Two new and, in a sense, interlocking problems relating to the conditions of the time emerged instead. The first, national oppression in Europe, affected what was to happen during the post-war period in terms of the road to revolution. The occupation of France in 1940 marked the end of one stage and the start of another in the development of the imperialist war. This was a set-back for the revolutionary movement and flowing from this came the question of the programme which was required to deal with the change and the tactics to apply to it. I cannot argue about the policy inside Europe because I do not know the details, but it seems that some material is now being turned up dealing with the activity of the various Trotskyist groups in occupied Europe, particularly in France. A broad outline seems to be known; in France the Trotskyist movement was split in all directions, from those who immersed themselves deep into the factories for the duration of the war to those who were infatuated by the chauvinist propaganda of the Stalinists and Gaullists. Nonetheless some good work was done, such as the episodic turning out of newspapers and other material catering specially for the German army of occupation, with a distinct class line approach to the German working class in uniform.

But as a consequence of this new period new differences arose in the Trotskyist movement, first and foremost within the SWP. As it was by far the largest and most dominant section of the Fourth International, it determined the pattern of struggle for the Trotskyist movement. The opening shot in revising the pink-coloured view of the developments in Europe was the Three Theses of a group of German emigré Trotskyists in the United States. The document was written in October 1941, at the height of the Nazis' successful penetration into the heart of the Soviet Union, and, although the three points hardly covered two printed pages (2000 words), the pessimism of its conclusions called into question not only the policy and programme of the Fourth International but the validity of Trotskyism itself. To be fair, over a year had elapsed before the Three Theses appeared in the major Trotskyist journals, some time after the atmosphere in which they were written had evaporated. Their pure empiricism may have laid them open to contradiction in the events that were taking place but equally they laid the basis for the conflict that first arose in the S WP.

Although articles had been written before, mainly by Marc Loris (Jean Van Heijenoort, who later also wrote under the pseudonym of D.Logan), about the situation in occupied Europe, and in particular with regard to France, illusions were being shattered by events in the occupied territories. The need arose to apply a revolutionary policy and programme to the phenomenon- what I would regard as the application of a transitional programme to Europe. The question of national oppression, and therefore the national question itself, arose but not as a rerun of the position of the colonies and the backward countries, because France and even Belgium and Holland were imperialist countries themselves exploiting colonies. The struggle for national independence had to be raised along with the struggle for Socialism. After the invasion of Russia the European Stalinists became active and leading supporters of a unified struggle against the Nazis under the banner of the bourgeoisie, particularly the bourgeois governments in exile. Their political shrewdness taught them that, whilst being under the overall blanket of the bourgeoisie, they must maintain their own resistance forces as far as possible. The Social Democrats, though nowhere near as active as the Stalinists, basically operated as a part of the bourgeois establishment. Resistance movements, mainly very small ones, were already emerging throughout occupied Europe, particularly with the changing pattern of the war, and the problem of the Trotskyist movement inside Europe was how to react towards and utilise this emerging struggle. From the little that I know about this they did not do it very well or very successfully. Outside the occupied territories the question equally arose of what policy arid programme had to be formulated to deal with the national oppression.

The Three Theses proved to be the spark for, whilst being repudiated by the opposing factions, they laid the groundwork upon which the polemics were carried out: the struggle against national oppression and how to carry out a policy for its success.

The Three Theses presented a theory of a classless (or all-class) national struggle leading to an abstract democratic revolution. The SWP as a whole rejected this as a capitulation to the bourgeoisie. The basic difference within the SWP revolved around what alternative policy to put forward for occupied Europe, a difference that only widened with the development of events in Europe. The Majority, led by Cannon and ER Frank (Bert Cochran) simply posed the demand of the Socialist United States of Europe - and that only. The Minority of Morrison (Albert Goldman), Cassidy (Felix Morrow) and Marc Loris (Van Heijenoort) began with differences among themselves. Loris posed the national struggle as the key issue, developing slogans around national liberation whilst drawing a line of demarcation with the Three Theses by counterposing the role of the working class and its party in order to give the struggle a working class character. Goldman and Morrow reaffirmed that the main demand and slogans had to be for a Socialist United States of Europe, but equally pointed to the importance of the struggle for national liberation. Whilst a coalescence of views developed around Van Heijenoort, Goldman and Morrow, the differences of the three of them with the Majority of the SWP increased rapidly. Whilst the Minority, in my opinion, attempted to understand the process and proposed a way for the Trotskyists to tackle it, the Majority, pointing to Hitler's 'New Order' in Europe, replaced serious analysis by extensive quotations from Trotsky about the reactionary character of the European states in the period of imperialism-an historical truism, as recent developments have proved in Western Europe, but a truth that fails to take into account all the other factors that existed and still do exist in Europe. Even Hitler, in spite of his 'New Order', had to maintain the separate states and many of the divisions between them.

