Trotskyism Today no. 7

TROTSKYISM

By John Doch Exactly fifty years ago, on the May Day of 1926. there erupted the most bitter and significant struggle in the history of the British working class.

miners were locked out on that day by The employers who demanded the most enormous cuts in their wages and conditions. On 3rd May, millions of workers struck in support of the miners. The forces of the capitalist state were brought into action, and after nine days the leaders of the trade unions strikers were declared unconditional surrender. Many victimised, and after six bitter months, the miners were forced back to work, alone and defeated.

These events affected class and political relations in every corner of the world at the time, and since then they have had their echo in every generation. Every social class, every political tendency, has laid claim to some fragment of them. Thus when it was recently proposed that the Greater London Council should spend a tiny proportion of its vast budget to support an exhibition on this major event in social history', the Tories on the Council were scandalised This was not just because they thought the General Strike is best forgotten, but also because it could not be said that any commemoration of these events would be 'unbiased and objective' They know very well that many of the characters of that drama still walk the land. There are still geriatric militarists and "patriotic' students who would rush to the side of the 'law and order'. There are still tough, determined miners and cringing union leaders. Even if the

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May Day demonstration, 1926 On the 50th Anniversary

THE GENERAL

AND TODAY

now different, many of the same dramatis 01211219 personae will be appearing again in the future.

It is for this reason that in celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the General Strike, we intend not simply to draw attention to some of its main features, but also to say something about the various points of view on what happened, and to illustrate how these views are reflected through into attitudes to the struggles of today.

books produced by sere aTe noW bourgeois academics and journalists that provide details of the main events of the 1926 struggle. The oldest and largest of these is by Crook. Another account by Symons is now almost twenty years old, but covers well the treacherous Farman's account is fuller and is role of the union leaders.

available in paperback. The latest version is by Renshaw, with new information, but it naturally suffers from efforts to be 'fair to all sides', even mineowners. (1)

HISTORY

seriously interested in the history of the Anybody working class must study at least one of these books. Each in their own way outline how the crisis of British capitalism at the time reflected itself most sharply in the mining industry. They describe how all sections of the working class, despite the unwillingness of their leaders, lined up to defend the miners in July 1925, when the Tory government capitulated, and in May 1926 when it was ready for the battle. All the books say something about the important role of the early Communist Party and its efforts to build up a militant Minority Movement which could challenge for the strength and leadership in the unions.

They portray determination of the workers on strike, the effectiveness of their efforts despite the criminal hesitations of their leaders.

Finally, they describe the abject surrender of these leaders after nine days, and the effect this had on pushing back the The General Strike was the culmination of an entire decade of militant struggle by the British working class.

With of stewards the the wartime shop the flooding of workers into the newly and amalgamated and centralised working class organisations in the brief period of post-war boom from 1918 to 1920, the The police strikes of class struggle reached a high point.

of 1919 and many 1918-19, other the railway strike important battles were dealt with by a combination careful strategy on the part of the Lloyd George Coalition Government and the lack of fighting spirit of the union leaders. Jimmie Thomas of the NUR, for example, deliber- ately timed his 1919 struggle so as not to seek the support of those miners and transport workers who were combined with him in the "Triple Alliance' and had undertaken to give

SPECIAL MAY DAY EDITION

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МОШО ГОССТ Armed police escort for scab driver Cabinet received regular During these months, the from Directorate of Intelligence about the reports changes in mood and activity within the working class and wing political organisations. With mutinies in the army, the police, and many waves of struggle from strikes miners and others to contend with, it is not surprising that for the Cabinet discussed military plans during dealing with a possible insurrection', including how, in the event, they might take 'private steps to secure the aid of a certain class of citizen'. (2)

COUNCIL OF ACTION

In August 1920 a National Council of Action was formed by all the main organisations of the labour move- ment to oppose any possible intervention in the war against Meanwhile local equivalents with the the Soviet Union. same title began to prepare strikes. The Directorate of Intel- ligence wrote to the Cabinet that these first Councils of Action were taking on more the form of Soviets and in some areas (were) forming plans for the seizure of private of transport. But the job of heading off this enthusiasm was left to the trade union who instructed the councils that they should 'not leaders, in any way usurp the functions of Trade Union Executives, especially so far as the withdrawal of labour is concerned, but to act as centres of information'. (3) When the mines were handed back to the owners in the following July, and the miners were threatened with wage cuts, the Prime Minister Lloyd George knew he could rely on the leaders of the other partners in the Triple Alliance to *is all "Thomas', said the Premier, leave them in the lurch. hese achen hadeo for ete tees ceily expressed a When Hodges for the miners publicly expressed a provided exactly the willingness to compromise, division that the Government wanted, and it was exploited to the full.

