As I have already mentioned, the faction fight in the organisation had been very fierce and had been going on for nearly three years, so by 1947 everyone was heartily sick of it. It was at the 1947 congress of the party that the split was prepared.

In fact although the formal faction fight had been going on since 1945/46, Healy had formed his own secret faction at the time of the founding conference of the RCP in March 1944, egged on by - and in collaboration with - leading members of the American SWP. The details of this can be found in Bornstein and Richardson's book. However, at a national meeting of Minority supporters in June 1947 a resolution was adopted which stated that in the event of their ‘platform' not being agreed upon at the forthcoming party conference they would request the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International to ‘allow the supporters of entry to work within the Labour Party under their own control'. This was a call for the de facto splitting of the RCP into entrist and open party organisations. At the conference of the party a few days later this call was decisively rejected. However, in the September of that year the IEC agreed to the Minority request. A special conference of the RCP was called in October to formalise this split, and the Healy minority departed to start their life as an independent organisation.

I had attended the national conference of the RCP in the summer of 1947 as an observer. I found it intensely interesting, being my first contact with many of the comrades and experience of a national conference.

I was able to take some holiday at that time and I had been to France, this being my first trip abroad on my own. I made my way to Paris and stayed with a young couple who were members of the PCI, the French Trotskyist organisation. The man was working at the Renault factory, and at this time there was a strike in progress. It soon became apparent that being known as a Trotskyist at the factory could be quite dangerous, since there had been several attacks by Stalinist goon squads upon members of the PCI. When I was taken to the flat of the young couple there was quite a prolonged discussion through the door before they were finally convinced that we were not a goon squad, and only then did they unbolt the door and let us in. They were both holding clubs that would have put baseball bats to shame, they were taking no chances. Although I did not speak any French I found that I was able to get around Paris quite easily because of the underground trains. Thus I was able to roam around on my own, seeing many of the usual tourist sights, and even the Communards graveyard. It was not that I was neglected by the French comrades, rather I had landed upon them at a time of intense activity, because of the strikes and also because there was a ferment going on in the Youth Section of SFIO in which the PCI had played some role. I know I ended up one day standing outside the office of Le Populaire helping to hand out leaflets, but that was the only event I took part in. It seemed that a number of the SFIO Youth had occupied these offices as a part of their protests against the treatment being handed out to them by the adult party. Never the less, I found my stay in Paris very satisfying, it gave me an opportunity to become acquainted with another way of life, one much the same as my own in some respects but so different in others. Being 1947 food was still rationed, and to eat in a small cafe one had to part with some food coupons, as well as money! However, I found one particular small restaurant that intrigued me, it was completely open plan, so that as you sat waiting for the food you could see it being cooked by the chef, I believe it was called the Cafe des Beaux Arts, I wonder if it is still open? Another small aspect of the food rationing that stuck in my mind was the lack of sugar, in most cafes there was no sugar provided. However, many of them provided sugar water to put in the coffee. This sugar water was in small bottles, very much like the vinegar bottles in British fish & chip shops, and when I first saw people shaking the contents into their coffee I was puzzled until I found out what it was! One aspect of life in France that I certainly appreciated was the cafes, these were - and still are - superior places to British pubs for socialising in.

I returned to London a day or so before the RCP conference opened and I was thus able to talk to a number of leading comrades informally, Jock Haston, Millie Lee, Roy Tearse, Jock Milligan, Heaton Lee, etc. These were the people that I had heard talked about in branch meetings, and had read about or read their writings in the publications of the party. I was in some awe of these people, since most of them had been active for many years, leading struggles, and had helped to develop the WIL and then the RCP. However, none of them had any pretensions, they willingly spent time talking to me - despite their busy schedule in the run-up to the conference - and made me feel at home and a welcome comrade. Mixing with the majority faction comrades I found the same warmth and comradeship that I had encountered in the Birmingham branch.

