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GCATT and the Archaeology of BritishTrotskyismPhilip WallacePublished online: 07 May 2009.

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GCATT and the Archaeology of BritishTrotskyismPhilip Wallace

This article describes the holdings of Glasgow Caledonian University Archive of the

Trotskyist Tradition (GCATT), the core of which are the organisational records of one of

the main post-World War II trends of British Trotskyism. This trend emerged from the

Revolutionary Communist Party in 1948 as the Club later became first the Social Labour

League and finally the Workers Revolutionary Party which fragmented in 1985. This

article for practical archival reasons concentrates on the earliest material held in GCATT.

This material relates to the prehistory of the organisation, essentially ranging from the

1930s to 1950. Items discussed relate to the activities of early Trotskyist organisations

such as the Balham Group, the Communist League, the Marxist Group, the Marxist

League and the Militant Group, and their relationships to each other and to other non-

Trotskyist British leftwing parties of the 1930s. The majority of GCATT documents

discussed here seem to originate from two organisational sources: the records of Hugo

Dewar in his official capacity as secretary of the Communist League and material

deriving from the files of Tom Mercer, leading member of the Left Fraction. The

Communist League was the immediate successor to the Balham Group after its expulsion

from the Communist Party. The Left Fraction had its roots in the Militant Group of the

late 1930s, emerged within the Revolutionary Socialist League in the early 1940s and

virtually ceased to exist in 1950. Much of the Left Fraction material originates within the

organisations Glasgow branch giving a unique insight into the, now nearly forgotten,

activities of this distinctive West of Scotland strand of Trotskyism.

Keywords: Hugo Dewar; Communist League; Tom Mercer; Left Fraction; Balham Group;

Peter Petroff

The core of Glasgow Caledonian Archive of the Trotskyist Tradition (GCATT)

consists of the organisational records of one of the three main trends1 emerging out

of the Revolutionary Communist Party (19441949) in the late 1940s and continuing

1 Two groups (Healys and Grants) each claimed Trotskyist orthodoxy while Cliff s was Bureaucratic State

Capitalist but continued to acknowledge its Trotskyist origins.

ISSN 0301-7605 (print)/ISSN 1748-8605 (online) # 2009 CritiqueDOI: 10.1080/03017600902760745

Critique

Vol. 37, No. 2, May 2009, pp. 261278

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through its various organisational guises. This archive covers in detail the

developments in the so called Healyite strand of British Trotskyism from its first

appearance as The Club (19471959), through its middle period as the SocialistLabour League (19591973), and in its final incarnation as the Workers Revolu-tionary Party which acrimoniously and terminally fragmented in 1985. Yet GCATT is

much more than an official archive of a constantly evolving (both in personnel and

political orientation) British Trotskyist grouping centred round Gerry Healy

(interesting and valuable though this undoubtedly is). This vast archive contains

substantial material from the pre-war history of British Trotskyism including items

(letters, pamphlets, internal bulletins etc.) from its very birth as the Balham Group in

1932. Throughout the rapidly changing world of the 1930s and 1940s this archive

provides, through its memos, conference documents, expulsion letters and news-

papers, material evidence of various British Trotskyist attempts to understand and

address such pivotal events as the rise of Fascism in Germany, the Second World War,

the post-war Labour government and the escalating anti-colonial struggles in Africa

and Asia. Much of the material dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s deals with

the influx (and frequently subsequent exit) of British communists drawn to

Trotskyism in the wake of Khrushchevs secret speech to the 20th Congress of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on 25 February 1956, and the

Hungarian uprising later the same year (23 October 19564 November 1956).2

Wherever one looks in the 140 linear metres of this archive, transferred from

storage in Newcastle in 2002, its holdings relate not just to internal party meetings

and struggles but also to wider UK and global issues, personalities and political

parties. If, for example, one wants to know the Socialist Labour Leagues (SLL) views

on the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) or the British

Labour Party there is (as one might expect of a Trotskyist organisation) a wealth of

(sometimes unexpected) information within the archive. Whether ones topic is the

Vietnam War, the various leftist groups in Britain and the world or Irelands troubled

history, this archive can supply valuable and often unique material.

2 Among the many individuals involved in this journey from the Communist Party (CP) to Healys group

one might mention the Daily Workers own reporter in Hungary Peter Fryer, historian and translator Brian

Pearce, writer Brian Behan (brother of Irish playwright Brendan Behan), and the soon to be prominent

philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre. Unlike many on the left MacIntyres political journey was not synchronised to

the events of 1956. Blackledge and Davidson suggest that MacIntyre left the CP in 1948, joined the SLL around

the time of its founding and identified himself with Brian Behans dissident Open Party faction in the spring of

1960. P. Blackledge and N. Davidson (eds), Alasdair Macintyres Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings

19531974 (Leiden: Brill), pp. xxxxi, xxviixxviii. For more on Fryer see P. Fryer, Hungarian Tragedy: And OtherWritings on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 2nd revised edition (London: Index Books, 1997) and on Behan see

B. Behan, With Breast Expanded (London: Select Books, 1991), pp. 154160, 178180. For a brief and livelyaccount of 1956 and the CPGB (plus Gerry Healys attempts to exploit the CPGBs difficulties) see F. Beckett,

Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party (London: Merlin Press, 1998), pp. 124140. Amore academic analysis of 1956 and its consequences, with substantial material on the role of B. Pearce, is

contained in Remembering 1956: Revolutionary History, 9:3 (2006), edited by John McIlroy (London: Porcupine

Press and Socialist Platform).

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Given the monumental task facing the GCU Archivist and her staff in providing a

collection level description of the GCATT an early decision was taken, for a variety of

reasons, to approach this ongoing and long-term project chronologically. Therefore

the process of listing and preservation of this archive has begun with the oldest,

most fragile, items dating from the 1930s and 1940s. As a consequence an evermore

detailed picture of the activities of the various Trotskyist (and wider left-wing) groups

operating in Britain in the pre-war period is slowly emerging. As a vital part of this

undertaking it has been an interesting and useful exercise to interrogate Reg Groves

vivid personal account of The Balham Group3 to contextualise and identify some of

the early material held in GCATT. In turn the archive can flesh out, and on occasion,

add documentary detail to Groves autobiographical narrative. Widening the story

out beyond the Balham Group a similar interactive process (with similar results) has

taken place with Bornstein and Richardsons more scholarly Against the Stream: A

History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 192438.4 To illustrate the added valueresulting from the activity of identifying and listing this archive it might be

instructive to look in a little more detail at a key section from Groves followed by one

from Bornstein and Richardson.

