2. Trotskyism of a New Type¶
Core Argument¶
The Workers' International League (WIL) emerged from the wreckage of British Trotskyism as a distinct political formation, one that turned its back on the squabbling sects to face the mass movement and the working class. Beginning with nine dedicated members in 1938, the WIL acquired a small Adana printing press and launched Workers' International News, selling it at Hyde Park and Tottenham Court Road, recruiting industrial workers from engineering factories. Within six months, they had thirty members, predominantly working class and young, despite persistent infiltration attempts by the Special Branch.
The WIL's founding period was marked by principled intransigence. When James Cannon arrived from the United States to unify British Trotskyist groups before the Fourth International's founding congress, the WIL insisted that unity must rest on correct political foundations. They rejected the "Peace and Unity Conference" of September 1938, which forced groups to sign an agreement in twenty minutes without political discussion, predicting correctly that this unprincipled compromise would destroy the organisation. Cannon threatened, "We crush splitters like beetles," and at the founding congress launched a vicious attack, accusing the "Lee Group" of splitting on personal grounds. The WIL regarded itself as the real Fourth International in Britain, and within weeks the united organisation dissolved, with the WIL winning Liverpool, Leeds, and Edinburgh.
The war transformed the WIL's orientation. Trotsky had advanced a proletarian military policy: the working class must take power to wage genuine revolutionary war against fascism, as the bourgeoisie could not. The WIL called for Labour to break the National Government, for election of officers by soldiers, and for arming the working class factory by factory under trade union control. They argued the ruling class would rather capitulate than arm workers, citing the French surrender of Paris.
The Hitler-Stalin Pact threw the Communist Party into crisis. Harry Pollitt was rejected at Silvertown by twelve to one. When Hitler invaded Russia, the Stalinists hastily changed line, becoming strikebreaking warmongers. The WIL won members from them, including shop stewards in Nottingham and Scotland. The CP responded with slanders, calling Trotskyists Hitler's agents; the WIL offered £10 reward to any CP member who could show a page of the pamphlet without five lies, a challenge never taken up.
By 1943, the WIL held its first national conference with around 300 members, 90 per cent industrial working class. The rival Revolutionary Socialist League had collapsed into three warring factions, its membership falling from 170 to twenty-three. The WIL insisted on principled unification, refusing a repeat of 1938. Home Secretary Herbert Morrison privately considered WIL members misguided but honest, consistent anti-fascists, holding the Communist Party in contempt for its Moscow-dictated twists and turns. The WIL had substituted the conception of "party" for "group" in its constitution, breaking down the semi-conspiratorial atmosphere, and had become the only genuine Trotskyist voice among British workers.