This conflict of ideas and policies developed and widened with the growing breakdown of Nazism and the Nazi occupations in Europe. It seems quite clear to me that the struggle for national liberation under a socialist banner had to be the main demand. In this context the way forward was shown by the actions of Tito of Yugoslavia. We do not have to apologise for Tito's ruthless, barbaric, cynical and opportunist actions (his treatment of the Trotskyists reflects his whole attitude) to be able to admit that his approach to national liberation won the day. This argument, in fact, is stated in Section 7 of the Resolution on the National Question in Europe issued by the Central Committee of the RCP when it says that "in opposition to the military formations of the bourgeois-led and inspired Resistance movements, the proletarian party must counterpose and organise independent military formations of the working class, as well as its own independent military formation". In other words, it was necessary to establish a basic concept about what should be the attitude and action of the workers in the struggle for national liberation even in an occupied imperialist country.

But the reality in Europe was that the Trotskyists were extremely weak and not really capable of creating such a force, though such formations were possible in such places as Vietnam, tangential to the problems of Europe. This question of the weakness of Trotskyism vis-à-vis the liberation movement was, in my opinion, dealt with up to a point, by Section 8 of the above mentioned resolution, which stated that 'as a part of its tactics the revolutionary party must send members into the Resistance Movement to create a conscious proletarian opposition to the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaders...', though this demand was really a position presented after the events. Moreover, it does not discuss or deal with the Stalinist forces inside the liberation movement, and this was of major importance, as events proved in Vietnam, where the Trotskyists were of some substance.

Moreover, in which of the resistance movements should the Trotskyists have most actively participated - those controlled by the Stalinists or by the bourgeoisie? This was not dealt with - and it was no academic question. It could be a matter of life or death, but the problem could essentially only he answered in the given context of each liberation movement, or each section of the liberation movement. For example, should you have participated in the Stalinist forces, where you were liable to be bumped off, particularly if you were awkward, or have taken advantage of the growing opposition to Stalin's policy, as in Greece, where the Stalinist forces were sold down the river by Stalin and his local henchmen? I think that the record of the Trotskyists in occupied Europe was not outstanding - not due to a lack of individual heroism, but on the grounds of understanding, which therefore affected our ability to tackle the extremely difficult situation we were in.

This weakness had a knock-on effect, for with the breakdown of the Nazi occupation essentially by military means, the still small and weak Trotskyist movement, whilst growing very slowly, was faced with a gigantic problem. The answers emerged in the next and most important stage of the conflict, to begin with between the Majority and Minority of the SWP, in which the British movement became increasingly involved, the Majority of the RCP supporting Goldman, Morrow and Van Heijenoort, and the Minority around Healy supporting the SWP Majority around Cannon and Cochran. No one questioned the assumption of the emerging European revolution, though already large elements of doubt were beginning to form as to the pattern that would emerge and what tactics should be adopted towards it.

The Cannon faction started from the opinions of Trotsky in 1940, as if they were the final word, proclaiming that the revolution was here and almost asserting that the European Trotskyists had already emerged as a power to lead the revolutionary struggle. On the other hand the SWP Minority and the RCP Majority pointed to the re-emergence of a strengthened Social Democracy and Stalinism, posing the question of a short and probably unstable period of bourgeois democracy, counterposing the need to struggle for the maximum amount of democracy in capitalist society, to build up the Trotskyist movement and to expose the limitations of this democracy so that the struggle could go beyond it. Demands, for example, in Belgium and Italy for a republic instead of a. monarchy, were expressions of this concept. Realising that they were totally out of touch with reality, the SWP Majority took on board some of the slogans and demands of the Minority, but without in any way altering their basic position. This policy on the part of Cannon & Co of trying to take the sting out of the criticism of their policy without really altering anything was the hallmark of the period. Pablo admitted as much in his reply to Morrow in agreement with the majority of the SWP when he wrote:

'It is perfectly true that at that time there was general agreement in the European Secretariat that the first critical documents of Comrade Morrow, and especially his criticism of the Resolution of the December 1943 NC Plenum of the SWP contained some correct observations on the tempo of development of the revolutionary situation in Europe, the importance of democratic slogans, and the dangers of sectarianism in our International'.

But this sectarianism was not confined to the SWP. When Europe was reconquered a similar phenomenon re-emerged with Pierre Frank's grandiose theory of Bonapartism in Europe and the argument that Stalinism, much weaker than ever before, was capitulating to Western imperialism, theories that were propounded as the essence of Trotskyism against which only revisionists could disagree. Trotsky's own argument, when replying to the Shachtman faction which was quoting him to prove he was wrong, was forgotten:

'Every historical prognosis is always conditional, and the more concrete the prognosis the more conditional it is. A prognosis is not a promissary note which can be cashed on a given date. Prognosis outlines only the definite trends of the development. But along with these trends a different order of forces and tendencies operate, which at a certain moment begin to predominate’.

The polemic arose over the type of regime arising from the Allied imperialist victory, the strength or weakness of the Soviet Union, the role and power of Stalinism and Social Democracy, the future potential of the European economy, whether cyclical boom or complete collapse; and, slightly later on, the character of the regimes of the countries occupied and controlled by the Soviet government. It was precisely in understanding and tackling these problems that the weakness of the Trotskyist movement was shown: without Trotsky's genius we were an ordinary bunch of revolutionaries incapable of understanding the process on which we claimed to be experts.