British Bolsheviks, supporters of the International Left Opposition, in admiration' leaves no room for doubting that they are partisans, whose sympathies and antipathies are bared for their readers to see for themselves. It is because they write as committed Marxists that they do justice to their subject. They have studied the facts concerning the early formative years of Trotskyism in this country and they have made them available to the reader, and like all serious historians they have interpreted those facts and drawn conclusions. They have performed a service which we should demand from all historians, in that by rigorous study and research there are 1161 footnotes to the ten chapters — they have produced a work which seeks its vindication in the information it provides, not in some alleged neutrality.
No socialist worthy of the name could possibly read this book without joining the authors in their admiration of those British 'supporters of the International Left Opposition'. These were the people who along with MILITANT THE MONGERS SURRENDER! "UNITY" Now For A Real Left Wing! The RED FLAG FOR LENIN AND TROTSKY! Men is On The Antl-Feachet Why The RED FLAG Appears. Front TO REGENERATE REYOLUTIONARY 16
had come together, inspired by the great October Revolution, to build a communist party in this country. In a country that lacked a tradition of revolutionary Marxism, and whose labour movement was permeated through and through by reformism, this was a daunting task indeed. It was a task that could only be completed with the aid of a revolutionary international, which the early rise of Stalin and his clique prevented. The young, politically immature Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was from the beginning a compliant tool in the hands of the Comintern's apparatchniks. "The CPGB was so small and its general political level was so low, that practically alone among the Communist Parties of the world (not excepting that even of the USA) there were no factions within it.'* This enabled the Stalinists to use the CPGB in the international fight against the Left Opposition it was CPGB representative J.T. Murphy who moved Trotsky's expulsion from the Comintern - and made the fight for Trotsky's ideas in such a party difficult indeed. Added to this was the problem that Trotskyism was born out of a period of defeats for the international working class which actually strengthened the grip of Stalinism. As Bob Edwards - a member of the ILP - said: ' 'Stalin was right about the need to build socialism in one country. I had a row with Trotsky when he said that defence of Russia lay in the imminent revolutions in Britain and Germany. I had just come from the General Strike and I knew it wasn't on." ' As the authors say: 'A better illustration of the Marxist theory of the relationship between ideas and material conditions could not be made. Given such obstacles it is little wonder that not more than about twelve members of the CPGB had come out for Trotskyism by the end of the twenties. By then Stalin had decisively defeated the opposition tendencies in the USSR and was steadily and relentlessly gaining full contro! of the Third International. The Daily Worker of 5 January 1932 was writing that Trotskyism was ' "the advanced troop of the bourgeoisie." ' which was simply echoing the line of the Cl.
Added to their other difficulties the Trot-
skyists now more and more confronted
systematic campaign of lies and slanders
backed up by the Soviet state international-
ly, and the apparatus of the CPGB at home.
The aim of this campaign was to isolate and
demoralise the few and tenuously based
Trotskyists. It succeeded inside the CPGB.
Their old friends from inside the party:
•...passed them with faces turned away,
some making hostile gestures. It was a way
of life, a whole series of friends, workmates
and acquaintances that was turned away
from them.' Outside the CPGB: 'Political
life had dwindled from the wider horizon of a
party into the suffocating confines of a small
group?
Again and again Trotsky's analyses were
to be born out during the thirties. His
warnings against the ultra-left lunary of the
JT Murphy (in centre with son) with lea Third Period were confirmed when German CP collapsed before Hitler western Europe's most powerful lat movement was prostrated under the boot of fascism. Likewise in Spain, warnings that the policies of the Pop front would aid Franco and lead to the de of the revolution were again proved t Reg Groves canvassing at Aylesbury, 1938
International, No. 3, March/April 1986
british Bolsheviks early history of Trotskyism in Britain is not widely known. But it is ustively and from a marxist perspective the origins of British Trotskyism. the Comintern including Stalin. The British CP was one of the most quickly Stalinised
history and there is much we can learn from it. BOB ININGTON reviews a new book which covers frankly, true. But being correct did not mean that the Trotskyist movement could break out of its isolation. Historic defeats do not build great movements. The lessons of a defeat were learned by a few people, and often such people did (after seeing what had gone on in Germany and Spain) join the ranks of the newly formed Fourth International. In International, No. 3. March/April 1986
coliectio general, though, the defeats strengthened the Stalinists. If the revolution could not take place in Germany, if it was being crushed on the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War, then many reasoned that all they could do was defend the USSR, even at the expense of the class struggle at home. Meanwhile in Moscow the regime's purge and legalised murder of the old Bolsheviks signalled that 'if Stalin's policy was not revolution, then he did not need any revolutionaries.' Midnight had arrived in the middle of the twentieth
It was against this background of defeats, of Stalinist terror, and social democratic betrayals that Britain's early Trotskyist pioneers tried to build a movement. At first they fought inside the Communist Party to save it for Then they struggled inside the Independent Labour Party to win what they could of its left wing. Later they entered the Labour Party aiming to win to the idea of revolutionary Marxism those in its ranks who were opposing the policies of the right-wing leaders. Inside the Labour League of Youth they opposed the supporters of the Young Communist League
organised around the paper Advance and led by Ted Willis, now Lord Ted Willis, author of Dixon of Dock Green, and his colleague Jim Mortimer, the last general secretary of the Labour Party.
