Marxists and the British

Labour Party

Introduction

The tasks of a small group

All this meant that the post 1945 west European situation was soon to be characterised by a stabilisation of capitalist rule, a strengthening of Stalinism, the granting of some reforms in many countries and the beginning of the long post-war economic upswing.

This meant that, in Western Europe, the tasks for Trotsky's supporters were quite different from the post 1918 period. Unlike the Communist International's mass parties that were quite quickly formed from 1919 onwards, the Trotskyists had to cope with a further period of being relatively small groupings and parties.

To a certain extent, Lenin had already anticipated these problems in 1920, when dealing with then newly formed British Communist Party, which at that time was very small, and by no means a mass party.

Lenin ...in 1920 urged the affiliation of the British Communist Party to the Labour Party. While it is necessary for the revolutionary party to maintain its independence at all times, a revolutionary group of a few hundred comrades is not a revolutionary party, and can work most effectively at present by opposition to the social patriots within the mass parties. (Trotsky, Writings 1935-36, p382)

(See for instance Lenin's Speech On Affiliation To The British Labour Party)

At the time that Lenin was writing the Labour Party still had a federal character and Communist Party members could be Labour Party members, and the Communist Party had the possibility of becoming one of the Labour Party's affiliates. Indeed one of the first Communist Party Members of Parliament in Britain, Saklatvala, was elected as a Labour Party candidate.

But from 1922 onwards the right-wing Labour Party leadership introduced measures first of all to limit the rights of Communist Party members within the Labour Party, then from 1924 to not allow Communist Party members to be Labour Party members any longer. These were the first steps on the long road that has led to New Labour, a bureaucratically centralised capitalist party.

Some time later, in 1932, a Trotskyist opposition group was expelled from the British Communist Party for advocating that the German Communist Party adopt the United Front tactic in Germany to unite in action with Social Democratic workers to stop Hitler, which Trotsky had proposed. Then, looking at what a small group could do, Trotsky in 1933 urged the forty or so British Trotskyists to join the Independent Labour Party, a party which had disaffiliated from the Labour Party the previous year with 17,000 members, although this had fallen by 1933 to 11,000 members.

Then the Independent Labour Party was moving in a more leftward direction as a response to the collapse of the second Labour Government. The Independent Labour Party was a "centrist" party (or "left-centrist" party, as Trotsky called it in 'Principled Considerations On Entry' in 1933), meaning that it was moving over the centre ground between a typical reformist position and a revolutionary position.

Trotsky's tactic was primarily one of winning the most left-leaning workers to the ideas of Marxism, over a short period of time, in the pre-war period of turmoil during which crises wracked the traditional mass parties.

Trotsky argued:

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 a centrist and even a reformist party. ('Principled Considerations On Entry', 1933)

Trotsky further gave this advice:

It is worth entering the Independent Labour Party only if we make it our purpose to help this party, that is, its revolutionary majority, to transform it into a truly Marxist party. Of course, such an entry would be inadmissible if the Central Committee of the Independent Labour Party should demand from our friends that they renounce their ideas, or the open struggle for those ideas in the party. But it is absolutely admissible to take upon oneself the obligation to fight for one's views on the basis of the party statutes and within the limits of party discipline. (ibid)

In 1959 the forebears of the Socialist Party in England and Wales produced a document called 'Problems of Entrism' which summarised almost three decades of historical experience of work in the mass parties of the British Marxists, from 1932 to 1959.

'Problems of Entrism' shows the flexible approach that brought a measure of success to the Trotskyists in Britain during this period and of course subsequently. It is recommended background reading to the 'Open Turn' debate of 1991, and is referred or alluded to a number of times in the main documents produced during the 'Open Turn' debate.

Acting as a faction of a centrist and even a reformist party was not a "once-and-for-all fetish" as the document 'Problems of Entrism' demonstrates, because by 1935, after less than two years of work in the Independent Labour Party (which was by then in rapid decline),

Comrade Trotsky suggested bringing the experience of entry into the ILP to a close, and conducting work in the Labour Party...

Furthermore, the document continues:

But the outbreak of the war in 1939 ... gave a different turn to events.

And here the problem of tactics as tactics, and not as once-and-for-all fetishes, shows its real importance. The Labour and TU leaders entered a coalition with the capitalist class, and at a later stage, entered government under Churchill. The Labour organisations declined in activity and as live, functioning organisations. The youth was in the armed forces. Later, the Communist Party with the entry of Russia into the war, became the most zealous strike-breaking organisation.

This gave tremendous opportunities for 'independent' work. The biggest successes of Trotskyism in Britain were obtained during this period.

('Problems of Entrism')

Thus, assessing the situation realistically, the Trotskyists of the Workers International League in Britain, which was founded in 1937 and is the fore bearer of the Socialist Party, generally left the Labour Party during the Second World War (1939 - 1945) and grew by conducting open, independent work. Another group of Trotskyists (the Revolutionary Socialist League) remained in the Labour Party and did not make gains similar to those of the Workers International League.

'Problems of Entrism' drew up a summary of the circumstances in which Trotsky had advocated entry into the reformist or centrist parties:

These conditions can be summarised as:

(a) Pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situation.

(b) Ferment in Social Democracy.

(c) Development of a Left Wing.

(d) The possibility of the rapid crystallisation of the revolutionary tendency.

('Problems of Entrism')

But these conditions were not present in society or in the Labour Party during the Second World War, and they were not present after the war either.

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