To maintain a sense of scale and background to the following illustrative examples it

is well to remember that the GCATT items discussed here, in the sections dealing with

the Balham Group and Independent Labour Party (ILP), relate solely to one box of

paper material (box 732, containing 121 separate items), unless explicitly indicated,

which we have recently been working on. The remaining material from this box, which

we have not chosen to highlight may, of course, hold equal or greater significance for

future researchers. GCATT as a whole contains more than 700 (as the number 732

suggests) similar boxes and, in addition, a large number of photographic, film,

microfilm and audio items. The majority of the material in box 732 relating to the

post-expulsion Balham Group (calling itself the Communist League) is comprised of

the official correspondence of the organisations National Committee Secretary, Hugo

Dewar. The central issue preoccupying the fledgling Trotskyists of the Communist

League, and the key to understanding their often apparently confusing interactions,

was whether to remain independent or to enter the ILP (an option endorsed by

Trotsky) or later the Labour Party. A minority joined the ILP in February 1934,5

which became the Marxist Group (most of this minority group left again at the end of

1936),6 while the majority remained outside (for a short time) and then joined the

Labour Party (becoming the Marxist League).7

3 R. Groves, The Balham Group (London: Pluto Press, 1974).4 S. Bornstein and A. Richardson, Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 192438

(London: Socialist Platform, 1986).5 G. Cohen, The Failure of a Dream: The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II

(London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), p. 103.6 Ibid., p.107.7 The picture is somewhat complicated by the trajectory of the Bolsheviks-Leninists who initially joined the

ILP with the minority but soon left in early 1935 to join the Labour Party, becoming the Militant Group in

January 1937. Cohen, op. cit., p. 104.

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Balham Group

Groves recounts8 how he, Henry Sara and Harry Wicks were summoned by

Communist Party District Organiser R.W. Robson to a meeting on 16 August

1932. Two days later Wicks and Groves received letters of expulsion (and Sara shortly

afterwards). Groves then relates that following a meeting of the Tooting Local where

a lone Hugo Dewar defended the [Balham] groups opinions . . . [Dewar] was duly

expelled.9 At this point GCATT can both confirm Groves account (and that of

Bornstein & Richardson) and add a little flesh to it. In box 732 we hold Hugo Dewars

letter of expulsion from the Communist Party dated 8 Septemer 1932.10 This letter

sent and signed by R.W. Robson details the grounds for Dewars expulsion, perhaps

unsurprisingly, as disruptive activity, attacking the Party before non-Party workers

and for engaging in fractional activity in pursuance of a political line hostile to that of

the Party. In the aftermath of the expulsions Groves mentions a cyclo-styled

statement (To our comrades in the Communist Party from the liquidated Balham

Group) produced and distributed by the Balham Group.11 Unfortunately Groves

does not reproduce the text of this important document. GCATT holds an original

copy of this double sided duplicated sheet.12 Original copies of other leaflets which

Groves refers to, (and does reproduce) are also held by GCATT.13

GCATT includes a range of letters and documents relating to the Balham Group

not referred to in Groves account for example, a single page Resolution on the

Standpoint and Activities of the Balham Group by the Working Bureau of the

London District [of the CP].14

One interesting example of a rare item dating from before, but relevant to, the

emergence of the Balham Group among the mountain of material relating to the

CPGB (comprising journals and documents both by and about the CP throughout its

history) is a handwritten ten page (A3 sized) letter from the Executive Committee of

the Communist International to the Secretariat of the CPGB outlining the British

partys failings dated February 1929.15 Along with a call for a change of the UK

leadership this document proposes the publication of a daily party newspaper. This

8 Groves, op. cit., pp. 6769; also Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op cit., pp. 8586.9 Groves, op. cit., p. 70.10 R.W. Robson, Hugo Dewars Letter of Expulsion from CPGB, 8 September 1932, Glasgow Caledonian

University Archives (hereafter referred to as GCATT), Box 732, Item 67.11 Groves, op. cit., p. 70.12 Balham Group, To our Comrades in the Communist Party from the liquidated Balham Group,

September 1932, GCATT, Box 732, Item 81.13 Good examples of this category include: To the delegates to the Party congress Battersea, November 1932,

from the British Group of the Left Opposition of the C.I., 27 November 1932, GCATT, Box 732, Item 118, see

Groves, op. cit., pp. 9596; and Stewart Purkis, An Open Letter to Harry Pollitt: General Secretary of theCommunist Party of Great Britain, 27 July 1932, GCATT, Box 732, Item 119; see Groves, op. cit., pp. 8690.

14 Working Bureau of the London District [of the CP], Resolution on the Standpoint and Activities of the

Balham Group, 1932, GCATT, Box 53, Item 120.15 Committee of the Communist International, Letter to the Secretariat of the CPGB, February 1929,

GCATT, Box 53, Item 13.

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item includes a short covering letter accepting the Communist Internationals (CI)

criticisms by J.R. Campbell on behalf of the CPGB Secretariat.16

The ILP

Another issue in the early history of British Trotskyism on which GCATT can throw

new light is in its relationship to the ILP. Bornstein and Richardson mention the

emergence within the London ILP of the Revolutionary Policy Committee led by

Dr. C.K. Cullen . . . and Jack Gaster. This group, after campaigning (successfully) for

disaffiliation from the Labour Party (1932), manoeuvred for ILP affiliation to the

Communist International and for a merger between the ILP and the British

Communist Party.17

There is much diverse material in GCATT, including a complete run of the early

issues of the Internal Bulletin * British Section * International Left Oppositionconcerning Trotsky and his followers evolving attitudes towards the Revolutionary

Communist Party (RPC) and the ILP.18 A number of GCATT items relating to the

ILP confirm and amplify Bornstein and Richardsons view (see chapter 5) that early

RPC aims and activities were more intriguing and problematic than the standard

view of the RPC as basically a Stalinist pressure group would suggest. This original

complexity is highlighted in the correspondence between a small group of ILP

members (wishing to lead an organised defection to the CP) and their party

leadership.19 Of particular interest is the document entitled To all Comrades of the

ILP circulated by the group (T. Kernot, P. Solomons, J. Sainsbury & M. Gibbs) to ILP

London branches in March 1933.20 Bornstein and Richardson quote extensively from

this document21 and highlight some of the complexities associated with it, including

the groups ideological closeness to the embryonic Trotskyist movement recently

emerged from the Communist Party.22 They also point to the dispute over the

16 The Daily Worker was launched at the start of 1930; on the February 1929 CI letter see B. Hunter, The

Beginnings of Trotskyism in Britain, Labour Review, 8:10 (1985), pp. 2223. For a useful brief account of the riseand implementation of the infamous Third Period see H. Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain: The CPGB from

its Origins to the Second World War (London: Pluto Press, 1976), pp. 79102.17 Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op. cit., p. 128.18 Internal Bulletin * British Section * International Left Opposition, 113/14 (14 March27 September

1933), GCATT, Box 732, Items 1931.19 See also the groups approach to the Daily Worker editor and the response from the Daily Worker Editorial

Board. Tom Kernot, Letter to Editor of the Daily Worker, 4 April 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 112; Editorial

Board, Letter to Tom Kernot, Daily Worker, 7 April 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 82.20 T. Kernot, P. Solomons, J. Sainsbury and M. Gibbs, To all Comrades of the ILP, 19 March 1933, GCATT,

Box 732, Item 109.21 Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op. cit., pp. 13940.22 On this issue it is interesting to note a subsequent letter from [Isabel] Mussi to a Tom [Kernot] about Left

Opposition (LO) activities. [Isabel] Mussi, Letter to Tom [Kernot], 21 July 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 96. See

also a letter addressed to 5 ILP branches from a T.K. (again perhaps Tom Kernot) of Hackney Group

International Left Opposition. 2 Letters to ILP London branches, 11 July 1933 and 10 August 1933, GCATT,

Box 732, Item 98.

