Entryism and the collapse of British Trotskyism - pt 2

This article, in our continuing series on "Entryism", looks at the "Socialist Outlook" venture by Gerry Healy in the 1940s and 1950s. With the arrival of yet another "non-sectarian" paper for the labour left - "Socialist Action" - it is timely to look at the errors of a previous similar venture.

The "Trotskyists" of the IMG and, indeed, those of the WSL, whose supporters produce yet another "broad" paper "Socialist Organiser", would do well to look at the history of "Socialist Outlook". That history, as we show, was one of political liquidation as the price of building a strategic alliance with friendly left-reformists. At the moment "Socialist Organiser", and most probably "Socialist Action" seem hell-bent on treading a similar path.

IN THE LAST issue of Workers Power (No. 39), we traced the factional struggle within the British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) over entry into the labour Party. On the one side, the majority around Jock Haston argued against total entry and for frac­tion work subordinated to "independent"

RCP work around industrial struggles. Ranged against them were the combined forces of the RCP minority - led by Gerry Healy and the International Secretariat leadership of Mandel and Pablo, who from 1945 onwards argued ever more stridently for total entry and the liquidation of any open party.

Despite their vastly more concrete grasp of conditions within the labour Party and with­in the unions, the RCP majority had at least one fatal flaw, one that they shared with the Healy/IS opposition. It was this flaw that was to lead by 1949 to the destruction of the RCP and the disappearance of any public organ of "Trotskyism" for over eight years.

As we have demonstrated Healy and Pablo whilst having no grasp of Trotsky's critical analytical method, clung all the more rigidly to his political perspectives of the late 1930s. These envisaged enormous revolutionary upheavals as a result of the war; the death knell of Stalinism and social democracy and the transformation of the FI sections into mass parties. Disorientated by the falsification of these perspectives, yet deeply fearful of admitting this, the whole FI resorted increasingly to vulgar apologetics designed to ,preserve' at all costs a perspective of revolution and a mass F I just around the corner. When the revolution failed to materialise and the Trotskyist groups stagnated and even declined, the FI leaders looked increasingly to false "perspectives" (catastrophic crisis, a third world war, etc) and to "new" tactics and new forces that would carry out the revolution.

Healy re-discovered Trotsky's advice to the British Trotskyists of the 1930s regarding the desirability of entry into the Labour Party and ripped it out of context. The "inevitable" crisis and slump of British imperialism would galvanise and radicalise the British proletariat. The masses would "inevitably' express this radicalisation through the Labour Party. The task of Trotskyists was to "anticipate" this development, to capture leading positions in the Labour Party prior to this occurrence, and put the organisational loyalty of the working class to the Labour Party to good purpose by revealing one's "Trotskyism" at the right moment so as to direct the energy of the proletariat against capitalism itself.

Healy's catastrophism provided an apparently revolutionary cover for his opportunism. In 1945/ 1946 he insisted on cloaking his calls for dissolution of the RCP into the ILP with analogies drawn from the 1930s. He could joyfully quote Trotsky's 'advice in 1933 that: "If we only send part of our membership into the ILP and keep a public organ going outside of it then we are in danger of getting our members expelled from the I LP in a very short time.”

Healy could use the 1945 ILP expulsions of RCP members in Newcastle as evidence of the truth of this. But Healy ignored the fact that Trotsky had based this tactical advice on the existence of a revolutionary majority in the "left centrist" I LP of 1933-5. This in his view justified total entry. Moreover, Trotsky demanded no restrictions on political discussion. But by 1945 the ILP had become what Trotsky knew it would if it was not won to the programme of the FI i.e. "a formed, homogenous party with a stable apparatus. " In which case Trotsky argued that "entry in it would not only be useless but fatal ".

Trotsky drew this conclusion as early as 1936. Healy not only wanted to apply this method in 1945 but to transfer its application in 1946 to the Labour Party, itself with its entrenched parliamentary and trade union bureaucracy.

