On 5th June, 1929, the Independent Labour Party [1], of which Ramsay MacDonald [2] is a member, sent me an official invitation, on its own initiative, to come to England and deliver a lecture at the party school. The invitation, signed by the general secretary of the party, read: “With the formation of the Labour government here, we cannot believe that any difficulties are likely to arise in connection with your visit to England for this purpose.’ Nevertheless difficulties did arise. I was neither allowed to deliver a lecture before the supporters of MacDonald, nor was I allowed to avail myself of the aid of English physicians. My application for a visa was flatly refused. Clynes [3], the Labour Home Secretary, defended this refusal in the House of Commons. He explained the philosophical meaning of democracy with a directness that would have done credit to any minister of Charles II. According to Clynes, the right of asylum does not mean the right of an exile to demand asylum, but the right of the state to refuse it. Clynes’s definition is remarkable in one respect: by a single blow it destroys the very foundations of so-called democracy. The right of asylum, in the style of Clynes, always existed in Tsarist Russia. When the Shah of Persia failed to hang all the revolutionaries and was obliged to leave his beloved country, Nicholas II not only extended to him the right of asylum, but supplied him with sufficient comforts to live in Odessa. [4] But it never occurred to any of the Irish revolutionaries to seek asylum in Tsarist Russia, where the constitution consisted entirely of the principle expounded by Clynes, namely, that the citizens must be content with what the state authorities give them or take from them. Mussolini accorded the right of asylum to the King of Afghanistan in exact agreement with this very principle. [5]
The pious Mr. Clynes ought at least to have known that democracy, in a sense, inherited the right of asylum from the Christian church, which, in turn, inherited it, with much besides, from paganism. It was enough for a pursued criminal to make his way into a temple, sometimes enough even to touch only the ring of the door, to be safe from persecution. Thus the church understood the right of asylum as the right of the persecuted to an asylum, and not as an arbitrary exercise of will on the part of pagan or Christian priests. Until now, I had thought the pious Labourites, though little informed in matters of socialism, certainly well versed in the tradition of the church. Now I find that they are not even that.
But why does Clynes stop at the first lines of his theory of the state law? It is a pity. The right of asylum is only one component part of the system of democracy. Neither in its historical origin, nor in its legal nature, does it differ from the right of freedom of speech, of assembly, etc. Mr. Clynes, it is to be hoped, will soon arrive at the conclusion that the right of freedom of speech stands not for the right of citizens to express their thoughts, whatever they may be, but for the right of the state to forbid its subjects to entertain such thoughts. As to the freedom of strikes, the conclusion has already been drawn by British law. [6]
Clynes’s misfortune is that he had to explain his actions aloud, for there were members of the Labour faction in Parliament who put respectful but inconvenient questions to him. The Norwegian premier found himself in the same unpleasant situation. [7] The German cabinet was spared this discomfiture because in the whole Reichstag there was not a single deputy who took any interest in the question of the right of asylum. This fact assumes special significance when one remembers that the president of the Reichstag, in a statement that was applauded by the majority of deputies, promised to accord me the right of asylum at a time when I had not even asked for it. [8]
The October revolution did not proclaim the abstract principles of democracy, nor that of the right of asylum. The Soviet state was founded openly on the right of revolutionary dictatorship. But this did not prevent Vandervelde [9] or other social-democrats from coming to the Soviet republic and even appearing in Moscow as public defenders of persons guilty of terrorist attempts on the lives of the leaders of the October revolution.
