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Trotsky's struggle with Stalin was a life or death struggle. It was a
struggle to defend the clean banner of Lenin against the growing bureaucratic
reaction within the Soviet state and party. While Lenin was on his deathbed, the
triumvirate of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin, waged a campaign to discredit
Trotsky and prevent him taking over the Russian leadership. Matters came to a
head after the tragic defeat of the German Revolution of 1923 when Trotsky wrote
an article drawing parallels with the vacillations of Stalin and Zinoviev in
regard to Germany with those within the Bolshevik Party on the eve of the
October Revolution. In particular Trotsky drew out the lamentable role of
Zinoviev and Kamenev who opposed the insurrection.
At the same time Trotsky formed the Left Opposition to organize the fight for
party democracy and a return to a Leninist policy. The publication of this Lessons
of October served to intensify the conflict within the Russian leadership,
and opened up a vitriolic struggle by the triumvirate faction against
"Trotskyism". This was further accentuated after Lenin's death in
January 1924.
Trotsky's fight to defend Lenin's ideas within the Soviet Union had
international repercussions. News of the internal struggle within the Russian
Communist Party gradually leaked out, and prominent individuals within the
International began to rally to Trotsky's defence. The majority of the French
Communist Party leadership for instance carried a resolution condemning the
attacks against Trotsky. The same was true of the majority of the Belgian Party.
Early on, individuals like Alfred Rosmer, a leading member of the Communist
International, raised support for Trotsky.
This situation could not be allowed to develop. Quickly, Zinoviev, the
president of the International, intervened on behalf of the triumvirate to
eliminate opposition currents within the foreign sections. Under the banner of
"Bolshevisation", the Russian leadership intervened to undermine and
remove leaderships that were not totally reliable to the triumvirate.
British CP
Unlike on the Continent, there were no widespread opposition feelings within
the British Communist Party. Traditionally on a low political level, the British
party had little real interest in the great questions that had rocked European
sections. This was a key reason for the swift obedience of the British Party. In
the dispute within the Russian Party, the young British section felt obliged,
despite some early hesitation, to line up behind the Russian majority. Loyalty
to the Russian Party was clearly used to bring the British Party into line. Few
of the British Party leaders had read any of the material of the Opposition. The
first support for the Russian majority took place at the Party Council meeting
in November 1924, and again at an extended Party Executive meeting in January,
which endorsed the ECCI decision condemning Trotsky for publishing his Lessons
of October. This decision, however, was questioned by the London District
Committee, which complained about a lack of material. However, in the report
given to a 200-strong London Aggregate on January 17, 1925, an attempt to delay
the decision pending further information was defeated by 81 votes to 65. The
main resolution condemning Trotsky's book as "an open attack upon the
present leadership of the CI", moved by Murphy, was overwhelmingly passed,
while 15 votes were received for an amendment supporting the fight of the
"Left Wing Minority" in the Russian Communist Party against
divergences from Leninism.[1] An Oxford Communist, member of the London District
Committee, and business manager of Labour Monthly, A.E. Reade moved the
amendment. Reade knew German and was able to read Trotsky's work at first hand.
One of those voting for Reade's amendment was the young Harry Wicks, destined
later to become a founding member of British Trotskyism. The decision was
reported in the Weekly Worker under the title "Trotskyism - a Peril
to the Party" on January 23, 1925. Reade himself was soon suspended from
the District Committee and later expelled. He played no role in the movement
after this.
At the Seventh Congress of the CPGB (May-June 1925), a resolution on
Trotskyism was moved by Tom Bell again reaffirming the Party's position and
declaring "complete agreement with the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party in its estimation of the principles of Trotskyism and the
measures taken to combat them."[2]
At this time, the Party issued a book entitled The Errors of Trotskyism,
which printed Trotsky's Lessons of October and a series of replies from
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Krupskaya (who had initially flirted with the
Opposition) and others. The book was not intended as an analysis of Trotsky's
ideas, but as the title clearly indicates, as an exposure of
"Trotskyism". J. T. Murphy, who was the British representative on the
International Executive Committee, wrote the introduction. At this time, given
the prestige of Trotsky in Communist ranks, those who attacked Trotsky had to be
somewhat cautious. "It is undoubtedly true," states Murphy, "that
it came as a great surprise to the British working class when they saw the
Communist International in the throes of a great controversy with Comrade
Trotsky."[3]
Murphy was forced to recognise, even at this time, Trotsky's colossal
reputation and authority within the ranks of the Comintern. In his preamble he
states: "Comrade Trotsky's name has always been associated in our minds
with Comrade Lenin. 'Lenin and Trotsky!' These were the names with which we
conjured in all our thoughts and feelings about the Russian Revolution and the
Communist International. As the news of the Russian Revolution spread westward,
these two figures loomed gigantically above our horizon and we never thought of
differences...We saw only leaders, Soviets and masses, and over all the great
historical giants, Lenin and Trotsky."[4] Nevertheless, a string of
articles, which filled the majority of the book from Comintern leaders, were
used to reinforce the myth of "Trotskyism".