BLACK FRIDAY

On 15th March 1921, the miners were left to fight on This was 'Black Friday'. As the Prime Minister and alone. his Secretary observed in an exchange of notes at the time: It is not enough to have a good cause. You must have good leaders. 4) The period between 1921 and 1925 saw an ebb in the was now armed with class struggle. Emergency Powers Act and with a range of strike-breaking machinery that was carefully preserved through the period of Labour Government in 1924. The need for such powers problems of British grew more acute the post-war capitalism intensified, and the markets for British goods

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1926 Cartoons by Communist Party members.

rate in 1925 further increased the prices of old at the British exports and forced the reduction of living standards of those who produced for this market.

Minister Baldwin told the In this period Tory Prime miners that 'All the workers in this country have got to face a reduction of wages to help put industry on its feet. (5) It became more and more clear to the Tories, however, that they would have to enforce an exemplary show-down, Preferably with the miners, in order to bring this about. In 1925, on 'Red Friday', , when the Triple together with the engineers threatened to come in together to protect the miners from wage cutting, Baldwin was compelled to retreat for a time by granting a temporary subsidy to the mining industry.

From 1925 the Government July to May 1926, carefully prepared. The country was divided into mintary districts, and officials were put in charge of food distrib- The semi-official and other tasks within each one.

ution Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies recruited retired army officers, members of various extreme right- wing organisations and other disaffected sections of the middle class into a strike-breaking force.

DID NOTHING

During these months the trade union leaders did nothing to prepare for the forthcoming struggle. In their heart of hearts even the most left wing of them always believed that a settlement was just around the corner. Thus Arthur Cook, Secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain and in many ways a genuine militant, while publicly repeating the slogan 'not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day', in private was prepared to suggest compromises of all kinds. April 1926 Cook spoke of a national 21st On only with plusses above it, but also with minimum not On 2nd May he even admitted to the minuses below it. Prime Minister's Secretary that 'the word revision would of reduction'. ease matters if it was understood instead MFGB President Herbert Smith, before the General Strike was even over, mentioned wage cuts for miners between 10 and 15 per cent. (6) The fact is that however much even the most militant this was not union leaders were prepared to compromise, good enough for the ruling class. Though Baldwin and his Government negotiated right up to the last moment in the hope that the union leaders would make major concessions, once this became impossible they simply seized on the pre- text of the workers at the Daily Mail refusing to print a lying strike-breaking editorial to leave the TUC negotiators outside Downing Street faced standing alone in the dark struggle against the of leading an all-out with the task Government. Submarines sent to London Docks

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?8-1-26. 927-5-26 Government's At this point the machinery came into operation. Telegrams were sent to all the regional civil commissioners set up under the Govern- ment's preparations containing the single word "Action' Those who received them knew what to do. Immediately all naval and military leave was cancelled. Troop reinforce- moved London and the main industrial ments were batallions of infantry centres, marched through ana two Liverpool with steel helmets, rifles and full equipment. The battleships Ramillies and Barham were recalled from the Atlantic fleet and anchored in the Mersey. Warships were also anchored in the Tyne, the Clyde and the Humber, and at Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Barrow, Middlesborough and Harwich. The military were used for various purposes. They were sent out in plain clothes to infiltrate the strikers and report any evidence...of sedition and subversion'. They were also used in enormous numbers to break the very effective picketing of the London docks. On Friday night, 7th May, scabs were moved into the docks from the river and the following morning 105 lorries moved out, containing food and armed soldiers and accompanied by armoured cars. The York World thought that this reporter from was supported by 'enough artillery to kill every activity living thing in the neighbourhood. (7) Over the week-end of 8th-9th May, there were baton charges by police against crowds of strikers in many parts of London, in Plymouth, Swansea, Southsea, Nottingham, Middlesborough Newcastle and in Hull, where there were 25 arrests and 41 hospital admissions. In York the crowd tried unsuccessfully to rescue an arrested striker from jail, and there were violent scenes over four or five nights in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Early the following week many hundreds of strikers were arrested, often for nothing more than possessing copies of Communist Party literature. ne Government's British Gazette, edited by Winston Churchill, notified individual members of the forces on 7th May that any action which they may find it necessary to take in an' honest endeavour to aid the Civil Power will receive both and afterwards, the full support of His Majesty's now Government".

