New Horizons¶
Core Argument¶
New Horizons
When Ted Grant and Sid Frost arrived in London in late 1934, they encountered a British Trotskyist movement mired in petty-bourgeois sectarianism, utterly divorced from the working class. Trotsky had urged entry into the Independent Labour Party (ILP), a centrist organisation of some 100,000 members, predominantly workers. He believed that patient work could win significant sections to Marxism. The British group, however, squandered this opportunity through sectarian prejudice. Trotsky condemned sectarianism as the negation of dialectical materialism: it treats discussion as an end in itself, substitutes ready-made formulas for concrete analysis, and replaces engagement with the workers’ movement by intrigue and gossip. The British groups behaved as exiles in their own land.
By contrast, the South African comrades were fresh and enthusiastic revolutionaries. They threw themselves into the growing anti-fascist movement, championing Trotsky’s united front policy. This culminated in the Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936, when 100,000 workers mobilised to stop Mosley’s Blackshirts marching through the East End. This activity enabled contact with rank-and-file Communist Party and Young Communist League members, providing fertile ground for recruitment.
The small group that had refused Trotsky’s advice—The Red Flag—split, collapsed into the Labour Party, and was replaced by the Marxist Group, which entered the ILP late and made limited gains, winning CLR James in 1935. During Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, the ILP opposed League of Nations sanctions but employed muddled centrist arguments. Trotsky criticised them for failing to distinguish between an oppressed colony and an imperialist power, and for their 1935 election policy of only supporting Labour candidates who opposed sanctions. He insisted they support all Labour candidates regardless—a position the group eventually accepted. Trotsky then concluded the declining ILP offered no further opportunities, and the Labour Party, especially its youth league, presented better prospects. The British Trotskyists subsequently formed the Militant Group within the Labour Party.
Ralph Lee compared the manoeuvring around a proposed Trotskyist fusion to a French bedroom farce. The WIL comrades were neither consulted nor lobbied. They refused to join, arguing the agreement was bound to fail. Cannon promised to take CLR James to America to secure his agreement. Lee warned Cannon that the fusion would cause the groups to tear each other apart. Cannon replied, “We crush splitters like beetles.” Ted Grant protested that even Trotsky could be challenged in a democratic movement. The RSP repudiated its delegate and rejected unification; within six weeks the fusion collapsed. Cannon blamed the WIL and harboured lasting resentment. At the 1938 founding conference of the Fourth International, Cannon prevented the WIL’s letter requesting sympathetic affiliation from being read, instead delivering a false diatribe. The conference recognised the RSL and rejected the WIL’s application. Cannon’s report to Trotsky was dishonest. Trotsky never attacked the WIL and praised their pamphlet. The WIL continued to grow, winning over RSL groups in Liverpool and Leeds. Millie Lee left Ralph Lee for Jock Haston. Ralph Lee returned to South Africa in 1940, where his organisation collapsed. A 1948 letter from Lee to Ted Grant reveals his depression and poverty. Ted believed Lee had committed suicide before his official death in 1965.