ABSTRACT
The idealistic, dedicated young people who joined the Trotskyist organizations remained a small minority. The stubborn allegiance of the bulk of trade unionists to labourism proved enduring. However, if the Trotskyists remained a marginal force in industrial politics, their influence stretched beyond committed adherents. In 1964 there were only a few thousand Trotskyists in Britain. The three main groups traced their origins to the Revolutionary Communist Party, the unified organization of British Trotskyists, which broke up in 1949. Stereotypes of the Trotskyists as self-interested ‘wreckers’ mingled with material concerns over wages lost by lay-offs through the plant induced by sectional action. Is in the 1960s provided a contrast with the orthodox Trotskyists in its rejection of dogmatism and its willingness to analyse changes in capitalism and class. Whatever its inadequacies, Tony Cliff’s analysis of Russia as state capitalist identified socialism with workers’ control.
