This week we will publish in 3 parts a history of British Trotskyism by Martin
Upham. This was a PhD thesis on the subject, and while we would not
agree with all the points raised in it, we believe it deserves a wider
audience, particularly for those interested in the history of our
movement. For a more in-depth study of the subject readers are urged to
consult Ted Grant’s book on the the History of British Trotskyism.
The History of British Trotskyism to 1949
being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the University of Hull
by
Martin Richard Upham, B.A., M.Sc.
September 1980
PREFACE
Trotskyism has been neglected by historians excavating those ever
more popular quarries the 1930s and 1940s. Their disinterest is my main
case for devoting a full-length thesis to Trotskyist activity before
1949. It may be objected that Trotskyism was unimportant throughout my
chosen period. But while it was certainly no major influence before
1949, even in the restricted area of the labour movement during that
time, Trotskyism maintained activity and conditioned in part the
behaviour of other movements and individuals who are thought fit
subjects for historical enquiry. There is therefore a job of recovery
to be done in order to establish whom Trotskyism affected and why. Yet
there is, simultaneously, a larger question to pose: if Trotskyism was
unimportant throughout, why was this so? There is no iron law of labour
movements which inevitably permits communist parties to eclipse
Trotskyism. In a number of metropolitan countries Trotsky received
early and significant support from noted communist leaders. Since this
did not happen in Britain where the communists themselves never
gathered mass support, the historian must ask why. It is also necessary
to allow for those occasions when Trotskyism passed out of the shadows
into the floodlights: these moments have also been skipped, for the
most part, by historians, and need to be put in their proper setting
within the labour history of the time.
My claim to have undertaken original work rests chiefly on the lack
of secondary material on the subject. The main lines of development of
the Trotskyist movement laid down in this thesis I have derived from
contemporary manuscripts and published material, and from conversations
with participants. Invariably my investigation took me from a working
knowledge of labour movement history into uncharted waters. Sometimes I
floundered and occasionally I was misled by red herrings: at all events
I had to make my own charts and I hope they will help others. Yet I do
not seek to give the impression that there has been no secondary work
at all. How do I relate to what has been written? The last five years
have seen a spurt of scholarly interest in the non-communist left of
the labour movement. Two theses on the I.L.P. have been written which
span a period similar to that of this thesis and discuss Trotskyist
influence on the party. [1] At the end of 1979 a thesis by John Archer was completed covering Trotskyist movements between 1931 and 1937. [2]
Since I had at that time a first draft of my own thesis, I did not, on
the advice of my supervisor, read Archer’s work. There has also been
written a shorter bibliographical thesis on the Trotskyist press by
Alison Penn which is a useful tool although it lacks absolute
authority. [3]
Published work which discusses British Trotskyism in whole or part
falls into two categories. There are the articles written by Brian
Pearce under a variety of pseudonyms some twenty years ago, several of
which have now been republished. [4] Pearce always went to the sources and unearthed many forgotten episodes or facets of better known events. Hugo Dewar’s Communist Politics in Britain
(1976) is broader though less sure in content but only marginally
concerned with the Trotskyists. Reg Groves has published his
recollections as The Balham Group
(1974), an invaluable memoir which yet leaves much unsaid. Harry Wicks
has also written briefly of the early years of Trotskyism. [5] Wartime and the controversy over Military Policy (q.v.) have stimulated interesting articles in the socialist press. [6]
Finally there have been accounts of the post-war controversies within
the Fourth International arising from European economic recovery. [7]
Consigned to the not recommended category must be those squibs
written by political activists in order to cancel out the past or to
justify the present: I have responded to these by seeking to establish
fact and demolish myth but they are mentioned in my bibliography.
It seems to me that the history of Trotskyism in Britain has a
natural periodicity. There was no organised movement in the 1920s. The
years to 1938 when the Fourth International was launched were in
Britain years of survival and sectarianism. Toeholds were established
but conditions were most unfavourable for the gathering of support.
From 1938 to 1944 there was a contradictory development as the official
British Section of the Fourth International splintered repeatedly and
finally ceased to be a coherent political force, while an unofficial
group, regarded as a pariah by official Trotskyist opinion, built the
strongest position yet for the movement in Britain drawing to it some
who were disaffected and others who were new. The process was thus
simultaneously one of fission and fusion. 1944 to 1949 were years when
the Revolutionary Communist Party declined as its perspectives collided
with reviving capitalism and it was progressively debilitated by
internal disputes. Just as in the 1930s, but now for quite opposite
reasons, there were no major industrial conflicts and this absence
blighted Trotskyism’s prospects. My argument is that the major
influences on the British working class were established at the
beginning of the 1930s while Trotskyism was still incipient. Only the
peculiar political conjuncture induced by the war permitted Trotskyist
growth. The end of the war brought a return to traditional political
loyalties, the objects of which had not yet been tested to the full.
