Trotsky: "The Lever of a Small Group"
A letter to the British Trotskyists, 2 October 1933. The British Trotskyists were then a small group recently emerged from the Communist Party. The Independent Labour Party had been the main precursor of the Labour Party, and then, as an affiliated group within the Labour Party, the main bulk of Labour's individual activist base. In 1932, after conflict with the Labour leadership, the ILP disaffiliated. ILP membership, which had stood at 17,000 in 1932, plummeted to just 4,000 in 1935, but there was also left-wing ferment within the ILP. Trotsky favoured arguing within the ILP for an...