, cleaning, care assistant, nursery worker and cold calling by phone. She doesn’t grumble about the jobs just points out how physically hard many of them are. She highlights many issues which seriously need addressing. Things like having to go and collect application forms rather than receiving them through the post, not being able to take contracts – or even copies of contracts – away with her, having to be at a job 15 minutes before the official start, having to go and sit and wait to see if there are any vacancies. Many of the jobs were through an agency which means an employee’s rights are few and their job security non-existent.”

And “The people she met were interesting and she really got over to me the commitment people showed to these low paid jobs. Many took a pride in their work and went the extra mile – often unpaid – to do the best they could. Many were working below their capabilities because it was nearly impossible for them to take the time out to search for another job. The majority of the people she met were women working for low wages – often below the then minimum wage – because the job fitted in with the care of their children and they didn’t dare complain about pay and conditions. Employers consistently undervalue these people and do not reward them as they deserve to be rewarded.”

“Being one of the working poor is to be defeated at every turn. When she gets her dark, damp, unfurnished flat, she has to borrow money from the Housing Authority to furnish it because she won’t get paid until she has been working for at least two weeks. She can’t make an appointment to see the doctor because her job doesn’t allow any paid time off. She can’t try to get a better job because all the employers want to schedule interviews during her work hours (and she can’t afford to take time off) or they want her to devote the day to waiting for an interview. She can’t even make her views as a voter known, because to get to the voting station would mean unpaid time off from work, or an hour on the bus and in line waiting to vote after a 10-hour shift on her feet.  Life is a constant Catch-22 and she finally admits defeat when she has to move out of her apartment because the building’s front door doesn’t lock, there are drug dealers in the lobby, and she can’t afford a phone.”

These people are not chavs, they are not middle class.  They are the working class.

http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com

By Mick Brooks

The purpose of this article is to show the explanatory power of Marxist analysis in looking at the dynamics of capitalism. The laws of motion of the system affect all our daily lives profoundly. Having a basic grasp of these laws of motion helps us to understand how changes in social being produce changes in consciousness and thus to participate in the fight for a better society – socialism.

This is not yet another attempt to repeat Marx’s analysis. This has been done thousands of times, including by the present author (See Brooks, Sewell and Woods-What is Marxism?). At best surveys of that kind will take the reader back to Capital which is, of course, the definitive treatment.

Neither is it an attempt to ‘prove’ the labour theory of value, as Marxists have been challenged to do over and over again. It is intended rather to show the dramatic effects that the operation of the law of value has on working people’s lives.

 

Chapter 1: The problem of value

Value

Marx begins his analysis in Capital Volume I with the commodity. The commodity is first a useful thing. That does not mean it has to be a material thing, as Marx makes clear. But use values are incommensurable. How do we compare apples with oranges?

Secondly it is an exchange value, which means it can be compared and exchanged with other commodities. To possess this quality of exchangeability commodities must possess a common property they share with one another – value. What does this common property consist of? Marx concludes that, “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour” (Capital Volume I, p.128)

This approach to the problem of value is daunting to the first time reader, as Marx himself recognised. We intend to approach the issues in a different way. When his friend Kugelmann raised the difficulty of his approach in 1868, the year after the publication of Capital, Marx replied as follows:

“The chatter about the need to prove the concept of value arises only from complete ignorance both of the subject under discussion and of the method of science. Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social labour expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products.” (Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, p.209)

This is our starting point:

• All societies have to work in order to live.
• All societies have to allocate the labour available to them according to their priorities.
• In a market economy this proportional allocation of the products of labour is regulated through the exchange value of commodities.
• The exchange value of commodities is determined on average by the (socially necessary) labour time required to produce them.

 

Socially necessary labour time

Corresponding to the twofold nature of the commodity is the twofold nature of the labour that produces it. Concrete labour produces specific use values, but use values are incommensurable. Marx shows that the substance of value is abstract labour. Abstract labour may be regarded as labour from the general pool of labour power available to any society. The magnitude of value is determined by the amount of labour time necessary to produce the commodity. Equal quantities exchange for one another. Marx goes on to qualify this at once:

“Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time…

“We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production.” (Capital Volume I, p.129)

• The value of a commodity is determined on average by the socially necessary labour time involved in its production.

 

Market forces

The amount of socially necessary labour time to make the commodity is proportional to its price. We are treating money here as the monetary expression of labour time. Labour is not consciously allotted to different purposes. The division of labour is implemented through private exchanges mediated with money.

Let us look at how the allocation of labour is determined through the exchange process under capitalism which is, after all, an unplanned system. How many commodities of each type shall be produced? How much labour time shall be allocated to the production of each? These matters are decided by the impersonal forces of the market. The exchange of commodities is not just a private matter concerning the owners of the commodities. In fact every individual act of exchange is subject to objective economic laws that go to shape the dynamics of the entire capitalist system.

Exchange is the way that a vast global division of labour is established under capitalism through the world market. Capitalism is an unplanned system. Too many of some sorts of commodities are continually being produced, so prices fall below their value in the glut. Too few are produced of others so prices rise above their value with the shortage. How could it be otherwise, since nobody knows how much is the ‘right’ amount to fulfil demand at any point in time? So the capitalists just go ahead, get the commodities produced, and hope they can sell them. Some make fortunes, others fail.

Commodities are usually sold above or below their value, subject to the forces of supply and demand. Only accidentally or occasionally are they actually sold at their value. But value is the axis around which the day to day movement of prices oscillates. Marxists do not deny the importance of supply and demand. For us these surface forces are the executors of the fundamental laws of motion of capitalism identified by Marx. As John Stuart Mill put it, the palpitations of the waves upon the surface of the sea do not negate the fact that there is a sea level and that it varies according to the pull of the tides.

• The law of value is executed by the forces of supply and demand in an unplanned society where commodity production is universal.

 

What drives capitalism?

The establishment of this average socially necessary labour time is no abstract process outlined in books. In introducing the concept, Marx offers the following example:

“The introduction of power looms into England probably reduced by one half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The handloom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.” (ibid p.129)

The determination of value by the amount of socially necessary labour time means that the quicker the commodity can be produced, the less it will cost. The speed with which the commodities can be produced depends on the productivity of labour. The power loom wiped out the handloom weavers on account of its greater productivity.

The formation of the socially necessary labour time for weaving cloth predominantly by power looms was a huge and dramatic incident in the early history of the British working class movement. It was an event, stretching over decades, which caused the impoverishment and ruin of hundreds of thousands of handicraft workers and their families. And the determination of socially necessary labour time in this devastating and revolutionary fashion is a continuous process under capitalism, causing upheaval and destroying livelihoods as it goes on.

What are the mechanisms driving this apparently impersonal operation of market forces? They are twofold: the need for the capitalists to exploit the working class more and more effectively; and the impulsion caused by competition between the capitalists themselves. As we shall see these processes are interrelated.

• Capitalism is driven by competition between capitalists and by the need all capitalists feel to exploit their workers more effectively.

 

Chapter 2: Exploitation

Exploitation and class society

All societies, as Marx reminded Kugelmann, have to work for a living. All societies have to allot the products of the total labour among their members. Marx calls the labour required to produce the goods that make up the subsistence of the toilers necessary labour.

When the productivity of labour rises sufficiently to produce a surplus over and above the subsistence needs of the population, the question will be posed: who is to enjoy this surplus? The ruling class in all forms of class society is that section of the population that grabs and appropriates the surplus. Exploitation in all forms of class society is nothing else but the extraction of surplus labour by the ruling class from the toiling and exploited classes. Under capitalism this exploitation is hidden behind a veil, a veil that Marx was committed to pierce:

“Capital has not invented surplus labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian devotee of the good and the beautiful, Etruscan theocrat, Roman citizen, Norman baron, American slave owner, Wallachian Boyar, modern landlord or capitalist.” (Capital Volume I, pp.344-5)

Marx cites the Reglement organique written by the Boyars (landlord class) of what is now Romania to show that exploitation was central to their class society and to any class society. The Reglement was a kind of rule book specifying how much corvee (an obligation to perform unpaid labour) must be performed by the peasantry. The ‘beauty’ of this document, from Marx’s point of view, is that the principle of exploitation is spelled out and transparent. As he points out in the passage above, the ruling class in all forms of class society legitimises its exploitation through its ownership of the means of production. One difference between capitalism and the rule of the Boyars is that the right to snaffle unpaid labour from the peasantry is written down in a book!

