SPGB Debate: "Which way to Socialism?" (1986)

 Party News from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I've posted this notice for the debate with the CPGB separately on the blog — away from the other meetings advertised in the December 1986 Socialist Standard  — for the rather mundane reason that I only just now spotted the notice in the original PDF. It was hidden away . . . which makes you wonder how many people saw the notice at the time when the Standard originally came out?

Unfortunately, I've no idea if there is an audio recording of the above debate but there is an audio recording of an earlier debate with Monty Johnstone. It dates from November 1982; the subject of the debate was 'Did Lenin distort Marx'; and the SPGB representative in that debate was Steve Coleman.

Monty Johnstone was an interesting political figure because he was, to the best of my knowledge, the only member of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party (1944-49) who returned to the official Communist fold. Interestingly, Eric Hobsbawm doesn't mention Johnstone's lost Trotskyist weekend in his 2007 obituary for Johnstone in the Guardian. Maybe he didn't know? Or, maybe, Hobsbawm right to the very end was doing that CPGB thing of always taking the opportunity to marginalise and hide any mention of the Trots.

SPGB Meetings (1947)

Party News from the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

S. Lustigman was a member of South West London Branch of the SPGB from October 1942 until he resigned his membership for personal reasons in December 1952. According to the SPGB's membership records, he was a relative of longstanding SPGBer Julius Merry, who shared the same surname until he changed it because of anti-semitism.

The Revolutionary Communist Party's Jock Haston first encountered the SPGB at Hyde Park in the early 1930s. He recounted his experience in Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson's 1986 book, Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1924-38:

"When I first began to question the C.P. line I still sold the Daily Worker, but at Marble Arch I came into contact with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and a guy who was then the Secretary of the S.P.G.B. called Cohn. He gave me a terrible hammering one night on my ‘Leninism’, and I spent the whole night reading, and when I went back the following night he gave me a bigger hammering. For some months after that I used to attend S.P.G.B. meetings, and learned a great deal from the S.P.G.B. over the course of the next eight or nine months."

The 'Cohn' mentioned in the quote would have been Adolph Kohn. I'm not sure Kohn was the [General] Secretary of the Party in the 1930s but, at various times, he was on the editorial committee of the Socialist Standard.

£3,000 per minute (1951)

From the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The News Chronicle on February 1st published an article which stated that the Government had not made the people of the country realise the effects of the defence programme. How it would affect the standard of living and freedom of action of the population.

It correctly claimed that these vast sums of many millions of pounds were too great for people to appreciate without looking further into them. The article stated that £3,000 per minute every day and night for the next three years would be spent on defence.

Stating the figure in this way can certainly make one realise the effect it will have on the production of commodities for consumption and on things like the housing programme.

Think for a moment of the effort to produce armaments to the value of £3,000 per minute. Think of the useful articles that could be produced, think of the shortages that this programme will mean, and think that if capitalism did not exist, the tremendous waste of labour and materials would not occur.

The chickens have now come home to roost. The Labour Government has given proof (not that any more evidence was needed), that capitalism cannot be run in the interest of the working class.—Think on these things.

S. W. Lock

Blogger's Note:

Though this short piece is signed 'S.W. Lock', I think that was a typo and the actual writer of the piece was probably D. W. Lock, a regular writer in the Standard in the early 1950s. 

Lock joined the Lewisham branch of the SPGB in September 1948, and remained a member until his death in August 1993. Prior to joining the SPGB, he had been a member of the ILP and the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party.

Letters: Ted Grant (2006)

Letters to the Editors from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ted Grant

Dear Editors

Following on from your obituary of Ted Grant, the Trotskyist founder of the “entryist” Militant Tendency (September Socialist Standard), I agree that he was never a revolutionary; but just another reformer masquerading as a revolutionary.

I first heard Ted Grant speak at a meeting in High Holborn, of the so-called Revolutionary Communist Party, just before its demise probably in 1947. At this meeting, I heard for the first time the claim that the Soviet Union was not socialist, or even a “degenerated workers’ state”, but in fact a dictatorial form of state capitalism. A member of the audience (of about 100) got up and forcefully, as well as persistently, much to the annoyance of Grant and the other Trotskyist speakers, and argued that the economy of the USSR was state capitalist, and that the workers and peasants there were exploited in much the same way as elsewhere. Shortly after, two of the leaders who were at the meeting, Jock Haston and Tony Cliff, both accepted the claim that Soviet Russia was state capitalist.

And who was the speaker from the audience? I learned later, when I knew the SPGB (from meetings on Clapham Common), that it was a man named Sammy Cash, a well-known and active member of the Socialist Party.

As you noted, Ted Grant was ousted from the Militant Tendency by a man called Peter Taaffe, a thoroughly dishonest individual who claims that his existing group is the “socialist party”, known by the most appropriate acronym of SPEW.

Peter E. Newell, 

Colchester, Essex

A frustrated priest

Dear Editors,

The obituary on Ted Grant by DAP rather impressed me with its honesty and, even, generosity. I met Grant and Haston in 1948 at the RCP HQ on the Harrow Road. Haston was a fun fellow; Grant seemed a bit like a frustrated priest.

Richard Montague, 

Ballymena, Co. Antrim.

Editorial: Socialism & the Agitation for Freedom of Speech & Organisation (1944)

Editorial from the June 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Executive Committee of the S.P.G.B. received from Mr. V. Sastry, Secretary of the Federation of Indian Associations, a letter inviting us to co-operate in the formation of a Defence Committee with the objects of providing legal aid to persons recently arrested for offences against the Trade Disputes Act, 1927, and of conducting a campaign against that and other restrictive legislation. Subsequently the “Anti-Labour Law’s Victims Defence Committee” was established, with Mr. Sastry as Secretary, and with the active backing of various individuals, including one or two Labour M.P.s, and the following: J. Maxton, J. McGovern, Fenner Brockway, and Walter Padley (I.L.P.); Ted Grant (Revolutionary Communist Party); and M. Kavanagh (Freedom Press). The newly formed Committee appealed to us for a donation.

While the S.P.G.B. sympathises with the Committee’s declared object of resisting capitalist encroachments on the activities of workers and their organisations, we declined to associate with this committee or to contribute to it, just as in the past we have refused to associate with numerous other such bodies set up with similar objects. The S.P.G.B. does not consider it desirable to associate with other political organisations and individuals, the aims and methods of which we oppose, in order to further the specific object of agitating against a particular Act of Parliament or action of the police or the Government. Since our own Socialist aim and the democratic principles on which we work compel us to oppose organisations that are not working for Socialism, or that are advocating methods which will not achieve that aim, only confusion would be caused in the minds of the workers if we abandoned our basic opposition and allied ourselves with the organisations in question.

Even on the particular question of interference with working-class activities, experience has abundantly shown what confusion exists in the minds of the self-styled advocates of free speech and freedom of organisation. Normally the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress rank themselves, along with the Liberal Party and the Liberal Press and the Communist Party, as the natural guardians of working class rights. Yet we have recently seen the first two bodies defending the new anti-strike Regulation against which, among other measures, the newly-formed Defence Committee is protesting. Although at present the Liberals and the Liberal Manchester Guardian are inclined to oppose the Regulation, we recall that at the time of the suppression of the Dally Worker, the Guardian and other Liberal papers supported the suppression, though disagreeing with the method. As for the Communist Party, their Daily Worker (now allowed to appear again) has been asking the same authorities which suppressed the Daily Worker to take action against the Trotskyists, to which group belong the four people the present Defence Committee seeks to protect. Recently the Socialist Appeal (Mid-October, 1943), an organ of the Trotskyists, was protesting that the Communist organisation, Central Books, had refused to handle an Indian pamphlet about the famine. Socialist Appeal said : “Such is the love of the principle of ‘freedom of the press’ by these revolutionary gentlemen.” We, however, recall that the Trotskyist attitude in the past has been no better than that of the Communist Party. Trotsky and Lenin (before Trotsky’s exile from Russia) were united in their advocacy of suppressing the press and organisations of their opponents, including, of course, working-class organisations with which they did not happen to agree.

We know nothing of the Federation of Indian Associations which is sponsoring the Defence Committee to protect the Trotskyists, but in view of the known sympathy of some of the Committee’s supporters with the Congress Party in India, it is relevant to recall that the Indian advocates of independence from British rule are no different from the British capitalists in their attitude to working-class organisations. When the Indian Congress Party was in office in Bombay they introduced a Trade Disputes Bill modelled on the British Act. As the Indian Labour Journal (October 23, 1938) remarked, the bill “takes away the legitimate constitutional and powerful weapon of the workers, namely the strike, by declaring it illegal and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.”

