Fifty years ago British Trotskyism was born. A founding member was Harry Wicks, along with Reg Groves, Hugo Dewar, Henry Sara and others. A former railway worker he soon established his potential in the young Communist Party. Sent to the Lenin school in Moscow he witnessed at first hand the struggles in the Russian Party and the comintern. In Britain he played a leading role in the Left Opposition, helping to launch The [illegible].
Harry [illegible] for International Vol 1 No 4 (now unavailable) on the early years of British Trotskyism.
Like the Bolshevik Leninists in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) the opposition developed out of a struggle within the Communist Party itself. Unlike the CPSU however the British Communist Party was not rich in theoretical Marxism. In fact, the British movement as a whole for generations was devoid of theory, one could almost say contemptuous of it. What Deutscher terms the 'classical Marxism', those debates that occupied Social Democracy before 1914, scarcely found an echo in this country. So not surprisingly, the Communist Party, formed in the halcyon days following the October Revolution, was equally indifferent to Marxist theory, to an extent insular in outlook, and devoted itself to giving a militant left wing edge to trade union struggle. Profiting from the 3rd Congress of the Communist International, particularly its thesis on the Party and Organisation, Dutt and Pollitt produced a report to the Battersea Congress (1922) which aimed to build a centralised party. The core of that report was that the Party was to be organised into working groups oriented to a specific function. The positive side of this organisational plan can be seen, the party membership was a working membership, coherent and unified within a particular field of activity. The negative feature, which aroused opposition at an early stage, was that the membership was deprived of an essential element of political life, that of discussion. Policy discussion became the prerogative of the leadership at national and district level. Only at times, by means of aggregate meetings of the membership, was it possible to hear political debate on a wider sphere than one's working group.
It was in such an aggregate meeting of the London membership that the issue of Trotskyism first arose in the British Party. At an extended Party Executive meeting held in January 1925 it was decided to endorse the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) decision condemning Leon Trotsky for the publication of The Lessons of October. This blanket endorsement was questioned [illegible] the information? This doubt resulted in the first and last discussion of Leon Trotsky's viewpoint in the British Party. An aggregate meeting of the London membership heard AE Reade, a member of the London District Party Committee move an amendment to a resolution submitted by Rothstein and Murphy. Reade's amendment was: 'This aggregate meeting of the London District membership of the CPGB joins with the District Party Committee in regretting the hasty vote of the Party Council in condemning Comrade Trotsky without full information: and this meeting at the same time takes the opportunity to express the London Membership's emphatic support both of the left wing's minority fight in the Russian Party against bureaucracy, and equally of the Comintern's struggle against right wing divergencies from Leninism in the French, Bulgarian and German sections.' (Workers Weekly, 23 January 1925)
According to that report the Rothstein/Murphy resolution was carried with only ten voting for the Reade amendment. What was significant was that the following week, 30 January, the Workers Weekly carried a correction to its report which stated that 200 were present at the meeting and the minority was 15. Further, at one stage in the debate, a motion to adjourn the debate (in order to be informed of the LT case) was defeated by 81 votes to 65. This episode in the Party's history revealed a party leadership supporting the Stalin line in the Comintern whilst at the same time starving the membership of information as to the issues in dispute. This practice was again repeated in 1929, this time on the Bukharin expulsion from the CPSU. At a London aggregate meeting held on 12 July 1929, a resolution was passed critical of the CC draft resolution for the Leeds congress. The London membership aggregate declared that the CC draft, 'presupposes that the Party as a whole has a fair knowledge of the inner Party situation of the sections (of the CI). This information the Party has not got and for the Party to understand this statement it must have in its possession more complete information.' (Com. Rev. November 1929)
The cumulative effect of the decisions of the 9th Plenum (Jan 1928), the 6th Congress of the CI (July 1928) and the 10th Plenum (July 1929) produced in the British Party complete ideological confusion. The 9th plenum pushed the Party to assert itself against the Labour Party on the parliamentary election front, the 6th Congress announced the Third Period, the eve of revolution. The 10th plenum declared that Social Democracy was social fascism and it was now the tasks of the Communist Parties to independently lead the masses. The Leeds Congress met in December 1929 with the Party at its lowest ebb ever, and the membership in ferment. Those comrades who wish to deepen their understanding of the nature of ultra leftism as applied to British conditions, I recommend the study of the British Party history for the years 1929-33. From this inner party struggle of that period the Groves, Sara and Purkiss group probed deeper for the reasons of the crisis within the CI and the Party. Within a year these comrades were studying the writings of Leon Trotsky which were being published in America. By early 1931 Groves was a correspondent for the American Militant, and preparations were under way to renew the fight against the ultra left line of the CI.