“The comparison of the greed for surplus labour in the Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English factories has a special interest, because surplus labour in the corvée has an independent and palpable form. (ibid p.345)

“The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus labour on behalf of the Boyar. The one he does on his own field, the other on the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour time exist, therefore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the corvée the surplus labour is accurately marked off from the necessary labour.” (ibid p.346)

In practice the Reglement allowed for unlimited exploitation. “The 12 corvée days of the Reglement organique cried a Boyar drunk with victory, amount to 365 days in the year.” (ibid p.348)

In all forms of class society the wealth (mass of use values) is produced by the toilers. The product of their labour divides into necessary labour (labour that goes to their subsistence) and surplus labour (the fruits of exploitation enjoyed by the ruling class).

We shall return to the specific form of exploitation of the working class later.

• Exploitation is a common feature of all forms of class society.
• It involves a division in the labour performed by the exploited class into necessary labour for their own maintenance and surplus labour, appropriated by the ruling class.

 

Workers and peasants

There are obvious differences between those who work for a wage under capitalism and the wretched Wallachian peasantry. We can assume that the extraction of a surplus from the peasants by the boyars was closely accompanied by the threat of physical force. Exploitation certainly does take place under capitalism. In contrast to pre-capitalist class societies it is not in principle accompanied by extra-economic compulsion. It classically occurs through what appears to be a contract over wages freely entered in to by both parties, as with other relations under capitalism. It happens through impersonal market forces.

That is the theory. In practice the capitalist class has never hesitated to use force when it suits their interests. Marx explains that the process of primitive accumulation examined below, the creation of the modern working class, “is written in the annals of mankind in letter of blood and fire.” (Capital Volume I, p.875) The dawn of capitalism also saw an obscene florescence of outright slavery as the direct counterpart to the emergence of wage labour. And capitalism created the world market through the colonial exploitation of three continents.

The capitalist state does have has a role in guaranteeing the profits of the capitalist class. “The modern representative state,” according to Engels, “Is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital.” (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, p.168) The state guarantees the rights of private property, which disproportionately benefits the capitalists, who own much more property than the workers. The state may intervene in the wage bargaining process, for instance to enforce a minimum wage or to pass anti-union laws. But the worker is usually exploited through the wages contract, without the direct intervention of the state.

It is actually this asymmetry of ownership that makes the wages contract a one-sided affair. The capitalist class, like every ruling class before it, has a monopoly over the means of production.

How this situation came to pass is a long story. Marx calls this process primitive accumulation, the accumulation of the preconditions for capitalist production. This consists on the one hand of the piling up of fortunes in the form of money. The Wallachian boyars, of course, measured their wealth in land.

Secondly primitive accumulation involves the complete separation of the toilers from independent access to the means of production. In the case of peasants, that means the loss of their own plot of land. The workers then have no option but to labour for a wage for the capitalist class, who have progressively acquired a monopoly in the means of production.

The capitalists own the factories, mines, farms and offices, the means of making a living under capitalism. The wage workers are formally free. Unlike the Wallachian peasants, they don’t have to work for a particular boss. The peasants in Romania were serfs, regarded as being as much an appurtenance of the land as a hedgerow, and their unborn children were regarded in the same light. We ‘free’ wage workers rightly see this as a monstrous form of slavery. But, as we can see from Marx’s description, the peasant household has access to its own field. We can assume that, despite the insatiable exactions of the landlords, in normal times the family can feed and clothe themselves at a modest level. Barring famines, their livelihood is more secure than that of a wage worker. Unemployment is not a threat; the word doesn’t even occur in their lexicon.

The difference between workers and peasants is that the workers are ‘free’ in two senses; they do not have to work for any particular capitalist. And they are free from any share in owning the means of production. They have no choice but to work for a capitalist, since the capitalists between them monopolise the means of production.

• Unlike peasants, workers are free in a twofold sense; first they are not obliged to work for a particular capitalist.
• Secondly, since they have no right of access to the means of production, they have to sell their labour power to a capitalist in order to maintain themselves.

 

Chapter 3: The case of Henry Ford

We shall illustrate the dynamics of capitalism by looking at the history of a man and a firm – Henry Ford. We are fortunate in being able to make use of Upton Sinclair’s book The Flivver King. The Flivver was a popular name for the Model T Ford which, together with the Volkswagen Beetle, was the most iconic and important car of the twentieth century. Sinclair wrote his book in 1937 as part of a drive to unionise Ford Motor Co. Although the characters in the book such as Abner Shutt, his family and neighbours, are fictitious, Sinclair drew his information on Ford-America from the public domain. It is not only accurate but sharply observed, informed as it is by a socialist perspective.

Labour power

Workers are told they are paid for the work they do. After all, they are free agents. If they don’t like the boss, they can collect their cards and go somewhere else. There seems to be no exploitation in the wages contract. If you work overtime, you get paid more for more work. If the firm falls on hard times and has to impose short time working, you will lose money. If you are paid for piece work, the harder you work the more you get paid. What could be fairer than that?

Marx described the standard of living enjoyed by the exploited in class society as their means of subsistence. Does this apply to the wages that workers earn in capitalist society as well? Marx rooted the exploitation of wage labour in the fact that, despite appearances, workers are not actually paid for the labour they perform. They are paid for their labour power, their subsistence:

“We mean by labour power, or labour capacity, the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use value of any kind.” (Capital Volume I, p.270)

So the capitalist buys a capacity, not a predefined lump of work. What does he get for his money? He gets labour. Labour is the use value of labour power. How much labour he gets out of that capability is up to him. Like the Wallachian boyar, he is forever thinking up ways to squeeze more out of this labour power. That drive, and the resistance to it, forms the central thread of much of the remainder of this narrative.

Throughout Capital Volume I Marx assumes that workers are paid by the day, though he carefully examines other forms of payment such as piece work in Part Six: Wages. He does so for two reasons. The first is that most British workers in the nineteenth century were paid by the day. The second reason is that, whatever the form of wages such as payment by results, they really represent a subsistence for the workers.

In comparing the British factory workers of his time with the Romanian peasant, Marx uses the following example to show how the identical process of exploitation is going on:

“Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour, and 6 hours of surplus labour. Then the free labourer gives the capitalist every week 6 x 6 or 36 hours of surplus labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But this is not evident on the surface. Surplus labour and necessary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the same relationship by saying, e.g., that the labourer in every minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist, etc.” (ibid pp.345-6)

In Marx’s hypothetical example above the worker works 6 hours ‘for himself’, that is to reproduce values sufficient to be exchanged for money equivalent to his wages. He then works 6 hours in the 12 hour day he works for 6 days a week to produce surplus labour. Under capitalism this surplus labour is called surplus value. The rate of surplus value, the rate of exploitation, in this case is 100%. As we shall find out later on, not all this goes directly to the capitalist who directly employs the workers. It goes to feed the entire class of exploiters.

The process of exploitation is veiled. Henry Ford didn’t wave a copy of the capitalist equivalent of the Reglement Organique at the workers like a Wallachian boyar. All we see in the factory of the Henry Ford Motor Co. is cars coming off an assembly line. In fact some cars are sold so as to pay the workers’ wages and more cars are sold to be turned into surplus value. This is how the workers are paid for their subsistence. For part of their working day, working hour, working minute or for any piece of work they perform they are in effect working for themselves. The rest of the time they produce a surplus for the boss class, surplus value.

• Whatever the form of appearance of the wages contract, workers are not paid for the work that they do but for their labour power.

 

Subsistence and class struggle

What does subsistence mean in this case? The subsistence requirements of an American worker working for Ford are certainly different from those of a Wallachian peasant. The Shutts, at one point in Upton Sinclair’s narrative, are a four car household. In fact this was the only way they could get around Detroit at the time. Cars were a necessity, which is not to say that every working class household could afford one. Sinclair’s book is full of incidents where, in hard times, the car has to be sold or is repossessed.