 

Both factions in the RCP held to perspectives based on a rapid numerical growth of the party. The Haston-Grant majority saw the source of that in trade union work. The Healy minority saw its realisation as coming through the Labour Party. Both sides seriously mis-estimated the nature and tempo of the class struggles that were to produce increased recruitment. After the war RCP membership drop­ped each year, while no revolutionary struggles erupted. Indeed the onset of the Cold War and the

witch hunting initiated by the Labour and Trade Union bureaucrats created, if anything, a democratic counter-revolutionary situation. The post-war series of state-capitalist nationalisations and social welfare reforms ground to a halt. Working class resistance was limited to isolated union struggles against

wage limits but the TUC-Labour Party bloc held firm against rank and file pressure, Full employment and social reforms proved a powerful base from which Bevin, Attlee and Morrisson could isolate their Stalinist and Trotskyist opponents.

The Trotskyists undertook virtually no thorough going perspectival and programmatic re-assessment, other than the analysis of Eastern Europe, Other debates centered on tactical questions premised on a false understanding of the period that post-war Trotskyism confronted.

Healy's opportunist appetite with regard to the Labour Party stemmed from his impatience. His schematism, and denigration of propaganda tasks were evident as early as December 1945:"The high hopes entertained at the time of the conference in the future of open work, the glowing future for the independent Party depicted by so many speakers have not so far been realised, nor is there any significant pointer in this direction. The rate of growth of the RCP since the conference (only 4 months previously - WP) can do nothing but demonstrate the impotence of a small propaganda body to affect the vital course of the political struggle.

The tempo of events, rapid on a world scale, in this country still lags behind Europe and Asia, but this cannot last long...The already overburdened economy of Britain will collapse catastrophically and the Labour Party will be thrown into utter confusion."

 

AN OPPORTUNIST OUTLOOK

 

This outlook was in no sense based on the objective conditions of the time which had unavoidably marginalised the revolutionary communists. Formally it may appear similar to the revolutionary optimism of the Transitional Programme, but the period was completely changed by the very outcome of the war, the strengthening of Stalinism and social democracy, it was not the hall-mark of Trotsky to be forever predicting breakthroughs of the G Healy type. On the contrary, in October 1922 after the wave of revolutionary unrest in Europe had subsided Trotsky said of the British communists that they were "a successfully functional educational and propaganda society but not a party capable of directly leading the masses," And this was when the CPGB was ten times larger and more strategically implanted in the working class movement than the RCP!

The RCP majority, however, had no alterative alternative to Healy's opportunism, The gradual foundering of their hopes for mass growth through the unions appeared to confirm Healy’s perspective as the correct one. By 1949 they were a spent force. The RCP's open paper "Socialist Appeal" disappeared and a clear field was left for Healy's centrist "Socialist Outlook" venture.

"Socialist Outlook" was launched in December 1948 as a 4-page monthly. Whilst still pursuing his faction fight against Haston and Grant. Healy in­sisted in self-protection that total entry into the Labour Party would nevertheless be to fight for the programme of the FI. But once the exigencies of factional in-fighting were over this pretence was rapidly dropped. "Socialist Outlook" described itself as "The Paper of Labour's Left-Wing': It was not a Trotskyist organ. Nor, within Healy's perspective could it be Since a mass left-wing did not yet exist in the Labour Party, the role of the paper was to coax one into being, Such a current it was hoped would be a centrist one- at first. A centrist current therefore needed a centrist paper.