However, at the sessions of the conference itself one could visibly feel the tense atmosphere. Such was the factional animosity, which had been engendered in the previous years, that already the party was split in all but name. When the minority resolution on the question allowing them to enter the Labour Party became known it produced considerable wrath on the part of the majority. All the sessions of the conference were tense. However, I do recall that when John Lawrence spoke I was impressed. Lawrence had an easy platform presence, and an engaging manner of speaking. I cannot recall what he said, but I definitely remember wishing that he was with the majority. The other speaker I remember from that conference was Michel Pablo. He had to speak through an interpreter, so there was a slight lag in the reactions to what he said. He criticised the majority leadership of the party, and the longer he spoke the more hostile became the audience. At one point he was suggesting that the majority were taking a political course that would lead to the same position as Shachtman and Damaziere, at which point the hall erupted in boos and cat-calls. It did not endear Pablo to his listeners, and merely confirmed most of them in their already existing hostility. This hostility had been nurtured over some considerable time because it was suspected, quite rightly, that Healy's faction was supported covertly by the IS of the FI. This was further inflamed when Pablo was taxed with meetings with Healy unbeknown to the leadership of the RCP, and denied this. However, Millie Lee got up and said that he had been seen entering the cafe where Healy was sitting, shortly before the session of the congress began.

As I have mentioned the Minority resolutions were all defeated at the conference, but I think most people knew that was not the last of the matter. When the spilt was consummated in the October most people had been acclimatised to the prospect. Therefore, although there was a heightened bitterness engendered against the Minority for splitting the party, at the October conference it was accepted.

There were, and are, a number of points of view about the correctness of what happened at that point. Should the minority have been allowed to enter the LP as a separate group? Should they have been forced to accept the majority decisions and pursue the open party tactic? Should they have been allowed to enter the LP but under the control of the CC of the RCP? There were a number of options which could have been adopted, none of which would have satisfied everyone, and few would have satisfied either the majority or the minority.

In retrospect I believe that the splitting of the RCP was the correct thing to do, since it allowed the tactics to be played out without the overheated factionalism then rife. However, as to whether the manner of the splitting was correctly handled I have extreme doubts. To allow the minority to go off and in essence break all contact with the majority of the RCP merely accelerated and accentuated all the tendencies inherent in both groups. Above all it allowed Gerry Healy to set up shop on his own without any real scrutiny as to what he was doing. In this respect the IEC and IS of the FI had a very heavy responsibility, along with the Cannon faction of the American SWP. Without this outside support Healy could not have survived and flourished in the manner he did, both before the split and afterwards. At no time in his long political career did Healy display any original political ideas, he always picked ideas from others and used them - often in a blatantly crude manner - to suit his own ends. However, all such speculation is based upon the premise that there could have been a healthy development for the Trotskyists at this time based upon the basic assumptions shared by all tendencies, I shall comment upon that question later.

At the time I, like most of the Birmingham majority supporters, felt acute resentment that the minority was splitting the party. Yet, on the other hand there was a sense of relief when the minority departed, since now we felt that we could concentrate upon building the party instead of having to read the interminable internal bulletins that the faction fight had generated.

However, despite our best efforts there were to be no new recruits. We did our best, as I have described in the previous chapter, we were extremely active but there were no results. What the departure of the minority did was to reveal the isolation of the RCP from the mainstream of the labour movement, all its best days were well and truly behind it when I joined in 1947. The election of a Labour Government in 1945 had stripped away the conditions which had given rise to the span of influence that the WIL/RCP had achieved, i.e. the electoral truce and the coalition government. In fact the internal faction fight had become a substitute for external political activity, and when this too was terminated a type of desolation descended upon many people. It was as though they were being rudely awakened from a dream to the cold light of day.

I did not witness at first hand the final collapse of the RCP which occurred in 1949, since I had been called up for national service in the RAF in May 1948. My own inclination had been to register as a conscientious objector. However, the rest of comrades eventually talked me into accepting the party policy of ‘going with the workers', so I grudgingly accepted my fate and reported for duty.