Marx of all people was least inclined to ignore the class struggle. He knew that workers aspired to share in the greater and greater quantity of wealth they were creating. “In contrast, therefore, with the case of other commodities, the determination of the value of labour power contains a historical and moral element.” (ibid p.275)

Upton Sinclair records the fact that in January 1914 Henry Ford introduced a minimum wage of $5 per day for his workers. Sinclair notes that, so far from being a unilateral act of philanthropy, Ford was grappling with massive problems of absenteeism and labour turnover, caused in large part by the relentless speedup imposed at the Ford plant. Sinclair also tells us of the regime of spies and busybodies that were part of the Ford way of life at Highland Park. The book recounts the daily struggle for a decent existence by the Shutt family and their fellow workers. For instance in 1930 when Henry Ford magnanimously unveiled his plan to raise the basic wage to $7, “There were only a few soreheads to point out that since Henry had established his five-dollar minimum, sixteen years back, the cost of living in the Detroit area had nearly doubled, so that the new seven-dollar wage was far less than the old one had been.” (Sinclair p.73)

American workers at this time were the most prosperous in the world. Yet the workers at Ford were still scrambling to keep up with the cost of living. Savings they built up in good times disappeared during layoffs and recession. Workers in the USA were still being paid a subsistence, though with, “A historical and moral element.” (Capital Volume I, p.275)

Meanwhile Henry Ford, who Abner Shutt had first encountered as an enthusiast trying to build a horseless carriage in his neighbourhood workshop, had become a billionaire, the richest man in the world. And he had done so from their unpaid labour.

• Wages paid for the workers’ labour power do not just provide a bare physical subsistence, but contain a historical and moral element.

 

Ford and socially necessary labour time

The law of value states that the value of a commodity is determined on average by the amount of socially necessary labour time involved in its production. That means that value is inversely related to productivity. The more productive the workers are, the less value the commodities they produce will contain, and the less they will tend to cost. This law is executed by competition between capitalists. It was Henry Ford’s genius that he didn’t see the motor car as a toy for the rich, as so many of his contemporaries and rivals did, but as a tool for the masses. He had to sell cheaper than the competition. The best way to do that was to make his cars cheaper, by means of mass production techniques. Labour saving tools and machinery are so called because they economise on the expenditure of labour time, and therefore allow each commodity to contain a smaller amount of value and to cost less.

“In 1909, before the assembly line method was introduced, just over 12,000 Model T Fords were sold at around $950 each; by 1916 sales had risen to 577,000 while the basic price had fallen to $360. This achievement was partly a result of pronounced economies of scale of speed (the average time for assembling a chassis falling from 12.5 man hours in June 1913 to 1.5 man hours in January 1914). (Schmitz–The Growth of Big Business in the United States and Western Europe, 1850-1939, p.63)

Schmitz talks of ‘economies of scale and speed’ (a term he borrows from Alfred Chandler). What does he mean but the coercive operation of the law of value? Why should the price of the Model T have fallen from $950 to $360 in seven years? Because it took much less labour time, socially necessary labour time, to produce one.

Writing of the panic of 1907, Sinclair observes, “It cut down the Ford sales slightly, but not much, for this new product was more and more wanted, and among the hundred million people of America there are always some who can buy what they want. Henry Ford, planning tirelessly, would find new ways to give it to them more cheaply. In the year after the panic he produced 6,181 cars, a little over three per worker; but within three years he was managing to get thirty-five thousand cars out of six thousand workers. (Sinclair p.21)

Here Sinclair calculates the effect of rising productivity on the price of the cars directly in labour time. One worker in 1910 is now producing nearly six cars in a year. The productivity of labour has doubled in three years.

• Raising the productivity of labour means that workers produce more use values in a given time.
• Since the value of the commodities is determined by the socially necessary labour time involved in their production, they will get cheaper as productivity rises.

 

The division of labour

“The work of assembling the flywheel magneto, a small but complex part, was put on a sliding table, just high enough to be convenient for the workers, who sat on stools, each one performing one operation upon a line of magnetos, which crept slowly by. In the old way, a man doing the work of making a magneto could turn out one every twenty minutes; now the work was cut into twenty-nine operations, performed by twenty-nine different men, and the time per magneto was thirteen minutes and ten seconds. It was a revolution

“They applied it to the making of a motor. Done by one man, it had taken nine hours and fifty four minutes. When the assembling was divided among eighty-four different men, the time for a motor was cut by more than forty percent.” (Sinclair p.26)

No doubt when Upton Sinclair penned this passage he was aware as to how strikingly it resembles the example given at the beginning of Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations. Smith showed how the division of labour in a pin factory means an enormous increase in the productivity of labour in making pins:

“To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business…could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty.”

Then Smith outlined how the division of labour works:

“One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations.”

Smith observed the effect at first hand in a small pin factory. The improvement in productivity was dramatic:

“Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day.”

We would expect the price of pins to fall as a result, since they are composed of so much less socially necessary labour time than before, just as the price of cars fell steadily as productivity improved in the motor industry. The other thing to note is that the workers become more and more productive as a natural result of the division of labour. Yet under capitalism the benefits accrue entirely to the owners of the means of production.

• The division of labour raises the productivity of labour, but the benefits accrue to the capitalist.

 

Rising productivity and the car industry

The effects of enhanced productivity in the car industry were not confined to Henry Ford and his plant. At the dawn of motor production dozens, hundreds of enthusiasts were tinkering with prototype horseless carriages in sheds and workshops. If this reminds the reader of the early days of Silicon Valley, it should do. The transition from craft to mass production methods is a natural and normal part of the innovation process under capitalism.

In the UK alone 221 firms began motor manufacture between 1901 and 1905. S.B. Saul observes that 90% of these had left the industry by 1914. (The motor industry in Britain to 1914) The USA had a much bigger home market for cars and was a more advanced capitalist country by this time. The same process of the concentration of capital advanced there with seven league boots.

Later professionalisation of the trade meant the transition from amateur enthusiasts, such as Henry Ford had been in the beginning, to the production of relatively expensive motors by craft methods, till Ford’s mass production methods began to dominate the industry. What happened to the pioneers of car production? Unless they managed to find a niche as a sports or luxury model (The Model T was a very basic design, which made it easy to mass produce, and it was much ridiculed as a result.) they were bound for extinction. “One capitalist always kills many”, as Marx says (Capital Volume I p.929). Henry Ford’s advances in assembly line production struck down many aspiring motor manufacturers.

The rise in productivity made possible by assembly line techniques inevitably means that smaller and weaker laggard capitals fall by the wayside. They simply can’t keep up with the industry leaders and innovators. The scale of production inevitably rose with the vastly increased output from the new plants.  By the 1930s the US auto industry was completely dominated by three mass production giant firms – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. But though there were far fewer firms in the industry, the big three in Detroit still saw each other as rivals. Every Ford sold meant an American citizen who would not be buying a Chrysler or a GM car any time soon. Competition remained the driving force of the accumulation of capital.

“Henry Ford might insist, as he continually did, that competition was wrong, and that he did not believe in it; but the fact was that he was competing at every moment in his life, and would continue to do so as long as he made motor-cars. In a hundred different plants scattered over the United States efforts were being made to beat him. In the long run, the successful ones would be those who contrived, by one method or another, to get the most out of a dollar’s worth of labor.” (Sinclair p.27)

So this competition was not just a contest between capitalists as to who could make and sell cars cheapest. It was also at bottom, as Sinclair notes, a contest in squeezing more and more surplus out of the working class.

• Competition between capitalists produced dramatic increases in productivity, the scale of production and falls in the price of cars.

 

Surplus value in practice

Where did Henry Ford’s profits come from? From his workers – where else could they possibly come from? The workers at Ford, like the peasants in Romania, were being exploited. That means that some of the value added in production went to reproduce the elements of their wages. And some of the value they added went to make Henry Ford rich. Surplus value is the unpaid labour of the working class.

