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![[Ted Grant Archive Update] – The French revolution has begun](https://communist.red/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/sparksmall.jpg "[Ted Grant Archive Update] – The French revolution has begun")
In August 1968 Ted Grant drew a balance sheet
of the revolutionary crisis ignited in France with the May events. In this
important article he carefully analysed the main problems facing the
revolution, exposing the treacherous policies of the Stalinist CP leaders, who
gave De Gaulle the possibility to recover from his earlier paralysis, and the
sectarian mistakes of the leaders of the "revolutionary left".
A name etched into the collective consciousness of the labour and trade
union movement is that of the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’, a case which clearly demonstrated that the State is
not a neutral instrument, but the means by which the ruling class will
use peaceful means by preference and violence if necessary in order to
maintain its power. So who were the Tolpuddle Martyrs,
what did they do and what lessons do they have for socialists in the
twenty-first century?
On 4th May 1919 Chinese people marched to end backwardness in China and
humiliation by the imperialist powers. They were led by Chen Duxiu. Chen realised that the modernisation of China could only be carried out by
the working class and founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. For a
hundred years the Chinese have engeged on the long and tortuous march to
modernisation.
"…the French events
suddenly brought home to me the reality of socialist revolution and how we had
entered a new stormy period, which the tendency had predicted. Within a couple
of years, the Labour government had fallen and Britain entered a convulsive
period including a near general strike. The French events of 1968, after a
short delay, had even found an echo in Britain. Those days of 40 years ago will
return again. This time we can be better prepared. Without doubt, 1968 will be
forever remembered as a political turning point by all those who were touched
by those historic events. That was certainly my experience."
![[Ted Grant Archive Update] – Workers want peace—Bosses prepare for war!](https://communist.red/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/war-prep.jpg "[Ted Grant Archive Update] – Workers want peace—Bosses prepare for war!")
With preparations for war in full swing the
small Workers’ International League gathered around Ralph Lee and Ted Grant was
the only voice that stood out defending a real internationalist position. Here
we provide our readers with the lead article of the August 1939 edition of Youth
For Socialism, signed by Ted Grant.
This horrific destruction of French civilians compares with the
militarily useless slaughter of the people and cities of Dresden and
Magdeburg in the closing days of the War. Was this a warning to the
French workers like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
warning to Stalin: thus far and no farther?
Pentrich in Derbyshire is a quiet place these days. But in 1817 it was the centre of a plot to
overthrow the Government of the day. Britain had been at war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic
France almost continuously until 1815. When war ended, the
economy slumped. It was the poor who had borne the brunt
of the fighting. Now they were required to bear the economic and
social fallout from the subsequent peace.
In April and May of 1797 the British ruling
class was horrified when two naval mutinies broke out; the first was at
Spithead, close to Portsmouth; the second at the Nore which marks the seaward
approach to the Thames Estuary.
The State
can ultimately be reduced to bodies of armed men. These bodies of armed men are
used by the ruling class either to maintain its power against what it sees as
internal enemies, to defend itself against foreign aggression, or in support of
its own aggressive action against foreign nations. Since its power lies in its
ability to threaten or actually to use force, the ruling class regards anything
that jeopardises the effectiveness of the State apparatus with the utmost
seriousness. This explains why mutinies in the armed forces are of such concern
to them.
This article analyses the relationship between the Soviet state and the Russian Orthodox Church. There was a clear dividing line between Lenin’s approach to this question and the zig-zag policy later adopted by Stalin. First published in Workers International News, October 1945.
In the autumn of 1916 the Industrial Workers of the World, better known
as the Wobblies, were trying to organise lumber workers near Everett,
Washington in the USA. A series of attempts to organise by the workers
had lead to a murderous response from the employers. Charles Ashleigh was appointed to run the Wobblies defence campaign – this article is in memory of him, a soldier of the proletariat.
"The October revolution laid the foundation of a new
culture, taking everybody into consideration, and for that very reason
immediately acquiring international significance. Even supposing for a
moment that owing to unfavourable circumstances and hostile blows the
Soviet regime should be temporarily overthrown, the inexpungable
imprint of the October revolution would nevertheless remain upon the
whole future development of mankind." Trotsky – The History of the Russian Revolution
Marxists have always maintained that
at some stage the intensity of the class struggle affects even the "armed
bodies of men" of the bourgeois state. Such an example was the police strike in
Britain at the end of the First World War. In the late summer of 1918 the sight
of 12,000 furious Metropolitan constables marching on Whitehall sparked panic
among ruling circles in Britain. Under the leadership of the National Union of
Police and Prison Officers, militantly class-conscious policemen conspired to
overturn their role as the subservient body of the State.