What were our general perspectives and party work? (Last five years)¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter provides a strategic autopsy of the Workers International League’s (WIL) relationship with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) during the war years, arguing that the ILP’s trajectory confirmed the bankruptcy of centrism and validated the WIL’s dual approach of independent open work combined with disciplined factional activity. The core narrative thrust is that Trotsky’s earlier advice to abandon the ILP as a dead sect was premature; the war temporarily revived the ILP as the only well-known anti-war organisation after the Stalinists’ pro-war somersault, attracting fresh workers. However, this revival was structurally shallow, drawing in pacifist and middle-class elements alongside good militants, while the ILP’s anti-war stance remained superficial and progressively watered down.
The chapter makes several key claims. First, the WIL’s most significant gains within the ILP were achieved not through internal faction work but from the outside, by building a thriving open organisation. The contrast between the flabby New Leader and the virile Socialist Appeal, between the Trotskyists’ consistent anti-war policy and the ILP’s wobbling semi-patriotic, semi-pacifist line, won over proletarian elements. Second, the ILP’s by-election successes against the Tories were fought on a reformist programme that became almost indistinguishable from Labour’s, and the party failed to penetrate the unions and factories, reaching only the fringes of the industrial working class. Third, the ILP leadership suffered from the illusion of a mass swing away from Labour, epitomised by their ‘Socialist Britain Now’ campaign; when the Labour Lefts did not break, the leadership panicked and turned back towards reformism, seeking salvation in the arms of the Labour bureaucracy.
The historical context is the wartime coalition between Labour and the capitalist parties, which paralysed local Labour organisations and left a bureaucratic shell, allowing anti-war groups like the ILP and Stalinists to grow. The chapter draws on Trotsky’s earlier assessment of the ILP’s decay and his advice to abandon it for entrist work in the Labour Party, a course the British comrades followed until the war cut across expected developments. The polemic is directed against the ILP’s centrist character—its mixture of pacifism, sectarianism, ultraleftism, and opportunism—and against the notion that the ILP could be won as a whole. The chapter insists that the ILP’s decline was inevitable because it lacked a revolutionary policy and theoretical understanding, and that the WIL’s independent work, not total entry, was the correct perspective for building the party.