This history is faithfully documented in Against the Stream, from the start of the battle inside the CPGB, until 1938. It is a history
that had more tears than victories, but it is our history and belongs to us just as much as the Paris Commune, the October of 1917 and all the other great events of the international class struggle. It is incumbent on every serious Marxist to read and study that history because it is part of their heritage. We are therefore indebted to the two authors for making it available to us. That does not mean that we will necessarily endorse all their interpretations or conclusions. In their preface for example they write: 'Whatever differences then, there was a general consensus about the superiority of the United Front over the Popular Front; of the crucial role of the working class in the struggle for socialism; and of the primacy of questions of class over those of sex or colour.' I may say that this magazine does emphatically stand for the United Front against the Popular Front, and we do consider the working class plays the crucial role in the struggle for socialism. We also stand in the traditions of Kollontai and Zetkin who as Marxists understood the need for an autonomous women's movement and we think the Women Against Pit Closures movement is just one vindication of what the early women Marxist pioneers fought for. By the late twenties the big radicalisation that affected working class women was ebbing away. The Stalinised Comintern was more interested in resurrecting the family, than in building an independent women's movement, and the idea of an autonomous women's movement was anathema to the Labour right. The question of women's autonomy was also not an issue discussed by the carly Trotskyists and this is probably explained by the decline in women's radicalisation, the strains of activity already bearing down on such a small group and quite frankly by the theoretical weakness which it had inherited from British Marxism.
It is not a good thing that early Trotskyism in Britain failed to see the need for indpendent among women and black people, although: it is understandable. If they had had such positions, the relationship of forces arraigned against them would still have been over-
But it is likely that they could have won just a few more women leaders and laid the foundations, both theoretically and practically for dealing with the emergence of movements of the oppressed in the post-war years. I suspect that this difference we have with the two authors will raise its head again when their next work appears, which deals with British Trotskyism from 1937-49. But like the reviewer I am sure that the readers of this book will look forward to their next instalment of Trotksyist history. *The six references are taken from the book. Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, Against the Stream A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1924-38, Socialist Platform, (Available from Housmans Distributors, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1). £5.95 net.
RacIsM is a fundamenia! and montable feature of the crisis of British capitalism. Britam is sorelining imperialist power which has, in proportion to the sire of its economy, much greater overseas investments than any other major capitalist economy. The profits of these investments and very important to British capitalism. le is precisely because Britain is a dedining imperialist power that racism is importam for the British ruling class. British capitalism is desperately and violendly trying to retain its investments abroad and rebuild its profit rate at home, and it requires racism and jingoism to juscly is foreign policy and to hold together its fragmenting social base. diverting workers from seeing themselves es part of a class to seeing themselves as part of an illusory nation.
In the wake of the vouth rebellions in Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham, racism in Britain is intensitying and becoming even more central to British polities The Tories are giving a free rein to the police to step up their harassment of black
The media has played its now characteristic role in whipping up the racism which has deep roots in British society. has been legitimised by satements from government ministers 18 and by the Tory party's derision to make law and order one of
the main planks on which to rebuild its fading popularity. The Tory campaign on law and order is bound to rely on stirring up racism given the way the issue has become increasingly intertwined with race over the last 15 years with the publication by
'An immediate task for Labour is to build
support for the youths (black and white)
arrested in and after the recent rebellions
and to combine this with an implacable
campaign to stop the Public Order Bill
Tand the tooling-up of the police with repressive equipment' the police of racially-based crime statistics and the identification in the media of 'mugging' with black youth.
It is now more urgent than ever that the labour movement confronts racisin and gives real assistance to black people fighting racism. This is not just a question of moral duty, nor of
International, No. 3, March/April 1986
Guarita/Refle demonstrating a commitment to an egalitarian and just society, but essential for the defence of the labour movement itself. The Tories have already given the police vastly increased powers with the passing of the Police Bill in 1984. The lack of seriousness with which the Bill was viewed by the labour movement as a whole, and the failure to challenge the testing of new police tactics on black people and in the north of Ireland, left the labour movement vulnerable - physically and politically — to the brutal police tactics used in the miners' strike.
In the face of the Tories' economic, political and social attacks on the working class, unity is a necessity. Racism is a major tool of the Tories to break any united working class resistance: anti-racism has to be a fundamental tool to build and preserve that unity. This message rings out loud and clear from two recent negative experiences. In Liverpool, the Militant led council has done all it can to alienate black support over the Sam Bond affair, ar a time when it urgently needed that support. In Haringey, the council workers who staged a one-day strike to demand Bernie Grant's resignation were attacking the very people from Broadwater Farm who had previously marched in support of the council's attempts to defy rate-capping legislation and defend the council workers' jobs. International, No. 3, March/April 1986
Black liberation and