Marxist Group (UK)
Marxist Group | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Denzil Dean Harber(1934-1935) C. L. R. James(1935-1938) |
| Founded | November 1934 |
| Dissolved | 1938 |
| Split from | Communist League |
| Merged into | Revolutionary Socialist League |
| Headquarters | Glasgow |
| Ideology | Trotskyism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| National affiliation | Independent Labour Party(1934-1936) |
TheMarxist Groupwas an earlyTrotskyistgroup in theUnited Kingdom.
History[edit]
Its origins lay in theCommunist League,one of the first[1][2]Trotskyist groups in the country.Leon Trotskyadvised the group toentertheIndependent Labour Party(ILP), which had just disaffiliated from theLabour Party.He believed that the group should work for a "Bolsheviktransformation of the party ".[3]
The majority of the Communist League argued against joining the ILP in favour of maintaining an open party, but allowed thirty of its members led byDenzil Dean Harberto form a secretive "Bolshevik-Leninist Fraction" in the ILP. This difference in orientation essentially split the party, and in November 1934, sixty Trotskyist ILPers officially formed the Marxist Group.
While, perhaps due to this delay and infighting, the Group never achieved the influence hoped for by Trotsky, it did win new members, includingC. L. R. James,who in 1937 dedicated his bookWorld Revolutionto the group.Ted Grantalso joined the organisation, having moved fromSouth Africa.By the ILP Conference of 1935, it claimed a similar strength to theRevolutionary Policy Committee,which was sympathetic to theCommunist Party of Great Britain.However the same year a group (including Grant and Harber) split to work inside theLabour Party's Labour League of Youth, initially as the "Bolshevik-Leninist Group" and then as theMilitant Group.
The Marxist Group soon realised that the ILP did not have mass influence outsideGlasgow,and sent John Archer to check the actual strength of the party around the country. Trotsky proposed drawing up amanifestoaround a militant programme, including a call for aFourth International,and requesting signatures to see how much influence the Group had. While the Group was unable to reach a decision on this, at the 1936 ILP Conference, none of itsmotionswere passed. Because these motions included a clear call for the Fourth International, many members of the Group were expelled from the ILP, including James. James then convinced the remainder of his organisation to exit the ILP.
Outside the ILP, the Group began working again with theMarxist League(as the Communist League was now called), and in early 1938 the two joined to form theRevolutionary Socialist League,into which the Militant Group fused later the same year.
References[edit]
- ^Alexander, Robert Jackson.International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement.Duke University Press, 1991, p438
- ^Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike.Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century.A&C Black, 2000, p153
- ^"LEON TROTSKY: Leon Trotsky on Britain, Excerpts from his writings".
- Sam Bornstein andAl Richardson,Against the Stream.