ABSTRACT
The world war was replaced by a Cold War, a war for hearts and minds, one of ideological battles and localized but virulent military conflicts. The United States emerged as the leading world power and the dominant Western protagonist in the alliance against the Soviet Union. The abortive history of the Train Apartheid Resistance Campaign illustrates the divergent approaches of Communists and Trotskyists to political mobilization. The idea and practice of socialism went into eclipse: socialists had not been able to offer a sustained and viable alternative to the broader national liberation organizations, and between 1946 and 1950 socialist groups either collapsed or, subsequently, disbanded to avoid the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950. The Communist Party of South Africa was certainly cognizant as early as 1947 that the Herenigde National Party intended to ban socialist organizations if it were elected. But there is no evidence that the Party made any attempt to build an underground structure.