BOOK

many other aspects of the events of those There are nine days which it would need an entire book to describe.

For example, there were the interminable and self-deceptive efforts of Thomas and the other union leaders to achieve a 'settlement' and there was the pathetic sight of the leaders of the most powerful action in the history of the British working class trooping to Downing Street on 12th May to announce their unconditional surrender.

This was partic- Armoured cars to protect scab traffic.

TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 21st April, 1976 J.H. Thomas. ularly well portrayed in Jim Allen's Days of Hope TV play and in the novel based on it.

But the great mass of workers showed a great deal and inventiveness than this. On 13th May, more courage there were more of them on strike than the day before, as efforts of their they fought tenaciously against the employers to victimise individuals or to deprive them of In this they were largely successful, trade union conditions. despite being abandoned by their leaders.

METHODS

The failure of the union leaders to prepare for the General Strike in advance was closely linked to the methods they used to limit it once it got going. Bevin of the T&GWU was the strongest voice in the TUC's Organising Committee and he was determined that all effective decisions should be even on a local level. made by the Unions themselves, 'dreaded about the struggle Jimmie Thomas said what he more than anything else' (including presumably defeat) was that power 'should have got out of the hands of those who were able to exercise some control'. (8) The activities of the union leaders during the strike simply sabotaged its effective operation. At Wellingborough the Secretary of the Building Trades Federation went to a meeting where he found that each affiliated secretary was on the platform with me, each with differently worded instructions. (9) The Swansea strike committee sent a message to the TUC on 8th May which said Telegrams are being received at intervals, cancelling one another and leaders of different signed by unions. is government concocting conflicting telegrams to mislead Strike Com- mittee?' Such a situation could not be allowed to continue, and although in some important centres such as Leeds rival committees continued in operation throughout the strike generally. speaking local trade unionists pooled struggle, their leaders, their resources, ignored and set up joint bodies often under the title 'council of action' taken over from earlier struggles. Many of them then issued permits for the movement of goods, Most issued strike bulletins, against the wishes of the TUC. Some set up defence squads as a result had little or organised mass picketing, and trouble from the strike-breaking authorities in their areas.

It remained a major fear of the union leaders, as Charles Dukes of the G&MWU later explained to the TUC, that every day the strike proceeded the control and the authority of that dispute was passing out of the hands of responsible Executives and into the hands of men of no authority, no control, no responsibility." (10) The councils strike action and local committees certainly won increasing power and authority within the working class movement during the General Strike, and they took on a range of tasks which the leaders of the movement simply tried to ignore.

MYTH

There has often been a myth put forward about the councils of action, particularly by Stalinist authors that they 'exercised complete control over during the strike their areas or even "began to develop an embryo alternative centre of government. (1l) It is true that such possibilities were implicit in the situation. They might even be said to be grasped for by the striker in South London who shouted But the your masters now after a blackleg bus.

'we are quite the reality because become did possibilities not simply there was nobody at all there to point the way to develop beyond such possibilities. The struggle to build an alternative state power can in no way be carried through in a spontaneous way, without conscious leadership.

In order to explain this point it is necessary to go on to activities of revolutionaries consider in some detail the before and during the General Strike and the views of their activities which have been put forward since that time.

For a long time after 1926, it was often considered that the Communist Party had done what it could. After all, despite the arrest of most of its leaders in 1925, and of many hundreds during the strike itself, the CP had played an active role in almost every area, been represented on councils of action, and numerous strike committees and recruited large numbers of workers, especially miners. after

_TROTSKYISM TODAY, Wedne

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the General Strike. The Communist Party alone, through its press, had warned in advance of the importance of the called for the establishment of councils of struggle and defence squads and other necessary forms of action, preparation.

ACHIEVEMENTS

All of these steps represented undoubted achievements However, they were closely allied to a political line which was unable to bring out the strengths of the working class in such a way as to take the necessary steps to victory. The beginning of the strike last Party publication before the echoed the views of the union leaders by saying that the proposed councils of action 'should not take over any of the duties that ordinarily belong to the Trade Unions, and in its first statement after it started said, 'All that it needs now is for every man to stand firm and the fight is won'.

