AGAINST THIS appalling background of national • Insularity, sectarianim, and political backwardness the Healy current developed. Gerry Healy apparently joined the British Trotskyist movement in summer 1937. (15) At that time the main organisation of British Trotskyists was the Militant Group. This consisted both of British Trotskyists and a group of South African Trotskyists led at that time by Ralph Lee. This latter group became the subject of various danderous attacks by Stalinists, which the leadership of the Militant Group mishandled, and in December 1937 a group of members including Let, Jock Haston, Grant and Gerry Healy split to form the organisation which later became the Workers International League (WIL). Healy played no leading role in this split — although he was involved in an extremely pleasant episode in which he felt it necessary t my that he had declared that various politic opponents would give information to the police.
bough the circumstances surrounding the split of he Labour Parts Puring mod of the period following the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, and during most of the period of the Second World War, the WIL maintained its independence from other Trotskyist forces. It also rejected memhership of the Fourth International. The Militant Group and various ober maller forces had meanwhile unified into the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSI). The chief difference of tactics between the two orpanisations was that of entryism into the Labour Party.
Coalition The RSL advocated a policy of entry. This was entirely correct in the late 1930's and rapidly became was wrong. The Lahour Party was part of a coalition government with the Tories which was pursuing an Imperialist war and savagely attacking the working class. Far from being attracted into this Party workers were, in these conditions, repelled from it individual membership of the Party, even on paper fell from 409,000 in 1939 to 266,000 in 1944. ALthough holding a general strategy, that of entryism. which was correct for the period of the 1930's and most of the 1940's, the RSL failed to grasp the needs of the particular specific situation, and the tactics which Bowed from them, and remained extremely weak.
The WIL however, although sectarian to the core nd holding quite false estimates of the gener olitical situation, nevertheless was led by its ver sectarianism and wild overestimation of the situation to an essentially correct tactical position - to do fraction work in the Labour Party but to concentrate on building an external public organisation. In consequence of this correct tactic, the WIL grew rapidly while the RSL stagnated.
Fused In March 1944, under the impact of these developments, the RSE and the WIL fused to form the Revolutionary Communis Party. The WIL recog nised its error in not joining the Fourth International and corrected this by fusing with une official section, ihe RSL. The RSL, in practice, came over to the more correct tactic of che WiL as in a fused organisation th WIL, with 52 delegates to 17 ar the founding of tbe RCP, was bound to have a majority on tactical issues.
It was also at this time in the mid-1940's that the Healy current as a specific formation came into existence. les exact origins are not clear — Healy claims it was over recognition that the WIL had made a grave political mistake in refusing to join the Fourth International. (16) Whatever the exact motivation for its formation, the Healy current came rapidly to stand for one dear and distinctive thing → it supported and called for a policy of entry into the Labour Party. As the war ended, and international links between Trotskyists became re-established, this policy of Healy was endorsed by both the International Secretariat of Above all he learsed from the SWP. Cannon's History of American Trotskyism and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party were the basic "textbook:' of the Healy current. It was from these that Healy absorbed both Cannon's exponence of the American workers movement, and involvement with the Communist International, and the flexible tactics for building the Party which the SWP leadership had carried our with the collaboration of Trotsky in the 1930's. Compared to the inveterate sectarianism and dogmatism of the carly British Trotskyists, the necessity for comcrete analysis and organisational Mexibility utilised by the SWP in its successful propapanda struggle with the Communist Party of 1929-33, its participation in the leadership of the mass Minneapolis strikes of 1934, its fusion with the Musteite American Workers Party in December af that year and its entry into the Socialise Party in 1936 and then its turo to open work again, were a blinding revelation in British revalutionary politics — and they remain a magnificent school to this day experience was insufficieet and one sided and should very Labour Party question which Healy made touchstone of his political line in the late 1940's. relation between open work and entryism had aiw boco the roost vexed of all questions among Brid Trotskyists because it clearly involved. particular in the rapid shifts often necessary betw the two types of work, a clear break with sectarianist (18). Instead of the revolutionary standpoint firmness in principles and the utmost Rexibil in tactics the British Trouskyiats thundered along a one tactic or shibboleth or another. They gane temporary success in the moment when that tactic wi particularly appropriate and then fell into declice cl moment it was no longer apt. (19) Whar a contrast this record of sectarian bankruptcy Healy was able find in the expericoo of the SWP!