Introduction¶
Core Argument¶
The first volume of Ted Grant's writings spans the pre-war period through the early years of the imperialist war, the Soviet Union's entry into the conflict, the formation of the Workers' International League (WIL), and the beginnings of wartime industrial unrest. Following Trotsky's death, Grant emerged as the Trotskyist movement's principal theoretician. In August 1942, the WIL issued Preparing for Power, written by Grant, which directed the organisation's youthful forces toward revolutionary tasks and predicted unprecedented growth. This perspective rested on Trotsky's analysis that war would generate a revolutionary wave, making the struggle for power the basis of agitation. By January 1943, the WIL's Socialist Appeal declared the first stage of party-building complete, stating the WIL had left narrow discussion circles and was placing itself directly before the workers. The military conflict had shifted to the eastern front, with the Battle of Stalingrad as a decisive turning point. The WIL tracked the war's stages and monitored prospects for revolutionary upsurge as Trotsky had predicted. By 1943, the WIL had become the most developed Trotskyist force in Europe, with approximately 300 members rooted in the working class, completely overshadowing the official section, the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), which had dwindled to twenty-three members. The WIL adopted Trotsky's Proletarian Military Policy, while the RSL repudiated it for an ultra-left, pacifist position. The WIL established the Militant Workers' Federation in 1943 and threw itself into the strike movement. In March 1944, the WIL and RSL fused to form the Revolutionary Communist Party, which in reality represented a complete takeover by the WIL.
In mid-1944, a revolutionary movement led by EAM/ELAS, under Stalinist control, broke out in Greece. The British government backed the monarchist forces. EAM's leaders entered the reactionary Papandreou government and made political concessions. After the Germans left Athens in October 1944, the Communist Party called for "public order" and ensured Papandreou's government, accompanied by British troops, took power. The government disarmed ELAS, provoking an armed uprising as power passed to the working class. By the end of 1944, Churchill deployed British troops alongside Greek reactionaries to crush the workers, with Stalin's full backing. The uprising was eventually suppressed. In August 1944, an insurrection in Paris saw barricades erected and dual power established, with factories in workers' hands. De Gaulle was rushed in to head the movement, made a truce with the Nazis, and, with Stalinist help, disarmed the workers and derailed the revolution.
Socialist Appeal argued that capitalism's leaders had learned from the post-First World War revolutions and feared a repeat. Trotsky had predicted this revolutionary wave across Europe, but the Trotskyists were too small to capitalise; Stalinists and social democrats betrayed the movement, disarming the resistance and protecting private property—a period of "counter-revolution in a democratic form." In January 1945, the RCP contested the Neath by-election, the first British Trotskyist parliamentary election. The campaign aimed to establish a base in the South Wales coalfield. The Stalinists reacted ferociously. Jock Haston secured 1,781 votes against Labour's 30,847. The RCP's membership grew by twenty percent since fusion. Ted Grant's March 1945 document, The changed relationship of forces in Europe and the role of the Fourth International, recognised a developing stabilisation in Europe due to mass organisation leaders' role, taking the form of "counter-revolution in a 'democratic' form." It explained the political preconditions for a new capitalist recovery, a departure from traditional perspectives, which the Fourth International leadership could not grasp.