The S.P.G.B. is in favour of allowing all groups and individuals unfettered rights of expressing their point of view, but we also recognise the very important fact that while capitalism lasts, the capitalists who control the machinery of government will always be able to use their power to suppress minority groups if they so desire. It is in the interests of the working class to resist such efforts so far as they are able, but working-class opinion needs much clarification before it recognises that working-class interests are not served by the suppression of any point of view, and, further, recognises that the suppression of working-class minorities will not end until the working class achieves democratic control of the machinery of government for the purpose of introducing Socialism.

Letters: Marx and/or Freud? (2001)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and/or Freud?

Dear Editors,

I found the articles and discussion in the January and February issues on ads, capitalist art, psychology and Amos’s letter interesting; indeed one can make a synthesis of all this, which I would like to try and do, basing my discussion on Amos’s confused critique.

Your reply (Letters, January) was one way of answering him: socialism will be able to expand production of useful things in an ecologically defensive manner. There is another approach, and that is to point out how we see socialism being established. We have always stressed the need for majority, working class political action, based on understanding of and desire for socialism.

Capitalism shapes our needs through ads–you are what you own! Socialist society will certainly not be one of massive consumption since we will develop a new ethos; ideas become material forces when they lay hold of the masses, I believe Marx noted. Amos is judging consumption in socialist society through the eyes of a pro-capitalist when he says that everyone should, or would, be on a par with Western workers. Whoever said the lifestyle of Western workers is desirable? Also we certainly agree with Marx’s idea that humans make their own history, but only within the realms of what is materially possible. This is historical materialism, not utopian thinking of post-modernist idealism.

Seen in this light Amos’s view that social democratic parties are the best bet against fascism and barbarism is ludicrous. Concepts like fascism and democracy do not exist in vacuo. Democracy can only be safeguarded and expanded with the growth of socialist consciousness. That is the lesson Germany 1933-45.

That period does, though, raise troubling questions for Marxists. Class consciousness does not arise entirely spontaneously, it would seem. Some irrational factor is at work. Wilhelm Reich saw this as a result of sexual repression and the patriarchal family structure. Reich, however, was an unrepentant Leninist, and if his theory has any credibility it must be applicable to the truly fascist period of Stalinism as well.

A more credible approach is that taken by Erich Fromm (even though he made the mistake of equating nationalisation with socialism). Fromm is a good antidote to the idealist, psychological nonsense being peddled now, despite his works being some 30-50 years old. He took the concept of alienation, to be found in Marx’s philosophical worldview, and attempted to give it a Freudo-style twist. His Fear of Freedom, The Sane Society, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness are great books.

Homo sapiens is not in control of the products of sinew and brain, relations to each other, has lost himself and his connection to nature. (It is also factually incorrect of Amos to state Marx wasn’t green—he was, and he need only read Marx to find out.) The impersonal forces can leave the individual truly crushed; open to neurosis and inclined to let someone else solve problems. Only by establishing democratic structures and common ownership (socialism) can the individual and society progress. In this respect can Reich’s idea of human emancipation (necessarily involving sexual emancipation) be defensible.

Capitalism creates the material grounding for socialism, but a society of alienated people. The dialectic, socialisation of production but not in society’s interest, will be solved in socialist revolution. As will be the dialectic of mind: rationality and irrationality. This concept answers those who wonder about anti-social behaviour in socialist society; it will regress.

I realise Freudo-Marxism isn’t held as being tenable by fellow comrades, so it is prudent you comment on it.

Yours for a sane society

G.C. Taylor, 

Brabrand, Denmark

Reply: 

It is true that we are Marxians rather than Freudians, historical materialists rather than believers in psychoanalysis. Freud himself of course was not a socialist, but in fact embraced the “human nature objection” in an extreme form. He was a pessimist who believed that without morality and government to channel human sexual energies constructively utter chaos would result. To their credit, some of his followers—Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm—did not go along with him on this and modified his theory to make the existence of a free, socialist society compatible with the Freudian view of human nature.

Reich’s The Sexual Revolution, written in the 1930s, has always been popular because it advocates a more relaxed attitude to sex—which Socialists share—but this message can be accepted without accepting the particular theory Reich put forward to justify it (which was very dubious and eventually led him to claim to have identified and to be able to measure “sexual energy” or “orgone” as he called it). Incidentally, although Reich was a member of the German Communist Party when he wrote it, he was soon expelled, partly because of it. In one of his later works, the pamphlet Listen, Little Man! he uses the term “state capitalism” in relation to Russia.

Marcuse’s Eros and Civilzation, like all his writings, is heavy going but his argument that abundance meant that sexual repression was no longer necessary found an echo amongst some socialists when it appeared in 1955.

You’re probably right about Fromm being the best of them, no doubt because (to the annoyance of the orthodox Freudians and even of Marcuse) he abandoned Freud’s explanations in terms of individual biology for social ones. The books of his you mention have always been popular amongst Socialist Party members—Editors.

Spying on the Trotskyists

Dear Editors,

In the article, “Chatham House and spies” (Socialist Standard, December 2000), I stated that the Security Service (MI5) has monitored, and heavily infiltrated Trotskyist organisations in this country, since 1943. In fact, the government’s Security Executive under the chairmanship of Viscount Swinton, using information obtained from MI5, reported under the heading of “subversive activities” on the British Union of Fascists, the Communist Party, pacifist and conscientious objectors; organisations, as well as Trotskyists, as early as 1941 (PRO: FO 371 32583).

In particular, the Security Executive considered the activities of Trotskyists in Britain, and concluded that nothing should be done to lessen their embarrassment to the Communist Party (PRO: FO 371 344 34416), and (PRO: FO 371 29523). Three years later, when the Trotskyists formed the Revolutionary Communist Party, Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, submitted a memorandum to the War Cabinet, in which he concluded that the Trotskyists had had little success in penetrating the Trade Unions. Among the leaders named was Ted Grant, the future leader of Militant Tendency, later ousted by the present leader, Peter Taaffe.

Peter E. Newell, 

Colchester, Essex

50 Years Ago: Another Fake Goes West (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exit the Revolutionary Communist Party

In July of this year the English Trotzkyists, the Revolutionary Communist Party, brought out a Special Number of their paper, the Socialist Appeal, consisting of a small four-page leaflet. If there were ever any doubts about the reformist character of the R.C.P., this four-page leaflet disposes of them for ever!

The front page of the leaflet contains nothing but the following, in large type:-

“DECLARATION

“On the Dissolution of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the entry of its members into the Labour Party.”

The second page informs us that after several months of discussion a Special National Conference was held in London, June 4th, 5th and 6th. and that the only items on the Agenda for this Conference were:-

“The current political situation in Britain: what forms the class struggle would take in the next period, and how best the energies and activities of its members could be utilised to further the cause of Socialism.”

We are told that:-

“After a two-days debate, this fully representative Conference decided, by a substantial majority, to dissolve the organisation and call upon the members of the Party to enter the Labour Party—to which the majority already pay the Trade Union political levy—as individual members. Within the Labour Party they would carry on the fight for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for a Socialist Britain.”

The last sentence is an exposure of mental bankruptcy; after originating as a challenge to the nationalism of the Stalinites the R.C.P. falls for the “Socialism in One Country” idea.

(From an article by “Gilmac”, Socialist Standard, September 1949)

Party News Briefs (1948)

Party News from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hackney Branch have now their own Speakers Class at Bethnal Green Library on Friday evenings. The aim is to develop a team of speakers for North and East London. This area has a number of excellent outdoor stations and it will ease pressure on the Central Propaganda Committee considerably if the branch can feed the stations with their own speakers. At present outdoor meetings are being held at Stamford Hill on Monday evenings, and at Fulbourne Street, Whitechapel Road (facing the London Hospital) on Wednesday evenings. The results are very encouraging.


Outdoor Meetings generally now need the support of party members more than ever before. The Conservative Party is making a great outdoor propaganda drive with many meetings all over London. They start their meetings with a big nucleus of supporters, which makes it much easier going for the speakers. Our members are urged to get to our meetings early and give them a good start off.


A Special Edition of bound volumes of five of our pamphlets is being prepared for public library use. These have been solidly bound and lettered in gold “Collected Socialist Pamphlets.” They are not for sale to party members or the public, but are reserved exclusively for public and university libraries. Wide-awake librarians will not miss this chance of adding a well-bound 307 page volume to their shelves containing objective socialist facts and views to place alongside the pseudo socialist literature of “ Communist” and Labour authors. The price is 8s. 6d.


