Against the Stream: A history of the
Trotskyist Movement In Britain
1924-38, by Sam Bornstein and Al
Hichardson, reviewed by Tony
Richards.
and a further volume dealing with the
history up to 1949 took them 10 years
o prepare.
They have gone over all the old
editions of the Trotskyist papers as
well as much other material, and they
have interviewed many of the people
Involved in this period. With the
amount they deal with, I can't help
feeling that they shouldn't have tried
to compress it so much.
The book starts by dealing with the
first tentative supporters of Trotsky,
reflecting the struggles against
Stalinist bureaucratism taking place
in Russia in the mid 20g. In fact some
1932: Trotsky arrives as an exile in France. Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p27
of the leaders of the British Communist Party were at first receptive to Trotsky. But this soon changed, and it was the British Communist JT Murphy who moved Trotsky's expulsion from the Comintern.
The authors go on to show how the opposition developed in the CP and moved towards the formation of a Trotskyist group.
Their expulsion from the CP showed how all bureaucrats act similarly: the Trotskyists were expelled just before a conference, and the leaflets they issued to delegates outside the conference were taken out of those delegates hands at the door. (Shades of Gerry Healy's regime 40 years later in the WRP!)
The Communist League was formed in 1932: by the end of 1933 it had 52 members.
The International Left Opposition argued for the Communist League to enter the ILP. The majority would not. So the minority split and entered themselves.
The majority protested to the international ( about the breach of democratic centralism. The international backed the minority. In fact its attitude to democratic centralism and what a group represented, dealt with on pages 150-51 of the book, is very interesting
Nevertheless the speed with which the split occured was a very bad sign for the future of Trotskyism. In fact by the end of the book there are 3 Trotskyist groups in Britain. A long tradition was started in these very early daThe main battle n and with the ILP was over their attitude to Stalinism. But one of the other major battles at this time, with most of the other groups was over the issue of League of Nations Sanctions against Italy for its invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopla). The IL.P had a generally correct position of opposition to these imperialist
- but this relapsed into a form of pacifism. The book deals extensively with both these questions.
Eventually the International came to the conclusion the period of entry work in the small ILP should come to an end and Trotskyists should be in the Labour Party
Trotsky argued this not as a principle but as a tactic flowing from the opportunities offered in that particular period
A good deal of this book is spent on detailina the different attitudes to this entry work. Bornstein and Richardson themselves argue complete entry very strongly and present it as though this is an overriding principle.
copies of the documents and propaganda produced by Trotskyists at that time would have been useful. In fact a documentary history alongside this work is badly needed.
The split into three groups was over attitudes to the Labour Party. One of the groups thought it was necessary
completely building the independent revolutionary party. The international argued for the fusion of all three groups. In fact two did fuse for a while into the RSL. But it was an unrepared tusion which quite quickly ell apart
Not surprisingly many of the Trotskyists of this period became worn out with the factional struggles and just dropped out.
It was a very difficult period to work in, The chapter of this book on the Moscow Trials is very interesting. As we look at that episode of Stalinist history today it is very easy for people to see the truth. But in this period the Stalinists were able in alliance with social democrats and liberals in the Popular Front, to almost completely isolate the Trotskyists from the rest of
the left.
Much of the work by Trotskyists in those days was experimental. It was the attempt to break from an essentially propaganda opposition, as the Left Opposition in the CP, to building their own groups and parties with roots and practical work in the masses. The pressures of the period are one reason why some of the central characters involved can be seen abrupty changing position, and suddenly switching rom one group to another.
All of this was also, to a lesser degree, of the International movement some of whose leaders misdirected the small weak British group:
But his means we must study this history all the more. As we look at the groups today we see that in their recent history they have been making the same mistakes as those made in the earliest of days of the movement.
Some of today's leaders have purposely covered over or distorted this history, It is obvious that some of them had a reason. That history would show the incorrectness of their £2.00. (62 pages). SICKLE cell disease is a term for a group of blood diseases resulting
inheritance of sickle haemoglobin. Heamoglobin is the
component in the red blood cells. Sickle haemoglobin can cause the red blood cells to distort into a rigid shape
Sup the small blood vessels and cause sickle crisis.
The severity of the disease varies
person is affected from childhood and may have crises and become dangerously ill with severe pain, fever and jaundice. There are many acute and chronic complications involving virtually every part of the body, e.g. strokes, loss of sight, hip and shoulder problems.
Sickle cell disease occurs in Black and Asian populations recently was considered to be a rare tropical illness of little signiticance in Britain. But sickle cell disease occurs with a frequency of at least in 200 babies the Afro-Caribbean community.
Screening at birth is possible and clearly needed. However, there has been no attempt to mobilise resources and provide a service comparable to that for phenylketonurea which occurs in in 10,000 babies but for which every new born baby is screened.
Other services, such as antenatal counselling and diagnosis in pregnancy (prenatal diagnosis) are also inadequate. Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p28
present actions. The renegade Jock Haston (once a Trotskyist, now an EETPU official) says that he recruited Gerry Healy. Healy was then a Stalinist who physically attacked him at Hyde Park Corner! Clearly old habits die hard, and false methods of the past have helped shape the present crisis of the Trotskyist movement.
Following their recent expulsion of Gerry Healy, and a start of the debate on the degeneration of the SLL/WRP in Britain, some of the current WRP majority around Cliff Slaughter are now revealing a bit about the history of that tradition. They have gone back to material from the 1940g. Few WRP members would have dreamed such material existed. Why has it been deliberately hidden for so
Let us hope that one thing to come out of the present crisis of Britsh Trotskyism will be a new attitude to the history of our movement. This volume by Bornstein and Richardson could
play a very important role in developing the necessary discussion.
eagerly await its companion volume. Sickle Cell