The Balham Group and the Communist League
In November 1931 Max Schachtman visited London and at a meeting of Groves, Sara, Purkiss and myself discussed the formation of a Left Opposition group in this country. Schachtman proposed that one of us should 'stand on the altar' for demonstrative expulsion as a declared Trotskyist. This we objected to. We saw our task as that of attempting to win a wider group of party members to challenge the leadership on the fateful line of the CI.
From the autumn of 1931, when unemployment reached its peak, we conducted a widespread unemployment agitation in South London. In spite of the 'social fascist' theory and the Party's attitude that the Independent Labour Party (ILP) was the 'left hand of fascism' we initiated discussions within the ILP branches in South London to clarify a policy to meet the crisis.
In the spring of 1932 the CI announced an International Conference against War, not called by organisations but by a manifesto under the name of Henri Barbusse. This substitute for the Leninist united front was forcibly denounced by Leon Trotsky and the International Left Opposition. The Balham Group tackled the task of building a South West London Anti-War Committee on a representative basis. The Daily Worker reported the widespread meetings of solidarity with the German workers which were initiated by the SW Anti-War Committee under the chairmanship of Reg Groves. Throughout the early summer of 1932, when the German elections were revealing the threat of fascism in Germany, the Balham group campaigned unremittingly for a united front in Germany and against the line of the Party on the Amsterdam congress of Barbusse. The trade union policy of the Party was criticised and the group demanded the convening of a party conference. A notable success was achieved by the Daily Worker publishing in full with bold headlines the resolution passed by the SW London Anti-War Committee The Militant Mandate for Delegates. This mandate embodied the salient points of the declaration of the International Left Opposition.
Three days later the Daily Worker with equally bold headlines carried an article by JR Campbell denouncing the Militant Mandate as not being militant but mischievous, and concealing Trotskyist phrases (DW 16 Aug 1932). On Monday 15 August the Politbureau announced the calling for October of the 12th Party Congress and the opening of the most democratic pre-conference discussion. Three days later the Daily Worker announced the expulsion of Groves, Flower and Wicks for factional activity against the line of the Party. Within a week, Stuart Purkiss and B Williams, two railway militants, were expelled and Henry Sara. At a specially summoned meeting of the Balham Group the remaining members were presented with an ultimatum: repudiate the line of the group or face expulsion. With one exception, all chose expulsion [illegible]. Through the Red Flag and active discussion the Group replied to the expulsion policy with a declaration explaining to the membership the issues that had been fought for, and the problems that faced the Party and CI in the existing situation. It listed the names of the expelled, together with their years of party membership, and ended with the declaration that we would appeal to the now announced 12th Party Congress. Refused the right to appeal to conference, Groves and myself distributed leaflets from outside. Apart from the attempted rough hand we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of Rust, the Political Bureau member, taking from the assembled delegates, even Central Committee members, our published statement before they entered the conference hall.
The Communist League (1933-34)
The voice of the International Left Opposition was by no means muted by our rejection in December 1931 of the Shachtman proposal for a demonstrative exit from the CP. From early 1932 The Communist was published, which printed in duplicated form all those writings of Leon Trotsky addressed to the German proletariat before Hitler's conquest of power. Trotsky, in a letter to us at the time, praised 'this excellent duplicated publication'.
On 1 May 1933, the first issue of the monthly paper the Red Flag appeared dedicated to the task of regenerating the revolutionary movement. Its first editorial declared: 'We do not, at this stage, seek to form a new Party or a new International, we are a group of revolutionaries who have been expelled from the Communist Party for advocating the policy and principles upon which the Communist International was founded. Our object is to win the Communists back to that policy, and such an object concerns all working men and women, since without a functioning effective Leninist International we cannot hope to overthrow capitalist rule.'
With the publication of the Red Flag as the organ of the Communist League, our appeal and the writings of Leon Trotsky reached out to a wider public. Some notable successes were recorded. Two worthy of mention were the Open Letter to Tom Mann, and the effective clarification of the implications of the United Communist Party proposal campaigned for by the Revolutionary Policy Committee of the ILP.