The B.B.C. still refuses us time on the air. Our efforts have so far been fruitless, and we decided that the time had arrived to use some kind of pressure, or at least get publicity, in another direction. So we wrote to the Manchester Guardian and they published our letter on June 18th. We said in our letter that while there appeared to be fairly general agreement in principle that minority political views should be heard, in practice the B.B.C. interpreted the principle in a narrow and exclusive way. Mr. Burke, a former Assistant Postmaster General said in 1947 in the House of Commons that the minority should be given a fair chance and that to put only one aspect was to falsify the whole truth. The view put forward by the Socialist Party of Great Britain was not expressed by any of the majority or minority political parties selected by the B.B.C. for a hearing on the air, but in reply to our many requests to the B.B.C. we have been invariably told that they were unable to arrange a discussion in which we could be heard. This was in spite of the fact that two members of Parliament (one Labour and one Conservative) had told us of their desire to take part in a joint discussion with us. The B.B.C. were informed of this but they made it clear to us that in no circumstances would they allow us to broadcast. We concluded our letter to the Manchester Guardian by saying that it would be interesting to know on what ground the B.B.C. decided that certain minority views were to be permanently excluded. An allocation of only a small amount of time would be reasonable, but with this absolute ban it appeared equally reasonable that they should declare the ground on which it was based. We are not aware of any results from this letter and it is probable that the B.B.C. have decided to keep quiet.


Ealing Branch’s Debate with Christopher Hollis (Conservative M.P. for Devizes) at Ealing Town Hall was the most successful indoor meeting held by the Branch in Ealing. The hall was packed and numbers had to be turned away. H. Young was the party’s representative, and he dealt very adequately with Hollis’s somewhat original interpretation of Conservative policy. A collection of over £10 was taken.


A Manchester Comrade is giving us a very inspiring example of how the party literature can be sold. During the last two months he has disposed of over thirteen hundred copies of the pamphlet “Socialist Party—its Principles and Policy” by personally interviewing residents in various parts of Manchester. He has sent us a long and interesting letter describing the methods he adopts. He is keeping a record of all purchasers and passing it over to Manchester Branch for them to follow up.


An attractive new poster to advertise the “S.S.” is now at the printers. It will he found useful at meetings and for newsagents display boards. A specimen copy will be sent to each branch as soon as they are ready.

Debate with Trotskyists: “Is Russia Capitalist?”
On July 1st at Conway Hall D. Fenwick for the S.P.G.B. debated with R. Tearse for the Revolutionary Communist Party. In his opening half-hour Fenwick carefully defined Capitalism and Socialism in the usual Marxian terms and argued that the existence in Russia of a propertyless working class living by selling its labour-power for wages, and producing commodities for sale on the market shows that it is not Socialism but a form of State Capitalism. Admittedly it had not developed exactly on the lines of capitalism in the Western countries. Trotsky in “The Revolution Betrayed” had asserted that the term “State Capitalism” is meaningless, but certainly Lenin did not think so for in his “The Chief Task of Our Times” he had argued that State Capitalism would be a step forward for industrially backward Russia. The contrasts of riches and poverty in Russia and the growth of bondholding are features of Capitalism not Socialism. What is the interest paid to the bondholders if not surplus value resulting from the exploitation of the workers? Fenwick emphasised that the achievement of Socialism presupposes a socialist working class, it cannot he imposed by a dictatorship.

R. Tearse in reply claimed that the S.P.G.B. is wrong in describing the 1917 revolution as a bourgeois revolution. It would be a peculiar capitalist revolution that expropriates the capitalists. The S.P.G.B. idea of all the workers moving together towards Socialism is wishful thinking, and the notion of Capitalism and Socialism being divided by a sort of Chinese Wall is erroneous. In the introduction to “Civil War in France” Engels had conceived of a whole new generation after the working class seizure of power before it would be possible to have fully-fledged Socialism. The R.C.P. never claimed that Socialism exists in Russia. Marx and Engels, in the Communist Manifesto, when they wrote of revolutionary measures such as steeply-graduated income tax, and the centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, obviously envisaged the continuance of the wages system and commodity production in the transition period after the workers had gained power. The first essential step for the workers is to secure the centralisation of large-scale industry in the hands of the State as had been done in Russia. Inequality exists but this does not prove the existence of Capitalism. The rich in Russia are the artists and writers but in the S.P.G.B. pamphlet “Socialism” it is claimed that these better-paid workers are still members of the working class.

Bondholding is a very small feature in relation to the whole economy. The bondholder does not control undertakings. The bureaucracy may receive parasitic income from the exploitation of the working class but accumulation of capital through the individual capitalist and the resulting capitalist crises of boom and slump do not exist in Russia. What social group constitutes the capitalist class in Russia? He challenged Fenwick to answer. As regards the R.C.P.’s willingness to support Russia in war, this is justified because there you have a progressive economy based on the nationalisation of the whole economy.

In further contributions to the debate Fenwick referred to Marx’s statement of the possibility of the workers overthrowing the bourgeoisie and of this merely serving the development of the bourgeois revolution itself as happened in France in 1794 (quoted in “State and Socialist Revolution” by Martov). He also quoted from “Socialism, Utopian, and Scientific” where Engels showed that the nationalisation of industries does not lessen their capitalist nature. Russia was in fact affected by the 1931 crisis like other countries. He referred to the change in the law which allows holders of State bonds in Russia to bequeath them to their heirs and quoted Trotsky’s statement in “Revolution Betrayed” that if any such development occurred it would be a victory for the bureaucracy and would mean their conversion into a new ruling class. The measures at the end of Section II of the Communist Manifesto, showed that at that time the immediate establishment of Socialism after the capture of power was not entertained by Marx or Engels; but industry and knowledge had undergone great development since then. In 1872 Engels had said that the passage in question would have been very differently worded under the different conditions existing at the later date.

R. Tearse repeated his argument that wholesale nationalisation is different in kind from the nationalisation of sectors of industry as in this country. In Russia nationalisation would form the basis of Socialism after the transition period. The 1931 crisis did not affect Russia in the fundamental way it affected other countries. It was not the result of the accumulation of capital in the hands of private capitalists. As regards the quotation from “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific” about the capitalist nature of nationalised industries, it should not be overlooked that in the very next sentence Engels argued that though the capitalist relation is not done away with it is “brought to a head, it topples over.”

In Russia industry as a whole has been taken over by the State and the anarchy of private appropriation of surplus value does not exist. The defeat of Russia in war would be a defeat for the working class and a further lease of life for capitalism. There must be a transition period between capitalism and socialism and during this period capital and wages would exist but this alone does not make it capitalism. Though in 1872 Engels had said he and Marx would not in the changed conditions lay special stress on the measures proposed in the Communist Manifesto Engels never said the measures were wrong and he continued to call them revolutionary measures.

The debate was well-attended and the audience showed the closest attention to the by no means simple clash of argument. A collection of £10 15s. was taken up.

Clifford Groves,

General Secretary.

By The Way: Give the Dogs a Thousand Lashes, Damme ! (1944)

The By The Way column from the December 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Give the Dogs a Thousand Lashes, Damme !

The mentality of some Tory M.P.s is weird and wonderful.

Thus we have Mr. D. Robertson (Conservative, Streatham) dilating on the idleness of the men employed on bomb damage repairs.

  He mentioned a case of men who were brought to Streatham in luxury coaches from a hostel at 8 o'clock and went off to breakfast at 10 o'clock.
  They should have had their breakfast before they left the hostel, but did not because they had lain too long in their beds. (Evening Standard, October 27th, 1944.)

Just fancy! Luxury coaches—the louts! Of course, M.P.s don't ride to the House in luxury coaches, not them— usually plain private (“unluxury”) cars, or just common old taxis.

  "If this idleness continues,” declared Mr. Robertson, "I say put the young men into the infantry and let the older men have a spell of unemployment.”

There for you! The young men can smash more houses up in the Army and the older ones do nothing! How Mr. Robertson can imagine this is going to put anyone's roof back, we can't think!

One or two members of the Socialist Party working on war damage repairs in South London have a suggestion; they propose that Mr. Robertson have a week off from the House of Commons and take a turn on the roofs down in Streatham. He won't do much work, of course, but it would give him a marvellous appetite for those wonderful dinners they serve in the Commons restaurant. Perhaps he might feel like lying in his bed Sunday morning as a result; he wouldn’t have to be at the House, anyway, for they don't sit Saturdays or Sundays.

Our comrades say they are quite willing to do a week in the House of Commons for every day Mr. Robertson gets his hands dirty down at Streatham.


Trouble Down on the Farm

As if in answer to Mr. Robertson, the Norfolk War Agricultural Committee has informed the London Star (November 4th) that the Italian prisoners are rather difficult.