There was simply no room for a strong Trotskyist organisation and all
the characteristics accurately or unfairly imputed to it were secondary
in effect to the brutal centripetal tendencies of the British labour
movement.
1. P.J. Thwaites, The Independent Labour Party, 1938-50 (University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1976); G. Littlejohns, The Decline of the Independent Labour Party, (University of Nottingham MPhil. thesis, 1979).
2. J. Archer, Trotskyism in Britain: 1931-1937 (Polytechnic of Central London Ph.D. thesis, 1979).
3. A.M.R. Penn, A Bibliography of the British Trotskyist Press (University of Warwick M.A. thesis, 1979).
4. See M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, 1975.
5. H. Wicks, British Trotskyism in the Thirties, International, Vol.1, No.4, 1971, 26-32.
6. W. Hunter, Marxists in the Second World War, Labour Review, Dec. 1958, 139-46; B. Farnborough (B. Pearce) Marxists in the Second World War, Labour Review, April-May 1959; D. Parkin, British Trotskyists and the Class Struggle in World War 2, Trotskyism Today, March 1978, 27-30.
7. Notably P. Jenkins, Where Trotskyism Got Lost, 1979.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis was begun as a piece of research in the Summer of 1972.
In the eight years that have passed since then I have been helped in my
research by a great many people. Whenever I needed it I have been
assisted by my supervisor John Saville, who read critically whatever I
wrote and made me a little less unscholarly than I originally was. It
was he who was responsible for acquiring the Haston Papers, now lodged
at the University of Hull, and who cleared the way for me to research
them. Latterly, he carefully read my penultimate draft and his comments
were always stimulating. I am deeply in his debt. Equally responsible
for my research falling into the minority category of completed
doctoral theses was my wife Chitra who encouraged me to take up anew a
project which had all but lapsed and who transformed my scribbled first
draft into clear typewritten pages. I also owe a huge debt to Sally
Boston, Assistant Librarian of the University of Hull, whose
responsibility it has been to classify the Haston Papers. She was
heroic in coping with the arrival of a researcher so soon after they
were deposited and helped me on countless occasions, sometimes at some
personal inconvenience. To their names must be added those of Joyce
Bellamy who put me to work to acquire the rudiments of scholarship on
the Dictionary of Labour Biography even before my
research officially began and from whom I continued to learn, together
with those of David Rubinstein and other members of the Department of
Economic and Social History at the University of Hull with whom I have
had many rewarding discussions.
Among the others who have helped me, especially in the early stages
of my research, were such former and continuing activists as John and
Mary Archer, Margaret Johns, Brian Pearce, Sam Bornstein, Sam Levy, Reg
Groves, Harry Wicks, John Goffe, Ted Grant, Jock and Millie Haston, Roy
Tearse and Sid Bidwell. My thesis would have had a very one-dimensional
character without their help and – not infrequently – their
hospitality. I have been most fortunate also in the help I have
received from the staff of a number of libraries. Much of the early
reading was undertaken in the Brynmor Jones Library of the University
of Hull where I was able to feast off strong Labour and socialist
history sources. I am grateful also to Richard Storey, Senior Projects
Officer of the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, and his
present and former staff on whom I often descended and demanded vast
numbers of photocopies. This was of critical importance for one who had
to work in his spare time. Special mention must also be made of
Margaret Kentfield, Nick Wetton, and the staff of the Marx Memorial
Library, an institution geared, in its opening hours and desire to
place the minimum of obstacles between reader and source, to the needs
of those who are not full-time students. I also worked at the L.S.E.
library and that of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford, at
the British Museum Reading Room and at its Periodicals Library in
Colindale, at the Public Records Office and the Fitzwilliam Library,
University of Cambridge.
In my first year of work I was maintained by the Social Science
Research Council on the recommendation of the Department of Economic
and Social History, University of Hull. In my second year I was
fortunate to receive an award of equivalent value to that from the
S.S.R.C. from the A.J. Horsley fund at the University of Hull. For a
short time after the completion of that year I worked on a part-time
basis for the Dictionary of Labour Biography under the direction of
Doctor Joyce Bellamy and Professor John Saville of my department. After
that I encountered the vicissitudes of completing this kind of work
under part-time conditions, constrained by absence from easy access to
a community of scholars and a good library and by being unable to
devote the whole of my mind to the project. It was therefore of
tremendous assistance that I should be granted by my employers, the
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, a sabbatical leave of two calendar
months in the Summer of 1980, during which time I was able to devote
all my time to writing the penultimate draft. Mr. Bill Sirs, the ISTC
General Secretary, showed no hesitation in granting me leave although
my request came at a critical moment in the Union’s fortunes.
Finally I am deeply indebted to Carol Tarling who quickly mastered
the intricacies of thesis lay-out and the almost unfathomable mysteries
of my handwriting to present me with a finished product which is a
pleasure to the eye.