I did my basic training at Padgate in Lancashire, learning the rudiments of foot-drill and ‘musketry', although I never became very proficient with the .303 rifle but at least I learned which end the bullets came out of. This lasted eight weeks, at the end of which we were graduated amid much bullying by drill sergeants and corporals, plus a lot ‘bull', i.e. spit and polish. Conditions at Padgate were at best bleak and most of the time just awful. As recruits we were bullied, chivied, talked at, shouted at and made to run practically everywhere from early morning to late at night. It was probably no worse than millions of others have had to endure in armies the world over, and it may have possibly been better than some, but at the time it seemed like hell. Nearly all of our instructors were ex-aircrew who had opted to stay in the service after the end the war, but had ended up as drill instructors for new recruits. Many of them seemed to resent their present situation, and seemed determined to take it out on us recruits. To us new arrivals their whole being seemed to be menacing, dressed in airforce blue battle-dress, razor sharp creases all over their uniforms, with ‘cheescutter' caps jammed on their heads so that their eyes were concealed, they clanked literally as they walked.

We found out that the clanking came from assorted whistles that were carried by instructors, plus the lead weights they put at the bottom of their trousers (above the gaiters) to hold them in place!! At first encounter they presented a ferocious sight and sound, particularly as they yelled at the top of their voice. I suppose the ‘theory' behind all this bizarre behaviour was that if they frightened us enough it would be possible to train us in the time allotted. Woe betide any ‘flight' that had to be put behind for further training, if we thought it was bad to begin with.... However, I had some insight to the reverse of this ‘theory'. One particular day we were on the drill square, and I was having some difficulty in grasping a particular drill movement. The more I tried the worse I became, the worse I became the more the instructor screamed at me, so I became more flustered....Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see our Flight Officer beckoning me. I thought I was in for ‘a right b********g'. However, he did not shout at me, he took me to the side of the square and said in a quiet voice ‘watch my feet', and then demonstrated the drill movement several times. Then he asked me to try, and when I didn't get it right, just quietly showed me again. After a few minutes I had the movement of ‘pat' and was able to return to the flight and carry on. What all the screaming and abuse had failed to do had been achieved by some quiet words and a simple demonstration! Incidentally, whilst I was doing this basic training there was a major change in drill. When we first arrived we were taught to complete most foot movements with a stamp of the foot. However, this was stopped after a few weeks and we had to re-learn many of our drill movements so that we eliminated the heavy stamping. It appears that someone somewhere had realised that all that stamping and bashing of feet down on the hard asphalt was damaging to the spine!! ‘We knew that'.

I left Padgate and went to a camp near Hereford to train as an Equipment Assistant (i.e. store keeper). This training only lasted four weeks and was relatively painless after ‘square-bashing'. The highlight of my stay there was the closure of one of the mess halls by the Medical Officer because it was so dirty. I was not pleased at first since I had been in a queue for about 20 minutes waiting for a meal when this happened. However, on reflection I realised I should be grateful, at least I had been spared food poisoning! Having been passed as an Air Craftsman 1st Class I was posted on the Yatesbury in Wiltshire.

Yatesbury stood on the Wiltshire downs, bleak and unyielding in winter. The soil was white clay, so that when it rained we trailed white mud everywhere. It was a hutted encampment, built during the war. The camp was a training establishment for Radar and Radio fitters, Engineers, and Operators. It was a huge place, being able to accommodate many thousands at its peak, but by 1948 only half the camp was in full use. I was assigned to the Headquarters staff, and worked in the main stores of the camp, dealing with radio valves, radar tubes etc., it was routine and totally un-exciting. I had struck up a friendship with Eric White, an Equipment Assistant like me and had arrived on camp on the same day. Knocker, as we called him, became my buddy for the rest of my service. Knocker was put in charge of one of the Wing Stores, which dealt with bedding, mugs, cutlery, clothing etc. for the trainees on the wing. It was a ‘cushy' number, and he made full use of its facilities....

