Book Review:
"Lifelong Apprenticeship - The Life and Times of a Revolutionary"
Published by Index Books and Porcupine Press
Reviewed by Charlie van Gelderen
As the title of this book implies, Bill Hunter has been a revolutionary socialist for most of his adult life, nearly all in one or other of the all-too-many British Trotskyist groups. Because of his long and active participation in the movement, this is almost a short history of British Trotskyism; its triumphs and failures.
This volume covers the years 1920-1959, the greater part of it is contemporaneous with my own active role in our movement. For many years we were comrades in the same organisations. During this period, which covers decades, we had some agreements and some differences. These differences must be born in mind when I deal with some of the incidents where we both were involved.
Early in the book, in Chapter 3, Hunter discusses the problems with "British exceptionalism". This is a theme which recurs frequently throughout the book and it has undoubtedly been a constant obstacle to full participation by British Trotskyists in the building of a viable International.
It is a pity that Bill did not perceive this weakness in the Workers' International League's (WIL) refusal to participate in the unification which preceded the Founding Conference of the Fourth International in 1938 and thus prevented the valuable contribution which, undoubtedly, they could have made.
The problem was to recur again when the Healy Group, of which Bill was then a leading member, refused to follow the lead from the American SWP to re-unite with the International Secretariat after the Pabloite split. This led to my own break with Healy.
It is this isolationist attitude to the building of the Fourth International which is perhaps the main cause of the weakness of the movement in this country. Ernest Mandel characterised it, in reference to the (British) SWP as putting up the roof before erecting the walls but the same method applies to almost every other group which has split from the International on some pretext or another.
Bill makes a passing reference to the witch-hunt against Joe Hansen with a promise to return to it in the second volume. This was surely one of the most shameful incidents in the history of British Trotskyism and I look forward to his retrospective review of his role in this sad affair.
One of the best sections of the book is his appraisal of Gerry Healy - his strengths and weaknesses. Properly harnessed and disciplined, Healy could have played a constructive role in building the British Section of the Fourth International and the International itself. Unfortunately, he learned more from Stalin than from Lenin and this was to lead to his eventual downfall.
I cannot deal at length here with the dispute round Pabloism which was to lead to a tragic split. Pabloism wasn't born with the document "The Rise and Decline of Stalinism". His views had been outlined in theses adopted at the Third International Congress of the FI, which were not opposed by either the American SWP or the British Section lead by Healy.
At the Caxton Hall meeting where the split came to a head, only Betty Hamilton and I pointed this out. In his final contribution, Lawrence pointed to me and said "my only consistent opponent".
"Pabloism" did not come out of the air. It was not such an outrageous break with the traditions of Trotskyism as its opponents tried to make out. It was certainly a completely wrong assessment of the world situation and the perspectives of the revolutionary movement. Never the less it could just about be hinged to the paragraph in the Transitional Programme where Trotsky wrote that under some quite exceptional circumstances and without their will, the Stalinists could find themselves at the head of revolutions ( as was to happen in China and Vietnam). This would not undermine the need for the FI to guide these revolutions on the road to socialism.
Pabloism could have been fought inside a united Fourth International and indeed, the line was eventually corrected. This brought Cannon and the SWP back. Healy, with Hunter's support, preferred to build his own empire.
Pablo became the main enemy, the devil incarnate, at the cost of the real fight against capitalism and for the building of the Fourth International.
It is an historic irony that some of those who were in the front-line in the fight against "Pabloism", such as Healy himself and the Banda brothers, hastened to embrace Stalinism in the Gorbachev period. Ernest Mandel and the main leaders of the FI continued to fight for its principles and to build it.
Perhaps Volume Two will show us if Bill Hunter has learned from this sorry history. Certainly his failure to fight for re-unification with the FI and its British section after the downfall of Healy does not indicate this.