LIST OF APPENDICES
A. A Note on British Trotskyists and Spain.
B. Reg Groves and the Aylesbury Divisional Labour Party (1937–1945).
C. Articles in Workers International News While it was Published by Workers International League (January 1938–February 1944).
D. Peace and Unity Agreement (1938).
E. Industrial Programme of Workers International League.
F. Trotskyism and the I.L.P.
G. Programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
H. War Cabinet. The Trotskyist Movement in Great Britain – Memorandum by the Home Secretary.
A NOTE ON REFERENCES
In the footnotes to the text I have tried to reduce details in
references to the minimum consistent with precision. Where possible
details of references are given in full in the bibliography. There are
no references to works published after 1979 at which date the first
draft of the thesis was complete.
In the footnotes and in the bibliography the following abbreviations occur:
BSSLH: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History
Inprecorr: International Press Correspondence
JCH: Journal of Contemporary History
JSLHS: Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society
PQ: Political Quarterly
Unless otherwise stated in the bibliography, the place of publication is London.
Introduction
TROTSKY AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE 1920s |
The failure of Trotskyism to establish a presence in the 1920s is to
be explained partly by reference to the character of the Communist
Party of Great Britain and partly by the quality of British Marxism
itself. Lack of interest in theory and the absence of intellectuals who
would make major contributions to Marxist thought had already separated
Britain from the Continent before 1914. [1]
Detachment from ideological controversy was carried over into the
infant CPGB, whose formation had been the subject of historical debate.
[2]
Respect for Trotsky as a revolutionary leader spanned the labour
movement spectrum at the start of the decade. By the end it had
narrowed to liberal and independent socialist intellectuals. The
Communist Party, which had promoted him enthusiastically up to the
middle 1920s turned, with the Comintern, away from him. For the Labour
Party, twice in government, he was too revolutionary. Trotsky had
support against both parties, but no organised following. The low level
of Party life, incomprehension at the debate within the Russian Party
and the Comintern, a lack of intellectuals among the membership [3],
all might be urged as reasons why the Communist Party produced no
Trotskyist opposition for nearly ten years. The Party observed the line
from Moscow until the late 1920s when a combination of Comintern
pressure and a rank and file revolt precipitated a leadership purge.
Support for Trotsky came from outside the Party, from people who had
stayed aloof from the attempt to build a Bolshevik Party in Britain or
who had taken part and then left as individuals. [4] In neither case were they the people to organise a movement. Until 1930 Trotsky was left in Britain only with admirers.
No one in Britain in 1923 grasped the significance of the clash
between the Left Opposition and the Russian Communist Party which burst
into the open that year. In other countries there were fierce disputes
within the Communist Parties over the critique advanced by the
Opposition in its platform. [5]
In Britain this did not occur. Lenin’s death in January 1924 physically
removed from Russia an influence neutralised for some time. Since the
battle between the Party leadership and the Left Opposition continued,
pressure began to build up for national parties to declare themselves.
The British Communist press, like the bourgeois press, was at first
content to report. [6] This was, after all, not the first instance of debate within the Russian Party. Inprecorr, originating from Moscow, mirrored developments there more closely and, moreover, without a timelag. Trotsky’s views on the New Course were printed as well as those of Stalin and Zinoviev, [7]
but Trotsky’s progressive isolation would soon be apparent.
“Trotskyism” as an identifiable phenomenon was categorised as such by
April 1924. [8] But the Comintern journal Communist International ran no campaign against Trotsky until the broad offensive after the General Strike, and he himself was still a contributor. [9]
However, British representatives at the Fifth Comintern Congress in
July 1924 endorsed the condemnation of Trotsky’s attitude by the CPSU.