Upton Sinclair did not have the information to work out the rate of exploitation at Ford. Business secrecy is protected precisely so such details won’t leak out. But the facts speak for themselves. At the beginning of the tale Henry Ford lives in the same neighbourhood as Abner Shutt. By the 1930s he is the richest man in the world, a billionaire.

In 1909, we are told, Ford was selling 12,000 cars at $950 each. Some money from those cars he sold went straight to pay the workers’ wages. Some went to pay for other expenses – the cost of depreciation on the plant, electricity, tyres upholstery and the rest. And some went into Henry Ford’s pocket. This was a surplus, just like that appropriated by Etruscan theocrats, Norman barons and the rest of them. It was surplus value. It was unpaid labour, the fruits of exploitation.

In the hypothetical example Marx used in comparing the exploitation of factory workers in Britain, he suggested that the workers worked six hours to produce the elements of their own subsistence and six hours in producing surplus value. There are two factors that veil the reality of this exploitative relationship: the first is that the nature of the wages contract suggests that the workers are being paid for their labour; in fact they are being paid for their labour power, for their keep.

The second is that (unlike the Danubian peasant) the wage worker doesn’t actually produce all the commodities that they buy with their wages. In the usual way they will specialise in producing a single commodity all day. Usually they will be a detail worker in the production process. Neither will they normally spend part of their time producing goods their boss will consume. They find themselves part of a vast worldwide division of labour imposed by the market, in which commodities produced by the workers of the world are all exchanged against money and pass from continent to continent.

What is the rate of surplus value in the UK today? From the government ‘Blue Books’ used long ago by Marx we can find data that, though rough and ready, can give us a clear idea of the rate of exploitation. We choose the year 2007 as the last set of statistics likely to be unaffected by the crisis. (Crises usually hit profits harder than wages.) All figures are at current market prices.

Gross Domestic Product                         £1,401.042m

Compensation of employees                    £744.857m

Surplus value                                           £656.185m

The formula for surplus value is S/V, where S is surplus value and V is variable capital, the sum laid out by the capitalist on wages. Surplus value is derived simply by deducting employee compensation (which we identify as the wages bill for the country) from GDP. Everything apart from employee compensation counts as surplus value. In the figure for surplus value I have therefore included the following categories:  Operating surplus, Taxes, Government supply, and a mixed, mysterious category called Mixed income, which is a little less than 6% of GDP for that year.

This gives a rate of surplus value of 88%.

Assuming a working day of 7 hours, the workers work on average about 3 hours 43 minutes for themselves and 3 hours 17 minutes to produce surplus value.

(From United Kingdom National Accounts: Blue Book 2007, Office for National Statistics)

Why include taxes as part of the surplus value? Here is the traditional Marxist justification for the procedure

“‘Taxes!’ A matter that interests the bourgeoisie very much but the worker only very little. What the worker pays in taxes goes in the long run into the cost of production of labour power and must therefore be compensated for by the capitalist.” (Engels, The Housing Question, p.36)

• The working class is exploited by the capitalist class, who extract a surplus from them.
• The form taken by the surplus extracted from the workers is surplus value, the unpaid labour of the working class.
• The worker also spends time on necessary labour, producing commodities that are sold to pay their wages.

 

Chapter 4: ‘Getting the most out of a dollar’s worth of labor’

Raising the rate of surplus value

As we have seen, in the battle to make more profits the capitalists need to compete against their rivals. They sell cheaper by making cheaper, raising the productivity of labour in the process. All the time they are engaged, as Upton Sinclair puts it, in the search “to get the most out of a dollar’s worth of labor.”

The extraction of surplus value gives us the basic anatomy of capitalism as a system of exploitation, as a form of class society. But, since the search for surplus value is never ending, it also provides us with the framework to analyse the dynamics of capitalism.

The rate of surplus value or rate of exploitation is given by the formula S/V, when S is surplus value and V is variable capital. For instance, when Marx gave the example of the British factory worker compared with the Romanian peasant, he suggested the former worked six hours for himself and six for the capitalist. In that case the rate of surplus value (S/V) would be 6/6 or 100%. How can the capitalists raise the rate of exploitation? Marx deals with two main methods: these are raising absolute surplus value and increasing relative surplus value.

“The surplus value produced by prolongation of the working day, I call absolute surplus value. On the other hand, the surplus value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components of the working day, I call relative surplus value.”  (ibid p.432)

• The capitalists are impelled by competition among themselves, and by the need ‘to get the most out of a dollar’s worth of labor’, to increase the rate of surplus value, the rate of exploitation

 

Absolute surplus value

The search for absolute surplus value is dealt with magnificently in Chapter 10 of Capital Volume I, entitled The working day. If workers are paid by the day, as most were in the nineteenth century, then what could be simpler than for the boss to demand that they work more and more hours for their recompense?  In terms of our earlier example, if  the bosses manage to force the workers to work a 14 hour day instead of 12 hours, while still paying them the same daily wage then the rate of surplus value (S/V) rises to 8/6 = 133%.

As is often the case in the early stages of an industrial revolution there were masses of desperate people prepared to work for a pittance. No doubt bourgeois economists would put down the possibility of super-exploiting these workers by extending the working day without limit to the forces of supply and demand. The supply of labour exceeded the demand, so the ‘price’ of the workers fell.

In a sense they are right. Supply and demand is important, specially when it is you who are supplying yourself and being demanded (or not) by the bosses. Marx was very much alive to the opportunities provided by recession for the capitalists to try to drive wages below the value of labour power which, as we know, is a level ultimately decided by class struggle. Upton Sinclair was equally aware of this, as he shows in his book. Both men also knew that periods of boom and relatively full employment provided the working class with the best opportunity to advance the level of real wages.

Upton Sinclair does not deal with the production of absolute surplus value as a way of raising the rate of surplus value in his book. The length of the working day was taken as a given in early twentieth century America by most sections of the working class. Workers were by and large paid by the hour. But the main reason for its unimportance to the likes of Henry Ford comes from the obvious advantages of assembly line production, speedup and other techniques to raise the rate of exploitation.

That does not mean that the extraction of absolute surplus value has ceased in modern capitalism. We can all list the occupations where workers are expected to work all the hours to make up a living wage. The mere payment of wages by the hour does not rule out the setting of an hourly rate at such a low level that vulnerable workers are forced to work far longer than the norm established by the better organised sections of the working class.

The extraction of absolute surplus value does not require much initiative or entrepreneurial skill. All the employer needs is the whip hand over the workers. But it was a very successful means of raising the rate of exploitation in the early years of the British industrial revolution In the end the decisive victory over this process of lengthening the working day was achieved by the British working class itself, pressing for the legal limitation of the working day.

Marx also observes that the capitalist enthusiasm for overworking their employees was in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. He quotes the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories as advising that, “The Ten Hours’ Act, in the branches of industry subject to it has ‘put an end to the premature decrepitude of the former long hour workers’” (Capital Volume I, p.416)

• The capitalist gains absolute surplus value by making the worker labour longer for the same wages.
• That means the worker spends more time in producing surplus value and a smaller proportion of their labour time on necessary labour.

 

Relative surplus value

If the worker is paid by the day and we regard the working day as fixed for the time being, there is only one other way the capitalist can raise the rate of exploitation. Since the working day is divided into a paid part and an unpaid part, the capitalists must reduce the hours that the workers labour to produce the elements of their own maintenance. This will automatically increase the hours they produce surplus value. And the way to do that is to raise the productivity of labour.

The extraction of relative surplus value is a much more complex process than that of absolute surplus value. It is not a conscious outcome of the calculations of the capitalists. Marx says that in essence it consists in shortening the amount of time the workers labour to produce the elements of their wages. But, as we know, the workers do not spend time in the workplace producing all the things they need to subsist on in their natural form. So how does this process work? The impetus comes from the need for capitalists to compete with one another and thus to raise the level of productivity of their workers.

