3. One or Two Peculiarities of English Labour Leaders¶
Core Argument¶
In this incisive chapter, Trotsky dissects the peculiar conservatism pervading the upper echelons of the British Labour Party, arguing that its leaders exhibit a servile deference to royalty, aristocracy, and bourgeois figures that fundamentally betrays any pretence to socialism. He marshals damning evidence: MacDonald eulogising Curzon as a great public servant; Thomas banqueting with railway directors and Baldwin, declaring he belonged to no class; the Daily Herald proposing a government post for the heir to the throne; and various Labour figures defending royal funding or the Prince of Wales’s tours on trade grounds. Even the so-called ‘Left’ Labour MPs display reactionary traits—Johnston and Maclean defending Scottish Church property by invoking the 1707 Act of Union, Lansbury borrowing enthusiasm from religion, and Wheatley insisting Catholicism determines moral rules.
Trotsky’s polemic is withering. To proclaim a socialist platform while defending the monarchy, he writes, is equivalent to professing materialist science while using magical incantations against toothache because the witch is cheaper. The monarchy question cannot be settled by cooked books but only by the complete overturn of society. He indicts MacDonald and Thomas for their indignation at workers protesting their ministers wearing court dress—a symbol of broader betrayal. He who is false in one small thing will be false in many.
The theoretical context is crucial: Trotsky locates the roots of this conservatism in Britain’s historical advantages—Protestantism, empiricism, island security—which have now become sources of backwardness. The MacDonalds inherit from Puritanism only religious prejudice, not revolutionary strength; from Owenism only utopian hostility to class struggle. Yet the dialectic is at work. The war dealt a blow to traditional religiosity. Britain’s economic decline will undermine the Labour leadership’s grip. Under pressure from below, MacDonald will be cast out, and substitutes like Lansbury, Wheatley, and Kirkwood will reveal themselves as a left variant of the Fabian type, constrained by democracy, religion, and national arrogance. The working class will likely have to renew its leadership several times before creating a party adequate to its historical tasks.