although no discussion in the CPGB had yet taken place. [10]
In November 1924 a definite lead was given in Inprecorr as Russian and foreign communists began to react to Trotsky’s The Lessons of October. [11] A sequence of rubbishing articles was begun which lasted until 6 February 1925. [12] Trotsky’s introduction to The Lessons of October only appeared after three months. No reader of Inprecorr
could possibly doubt, after such a sustained onslaught, that this was
more than an ordinary policy difference. The British Party reacted
swiftly to the debates at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern. On 30
November, a party council approved the stand on Trotsky adopted there
and in the CPSU. [13] Within a week Tom Bell had published the first authentic British article against Trotskyism. [14] Yet at this point the party leaders had not read The Lessons of October [15]
and that certainly meant that the membership, in general, had not read
it either. One exception was Arthur Reade, member of the London
District Committee and business manager of Labour Monthly,
who read German and had access to Comintern documents. He knew
Trotsky’s views and expounded them at classes he gave to the Battersea
Young Communist League. [16]
He and several of these young communists attended the Party’s London
aggregate meeting of 17 January 1925 to hear Andrew Rothstein and other
speakers. When J.T. Murphy put down a resolution endorsing the Party’s
condemnation of The Lessons of October, Reade moved an amendment from
the London District Committee supporting the Opposition and regretting
the haste with which the Party Council had taken a stand. [17] He was defeated with ten or fifteen votes in support. [18] But an attempt was made to delay the vote until the case for both sides had been put and this fell by only 81 votes to 65. [19]
The meaning of these votes seems to be not an endorsement of Trotsky’s
views by a minority of London communists, but a fairly widespread
feeling that party leaders had been too eager to put themselves on
record. England could join the triumphant list of countries where
Trotskyism was completely isolated [20],
but it was the manner rather than the ideas of the leaders which had
occasioned protest. Yet Rothstein’s article of a week later suggests by
its title more alarm among the party leaders after the aggregate than
before. [21]
The introduction to The Lessons of October was published on 26 February 1925. [22] By then, however, the attack on Trotskyism had broadened out and stretched back in time. [23]
Bell published Trotsky’s 15 January letter to the central committee of
the Russian Party with a preamble arguing that its rejection proved the
Party to be still a Bolshevik one. [24]
He and Gallacher attended the extended plenum of the Executive
Committee of the Communist International, which met from 21 March to 6
April. [25]
They took no part in the debate on theoretical matters, but in the
eleventh session, devoted to Trotskyism, Bell followed Treint and
Neumann in a speech composed entirely of slogans. [26]
The British delegates supported a motion calling for a drive against
deviations to be conducted by all parties. Back in Britain Reade had
been suspended from the London District Committee of the Party
following the January aggregate. He appealed, but was turned down by
the Party Executive on 26 April. [27]
Some time after this he left the Party and the country. Perhaps the
first British Trotskyist had departed, apparently making little
impression. The Seventh Party Congress of the CPGB met at the end of
May, and Bell implemented the ECCI decision by moving a motion agreeing
with the Russian Party Central Committee in its estimate of Trotskyism
and the measures taken against it. [28] There was now published The Errors of Trotskyism by Bukharin and Kamenev, a reply to The Lessons of October, with an English edition introduction by J.T. Murphy. [29] It has been suggested that, even at this late date, the British Party leaders had seen only a summary of Trotsky’s book [30] and indeed this was what was published with The Errors of Trotskyism.
There would be no support for Trotsky from Party leaders when he was
out of step with Moscow, though for more than a year he was to remain a
legitimate figure with the British Party. With a minor manifestation of
Trotskyism in the CPGB dispelled, support for the Opposition leader now
appeared outside the Party. [31] The response to Lenin (1925) illustrated the point well. Reviewers in the Party press tended to regret Trotsky’s loss of form. [32] Communists writing in non-party publications were hostile. [33] The ex-communist M. Phillips Price was friendly, [34] and Frank Horrabin was able to enjoy himself over communist inconsistency. [35] This divergence was important now and later. Many of the independent Marxists around The Plebs met Max Eastman [36]
during his 1924 stay in Britain following a twenty one months spell in
Russia. Eastman had met Trotsky in Russia and witnessed the debate
around Opposition criticism of the Party programme, details of which he
must have passed on. In the spring of 1925 he published Since Lenin Died. [37]
Though formally disowned by Trotsky, Eastman offered a detailed
account of the clash within the Russian Party during the last two years
– the only one available. He analysed Lenin’s suppressed Will,
with its celebrated member by member assessment of the CPSU Central
Committee. He reproduced a passage on Trotsky from Lunacharsky’s Revolutionary Silhouettes. It was a definite and radical challenge to the prevailing version of recent events in Russia. [38]
The Communist Party was accustomed to speaking with authority about
the Soviet Union. Eastman could be the butt of unqualified attacks. For
tactical reasons Trotsky had disowned the book [39]
and Party reviewers in Britain therefore took the line of separating
author from subject. Arthur MacManus bracketed Eastman with Party
renegades Price and Levy. “Under the guise of defenders of Trotsky”
they were all attacking the Russian Party. [40] Jackson predicted that Trotsky would be furious at the way his name had been used. [41] Palme Dutt ridiculed the book. [42] The Party went to some lengths to separate Eastman from Trotsky which suggests considerable embarrassment. [43] The belief that Eastman’s account might be true and Trotsky deserving of sympathy surfaces only in the non-party press. [44]
Support from outside the Party was a mixed blessing when it was offered
by lapsed members. Nor did it provide any profound analysis of what had
taken place in Russia: Postgate, for example, expressed the wish that
the two factions might speedily be united and win success for the
revolution. [45] A journal like The Plebs
might be an alternate outlet for news, but was not likely to provide
fundamental criticism of the kind Trotsky himself had offered in The New Course. He was defended as a revolutionary hero, not as a theoretician, [46] a point sometimes overlooked. [47] The communist press continued its attempts to clarify the status of Eastman’s book well into the summer. [48] After the controversy died, [49] the British Party seems to have been uncertain about Trotsky’s status. He could still be reviewed [50] but articles published were not on immediate issues. [51]
It was only his decision to devote his next important book to Britain
which brought him again to the attention of the communist press.