For the younger comrades the letter addressed to Tom Mann was on the occasion of the arrest of Chen Tu Hsiu, a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party. The Comintern and its International Labour Defence organisation uttered no protest. The reason for this silence was that Chen Tu Hsiu had written that the Chinese events of 1927-28 had tragically confirmed the analysis of the Russian Opposition. Tom Mann, like our comrade Sara, was a member of the Comintern delegation to China in 1927. Tom Mann wrote to the Red Flag: 'I count it my duty to continue to develop opinion till it shall be equal to demanding and securing the release of our comrade.' (Red Flag, 7 Sept 1933)
Following the disaffiliation of the ILP from the Labour Party (1932), the Revolutionary Policy Committee within the ILP was campaigning for a United Communist Party. The basis of this unity was to be the programme of the Communist International, [illegible] with the ILP militants. The Communist League urged the revolutionary workers in the ILP to fight for their organisation to declare itself openly upon the main political questions of the time. The problem posed by the German debacle, the united front, the question of the situation in the USSR. By our active intervention, the militants in the ILP were innoculated against Stalinism and only a fragment followed J Gaster into the Communist Party.
At the end of 1933, the International Secretariat of the Left Opposition suggested that we should liquidate the organisation and enter the ILP to win them over to the Fourth International. After a thoroughgoing discussion this view was rejected by a substantial majority, thereupon the minority entered the ILP and the status of the Communist League was reduced to that of a sympathising section.
The Marxist League
The immediate aftermath of the German defeat, 'the Communist International's Fourth of August', as Trotsky expressed it, raised the question for all revolutionary Marxists: can the discredited Communist movement be regenerated? Throughout the Left Opposition a vigorous debate proceeded. Trotsky projected on an international scale a new orientation for the movement; the need to build a new International. Experience had convinced us that it was necessary to look beyond the discredited Communist Party for fresh forces. In that situation the Red Flag (Oct 1934) stated: 'For the victory of the British workers there is a need for a Marxist leadership: this does not exist today in an organised form within the labour movement, neither is it to be found in the Communist Party of the ILP. A new Party cannot be built by proclamation; a leadership does not spring up over night ... For this reason the CL seeks to unite the advanced workers within the already formed organisations for the winning of the mass of the workers to revolutionary principles and understanding.'
With the aim to return to the grass roots of the movement, and a declaration of principles for which it would struggle, the main force of Trotskyism in this country concentrated its energies in the Labour Party, the trade unions, trades councils and the 'Labour League of Youth. The Red Flag continued to be published, but now as the organ of the Marxist League. The Popular Front strategy of the Communist Party met within the wider labour movement itself an articulate opponent. In the Socialist League, the Unity Campaign of the ILP, Communist Party and Socialist League, was opposed from a revolutionary Marxist position. The Communist Party's efforts to silence criticism of Soviet foreign policy and the critics of the Moscow Trials through the Unity Committee encountered formidable opposition. This episode ended by Cripps succeeding by a narrow majority in liquidating his own organisation. It was in this period that Groves was selected, in face of considerable opposition from Transport House, to fight a parliamentary by-election in Aylesbury. The Daily Worker excelled itself in its attack on the Trotskyist Groves as a Labour candidate. In the interest of the Popular Front the Communist Party in this by-election urged the workers to vote Liberal. To the dismay of the CP and the unrecorded views of the Transport House leadership, Groves considerably increased the Labour vote in that constituency.
The Moscow Trials of August 1936 were a stern test for our movement. Both the Red Flag and The Fight, the journal of the Marxist group within the ILP, found difficulty in preserving regular publication. The Communist Party conducted a most slanderous campaign against the Trotskyists within the labour movement.
An effort was made to initiate in this country a broad committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky analogous to that formed in America. Despite the most painstaking efforts to win support for the elementary idea of an inquiry into the Moscow Trials through an international commission set up by the international labour movement, the movement preferred to remain silent on that obscene episode in the history of Stalin's Russia. The appeal for a Provisional Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky was finally published in the Manchester Guardian and the Daily Herald in December 1936. With few exceptions the left intellectuals preferred to remain silent.
Years later I passed to the Revolutionary Communist Party the files of that voluminous correspondence between the Committee of which I was secretary and the 'left' intellectuals of that day. It represented to me a pitiful picture of how even 'great' minds are intimidated by power.
This apparent isolation of the Trotskyist movement on the issue of the Moscow Trials did not deter us from rallying to the defence of Leon Trotsky. Every opportunity was sought out to explain the significance of the Moscow Trials. In the big Communist meetings, against the Campbells, Pritts and Sloan we took the platform. Our own meetings, despite the fused efforts of all the groups, were significantly small. The years from 1936 to 1939 indicated that we were swimming against a strong current. Our movement, it would be true to say, was stagnating.