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→ ?16•4•24 It was the great achievement of Brian Pearce in a series 50s to draw of articles originally published in the late attention to the origin and international character of the development of the early Communist Party in Britain, to describe how it built its industrial base and how it made the errors that it did in 1926. Some ten years later, in 1967-69, Michael Woodhouse systematically analysed the strengths and weaknesses of the British Communist Party in the the only time it tried crucial period of the early 20s. seriously to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class movement. (14) The main arguments of Trotsky, and, following him, of Pearce and Woodhouse, about the struggle for revolutionary leadership in the British working class in the 1920s may be briefly summarised as follows. Although it was an enorm- Communist Party in ously positive step to establish the to reorganise it on democratic centralist lines in 1920, 1922-23 and to make the necessary turn to mass work by setting up the Minority Movement in 1924, the Party failed to break decisively from its own sectarian and syndicalist roots and to develop a policy which could mobilise the working class independently of its bureaucratic leadership.

SUPPORT

In the period from the collapse of the Labour Govern- ment at the end of 1924 to the great victory of "Red Friday' in July 1925, the CP made some inroads into the mass movement, winning support in the trades councils, in the Miners Federation and many other areas. This impetus was lost as the Stalinist faction consolidated its hold on the Communist International, supported a policy of alliance "lefts' through the Anglo- with sections of trade union Russian Trade Union Committee, and turned the British independent policies for Party away from the positive, which it had begun to search in its first hesitant steps into the mass movement. In 1925 Trotsky outlined in Where Is Britain Going?

the need for a decisive: break from the trade union 'lefts' as the need for an ideological struggle well as the rights, decisive importance of the and the Fabianism against building of 'a correct and resolute revolutionary leadership'.

However, as the struggle which the CP correctly warned was inevitable grew closer and closer, there was, as Woodhouse puts it 'very little concrete evidence that the party did any- thing to break out of the limitations placed on preparation imposed on the rank and file by the trade union apparatus Top left: Arthur Cook addresses workers on May Day 1926; Centre: Communist Party cartoon - note 'All Power to General Council'; Above: Bevin; Left: mounted police at Elephant and Castle. or that it saw its role as anything more than 'gingering up' the official leaderships'.

One of the leading members of the Party at about this time presented a 'Plan of Action' to a strike committee in the North-East which repudiated a concern 'with any wider and restricted the committee to our limited horizons'. objectives. (12) It was only days later, and effectively after the end of the strike that the CP called for independent joint meetins of the councils of action or even posed in general terms the replacement of the current abstract leaders of the movement. For many years after 1926, it was very difficult to discover how it came about that such a poor lead had been given to the embattled British working class. Only in the late 1950's did Trotsky's writings on this period become generally available, showing that there was quite a different for the independent method which called in existence mobilisation of the working class in a way that challenges the bureaucratic leadership. (13)

TROTSKY

Since these views were first fought for by Trotsky within the Communist International in the 1920s, they have been subject to attack in a number of different ways.

the Stalinists developed a style of At first of course, polemic which accused the opponents of their opportunist policies of being agents of fascism and counter-revolution.

It is of some interest to see the re-appearance of such views in a pamphlet by Ernie Trory published last year and entitled Soviet Trade Unions and the General Strike. (16) This is written in a quaint Stalinist knockabout style with long quotations from the works of Stalin, no refer ences to any books containing a different point of view and a complete ignorance of the difference between th the Communis opposition tendencies within various movement during the 1920s.

It is of interest to note that Stalin is quoted as describ ing the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee as a "bloc which could be used to organise a united movement agains It was certainly nothing of th the capitalist offensive also goes on to mis-represent his opponents a kind. He supporters of break-away 'dual unionism'. This in fact wa Stalin's own policy for Britain two years later.

The lies, distortions and pure ignorance contained i this pamphlet are easy enough to refute with the mos happened of what actually knowledge elementary Nowadays the Stalinist leadership has to take more seriou account of the careful analysis of the history of our move ment undertaken in particular by Woodhouse and Pearce though generally they prefer to exclude specific referenc to this work, perhaps in the hope that people may not fin out about it. Thus the Party's 'official' historian James Klugman agrees that the slogan 'All Power to the General Council perhaps the most common one in the Party's press durin 1925-6 was certainly incorrect, , and even refers to th attacks on the trade union lefts after the end of the Gener the view h Such points do little to support Strike. continues to maintain that the line of the party was love whelmingly correct. (17) and tendentious views wordy submit the Klugmann to careful analysis is rather like trying to stud the specific gravity of suet pudding. However, the defenc of the Stalinist positions on these questions has now gone stage further with the publication earlier this year of collection of articles edited by Jeffrey Skelley and entitle The General Strike 1926.