Though certain subjects were taboo, Britain was not one of them. [52] Where is Britain Going?,
a sparkling polemic against British labour and trade union leaders and
their gradualist philosophy was published in February 1926. It was
published not by the Party but by George Allen and Unwin who attached a
preface by Brailsford. [53] Where is Britain Going?
was very much part of Trotsky’s case against Comintern policy. It
appeared during a phase of the struggle in Russia between the Joint
Opposition and Stalin and Bukharin. It did not handle roughly the
British Party’s support for left wing figures on the TUC General
Council, but Trotsky later wrote:
“The book was aimed essentially at the official conception of the
Politbureau, with its hope of an evolution to the left by the British
General Council, and of a gradual and painless penetration of communism
into the ranks of the British Labour Party and Trade Unions.” [54]
It has been suggested that the British Party did not understand the book. [55]
No other communist had written anything as relevant for the year of the
General Strike, however, and it was well enough suited to the party
mood after May for a second edition to be published. Trotsky confronted
the entire working class leadership, left and right. His critics were
the party’s critics, and he wrote as a party member. The CPGB could
only rally to him.
Where is Britain Going? scattered its shot so
widely as to stimulate many of its victims into print. Norman Angell
was provoked into writing a full length book to show “the futility of
revolution”. [56]
For MacDonald, Trotsky was a pamphleteer not an historian, a devotee of
theories not a slave to facts; he had concocted “an oriental riot of
fancy regarding facts and events”. [57]
Brailsford in his introduction to the first edition, had observed that
the imprisoned CPGB leaders had been sentenced for the opinions
expressed in the book. While allowing Trotsky force of argument,
Brailsford did not believe his Russian approach would convince. Russell
[58]
allowed that Trotsky was “remarkably well-informed” on the politics of
the British Labour movement, but considered that he was advocating an
English revolution for Russian advantage. Lansbury [59]
gave much support to Trotsky while defending himself. Transport
Workers” leader Robert Williams, a former Labour Party Chairman, and
yet another former communist, had been pilloried by Trotsky in the book
for having “ratted”. Like Lansbury he had both to defend himself
against Trotsky and to defend Trotsky against his critics. [60]
Cleverly he pointed out that the charge of renegacy presented by
Trotsky against him was advanced against Trotsky himself by the Russian
leadership two years before. He recalled the persecution of Trotsky and
the suppression of Lenin’s will:
“ ….those in charge of the machine were so afraid of the criticism
of one who had rendered more service to the revolution than all of them
combined that they deliberately suppressed it.”
The non-communist reviewers generally took the line that Trotsky did
not understand the peculiarities of the English. Communist reviewers
believed they detected another common factor in these reactions:
hostility to the proletarian revolution. [61]
Through the reviews of MacDonald and, especially, of Williams, the
fact of Trotsky’s downfall was kept to the fore in the labour movement
press. The Communists, with their front rank leaders in jail and their
attention on the imminent expiry of the coal subsidy showed no public
awareness of Trotsky’s deeper purpose. [62]
His book was a welcome friend at a critical time as Palme Dutt strongly
underlined: “A challenge may safely be issued to the critics to name a
single book by a single English author or politician, bourgeois or
labour leader, which is as close to the essentials of the English
situation as Trotsky’s book”. [63]
Dutt was not prepared to allow the critics a single point, not even
disavowing Trotsky’s claim that the Liberal election victory of 1905
was partially a result of shock waves from the Russian Revolution of
that year. Indeed, he continued,
The English working class has cause to be grateful to Trotsky for
his book; and to hope that he will not stay his hand at this short
sketch, but will carry forward his work of interpretation, polemic and
elucidation, and elaborate his analysis further which is so much needed
in England. [64]
It may be that the British party leaders were mostly dense in
matters of theory. They had, moreover, no public guidance from Moscow,
where it had first been published, as to the attitude they should adopt
to Trotsky’s book. Trotsky’s polemic could only assist those more
astute party leaders who were later to gain control of the party. The
authority of Dutt and Labour Monthly was growing and both must have influenced the reading of Party members. [65]
It soon became impossible to quote Trotsky as an authority, but that
did not prevent borrowing from the theoretical arsenal of one who had
been cruelly vindicated by events.