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authorship of this important document.23 Yet, as with the material relating directly to

the Balham group, GCATT can add a wealth of material not referred to by Bornstein

and Richardson. GCATT contains the correspondence between Kernot and the ILP

leadership, including New Leader editor Fenner Brockway. Noteworthy in the replies

from Brockway and Aplin is the tone of bemusement that a group of apparent

Trotskyists should wish to join the Communist Party. Another source of puzzlement

for the ILP officials is whether or not Kernot and company have (or have not)

resigned from the ILP.24

Further light on the complex relationship between Kernot et al. and the RPC is

shed in a copy of a hand written five page letter to Gaster outlining The future of the

Revolutionary Policy Committee dated 30 December 193225 and in what seems to be

Gasters short response of 16 January 1933 addressed to Comrade Kernot.26

GCATT material (held in Box 732 and elsewhere in the archive) should allow future

researchers to directly examine the complex, shifting and sometimes unexpected

relationships between first generation British Trotskyists and the CP, ILP and wider

Labour movement.

Scotlands Forgotten Trotskyists

Of interest for those seeking to better understand the distinct but largely

unknown wartime and early post-war history of the Scottish Trotskyist movement

(or more accurately movements) GCATT should in time be of considerable value.

Boxes 420, 636 and 637 (with the promise of more to come) offer a range of

material, mostly letters and internal documents from Tom Mercers Glasgow

group, which can usefully supplement the materials held in Stirling University

from the quite divergent Tait (Edinburgh) group.27 In its guise as a leading part

of the Left Fraction (LF) from early in World War II until its almost total

23 Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op. cit., p. 157.24 On this issue see the following items: Jack Gaster, Letter to Comrade Kernot, 16 January 1933, GCATT,

Box 732, Item 94; Mussi , GCATT, Box 732, Item 96, op cit.; 2 Letters to ILP London branches, GCATT, Box

732, Item 98, op. cit.; T. Kernot, Letter to John Aplin, 4 April 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 104; Tom Kernot,

Letter to the editor of New Leader, [1933], GCATT, Box 732, Item 107; John Aplin , Letter to T Kernot; P.

Solomons and J. Sainsbury, 3 April 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 108; To all Comrades of the ILP, GCATT, Box

732, Item 109 op. cit; John Paton, Letter to T. Kernot, 19 March 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 110; John Aplin,

Letter to T. Kernot, 30 March 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 111; Tom Kernot, Letter to the Daily Worker, 4

April 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 112; Fenner Brockway, Letter to T. Kernot, 4 April 1933, GCATT, Box 732,

Item 113.25 T. Kernot, Letter to Jack Gaster, 30 December 1932, GCATT, Box 732, Item 117.26 Jack Gaster, Letter to Comrade Kernot, 16 January 1933, GCATT, Box 732, Item 94, op. cit.27 See also the Glasgow based (Oehlerite) Leninist League of Ernest Rogers and Hugh Esson (aka Morrison),

active from the early 1930s, which was close to the American Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) of Hugo

Oehler. A Communist Party document on British Trotskyist groups, written in 1943 describes it as Affiliated to

the International Contact Commission for the building of a new Communist Fourth International . . . [i]t claimsto be the true 4th International abd [sic] describes the Trotskyists as a festering centrist sore on the political

body of the proletariat. CPGB, Report on Trotskyite Activities in Britain: May 1943, (London: CPGB, 1943), p.

15, GCATT, Box 51, Item 1; see also T. Grant, A History of British Trotskyism, (London: Wellred, 2002), p. 77.

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absorbance into Healys organisation around 1950 GCATT holds a very substantial

amount of the Glasgow sections organisational records, including conference

reports and an extensive run of minutes for editorial meetings of the Voice of

Labour (LFs duplicated paper).28 Particularly note worthy is the exchange of

letters and documents regarding the expulsion of Harry Selby and Tom Mercer

from Glasgow Labour Party in 1946.29 Light is also thrown on the near extinction

of the LF (19491950) and Selbys reaction to the move into Socialist Fellowship.30

Preliminary examination of some of the as yet unlisted LF material promises

items dating back to the very birth (and possibly earlier) of the LF circa 1940/

1941. Among this potentially exciting material on Glasgows early Trotskyists the

names Tom Mercer, Harry Selby, Roddy Hood and Gibbie Russell (with perhaps

other significant names yet to emerge) frequently appear. The topics discussed

include the groups ubiquitous and difficult relationship with the Labour Party

and the production of the groups (in conjunction with the Militant Miners

Committee) journal The Militant Scottish Miner.31

An illustration of the type of items awaiting discovery comes in the very first folder of

box 639. Martin Upham in chapter 10 (footnote 108) of his useful 1980 PhD thesis The

History of British Trotskyism to 1949 states that [t]he Left Fraction later claimed that

at this time [August 1941] the RSL issued two pamphlets, Class War in the West and

Production Committees and the Soviet Union . . .. Neither has been located.32 Situated in

28 As far as we can tell the LF material in GCATT originates from the organisational records of Tom Mercer.29 Documents and letters concerning expulsion of Tom Mercer and Harry Selby from Glasgow City Labour

Party, May August 1946, GCATT, Box 636, Item 1. For further material relating to the expulsion of T. Mercer,H. Selby and a Margaret Maclean from Glasgow LP in 1946 see, Material relating to expulsion of T. Mercer, H.

Selby and M. MacLean from LP, 1946, GCATT, Box 734, Item 8, and To the National Conference of the Party,

[1946], GCATT, Box 421, Item 27. For additional documents on the efforts during 1947 to expel the said

Margaret Maclean from the Glasgows Left Fraction group see: Documents on the Charge against T.M., 1947,

GCATT, Box 636, 14. Thus far I have been unable to ascertain for certain whether this Margaret Maclean is

actually John Macleans daughter Nan who had been married to Mercer and was active in the group.

Circumstantial evidence within GCATT seems to suggest that this identification of Margaret with Nan is a

distinct possibility.30 Folder of Correspondence between AR (for the Secretariat of the LF) and DH [Harry Selby], 26 April

194819 September 1949, GCATT, Box 636, Item 5.31 According to McIlroy and Campbell the paper first appeared in February 1943 and was followed by a

further eight issues. After contact with other UK mining areas the paper was renamed the Militant Miner and

produced another ten issues from December 1943. The paper was an impressive achievement, financed by

miners, produced by Mercer and Hood and largely written by Brannan and Russell, who edited it from his home

in Burnbank. J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, Beyond Betteshanger: Order 1305 in the Scottish Coalfields during

the Second World War, Part 1: Politics, Prosecutions and Protest, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 15

(2003), p. 49. The Militant Miner ceased publication in November 1944. J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, Beyond

Betteshanger: Order 1305 in the Scottish Coalfields during the Second World War, Part 2: The Cardowan Story,

Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 16 (2003), p. 67. Oddly, GCATT, Box 16, Item 4, holds a copy of The

Militant Scottish Miner for February 1943 which describes itself as being New series no.12. This apparent

anomaly can no doubt be explained by the papers origins as Youth Militant and the Militant. H. Selby, Brief

notes on the History of the Left Fraction, Revolutionary History, 1:1 (1986), [editorial footnote 7], http://

www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol1/No1/Selby.html, accessed 22 December 2008.32 M. Upham, The History of British Trotskyism to 1949 (PhD dissertation, University of Hull, 1980),

http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/Upham/upmen.htm, accessed 22 December 2008.