  When they are slack, lazy or disobedient we can report them to their camp, but what happens? They may get a spell of detention, but while they are away doing their punishment the farms are deprived of their services, indifferent though they may be.
  We have also found that punishment does not seem to improve them. As a fact, a spell of detention does not have any salutary effect on them, neither does it seem to have any terrors for them.
  And when they return to the farm they are worse than ever. The result is that the farmers will not report them for minor breaches of discipline.

And these are the boys we went to Italy to “liberate”!

This War

More Trouble. Now Thorburn Wiant, Associated Press correspondent back in London after two years in China, wrote : —

   There is probably no more efficient dictatorship than General Chiang Kai-shek’s party.
   There are secret police, concentration camps and firing squads for those who dare to speak, write or act out of turn. (Daily Mirror, November 1st, l944.)

Come, come, Thorburn! Chiang may be more efficient than Hitler—but not more than .Marshal Stalin!.

He also says the Chinese are not fighting the Japs at all—but one another.

We give it up!

A General Tells About the Cause of War

Lieutenant-General Sir G. Le Q. Martel, K.C.B., is writing on Conscription after the War.

  There is a universal hope that after the war the great nations will get together and solve the international problems of trade and currency, and thus eliminate unemployment and poverty. This would remove the main causes of world wars and the need for large fighting forces. (Evening Standard, September 27th, 1944.) 

Unemployment and poverty are not solved by trade or currency reorganisation, but the worthy General is certainly getting rather warm on the causes of modern war.

Perhaps, as he has retired, now he can write this sort of thing. We can’t imagine General Montgomery telling his troops that the war is caused by unemployment and poverty, though.

Virtue is its Own Reward

The Press is already speculating on how much Parliament is going to give the heads of the fighting services when the war is won. After the last war a sum of £585,000 was voted by Parliament to be distributed to Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals.

Admiral Jellico got £50,000, as did French and Lord Allenby. Sir Hugh Trenchard got £10,000 (Air Force), Sir David Beatty £10,000, and Sir Douglas Haig £100,000 and a statue in Whitehall.

  “It seems clear that any sum voted by Parliament must considerably exceed the £585,000 of the last war,” says one London evening paper (Star, September 7th).

Oh! quite clear! And most essential to cut down on expenditure for the rank and file to do so. Those who lose limbs will lie supplied with mass-produced standardised “Woolworth” arms and legs—free of all charge. Better artificial legs—for the benefit of the workers.

Dreaming of Thee !

The following is from the Daily Mirror (October 25th, 1944):—

   Have Your Holidays by Hypnotism, says Doctor.
   Tired and jaded war workers can have all the invigorating benefits of a seaside holiday without ever going near a beach. It can all he done at home—by hypnotism.
  So, at least, says Dr. Alexander Cannon, of the Isle of Man, former psychiatrist to the L.C.C. mental hospital service.
  Dr. Cannon suggests the hypnotism may be based on a wavelength in some way common to the length of the so-called short wave.”
  “The tired and worn-out worker in this dreamland of hypnosis,” he says, “can be made to walk along the seashore on a warm, sunny day, with a cool, refreshing breeze, and to feel the magnetic power being drawn in through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet as he leisurely walks until he feels wonderful.”
  “Having allowed this dream picture to be implanted in his mind for a period of from twenty to forty minutes,” the doctor adds, “the worker can then be awakened with no recollection of his dreamland tour but with a feeling of energy, power and revitalisation which may last anything from one to four weeks or longer.”

So this is where “psychology” has got us to. Starting out with telling us that the cause of the trouble is our repressions, going on, like Max Eastman, to inform us that the reason Karl Marx expounded scientific Socialism is because be wanted Hegel for his father, finishing up with fortune telling and psycho-analysis.

We are quite amenable to the idea of having this dream implanted on us if Dr. Cannon will undertake to implant one on our guv'nor on the same terms—viz., are will go away to the seaside for twenty minutes in our dreams, if he (the guv'nor) will agree to dream that we’ve done a week’s work and pay us for it (in real money --not dreams).

Great “Legal” Victory of the Working Class

We gather from the Socialist Appeal (September) that the quashing of the sentences of imprisonment passed on the members of the Revolutionary Communist Party is “one of the most important legal victories in the struggle against anti-labour legislation” which the working class has gained.

We must confess to some mild surprise. For ourselves, we have always held that the only real “legal victory” was when the working class captured the machinery of government (including the armed forces) by voting themselves IN and the boss OUT, which would enable them to enact and enforce laws.

Are we to understand that “revolutionary” Trotskyists have now forsaken armed insurrection and direct action for pleading at the bar of (capitalist) justice?

The New Statesmen !

Every week the New Statesman awards five shillings for the most idiotic statement published in the Press sent in by its readers.

We submit the following :— 

  Somebody should now get up, as they did in 1940-41, and point out that Southern England is part of the same battlefront as Normandy, and that the toughest part of the war is still to come. If the German threat to send rocket shells does mature, something of the sort will have to be done. I believe the response would be much as it was in 1940—production would increase and so would popular resolution. We should in our hearts all rejoice that in this war we are not “sending our sons” only, but sharing in some small way in their risks. (New Statesman, July 1st, 1944.)

Please send our five shillings award to Socialist Standard, Rugby Chambers.

New Insecticide

Reference has already been made in these colmuns to the new insecticide, D.D.T.

It is stated that this new compound has already stopped an incipient typhus epidemic in Naples, and been used with deadly effect on bugs, fleas, cockroaches, beetles, moths, lice and mosquitoes. 

It is a great preventative of malaria and dysentery. British troops now have a standard issue of D.D.T. impregnated shirts which effectively protect the wearer against lice for two months even after regular washing. (Times, August 2nd.)

It will be available to civilians after the war. So. perhaps, ends the career of some of the greatest pests of poverty-stricken workers—their poverty, however, will remain.

D.D.T. was discovered by an obscure German student chemist employed by the Basle firm of J. R. Geigy in 1874.

It lay dormant until 1942. when the British branch of the Geigy Company brought it to the notice of the British Government. What became of the inventor is not known.

Explosions for all

  “The reason given on Thursday for the dismissal recently of 1,000 war workers, 900 of them women, from a factory in the West Riding of Yorkshire was that the country is so overstocked with shells that to get rid of them, firing day and night, would take two years. “Two hundred workers are reported to have been dismissed by another Yorkshire firm, but all the 1,200 are said to have been absorbed by engineering concerns in Bradford and Leeds or given jobs as conductresses on buses in these two cities. About fifty have been permitted to return to their peace-time jobs in the textile trade.”—(Manchester Guardian, November 11th, 1944.)

Free Health (? !) Service for Workers

  “Frank statements about the methods of some medical men are made to-day by Dr. Andrew Kefalas, of Sheffield. After pointing out that one reason why many people go to the chemist instead of the doctor is that they cannot afford to pay both, he says this in the British Medical Journal:
  There is a more ugly side to this scandal and that is that so many of us neither prescribe nor dispense at all. We simply dope out stock mixtures. 

Cutting the Cards.

  For myself, I would, in case of illness, as soon lay out at half-dozen patent preparations, select one of them by cutting a pack of cards, and take my chance on the one which turned up, as swallow some of the  'mist this' and ‘mist that' which are foisted upon the people who chance the doctor instead of the chemist.” (Evening Standard, September 12th, 1944.)

“ Good God! said God. I've got MY Work Cut Out.”

  “Britain as a nation is not ready to have victory granted to her,” says Rev. A. M. Hay. of St Paul's, Braintree, Essex, “and that is why the weather—God's weather— has been almost persistently against us since D-Day.”
  Writing in the church magazine, he says: “If there is any doubt that we are not ready for victory, let us ask ourselves how are the majority of people in onr land preparing to celebrate? With revelling rather than with humble thanksgiving.”
Mr. Hay told the Daily Mirror last night: “It was God's good weather at Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain that saved us.
  “I believe strongly that God uses the weather as an instrument in his moral government,” Mr. Hay added.

(Daily Mirror, November 9th, 1944.)

Horatio

50 Years Ago: The Weakness of the Trotskyists (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Due to the Trotskyist belief in "revolutionary situations," no explanations of the nature of Socialism will be found in the columns of the Socialist Appeal. As the revolution will take place at any moment, there is no need for this painstaking work. The line of their propaganda is rather like the instructions of a general staff to its army — "Second Front — and the tasks of the working class." "Workers must fight for equal pay.” etc.