MATERIAL

It must be said that this book contains some usef material, particularly in the new information it provides c activities. However, its main purpose is to associa local the mistaken but sincere and combative Communist Par of 1926 with the utterly rotten policies of today. Th Martin Jacques, who is both a university lecturer and member of the CP Executive Committee writes about tl

Page 4 period as if all that was involved was the maneouvres of various sections of the bureaucracy, without any indepen- dent mobilisation of the working class. To see things in that way is to gratuitously insult those who once fought for something different.

JUSTIFY

It is left to Klugmann in another essay in the volume, entitled Marxism, Reformism and the General Strike to justify once again the line of the CP at the time, and indeed ever since. He writes at enormous length to arrive at the irrefutable proposition that reformists cannot lead revol- utionary struggles. He concludes from this that It has been a tragic feature of British working-class history' that resent- ment against betrayal has been directed 'against individual betrayers, and not against the most real enemy - reformist theory, reformist ideas. If this odd statement means any- thing, it must be that revolutionaries should not in fact cease to struggle to replace the present counter-revolution- ary leaders at all but should manoeuvre around them on the basis of 'revolutionary ideas'. This is certainly the kind of have been appropriate for the policy he considers to "The Party well knew that....the General Strike, when workers... were not ready to challenge the social system.

(18) Everything else that they did flowed from this, and has been used to justify every Stalinist effort to hold back and defeat the working class ever since.

There is a curious congruence between these views and those presented in a recent pamphlet by James Hinton and at Warwick University Richard Hyman, two lecturers associated with the International Socialism group, entitled Trade Unions and Revolution: The Industrial Politics of the Early Communist Party. (19) The main thesis presented in this work is that the CP could not have done any better The fact is, we are told, 'it was a mistake to construct a mass revolutionary party' in a 'profoundly unfavourable situation. Though they agree that the Communist Party in the period before the General Strike tied itself too closely to the trade union lefts, they also quote a most uncharac- teristic statement from just before the struggle pointing to the potential of the councils of action. (20) Even the Stalinists themselves have not gone that far in defending their position!

HINDSIGHT

By the use of statistics about strikes and union membership in a way that must have gone down well in many a postgraduate seminar, Hinton and Hyman argue from their Olympian hindsight that there was no revol- utionary situation' in the mid-1920s. They sneer at the

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'orthodox Trotskyists', who, unlike themselves, fail to understand that history moves 'in its devious way through the contradictory cross currents of the immensly varied and many-sided consciousness of the working masses" However, it is they who show an utter contempt for the needs and aspirations of the working class in failing to even consider how revolutionaries could or should have intervened in the dynamic relationship between the workers and their established leaders. In fact it is they who leave the masses to the tender mercies of the bureaucrats and the Stalinists. The one question that our authors refuse to consider in all their grand talk of revolutionary situations and the self-action of the masses, is just how revolutionaries were supposed to confront the real problems that faced the miners and all sections of the working class. The capitalists and the ruling class decided to make a stand after July 1925. Hinton and Hyman apparently consider that at this point they should have been "cadre building; and preserving the purity of their theory.

Trotsky But the efforts of even the smallest group of revol- utionary workers cannot be developed in this way.

The miners and the rest of the working class were not thrown in May 1926 into a revolutionary situation' that they could smell or measure with a slide rule.

They moved in a mass way in a struggle which could have developed on to a much higher level. Revolutionaries had a responsibility to present policies to develop this struggle, even if they could not predict in advance how it would finally work out.

While it is certainly true that the orientation towards the trade union 'lefts' in 1925-6 represented a fatal error, it is also worthwhile recalling the strengths and achievements of the Minority Movement before it finally succumbed to Stalinist degeneration. It was above all not a kind of pre- cursor of the IS 'Rank and File' organisation, placing itself outside the dynamic of the struggle for leadership in the considerable step working class. (21) It represented a forward from the wartime shop stewards movement in that it hoped not to bypass the official leadership, but in putting forward a programme to bring together the interests of all sections of the working class in a unified, revolutionary way. By challenging the established leaders within the mass organisations, it openly proclaimed that it aimed to become 'majority movement'. There is no doubt that they had a concidemile affoot in formino the hande of the inion lendard TROTSKYISM TODAY, Wednesday 21st April, 1976 12X Top left: Two views of the police in action against workers; Bottom left: scab woman acts bus conductor, as miners' leaders Smith, Cook and Richardson; Above; sailors arrive in London. ence to the trades councils, and did much to prepare the working class for the battles that were bound to come.