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a folder full of other possibly unique 19411942 RSL pamphlets and documents arecopies of Uphams missing publications. To help clarify matters of group authorship

the four page Class War in the West and five page Production Committees and the Soviet

Union were both Printed and published by Pioneer Publishing Association, 65

Burnside Street, Glasgow; for The Revolutionary Socialist League, British Section of the

Fourth International. Other interesting items in this folder include: Roosevelt indicts

Revolutionaries (June 1942), On Revolutionary Defeatism (December 1941) and

Churchill fought the USSR (August 1941).33

As a useful supplement to this LF material, one of our other archives (Sandy

Hobbs) holds many of the internal bulletins and other records of the resurrected

LF centred around Glasgow activist (and survivor of the pre-1950 LF) Harry Selby

in the early and mid 1960s.

Just as our understanding of the origins of British Trotskyism was assisted by

reference to Groves and the first volume of Bornstein and Richardsons history so

the narrative of the Left Fraction is put in context by Bornstein and Richardsons

second volume on the history of British Trotskyism.34 Also of use, especially on

the later re-emergence of the LF, is Harry Selbys own Brief notes on the History

of the Left Fraction written around 1964 and reprinted in Revolutionary History.35

Generally enlightening and of particular value on the wartime activities of the RSL

in the Scottish Coalfields is the two part article Beyond Betteshanger by John

McIlroy and Alan Campbell. Another source worth mentioning is Tony Milligans

interesting article on Trotskyist Politics and Industrial work in Scotland 19391945.36 Again, as with our Balham Group and ILP material, our resources on the

LF (both in GCATT & Sandy Hobbs) confirm, add to and, on occasion, raise

questions about some of the published sources consulted.

For a relatively minor example of how GCATT can clarify doctrinal or

biographical details in the history of the LF given in the standard accounts one

might look at the neglected 1940s figure of Gibbie (Gilbert) Russell. Given Bornstein

and Richardsons understandably succinct description of Russell as a retired miner37

one would be forgiven for assuming him to be a man in his 50s or 60s, yet GCATT

shows this to be a mistaken assumption.38 In the publicity material associated with

33 Series of LF documents and pamphlets, including Report on Negotiations with the WIL, September 1941June 1942, GCATT, Box 639, Item 1.

34 S. Bornstein and A. Richardson, War and the International: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain

19371949, (London: Socialist Platform, 1986).35 Selby, op. cit.,36 McIlroy and Campbell, Part 1: Politics and Protest, op. cit., pp. 2772; McIlroy and Campbell, Part 2: The

Cardowan Story, op cit, pp. 3980; T. Milligan, Trotskyist politics and industrial work in Scotland 19391945,Scottish Labour History Journal, 30 (1995), pp. 104120.

37 Bornstein and Richardson, War and the International, op. cit., p. 29.38 Milligan, op. cit., p. 107, repeats Bornstein and Richardsons brief information on Russell with a little

added detail. Upham simply says Gibbie Russell, was a former Lanarkshire miner who had retained his links

with the pits. Upham, op. cit., Chapter 10 footnote 134. McIlroy and Campbell are more expansive telling us

that Russell had been a miner for fourteen years before being injured in 1941 and that subsequently he became

an insurance collector. McIlroy and Campbell, Politics, Prosecutions and Protest, op. cit., pp. 4849.

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Russells candidacy in the Hamilton Municipal Election of 6 November 1945 he is

described as being 34.39 Without this small detail (and accompanying image) the

initial misapprehension might only be compounded by the fact, revealed elsewhere,

that Russell died just over a year later on 7 February 1947.40

Another, perhaps more important, example of the questions raised by the LF

material examined so far relates to the response evoked by the re-publication of

Selbys article. In Revolutionary History number 2 (Summer 1988) Ken Tarbuck as

a corrective gives the Nottingham-based International Groups view of the split

with Selbys LF41 and Ted Crawford questions both the reality (in numerical

terms) of Selbys group (mid-1966) and its desire to relate to the wider non-

Labour Party left.42 While Tarbucks contribution is entirely justified and

Crawfords view of the LFs sectarianism is largely confirmed by the (GCATT &

Hobbs) material consulted, Crawfords question regarding the actual existence

(apart from Selby himself) of the later LF is a little more problematical and

requires further study.

While it is undoubtedly true that Selby (like many on the left) enjoyed the use of

multiple pseudonyms, both to boost perceived membership and to enhance

revolutionary kudos, and while LF membership was no doubt small and probably

had a high turnover of members, our evidence seems to suggest that the LF was

unlikely to be quite as small, even as late as 1966, as Crawford suggests. In our

Hobbs LF material there are a number of documents relating to a LF conference

held in Glasgow a year earlier (May 1965) which, apart from Glasgow members,

was attended by a group of Nottingham comrades (probably a very small group).

Conference documents and at least one conference resolution were presented by

(two) Nottingham members. We also hold around 20 issues of the internal Bulletin

of the Left Fraction for 1965 which would suggest that Selby was at this time not

totally alone and that the organisation was not entirely moribund. A final anecdotal

indicator that Selby was not quite a one man fraction (like The Popular Front of

Judea in Monty Pythons The Life of Brian) is that our 1960s material originates

from two LF members of the time, neither of whom was Harry Selby (or indeed

Sandy Hobbs).43

39 Gibbie [Gilbert Russell], Letters to Tom Mercer and leaflets for Hamilton Municipal Election, November

1945, GCATT, Box 641, Item 1.40 R [Roddy Hood], Letter to T [Tom Mercer], 8 February 1947, GCATT, Box 641, Item 4. McIlroy and

Campbell place Russells death a little earlier: Russell, fighting to the end, contracted throat cancer and died in

late 1946. McIlroy and Campbell, The Cardowan Story, op. cit., p. 67.41 K. Tarbuck, Selby, Revolutionary History, 2 (1988), http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol1/

No2/LetSelby.html. This view is substantially restated in Tarbucks autobiography posthumously posted on the

Revolutionary History web site: K. Tarbuck, Ever Hopeful * Never sure: Reminiscences of a Some-time Trotskyist,1995, http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/Articles/kentarbuck.htm, accessed 22 December 2008.

42 T. Crawford, Harry Selby again, Revolutionary History, 1:2 (1988), http://www.revolutionary-

history.co.uk/backiss/Vol1/No2/LetSelby.html, accessed 22 December 2008.43 Glasgow Caledonian University Archives, Records of Sandy Hobbs, Left Fraction Bulletin and associated

papers 19581974.

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How can we therefore account for the divergence in the period of a year

between our 1965 picture of an apparently reasonably healthy political grouping

and Crawfords 1966 conviction that the LF was almost entirely a figment of

Harry Selbys imagination? Can two such divergent views possibly both be correct?

A promising provisional reading (admittedly one speculative interpretation among

several) from our fragmentary evidence is that between 1965 and 1966 the group

entered into terminal decline. Provisionally, the downturn in the volume of

material held by us for 1966 (and later) in comparison to 1965 might be seen as

confirming this theory. Alternatively, this may simply reflect the gradual distancing

of our two LF contributors from the group, but this small-scale departure itself

might indicate a wider haemorrhaging of members. Certainly, much of our later

material does seem to be concerned with internal disputes and discipline issues,

most notably regarding the so called Workers State Faction (or Block). On the

other hand all this internal acrimony may simply, with some justice, be described

as the normal activity of any left group.