In spite of their claims to be revolutionary, their official policy contains the usual reformist nonsense, such as the "Nationalisation of the land, mines, banks, transport and all big industry.” "A rising scale of wages to meet increased cost of living,” "Confiscation of war profits." etc.

The Trotskyist attitude to the war is vague and ill-defined. Whilst denouncing the war as imperialist, they want the "unconditional defence of the Soviet Union against all imperialist powers, despatch of arms, food and essential materials to the Soviet Union."

The Trotskyist claim to be revolutionary is ill-founded. Once again we insist that the S.P.G.B. method is the only revolutionary one, and we will continue to do what the Trotskyists do not do — advocate Socialism as the only cure for social ills.

(From an article by G. Ewbank in the Socialist Standard, October 1944)

The Weakness of the Trotskyists (1944)

From the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recognising the class antagonisms that arise from the capitalist ownership of the means of production, the Socialist Party holds that the workers can only solve their problems—poverty, war, unemployment—by the overthrow of the capitalist class and the institution of a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of living.

That this can only be accomplished by the workers sending a majority of Socialist delegates to Parliament is a fact recognised by the S.P.G.B. Thus, in order to do this, the workers must themselves understand Socialism, or, in other words, become Socialists. The S.P.G.B. therefore devotes itself to the unspectacular business of educating the workers—the making of Socialists. When the workers become Socialists they will change the basis of society. Thus the policy of the Party is revolutionary, because it follows the only course that will produce the change.

The Trotskyists, known variously throughout their history as the Revolutionary Socialist League, the Militant Communist League, etc., also claim to be the only revolutionary party in this country.

To examine this claim it is necessary to go back a few years to explain briefly the origin of the Trotskyists. The Russian Revolution in 1917 resulted in the political supremacy of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky. The breakdown of Russian society after World War No. 1 and the inability of the Russian capitalists under Kerensky to deal with the situation resulted in the Bolsheviks being swept into power on a programme of Peace, Land and Bread. The S.P.G.B., basing its analysis of the situation upon the material conditions existing at the time in Russia, pointed out that the Bolsheviks, in spite of their Marxist phrases, could not impose Socialism upon an economically backward country, and that Russia would have to go through a stage of capitalism before a Socialist society could be possible in Russia, and then only in conjunction with the class-conscious workers of the rest of the capitalist world.

After the death of Lenin, the Bolsheviks divided into two rival factions under Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin believed in the possibility of establishing Socialism in one country, whilst Trotsky still believed that the Russian Revolution could be the starting point of a world revolution. The material needs of Russia, living in a capitalist world, resulted in the victory of Stalin, the expulsion of Trotsky, and the building up of a strong pro-capitalist state in Russia.

That the Soviet Union has now a firm place in the capitalist sun and has dropped the facade of Communism, such as the Comintern, is proof of the correctness of the S.P.G.B. method of analysis—historical materialism. This is not the method of the Trotskyists, despite their revolutionary jargon. Their conception of history is just a belief that working-class politics is a game of leaders, that the revolution would have taken place but for the fact that the workers were betrayed by their leaders, that Stalin “betrayed the revolution.” This surface scratching of history is typical of Trotskyist literature. According to them, every political upheaval, every wave of strikes, would have resulted in the revolution but for the fact that workers lacked “revolutionary leadership.”

The revolution is always round the corner. They believe that one day a “ revolutionary situation ” will arise in which they will seise power and lead the masses to victory. This wearisome nonsense abounds in the columns of the Socialist Appeal (the Trotskyist organ).

It is obvious that there is something lacking in a working class that is continually side-tracked. It is precisely because the workers lack Socialist knowledge that reformist leaders rise to power. If the workers’ leaders do not represent the interests of workers, they do certainly reflect the outlook of the workers. When they do acquire Socialist understanding, the workers will not require leaders—revolutionary or otherwise.

Due to the Trotskyist belief in “revolutionary situations,” no explanations of the nature of Socialism will be found in the columns of the Socialist Appeal. As the revolution will take place at any moment, there is no need for this painstaking work. The line of their propaganda is rather like the instructions of a general staff to its army—“Second Front—and the tasks of the working class,” “Workers must fight for equal pay,” etc.

In spite of their claims to be revolutionary, their official policy contains the usual reformist nonsense, such as the “Nationalisation of the land, mines, banks, transport and all big industry." "A rising scale of wages to meet increased cost of living." "Confiscation of war profits," etc.

The Trotskyist attitude to the war is vague and ill-defined. Whilst denouncing the war as imperialist, they want the "unconditional defence of the Soviet Union against all imperialist powers, despatch of arms, food and essential materials to the Soviet Union."

The Trotskyist claim to be revolutionary is ill-founded. Once again we insist that the S.P.G.B. method is the only revolutionary one, and we will continue to do what the Trotskyists do not do—advocate Socialism as the only cure for social ills.

G. Ewbank

Another Fake Goes West! (1949)

From the September 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exit the Revolutionary Communist Party

The Russian Bolshevik movement as such really began with Lenin's scheme for control of the working-class movement by a band of trusted "leaders." After the Bolsheviks came to power they and their supporters deluged the world with literature; one of the main burdens of this literature was the necessity of correct leadership in the working-class movement. It was claimed that the main trouble with the Social Democratic Parties was "bad leaders," not lack of understanding on the part of the workers. From that time onwards understanding took a back seat and passionate controversies over the merits and demerits of leaders became the fashion, accompanied by bitter personal attacks. In the East and in the West what had claimed to be a movement for Socialism degenerated into a sordid and acrimonious struggle between "leaders" with the watchword "Woe to the vanquished."

From its beginning the Bolshevik movement was a struggle of new "leaders" against old, carried through with cunning and intrigue, and its principal exponent, Lenin, contended that the workers were incapable of developing from their own ranks the type of leaders that could establish the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"; these leaders had to come from outside, as Lenin himself had done, from the ranks of the well-to-do. Lenin's ideas were the offspring of political conditions in Russia at the time which reflected the conditions of Europe at an earlier epoch. Even before the Bolshevik uprising the leaders within the party were at loggerheads, bitterly attacking each other for alleged "Rightism" and incapacity. After the Bolsheviks had captured power acrimony and recriminations became even fiercer, interfering with the conduct of affairs, and the uneasy co-operation of those at the head of the dictatorship was only held together by the personality of Lenin. After his death the struggle between the leaders for control of the government broke out into open warfare and the first important loser and casualty was Leon Trotzky, up yo Lenin's death the most popular leader next to him and one of the idols of the blind worshippers of Bolshevism in the Western world.

A partnership between Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, which made better use of the Party machine and of dirty linen washing, drove Trotzky out of the Party and finally into exile. He was a victim of his own wrong conceptions and of the machine he had helped to strengthen. In the course of time a new partnership between Stalin, Bukharin and Radek disposed of Zinoviev and Kamenev; then Bukharin and Radek were jettisoned, and so it went on until almost all the old Bolsheviks had either been executed, imprisoned or driven into exile, leaving the more cunning and ruthless Stalin the supreme victor with a network of secret police, henchmen and bodyguards to protect him from further aspirants to his throne. The economic circumstances that were the basis of these struggles and intrigues, and the cold brutality that went with them, have been described in these columns over the years; they are outside the subject of this particular article.

When Trotzky went into exile he carried on the struggle against Stalin from abroad and was the theoretical exponent of a new group, the Fourth International, more familiar as the "Trotzkyists." In England the Trotzkyists formed the "Revolutionary Communist Party." Between the Trotzkyists and the Stalin group there was no fundamental distinction; the former alleged that when Stalin changed his policy to "Socialism in One Country" he had "betrayed the Revolution," gone over to the reformist camp and deserted the World Revolution. This was just fantasy. The Bolshevik movement had never been anything but reformist as far as the Socialist Revolution was concerned. It was only revolutionary in the sense that it was helping capitalist production to replace a backward and semi-feudal production. It had turned back to borrow from the Jacobins of the French Revolution and from the Blanquist movement of the middle of last century. There is at least this to be said for Stalin: his present policy us the logical outcome of ideas that held sway in the minds of those who built up the early Bolshevik movement, whereas Trotzky was trying to side-step the inevitable result of the practical working out of those ideas in the Bolshevik state that he had so passionately supported.

In July of this year the English Trotzkyists, the Revolutionary Communist Party, brought out a Special Number of their paper, the Socialist Appeal, consisting of a small four-page leaflet. If there were ever any doubts about the reformist character of the R.C.P., this four-page leaflet disposes of them for ever!

The front page of the leaflet contains nothing but the following, in large type:—

"DECLARATION.

"On the Dissolution of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the entry of its members into the Labour Party."