International developments soon impelled Stalin to decisive moves
against the Joint Opposition in Russia. Repercussions in the CPGB could
not fail to follow. The British crisis of 1926 was merely the current
event on which Trotsky was honing his polemical scalpel to a fine
sharpness. He returned to the subject several times in an independent
way during the General Strike. He pressed especially for severance of
the trade union connections established through the Anglo-Soviet Trade
Union Committee established in 1923. Under the title Problems of the British Labour Movement some of Trotsky’s later thinking appeared in the communist press. [66]
It was a sterilised Trotsky that was allowed into English, free of
uncompromising references to the left members of the TUC General
Council, with whom the Soviets retained a connection until 1927.
In July 1926 Stalin spoke of the British party as being one of the best sections of the Communist International. [67]
He made it quite clear, however, that his commendation did not derive
its inspiration from the party’s influence. It continued to gain
members through 1926, even approaching 11,000, but then shrank. [68]
Yet Britain had held the attention of the entire Communist
International during 1926 and the setback of the General Strike had to
have repercussions. In Russia Bukharin and Stalin increased their
power, while measures were taken rapidly against the Joint Opposition.
Criticism of Trotsky grew more strident. Those who had access to Inprecorr
could follow the new Comintern leaders“ orchestrated attack. Articles
in it were intended “for the widest possible publicity”. Dead disputes
with Lenin were resurrected. Opposition prophecies of doom were refuted
by reference to the greater size and more proletarian composition of
the party. The Joint Opposition was deemed to be a Social-Democratic
deviation, a theoretic consensus with Otto Bauer. Communist International, no longer Zinoviev’s organ, analysed the clash in the USSR, and attacked Trotsky by implication through Zinoviev and Kamenev. [69] Readers of Communist Review
were treated to Bukharin’s lengthy treatment of the Opposition platform
between September and December. The actual words of the Opposition
leaders were available to British communists only through Inprecorr. [70]
Dire warnings were attached that “Field Marshal” Trotsky wanted “to
lead the opposition of all countries” and that the dissidents must
choose between Lenin and Otto Bauer.
Problems of the British Labour Movement had been allowed to
surface in the English pond, but the CPGB was anxious there should be
no misunderstanding about where it stood. [71] On 9 August the political bureau adopted a resolution on the Discussion in the CPSU. [72] which rejected Trotsky’s call to sever the Anglo-Russian Committee and condemned Problems of the British Labour Movement. [73] It was still possible to discuss Opposition ideas [74]
(those that were known), but the leading figures in Russia had little
time left as party members. And in Britain even Opposition views on
economics could be disregarded no longer. [75]
After 1926 it took a determined party member to discover details of
the much abused platform of the Joint Opposition. Communist
International carried no articles by opposition leaders during 1927,
but kept its readers informed about their successive downgrading. Tom
Bell reported to Communist Review on the fifteenth
conference of the CPSU. but, while he witnessed the debate on
Trotskyism and Trotsky’s own speech in it, he passed little on. [76] Those who read Inprecorr would know that the opposition platform was a major preoccupation of the conference. [77]
Bell had spoken in the debate on the Opposition, but he was unwilling
or unable to subject its ideas to any theoretical analysis. He
condemned its factiousness and disloyalty however, and went on to
reassure the Russian comrades:
Though our experience with oppositions is very limited (probably our
time will come when we too shall have to deal with serious political
oppositions) nevertheless, our experience, limited as it is, justifies
our complete identity with the measures taken by the Party of the USSR
to deal with its opposition.
Since there is little evidence to indicate any profound grasp among
British communists of the Opposition platform, Bell’s support for
Stalin rested on a narrow base. Smith, a colleague, attempted to shore
him up with some purely British complaints of substance. He objected to
Trotsky referring to the British Party as a brake on the revolution and
complained that Lansbury, Plebs, and other Lefts were using Trotsky’s call for the exposure of left reformism:
… this group of liquidators, of renegade Communists, of Left
elements in the labour movement, seize with joy on every attack which
Trotsky makes upon the leaders of the Party and of the Communist
International.Comrade Trotsky’s policy is objectively helping these liquidators,
while the article to which I referred was of direct assistance to them.
[78]
The climax of the clash in the CPSU was ill-reported in the British
communist press: only publicity from outside forced the party to deal
with it in any detail. Trotsky’s own speech to the conference, and
indeed Smith’s, was reported verbatim only in Inprecorr.