Healy convinced the Constructional Engineering Union (CSE) Secretary Jack Stanley to co-found tile paper Healy, Stanley, John Lawrence ("Club" member! and later Tom Braddock, formed the Editorial Board. Braddock was a Labour MP until he lost his seat in the 1950 General Election. After that the NEC refused to endorse his candidature any where else because of this leftism and he became even more closely involved in "Socialist Outlook': Various left Labour MPs contributed to SO, several with definite pro-Stalinist leanings who could not be accommodated in the pages of the "neutralist" "Tribune':

No debates of or features on the Fourth International were found in 50s pages. The politics of the paper reflected left-labourite concerns' and the pro-Stalinist sympathies of people like Stanley and Braddock. This of course merged well with the pro-Stalinism of the Pablo FI after 1948. A year after the launch of SO, Ellis Smith MP and a core of SO writers took the initiative in launching the 'Socialist Fellowship" (SF). SO was not the official paper of the SF, nor did Healy control it as he did in fact control the paper, but the Fellowship drew in "broader" forces. One hundred delegates from 29 towns attended the first conference and by mid-1950 it claimed 1,000 members. At the peak of its influence in early 1951 SO claimed to be selling 9-10,000 copies a month though Mark Jenkins' book "Bevanism" asserts that it was probably nearer 5,000.

 

HOPE THE LEFTS FIGHT

 

While SO itself had no programme the Fellowship advocated a left-reformist platform. The "Trotskyists" succeeded in getting a call for a sliding scale of wages and benefits into the platform. However this hint of "Trotskyism" had no real revolutionary content. It was divorced from workers' control demands, and in a period of Iow inflation was little more than a cosmetic reform which even Bevan managed to support in relation to benefits. SO itself did little to add any demands for workers' control, either in connection with the sliding scale, or the government's nationalisations. lt went as far as calling for "more industrial democracy in our schemes of nationalisation." (January 1949) but diplomatic evasiveness shrouded every slogan put forward.

In the SO Editorial of August 1949 on the "Way Out of the Economic Crisis" , in place of the clear demands for a sliding scale of wages operated by the working class we are told: "Wages can be improved... if the government is prepared to attack the wealth and privileges of the capitalists." The question of workers' control over industry is posed thus: "The basic industries of the country must be operated as part of a national plan. The workers' themselves, with the aid of technicians and Government representatives, can operate these industries           "This concession, which effectively amounts to workers' participation, was a classic centrist amalgam of Trotskyism and left reformism. It played straight into the hands of the left-reformists who were arguing then, as Bevan was to argue after the 1951 election defeat, that it was "a constitutional outrage" to "entrust these (nationalised) industries to Boards...of Civil Servants, leaving only a power of general direction to the Ministers."

(In Place of Fear, 1952,pp. 97-8).

 

It was the government representatives that the left reformists wanted, not workers’ control It was understandable that Bevan should identify governmental or ministerial control with socialism but for Trotskyists - "government representatives" whether Labour or Tory should have been stigmatised as agents of the bosses.

SO repeatedly engaged in illusion-mongering about the achievements of the Labour Government and the prospects of socialism through the Labour Party and Parliament. Indeed workers' illusions in the Labour Government as a workers' government introducing socialism were consciously bolstered. Thus, the Editorial of May 1949 trumpeted: "Labour Believes in Socialism". "In Britain we have taken a great step forward towards socialism by defeating the Tories and establishing for the first time in our history a majority Labour Government." And this was after nearly four years of Labour rule on behalf of the capitalists! In an April 51 Editorial, it was claimed that the Labour Government was "itself engaged in freeing Britain from the exactions of the capitalist class..." In the Editorial of January 1950 the Labour Government was urged "to abolish capitalist exploitation and replace it with planned socialist co-operation.." and in the October 1951 Election supplement, workers were urged to vote Labour: "as an expression of your confidence in

the workers' ability to govern this country...and to act so that the Labour Government will destroy capitalism."

Bit by bit the Trotskyist programme was trimmed to fit the rhetoric of the lefts. Every constitutional, parliamentary illusion was nourished in the pages of SO. The notion of direct independent working class action as alone capable of erecting a workers' state on the ruins of the bourgeois state found no place in 50's columns. In its place its readers were treated to the musings of Mr. H. Davies' MP's "Week in Westminster" or Tom Braddock's socialist romanticism.