The second page informs us that after several months of discussion a Special National Conference was held in London, June 4th, 5th and 6th. and that the only items on the Agenda for this Conference were:—

"The current political situation in Britain: what forms the class struggle would take in the next period, and how best the energies and activities of its members could be utilised to further the cause of Socialism."

We are told that:—

"After a two-days debate, this fully representative Conference decided, by a substantial majority, to dissolve the organisation and call upon the members of the Party to enter the Labour Party—to which the majority already pay the Trade Union political levy—as individual members. Within the Labour Party they would carry on the fight for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for a Socialist Britain."

The last sentence is an exposure of mental bankruptcy; after originating as a challenge to the nationalism of the Stalinites the R.C.P. falls for the "Socialism in One Country" idea. We also like the touching phrase "to which the majority already pay the trade union political levy." If they had thought of the "Socialist Britain" and the political levy ideas beforehand they would have saved themselves the trouble and disappointment of forming a party. The R.C.P. is only one more of those impotent groups that have worked themselves into a perspiration ranting against the Labour Party and then, when their excitement has subsided, gone back where they really belong, to sleep peacefully in its fold along with the other sheep.

The reformist character of the R.C.P. is simply evident in this four-page leaflet which considers that the proper policy to be followed is further steps in the direction of nationalisation and only criticizes the Labour Government because it believes the Labour Government has not gone far enough. Again on the second page we read:—

"While the Labour Government has introduced a series of economic and political reforms, we do not believe that these reforms have gone far enough, or that they have basically undermined the capitalist structure of the country. The experience of two years of nationalisation has brought to the forefront the problem of workers' control and management of the nationalised industries; of further nationalisations and inroads into capitalist enterprise—key questions for a future Socialist development of the country."

In what way nationalisation has made inroads into capitalist enterprise we are not told, but it is interesting to notice that it has not basically undermined the capitalist structure of society—so they are going inside to carry on the same policy! In fact there is not a glimmer anywhere in the leaflet that the members of the R.C.P. have any idea of what Socialism is; instead they confuse it with nationalisation and defend the basic economic structure of Russia from the same point of view.

The immediate impetus for dissolving the Party appears to be contained in a paragraph on the third page:—

"An offensive against Capitalism is above all necessary to secure a decisive victory for Labour at the forthcoming General Election and to effectively combat Tory reaction."

So the offensive against Capitalism, according to them, consists in supporting a government that resists wage increases, breaks strike, prepares for war and generally carries on the fundamental traditions of Capitalism by ensuring that capitalist investors hold on to their privileged position of living on the backs of the workers!

One mystery the leaflet does not solve; why the members of the R.C.P. ever thought of wasting time and energy forming the R.C.P. when the Labour Party so adequately expresses their lack of understanding.

The R.C.P. was a fake revolutionary party, battening on the impetuosity and genuine enthusiasm of misguided workers who were perplexed by the antics of Russia. It demonstrates once again that Communist Parties, Left, Right or Centre, along with the fellow-grovellers, help to mobilise the workers for the familiar route march along the reformer's road in the bosom of futility.

So ends, ingloriously, a brief and uneasy span of spurious Marxism.

Gilmac.

The Theory of State Capitalism (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"The fact of the matter is that the credit for this particular form of state capitalism should go back to the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who taught Jock Haston his Marxism in the first place (cf Against the Stream, p. 251) and had promulgated the theory as far back as 1918. For it was Haston who first raised the question of state capitalism within the Revolutionary Communist Party, not only as a purely Russian phenomenon but in global terms, both in the group's internal bulletin (War and the International, pp. 182-5) and in a series of articles in Socialist Appeal (mid-August to mid-September 1947). In fact Cliff's remit from Mandel when he first came to Britain was specifically to argue against these 'state capitalist' heresies, and what happened was that in the course of the dispute the contestants changed sides. Anyone who wishes to make a serious investigation of the whole topic should consult the above sources, as well as the SPGB's position, which was reissued as a pamphlet in the same year as Cliff first published his own, though we have to admit that Cliff's logic is inferior to theirs, since they dated Russia's capitalist revolution back to 1917."

—from a review of Alex Callinicos's book Trotskyism in Revolutionary History, Autumn 1991.

Why I joined the SPGB (1975)

From the November 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the nineteen-thirties it was commonplace for meetings to be held at street corners. Many sites became well-known. There were fewer cars and no TV. The audiences were attentive, asked questions and took part in discussion. Many workers became interested in politics at such meetings. I was an example. Apart from a critical attitude to Religion, as a youth, I took most things for granted.

It was in 1933 that I first stopped to listed to a meeting. I was eighteen years old. When I heard the speaker say we were "slaves" I stayed to hear more. I may have heard words like "capitalism", "socialism", "wage-labour" before but never thought much about them. The speaker urged workers to organize themselves as a class and end the system that exploited them and was the cause of their poverty". This impressed me as I had often wondered what gave other people the right to order me about, so I was in the right frame of mind. I stayed until the end. I bought a pamphlet for 1d called From Slavery to Freedom and that title suited me fine. I could use a bit of freedom. It gave me an inkling as to what Socialism was all about. I went back to Rushcroft Road time and again. Meetings began to act like a magnet. I was drawn to them. I was out every night listening and learning. I was soon familiar with the various parties. Amongst them the SPGB and I listened to their speakers. It was one of them that I heard the first time. I had become a "Political Animal".

However, if there was a wrong turning, I took it. I was going to have to learn the hard way. I was attracted by the rallies in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square which were always "Against Fascism". I got the idea that this was helping Socialism. This was unfortunate as I was going off at a tangent. But I wanted action. I wanted to be in the middle of things.

At the time of the Spanish Civil War, whilst crossing Westminster Bridge, our long rambling columns were confronted by arm-raised lines of BUF (Mosleyite) supporters. There were thousands in our demonstration and we outnumbered and out-shouted the "Blackshirts". We held up clenched fists in reply to the "Hitler salute". With our chanting and banners proclaiming "Arms for Spain" we felt we had won a victory for the forces of "peace and socialism".

In 1936 I joined the Labour Party because I considered it "the mass party of the working class". I was not sure what they meant, but it sounded fine at the time. Anyway I was only joining to help turn it into a genuine socialist party. My fellow members were reformists and I was going to win them over to socialism. I now regarded myself as a sound revolutionary. I did not entertain any doubts on that score.

I soon found myself engaged in other activities. Soon after becoming a member of the LP I came into contact with the "Militant Labour League" and joined. They were one of several Trotskyist factions. I was in fact a member of a party within another party. The atmosphere was very conspiratorial. Secret meetings were held regularly to decide strategy. The object was to try and get control of local Labour Party Branches. The so-called Communist Party was playing a similar game. According to the MLL the basis of socialism had been laid in Russia in 1917 by the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky, but Stalin had betrayed the October Revolution, usurped power and built up his bureaucracy. The USSR was a "degenerated workers' state". The object of the League was to defend the basis of this "workers' state", build up a fourth International, work for world revolution and overthrow Stalin, at the same fighting against the Labour leadership in Britain. We sure had plenty to get on with. But we were not deterred: we were Bolsheviks ready for any task. With the "deepening of the crisis of world capitalism" the working class would rally to the Vanguard of the Masses. That was us. We were all set to win the "leadership" stakes.

We did not bother to explain to other workers what socialism was. That was a waste of time. The workers would trust and follow us. We would raise the right slogans at the right time and we were the right leaders. Had not the mantle of Lenin and Trotsky fallen on us? The tasks in the "coming period" was immense. Programmes dealing with "perspectives" were constantly issued. We would be dealing with world-shattering events. Hitler came to power because of false leadership of the German workers. Victory for the world working class would come, under the Banner of the Fourth International. Each of us saw himself as a potential Trotsky directing Red Armies all over the world. We did not have long to wait for events to start moving. "The death agony of capitalism" started getting under way, or so we thought, when World War Two began in 1939.

During the war, at a conference, all the groups united to form the "Revolutionary Communist Party". We listened to a recording of Trotsky's voice. Delegates were overcome and had tears in their eyes as they heard the "Old Man's" voice. We, the self-appointed leaders, then all shook hands and sang the Internationale. The ruling class did not have time to tremble, however, for this new party sank soon after this emotional launching. All the "perspectives" were wrong. None of the forecasts of world revolution materialized. It was the RCP that collapsed and not capitalism. There was no turning of the masses to the vanguard, and there was no death agony of capitalism.

Disillusioned, it came to me in 1945 that the workers of the world were not class-conscious. They did not want Socialism. I had to adjust my thinking. After the dust settled it was clear the post-war world was not going to be different. The working class supported capitalism and it was going to continue. At the end of the war it was "back to work" as usual for wages. The only crisis that occurred was if workers could not get their old jobs back.