Some time after I arrived I was put in charge of the Advanced Ground Radar School stores. This was a unit outside the main perimeter of the camp, and had a high volume of stores transactions, mainly - again - in radio components, radar parts and tubes etc. Although I was only an AC1, I had a corporal Radar Fitter with me as a technical adviser, but I was responsible for the stores. Why such an arrangement had been set up I do not know, since I never found any need for a technical adviser! I had all the manuals to tell me what I needed to know about store procedure!! However, Taffy, as he was called, was actually invaluable, but in ways unforeseen by ‘higher authorities'. Taffy had a nicely fitted-out workshop at the rear of the store, and he spent his time manufacturing small radios from ‘gash' spare parts that we salvaged. There was a disused NAAFI building on AGRS site and this was full to the rafters with old radios, radar sets etc. It was from these that Taffy and I selected what we needed for making the sets. Later he graduated to making TV sets! By this time the BBC had resumed its TV transmissions, and Taffy was able to bodge up some TVs from old Radar sets. Unfortunately we did not benefit directly from these, since the three he made went to officers on the camp, the first being the inventory holder for the stores, and the others on the staff of AGRS. We did benefit indirectly however, since no one bothered Taffy and I in our snug stores. Neither of us attended any parades, not even pay parades since we usually got our money via casual payments when we were near the pay office!. Apart from the chilly bicycle ride to work in the winter this, like Knocker's job, was a ‘cushy billet', and it lasted more or less until I completed my service in February 1950. We found that so long as I kept the stores records in good order, kept a proper balance of spare parts available, and the stores looking neat and clean we were never hindered in our main pursuits!! One final side benefit from this activity was what was written in my discharge book when I was demobbed. The Warrant Officer who was the inventory holder for AGRS had written into my book ‘Has carried out duties above his rank'!!! I think he had a very good sense of humour.

This whole period, from May 1948 to February 1950, was for me, politically on a personal level, completely uneventful. The party's idea that we should go where the workers went had made sense during the war. During the war there was obviously a wide mix of ages being called up, with many experienced workers in the ranks. By 1948 when I was inducted we were all 18 year old youths with little or no experience, and as such proved impervious to any attempts by me to raise political issues. I had copies of Socialist Appeal sent to me, but I never found anyone who was interested in reading it. In fact no one was interested enough to report me for having such material with me. Overwhelmingly the main preoccupation of all my mates was their demob date. None had any ideas of doing their patriotic duty, all they wanted was to go home and get on with their life. Like me they all found their service life a boring hiccup in their real lives. There was no ‘great cause' for them to hook up to, only badly paid routine work in out of the way places. I think from my own experience I was correct when I first wanted to resist being conscripted, the party policy on this question - like so much else - had failed to move with the times.

At this time there were three broad categories of people in the airforce: Firstly, the small number of leftovers from the pre-war regular airforce, many of these were of fairly low intelligence, even when they had reached senior NCO rank, and were the butt of most people. Secondly, there those who had stayed in the service after the war, largely because they did not want to face going back to what jobs - if any - they had before the war. They did not have the spit and polish attitude of the older regulars, since they had gained their experiences in the war. But they were a slightly disgruntled layer, not really committed to the service but not having anywhere else to go. At this time it was possible to sign on for 5 years periods, so they did not have to make such long-term commitments as before the war. Thirdly, there was us conscripts, few of whom even reached the rank of corporal, since we had little incentive to make the effort to pass the examinations necessary, we were not going to be in long enough to bother. Any attempt to appeal to our patriotism was met by piss-taking and contempt.

If there was any friction it was between the conscripts and the older regulars. One of our grievances was that no matter what grade we passed out of trade training, as conscripts we not entitled to the full pay until we had served six months, regulars obtained all their pay immediately on ‘passing out' from training. But this was never a subject that was likely to set anyone alight, it was accepted as a fact a life, even if an unpleasant one.

