Workers International League

The Workers International League (WIL) was a Trotskyist group in Great Britain from 1937 to 1944.

When the Fourth International, led by Leon Trotsky , was founded in 1938, the WIL refused to join its official British section, the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). The main reason for this were different opinions on entryism in the Labor Party . Trotsky and his supporters pursued tactical participation within the Independent Labor Party and later in the Labor Party, while the WIL advocated strategic participation in the Labor Party. These national and practical needs were of greater interest to the WIL than membership of the Fourth International. A sympathizer status without organizational and political obligations, which was subsequently applied for by the WIL, was rejected by the Fourth International. A resolution formulated by Leon Trotsky and passed by the founding congress of the Fourth International accordingly concluded about the Workers International League:

“They are being led down a path of unprincipled clique politics that can only lead them into the quagmire. Sustaining and developing a revolutionary political group of serious importance is only possible on the basis of great principles. A national group can only maintain a consistent revolutionary course if it is firmly integrated into an organization with like-minded people around the world and cultivates constant political and theoretical cooperation with them. Only the Fourth International is such an organization. All purely national groups, all those who reject international organization, control and discipline, are essentially reactionary. "

- Leon Trotsky : Documents of the Fourth International (1933-1940), Pathfinder Press, New York (1973), p. 270

On the initiative of the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Workers International League finally merged with the Revolutionary Socialist League to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in 1944. This was henceforth the official British section of the Fourth International.

Others

Well-known members of the group were Gerry Healy and Ted Grant . Today the Committee for a Workers International and the International Marxist Tendency appeal to the Workers International League.

literature

Alan Woods: Ted Grant. The Permanent Revolutionary. Wellred Books (2010). London. ISBN 978-1-900007-47-4
David North: The Legacy We're Defending. A contribution to the history of the Fourth International. Arbeiterpresse Verlag (1988). Eat. ISBN 3-88634-051-1

Individual evidence

^ Workers International League: Statement of the WIL to the international congress of the Fourth International . In: Ted Grant: Writings Volume One. Trotskyism and the Second World War (1938-1942) . Wellred Books, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-900007-33-7 , pp. 46 .
^ Fourth International: On the Unification of the British Section. In: Resolution of the Founding Congress of the Fourth International. September 1938, accessed August 5, 2018 .

[1] Workers International League: Statement of the WIL to the international congress of the Fourth International . In: Ted Grant: Writings Volume One. Trotskyism and the Second World War (1938-1942) . Wellred Books, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-900007-33-7 , pp. 46 .

[2] Fourth International: On the Unification of the British Section. In: Resolution of the Founding Congress of the Fourth International. September 1938, accessed August 5, 2018 .