The question of the ILP¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter dissects the shifting and contradictory positions of the Minority faction within the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) regarding the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The core argument is that the Minority has lurched through three distinct, unexplained policies, revealing the bankruptcy of their political perspective. The first position, articulated in ‘Our Tasks and Perspectives’, demanded that the ILP be treated as an immediate obstacle to be removed, irrespective of whether the ILP entered the Labour Party (LP). The second, advanced in a congress amendment and a post-congress document by comrades Goffe and Healy, tied the necessity of tackling the ILP directly to the prospect of the ILP entering the LP. The chapter’s narrative thrust is to expose this contradiction and then to highlight the Minority’s third, newly adopted position: that the party should merely keep a watching brief on the ILP while otherwise abandoning special activity within it.
The author argues that this third position is a tacit admission that the Majority’s original 1945 Congress resolution was correct. That resolution had characterised the ILP as suffering from stagnation, decay, and isolation from the industrial workers, making it a secondary field of activity. The Minority had previously denied this, but now, faced with the undeniable decline of the ILP, they have capitulated to the Majority’s practical conclusions. However, the chapter is fiercely critical of the Minority’s attempt to justify this reversal. Instead of admitting their false perspective, comrades Healy, Goffe, and Finch blame the party’s own “guerilla tactics” for “poisoning” the ILP rank and file against Trotskyism, thereby making further work impossible. The author demolishes this excuse with a historical parallel: the Left Opposition in Germany, led by Trotsky, continued to advocate a united front with German Social Democracy despite the Stalinist policy of “social fascism” systematically poisoning the social-democratic rank and file against the Communist Party. The key claim is that if a political perspective is correct, such poisoning is merely an additional obstacle to be overcome, not a reason to abandon the perspective entirely. The Minority’s attempt to blame the party’s tactics for their own failed estimation proves only the “bankruptcy of their perspective.” The polemic is thus directed squarely at the Minority’s theoretical inconsistency, their failure to explain their changes of front, and their resort to blaming the party for the consequences of their own erroneous analysis.