Industrial disputes were given extensive coverage by Socialist Outlook. The resistance to the austerity programme of the Labour Government was supported. However the goal of the resistance was declared to be a replacement of the leadership of the Labour Party with a "left" one. This was seen as the answer to the conflict. Every radical phrase, every loose leftist remark, or sign of discontent in the PLP was seized upon as proof of the possibility that the lefts in the LP would fight the right for leadership.

It came as no surprise that the "deep entry" perspective undermined the belief of these "Trotskyists" in the need for even a hint of political independence from Labourism. The whole logic of the perspective and practice leads in the direction of total liquidation. Indeed, SO was a conveyor belt for many out of revolutionary politics. One leader of the RCP, who fought Healy's early opportunism but later succumbed, was Jock Haston. His resignation letter eloquently summed up the logic of Healy's liquidationist project: "Publically in the paper it is argued, not by right or left-wing labour Party members, but by Trotskyists, that the labour Party is a socialist party, the mass party of the working class to which all workers must loyally adhere; and that this party can transform society through Parliament. But privately within the confines of the group, the opposite is advocated. Alleg­edly on the basis of Marxist theory, it is categorically denied that it is possible to transform this party into an instrument for the overthrow of capitalism, and that parliament can "be used as the vehicle for such a transformation. The line in the paper ...is either 'a capitulation before the pressure of bourgeois-democratic public opinion' or a tacit admission that this aspect of 'fundamentals' is not applicable."

Haston and others were to conclude it was the latter. Those that remained could sustain their centrism only by reducing Trotskyism to a private faith based on a mixture of economic catastrophism and political 'processism' which would guarantee eventual success.

"Socialist Outlook" was marked by a passive acceptance of the classic reformist divide between trade union and political struggle and could only think of making trade union struggles "political" by subordinating them to labour Party routinism. Thus articles in SO could declare: "It is not possible for a militant trade unionist to struggle politically unless he does it through the labour Party." (SO no.56, P. Williams.)

Despite the fact that shop stewards and leading militants wrote for the paper, no Trotskyist critique of the trade union bureaucracy was advanced. Extreme right-wingers, like Arthur Deakin of the TGWU, were denounced but the political limitations of the trade union bureaucracy as a distinct social caste was never pointed to or warned against. In practical struggles the steps necessary to achieve rank and file political independence were never advanced. The fact was that Healy was compromised by his alliance with "left" bureaucrats like Stanley within SO. The alliance was on Stanley's terms.

 

ESTABLISHING FRIENDLY CONNECTIONS

 

The limitations this imposed were again highlighted when labour was in opposition after 1951. The "Iefts" as usual indulged in more radical phrases now they were free from the responsibility of office. Conference became the scene of sharp left/right tussles. The labour Party right-wing relied upon the trade union block vote to stymie constituency party aspirations. What was needed was a campaign for democratising the unions and seizing the block vote from the likes of Deakin and placing it in the hands of the political levy-paying rank and file trade unionists. The Healyite editorial control of SO could not, however, risk making this call and embarrassing the trade union bureaucrats upon whom SO relied. All that was proposed was for the left in the PLP and constituencies to win over left bureaucrats to wield the block vote for progressive policies: "If the left Wing in the Unions now allies itself to the left Wing in the Party and the Co-ops, the 'block vote' which has carried so many right wing motions in the past CAN NOW BE WIELDED FOR SOCIALISM" (SO. No.41 May 1952.)

 

This proposal, like everything else in SO, was utopian. It relied upon the "revolutionary" qualities of the left-wing of reformism. After Labour's defeat in 1951, the illusions placed in the lefts in the PLP and the unions mounted and served to underline the distance that Healy and the "Club" had travelled from Trotskyism. This accommodating view of the Labour "Iefts" did not, of course, develop with Labour's defeat but had been a theme of

Healy's from the. early days of the faction. Perhaps the sharpest statement is found in the re-unification statement of the factions in March 1949; 'Certain lefts have developed some prestige as a result of their criticisms of the right wing leadership's policy on one or other aspect. As problems become more intense, these lefts will be more bold and outspoken as a reflection of working class pressure. Workers in the unions and the LP will gravitate towards these individuals In search of a solution to their problems. As LP members we will be able to establish friendly connections and through them with the trends around them." (our emphasis).