At the beginning of 1926, Trotsky's book Where is Britain Going? was
published, which drew a wave of criticism from the British reformists, stung by
Trotsky's analysis of their prejudices and hopeless approach to fundamental
questions. So, as late as April 1926 in Labour Monthly, Palme Dutt, still
not sure which way to jump, took up a robust defence of Trotsky's book.
"Trotsky's book will be eagerly read, and will give stimulus and help; will
help to break the chains of enslavement to old ideas and leadership, to give
confidence and clearness and strength, and to show the plain path forward of the
struggle," states Palme Dutt. "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."[5] Any hint of support had, however, completely evaporated by the
time of Trotsky's criticism of the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee and his
expulsion from the Russian CP in late 1927.
Trotsky completed Where is Britain Going? in May 1925, but it was not
in fact published in Britain until February 1926. Even then, it was published by
a bourgeois publisher George Allen and Unwin, and contained an introduction by
H. N. Brailsford, which sought to challenge Trotsky's ideas. It was only
reprinted by the Communist Party in October 1926, substituting Brailsford's
introduction with Trotsky's own May 6, 1926 preface to the second German
edition. Although the book demolishes the ideas of gradualism and reformism, it
also constituted a disguised attack against the then line of Stalin and Bukharin
who were looking towards the left of the TUC General Council.
The most "loyal"
A few months later, Thaelmann, the German Communist leader, remarked that the
British CP was the only major party that had no differences with the ECCI.[6] It
was regarded as the most "loyal" and its leaders, after a period of
selection, considered the most pliable by the Kremlin. Pollitt and Co. simply
followed every change in the party "line". On all occasions, they were
with the "majority".
In April 1926, under pressure from the workers of Leningrad, Zinoviev and
Kamenev split from Stalin and founded, with the veterans of the 1923-25
Opposition, the United Opposition. Their principal document was The Platform
of the Left Opposition (1927), which served as a rallying point for
opposition forces with the party, and was submitted to both the Politburo and
the Fifteenth Party Congress. By this time, the British Communist Party was
firmly in the anti-Trotskyist camp, endorsing every dictat from Moscow. In fact
it was Murphy himself who proposed the motion to expel Trotsky from the ECCI on
September 27, 1927.
"...I went to the platform," recalls Murphy. "I expressed the
view that the time had come for decision, and that Trotsky himself had made it
abundantly clear that the struggle had reached the stage when it was no longer
an internal fight concerning differences of opinion among members of one
organisation, but a fight against the Communist International itself and all its
sections. We had no option but to accept that challenge, and I moved that he
should be no longer recognised as a member of the Communist International. It
was carried with two dissents."
Murphy continued: "I did not dream when I moved that resolution that
some few years later I myself would also be outside the Communist
International."[7] The Moor had done his duty and was shown the door,
expelled ironically on a charge of "Trotskyism"!
The development of a genuine Trotskyist current did not emerge in Britain
until the crisis of 1929-31 and the rise of fascism in Germany. This took place
when a group of comrades in the Communist Party in Balham, South London, moved
into opposition to the leadership. As a group they came relatively late to the
ideas of Trotsky, although some had read and were influenced by Where is
Britain Going? and the Lessons of October. The leading lights of the
Balham Group, Billy Williams, Stewart Purkis, and Reg Groves, joined the Party
after the 1926 General Strike. They were soon elected to the London District
Committee. During the inter-party controversies surrounding Trotsky, they tended
to sympathise with the arguments of the Opposition, either abstaining or
opposing the leadership on anti-Opposition resolutions.[8] In 1929, they linked
up with Henry Sara, and the following year with Harry Wicks, who had just
returned from a three-year stint at the Lenin School in Moscow.
