Introduction to the English Edition of ‘ Where is Britain Going? ’ [1]¶
Core Argument¶
In his introduction to the English edition of Trotsky’s Where is Britain Going?, H. N. Brailsford confronts the paradox of the book’s publication in the shadow of the 1926 Communist trial at the Old Bailey, where seven prisoners were ordered to choose between a six-month sentence and the opinions expressed in Trotsky’s text. Brailsford seizes on this judicial summons as a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the mere appearance of a tiny revolutionary party can frighten the ruling class into abandoning the liberty of opinion on which democracy rests, then Trotsky’s thesis that force is the only adequate instrument for social change is already established. Yet Brailsford insists the battle for freedom is not lost. The Labour Party, he argues, has the chief interest in demanding liberty and attention for this ruthless attack upon itself, for only by allowing the opposite opinion to be argued in perfect liberty can its own faith in the democratic approach to Socialism remain a reasoned conviction rather than an imposed dogma.
Brailsford grants Trotsky’s argument formidable strengths: it is brilliantly argued, backed by the prestige of experience—the pamphleteer who predicts civil war has himself conducted one to a triumphant conclusion—and grounded in a serious study of British history and contemporary life. The book is a slashing attack on the whole British movement, assailing Left and Right with equal vehemence, and Brailsford warns against allowing its manner to blind readers to the strength of its case. Yet he identifies a fundamental failure of understanding. Trotsky, for all his intellect, does not grasp the English national character. Brailsford, though an agnostic, takes Trotsky’s attitude to religion as the test: no Russian, he claims, has ever understood that English Protestantism—with its tradition of open discussion, democratic church forms, emphasis on conduct, and freedom from otherworldliness—has nothing in common with the Eastern Church. He challenges Trotsky to visit a Dissenting chapel in a mining district, to read Bunyan, or to consider the revolutionary history of Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men. Similarly, Trotsky’s mockery of the idea that a Labour majority in Parliament will ever be allowed to do anything fundamental reveals a failure to grasp how deeply the Parliamentary tradition and the instinct of obedience to the majority are graven on the English mind—inculcated not only in Parliament but in churches, trade unions, and clubs across generations.
Brailsford’s polemic is directed not only at Trotsky but at those who would suppress his book. The introduction is a defence of free debate as the condition of democratic socialism’s integrity. Brailsford concludes that if Trotsky is right—if the propertied class will defend its privileges by force—then English socialists prefer to fight, as Cromwell fought, with Parliament behind them and the rights of a majority on their side. The book, he argues, is doubly valuable: as a revelation of the Russian mind and a criticism of English ways, a challenge that forces readers to think out their position anew.