What was more, the performance of the more left wing members of the TUC
General Council during the General Strike could only nurture doubts
which Trotsky was free to nourish. The pride of the British party was
punctured. CPGB membership continued to grow after the General Strike
but apparently went into a consistent decline from Autumn 1926 [79]
which was not reversed until 1930. Factors in this decline were the
effectiveness of Labour Party action against the National Left-Wing
Movement a natural depression following the failure of the General
Strike and growing sectarianism on the part of the Party itself. There
were some in the Party who leaned towards intransigence, but their
influence was increased by pressure from Moscow which was displeased
with lack of progress in Britain and at loggerheads with CPGB leaders
over the colonial question. [80]
Malcontents lacked the strength to displace the Party leadership at the
January 1929 Party congress, but this was accomplished with Russian
support at a special congress in December. [81]
The staggered passage into what became known as the “Third Period”
(following the years of revolution and then stabilisation), was
accompanied in Britain by increased vigilance against Trotskyism. The
honour of proposing Trotsky’s expulsion from the ECCI. In September
1927 fell to a British communist, J.T. Murphy. [82]
Murphy’s own Sheffield District telegraphed Moscow endorsing
disciplinary measures against the Opposition leaders and called for
action to further the struggle against war. [83] The Russian leaders were pleased and noted that the British party was innocent of Oppositionism. [84]
When British delegates attended the Moscow conference of the Friends of
the Soviet Union a fortnight after Trotsky’s expulsion from the CPSU,
they took the initiative in moving a resolution (passed with one
opposed), approving the measures taken against him for trying to set up
a second party. Indeed they went further, and demanded “more severe
measures”. [85] Inprecorr
was deluged with anti-Opposition articles: “Trotskyism” was assuredly
the issue of the hour. The British Party ventured into the field of
theory. Jackson, who had written of Trotsky with such awe two years
earlier, now discovered that the Opposition leader’s views on the
danger of reaction were diametrically misplaced. It was, concluded
Jackson, Trotsky himself, with Zinoviev, who represented the danger of
Menshevism and Thermidor. [86]
His colleague Gallacher developed the theme for an international
audience. “In Britain every rotten reactionary, every reformist
trickster, looks with hope to the Opposition’s; which statement he
wisely left without explanatory footnotes, since Smith had been
complaining the previous month that Trotsky handled the Left too
harshly. [87]
Gallacher’s claim that “every attack on the party by the Trotskyists
was hailed with delight in the war mongering press of Britain” would
have proved equally hard to sustain.
There were still traces of interest in Trotsky – pictures on walls, enthusiastic delegates to the Y.C.L. congress of 1928. [88]They
added up to little. The parties had been warned that the exclusion of
Trotskyism from the CPSU must of course, also result in “the end of
Trotskyism in the Comintern”. [89] Rust reassured the international that Trotskyism had no following among “the active conscious sections of the workers”, [90] which verdict was confirmed. [91]
Yet the new broad definition of Trotskyism, obscurely commingling with
reaction, is to be gathered from his affirmation that the British Party
had “tremendous duties” in the fight against it, especially since the
Baldwin government led the Anti-Soviet bloc. [92]
Stalin’s praise for the party gains in significance when the glassy
smoothness of the British Party is compared to turmoil elsewhere.
The Communist press ground on about Trotskyism throughout 1928 and
into 1929. Publicly it now presented Trotskyism as a non-communist
current, supported by reaction and used (consciously or unconsciously)
against the USSR. Original Opposition documents were rare. They were
not being printed in Britain, and were only just becoming available in
English through the efforts of American communists sympathetic to
Trotsky. [93] The only exception (and this partial because of Inprecorr“s
small print run), was the last letter of Adolf Joffe with its
celebrated final words to Trotsky proclaiming that he had always had
the better of the argument politically. But this was forced on the
communists by publication in the Western press, and issued with a
gloss. [94] Periodically, the Communist press would carry further material against the Opposition. [95] The stimulus would invariably be external, as when Rothstein took the opportunity provided by Eastman’s The Real Situation in Russia to reduce to rubble the Opposition documents of recent years. [96]
The CPGB had survived the twenties relatively intact by making the
right noises, but its hour was approaching. Manuilsky wondered: How
does it happen that all the fundamental problems of the Communist
International fail to stir our fraternal British Party? It is not that
the British Communist Party does not pass resolutions or take a stand
upon all important questions. No, this cannot be said. Nevertheless,
one does not feel any profound organic connection with all the problems
of the world Labour Movement. All these problems have the appearance of
being forcibly injected into the activities of the British Communist
Party. [97]
Trotsky intruded once more into British politics in the 1920s, this
time over an issue which would not alienate the liberal intelligentsia
but draw them towards him. He had arrived in enforced exile in Turkey
in February 1929 and shortly began to cast around for a visa. The
possibility of British asylum for him was first raised in the Commons
under the Tories that same month. [98]
He told the press that his favoured place of exile would be Germany but
Britain did appeal since it offered a chance to revisit the British