All of the above speculation, although indicating the wisdom of caution whenever

making statements concerning the LF, does not in the end I think invalidate the main

thrust of Crawfords letter or his conclusion that one should not invariably assume that

all the founders of the movement were worthy of respect and emulation.44 Whatever the

reality or otherwise of Harry Selbys later attempt to revive the LF, largely in Glasgow,

few would see it as anything more than a pale reflection of its earlier namesake. In this

regard it is tempting to recall Marxs famous remark about history repeating itself, the

first time as tragedy, the second as farce.45

Among the sometimes bewildering amount of day to day and month on month detail

on the activities of the LF (especially those of its Glasgow group) there is the possibility

within GCATT of identifying longer term trends. One such trend which is likely to

emerge from detailed study of this material is the increasing loss of autonomy and

distinctiveness of this Glasgow and West of Scotland brand of Trotskyism which

arguably, in the minds at least of its leadership (Nan Maclean and her then husband

Tom Mercer) and some of its working class support base (Lanarkshire coal fields), could

trace its roots to the Red Clydeside of the previous generation46 (and of course the

General Strike of 1926). Mercers Glasgow branch of the RSL in the late 1930s and the

44 Crawford, op. cit.45 The actual quotation is from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: Hegel remarks somewhere that

all the great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as

tragedy, the second as farce. K. Marx, Surveys from Exile: Political Writings, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1973 [1869]), p. 146.46 This perceived continuity with an earlier Clydeside tradition is tacitly acknowledged in Nan Miltons [nee

Maclean] later (1973) comment on Mercer in her biography of her famous father: The latters [i.e. Tom

Mercers] rocklike conviction that John Maclean had been the victim of a character assassination designed to

obscure the magnitude of his contribution to the international socialist movement and that it was my duty to

right that wrong, was an inspiration. Interestingly for us, Milton also notes that [m]ost of the research for this

book was carried out . . . in 193738 (a period when she was committed organisationally and was presumablynearest ideologically to an orthodox Trotskyist worldview. N. Milton, John Maclean, (London: Pluto Press,

1973), p. 7.

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wartime LF provided, certainly in terms of active engagement with working class

struggles, the only serious Trotskyist rival to the dynamic and combative Workers

International League (WIL). As McIlroy and Campbell point out, the late 1930s saw

Scottish miners start to reverse some the defeats inflicted at the time of the general

strike.47 Given the much higher levels of wartime industrial conflict in the Scottish

coalfields in comparison both with industry as a whole and with other UK mining

areas,48 and given the disproportionate influence of Trotskyists within the Lanarkshire

coalfield, it is little wonder that the west of Scotland Trotskyists saw themselves in the

early 1940s as attempting to guide the activities of the most militant and politically

advanced section of the British working class, the direct heirs as they saw it of Red

Clydeside.49 An indication that this view was not entirely a delusion of the RSLs Left

Fraction and their allies in the Militant Miners Committee comes in a 1943 letter to

Gibbie Russell from a Kent miner: here at Betteshanger . . . you will receive considerable

support in your efforts to lead the miners of Britain in an independent, militant class

policy.50 The subsequent ill tempered erosion of Glasgows leadership (and autonomy)

within the Left Fraction of the later 1940s may, to a large extent, simply reflect the reality

of a post-war Britain where the widely (within Trotskyist circles) predicted revolu-

tionary situation failed to materialise and, more particularly for Glasgows Left

Fraction, a relative decline in militancy within, and a weakening of the LFs influence

upon, the Lanarkshire coalfields.

In a 1986 interview with Al Richardson, Ernest Rogers tells how circa 19321933he, Hugh Esson (Morrison) and others of the Leninist League sold copies of the

American Trotskyist paper The Militant to activists such as [Tom] Mercer and Nan

McLean [sic], who eventually became Trotskyists.51 As far as I can ascertain from

Milligans (1995) slightly vague account Mercer and co. were part of Denzil Harbers

47 McIlroy & Campbell, Politics, Prosecutions and Protest, op. cit., pp. 5152.48 Ibid., pp. 3133.49 In the preface to a jointly written (with Gilbert Russell) pamphlet of 1943 Hugh Brannan states that The

Scottish miners are without doubt the most militant workers in Britain to-day; they are in the forefront of the

struggle and this imposes responsibility upon them, the responsibility of leadership. G. Russell and H. Brannan,

The Italian Revolution, (Glasgow: Pioneer Publishing Association, 1943). Although Hugh Brannan was,

according to McIlroy & Campbell, in the ILP and not the RSL as Upham maintains, he was undoubtedly close to

Russell and the LF. Upham, op. cit., Chapter 10 footnote 134; McIlroy & Campbell Politics, Prosecutions and

Protest, op. cit., pp. 47, 49.50 Quoted in McIlroy and Campbell, The Cardowan Story, op. cit., p. 41.51 S. Bornstein and A. Richardson For the Record, Revolutionary History, 1:1 (1986), http://

www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol1/No1/Forrec.html. In apparent contradiction to footnote 46

above, James D. Young mentions without further elaboration that Although Nan Milton, Macleans youngest

daughter, belonged to the Trotskyist Militant Labour League in Glasgow in the 1930s, the British Trotskyists did

not discover John Maclean until the early 1930s. J.D. Young, James Connolly, James Larkin and John Maclean:

The Easter Rising and Clydeside Socialism in Robert Duncan and Arthur McIvor (eds) Militant Workers: Labour

and Class Conflict on the Clyde, 19001950 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992), p. 156. This final date shouldperhaps read early 1950s as, in a slightly variant version of this statement made elsewhere, Young calls Nan

Milton a prominent member of the Trotskyist Militant Labour League in Glasgow and notes that British

Trotskyists did not discover John Maclean until 1953. J.D. Young, John Maclean: Clydeside Socialist (Glasgow:

Clydeside Press, 1992), p. 43. If Young had intended the later date then the clash with footnote 46 is surely

questionable; even assuming (a probably mistaken assumption) that British Trotskyism was largely ignorant of

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Militant Group which merged with the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) and the

Edinburgh based Revolutionary Socialist Party (Tait Group) in 1938 to become part

of a unified RSL.52 Milligan also notes that the Mercer/Maclean grouping in concert

with the larger English group had transferred allegiance from the ILP to the Labour

Party53 and that from July 1937 the Glasgow group called itself the Militant Labour

League (MLL).54

Despite being formally embedded in larger national Trotskyist organisations

Mercers group in reality remained for the most part autonomous. The emergence, in

1941, within the RSL of the Left Fraction, (in which Glasgow played a leading role

along with Leicester) allowed, for a time, Glasgow to remain distinctive and

nationally prominent. This fierce independence was underlined when the LF was

expelled from the RSL in 194355 and again from the newly unified RCP in

September 1945 barely 18 months after its launch in March 1944. This distinctiveness

and autonomy was however, over time, being substantially eroded within the LF itself

as, for example, when full-time officials Tom Mercer and Roddy Hood were moved

south in 19461947 along with the LF centre. The production of its paper The Voice ofLabour although remaining in Glasgow came under increasing scrutiny and criticism

from London based editors. The final blow to the LF and a distinct west of Scotland

Trotskyist organisation came in 19491950 with the defection of Mercer, Hood andmuch of the rank and file membership of the LF initially into Socialist Fellowship and

then into Gerry Healys Club. It should be noted however that these centralising

developments did not go unopposed. A clear counter trend emerges in the GCATT LF

material so far listed showing a growing resistance, by a majority, in the Glasgow

group (19481950) to the Secretariat in London. This opposition was led by D.H.