It was whilst I was serving in the airforce that Rhoda and I got married, in June 1949. It was odd, although we both now had all our firmest friends in the RCP, none of them came to our wedding. It was as though we had two quite separate lives, our own very personal life and the one we shared with our families. Neither my family nor Rhoda's approved of our political activities, and since we were under 21 we needed parental permission to marry. We decided to let the families have their own way and organise the wedding as they liked, and once we were married we would be able to lead our own lives. We knew that if we had tried to invite any of our comrades Rhoda's father in particular would have dug his heels in and probably refused permission for the wedding. As it was her father barely tolerated me, and he took every opportunity to snub me. When I had first met him, when I was about 16, I had been intimidated by him, and in fact Rhoda was afraid of him right up to the time she left home to marry me. But as I got older I began to develop an indifference to him, recognising him for the bully he was, and avoiding him for Rhoda's sake. But even though we were still only 19, once we were married we were able to shake ourselves free of parental interdictions, the law recognised us as being fully adult!

Rhoda was able to find a small, two roomed flat, for us and we had fixed it before the wedding. My parents had been particularly helpful in this respect. After the initial shock when I told them that Rhoda and I wanted to get married (and that no, she was not pregnant) they helped in any way they could, particularly my mother. After all I was still her ‘baby'! Furniture was found, or bought and pots and pans etc. produced. So that in the end we ended up with most of the essentials, at least by those days standards. Rhoda's parents were far less forthcoming, and it was not for the lack of money, merely the lack of will. Rhoda by this time had a job with a dentist, working as his nurse, and I was able to make a married allowance to her of two shillings per day which was doubled by the airforce. So she was able to escape her bullying father and set up on her own. I was able to get home every two weeks for a week-end, so unlike so many forces personnel during the war we were not separated for years on end. In fact it probably helped us to get used to living together, not being together all the time to start with probably helped in the transition period.

This was the personal background to the political developments taking place in the RCP. I only used to see the other comrades occasionally, so most of my information came via the Socialist Appeal, internal bulletins and from Rhoda. It came as a great shock when I learned that Tommy Reilly had defected from the RCP and tried to join the Stalinist CP. Tommy had been a member of the CC of the RCP and a full time organiser, playing a leading role in the fight against the fascist British Union Movement. That someone could leave the party was understandable, even if disappointing, but to want to join the CP!! That was the really shocking thing. When Jock Haston came out in late 1948 in favour of entry into the Labour Party and the dissolution of the RCP it came like a bolt from the blue for me. Even after Tommy Reilly's defection I had not realised that matters were getting so bad inside the party. It may be that because of her own inexperience Rhoda was not fully aware of what was happening. And it seems neither were most of the other comrades in Birmingham fully aware of the situation, even though they began to feel uneasy about the way the party was moving - or not moving - nationally. Haston's letter delivered a blow to morale that was already beginning to sag, and it was really down hill from there on.

At first there was considerable confusion inside the organisation. Not all the leading members on the CC accepted Haston's position, particularly Ted Grant and Jimmy Deane. However they did not actively oppose Haston but stood on the sidelines. It was left to a number of rank and file comrades to form a new Open Party faction, notably Alf Snobel, Sam Levy, Marion Lunt, George and Sheila Leslie, Charley Sisley, Geoff Carlson, Arthur Deane, Norman Pentland, J. Ross, Hettie Snobel and Sam Bornstein. Their faction was proclaimed in February 1949. And initially the party seemed to be split 25% for the Haston/Tearse line of entry, 25% supporting the Open Party Faction, and the rest standing on the sidelines, even if not silently. What swung the issue was when Ted Grant, Jimmy Deane and George Hanson came out in support of the entry tactic. They admitted that they did not believe in it, but argued that it was necessary to keep the leadership and organisation intact. Let me quote a part of what they said :

‘The discussion has not convinced us that in the present situation entry would constitute a superior tactic. However, faced with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the leadership and the trained cadres, and substantial sections of the rank and file are in favour of entering the Labour Party, and given that the objective situation will be a difficult one for the Party, we believe that a struggle would be sterile.'[2]

In other words there was a complete abdication of responsibility by these people and rather than face a political struggle with their own politically intimate comrades they ducked out.

