Opportunism

Of course, both Engels and Lenin understood the working-class basis of the ILl support, but both recognized the fundamental opportunism of the parliamentary leaders.

'Independent of socialism, but dependent on liberalism', was the phrase Lenin used more than once to describe the ILP.

If Liddle and Turner try to conceal this opportunism, it 1s because they, and those like them, want it to continue to dominate the labour moveThus, referring to the 1914 war, they exalt the ILP's 'antitheoretical' opposition to the war. Let us see what role it really played.

The ILP leaders MacDonald, Snowden and Jowett denounced the war as a crime of capitalism, but they managea to maintain their unity with the Labour Party leaders, who joined the very cabinet that perpetrated this crime.

ILP chairman Fred Jowett could sign anti-war manifestoes and still declare his belief in 'national defence'. • Brockway says of him:

'He acknowledged that government, having made stay with the right-wing leaders of the Second International who had led the workers into the imperialist slaughter in 1914.

The ILP did neither.

In April 1920, it disathlated from the Second International.

It sent a delegation to Moscow to inquire, in effect, whether it could affiliate with the Third International and still remain a reformist party.

At the same time, it decided to look into the 'possibility of the re-establishment of an all-inclusive International, for the purpose of formulating the basis of an International, which, while making a quite definite announcement of our socialist objective, would allow the national sections to adapt their policies to the different political and industrial conditions in their various countries'.

The reply of the Third International was made, not to the ILP leaders, but over their heads.

It called on Marxists in the ILP to break with MacDonald and company and help found a British Communist Party.

After the attempt to form the half-way house International, decisively referred to as the 'two-and-a-half', the ILP returned to the Second International.

Wednesday, November 26, 1969 CINEMA reviewed last week, kes? Betty Reid.: Still uses oli against bogey of 'secret finance', Reid harks back to the days when Stalinists, taking their cue from the Moscow Trials, accused the Trotskyist movement of taking money from We warn Reid and company that any attempt to peddle an updated version of this myth around the labour movement THREE developments in the Young Socialists and amongst our supporters in the adult movement, now organized in the All Trades Unions Alliance.

There is in the leadership of the League a combination of many generations and layers of the working-class movement, blended with intellectuals who have broken