In this every last element of Trotsky's warnings on the role of the "Iefts" is turned upside down. Trotsky warned that the "Iefts" will ultimately deceive and seek to reconcile the workers with the Party leadership and through it to the state.

They not only reflect the pressure of the workers but they seek to divert it into harmless, voting bases for their own parliamentary ambitions.

This accommodation was a travesty of the united front and obstructed the development of a revolutionary wing in the Labour Party. Trotsky was crystal clear that conciliation to left leaders would result in a weakening of the revolutionary forces.

His attitude towards Bevan's more radical predecessors - Purcell, Lansbury and Wheatley - demonstrates this: "The ideological and organisational formation of a really revolutionary party, on the basis of a mass movement, is only conceivable under conditions of a continuous, systematic, unwavering, untiring and naked denunciation of the muddles,

the compromises, and indecisions of the quasi-left leaders of all stripes".

As Minister of Labour Bevan was finally responsible for the imprisonment of 10 gas workers for striking in 1950, and charging 7 dockers with organising an illegal strike in 1951. On a range of issues the other lefts had shown themselves to be of a similar ilk. Yet Healy refused to make any untiring and unwavering criticism of them. He dubbed the Bevanites "centrists", and maintained friendly relations with them. His approach to the lefts was that of a Stalin or a Bukharin rather than a Trotsky. It was an infallible sign of his centrism.

Labour lost the October 1951 General Election despite registering their highest ever vote. As usual the lefts in the PLP took the advantage of a period in opposition to campaign for "left" policies. More often than not the friction which results within the Labour Party is not wholly bad from the stand point of the reformist bureaucracy. Even if the policy changes are resisted by the right, the advance of the left does have the effect of restoring worn credibility during the period of office. This was no less true of "Bevanism" than it was of Cripps' "Socialist League" in the 1930 wilderness, or of Benn after 1970 and 1979. Experience shows, how­ever, that in each case, the "Trotskyist" centrists are a key component in strengthening rather then testing the illusions that these left reformists generate. Healy's self-appointed role was to maintain "friendly relations" with Bevanite MPs and assist them to organise their supporters.

Bevan's credit in the working class movement rested above all on his construction of the National Health Service and his opposition to re-armament as part of the American cold war drive. It was the linking of these issues which was to lead to his resignation from the Cabinet in April 1951. When Gaitskill's 1951 budget pushed defence expenditure beyond 14% of GNP and involved clawing back £23 million from the NHS to help do it, Bevan resigned. This gesture was the start of the Bevanite movement. Organisationally, Bevanism was always extremely weak, its core being up to 50 or 60 Labour MPs. Bevan was loathe to organise the constituency rank and file and it was "Tribune" which in 1952 and 1953 organised the "Brains Trusts" meetings for these MPs. But these were no more than public meetings. There were no organised factions within the constituency parties. Bevanism was even weaker in the trade unions. Appealing over the heads of the trade union bureaucrats was out of the question for Bevan and Co. Nor was there at this time a discontented layer of trade union officials who could be related to as with Benn after 1979.

Certainly there was a powerful if beleaguered CP network but in Cold War circumstances Bevan and Co. were terrified of the red smear.

 

IN PLACE OF CRITICISM

 

Politically Bevan's oppositional stance was summed up in his book In Place of Fear (1952). The politics of this book were timid. His criticisms of parliamentary democracy were insignificant and lacked even the limited reforms advocated by todays Bennites. His proposals on nationalisation were much less radical than Cripps' of twenty years earlier. In summary Bevanism stood domestically for a "reasonable" level of defence spending, against NHS charges and for a moderate extension of nationalisation. On the foreign policy front Bevan was opposed to German re-armament and Britain's involvement in SEATO. Whilst in opposition the Bevanites exclusive arenas of "struggle" were the 1952-54 labour Party Conferences and the House of Commons. In the various conferences Bevan's nationalisation proposals were soundly beaten by the block vote although 6 of the CLP NEC seats went to Bevanites each time.

