The situation in Britain today¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents a polemical confrontation between two British Trotskyist groupings during the Second World War: the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) and the Workers’ International League (WIL). The core argument is that the RSL has produced a catastrophically mistaken assessment of the British working class, one that reveals its isolation from real class struggle and its descent into sterile sectarianism. The WIL, by contrast, claims to understand the actual dynamics of mass consciousness and therefore to be positioned for growth.
The RSL’s position, as quoted and then attacked, holds that British workers remain predominantly chauvinist, support the imperialist war, and demand only its more efficient prosecution. Any discontent arising from British defeats, the RSL argues, is a petty-bourgeois reaction, not a proletarian one, and cannot produce class struggle because the demand for efficient war-making is not a class demand. The WIL counters that this is a mechanical schema, utterly divorced from reality. It asserts that a profound radicalisation is underway among workers, within the armed forces, and among sections of the middle classes. The objective and even subjective conditions for socialist revolution are maturing. The chapter insists that the relationship of class forces has been fundamentally undermined, producing fissures within the ruling class itself. Britain, it claims, is in a pre-revolutionary situation.
The evidence marshalled is concrete and contemporary. The chapter points to by-election results where pseudo-socialist candidates have won significant support against government figures, and to the electoral successes of the Common Wealth party in traditional Tory strongholds—interpreted by The Times as an ominous portent. Strikes in 1943 reached their highest level in years, despite every obstacle placed by Stalinist and Labour bureaucrats, and these strikes coincided with British military victories in North Africa, flatly contradicting the RSL’s expectation that victories would produce greater support for the government. Civil servants are violating the Trade Disputes Act; even the police are affected by the prevailing mood. The Beveridge scheme is identified as a deliberate attempt to sidetrack this radicalisation.
The chapter draws on the theoretical legacy of Trotsky, invoking “the Old Man” and his military policy as providing the weapon that answers the questions troubling the masses. It argues against a rigid, pre-determined pattern of revolutionary development. The masses support the war not out of hatred for the enemy, but because they see no alternative, while fear of a Nazi victory paralyses them. As that fear recedes, demands for improvements will grow, and the experience of the last war and its aftermath has left its mark. The RSL is accused of being hopeless scholastics, out of touch, writing from the secluded cliffs of Eastbourne. The polemic is sharp: the RSL’s errors are not accidental but stem from a complete lack of comprehension, and its organisation has declined and disintegrated precisely because of this failure, while the WIL has made modest but real gains.