The outcome of increased productivity means that commodities are produced with less socially necessary labour time. In monetary terms they are cheaper. We now have to consider what the effect of cheapening commodities has on the economy as a whole. One possibility is that they are wage goods, commodities that by and large are bought by workers with their wages. If they are wage goods, what will happen when they get cheaper? Will the workers enjoy a higher and higher standard of living through the falling price of necessaries? Our answer is, ‘not necessarily’. Falling prices do not always afford the workers a rising standard of living. The issue is determined by the balance of forces between worker and employer, by the class struggle.

It is quite obvious that workers in advanced capitalist countries have made big gains in their standard of living compared with 200 years ago. There are many more goods in the notional basket of commodities that make up the elements of their maintenance than was the case in the reign of Queen Victoria. Many of these new wants were not even invented at that time. To be fair to Henry Ford, part of his vision was that ordinary working people, wage workers and small farmers, would be able to afford a car made by the methods of mass production he pioneered. It is also the case that for workers and farmers at that time their Model T Ford was not a luxury for riding out on Sunday. It was a necessity for getting to work or sending their crops to market.

• Relative surplus value is gained by making the worker labour more effectively, more productively, in a given time.
• This means that the worker spends more time producing surplus value and less time on necessary labour.

 

Raising the productivity of labour

Marx’s analysis of the extraction of relative surplus value in Capital remains the core of our analysis here. If productivity doubles throughout the economy then prices will halve. If we assume that workers’ living standards remain the same in real terms then, if they formerly worked four hours to produce the elements of their subsistence and four hours producing surplus, they now only need work two hours to produce the basket of goods they need to subsist upon. That means they can work six hours for the boss in an eight hour day. The rate of exploitation has jumped from 100% (S/V = 4/4) to 300% (S/V = 6/2).

Here is the classic position outlined by Marx:

“The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a proportionate fall in the value of labour power, a fall proportional to the extent of that commodity’s employment in the reproduction of labour power. Shirts, for instance, are a necessary means of subsistence, but are only one out of many. The totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various commodities, each the product of a distinct industry; and the value of each of those commodities enter as a component part into the value of labour power…Whenever an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for instance, by increasing the productiveness of labour he by no means necessarily aims at reducing the value of labour power and shortening, by as much the necessary labour time. But it is only in so far as he ultimately contributes to this result that he assists in raising the general rate of surplus value. The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of manifestation.” (ibid p.433)

Just to emphasise the last point. The capitalist does not set out to reduce the labour time necessary to reproduce the elements of the workers’ subsistence. All he seeks is to steal a march over his competitors. Yet raising the rate of surplus value is the ultimate outcome of the capitalists’ acts. Marx does not derive the laws of motion of capitalism from the motivations of the capitalists. On the contrary he sees the motivations of the capitalist as a product of their position in capitalist society.

• The production of relative surplus value is an unconscious process, driven by competition between capitalists.
• The overall result of this competition is to raise the productivity of labour and make commodities cheaper.
• This reduces the necessary labour time performed by the worker, and therefore raises the rate of exploitation.

 

Vanishing super-profits

Capitalists compete with one another. The overall result of this competition is that productivity rises and prices fall. Naturally this is a process that takes place unevenly in real time. The first capitalists who introduce a labour saving technique can sell the commodity at a price corresponding to the prevailing socially necessary labour time. This is set at the standard level of productivity then established within the industry. Since the innovators have actually had the commodity produced with less labour time (i.e. in principle cheaper) they can make a super-profit for a period of time by selling their goods above their individual value, at the prevailing industry norm.

As their competitors hasten to retool with the new technique, the value of the commodity (the socially necessary labour time required to produce it) will gradually fall to a new, lower average and the super profit will disappear. Thus the pursuit of a higher rate of profit is like chasing a will o’ the wisp.

Here is an example showing graphically how the value of a commodity is determined by socially necessary labour time in the longer term, and how raising the productivity of labour drastically reduces the value of the commodity and its monetary expression, price.

The first ballpoint pen was produced for sale by the Reynolds International Pen Company in 1945:

“The price was set at $12.50…In the early stages the cost of production was estimated to be around $0.80 per pen…By early 1946 (Reynolds) employed more than 800 people in its factory and was producing 30,000 pens per day”

Rival firms sprang up. So, “Reynolds introduced a new model, but kept the price at $12.50. Costs were estimated at $0.60 per pen.”…“Fortune reported fears of an impending price war in view of the growing number of manufacturers and the low cost of production.”…“By Christmas 1946 approximately 100 manufacturers were in production, some of them selling pens for as little as $2.98.”…

“In mid 1948 ballpoint pens were selling for as little as $0.39 and costing about $0.10 to produce. In 1951 prices of $0.25 were common. Within six years the power of the monopoly was gone for ever.”

This example is taken from Richard G. Lipsey-An introduction to positive economics, p.393, a standard economics textbook. Lipsey is an opponent of the labour theory of value. The whole of his book is intended to provide an alternative explanation of economic phenomena. Yet this example shows graphically how the law of value is the regulator of production under capitalism.

The search for super-profits not only generalises the use of new technology throughout the capitalist system; it also opens up new areas of the globe to capitalism. The conquest of new markets is usually associated with the reaping of super-profits, with a higher rate of profit. For instance when British capitalists began to export machine woven cotton to the rest of the world, local handloom weavers were wiped out because they could not compete on price. Locals in the rest of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas would compare the price of the imported cloth with prices associated with the productivity of handloom weaving and find the British products cheap.

This is the usual good fortune of industrial pioneers under capitalism. They can sell for a time at a price above the individual value of their product but below the norm established by the former level of productivity, the prevailing social value. Eventually the level of productivity associated with the new technology will become the norm all over the world and super-profits will disappear. This was a painful process that involved the destruction of the livelihoods of millions of handloom weavers all over the world. Even when the lower prices associated with the productivity of machine woven cloth became the norm, the sheer mass of profits from a market of the whole world made the Lancashire cotton magnates very rich. The result of this search for super-profits in new and distant markets binds the world together within the capitalist market.

• Capitalists compete with one another to make commodities cheaper.
• If they can sell their commodities cheaper as a result, they will make a super-profit for a time.
• Capitalists also try to make a super-profit by invading markets not yet completely subject to the laws of capitalism.
• The outcome of their endeavours is to extend the global reach of the capitalist system.

 

The logic of capitalism

This is how Marx explains the effects of this search for super-profits:

“On the other hand, however, this extra surplus value vanishes, so soon as the new method of production has become general, and has consequently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The law of the determination of value by labour time, a law which brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production, by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a coercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method.” (Capital Volume I, p.436)

The net result of this competitive process, unknown to the competitors, is that commodities in general will be produced with progressively less labour time and therefore be represented with a smaller quantity of value. That is surely progress for humanity at least in principle, even if it is an unconscious result of the striving of the capitalists for super-profits.

In the twenty-first century we all take for granted many things that were no part of the Shutts’ subsistence basket in the 1930s. So what? The working class has gained some share in the enormous outpouring of commodities we have contributed to. We are more dependent than ever upon wage labour on account of the ruling class’s grip upon our livelihoods for us to make a living. The shackles of wage slavery have still to be struck off.

The motivation of the capitalists in searching for super-profits is not to raise the rate of relative surplus value but to steal a march on their competitors. The intention of the individual capitalist and the outcome of the working of the law of value are two completely different things. The law of value actually works through continual attempts by capitalists to negate its operation. The analysis of the production of relative surplus value is a classic illustration of the general position taken by Marx, that the laws of capitalism operate behind the backs of the individual economic actors, whether workers or capitalists:

“It is not our intention to consider, here, the way in which the laws, immanent in capitalist production, manifest themselves in the movements of individual masses of capital, where they assert themselves as coercive laws of competition, and are brought home to the mind and consciousness of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of his operations. But this much is clear; a scientific analysis of competition is not possible, before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not intelligible to any but him, who is acquainted with their real motions, motions which are not directly perceptible by the senses.” (ibid p.433)

• When the new technology and higher level of productivity associated with it are taken up generally within the industry, the super-profit will disappear.
• The laws of capitalism operate behind the backs of individual capitalists and independently of their will.
• The result of the search for super-profits is to raise the overall level of productivity and the global reach of capitalism.