His policies amounted to a "little England" revolt from becoming the subordinate partner

of American imperialism during the Cold War. It was his stance on foreign policy, rather than his domestic policies, that brought down the wrath of the labour right and the Tories. He threatened to reduce British imperialism to a fourth rate power.

To them the loss of the Empire meant that a junior partnership with the US was the only realistic imperialist foreign policy that would preserve an influential role for Britain in the world.

The right wing counter-offensive to Bevan began in October 1952 when they voted to ban groups within the PLP. Bevan accepted immediately and the PLP group became "clandestine". The weakness of Bevanism was obvious here. Rather then campaign for their right to organise Bevan complied. "Socialist Outlook" calmly accepted Bevan's retreat. This was no surprise. The fake Trotskyist John Lawrence had praised the decision of the Socialist Fellowship not to fight when they were proscribed in early 1951 - a sacrifice to electoral credibility by Labour's NEC. Lawrence had opined: "They (the Socialist Fellowship - WP) have very wisely decided not to be driven out of the ranks of the labour Party but to stay inside and fight it out." (SO, May 1951 J. Some fight, the first move of which is to dissolve your own army! Warming to the task of apologists for capitulation the SF wrote to the NEC in September 1951: 'as loyal members of the LP who have never had any interests separate and apart from the Labour Party we are obliged to accept the decisions of the NEC." Secret connoisseurs of Marxism will catch the allusion to the Communist Manifesto's "They (The Communists - WP) have no interests separate and apart from the proletariat as a whole." The sleight of hand where the proletariat" becomes Labour Party speaks volumes. These "Communists" certainly did not "disdain to conceal their aims." In true Waiter Mitty fashion they consoled themselves with fantasies of power and success: "The SF may be gone but the ideas for which it fought will, we are sure, become the official policy of the movement in a shorter time than the witch-hunters imagine." (May 1951)

 

COVERING THE RETREAT

 

This covering up of the impotence and retreat of the left persists throughout the rest of Socialist Outlooks life. The political programme of the paper was reducible to "the return of a new and more socialist Labour Government" (No.41,1952). The guarantee of its socialist character would be the victory of the left around Bevan, whose politics were equated with socialism. Despite the defeat of the left at the 1952 Morecambe Conference, "Socialist Outlook"s headline exploded: "BEVAN GIVES THE LEAD THE WORKERS' WANT:' The Editorial below blithely stated: "The first two days' procee­dings at Morecambe have shown that the LP is turning resolutely to the socialist road the delegates came to Morecambe looking for a clear alternative to the old politics. Aneurin Bevan gave them such a lead in his speech of the first day." (SO, No.51, Oct. 1952). The following month SO proclaimed (No.56): "Aneurin Bevan Demands a Real Socialist Policy," This ridiculous grovelling before such a timid left reformist programme and leader existed alongside fantasies about the growing successes in the fight against the right. In 1953 (No.69) SO detected "a gathering triumph of the vast majority of the rank and file of the Party over those few lordly leaders who would drag the movement behind the tail of the Tories...socialists in the Party are bound to. triumph in the end." This was despite the steam-roller defeats at each Conference at the hands of Atlee, Gaitskill, Deakin and company, and despite the NEC's squelching of "Tribune's" Brains' Trust as "contrary to the spirit and intention of the recent decision of the PLP." Healy's schemas never have, and no doubt never will, brook interference from vulgar "appearances."

Through 1953-4 as Bevan's conciliationism became pronounced SO continued to laud him. The economic crisis, it was thought, would soon produce a mass radicalisation. This nonsense was expressed by Lawrence in an SO Editorial in 1953, at a time when the post-war boom was well underway: "Many of the points in Labour's programme are good in themselves, but their realisation is still envisaged as being achieved within the framework of a continuing prosperity of the western (capitalist) world.

