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Review article The Unbro- Thread Forty years of Marxism
(Photo above)
Ted Grant
(left) and Jimmy Deane
during the
1945 Neath
by-election.
ed Grant provides the vital
link
between Trotsky's leas and Marxism
today.
40
The aftermath of the second world war threw
the international leaders who claimed the leg-
acy of Trotsky into confusion and disarray.
Stalinism emerged from the war strengthen-
ed, and through the might of the Red Army
new Stalinist regimes were established in East-
ern Europe. This extension of Stalinism dem-
anded the further elaboration of the Marxist
theory of the state and Trotsky's theory of proletarian bonapartism. In China, the long peas-
ant-based struggle of the Red Army resulted in the formation of another Stalinist-type regime
under Mao Zedong. Later, conflicts developed between the national bureaucracies, with a Yugoslav-Russian rift and especially the Sino- Soviet split.
The political consolidation of capitalism in Western Europe and Japan laid the foundations of the phenomenal economic upswing of the post-war period. The working class was immeasurably strengthend by the long boom, but apart from important episodic struggles, was crippled by the lack of a conscious political leadership. To prepare for new mass movements, particularly under conditions of a historic set-back for Trotskyism. Marxism had to grasp the real nature of the capitalist upswing and the new characteristics of the mass organisations of the labour movement. Incapable of understanding these new social trends and class relationships internationally, the wouldbe leaders who claimed the title of Trotsky's Fourth International manoeuvred themselves into sectarian isolation. Losing their theoretical bearings, they succumbed to the same social pressures which led to the degeneration of the Stalinist and reformist leaders. Alone of the pre-1945 representatives of Trotskyism, Ted Grant was able to apply Trotsky's theoretical principles and methods to the new phenomena
the post-war world.
In spite of the intense pressures of isolation,
and despite the political hostility and often
malicious attacks of the opponents of genuine
Marxism. Ted Grant tenaciously formulated
the ideas and perspectives around which fresh
forces of Trotskyism could be assembled.
These ideas represent the vital link between
the real ideas of 1917, Trotsky's International
Left Opposition, and today's Marxists, which is
why this selection of Ted Grant's writings can justly be republished under the title of The
Unbroken Thread. The collection, which appears on 13 June, is being published by Fortress Books, and is edited and introduced by John Pickard. Here we present an excerpt from his introduction, which records Ted Grant's own political development.
John Pickard writes:
Ted Grant was born in Germiston, near Johannesburg in South Africa. At the age of eleven, he was introduced to the writings of Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, Maxim Gorky, Jack London and others by Ralph Lee, a member of the Communist Party and a friend of the family. Within a short time, the reading material graduated on to the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, so that by the time he was fifteen. Ted Grant was a confirmed Marxist.
His association with Trotskyist ideas began with the critique that Trotsky made of the Fifth Congress of the Communist International. By a bureaucratic oversight, much regretted by the Stalinists later. Trotsky's criticisms were circulated to delegates. Some American Communists smuggled copies out after the Congress and began to organise the distribution of Trotsky's writings, using, among other means, the paper they founded, Militant.
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'I think it was in 1928 or 1929; Ted Grant recalls. 'when the American Militant was sent to radical bookshops in a number of different parts of the world, and a few were sent to Johannesburg. They published all Trotsky's criticisms of Stalinism, including his analysis of the aborted revolution in China in 1925-27. We used to wait eagerly for the arrival of each new batch of papers. We read them avidly from cover to cover, especially the writing of Trotsky himself. These contributions made an enormous difference to our understanding
Within a few years. Ralph Lee was expelled from the Communist Party and he, Grant and another supporter, Murray Gow Purdy, formed the Workers' International League in South Africa. They regarded themselves as a left opposition to the Stalinist leadership within the Communist Party, as did all the newlyformed Trotskyist groups throughout the world. The WIL around this time organised a strike of black laundry workers in Johannesburg
In this period, however, the black proletariat was far smaller, with less social weight, in comparison to the situation that developed alter the war. It was understandable, therefore, that South African Trotskyists should have looked for inspiration to the many-millioned working class movement in Europe, with its mightier organisations and longer traditions. Not long after Hitler came to power in Germany, in mid-1933, Ted Grant left South Africa, as he put it, for 'broader horizons' in Europe.
The small South African group had already corresponded with the Trotskyist movement in Britain, regularly receiving Red Flag, its newspaper. Travelling with another supporter of Trotsky, Sid Frost, Ted Grant went by boat, first to France, then on to London. While they stayed in Paris for a week or two, they met and discussed with Leon Sedor, Trotsky's son and a key organiser of the international Trotskyist movement.
In Britain, Ted Grant joined the Independent Labour Party, but only briefly, and then the Labour League of Youth, the youth section of the Labour Party. With other Young Socialists, he was very prominent in the day-to-day struggles against the Mosleyite blackshirts, including the famous battle of Cable Street.
In 1938, Ralph Lee also came to Britain, and with Ted Grant and others formed a Trotskyist group, once again calling it the Workers International League. Lee was a talented speaker and writer, but within two years returned to South Africa, largely for personal reasons. The continuity of Ted Grant's own political work was saved around this time by 'good fortune': called up in 1940 to serve in the Pioneer Corps, he unfortunately suffered a fractured skull in an accident, and was invalided out of the Forces, without ever having donned the
khaki.
The Workers' International League was a marked success in wartime conditions, its theoretical leadership mainly the work of Ted Grant. By 1944, the WIL took over the remnant of the Revolutionary Socialist League, another smaller group, to form the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP continued the success, especially in the recruitment of industrial militants. So much so that the War Cabinet was supplied with a secret memo from the Labour Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, outlining the policies of the RCP, and giving brief biographies of its leaders, including Ted Grant. Although it was not carried through in the end, it is clear that the capitalist class was seriously considering banning the RCP.
Untortunately, the marvellous momentum of the wartime work was not reflected in the fortunes of the RCP afterwards. This is not the place to give a history of British Trotskyism, but without going into all the background and the causes, it is enough to know that the RCP broke up in 1949-50. Suffice to say that this was in large measure due to bureaucratic interference and outright manoeuvres by the leadership of the Fourth International, of which the RCP was a part.
After the RCP disintegrated, Grant continued to put forward a Marxist view in a variety of journals and magazines. He was editor of the International Socialist, a theoretical magazine, and later editor of the paper, Socialist Fight. When that was coming out duplicated, he recalls, 'I was doing most of the work for it myself. I wrote most of it. I typed it once, proof-read it and typed it again to justify it (ie. to adjust the type to fit evenly between the margins). I even had a hand in working the duplicator from time to time.
In 1964, he was one of the founders of the newspaper Militant, still going strong, twentyfive years later, as 'the Marxist voice for Labour and Youth'. As political editor of the Militant he has written regularly on all major political questions, as well as contributing to Militant International Revieu: writing pamphlets and documents, and giving countless speeches and lectures. Because of the growth in support for the paper, the leadership of the Labour party began to expel its supporters, beginning with the editorial board, in 1983. After having rejoined the Labour party in 1950, with 33 years continuous membership, Ted Grant was expelled. But to expel the 'head' of a movement is not to expel the movement itself. The political work of half a century cannot be erased by a flash of the block vote. The fruits of 50 years work, of an unrivalled contribution to socialist theory are there to be seen; in the development of a Marxist tendency deeply rooted in and inseparable from the labour movement.
MIR Summer The Unbi
•25 1989 oken read
An unrivalled contributio to sociali:
theory
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