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From: Peter Rushton (peter@glaucon.demon.co.uk)

Subject: Re: Trotskyists in England

View: Complete Thread (4 articles)

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Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky

Date: 1996/07/20

kemurph@shore.net (Keith E. Murphy) wrote:

>Okay!!  I'm searching for you, British Trotskyists!  I am a college

>undergrad about to embark on the research project of your dreams.  I am

>writing a comparative thesis on Trotskyists in the U.S. and Great Britain .

>I will be staying in London (or wherever I must stay) from January thru

>May in order to conduct research on active Trotskyists.  I would like to

>interview anyone who meets the above description -- British Trotskyists.

>I'm sure it is quite obvious that I know very little about British

>Trotskyism as an organized political party, so I can use all the help and

>information that I can get.  I am already aware that the U.S. party, the

>Socialists Workers Party, considers itself a Trotskyist party, so all you

>SWP members are more than welcome to give me a hand.  I would like to

>successfully complete this thesis -- I would like to graduate soon!  Any

>info you can give is much appreciated.

>Andrea Catalano

A brief historical background might be in order.  (Allow for the fact that my last close contact with British Trotskyists was in 1993.

The main British Trotskyist organisation in the 1930s was the Militant Labour League, which operated the same 'entrist' policy as its recent namesake, and had a strong presence in the Labour Party's youth section.  In 1938 the Militant Labour League became the first official British section of Trotsky's Fourth International, and was renamed the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL).

During the war years a factional conflict (surprise, surprise :) ) developed between the RSL and a splinter group, the Workers'International League (WIL).

(One of the leading WIL activists was the young Ted Grant, later guru of Militant Tendency.)

Towards the end of the war the rival factions merged to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), which took over from the RSL as the Fourth International's British section but, unlike the RSL, did not adopt entrism.  (The RCP name resurfaced in another context thirty years later - see below.)

The entrist tradition was maintained by a dissident group led by Gerry Healy, and Healy's group inherited the RCP's Fourth International mantle when the RCP disintegrated in 1950.

The Healy faction, known in the 1950s as The Club, grew in strength and influence, initially through its association with mainstream Labour leftwingers who were witch-hunted on an epic scale by the right-wing Labour leadership, and later through the recruitment of disillusioned Stalinists.  In 1959 Healy set up the Socialist Labour League, which became a '60s equivalent of the modern Militant, prompting a new phase of Labour witch-hunting, especially in the youth section.

In 1969 the SLL (having ditched the entrist tactic) became the Workers' Revolutionary Party (WRP), still under Healy's leadership.

The WRP was best known for its extreme anti-Zionism (which led to a close association with Libya 's Col. Gadaffi), and for the fact that Vanessa Redgrave and (for a while) several other well-known actors were members.  In the mid-'80s it split into pro- and anti- Healy factions, who respectively eulogised and denounced the party's dead leader.  The main WRP publication, 'Newsline', appeared for a while in two versions, produced by the rival factions.

In the early '50s, Healy's 'Club' had expelled a faction centred on the magazine 'Socialist Review'.  This faction, which later became the International Socialists, and later still the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was most distinctive for its hardline condemnation of Soviet Communism as "state capitalism", and this analysis was the main reason for the split from Healy.  The best known activist in the Socialist Review Group / IS / SWP was Tony Cliff.

In the '60s and early '70s the IS - in competition with the International Marxist Group - was in the vanguard of the student "new left".  The SWP's Socialist Workers Students Society (SWSS) maintained this tradition as a strong faction in student politics in the 1980s.

The SWP has also been strong in some trade unions, but perhaps its best known activity was as the backbone of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), launched to combat the National Front in the 1970s.  SWP members sell the party newspaper, 'Socialist Worker', in city centres throughout the U.K. .

Before the IS transformed itself into the SWP, it suffered a number of splits.  One of these led to the creation of the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), another to Workers Power, etc., etc.

The RCG became well known in London in the 1980s via its heavy involvement in an anti-apartheid picket outside the South African Embassy.  Its best known publication was 'Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!'

By this time, however, the RCG had itself split, giving birth in the now traditional amoeba style to the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, later renamed Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).

When you arrive in London , go into any of the larger branches of the newsagent 'W.H. Smith', and you will find the RCP monthly magazine 'Living Marxism' - the glossiest and most widely distributed Trotskyist publication in Britain .  RCP activists have been prominent in several other organizations, which some might describe as front groups, notably the Irish Freedom Movement and Workers Against Racism.

Though overshadowed for the moment by Healy, Ted Grant had continued to operate through the '50s and '60s as a Labour Party entrist with a small faction of former RCP members, who formed the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1955.  Two years later the RSL became the Fourth International's British affiliate (a position which Healy's faction had abandoned in an earlier split).

In the mid-1960s the RSL:

a) merged with the International Marxist Group (IMG);

b) split again, and was replaced by IMG as the Fourth International's British section;

c) reorganised itself as a semi-secret organization centred on the newspaper 'Militant', and soon to become known as Militant Tendency.

The later history of Militant's relationship with the Labour Party is well known.  A few years ago it split, with the majority faction abandoning entrism and choosing to fight elections against official Labour candidates.  'Militant Labour' has had far more success than most Trotskyist electoral efforts, with particularly impressive performances in Scotland .

The best known Militant campaigns have been against Thatcher's local government policies (rate capping and the poll tax).  Its most recent front group was Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE).

The Labour witch-hunts of the '80s and '90s also targetted other Trotskyist entrists based around the journals 'Socialist Action' (produced by the remnants of the old IMG) and 'Socialist Organiser'.

Socialist Organiser's greatest success had been in student politics, through SSIN - Socialist Students in NOLS - NOLS being the right-wing dominated Labour Party student organization and SSIN being, for a while, the main left opposition.

Apologies to all the groups omitted - no insult intended, but it's late at night and I needed to finish this in time to watch Kieslowski's 'Three Colours: Red' on the tv   :)

If you read 'Time Out' when you get to London , it should keep you informed on a weekly basis of many Trotskyist meetings and conferences in the city.

--

Peter Rushton

peter@glaucon.demon.co.uk

P.S.

This hilarious entry for Trotsky appeared in the glossary of 'The Handbook of Marxism', published by the American Stalinist Emile Burns in 1935, and republished as 'The Marxist Reader' in 1982.

"Trotsky, L.  (1879-    )

Leading Russian Social-Democrat, who vacilated between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks after the Party split in 1903, being continually in opposition to Lenin.  He joined the Bolshevik Party just before the Bolshevik Revolution and filled leading posts during the Civil War.

Later he became a leader of anti-party fractional struggles and was expelled from the Party.  From 1928 carried on active campaign from various countries against the Soviet Union, and in the Moscow trials of 1936 and 1937 was stated by certain of the accused to be the organiser from abroad of groups of terrorists and wreckers inside the Soviet Union , in conjunction with Nazi agents."