John Maclean Glasgow Trotskyism clearly wasnt. Interestingly, Mercer and Nan Macleans main (English)

Trotskyist rivals in WIL operated among Clydeside engineers through the Clyde Workers Committee (CWC), a

clear reference to its First World War/Red Clydeside predecessor. [T]he Clyde Workers Committee had

proclaimed itself revived in May 1943. R. Croucher, Engineers at War (London: The Merlin Press, 1982), p. 229;

see also Bornstein and Richardson, War and the International, op. cit., p. 70. Even if, however, Youngs 1950s view

is broadly correct it maybe no accident that British Trotskyism discovered Maclean just as Mercer was becoming

active in Gerry Healys Club.52 Milligan emphasises that the Revolutionary Socialist Party continued to go its own way. Milligan, op. cit.,

p. 105. The original RSL was itself the result of an earlier merger of the Marxist League and Marxist Group.53 The attractions of being part of a larger national organisation are easy enough to understand both in

terms of membership (and thus influence) and in terms of Trotskyist internationalism. Also, the Glasgow MLL

group & later the LFs rigid policy of entrism into the UK Labour Party made it logical for them also to operate

organisationally on a national scale.54 Milligan, op. cit., p. 105. The MLL was essentially a flag of convenience for the activities of the UK Militant

Group as a whole within the Labour Party: It [the MLL] was a front for the Militant Group itself and at no time

achieved an independent existence. Upham, op. cit., Chapter 8; see also R.J. Alexander, International Trotskyism,

19291985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 450; Grant,op cit., pp. 45, 82.

55 By the early 1940s the RSL comprised three distinct factions: Harbers, the Left Fraction and Hilda Lanes

[pro WIL] Trotskyist Opposition. J. Higgins, Ten Years of the Locust: British Trotskyism 19381948 [1963], inJim Higgins, Speak One More Time: Jim Higgins: Selected Writings (London: Socialist Platform, 2004), p. 10.

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(Harry Selby) and arose over a range of policy and organisational issues.56 The

responses from the Secretariat in the persons ironically of R.A. (Roddy Hood) and

T.O. (Tom Mercer) show an increasing level of irritation and hostility.57 This ongoing

confrontation between Glasgow and the London centre seems to have come to a head

in August and September 1949. In the Glasgow Committee minutes for these two

months the majoritys opposition to the Fractions entry into the Socialist Fellowship

is intense with some members advocating the seizing of editorial control of The Voice

of Labour (VOL) from London. Londons unyielding response to Glasgows voluble

hostility can be seen in the minutes of the Secretariat meetings of the same period.58

Among a number of other important themes which can be detected in the GCATT

(LF) material is the ever present, often inept, concern regarding the security of the

group. Although a major headache for the archivist trying to identify and

contextualise documents this preoccupation with secrecy is in this case, to some

degree, understandable given that: much of the material relates to wartime; the group

is critical of the war; the LF was attempting to organise inside the armed forces and

industry; and the police did on occasion arrest and interrogate LF members. Thus

very rarely in the body of documents are LF members named, they are referred to by

(slightly) disguised initials (see above for examples). Members would also use code

words embedded in the text of apparently innocent letters and telegrams, as one

helpful letter explains, and the group had a number of safe addresses to which

correspondence could be sent.

One comic example of the confusion sometimes resulting from this security

obsession occurs in a document sent from the LF London centre to the Glasgow

group. In this letter London apologises to Glasgow for using in a previously sent

56 Minutes for the LF Glasgow Committee for 1949, 4 January 194916 November 1949, GCATT, Box 633,Item, 4. See also LF Glasgow Group Reports for 1948, 5 January 194828 December 1948, GCATT, Box 636, Item20.

57 Minutes of the LFs Secretariat 1949, 7 January 194929 December 1949, GCATT, Box 634, Item 3; Minutesof the LFs Secretariat 1948, 10 January 194823 December 1948, GCATT, Box 632, Item 7; LF SecretariatReports 19489, 10 January 194814 August 1949, GCATT, Box 632, Item 4.

58 As is implied above (footnote 46) the history of Glasgows LF section of the 1940s and its 1930s

predecessor, can perhaps, provide evidence relevant to the long running and continuing debate over the myth or

reality of Red Clydeside and whether this legend (or reality) influenced later Scottish (more particularly the West

of Scotland) history for good or ill. To discover what exactly, assuming it exists, the Maclean/Red Clydeside

legacy actually consists of, and how that differs from what Maclean would have recognised as his legacy, is a

complex question which requires not only a study of Red Clydeside but also the evolving political histories of its

would be interpreters, for example among many others, Nan Milton and Tom Mercer. None of the above

discussion however should imply that Glasgows MLL of the 1930s (and later the LF) had any sympathy

whatsoever with Scottish Nationalism. As Young (on the authority of a conversation (2 February 1982) with Nan

Milton) puts it, The members of the League were so hostile to Scottish nationalism as a blot on their efforts to

forge international workers solidarity that they refused to regard it as a problem requiring analysis. J.D. Young,

Marxism and the Scottish National Question, Journal of Contemporary History, 18:1 (1983), p. 153. Hugh

Brannan, closely associated with the RSLs Left Fraction, writing in 1943 also emphasises that [w]e have never

been under any illusion as to the interdependence of the miners upon the workers of other industries, nor of the

Scottish workers upon their English comrades. Similarly, Russell and Brannans commitment to internationalism

is evident from the fact that they chose to write in the midst of the Second World War a pamphlet on The Italian

Revolution. Russell and Brannan, op. cit.

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document the initials of a non-existent Glasgow comrade. Shortly afterwards London

complains to Glasgow that they (London) have just received a communication under

the initials of this non-existent comrade.59

In a slightly more serious vein, one LF document displays unconcealed contempt

for the cavalier attitude towards security shown by the WIL and later the RCP who

apparently did not realise the precariousness of their legal status. When discussing the

laxity of these groups this document makes the retrospective claim that during unity

negotiations with WIL it became clear that an unnamed member of WILs leadership

was a police spy.60

Another, largely unexpected, theme that sometimes appears among the mass of

dry LF conference reports and demands for unpaid financial dues, is the occasional

glimpse of the private lives of the LF members and the wider social environment of

the 1940s in which they operated. An atypically dramatic example of these social

insights comes in a letter from John Robinson in London to Tom Mercer in

Glasgow61 written sometime between September and November 194462 in which

Robinson makes a long digression from LF business to describe his first experience

the previous night of bombardment by German V2 rockets. Robinsons account is

interesting both for his vivid personal reactions to this 12 hour experience and also

for his speculations about the nature of these new weapons.

