Marxist Group (UK)
Marxist Group | |
---|---|
Leader | Denzil Dean Harber (1934-1935) C. L. R. James (1935-1938) |
Founded | November 1934 |
Dissolved | 1938 |
Split from | Communist League |
Merged into | Revolutionary Socialist League |
Headquarters | Glasgow |
Ideology | Trotskyism |
Political position | Far-left |
National affiliation | Independent Labour Party (1934-1936) |
The Marxist Group was an early
History
Its origins lay in the
The majority of the Communist League argued against joining the ILP in favour of maintaining an open party, but allowed thirty of its members led by Denzil Dean Harber to form a secretive "Bolshevik-Leninist Fraction" in the ILP. This difference in orientation essentially split the party, and in November 1934, sixty Trotskyist ILPers officially formed the Marxist Group.
While, perhaps due to this delay and infighting, the Group never achieved the influence hoped for by Trotsky, it did win new members, including C. L. R. James, who in 1937 dedicated his book World Revolution to the group. Ted Grant also joined the organisation, having moved from South Africa. By the ILP Conference of 1935, it claimed a similar strength to the Revolutionary Policy Committee, which was sympathetic to the Communist Party of Great Britain. However the same year a group (including Grant and Harber) split to work inside the Labour Party's Labour League of Youth, initially as the "Bolshevik-Leninist Group" and then as the Militant Group.
The Marxist Group soon realised that the ILP did not have mass influence outside
Outside the ILP, the Group began working again with the
References
- ^ Alexander, Robert Jackson.International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement. Duke University Press, 1991, p438
- ^ Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike. Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black, 2000, p153
- ^ "LEON TROTSKY: Leon Trotsky on Britain, Excerpts from his writings".
- Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, Against the Stream.