The War Years¶
Core Argument¶
The assassination of Leon Trotsky on 20 August 1940 marked a devastating turning point for the international Trotskyist movement. Stalin had ordered the killing, calculating that without its founder the movement would collapse. Ted Grant argued that the timing was deliberately chosen to exploit wartime turmoil, and bitterly criticised the American Socialist Workers' Party for failing to protect Trotsky, rejecting their excuse that Trotsky disliked guards during political discussions. Trotsky's grandson Esteban Volkov confirmed the American guards were unprofessional, noting that even had Ramón Mercader failed, Stalin would have found other means. Grant considered Trotsky's theoretical work between 1923 and 1940 indispensable, particularly his analysis of Stalinism, and believed his finest writings—including In Defence of Marxism—were produced in his final year. Deprived of Trotsky's leadership, the Fourth International made fundamental errors; only the British Revolutionary Communist Party adjusted to the post-1945 situation.
The war posed profound strategic questions for Marxists. Lenin, initially taken aback by the wave of national chauvinism in 1914, had developed revolutionary defeatism, but after February 1917 he adapted his presentation to address honest working-class defencists who opposed imperialist annexations. Trotsky later formulated the Proletarian Military Policy for the Second World War, arguing that Marxists must speak to workers in a language they understand, demanding military training at capitalists' expense and the right to bear arms. The Workers' International League applied this policy in Britain, while the Revolutionary Socialist League took an ultra-left position, caricaturing Lenin's 1914 defeatism and condemning itself to sterility.
The WIL and later the RCP did outstanding work in the armed forces. Rather than opposing conscription outright, they proposed transitional demands for workers' control over military training and election of officers. The ruling class's concessions to allow political debate enabled a Trotskyist to chair the "forces parliament" in Egypt, where 600 soldiers voted to nationalise banks, land, mines, and transport. Ted Grant's remark about "our Eighth Army" at the 1943 congress was maliciously distorted by an International Secretariat representative, who insinuated defencist tendencies. The RCP's January 1945 Open Letter exposed this distortion, noting a Trotskyist had been elected Prime Minister of the Benghazi Forces' Parliament.
Working-class militancy grew, especially in mining areas. The RCP led the 1944 Tyneside Apprentices' strike and organised defence committees when four leaders were arrested under Bevin's anti-strike regulation 1AA, securing their release on appeal. MI5 attempted infiltration; the RCP used an agent's membership fees to print Trotsky's Transitional Programme. In the 1945 Neath by-election, Jock Haston stood on a platform of breaking the coalition and Labour taking socialist power, winning 1,781 votes despite the Communist Party's slanderous slogan "A Vote for Haston is a Vote for Hitler".