With the decline and isolation of the Party due to the ultra-left policies of
the "Third Period", the members of the Balham Group came into
opposition to the CP leadership on a series of questions. "Up to
1931," admits Groves, "most British Communists had scant knowledge of
communist oppositional groups abroad." Then, in the spring of that year,
Groves visited Henderson's left-wing bookshop, the "Bomb Shop" in
Charing Cross Road. "On sale in the shop on that day in 1931 were bundles
of two American weeklies - Labor Action, run by Jay Lovestone, an
expelled "Rightist"; and The Militant, published by the
American Left Opposition, with articles in it by Trotsky himself, which appeared
the more promising publication," continued Groves. "The three or four
numbers bought that day were passed round six or seven of us - and our little
world was enlarged."[9]
It was then that the Balham Group became aware of the existence of the
International Left Opposition. "True, we were woefully ignorant,"
states Groves later, "particularly about the situation in Russia, and as we
struggle for enlightenment and understanding and clarity, some of us found help
in the writings of Trotsky and, to a lesser extent, in the periodicals published
by the American Left Opposition."[10]
At first, they wrote to the Americans for pamphlets advertised in The
Militant. Later, Arne Swabeck on behalf of the International Secretariat
sent them a letter from the United States proposing "that some concrete
steps should be taken towards organisation in a preliminary sense," adding
that Albert Glotzer, the youth representative on their national committee, after
visiting Trotsky and the IS, would "stop over in England for the purpose of
being helpful in bringing our various contacts together." Another letter
told them that Max Shachtman was also coming to England "to do whatever
possible to help towards the formation of a Left Opposition Group in
England."[11] But the Balham Group didn't want to be rushed into any
premature action or anything they would later regret.
According to Harry Wicks, "in November 1931 Max Shachtman visited London
and at a meeting with Groves, Sara, Purkis and myself discussed the formation of
a Left Opposition group in this country. Shachtman 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."[12] Albert Glotzer also tried to assist Shachtman's efforts, and
concluded: "Although no specific organisation emerged from this discussion,
either during my stay or in the brief period that remained to Shachtman, the
spadework had been done for its later emergence."[13]
Critical moment
But events would drive things along. In May 1932, the Balham Group published The
Communist anonymously, which reproduced Trotsky's main writing on Germany, Germany,
The Key to the International Situation. On the front page it proclaimed
boldly: "The Communist International is unable to gain the leadership of
the world proletariat. It is - at this critical moment - unable, unready and
unfit to lead the world revolution, and there is no possible alternative. The
Left Opposition - led by Comrade Trotsky - is fighting to win back the CI to its
task of leading the world revolution; the British group begins its work by the
issue of this bulletin."[14] Trotsky wrote to the group congratulating them
on "this excellent duplicated publication". Throughout the summer of
1932, the Balham Group spoke out against the suicidal line of the party over
Germany and called for a united front to defeat the menace of fascism.
At a London aggregate in which the issue of Germany was raised, Stewart
Purkis identified himself with Trotsky's views and was confronted by Party's
General Secretary Harry Pollitt. Soon afterwards Purkis wrote to Pollitt:
"You have asked a straight question: you have a straight answer. You have
asked how far I go with The Communist: bulletin...My answer to you and my
comrades in the British Party is: 'I go with it all the way.'"[15]
In August 1932 Purkis, Williams, Groves, Flower and Wicks were expelled for
factional activity against the party line. Henry Sara was "suspended"
and the Balham Group "liquidated". The expelled comrades issued an
appeal against their expulsions to delegates attending the British party
congress in November, but were denounced by Pollitt, who urged delegates
"to go away from this Congress full of contempt, hatred and loathing for
the miserable gang of counter-revolutionaries."[16] It was the crossing of
the Rubicon for these comrades. There was no way back on the present basis.
Their only road was the building of a viable British section of the
International Left Opposition, as an expelled faction of the Communist Party.
As Groves put it later, they had "entered the world of international
Trotskyism, which was beyond our control and often beyond our
understanding."[17] Together with other sympathisers, they finally held a
conference in December 1932 to establish the British Section of the
International Left Opposition. By May Day 1933, the Communist League, as the
group was now called publicly, issued a new publication called Red Flag.
The work of British Trotskyism had truly begun.
February, 2002
Footnotes
[1] See L. J. MacFarlane, The British Communist Party, London, 1966,
pp. 140-41.
[2] Quoted in Klugmann, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain,
p. 327.
[3] The Errors of Trotskyism, p. 5.
[4] ibid, p.5.
[5] Labour Monthly, April 1926.
[6] Imprecorr, March 17, 1926, quoted in MacFarlane, p. 141.
[7] J. T. Murphy, New Horizons, London 1941, p. 275.
[8] See Reg Groves, The Balham Group, London 1974, p. 16.
[9] ibid, p. 46.
[10] ibid, pp. 11-12.
[11] Quoted in Groves, p. 48.
[12] International, vol. 1, no. 4, 1971.
[13] Revolutionary History, Spring 1988, p. 3.
[14] Quoted in Groves, p. 9.
[15] ibid, p. 86.
[16] Pollitt, The Road to Victory, p. 92.
[17] Groves, p. 73.
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