Museum. [99] He professed puzzlement that the subject of a visa for him should bring the House (of Commons) down in laughter. [100]
Before the second Labour Government was formed, Trotsky received
several celebrities of the left in Prinkipo. Cynthia Mosley was one of
them. She admired him greatly, though her esteem was not reciprocated. [101]
Sidney and Beatrice Webb called on him in May 1929. They were not
impressed by his arguments and disputed that the Labour Government was
obliged to offer him asylum. [102]
The return of Labour to office in May 1929 provided an opportunity
for Trotsky to cash his cheque of goodwill – or at least to discover
the extent of his credit. Two fairly sustained efforts were made to
secure asylum for him in Britain, one in the early, the other in the
dying days of the Labour Government. Those who favoured his entry
included Emrys Hughes who compared his case with that of Marx, and many
ILP branches, who wrote to their Head Office urging his admission. [103] Perhaps in response the Party invited him to deliver a lecture at its party school. [104]
Trotsky requested a visa of the British Consul in Constantinople and
then, in early June, cabled MacDonald. He later wrote to Beatrice Webb
and Snowden, and telegraphed Lansbury. [105]
To the public he declared that he hoped, given asylum, to supervise the
publication of his books in England and to pursue (social) scientific
work. [106]
What was more he had a special interest in seeing if “the difficulties
created by private ownership can be surmounted through the medium of
democracy”. Democracy which planned to overlap the greatest obstacles,
he observed, could hardly begin by denying the democratic right of
asylum. [107]
An impressive list of celebrities of radical England spoke up for
Trotsky’s right of asylum, but the Webbs (Sidney was now a minister),
were crucial exceptions. Beatrice Webb wrote that those who preached
the extension of revolution would always be excluded from the countries
in view. As Caute remarks [108]
she thus indicated her ability to miss the whole purpose of asylum. She
also showed ingratitude for her reception by Trotsky when he was in and
she was out. Of the major British papers, only the Manchester Guardian (which was to befriend him over the years) and the Observer supported his claim. [109] The Times believed his presence in Constantinople a ruse by arrangement with Stalin to screen revolutionary activity in Germany. [110]
Other rumours abounded. There was a general disinclination to take at
face value Trotsky’s protestations that his interest in British asylum
was exclusively personal.
Magdeleine Paz had been among the 280 signatories of a January 1926 complaint to the Comintern about dictatorship in the PCF. [111]
Later, her group Contre le Courant, was an early vehicle for the ideas
of the Left Opposition in France. She now became the central organiser
of a campaign to win Trotsky a British visa, and she it was who put to
the government the strict conditions which Trotsky was prepared to
observe, if admitted. [112]
Clynes hesitated under the pressure and then in July 1929 came out
against a visa for Trotsky. The government seems to have feared that
his entry would provide difficulties for them, found his ideology
distasteful, and worried as to whether, once in Britain, he might be
difficult to expel [113],
Clynes suffered “a chorus of frantic personal abuse” but he had no wish
to jeopardise his relations with Russia and stood firm. Later he was to
find solace for his rectitude in the verdict of the Trials. [114]
There was another attempt to raise the matter in the House in
November 1929, but the second sustained effort to secure entry for
Trotsky occurred in the spring of 1931. Ivor Montagu [115],
who had met Trotsky in Prinkipo, employed George Lansbury as an
intermediary to Clynes. One request was that Trotsky be allowed to
change boats at an English port en route for Norway. [116]
It is now clear that it was certain Labour ministers, rather than – as
might have been expected the Liberal Party, which barred Trotsky.
Samuel (who was related to Montagu), intervened repeatedly, as did
Lloyd George himself. Keynes, Scott, Bennett and Garvin all urged the
government to reconsider its decision. It is noteworthy that there was
stronger support from Labour intellectuals at this time than there was
to be later over the Moscow Trials. Laski protested to the government.
Shaw wrote Clynes a lengthy letter, [117]
and joined with Wells in composing two statements against barring
Trotsky’s entry. Ellen Wilkinson added her name. But there was no
success in this classic liberal issue. MacDonald, Clynes and Henderson
overrode Lansbury’s protests in Cabinet. [118] Possibly they were still smarting from the treatment they had received in Where Is Britain Going?
With only minority support, they may have felt their parliamentary
position at risk. There might also have been a sense of insecurity in
the labour movement. An astute cartoon by David Low in the Manchester Guardian
depicted a supplicant Trotsky having the door shut in his face by the
determined Clynes. “But I am an old friend of the House”, protests the
exile. “Yes, that’s why”, comes the reply.
No Trotskyist movement emerged in Britain before 1930 due to meagre
awareness of, and involvement in, the Russian and Comintern debates by
communists and, perhaps, the small size of the CPGB Party leaders dealt
uncertainly with Trotsky as an individual and as a theoretician unless
they first received guidance from Moscow. The Where Is Britain Going?
episode occurred because of lack of this guidance and also because
nobody in Britain, and perhaps elsewhere, was equipped to give the CPGB
such a boost. Trotsky’s standing in Britain, which was high at
mid-1926, collapsed abruptly as a direct result of the new drive
against Trotskyism in the Comintern.
Outside the Party, reactions to Trotsky separate into three groups.
The Labour and Trade Union leaders had a conventional fear of him and
their experience in 1926 and even i
