Fourth International Documents

Conferences, congresses and resolutions, in English

The birth of the Fourth International 1930-1940 › The Emergency Conference of the Fourth International (May 1940)

Resolution on Unification of the British Section

May 1940 · The Emergency Conference of the Fourth International (May 1940) · 332 words

Britain

Published English text: Fourth International, Emergency Conference documents (MIA ETOL), May 1940. Transcribed by the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line (Marxists Internet Archive).
French text: Résolution sur l'unification de la section britannique.

Resolution On The Unification Of The British Section

Adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International

May 19-26, 1940

Taking cognizance of the fact that all reports from England point to a rapid revolutionary development in the labor move-ment of that country, and;

That a broad unorganized Trotskyist sentiment already exists within the latter’s ranks, and;

Furthermore that the official British section of the Fourth International, the Militant Labour League, has achieved sub-stantial progress by its work inside the British Labour Party;

The Emergency Conference of the Fourth International de-plores the fact that no less than four groups claiming adherence to the Fourth International exist outside the ranks of our official section in Great Britain, and that tremendous efforts and useful energy are wasted in maintaining four separate organizations as well as publications outside of the organization—energy and material resources which could be of immense value to a unified British section—developing the already growing influence of Trotskyism in England into a powerful, unified, organized revolutionary force.

The conference calls upon the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), the Workers International League (WIL), the League of Labour Youth (LLY), and all other groupings claiming adherence to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky to realize the serious need of a single section of the Fourth International in Great Britain, to give up theft separate organizations and to merge with the Militant Labour League into one powerful organization.

The conference furthermore calls upon the Militant Labour League to make such organizational concessions to groups claiming adherence to the Fourth International as will help them find theft way to a unified organization without giving up any of the principled positions and without contravening any of the decisions made by the First World Congress of the Fourth International.

The Emergency Conference of the Fourth International hails the coming unified British section. It greets, in it, the vanguard in the struggle for the revolutionary socialist solution for the war: the overthrow of its rotten, decayed, imperialist bourgeoisie.

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