My pipe-dreams were coming to an end. I could not agree with the Trotskyist slogan "For a Third Labour Government". I refused to vote for it at the 1945 General Election. I left the Labour Party and, at the same time, broke with Bolshevism although this was regarded as "impossible". It was like breaking out of a stifling prison and coming back into the real world.

I avidly started reading the SOCIALIST STANDARD again. In the light of bitter experience, I had to re-learn all the fundamentals of Socialism. I listened again to what the SPGB had to say. Hearing their speakers was like a breath of fresh air. I went to their lectures and classes. I was thoroughly routed in arguments about Russia. I felt confused when members of the SPGB asked me what a "workers' state" was; why did the Russian workers pay themselves wages? Did Karl Marx write a book called Capital or a book called "Dialectical Materialism"? And much else besides. Understanding, at last, the materialist conception of history I was able to refute the "workers' state" nonsense, and beginning to see the Trotskyite so-called "theories" were ridiculous.

I never met one Trotskyite who advocated the abolition of the wages system or understood its implications. No-one ever spoke about production solely for use. They do not know the difference between the common ownership of the tools of production with democratic control by the whole of society and what they call "nationalization under workers' control". The followers of Trotsky are anti-working class because they distort the meaning of Socialism. They hinder the spread of genuine Socialist knowledge.

I could see now how wrong I had been been, and I had much to learn. Despite my mistakes I had not turned sour about Socialism. I applied to join the SPGB and was accepted in 1946. Socialist understanding expands when you become a member. I recall meeting again in the Camberwell branch our late Comrade Frank Dawe, whom I had known very slightly over the years. He had asked me what I had been up to, and I told him. He gave me a quizzical smile and said: "You have been doing what I call 'boring' in the Labour Party. All you do in fact is to 'bore' in at one end and then 'bore' out again at the other, without achieving anything. Put it down to experience!" That just about sums it all up.

J. C. Gormley

Death of a tendency (2006)

From the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent death of Ted Grant at the age of 93 has been a landmark, albeit a minor one, in British political history.

Grant was the last of the three great gurus of the British Trotskyist movement and the eminence grise of what became known as the Militant Tendency. Along with his two main Trotskyist rivals, Gerry Healy (of the Socialist Labour League/Workers' Revolutionary Party) and Tony Cliff (of International Socialism/the Socialist Workers' Party) he had a considerable input into what became - with the decline of the Communist Party - the most significant political trend to the left of the Labour Party. 

Born Isaac Blank just outside Johannesburg, he changed his name to Grant when he came to Britain during the turbulent mid-1930s with a small band of other South African militants, convinced that it would be more fertile political territory than his country of birth. Attracted to the political ideas of the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, this small group of South African émigrés had already been influential in the founding of South Africa's first Trotskyist organisation, the Workers' International League, and soon made a mark on the fledgling British Trotskyist movement. Of the two small British Trotskyist groupings of the time, the Balham Group and the Revolutionary Socialist League (later to be called the Militant Labour League, selling a newspaper called Militant), Grant and his colleagues were attracted towards the latter. In what became a tradition of the Trotskyist movement not only in Britain but internationally, they soon split from it though to form their own organisation, this time a British version of the Workers' International League they had left behind in South Africa. Among those joining them was the Scottish orator Jock Haston and a voluble Irish militant, Gerry Healy. 

Fourth International 

In 1938 Leon Trotsky and his followers set up an international organisation intended to rival the worldwide Communist ('Third') International. This 'Fourth International' cast around for a British section, but the tiny group around Grant, Haston and Healy was ignored and the franchise went instead to the larger Militant Labour League. For this key event in Trotskyist history then, Grant and his comrades were shunned and Grant himself never got to meet Trotsky before the 'Old Man's' assassination by Soviet agents in Mexico in 1940. 

During the Second World War, Grant's WIL was active on the industrial front and soon began to eclipse its parent organisation in both membership and influence - so much so, that by 1944 the Fourth International persuaded the two organisations to merge, in what was effectively a WIL takeover. The new organisation created was called the Revolutionary Communist Party and was the first (and last) time the British Trotskyist movement was united in the one organisation. 

Grant became editor of the RCP's paper, Socialist Appeal, and Grant and Haston were the organisation's first delegates to the Fourth International. The RCP existed for three years and grew to 500-600 members, being a thorn in the side of the Communist Party before, in true Trotskyist fashion, internal strife led to decline and a split. 

Significantly, in the late 1940s three main factions had begun to emerge which were to be the main tendencies within the Trotskyist movement in Britain in the decades thereafter. Those around the Palestinian émigré Tony Cliff developed a distinctive version of the theory that what existed in the Soviet Union was a form of state capitalism (though only after Stalin's accession to power in 1928) and therefore couldn't be supported by socialists, while the groups around Grant and Healy held on to Trotsky's own belief that what existed in Russia was a workers' state, albeit a degenerated one. Indeed, the Grant and Healy factions had much in common politically, and it was mainly the bitter personal hostility that developed between the two men that kept their groupings separate. 

Secret organisation 

In the early 1950s, Grant and his small number of followers started a magazine called International Socialist. Grant lived in London and worked as a night-time telephone operator, which left him free to pursue his political work as a Trotskyist during the day. At this time he began to build up a close political relationship with a Trotskyist from Birkenhead called Jimmy Deane, who was the driving force behind Rally, a paper popular with the youth section of the Labour Party in the North West of England (and soon edited from Liverpool by a teenage Pat Wall, later one of the Militant supporting Labour MPs). 

By 1955 Grant and his supporters decided that the time was right to found a new organisation. Harking back to the group Grant first joined on his arrival from South Africa, it was called the Revolutionary Socialist League and its first General Secretary was Jimmy Deane. It effectively fused two small Trotskyist bases in London and Liverpool where Grant had an influence, and was a tightly-knit organisation built on the Leninist principles of the vanguard party, being hierarchical and secretive in almost equal measure, operating like other Trotskyist groups before it as a clandestine faction within the Labour Party. 

Coincidentally, two years earlier the Trotskyist Fourth International had split. Healy's faction had the UK franchise but went off with the splitters, leaving a vacancy for a British Section which the leadership of the FI allegedly tried to fill by placing an advertisement in Tribune, which Grant answered. By 1957, the RSL was given the British franchise by the FI but advanced only sporadically, starting a new paper called Socialist Fight but otherwise being eclipsed by other Trotskyist groups, particularly Healy's. At the time the Healy, Cliff and Grant factions were all building up support by working inside the Labour Party as secret parties within a party, focusing especially on the Labour League of Youth, but Grant's faction was so unsuccessful that the FI forced it to merge with an up-and-coming young group of Trotskyists in Nottingham around Ken Coates called the International Group. When this marriage of convenience led to the inevitable divorce within a year or so, the FI took the opportunity to rescind Grant's franchise altogether, giving it instead to the Nottingham faction which by then had turned itself into the International Marxist Group (IMG), a current which went on to develop a strong student base under the leadership of Tariq Ali.

Militant 

The loss of the Fourth International franchise was an understandable blow to Grant, but around the same time his group had begun to take steps which were to prove more fruitful, the most significant of which was the creation of a new publication to be called Militant - for Labour and Youth. It's editor was a young Liverpudlian with strong organisatiuonal abilities called Peter Taaffe, who became Grant's lieutenant-in-chief, while Grant himself was political editor. The striking design of the paper was created by Roger Protz, later of the Campaign For Real Ale, but who was a notable activist at various times in each of the three main Trotskyist factions in British politics (later, in Cliff's International Socialists, he became editor of Socialist Worker). It was to be growing sales of Militant, combined with systematic, organised activity in the Labour Party, which was eventually to bear fruit for Grant's faction. 

By 1966 they were the only one of the three main Trotskyist factions still inside the Labour Party. Healy's group had, by the early 1960s, almost completely taken over the (now renamed) Labour Party Young Socialists and after several attempts they were eventually expelled, with Grant personally refusing at one stage to vote to keep Healy-ites in the Party. Cliff's faction disengaged from Labour in the mid-1960s, seeing propaganda opportunities in disassociating itself from Wilson's Labour government, leaving the field free for Grant. By 1970 Grant's RSL had a majority on the Labour Party Young Socialists Executive and from 1972 onwards always had one of its members on the Labour NEC as the LPYS representative. 