 

Intensity of labour

The production of more absolute surplus value is achieved by making the worker labour for more hours for the same wages over the working day. The capitalist also strives to make the wage earners work harder in the time they are at work. “Increased intensity of labour means increased expenditure of labour in a given time” (ibid p.660).

To achieve this, the capitalist needs to control the labour process. As we have seen in the case of Ford, this is accomplished by mass production methods that turn the workers into an appendage of the machinery.

The principal ways the capitalists can make the labour of one hour worth more to them than before is by making the workers produce more use values in a given period of time; they do this mainly by making their workers supervise more machines and by speeding up the assembly line. This intensification of labour and the accumulation of capital that raises the productivity of labour through the mechanisation of the labour process are two processes that go hand in hand.

“There was always a clamor from the sales department to get more cars. When the plant was turning out a thousand a day, those who had the job in hand knew that by increasing the speed of the assembly line one minute in an hour, they would get sixteen more cars that day. Why not try it? A couple of weeks later, after the workers on the line had accustomed themselves to the faster motions, why not try it again?

“Never had there been such a device for speeding up labor. You simply moved a switch and a thousand men jumped more quickly. It was an invisible tax, like the tariff, which the consumer pays without being aware of it. The worker cannot hold a stopwatch, and count the number of cars which come to him in an hour. Even if he learns about it from the man who set the speed of the belt – again it is like the tariff in that he can do nothing about it. If he is a weakling, there are a dozen strong men waiting outside to take his place. Shut your mouth and do what you’re told!” (Sinclair p.27)

• The capitalists also strive to increase the intensity of labour, to make the workers perform more labour in a given time.
• Two classic methods of raising the intensity of labour are speeding up the assembly line and making the worker mind more machines.

 

Chapter 5: The dynamics of capitalism

The general formula for capital

Marx contrasted the circulation of capital with that of commodities under petty commodity production. The sellers in petty commodity production aim to exchange a commodity they own (and which they probably produced) for money. For their purposes this is simply an intermediate step. It’s stage one. They don‘t want to hang on to the money but to exchange it for another commodity. In effect they intend to exchange a use value they don’t want for one they do want. Money is just an intermediary. Characteristically they exchange an exchange value they own for a commodity of equal value.

Marx labels this as a C – M –C exchange. He contrasts this with the circulation of capital. Let us assume capitalists start with money. Their intention is to end with money, more money than they started with. There is no point for them in exchanging a commodity worth £100 for another worth £100. But that is what the traders of commodities usually do in the C – M – C circuit. For the capitalists the exchange of commodities, and the production of those commodities, is purely incidental to the production of surplus value. So the circuit of capital is M – C – M’, where M’ is a greater sum of money than M with which the capitalist started.

As Marx often had occasion to point out, capital is not a thing. It is a social relation. Capital goes through different forms of existence in its circulation process. Let us begin our analysis with money capital. Whereas the boyars start with land as the basis of their social power, the capitalists begin with money. The capitalists lay out their money on means of production and labour power. Then production can begin. As we know the surplus value is actually generated in the production process by the labour power of the workers being set to work to produce necessary and surplus labour. It must then be realised, the value created turned back into the money form and the circuit completed.

But the necessary labour has not at the stage of production been translated into wages for the workers; nor has the surplus labour become surplus value jingling in the pockets of the capitalists. The firm will usually specialise in producing one or a narrow line of goods. Whether these be motor cars or ice lollies, they have to be sold in order for the values congealed in the commodities to be realised. The production of surplus value and its realisation are two acts separate in time and in place. There are no guarantees that surplus value that has been produced can be realised. Yet, till the commodities have been realised, the circuit of capital has not been completed and capitalist production cannot continue.

Purchase and sale represent the unity of two processes. Yet these two processes can be ruptured and become independent of one another. The result is crisis. As Marx puts it, “The independence of the two correlated aspects can only show itself forcibly as a destructive process. It is just the crisis in which they assert their unity, the unity of different aspects.” (Theories of Surplus Value Volume II, p.500)

This gives us the possibility of crisis. We shall follow this up in more detail in Part 2: The Marxist theory of crisis.

• Under capitalism the aim of the capitalist is to start with money and end up with more money.
• Capital performs a circuit: from money; to production; to commodities produced; to money once more.
• Surplus value must not just be produced. It also has to be realised through the sale of the commodity so that the capitalist can begin the process of exploitation again.

 

Constant capital, variable capital and surplus value

So far we have dealt with the determination of the value of commodities and the decisive role of the productivity of labour in this process. We have also dealt with the division of the working day (or working time generally) into paid labour and unpaid labour, surplus value. We have seen that the battle over this division is never-ending, the objective basis for the class struggle.

As we know, Upton Sinclair was not allowed to look at Henry Ford’s account books in order to establish the rate of exploitation. After all he was preparing a novel, whose whole purpose was to aid the union drive at Ford which, if successful  (and it was), would curtail Henry Ford’s ability to extract more and more surplus value from his workforce without let or hindrance.

We postulated rates of exploitation such as 100% in the examples we have given. If we could give Henry Ford the right of reply, he would no doubt explode that his rate of profit was nothing like as high as we have suggested. And he would be right.

The division of the working day which gives us the rate of exploitation can be represented by V (variable capital) and S (surplus value). By variable capital we mean the money the capitalist lays out in wages. We work out the rate of exploitation with the formula S/V.

But the capitalist doesn’t just have to purchase the services of working class people before the production of surplus value can commence. Earlier we suggested a random list of other expenses Henry Ford might have to pay: the cost of depreciation on the plant, electricity, tyres, upholstery and so forth. So the overall rate of profit on capital outlaid will generally be lower than the rate of surplus value (rate of exploitation).

All these other costs apart from wages are regarded by Marx as constant capital. They are constant capital because they pass their value unchanged to the final product. Constant capital is dead labour. When we come to consider the value of the commodity, as opposed to the division of the working day, this can be divided into three parts: constant capital(C), variable capital (V) and surplus value (S).

This notion of constant capital is easy enough to grasp in the case of the tyres. Henry Ford pays the tyre manufacturer $50, or whatever they cost, and adds $50 to the price of the car. Theoretically he could sell cars with no tyres, and the customers could go out and buy tyres for $50. The tyres are the object of a past process of exploitation. The workers in the tyre factory performed paid labour and unpaid labour in making the tyres, just like Henry Ford’s car workers. Then the tyres are sold to Henry Ford at their value (on average). He makes no money out of buying tyres.

It might be more difficult to accept that the cost of the plant is also dead labour and does not produce a surplus for Henry Ford. Doesn’t assembly line production make car workers much more productive than engineers working in a shed, as was the case in the early days of the industry? Of course the assembly line workers produce more cars. But the cars are cheaper, because they contain less socially necessary labour time than motors produced under craft conditions. The workers are now producing more use values, not more exchange value. The same amount of labour time expresses itself in a greater mass of use values.

The assembly line was produced by workers who were exploited just like the Ford workforce. Then it was sold at its value to Henry Ford. Only the depreciation on the assembly line goes into the value of a motor car, not its entire value. If the assembly line cost $10 million and assists in the production of a million cars before it gives up the ghost, then we can say it adds $10 to the value of each car.

The Marxist way of looking at value as being composed of living labour (V + S) and dead labour (C) is not confined to ourselves. Living labour is the value added in the production process. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs use the same form of calculation when they send out bills for Value Added Tax. In assessing a motor manufacturer’s liability to pay VAT they may, as a first approximation, bill them for tax on the full sales price of the cars sold.

The car company’s accounts department will at once reply that the costs of tyres, glass, upholstery and all the other components they bought in are not value added. They will not use the expression ‘constant capital’, but that is the basis of their counter-claim. So they will supply copies of the invoices they paid for these items to HMRC, in effect arguing that they are items of dead labour that added no value in the production of cars. VAT is only levied on value added, that it on the new labour (value) added in the production process. And that’s official.

• The capitalist lays out money on constant capital, which passes its value unchanged to the final product.
• He also lays out variable capital to pay the workers’ wages.
• The value of a commodity may be broken down into constant capital, variable capital and surplus value.

