Spartacus Review

Volume 17: 28th April, 2008

Labour History

Title: Against the Stream

Author: Sam Bronstein & Al Richardson

Editor:

Publisher: Merlin Press

Price: £18.95

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: British Communist Party

Category:

Against the Stream documents the way that the rift between Stalin and Trotsky resounded in Britain. In 1930 some British left-wing activists formed a Trotskyist network that was antagonistic to the Stalinist USSR and sought to influence the mainstream British labour movement. The book has grown out of interviews with many of these the protagonists and research among the published documents and private correspondence of the period. It charts the history of Trotskyism in Britain from the first echoes of the Stalin-Trotsky faction fight, through to the emergence of the Fourth International in 1938. The authors aim to clarify some of forgotten historical and theoretical background to the tactics adopted by the Trotskyist faction and explain the movement's evolution into different millieux. It presents its picture 'warts and all' irrespective of orthodoxies, whether left or right.