ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses trends in the membership of the Trotskyist movement over time. It describes the development of the Trotskyist movement in Britain through a series of distinct phases. The chapter charts the emergence of discrete organizations linked to particular families of Trotskyist doctrine where a family is understood as a set of organizations, both national and international, that share most of the core elements of Trotskyism but diverge on one or two key issues. From the mid-1960s Britain experienced a dramatic rise in the numbers of strikes, as workers sought to protect earnings against rising inflation despite the restrictions of the new Labour government's state incomes policy. The most notable feature of the Trotskyist organizations of this period is a remarkable degree of leadership stability, despite rapid and substantial membership turnover. The other major Trotskyist group, the Socialist Labour League, also became increasingly active in the trade union movement.
