The Radicalisation of the British Workers and the Tasks of the Labour Movement¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter, drawn from a 1945 Revolutionary Communist Party conference decision, argues that the end of the Second World War marks not a triumph for British imperialism but the beginning of its terminal crisis, which will in turn radicalise the British working class and create the objective conditions for revolutionary struggle. The core narrative thrust is that Britain has ‘won’ the war but lost its empire, and the consequences of this decline will be borne entirely by the working class at home.
The chapter opens with a blunt polemic against the official justification for the war, insisting that Britain fought to defend its markets and empire, not democracy. The evidence for decline is marshalled in concrete economic and strategic terms: British steel production stagnates at 14 million tons while America’s war-era increase alone amounts to 28 million tons; the dollar has replaced the pound as the world’s reserve currency; Wall Street has supplanted the City of London. Britain’s dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand—are described as having already shifted into the American orbit, with separate defence arrangements and altered economic relationships. America has seized British investments in South America and gained a foothold in India and the colonies. Britain will emerge from the war as a debtor nation to the tune of £4 billion.
The chapter draws on the historical trajectory of British capitalism since the First World War, noting that the last war yielded Britain nothing but liabilities: loss of naval supremacy, the rise of American competition, industrial decay, and a parasitic dependence on colonial tribute. This decline was masked by Lend-Lease, but the post-war situation is far worse. The chapter explicitly compares Britain’s predicament to that of pre-war German capitalism, which adopted the slogan ‘Export or Die’ before attempting a redivision of the world; Britain, in its ‘hour of victory’, is compelled to adopt the same slogan, but with even slimmer prospects given America’s plan to treble its own exports.
The key claim is that British imperialism, stripped of its colonial tribute and foreign investments, will be forced to drive down the living standards of the British workers to compensate. The former privileged position of the British working class—especially the labour aristocracy—based on the super-exploitation of the colonies, has come to an end. The chapter predicts mass unemployment, industrial dislocation, and the rationalisation of British industry at the expense of the masses, with the state intervening directly on behalf of the monopolies.
The polemical targets are multiple. The chapter argues against the Labour government and the trade union bureaucracy, which it accuses of intending to fuse the union apparatus with the state machine and extend class collaboration into the post-war period. It also targets the Stalinists, who are grouped with the labour bureaucrats as obstacles to working-class resistance. The rising wave of strikes in 1944—the greatest since the General Strike of 1926—is presented as evidence that the ‘industrial truce’ is breaking down, with strikes occurring illegally, without strike pay, and against the opposition of union leaders and employers alike.
The chapter concludes with a warning against syndicalist tendencies emerging among the most advanced workers, who are turning away from the Labour Party. The task of revolutionary internationalists is to reach these militants—the natural leaders of the workers in day-to-day struggles—and provide them with theoretical education and political understanding, lest their energies be dissipated in futile adventures and defeats. The revolutionary upheavals in Europe and the colonies are identified as the background against which British developments will unfold, with the Greek events already having shaken the British masses and revealed the imperialist aims of the government.