[Concluding article in our series reviewing: Leon Trotsky…]

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Concluding article in our series reviewing: Leon Trotsky Collected Writings and Speeches on Britain in three voltames.

edited by R. Chappeli and A. Clinton New Park Publications, 1974, €1.65 per volume Campbell-Stephen, Percy Williams, Francis Johnson.

Line The third volume of Trotsky's works on Britain covers the period when Trotskyism developed as a distinct tendency in the working class, and thus deals with the basic principles of policy and orientation of the founders of our movement in this country. Its careful study is an essential task for those who seek to carry forward the struggle for these principles today.

In the years between 1929 and 1940, to which most of the extracts in this volume relate, the shadow of world economic slump loomed large over the working class movement. The defeat of the 1926 General Strike pushed back the working class for a generation. The smallest effort in defence of jobs and conditions had to be undertaken against tremendous odds.

This was a situation of extreme difficulty for those who fought tor the continuity Marxism against the betrayals the social democrats and Stalinists. Trotsky himself, who led this struggie. was subject to harassment by the police forces of the entire capitalist world, as well as to pursuit and eventual murder at the hands of Stalinist agents. Yet the continuity was maintained and the battles of that period remain an essential part of our experience today.

There are many topics covered in the third volume which can only briefly be referred to in this review. In particular. there are extracts which deal with Trotsky's personal fate, notably the refusal to grant him asylum by the liars and hypocrites of the 1929 Labour Government. The volume contains an entire section about the struggle against British imperialism in the colonial world which cannot be covered here. This is not to say of course that many matters of importance are not taken• up. Particularly recommended are the pieces on India, which develop the theory of permanent revolution in relation to the particular stage the national liberation struggle had reached at that time.

Naturally, Trotsky refers to the main political and economic developments of the period. He refers in particular to the policies of the Labour and ex-Labour ministers wh officiated over the capitalist slump They played a special role in preparing the only solution to economleft to right: Jowett, ic crisis available within the system - another world war. In later years Trotsky grew much concerned with the drive of capitalism to wat, and many of the particular political strategies he put forward must be seen in this light.

In a period where all around could be seen the hankruptcy of the methods and illusions of partiamentarianism amidst the crumbling ruins of the capitalist system, Trotsky insisted on the absolute need for a new, truly revolutionary party. The struggle of the first British Trotskyists to carry through this perspective in the face of the most apalling odds is at the centre of the main section of articles and extracts contained in this volume.

This is a story which is virtually unknown to the present generation in the Marxist movement. We have already taken up, in our issue of 20th February, the willful misuse of the history of our movement by the leaders of the WRP in their efforts at retrospective selfjustification. It is only they wh for many years have had theresources to produce a history which would make it possible to describe the origins of our movement in the struggle against ultra-left sectarianism, and to assess the many years spent inside the Labour party UN NOWN Few if any of the younger generation of the members of the WRP know why it is that the first published studies of the early histor of our movement has been left to the revisionists of the IS and the IMG. It is because the leaders of the WRP. for all their achievements, (and these cannot be gainsayed) have become incapable of any objective assessment of their own development. Their intolerance of criticism, even of the distant past, reflects a political method which makes them incapable of building the kind of leadership which they once so correctly defended.

There is an immediacy in much of the material about the origins of Trotskyism in this volume for those of us who founded the WL in the course of a struggle against bureaucratic methods and sectarian politics We can understand very well Trotsky's words to the first British Left Oppositionists in 1931:

"The bureaucratic bankrupts believe that one can mechanically fasten our leadership on to Frank Wise, and P. J. Dollan.

the working class: on the one side with the aid of cash and epression, on the other side with the help of abrupt leaps.

the blotting out of traces, with lies and calumnies. But this is totally untrue.

ite so, comrade Trotsky! We can o well understand the force of thi ertion that:

*A party which dissolves the oppositional groups but lets the ruling clique do as it jolly well pleases, is no revolutionary party it will not be able to lead the the proletariat to victory.

or could we improve on Trotsky's vice to those who in 1931 took › these issues for the first time in itain:

"The British Left Opposition must begin systematic work. You must establish our staff-centre though a small one. You must build your own publication, even on a modest scale.....It is necessary to have a steady, uninterrup ted activity. to educate our cadres, although in the first stages few. The fundamental power of history is in our favour.