It is precisely this which makes the" programme entirely inadequate and even Utopian in the present world realities. As everyone now admits, the American recession, that is, slump, is now here!" (SO, Nov. 19531. Healy and Lawrence's predictions had acquired the scientific value of Old Moore's Almanac.

The end of the "Socialist Outlook" project came at the crossroads of two events; one within "the Club", one within the left-wing of the .Labour Party.

The split in "the Club" between Healy and Lawrence in 1953 was a reflection of the long-term crisis within the Fourth International itself. Disoriented by the expansion of Stalinism the leadership of the FI after the Tito-Stalin split, capitulated to Stalinism. In Britain this capitulation was modified to encompass the "left centrist" Bevan.

During the first two years of SO's life an even handed conciliationism to Labourism and Stalinism had prevailed. It actually suited many of the lefts such as Braddock, many of whom were distinctly pro-Stalinist, especially "Iefts" in international affairs. However, Britain's involvement in the Korean War changed things dramatically. The Labourites swung, by and large, behind the British Government. John Lawrence, the editor of SO, swung the paper towards an anti-war stance. This produced schisms within the SO periphery.

Prominent figures in the Socialist Fellowship, like Fenner Brockway and Ellis Smith, resigned.

The Bevanites, long-time pacifists now showing their true social patriotic colours, began to distance themselves from Healy and his paper. Healy tolerated the pro-Stalinist line of the paper until, in 1953, Pablo proposed that the British, along with other sections, should enter ("entryism sui generis") the Stalinist parties. This proposal split the "Club" wide open. Lawrence acted as Pablo's agent while Healy with all his might resisted since his opportunist appetite could not be sated by work in the isolated rump of British Stalinism when Labourism was the mass force in the British working class.

The struggle within "the Club" didn't last very long with Healy winning a majority of the members- probably now less than 100, so "successful" had the SO tactic been. But there was a protracted fight for "Socialist Outlook", between Nov.1953 and April 1954. This was not an ideological battle the pages of SO hardly changed at all. But the battle over the control of the paper which Healy eventually won, was fierce, even leading to physical fights between Lawrence and Healy. By the time of Healy's ' victory" events within the LP and the Bevanite movement were signalling the end of the line for SO. The first two to three years of SO were the most influential; its sales built up to a claimed 9,000 a month. By the time of the struggle for control of SO the paper was a weekly with a sale of around 4,500. The major change in its fortunes came with the defeat of the Labour Govern­ment in 1951. From then on the "neutralist' "Tribune", also a weekly by 1952, was outflanking SO in its flattery of Bevan as an "organiser" of the amorphous left. By 1954, devoid of any distinctive revolutionary politics to win readers away from Bevanism, "Socialist Outlook" was simply a second rate "Tribune". The timing of 50's demise was dictated by the exigencies of Transport House's offensive against Bevan. SO was proscribed by the NEC by way of a warning shot across the bows of Bevan and his supporters.

Healy and his supporters meekly bowed their necks to the axe, if not with a glad heart, then at least with the sense of relief that the dwindling band of "Club" members remained Party members and that the "mass radicalisation" of the working class would still be able to crystallise around "Triibune," To be there when the masses arrived, Healy and Co. took the logical step of occasionally writing for and selling Michael Foot's "Tribune" for the next three years, pathetically underlining the "good bits" in copies to sell to working class readers!

Healy's successful liquidation of the only united and significant revolutionary Trotskyist grouping in the late '40s and early '50s was undoubtedly a tragedy. It was part of the international tragedy of the destruction of Trotsky's Fourth International by the generation of epigones Pablo, Mandel, Cannon, Hansen, Lambert etc. The repetition of this experience by Socialist Organiser and now Socialist Action, bids fair to repeat this history "the second time as farce,"

 

by K. Hassell

 

WORKERS POWER

 

MARCH 1983

 

 

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 20:07