In this situation it became almost a forgone conclusion when the special conference of the RCP met on the 4th to 6th June 1949 that the dissolution of the RCP would take place and the entry tactic be adopted. Most of the rank and file members only agreed to this with great reservations and very heavy hearts. They agreed to it out of loyalty to the leadership, and particularly to Haston.

Although I was not able to participate in the discussions, I too was opposed to the move and only followed the majority out of the same loyalty to the leadership. I had an unnerving experience before the conference met. I had been sent to an RAF station just outside London for a short time to help out in the store, which had become disorganised through most of the staff being demobbed. I was able to get down to London one Sunday and went to Jock Haston and Millie Lee's flat in Maryland Rd.

Whilst I was there Gerry Healy arrived with his small daughter, who was very much like her father. He and Jock were finalising the details of the unification of the two groups that was to take place once the RCP had been officially dissolved as a public organisation, but in fact the organisation continued in being. I was horrified to learn that Healy's group would be given a majority on all the committees of the fused organisation, this despite the fact that even after two years independent work in the Labour Party they would still constitute a minority in the fused organisation. This was supposed to change after the first conference of the unified organisation which was due to be held 12 months after unification. When Healy had left I had protested very vigorously to Jock and Millie. Millie remained silent most of the time, but Jock argued that it was necessary because the Healy group had adopted the entry tactic two years before and had that much more experience in such work. This did not satisfy me, since the open party faction of the RCP had a fraction working in the LP before 1947 and after. But in the end Jock said I must accept the discipline of the organisation and this meant the discipline of the international, since there would be no fusion except on those terms because it was what the international (i.e. Pablo, Mandel, Frank and Cannon) insisted upon. I went away feeling very uneasy, but I cannot remember if I communicated this unease to my comrades in Birmingham. As far as I can recall the RCP was officially ‘dissolved' in July 1949 and actually fused with the Healy group in the September of that year. I cannot recall much of what happened between these events and my demobilisation from the Air Force in February 1950. Only in retrospect was it possible to see that Haston at least, if not others of the RCP leadership, had deliberately connived at the handing over of the whole organisation to Healy. Haston must have been planning his own departure from Trotskyism well before he actually took the final step in February 1950. Obviously Haston wanted to dump his responsibilities as leader of the RCP, and the conditions of the fusion with the Healy group provided him with a way out of his dilemma. It was a sad end to what up to then had been a distinguished record of struggle for Trotskyism.

One of the few people who attempted to draw some political conclusions from the debacle of the RCP had been Frank Ward. In 1949 he had already raised some pertinent questions regarding the founding of the FI, but in 1950 he issued a document entitled ‘The Left and the Labour Government' in which he attempted to grapple with the contradictions between the perspectives of the RCP and the actual course of events. By this time he had, of course, been branded as a ‘deserter' and either been expelled or had left the movement voluntarily. Ward raised four basic assumptions of the Trotskyist movement which he said needed to be addressed:

‘1. That Parliament could never be the instrument of major social change.

‘2. That substantial nationalisation would lead to civil war.

‘3. That the old state machine had to be smashed. If it was not then it would grow constantly as a vicious anti-working class force.

‘4. That no such system as a ‘mixed economy' could maintain itself.'

Whatever one may think about Frank Ward's proposed solutions to these questions, and will look at them later, the fact remains that he had attempted to open up discussion around some quite pertinent and fundamental questions relating to the failure of the RCP, and Trotskyism internationally. But, it must be said, that he proved to be a very lone voice at that time, few of us were prepared to consider our predicament in the depth that Ward's questions required. Frank Ward was lumped together with Haston and Tearse as being demoralised, which was not true of Ward as a reading of his document demonstrates. However, this is not the place to attempt to analyse the reasons for the failure of the Trotskyist movement at this time. I merely record that there were a few isolated voices raised, Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman in the USA, and Frank Ward in Britain, that did attempt a theoretical accounting, and were damned for their efforts.

There was one event however that did have considerable bearing on what happened in Birmingham subsequently. And I shall deal with that in the next chapter.