E.P. Thompson argues in The Making of the English Working Class that a revolution was possible in England 1819, and in 1832 one very nearly happened. He even makes the case that the Pentridge rising of 1817 was “one of the first attempts in history to mount a wholly proletarian insurrection, without any middle-class support”. Its leader Jeremiah Brandreth was beheaded for treason and has largely been written out of history.
Trotsky saw the 1926 General Strike as also holding the promise of revolution in Britain.
The fact that these potentially pre-revolutionary situations did not end in revolution does not invalidate the judgements. Thompson points to high levels of working class organisation in many parts of England with people influenced by Paine and the Jacobins arming themselves and planning to launch an insurrection. Trotsky was writing at the high point of class struggle in Britain and fresh revolutionary experiences in several countries.
A feature of the late 18th and early 19th century radical groups was that they were always persuaded that there was something big about to happen imminently not too far away. The most extreme version of this was the prophetess Joanna Southcott who used religious language to describe a sort of class war in which wealth and land would be redistributed.
“I’ve gold of Ophir, that shall come
To build Jerusalem up again”.
Revolution in five years
This brings us on to the Revolutionary Communist Party. Even the name is a throwback to British Trotskyism of the 1940s and the language and graphics owe a profound debt to the Bolsheviks. Think of it as similar to one of those enthusiast groups that re-enact Viking battles or the English Civil War except that its members write in an English which is a clunky translation of how Russians used to write.
Trotsky and Lenin talked and wrote about the world in which they were living without citing Robespierre or St. Just every five minutes even though their revolution happened 120 years after the French one. That’s spitting distance of the time between today and the Russian Revolution. Trotsky was also considered quite a stylist and would probably be mortified at some of the literature which has nicked his best lines
To be fair, the RCP do seem pretty confident that “Our relatively untested party will, within the next five or ten years, be hurled into the turmoil of the British revolution.” Yet a mere five years ago they were saying “The more socialists who join the Labour Party, the more it will hasten the defeat of the right-wing and help transform the party into a vehicle that can carry through the socialist transformation of society.”
What changed in the meantime? Was it a huge imperialist war? General strikes across Europe creating a dual power situation in several countries? Mass class struggle parties emerging from existing formations and movement?
Nope. They got chucked out of the Labour Party and made a hugely successful turn to students with boldly Communist propaganda and concluding every single article with a variation of “With your help – through continued organisation, education, and agitation – the Revolutionary Communist Party can become this lodestar for workers and youth.” How many workers and youth in 2024 could tell you the meaning of lodestar is another matter when most people use their phone to work out how to get somewhere.
Now, it’s a good thing that a modestly significant number of young people are being attracted to a version of anti-Stalinist Marxism, and the “1,791 votes for revolutionary communism” won by the very impressive Fiona Lali in the general election with a dynamic and energetic campaign was a real achievement.
Every once in while an organisation taps into something and grows hugely as a result. The left’s history internationally offers hundreds of examples, of which the RCP is the current one. However, it’s recruiting on a misleading basis. Virtually every single article in recent months has explained how they are humanity’s only hope. Our survival as a civilised species depends on an organisation in Britain with a largely student membership of about 1000 and its satellites in other countries. That might be how you keep people on a treadmill of hyperactivity for a while, but as the recent French election shows real life is much more complicated than that. Every class has already produced a whole spectrum of organisations and trying to convince people that you alone hold the truth has more in common with millenarian prophets than a questioning Marxism.
Source >> Liam Redux
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