Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain
by John Kelly
(Routledge, £29.99)

THIS painstakingly and meticulously researched book provides both a narrative history and an insightful analysis of the multitude of Trotskyist groups and “front” organisations extant in Britain from the 1930s to 2017.

It is an almost impenetrably confusing picture, which the author does his best to unravel. It's a laborious task given the characteristic sectarian feature of Trotskyite organisations, resulting in frequent splits and divisions at both a national and international level.

To date no fewer than 23 organisations claim to be Trotskyist Internationals, all supposedly emanating from the Fourth International established by Trotsky in 1938. This is only one less than the number of national organisations functioning in Britain today.

The “votes, office, policy” framework traditionally used to analyse political parties is inappropriate for Trotskyist organisations, but not only for the reasons given by Kelly. He correctly adds ideology or doctrine to this framework, but “votes and office” are inappropriate too, since some of these organisations like Militant and Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL) are, or have been, Labour Party “entrists.”

In addition, most Trotskyist organisations do not seek votes in elections and none of them has held or seeks to hold office, other than in their own ranks or more frequently in trade unions and social movements.

Kelly traces the history of Trotskyist organisations from their inconspicuous genesis in 1933 to what he terms their “golden age” from 1966 to 1985, through to the period from 1985 to 2004 of “decline and disintegration.” This is followed by what he calls “stasis” from 2004 to the present – the era of austerity.

The entire period, however, has been dominated by doctrinal disputes within and between what Kelly calls the three Trotskyist “families,” leading to frequent splits into an ever-increasing plethora of organisations. Thus despite their vanguardist pretensions, their doctrinaire sectarianism accounts for the fact that there has never been a mass Trotskyist political party anywhere in the world, much less the capability of leading a revolution.

Apart from dissecting the complexity of the internal fissures and almost Jesuitical ideological wrangles resulting in frequent name changes and/or new groups, Kelly examines Trotskyist influence in trade unions and social movements. This is where they can chalk up some success, notably in such movements as the People's Assembly, the Stop the War Coalition and several others past and present.

Within trade unions today, their influence is strongest in white-collar unions. Their greatest impact, via the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), is in the education union UCU in which their tactics successfully derailed its annual conference last month. Ironically, it resulted in the obverse of their stated objective of enhanced membership control against “union bureaucracy.”

The initiatives of Trotskyist organisations in establishing successful social movements have often been regarded as front organisations. Whatever the assessment, it is clear that it has not resulted in increased membership. Kelly estimates that the combined total membership of all 22 Trotskyist groups is currently about 9,500.

This substantiates his conclusion that their success in building broad-based social movements can only be achieved when Trotskyist doctrine is jettisoned. Given Kelly’s trenchant critique, it is hardly surprising that the Trotskyist movement has ignored this book. We should not.