Throughout the 1970s, the influence of what by this time was becoming known as the 'Militant Tendency' grew apace, both in the Labour Party and trade unions. Grant's organisation moved from being the least well-known of the major Trotskyists sects to becoming the most well-known, with something of a 'workerist' face, placing less emphasis on building up student support than most Trotskyist groups and more on recruiting the skilled and semi-skilled working class, especially local government workers. 

By the 1980s Militant's growth and influence was such that it could claim scores of Labour councillors across Britain as 'supporters' (when in reality they were RSL members who couldn't publicly admit to being a 'party within a party'). In addition, they could claim several Labour Parliamentary candidates - three of whom (Dave Nellist, Terry Fields and Pat Wall) eventually became MPs, and - most controversially of all - they took effective control of Liverpool City Council, with Derek Hatton as the council's Deputy Leader and Tony Mulhearn (a long-time RSL member more trusted by Grant) as his aide de camp. 

The mid-1980s, when the Tendency claimed over 8,000 'supporters', was the peak of Militant's influence on British politics and the nearest Grant came to fulfilling his dream of creating a mass Trotskyist base within the Labour Party. But its size, influence and the notoriety attached to it by the mainstream press led to the first systematic attempt to deal with Trotskyist infiltration in the Labour Party since the expulsion of the Healy-ites. Earlier, in 1975, Lord Underhill had written a report on Militant's activities in the Labour Party for a left-wing dominated Labour NEC that chose at the time to do nothing about it. But in the 1980s the Labour leadership acted, first under Michael Foot and then under Neil Kinnock, with his famous attack on the Militants on Liverpool City Council at the 1985 Labour Party conference, after they had deployed the tactic of refusing to set a rate, issuing 30,000 council workers with redundancy notices. 

Labour initially started by picking on the most obvious candidates for expulsion, the five members of Militant's Editorial Board, including Grant and Taaffe, who were expelled in 1983. After this, large and increasing numbers of their comrades were systematically put outside the Party they claimed was 'the mass party of the working class'. 

Political positions 

Throughout the lifetime of the RSL, 'entryism' into the Labour Party was one of its defining characteristics as a Trotskyist current. Others used entryism as a tactic, including Cliff and Healy, but for Grant's group it appeared to amount to more than this - it was a defining political position. Sometimes called 'deep entryism' it was not simply about a Trotskyist organisation going into the Labour Party, building up support and effectively raiding it for new members before emerging into the outside world stronger and fitter. For Grant, as Militant's main theoretician, the task of his tendency was to 'win the Labour Party to socialism' on the grounds that a united Labour and trade union movement under a Trotskyist leadership was unstoppable. 

The means for achieving this goal was deep entryism plus a particular variety of Trotsky's 'transitional demands' programme, a strategy developed from Lenin's premise that the working class in capitalism was not capable through its own efforts of developing a socialist consciousness. This transitional programme was a carefully calculated list of demands - such as massive public works programmes, the nationalisation of the top 200 monopolies, and an implausibly generous minimum wage - which would be superficially attractive to supporters of reforms in the wider Labour and trade union movement, and which Militant thought contained the seeds of a future socialist society. The intention was a dishonest one, for Grant and Militant's other leaders knew that these demands were not generally capable of realisation within the normal politics of capitalism - indeed, that was the very point of advocating them. The resultant anger they expected within the working class when these demands were unmet would lead, they hoped, to a lurch towards the left under the leadership of the Trotskyist vanguard itself - the RSL. 

The desire to stay in the Labour Party at all costs coupled with distinctive transitional demands that could lead to a Trotskyist leadership introducing 'socialism' (really state-run capitalism based on nationalisation) via an Enabling Act in parliament - and supported by workers' councils in the industrial field - was what really defined Militant in relation to the other Trotskyist sects. Also, and uniquely, the RSL quickly identified the arena of local government as a means for criticising traditional, piecemeal reformist politics (saying they would always oppose rent and rates increases), raising its programme of more radical transitional demands instead as the 'bridge to socialism': 

"To lift the horizon of the local parish pump politicians on to the broader national and international field - this is the first task of the revolutionary Councillor . . . It is necessary within the Labour Groups and in open council to point out the limitations of particular struggles and reforms and show how (in theory and practice) reformism (nationally and locally) cannot resolve the contradictions of capitalism." (RSL 'Notes on Council Work', by Ellis Hillman, 1961.) 

These socialist-sounding phrases, in reality masking the advocacy of what were, in effect, just more radical reforms of capitalism, was typical of their entryist tactic, as later exemplified in Liverpool. Combined with their relentless workerism and disdain for non-economic issues, this constituted their 'Unique Selling Point' within the Trotskyist milieu (unlike others, Militant had relatively little interest in sexual or student politics, or supporting Third World nationalist movements). 

These were the key perspectives handed down by Grant himself, consistently over decades. Indeed, it was often said by his supporters and opponents alike that Grant was saying the same things in the 1980s as he had been saying in the 1940s, and his book, "The Unbroken Thread: the Development of Trotskyism Over 40 Years", is testament to this. This would have to include his oft-repeated claim (following Trotsky, and like his rival Gerry Healy of the WRP) that capitalist collapse leading to a Trotskyist leadership of a revolutionary working class was imminent in 'the coming period' of the next 10-15 years, somewhat in the perpetual manner of 'tomorrow never comes'. 

Post-Militant 

In the eventually, capitalism outlived Grant himself. Indeed, Grant's end appears to have been a rather sad one, in an old people's home, years after having been kicked out of the Labour party and then, rather more remarkably, the RSL itself. The campaign of the Labour leadership in the 1980s against Militant had been so successful that by 1992 the majority of the RSL, led by Taaffe, came to the conclusion that continuing with entryism was pointless and stood 'Militant Labour' candidates against the official Labour Party, with mixed success. A group around Grant and one of his protégés, Alan Woods, refused to accept this reversal of what the Tendency had always stood for, and were expelled. 

Just as Grant had borrowed from early Trotskyist groups when founding the Revolutionary Socialist League and its paper, Militant, so this expelled rump from the RSL started a new paper called Socialist Appeal, the name of the journal Grant edited while one of the leaders of the RCP just after the war. Never more than a couple of hundred at most, this group made little impact, while after a period of serious decline the slightly larger Militant Labour eventually voted in 1997 to dishonestly turn itself into the 'Socialist Party' (of England and Wales - SPEW to its enemies), effectively trying to usurp the name of the SPGB. This grouping has since declined further, though its leading elements in Scotland, such as Tommy Sheridan, were instrumental in forming the rather more successful but equally reformist Scottish Socialist Party. 

The modern legacy of Ted Grant is an interesting one, for in many respects he was the most successful of the three main British Trotskyist leaders, while still falling well short of his ultimate goal. From a socialist perspective, the Militant Tendency (like the other Trotskyist groups) did much to muddy the waters of revolutionary politics in the UK, posing as socialist while supporting the usual Trotskyist stew of radical reformist demands with the long-term aim of state-run capitalism organised by a Leninist vanguard party, another classic 'dictatorship over the proletariat', with Grant as leader-in-waiting. 

Grant knew full well of the real socialist alternative promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain and our companion parties overseas (he debated Socialist Party speaker Tony Turner in 1945 and was wont to deride us as 'ultra left' sectarians) but he rejected real socialism for the type of politics that cast him in the role of leader, manipulating the mass of the proletariat towards a 'revolutionary situation'. But, as history proved, the working class were not so easily manipulated by Grant's particular mix of Trotskyist tactics, and his lifetime was effectively wasted on an ultimately dishonest political cause. 

This was a shame, because like Tony Cliff, Grant had much energy and some talent as a writer and speaker. He was an obsessive analyst of - and collector of information about - the capitalist economy, though arguably (because of his unsupported belief in capitalist collapse) his best works were not in this field. His political tract Against the Theory of State Capitalism in 1949, for instance, was a relentlessly logical attack on the irrationality of the Cliff (SWP) position from an orthodox Trotskyist perspective, implying that the only coherent state capitalist theory applied to the Soviet bloc, etc came from those, like the Socialist Party, who rejected Leninist and Trotskyist politics altogether. And in more recent times, he collaborated with Alan Woods to write an excellent book called," Reason and Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science", a history of science and scientific methods from a general Marxist standpoint. Grant will be remembered, above all else though, for founding a political tendency which hit the headlines and gained public notoriety but which otherwise did the socialist movement huge amounts of damage. His political heirs in Socialist Appeal and SPEW fittingly continue to peddle the same kind of elitist and outdated reformist nonsense now as Grant did when he first became a Trotskyist in the 1930s. Indeed, for years Grant was derided by many for sounding rather like an old, broken record - and today, his surviving political heirs most certainly stand out as badly scratched vinyl in what is a transparently digital age.

Dave Perrin