It was, on the basis of these began work in When looking how Trotsky develops these points, much of what he says almost leaps from the printed page by ils apparent immeulacy to problems that confront us today. However, in studying these works it is of considerable importance to assess the statements made in their proper context at a particular stage in the development of the working class movement and its revolutionary vanguard.

paralysis of the Communist International in the face of this disaster, Trotsky came to the conclusion that the Stalinists had now definitely gone over to the side of the counter-revolution. He called for the establishment of a new, Fourth, International and for independent work by those who agreed with this perspective.

It was in this situation that Trotsky advised the British Bolshevi -Leninists to enter the Independent Labour Party. This was at a time when the criminal ultra-leftism the Stalinists resulted in lity of the Comintern to group Brockway, Elijah itself around revolutionary currents within the proletariat. This had a major effect on the ILP, the historic political organisation of the Labour Party, which after its disaffiliation in 1932 began to group around it sections of workers who wanted to fight their bureaucratic leaders but did not agree that they were social fascists' The growth of such centrist formations as this was an important international phenomenon in a period when the Stalinists abandoned confrontation with retormist bureaucracy whose treacherous role was intensified by the hammer blows of world cconomic crisis. Such groups oscillated wildly between revolutionary perspectives on the one hand, and Stalinism or reformism on the other. However, in the specific circumstances of the time it was possible to begin with the struggle to develop the forces who could fight on a consistent revolutionary basis. Thus Trotsky wrote in 1933 that the fate of our British section for the next couple In putting forward his perspectives for the ILP, Trotsky set out his views on many matters regarding the principles on which revolutionaries should operate in the working class movement. Thus there are important statements about the theory of the general strike and the practice of the united front. He also took up the nature of work within the trade unions and the central importance of the International.

In the period of imperialism, says Trotsky, *the most important task of the revolutionary party became the liberation of the workers from the reactionary influence of the trade union bureaucracy. In order to do this, It is not enough to offer the masses a new address. It is necessary to scek out the masses where they are and lead them.' It was in the application of this fundamental principle that Trotsky in 1933 set out the basis for Bolshevik-Leninist work within the ILP:

*A Marxist party should, of course, strive to full independence and to the highest homogeneity. But in the process of its formation, a Marxist party often has to act as a faction of centrist and even a reformist Sandham.

Such work, undertaken Thus Trots] of those wl left-centrist without a and without Kirkwooa, however, had to be in a particular way. y was bitteriv critical o resolved to enter a party, but did so omplete programme n organ of their own.

VACI AT LL In his attacks on the indecision and ultimate class treachery of the leaders of the ILP, Trotsky emphasised their inability to take principled internationalist orientation. He was adamant that Without Marxist International, national organisations, even the most advanc ed, are doomed to narrowness, vacillation and helplessness'. This was not a matter abstract principle but derived directly from the real material problems posed in this period of history.

.....today, under the conditions of the imperialist epoch, after the proletarian vanguard of all countries in the world has passed through many decades of colossal and common experience, including the experience of the collapse of the two Internationals, it is absolutely unthinkable to build new Marxist parties, without direct contact with the self-same work in other countries. And this means building the Fourth The centrist leaders of the ILP lems by setting organisation under the title of the International Labour Community. later known as the "International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity' or the Seven Left Parties This body was made up of thost elements of the European socialist movement who, while opposed tc Stalinism at least nominally, were unprepared to take up the struggle for a new international. Trotsky fought with some success to win some of the best elements to the banner of the Fourth International. though the main sections went back to the Stalinists or social democrats or simply disappeared into the political wilderness.

Trotsky continually warned that the centrists of the TEP would ultimately fail in their efforts to act as honest brokers between Stalinism and social democracy. Similar policies by their associates in Spain, the POUM, had tragic results when they proved unable to

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make the break from the trap of the popular front. Such a break would bril

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attitude towards the ILP: a correct PRINCIPLES