It was a lack of sensitivity to the moods of the working class as the struggle developed that made the denunciation lefts' by the Communist Party and the Minority of the Movement after the General Strike ring much less true. The failure of anybody at all to present any other possibility meant that there was no new road open to the working class when they were overwhelmed by the sell-out. When the Coventry Council of Action sent a delegation to the the recall of the TUC after the surrender to demand General Strike in the name of the workers of Coventry' one of the delegation found that when they met the left' Purcell 'the mighty leader whom I had known as a fighter...

was cowed and beaten....The iron man....had feet of clay' (22) At this point what else was there to do but minimise the victimisations?

TODAY

It is clear that fifty years after the event, the General Strike and its problems live with us. We can of course see a capitalist class still determined to solve its crisis at the expense of the working class, and a trade union and Labour bureaucracy determined to help them with the task. Many echoes of the strength and determination of the working class could be heard in the battles of the miners, the dockers and the engineering workers in recent years.

It is important not to confuse the wrong policies of the Communist Party in those years with the counter-revol- utionary activities of those who masquarade behind the same name today. Above all, it is necessary to see that the struggle for a revolutionary programme in the working class is inseparable from a continual analysis of the political process within the working class and the testing of different lavers of its leadershin. It is in this process that even smal groups of revolutionaries can play a central role in the construction of the mass revolutionary party which is necessary to put an end to capitalist exploitation for good.

FOOTNOTES.

(1) WH. Crook The General Strike (University of North Carolina Press 1931). 1 Symons The General Strike. A Historical Portrait 1957): C Farman The General Strike.

May 1926 (Cresset Press. (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972): P. Renshaw The General Strike (Eyre Methuen, 1975). (2) T. Jones Whitehall Diary Vol 1, ed. R.K. Middlemas (Oxford University Press. 1969) p. 99f. (2) Form You Councils of Action! leaflet issued on 20th August 1920. (4) Jones pp. 136. 151. (5) Baldwin denied he actually said this, but, as Farman (p. 25) puts it, this was 'hardly an exaggeration of what he meant'.

(6) Jones II pp. 16, 32, 43.

(7) Symons pp. 113, 193. (8) Crook p. 398. (9) R.W. Postrate and others A Workers History of the Great Strike (Plebs League, 1927) p. 25.

(10) TUC 1926 Conference Proceedings p. 345.

(11) P. Carter in The General Strike 1926 ed J. Skelley (Lawrence and Wishart, 1976) p. 111; J. Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain vol ii (Lawrence and Wishart 1969) p.159 (12) Workers Daily 3, May 1926. Workers Bulletin 4 May: R.P. Arnot The Miners. Year of Struggle (Allen and Unwin. 1953) p.346.

(13) These writings are now given in full in ti Trotsky Collected Writings vol li ed. R. Chappel and A.

and Speeches on Britain Clinton (New Park Publications. 1974).

(14) These collected in M. Woodhouse and B writings now Pearce Essays on the History of Communism in Britain (New Park Publications. 1975), This book is a must for all those seriously concerned with questions of revolutionary leadership in the working class, though the Introduction' shows clearly that the WRP leader ship who produced it have gone one step beyond Louis XVI's courtiers: they have remembered nothing of what the articles say and understand nothing now of what the method that lies behind They tham mone a wilful inability to deal seriously with points raised by the WRP opposition linking the history of the CP with their own degeneration.

(15) L. Trotsky op cit p.123; Woodhouse and Pearce p.97.

(16) The publisher in Crabtree Press, Brighton.

(17) J. Klugmann op cit pp.191-4.

(18) Skelley op cit pp. 101, 79.

(19) Published by Pluto Press in 1975.

(20) p.41, quoting Tom Wintringham.

(21) On p.34 they seem to be arguing that the councils of action should have been built outside the existing trade union machinery.

Such a policy would certainly have failed.

(22) G. Hodgkinson Sent to Coventry (Maxwell, 1970) p.99