I would like to correct one or two of the historical inaccuracies that appeared in Dave Windsor's article criticising the International Socialism group. He repeats the same calumnies and falsifications as the Workers' Press. Both claim that the Socialist Review, which was the precursor of IS, came into existence when "some members of the British Section of the Fourth International wavered and opposed the policy of defencism of the Soviet Union, China and North Korea".
[illegible] had rejected, for some considerable time, Trotsky's views on the Soviet Union. I had, for example, written an article in the socialist discussion journal Left (November 1947), in which I suggested that Russia was state capitalist. The following year, Cliff published [illegible].
We were told that we had the right to hold our views, trying to persuade [illegible]. The RCP [illegible] had not favoured [illegible] class nature of Russia; even if in a minority, he thought James P. Cannon & Co. should show they had faith in their ideas by staying within the organisation and fighting for them.
But tolerance and internal democracy ended with the beginning of the Korean war. The Trotskyist organisation, now led by Gerry Healy, dispensed with such niceties. Discarding Trotsky's view, it deliberately engineered a split with those members who disagreed with its line on Russia. For instance, I was expelled from the Manchester branch without hearing the charges against me or even being invited to the meeting.
From the foregoing, I think it is clear Dave Windsor is wrong on two counts: first, many of us took an anti-defencist position well before 1951 ... in other words, it wasn't the Korean war, as he suggests, that made us change our minds; and, secondly, that revolutionary unity was shattered by Healy's expulsion ... we had no alternative but to start our own organisation.
But the most ludicrous of Dave Windsor's accusations is that somehow or other, by forming the Socialist Review group, we were succumbing to the pressure of imperialism. In fact, the opposite was the case. Our line was far more clear, decisive and revolutionary than that of the official Trotskyist group. It was publishing the Socialist Outlook at that time, with contributors like Bessie Braddock, Harold Davies (who is now Harold Wilson's private parliamentary [secretary]) and George Craddock MP.
[illegible] sexual impropriety between them. Nevertheless, the political fruits of their liaison were quite obscene. The Socialist Outlook, of 3 October 1952, had the front page headline; "BEVAN GIVES THE LEAD THAT WORKERS WANT". Later, after Bessie Braddock had ended the affair, Socialist Outlook still continued to court left parliamentarians. The issue of 14 May 1954 had the headline: "BEVAN AND MORRISON. It is a Difference of Principle says G. Healy".
The journal also spread other pernicious illusions. Disregarding the class relationship of forces, it believed that, by a little pen-wagging, the Conservatives could be ousted. Socialist Outlook, of 27 November 1953, had the front-page banner headline: "THE TORIES MUST RESIGN. Let's have a Petition to Get 'em out!"
In contradistinction to such inanities, the Socialist Review maintained [illegible] did not jump on the [Bevanite] bandwagon. Indeed, Socialist Review attacked the Socialist Outlook for sowing reformist illusions (see, for instance, the issue of November 1952, where I say it "is idiotic fantasy" to claim "Bevan gives the lead the workers want").
Now I would like to ask Dave Windsor: Does he really think we should have been selling Socialist Outlook in the early 'fifties? As one who firmly believes in the truth of Karl Liebnecht's dictum about the anti-war struggle ... "the enemy is at home" ... I would argue that we of the Socialist Review group pursued the enemy at home during the Korean war in all his guises (including [illegible]).
DAVE WINDSOR COMMENTS
Raymond Challinor criticises me on two points:
(1) [illegible]
(2) that the impression I gave that Socialist Review was capitulating to anti-communist pressure was incorrect because that paper had a better record than Socialist Outlook.
Let me first say that I never intended to say that the Socialist Review comrades adopted their viewpoint just because of the pressure of the Korean war. That is quite beside the point. What I do argue is that it was the pressure of the anti-communist propaganda connected with the Korean war which led them to abandon the defencist position in theory and practice.
Let me say in passing that the key question differentiating Trotskyists from the various tendencies like International Socialism, the Shachtmanites, etc., is not the definition of the Soviet Union. [illegible] explained this many times. [It might be] possible to make a semantic concession on this point. On the contrary, the key question is that of whether one is a defencist or not. If state capitalists are consistent they will draw the conclusion from their analysis that all the gains of the October revolution have been lost and that therefore revolutionaries have no duty to defend the Soviet Union against imperialism. The logic of this position leads them to deny that we should be on the side of other workers states and [illegible].
According to the Trotskyist view that the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia [and other workers states, it is a] question [of] loyalty [to defend] them against imperialism. [illegible]
I am not disputing in any way that The Group, as it was [called, treated] badly [illegible] state capitalist minority (among others). However, it is well-known that members of that minority had publicly recorded themselves against 100% unconditional support of the Korean workers' state against U.S. imperialism—in Birmingham Trades Council, for example. [illegible] pure red herring for Challinor to pose the question thus. The real test of the politics of the state capitalists is what they did once they set up their own organisation.