As a curious postscript to our discussion of early British Trotskyism and its roots

one tiny fragment of information has been uncovered that tangentially links Red

Clydeside to World War II British Trotskyism and may indicate an area worthy of

further investigation.63 This fragment centres on the now nearly forgotten figure of

Peter Petroff who had been a comrade of, and key influence on, John Maclean before,

during and immediately after World War I. Subsequently, in the early 1920s, Petroff

was active as a communist and, after 1925, an independent socialist in Germany but

on the coming to power of Hitler Petroff fled to France and then to England.64

Because of his break with communism and in spite of his continuing anti-fascist

activities the Home Office, as early as 1930, regarded him as now a backnumber and

harmless politically.65 In a series of articles written for the Labour Party/TUC journal

Labour and in a book published in 1934 Petroff was highly critical of the strategy

59 Correspondence between R [Roddy Hood] and Tom [Mercer], 2 October 194620 August 1947, GCATT,Box 634, Item 2.

60 Series of LF documents and pamphlets, GCATT, Box 639, Item 1, op. cit.61 John [Robinson], Letter to T.O. [Tom Mercer], October / November 1944, Box 632, Item 2.62 A date of either October or November 1944 has been added to this letter subsequently but from internal

evidence it may possibly be slightly earlier, i.e. September 1944.63 Another interesting historical fragment consists of a single sheet list of subscribers to Socialist Appeal for

the end of 1942 which among other names includes that of Pierre Frank who was at the time interned on the Isle

of Man. List of Subscribers to Socialist Appeal end of 1942, 1943, GCATT, Box 51, Item 3; see also Grant, op. cit.,

pp. 70, 77. The near contemporary CP report on British Trotskyists makes the following slightly puzzled

comments on Frank: P. Frank, now interned in the Isle of Man, receives papers and money from the W.I.L. . . . Itappears he is a refugee of some importance to them. CPGB, Report, op. cit., p. 27.

64 H. McShane and J. Smith, Harry McShane: No Mean Fighter (London: Pluto Press, 1978), p. 152.65 J. McHugh, Peter Petroff: The View from the Home Office File, Scottish Labour History, 35 (2000), p. 30.

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pursued by the Communist Party against Hitler.66 Despite the Home Office view

quoted above, and Rodgers and Smyths essentially accurate observation that after his

final article in Labour in November 1939 Petroff s career in labour journalism seems

to have come to an abrupt end and he faded into obscurity,67 GCATT can throw a

tiny bit of additional light on the ensuing wartime life of Petroff and his family.68

Buried within a CP Report on Trotskyite Activity in Britain May 1943 are two

anecdotal sentences on Peter Petroff: Peter Petroff retains his personal connections

with Herbert Tracy, T.U.C. Publicity Organiser and with Gillies, Assistant to

Citrine. His daughter Margaret Petroff, speaks of her and her sister Diana Petroff

being friendly with Ted Grant of the W.I.L.69 These two sentences allow for

contradictory interpretations, on the one hand although Peter Petroff is unwell

and in his late 50s he retains contacts with the British Labour movement. On the

other hand however, our anonymous communist informant does not attempt to

link Petroff with dangerous revolutionaries such as he would have been associated

with 25 years earlier,70 the best he can muster are a couple of conservative senior

trade union bureaucrats. Yet, just as we are about to accept uncritically the Home

Offices opinion of Petroff and to dismiss as paranoid the communist tendency to

identify every left-wing critic of its policy as Trotskyite we are offered the

possibility of a link between Petroff s daughters and an actual flesh and blood

wartime British Trotskyist. If this connection existed it is of course possible that

Petroff himself was unaware, indifferent or disapproved of it but it is equally

possible that he approved of and encouraged such links.71

A hint of where Petroff s mature views might be located on the reform/ revolution

spectrum is given at the end of his 1934 book: The international proletariat must, if

it does not want to go under, defend democracy. Democracy is not a bourgeois

invention. It has been gained, developed and protected by the blood of the working

class. But democracy alone does not suffice . . . it [the working-class movement]must again become a real force in class struggle . . . [the working class] must get backto its revolutionary starting-point. It must take the offensive in the decisive battle for

66 Rodgers and Smyth suggest that as a consequence of Petroff s hostility to communist policy on Germany

Willie Gallacher may have decided in his autobiography Revolt on the Clyde (1936) to retrospectively vilify

Petroff and condemn his influence on John Maclean. M. Rodgers and J.J. Smyth, Peter Petroff (18841947), inWilliam Knox (ed) Scottish Labour Leaders 191839: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1984),p. 229; see also Milton, op. cit., p. 112; McShane and Smith, op. cit., pp. 151152.

67 Rodgers and Smyth, op. cit., p. 229.68 McHugh claims that Petroff s sudden political inactivity around 1940 was a result of the effects of diabetes.

Petroff died in 1947. McHugh, op. cit., p. 31. In light of this later research by McHugh, I think Challinors view

that as a response to the negative reaction to his 1934 book Petrov [sic] became disillusioned with revolutionary

socialism . . . [and that as a consequence] politically his death had occurred many years before his actual death in1947, seems simplistic and a little harsh. R. Challinor, Harry McShane and the Communist Party in R. Duncan

and A. McIvor (eds) Militant Workers: Labour and Class Conflict on the Clyde, 19001950 (Edinburgh: JohnDonald, 1992), p. 19.

69 CPGB, Report, op. cit., p. 16.70 For the CP report Petroff himself is of course a dangerous Trotskyite.71 Perhaps unsurprisingly Grant in his much later recollections of this period (Grant, op. cit.) makes no

mention of Petroff or his family.

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socialism.72 Although Petroff was no longer a communist he remained, rhetori-

cally at least, a distinctly left-wing Marxist socialist, even if ill health and

political realities seriously curtailed the active intervention of this once infamous

revolutionary.73

Whatever the truth of the matter it is tempting to speculate that just at the time

when the younger daughter of his old comrade John Maclean was deeply involved in

the Trotskyist politics of Clydeside Petroff s own daughters may themselves have been

close to a rising figure in British Trotskyism. In both cases it is likely that Macleans

and Petroff s daughters believed themselves, rightly or wrongly, to be acting in a

manner consistent with their fathers core beliefs, which with both men arguably had

their highest expression during the period of Red Clydeside.74

Publications of Interest

In addition to letters and internal party documents such as those discussed above

GCATT holds a large amount of material published by SLL/WRP including books

and pamphlets and near complete runs of Workers Press, Newsline and Labour Review.

The archive also contains substantial runs of journals (many held in microfilm

format) from other UK and international left-wing groups. The US Trotskyist

material for example, includes considerable numbers of The Militant and New

72 P. Petroff and I. Petroff, The Secret of Hitlers Victory (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth

Press, 1934), pp. 127128.73 Although, according to Milton during the First World War Petroff had been in constant touch with . . .

Trotsky and regularly sent articles to Trotskys paper Nashe Slovo in Paris, later, in the 1930s after the triumph

of Stalinism and despite his break with the Communist Party, Petroff seems to disqualify himself doctrinally

from the possibility of being an orthodoxy Trotskyist by his passing reference to Russia as state capitalist.

