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GCATT and the Archaeology of British

Trotskyism
Philip Wallace
Published online: 07 May 2009.

To cite this article: Philip Wallace (2009) GCATT and the Archaeology of British Trotskyism,
Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 37:2, 261-278, DOI: 10.1080/03017600902760745
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Critique
Vol. 37, No. 2, May 2009, pp. 261
278

GCATT and the Archaeology of British

Trotskyism

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Philip 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 nonTrotskyist 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 (1944
1949) in the late 1940s and continuing
1
Two groups (Healys and Grants) each claimed Trotskyist orthodoxy while Cliffs was Bureaucratic State
Capitalist but continued to acknowledge its Trotskyist origins.

ISSN 0301-7605 (print)/ISSN 1748-8605 (online) # 2009 Critique

DOI: 10.1080/03017600902760745

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262 P. Wallace

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 (1947
1959), through its middle period as the Socialist
Labour League (1959
1973), and in its final incarnation as the Workers Revolutionary 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 newspapers, 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 1956
4 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
1953
1974 (Leiden: Brill), pp. xx
xxi, xxvii
xxviii. For more on Fryer see P. Fryer, Hungarian Tragedy: And Other
Writings 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. 154
160, 178
180. For a brief and lively
account 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. 124
140. A
more 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 1924
38.4 To illustrate the added value
resulting 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).

S. Bornstein and A. Richardson, Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1924
38
(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.
4

264 P. Wallace

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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. 67
69; also Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op cit., pp. 85
86.
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. 95
96; and Stewart Purkis, An Open Letter to Harry Pollitt: General Secretary of the
Communist Party of Great Britain, 27 July 1932, GCATT, Box 732, Item 119; see Groves, op. cit., pp. 86
90.
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.
9

Critique

265

item includes a short covering letter accepting the Communist Internationals (CI)
criticisms by J.R. Campbell on behalf of the CPGB Secretariat.16

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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 Opposition
concerning 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. 22
23. For a useful brief account of the rise
and 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. 79
102.
17
Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op. cit., p. 128.
18
Internal Bulletin * British Section * International Left Opposition, 1
13/14 (14 March
27 September
1933), GCATT, Box 732, Items 19
31.
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. 139
40.
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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266 P. Wallace

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.

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 claims
to 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.
24

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267

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 (1949
1950) 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.
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
1948
19 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.
29

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268 P. Wallace

a folder full of other possibly unique 1941
1942 RSL pamphlets and documents are
copies 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 1939

1945.36 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 1941

June 1942, GCATT, Box 639, Item 1.
34
S. Bornstein and A. Richardson, War and the International: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain
1937
1949, (London: Socialist Platform, 1986).
35
Selby, op. cit.,
36
McIlroy and Campbell, Part 1: Politics and Protest, op. cit., pp. 27
72; McIlroy and Campbell, Part 2: The
Cardowan Story, op cit, pp. 39
80; T. Milligan, Trotskyist politics and industrial work in Scotland 1939
1945,
Scottish Labour History Journal, 30 (1995), pp. 104
120.
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. 48
49.

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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 nonLabour 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.revolutionaryhistory.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 1958
1974.

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270 P. Wallace

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.

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 1937
38 (a period when she was committed organisationally and was presumably
nearest ideologically to an orthodox Trotskyist worldview. N. Milton, John Maclean, (London: Pluto Press,
1973), p. 7.
45

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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 revolutionary 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 1932
1933
he, 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. 51
52.
Ibid., pp. 31
33.
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, 1900
1950 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992), p. 156. This final date should
perhaps 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
48

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272 P. Wallace

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 1946
1947 along with the LF centre. The production of its paper The Voice of
Labour 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 1949
1950 with the defection of Mercer, Hood and
much 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 (1948
1950) 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,
1929
1985: 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 1938
1948 [1963], in
Jim 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 1949
16 November 1949, GCATT, Box 633,
Item, 4. See also LF Glasgow Group Reports for 1948, 5 January 1948
28 December 1948, GCATT, Box 636, Item
20.
57
Minutes of the LFs Secretariat 1949, 7 January 1949
29 December 1949, GCATT, Box 634, Item 3; Minutes
of the LFs Secretariat 1948, 10 January 1948
23 December 1948, GCATT, Box 632, Item 7; LF Secretariat
Reports 1948
9, 10 January 1948
14 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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274 P. Wallace

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 1946
20 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. . . . It
appears 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 back
to 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 (1884
1947), in
William Knox (ed) Scottish Labour Leaders 1918
39: A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1984),
p. 229; see also Milton, op. cit., p. 112; McShane and Smith, op. cit., pp. 151
152.
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 in
1947, 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, 1900
1950 (Edinburgh: John
Donald, 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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276 P. Wallace

socialism.72 Although Petroff was no longer a communist he remained, rhetorically 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. 127
128.
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 1917

1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993 [1937]), pp. 345

346. 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., pp143
144; T. Cliff, A World to Win: Life of a Revolutionary (London: Bookmarks, 2000), p. 51. In
the 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 Petroffs 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.

Cencrastus, Winter 1980
1981; 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. 223
238.
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 Cliffs
1952 book [written under his original name of Ygael Gluckstein] Stalins Satellites in Europe (London: George
Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952).
79
The Communist, 2
5 (September 1932
May 1933) and 9 (5 January 1934), GCATT, Box 301, Item 1;
Bornstein and Richardson, Against the Stream, op cit., p. 83.
76

278 P. Wallace

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

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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.

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.
81