The public platform of the state capitalists was, of course, their own journal Socialist Review. I am certain Raymond Challinor will not try to say that the contents of this journal were determined by his (or anyone else's) bureaucratic expulsion from the Group.
In issue number one, Bill Ainsworth was very clear about the paper's position on the Korean war:
"Since the outbreak of the war in Korea, the Socialist Outlook has campaigned for full and unconditional support for the Stalinist forces in Korea ... this attitude is, of course, fundamentally identical with that of the Stalinists and their fellow-travellers. Consequently, we consider it our socialist duty to urge all those whose socialist hopes were raised when the Outlook was launched in 1948, to enquire now as we intend to do—whither Socialist Outlook" ..." This was followed by a long attack on Socialist Outlook for, among other things, not criticising the North Koreans as much as it did the South Koreans.
In the early 1950s the Korean war had virtually the same international significance as has the Vietnam war in the late 1960s. A defeat of the Koreans, which would almost certainly have been followed by the invasion of China, would have been a first-rate disaster for world revolution. The defeat of the American-led forces, although it was not decisive, was a tremendous impulse for the world revolutionary forces. British troops were fighting alongside the Americans: it was therefore mandatory for revolutionaries in this country to give "full and unconditional" support to the Korean and Chinese struggle.
Socialist Review, as innumerable quotations from its columns will prove, was on the wrong side of the barricades in this key question.
Raymond Challinor makes great play with the fact that the official Trotskyists were publishing a paper which could contain articles by people like Bessie Braddock et al.
Some basic points have to be made on this question. First of all, Socialist Outlook was an entry paper. Its aim was to regroup a viable left wing in the Labour Party to give a structured response to the growing rightward drift of the Labour Party. On the whole, I am of the opinion that under the circumstances prevailing at that time it followed a fairly correct policy. That it was too uncritical of Bevan can be accepted—the leadership of the Fourth International criticised Healy on this point at the time (internally, this was before Healy broke with the Fourth International).
I am sure that Raymond Challinor is very well aware of the reasons why Trotskyists adopted the entry tactic in those years. He himself—and I do not criticise him for this—became a Labour Party candidate as part of the entry work. Moreover, the Socialist Review group practised entry and transformed their paper into a de facto entry paper.
[illegible] the Socialist Review on occasions went [further than] the Socialist Outlook. Thus Raymond [Challinor], in a front-page article in the very same issue he refers to in his letter (November, 1952) says:
"We, on the other hand, are confident that our demands, such as further nationalisation, workers' control of [production and inde]pendence from both imperialist war camps, [illegible] such a socialist policy [illegible] the final victory of socialism."
[illegible] "reformist illusions" in these words. To argue that the [Labour] Party can be [an instrument for] [illegible] these policies [towards] socialism" sounds suspiciously like what the Tribunites are saying today.
Raymond [Challinor] [illegible] the early 1960s. Writing in the March [issue of] Socialist Review, as Labour Party councillor in [New]castle, Staffs, he complained bitterly that the Labour Party NEC had "unilaterally, without first seeing whether the Liberal or Tory Parties intended to suspend theirs", cancelled a conference for Labour Groups on Local Authorities. But of greater interest to me is his reference to [illegible] by the Labour Party.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s one could find the names of Cllr. Duff, Eric Heffer, Sid Bidwell, and Stan Newens quite regularly in the columns of Socialist Review. For a period there was even a regular column by Peggy Rushton, the then secretary of the Movement for Colonial Freedom; even Bill Jones put in an appearance. In those days it was customary for a writer in Socialist Review to [belong] [illegible] candidate for ... [illegible] that any of this is wrong per se, but [there] is an old saying about people in glass houses ...
Who then is guilty of "historical inaccuracies"? International Socialism group members seem to be very apprehensive about a discussion of their history. Despite one rather half-hearted attempt in an editorial in International Socialist they have never really tried to explain why they adopted one position on Korea and another on Vietnam. Instead it seems to me that they would like to forget their origins. This is a very bad sign in a political tendency—it is very dishonest, for instance, for Duncan Hallas to give a potted and highly inaccurate and biassed account of Trotskyism in the 1950s without even mentioning the [illegible] of the [illegible].
The purpose of my [article] was not to delve into history but to try to draw out the politics of the International Socialism group from our historical analysis. As Marxists [we accept] that it is not only important to analyse where a political tendency stands at a particular moment. To understand it fully we need to examine its origins and where it is going. On this [basis] we can expect and understand such incidents as the disgraceful behaviour of Chris Harman at the Ho Chi Minh memorial meeting.
There are signs that increasing numbers of members of International Socialism are beginning to understand that something is basically [wrong with their position]. It is to be hoped that they [illegible] their [analysis of state] capitalism and the main conclusion (non-defencism) that they draw from it.