 

The rate of profit

What is decisive in the considerations of the capitalists is not the rate of exploitation but the rate of profit – how much extra they get out compared with what they put in (invest). This is not just the lodestar of individual capitalists. It is a vital regulator of the capitalist system as a whole.

We have already had occasion to point out that the capitalist system is unplanned. How much capital equipment is needed at any point in time? Nobody knows. Nobody calculates. Still it is important for Henry Ford that, when he decides it would be profitable to increase the production of motors at his plant, he should be able to go to the marketplace and buy tyres, upholstery, wood for dashboards and whatever other components he needs in sufficient quantities and proportions to turn out more cars.

Likewise it was important for the workers who came to Detroit that they could be decently housed, clothed and fed. This didn’t happen automatically. Detroit at this time was a vibrant capitalist metropolis sucking in all manner of skills and resources to back up the fast-growing motor industry. How is this proportionality between the different inputs needed for capitalist firms to grow established? How do the use values needed for capitalism to reproduce itself as a system come into existence?

All these skills and resources were attracted to the Detroit area by the search for profit. Capital must reproduce itself. It must find the means to satisfy all its material needs in the marketplace. A vast division of labour is achieved entirely through people buying and selling. But when they are buying and selling, they are oblivious to the actual needs of society, which are unknown to them. They are all looking to their own advantage. Capitalists measure the advantage to themselves in profit, and naturally they look to their own rate of profit compared with that of other capitalist firms.

As we pointed out earlier, commodities are only sold occasionally and accidentally at their value. Usually they are sold at a price above or below their value. If supply exceeds demand, and as a result commodities are sold at a price below their value, this means the capitalists who sell them will have to take a cut in profit. If low profits persist, this can be taken as a signal that the capitalist is in the wrong line of business. Marginal capitalists in the industry are likely to drop away.

Likewise if demand in an industry is booming and capitalists in an industry are making bumper profits, then two things are likely to happen; first the incumbent capitalists will maximise output to the fullest extent to take advantage of the super-profits to be made. They will work their capacity to the utmost, take on more workers and offer overtime to those already on the books. They may plan to expand their output potential. Secondly other capitalists, particularly those that find themselves trapped in low-profit industries, will begin to think seriously about upping stakes and moving to where the serious money can be made.

So the regulator of the division of labour within an unplanned economy is the rate of profit. Low profits in a sector cause exit while high profits attract new entrants. Capital flows are the way in which proportionality is established in an unplanned economy. Naturally the working of these capital flows is as chaotic on the surface as the day-to-day movement of prices.

• Capitalists are guided in their investment decisions by expectations of profit.
• The rate of profit thus serves as a regulator for the capitalist system as a whole.

 

Chapter 6: How capitalism evolves

The accumulation of capital

Don’t think for a moment that Henry Ford spent all the surplus value extracted from his workers on himself, on fine living. He lived well, as Upton Sinclair testifies. But the majority of that surplus value was accumulated, ploughed back into production. Any capitalist has to decide whether to consume the surplus unproductively or to accumulate it, and in what proportions. This decision is presented here as a choice. But really the individual capitalist and individual firm don’t have much choice. They must accumulate or go under. That is the lesson Henry Ford taught his rivals.

Under capitalism there is no natural limit to the rate of exploitation. Nor is there any limit to the accumulation of capital under the system. There is an impulsion upon the capitalists to accumulate most of the surplus value. Thus they are continually raising the level of productivity and, potentially, making us all richer. This is important. Romania remains a desperately poor country. In part this is the heritage of the rule of the boyars. Feudalism did not develop the productive forces in the way capitalism does. Capitalism has a completely different dynamic from previous forms of class society. It is the dynamics of the system that we are trying to outline here.

We have already seen that, in the hunt for higher productivity, capitalists are forced to accumulate the lion’s share of the surplus value as capital rather than spending it on their personal consumption.

It is obvious to the casual observer that the transition from weaving cloth by handloom weavers to the general use of power looms consists of a progressive replacement of human labour power by machinery in the production process. The transition of the Ford Motor Co. from Henry’s shed to the giant River Rouge plant opened to make the Model A Ford in 1928 is an instance of exactly the same trend.

As a result the scale of production in a firm is likely to expand and the number of firms in an industry to fall over time. Marx calls this the concentration of capital. Rather than the small-scale competitive capitalism that typified nineteenth century capitalism, the system in the twenty-first century is dominated by giant firms. These still compete against one another for market share, but quite often this rivalry may be pursued in different ways from just competing on price. Attempts at product differentiation which can lead to an advertising blitz are just one example of a different form of competition between capitalists.

Alternatively, large corporations can use their financial muscle to buy their rivals out. Big firms that supply one another and become interdependent may also form networks. These in turn can solidify into alliances pitted against other capitalist networks. Informal networks can also turn into friendly mergers or provoke hostile takeovers of rival firms.

Centralisation of capital means the merger of capitalist firms, the concentration of ownership rather than production. Whereas the driving force of the concentration of capital is the ever-increasing scale of production and the rising minimum efficient scale needed to produce and sell competitively in modern business, the centralisation of capital derives from the advantages of joint ownership. Production may be divided into different plants separated geographically, but unified by a common purpose which is drawn up by a common management team.

• Raising the productivity of labour in an industry naturally produces a larger scale of production, bigger units of production and a smaller number of firms. This is called the concentration of capital.
• Capital also becomes centralised through links of ownership rather than production.

 

The organic composition of capital

Henry Ford achieved his victories over his rivals by spending first and most on machinery in order to raise the productivity of labour. So the proportion of his capital laid out on labour power (variable capital) compared with that invested in plant and machinery (constant capital) was falling as production became more capital intensive. The natural accompaniment to the raising of the productivity of labour under capitalism is therefore the increasing capital intensity of production.

Marx explains that this is a general tendency in capitalist production, “Every advance in the use of machinery entails an increase in the constant component, that part which consists of machinery, raw material, etc., and a decrease in its variable component, the part laid out in labour power.”  (Capital Volume I p.578)

Marx calls this process the rising organic composition of capital. Readers may find it intuitively obvious that the proportion of dead labour to living labour tends to rise over the history of capitalism – that twenty first century workers usually have more machinery behind their elbow than nineteenth century workers. But Marx is not just referring to the mass of constant capital compared to the number of workers. He calls this the technical composition of capital. This ratio cannot be computed because, just as use values are incommensurable, we cannot compare a mass of machinery etc. of different types with a number of workers.

The organic composition of capital is expressed by the formula C/V, where C is constant capital and V is variable capital. It is calculated in value terms. Since price is here the monetary expression of labour time the organic composition of capital is the value of constant capital relative to variable capital, or how much the capitalist lays out on them respectively. The increase in capital per worker is known in conventional economics textbooks as capital deepening. Here are the figures given in Angus Maddison’s Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD, (p.305) for the UK and the USA. All figures are in 1990 dollars.

Gross Stock of Machinery and Equipment Per Capita

UK                       USA

1820           92                          87

1870         334                        489

1913         878                     2,749

1950      2,122                     6,110

1973      6,203                   10,762

2003    14,291                   32,240

These figures are, as we see, only a first approximation to the organic composition of capital. All the same they represent a triumphant vindication of Marxist analysis.

• The rising proportion of constant capital relative to living labour in the production process is called the increasing organic composition of capital.
• The increasing organic composition of capital is a fundamental trend in capitalist production.

 

The tendency for the rate of profit to fall

As we pointed out earlier the rate of profit is calculated by the capitalist as the surplus gained (S) compared with the costs laid out on constant and variable capital (C + V). So the formula for the rate of profit is S/(C + V). Note that, in contrast to calculating the value of a commodity (C + V + S), in this case the whole of the constant capital outlaid is included as costs, not just the constant capital used up in the production of the commodities.