Milton, op cit., pp. 109, 111; Petroff, op. cit., p. 123. This apparent unorthodoxy did not however prevent

Trotskyist C.L.R. James in 1937 from quoting Petroff as a reliable source. C.L.R. James, World Revolution 19171936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993 [1937]), pp. 345346. Subsequently, in the period after Trotskys death in 1940, leaders of the RCP (Grant and Haston) toyed in

1946 with the state capitalist idea and Tony Cliff based his whole 1948 analysis on a version of the concept.

Grant, op. cit., pp143144; T. Cliff, A World to Win: Life of a Revolutionary (London: Bookmarks, 2000), p. 51. Inthe US the Johnson-Forest tendency of C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee also developed a variant

of the state capitalist theory during the 1940s and 1950s. See R. Dunayevskaya, The Marxist-Humanist Theory of

State-Capitalism: Selected Writings (Chicago: News and Letters, 1992); C.L.R. James, State Capitalism and World

Revolution (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1986). In connection with Petroff s choice of the term State Capitalism it

is perhaps significant that Lenin himself had on occasion described the early Soviet Union as state capitalism

under proletarian dictatorship.74 Against a possible charge of parochialism one should perhaps acknowledge that according to Milton

(1973) Petroff also played a significant part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and after his expulsion from

Britain in 1918 both honourably served Russias successful revolution during its early years (including as part of

Trotskys negotiating team at Brest Litovsk) and later attempted to combat the rise of Hitler. Milton, op. cit., pp.

36, 112. None of this, however, negates the importance of his socialist activities in Britain during the first two

decades of the twentieth century. In fact, the guiding spirit of his activities throughout his life seems remarkably

consistent despite his occasional change of political affiliation. For this reason and his seriously failing health, I

see Challinors unfavourable comparison of Peter Petroff and Harry McShane in their later years as somewhat

unfair and one that McShane himself might have felt uncomfortable with. Challinor, op. cit., p. 19.

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International (became Fourth International after the split with editor Max Shachtman

who took the original title with him to his new Workers Party).

Of particular interest among the American material is a relatively short run of

the Shachtmanite version of New International for the 1940s and early 1950s.75

During this period of intellectual ferment Shachtmans journal published, in

addition to Shachtmans own important work on the nature of the USSR, T.N.

Vances (six part) pioneering permanent arms economy analysis of the post war

world and a seven part translation by James M. Fenwick of extracts from Victor

Serges Carnets. These fragments ranging from the mid-1930s to a few months

before his death in November 1947, together with John Mansons much later

translation of Serges 1944 Carnets (for Cencrastus),76 remain the only published

English language version of this important source work. In addition to general

thoughts on topics such as fascism, Stalins Gulag and the Spanish Civil War the

Carnets are full of Serges descriptive and insightful accounts of encounters with

major political and literary figures. Much space in the notebooks is taken up

discussing the Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Dels (NKVD) deadly intrigues

against the fledgling 4th International with the names of long forgotten Soviet

defectors and their tragic fates (such as Ignace Reiss and Walter Krivitsky)

periodically appearing. In Serges description of his meetings with Krivitsky he

paints a chilling picture of mutual distrust and fear. An unsurprising recurring

theme in many of Serges later entries concerns Trotskys death and the subsequent

treatment of his assassin Ramon Mercader (aka Frank Jacson). The Carnets most

poignant entries however are those giving Serges recollections and assessment of

Trotskys son Sedov and his sympathetic but painfully honest description of his

visits to Trotskys widow Natalia.

Although not strictly speaking a publication (but later revised and published in

many editions) GCATT holds a rare copy of Tony Cliff s original version of The

Nature of Stalinist Russia printed as an RCP Internal Bulletin in June 1948 and

translated by C. Dallas.77 It is interesting to confirm here that as Bill Hunter recalls in

his autobiography this edition of [t]he bulletin [was], so thick that it had to be

riveted together.78

Other rare published items include a partial run of the Balham Groups duplicated

magazine, The Communist79 and seven (non-consecutive) issues of the Partido

75 GCATT, Box 92; GCATT, Box 93.76 Cencrastus, Winter 19801981; for more detail see J. Manson, The Carnets, in Susan Weissman (ed) The

Ideas of Victor Serge: A Life as a Work of Art (Glasgow: Critique Books, 1997), pp. 223238.77 GCATT, Box 83, Item 1.78 Bill Hunter, Long Apprenticeship: Life and Times of a Revolutionary (London: Porcupine Press, 1998), p.

249; also confirmed in interview with author, 14 November 2003. GCATT also holds a copy (Box 18) of Cliff s

1952 book [written under his original name of Ygael Gluckstein] Stalins Satellites in Europe (London: George

Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952).79 The Communist, 25 (September 1932May 1933) and 9 (5 January 1934), GCATT, Box 301, Item 1;

Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op cit., p. 83.

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Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM) English language newspaper The Spanish

Revolution dating from 9 December 1936 (Vol.1 no. 8) to 19 May 1937 (Vol. 2 no.8).80

Levels Yet to be Excavated

Linked to the important influence on policy and outlook exercised for decades by the

Trotskyist movement over the wider political left is the intellectual and cultural effect

of Trotskyist ideas on academic and creative individuals. Internationally generations

of historians, film and TV makers, art critics, novelists, sociologists and playwrights

have for at least some of their active lives accepted significant elements of a Trotskyist

worldview. In France one could point to influential intellectual figures such as Claude

Lefort, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Cornelius Castoriadis (leaders of the group centred

round 1950s journal Socialisme ou Barbarie) or historians Daniel Guerin and Pierre

Broue. In the US the most high profile examples are the so called New York

intellectuals including philosophers James Burnham and Sidney Hook, art critics

Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro and novelist James T. Farrell.

In contrast with the American experience it is easy to underestimate, or forget, the

range and quality of British intellectuals significantly influenced by Trotsky and his

doctrines. In addition to much of the 1960s New Left around Perry Anderson, and

from an earlier generation C.L.R. James and Isaac Deutscher,81 many in the creative

arts in Britain also found inspiration in Trotskys life and ideas. Although not centred

on the cultural diaspora of the British Trotskyist movement, GCATT holds a large

amount of material relating directly to cultural and artistic issues and individuals

(many of whom were current or ex-Trotskyists) active in an artistic or intellectual

environment. Because some of this material comes from the most recent sections of

the archive and given our policy of processing the archive chronologically (issues

of privacy and copyright need also to be addressed) it maybe sometime before much

of it can be accessed by scholars. In time however it is hoped that this aspect of the

British Trotskyist tradition can be more fully understood and evaluated thanks to

GCATT.82

80 GCATT, Miscellaneous Journals Box.81 James was of course an important figure in the British and American Trotskyist movements of the 1930s

and 1940s and Deutscher was a major source of Trotskyist ideas for many of the New Left. It is interesting and

perhaps significant to note that, although both spent a considerable part of their lives in England, neither James

(born and educated in Trinidad) nor the Polish exile Deutscher were during their lifetimes unambiguously

acknowledged as part of the British radical intellectual tradition.82 www.gcal.ac.uk/archives/gcatt/index.html, accessed 22 December 2008. Anyone requiring further

information about GCATT or related archives should contact Carole McCallum, Glasgow Caledonian

University Archivist by e-mail or telephone: C.McCallum@gcal.ac.uk; 0141 273 1188.

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