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From Fourth International, vol.4 No.11, December 1943, p.351.
Transcribed, marked up & formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for ETOL.
The split in the ranks of the Communist Party in Glasgow continue to grow. To the already reported developments a recent letter from a British Trotskyist adds the following:
“The latest bombshell for the Stalinists on the Clyde is that the Convenor of Shop Stewards in one of the largest factories in the area – a Communist Party member of some years standing – has publicly broken with Stalinism at a meeting of the workers in the plant.
“His resignation has not been accepted by the Stalinists on the ground that he had been operating under the pressure of the Trotskyist controlled Clyde Workers’ Committee! He has been followed by others. This is only the beginning. In London the crack is also beginning to appear.”
J.H.
****
The Case of Leon Trotsky is one of the books which are now playing an important role in the political education of those English militants who are moving away from the CP and towards the program of revolutionary socialism.
One Clyde militant writes:
“I have read the Case of Leon Trotsky twice, and not only is it an eye-opener but a complete re-education ...
“Trotsky’s analysis of the world position is indubitably the dialectical and historical truth and is amazingly simple to grasp in comparison with the tortuous so-called policy of the so-called Communist Party. His summary on his own behalf is really the finest possible survey of the history of the world during the last twenty-five years – the world as a worker should see it.
“Prior to this it has always been my opinion that only a world war could give us the revolutionary situation on a large enough scale to be successful. Clearly, an extension of the struggle in Spain by the French proletariat – backed and guided by the Comintern, in a Bolshevik manner – could have dispensed with the capitalist war, and under favorable circumstances made use of the general European revolutionary situation to sovietize Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. The fresh revolutionary leadership of these countries would have rendered the bureaucratic leadership sterile and expedited the political revolution in the Soviet Union.
“The other major point is the criminal policy of ‘Popular Front’ as compared to the united front of all progressive proletarian and intellectual, petty bourgeois organizations, at least so long as we are going on the same road ...”
****
A London letter supplies the information that early in August the Davies-Warner Brothers whitewash film, Mission To Moscow, was released in the provinces after a few weeks’ run at two London movie houses. Apparently the film proved as much of a box office flop in England as it did in the USA.
English Trotskyists, picketing the film, on the very first weekend “sold 7,000 penny supplements exposing the film.”
The English intellectuals and “left-wingers” have maintained a disgraceful silence. “Only the Glasgow Forward,” writes our correspondent, “and the Tribune were at all critical among the socialist press – the latter barely so.”
The New Leader, organ of the British ILP carried a review which contrived to omit any mention of the attack and frame-up against Trotsky and Trotskyism.
A protest by English Trotskyists to Fenner Brockway, leader of the ILP, elicited the following reply:
“I note what you say about Mission To Moscow. You will appreciate that I can’t hold myself in any way responsible to you for the contents of the New Leader, but as a matter of fact we are arranging to review the film Mission To Moscow more fully when it is generally released.”
The Davies film has done something unintended and unforeseen by its sponsors: it has revived interest in the Moscow Frameup Trials in England. The WIL group decided to publish 10,000 copies of Leon Trotsky’s I Stake My Life, together with a summary of the report of the Dewey Commission.
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Last updated on 27.8.2008