Now there is a fly in the ointment in the progressive rise in the organic composition of capital over time. For the surplus value on which the whole of the ruling class depends for its livelihood comes from the living labour added in the production process. Yet the proportion of living labour compared with dead labour in the production process will tend to fall as the organic composition of capital rises. This will produce a tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

In Part 2: The Marxist theory of crisis we show that in the Grundrisse Marx stated that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is “the most important law in political economy”. This is not an isolated thought from an unpublished preparatory manuscript. In his economic manuscripts of 1861-3 he repeated this formulation almost word for word: “This law, and it is the most important law of political economy, is that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall with the progress of capitalist production” (Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 33, p.104).

We consider the working out of this law in much more detail in The Marxist theory of crisis. We discuss throughout the course of this book how to apply this basic principle of Marxist economic analysis to the current crisis.

As we have already established, all ‘laws’ in Marx’s sense are tendencies, that is to say they are forces pulling in a certain direction. They are not predictions that always yield a determinate result.

We know that the drive to raise productivity, and therefore for the worker to spend less time on paid labour and more on unpaid labour can raise the rate of exploitation. This rising rate of exploitation is an important counteracting factor to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. For the moment, observe that the same force, the drive to raise the productivity of labour, which produces the tendency for the rate of profit to fall also produces its own counter-tendencies.

Secondly the same tendency to raise productivity and reduce the relative price that goes prevails in consumer goods industries such as car production (producing ‘wage goods’, the elements that variable capital is spent on) is also at work in the capital goods sector. Though the mass of constant capital per worker has risen enormously over time, the cost of each unit of constant capital will tend to fall. This fall in the price of constant capital is another important counteracting factor to the tendential fall in the rate of profit.

• The rising organic composition of capital produces a tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
• There are also counteracting factors generated by the accumulation of capital. How this tendency and the countervailing tendencies interact is discussed in Part 2.

 

The tendencies of capitalist production

Ford was progressively employing more and more workers as he grew to be an industrial giant. This is how the accumulation of capital proceeds. Marx deals with it in the long Chapter 25 of Capital Volume I: The general law of capitalist accumulation.

He opens the discussion by asserting that, “A growing demand for labour power accompanies accumulation if the composition of capital remains the same.” (p.762) Of course the accumulation of capital does not usually leave the composition of capital untouched. Theoretically the capitalists could open another wing to their plant or another plant in their firm with an identical organic composition of capital to the others and employing the same technology. Given the continual technical progress under capitalism, that is highly unlikely, except in a ‘mature’ or stagnant industry – and that is not where the biggest profits are to be made.

Though firms are likely to employ more workers as they grow, that leaves out of account the wider picture. Weaving firms employing power looms were no doubt taking on ‘hands’ in the early decades of the development of the new technology, but they were ‘displacing’ vastly greater numbers of handloom weavers. Nor was this process confined to the UK. Traditional handicrafts in India and elsewhere were laid waste by British machine-woven cloths with which the handloom weavers were incapable of competing. Handloom weavers were reduced to penury all over the world. The law of value is no mere theoretical construct. It strikes with the power of a hurricane.

Advances in productivity are an imperative under conditions of capitalist competition. They are expressed in a rise in the relative importance of machinery, in particular in the capital laid out by the magnates of industry. Ford’s early workshops could not possibly have competed with his own mass production plants a generation later. The accumulation of capital therefore is usually accompanied by “a relative diminution of the variable part of capital”, according to Marx (ibid p.772). Whether that leads to an absolute fall in the number of employed workers is uncertain. Marx goes on to explain how capitalism generates a reserve army of labour from its own dynamics.

Capitalism is an unplanned system. In this it resembles a creature with no brain, no central system for thinking and planning. The brontosaurus was such a creature. Unfortunately it is now extinct. In an unplanned system it is always possible that too little or two much might be produced. After all nobody knows how much ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ actually is.

Since the capitalists are actually interdependent, if too little is produced in one industry and too much in another that will cause problems for firms further down the supply chain. This dislocation could set off a more general crisis of the system if profits took a tumble. A crisis of overproduction occurs when capitalists cannot sell their commodities and therefore cannot realise the surplus value that has been produced. Under capitalism trade is not conducted by petty proprietors exchanging products for products for their own satisfaction but by capitalists who are only interested in profit.  It is ultimately because production is not to satisfy human wants but to make profit for capitalists, that a crisis of overproduction is an ever-present possibility.

In a footnote to Capital, Chapter 4 (p.254), Marx highlights this confusion in the outlook of an apologist of capitalism:

“‘The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames,’ (accursed love of gold) ‘will always lead capitalists.’ (MacCulloch: ‘The Principles of Polit. Econ.’ London, 1830, p. 179.) This view, of course, does not prevent the same MacCulloch and others of his kidney, when in theoretical difficulties, such, for example, as the question of overproduction, from transforming the same capitalist into a moral citizen, whose sole concern is for use values, and who even develops an insatiable hunger for boots, hats, eggs, calico, and other extremely familiar sorts of use values.”

Crisis is inherent in capitalism because it is an unplanned system where production is for profit and not human wants. The purpose of this essay is to outline the dynamics of capitalism. We are mainly concerned with the long term trends rather than the fluctuations of boom and slump, which we shall deal with separately. To sum up these trends in a single phrase they are, “the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself.” (Capital Volume III, p.569) Capitalism is preparing the material conditions for a higher mode of production – socialism.

• As it accumulates, capitalism naturally tends to generate a reserve army of labour.
• Capitalism naturally produces crises. This is because it is an unplanned system where production is for profit.

 

Tasks of the working class

But socialism will not emerge of its own accord. It must be fought for. Socialism can only come about by the destruction of capitalism, which has to be the conscious act of millions of working class people. What will cause this questioning of capitalism in the minds of the workers?

There was no revolution against the boyars in Romania, though the serfs lived lives that in many ways were incomparably poorer and more wretched than those of twenty-first century wage workers. Conditions were stagnant, and we can assume that consciousness stagnated as a result. How different is the capitalist system and the lives of the mass of workers who live under it! Capitalism is unprecedentedly dynamic and continually shakes up the lives of its wage slaves. That was the story of the Shutts who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it’s the same today. Capitalism is incapable of offering its workers a secure existence.

Since being determines consciousness, changes in consciousness are likely to be triggered in changed conditions. This essay is being written as the world is dominated by the effects of a gigantic recession.  Coming after a long period of relatively full employment and rising living standards for most workers in Britain and other advanced capitalist countries, this recession is bound to produce a profound questioning and criticism. Capitalism stands revealed as a system that squanders human and material resources and where the ruling class always strives to make the workers bear the burden of the crisis and other flaws of their system. It is hoped that this essay will contribute to an understanding of the alternative and how to achieve it.

We have seen that the law of value acts as a natural force like a tsunami, disrupting and ruining people’s lives over and over again in good times and (specially) in bad. Capitalism has developed the productive forces enormously. It has taken us to the threshold of abundance, and then slammed the door firmly in our face.

Capitalism also develops a mass working class, who can and will act as its gravediggers. Even now, more than ever, millions of peasants, handicraft workers and small traders are being drawn into the maw of wage labour. There are now more than a billion wage workers. They, together with their families, outnumber the peasantry for the first time in the history of the world. They are an absolute majority of the globe’s population.

The working class, unlike the isolated peasantry of Wallachia, are concentrated together by the concentration of capital. The technology of mass communication developed by capitalism keeps them informed of movements elsewhere and helps them to plan their own resistance. They find that the small victories they win against the boss are achieved by unity in action. They are schooled in solidarity. The world’s working class, faced with the failure of capitalism, will increasingly turn to the ideas and programme of socialism.

• Capitalism is an unprecedentedly dynamic form of class society.
• Capitalism developed the productive forces, and so produced the conditions for a higher form of society – socialism.
• Capitalism also created a mass working class, who can and will carry through the socialist transformation of society.

 

The historical tendency of capitalist accumulation

What are the general tendencies of capitalist production in broad historical terms? Where are they taking us? Marx sums up his analysis in Chapter 32 of Capital Volume I, entitled The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.  After dealing with the process of primitive accumulation, he continues (ibid pp.928-9):

“As soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated…

“The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.”

April 2011

 

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.

---

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.

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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 -38

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.

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 organ