The present British ministers were also among our visitors. I cannot remember all of those who came to us—I haven’t the necessary data at hand—but I remember that among them were Mr. and Mrs. Snowden. [10] This must have been as far back as 1920. [11] They were received not simply as tourists but as guests, which was probably carrying it a little too far. A box in the Grand Theatre was placed at their disposal. I remember this in connection with a little episode that it may be worth recounting at this point. I had arrived in Moscow from the front, and my thoughts were far away from the British guests; in fact I did not even know who those guests were, because in my absorption in other things I had hardly read any newspapers. The commission that was receiving Snowden, Mrs Snowden, and if I am not mistaken, Bertrand Russell and Williams, as well as a number of others, was headed by Lozovsky [12], who told me by telephone that the commission demanded my presence in the theatre where the English guests were. I tried to excuse myself, but Lozovsky insisted that his commission had been given full power by the Politburo and that it was my duty to set others an example of discipline. I went unwillingly. There were about a dozen British guests in the box. The theatre was crammed to overflowing. We were gaining victories at the front, and the theatre applauded them violently. The British guests surrounded me and applauded too. One of them was Snowden. Today of course he is a little ashamed of this adventure. But it is impossible to erase it. And yet I too should be glad to do so, for my “fraternizing” with the Labourites was not only a mistake, but a political error as well. As soon as I could get away from the guests, I went to see Lenin. He was much disturbed. “Is it true that you appeared in the box with those people?” (Lenin used a different word for “people”.) In excuse, I referred to Lozovsky, to the commission of the Central Committee, to discipline, and especially to the fact that I had not the remotest idea who the guests were. Lenin was furious with Lozovsky and the whole commission in general and for a long time I too couldn’t forgive myself for my imprudence.
One of the present British ministers visited Moscow several times, I believe; at any rate, he rested in the Soviet republic, stayed in the Caucasus and called on me. It was Mr. Lansbury. [13] The last time I met him was at Kislovodsk. I was urged to drop in, if only for a quarter of an hour, at the House of Rest where some members of our party and a few foreign visitors were staying. A goodly number of people were sitting around a large table. It was in the nature of a modest banquet. The place of honour was held by the guest, Lansbury. On my arrival, he offered a toast and then sang: For he’s a jolly good fellow. Those were Lansbury’s feelings toward me in the Caucasus. Today, he too would probably like to forget about it.
When I applied for the visa, I sent special telegrams to Snowden and Lansbury, reminding them of the hospitality that had been accorded them by the Soviets and in part by myself. My telegrams had little effect. In politics, recollections carry as little weight as democratic principles.
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb [14] most courteously paid me a visit quite recently, early in May of 1929, when I was already on Prinkipo. [15] We talked about the possible advent of the Labour party to power. I remarked in passing that immediately after the formation of MacDonald’s government, I intended to demand a visa. Mr. Webb expressed the view that the government might find itself not strong enough, and because of their dependence on the Liberals, not free enough either. I replied that a party that isn’t strong enough to be able to answer for its actions had no right to power. Our irreconcilable differences needed no new test. Webb came into power. I demanded a visa. MacDonald’s government refused my application, but not because the Liberals prevented it from following its democratic convictions. Quite the contrary. The Labour government refused the visa, despite the protests of the Liberals. This was a variant that Mr. Webb did not foresee. It must be pointed out, however, that at that time he was not yet Lord Passfield.
Some of these men I know personally. Others I can judge only by analogy. I think that I measure them correctly. They have been raised up by the automatic growth of labour organizations, especially since the war, and by the sheer political exhaustion of liberalism. They have completely shed the naive idealism that some of them had 25 or 30 years ago. In its stead, they have acquired political routine and unscrupulousness in the choice of means. But in their general outlook they have remained what they were—timid petty bourgeois whose methods of thought are far more backward than the methods of production in the British coal industry. Today, their chief concern is that the court nobility and the big capitalists may refuse to take them seriously. And no wonder. Now that they are in power, they are only too sharply aware of their weakness. They have not and cannot have the qualities possessed by the old governing cliques in which traditions and habits of rulership have been handed down from generation to generation, and often take the place of talent and intellect. But neither do they have what might have constituted their real strength—faith in the masses and the ability to stand on their own feet. They masses who put them there, just as they are afraid of are afraid of the conservative clubs whose grandeur staggers their feeble imaginations. To justify their coming to power, they must needs show the old ruling classes that they are not simply revolutionary upstarts. God forbid! No, they really deserve every confidence because they are loyally devoted to the church, to the King, to the House of Lords, to the system of titles; that is to say, not simply to the sacrosanct principle of private property, but to all the rubbish of the Middle Ages. For them to refuse a visa to a revolutionary is really a happy opportunity to demonstrate their respectability once again. I am very glad that I gave them such an opportunity. In due time, this will be taken into account, since, in politics, as in nature, there is no waste.
One needs no great imagination to picture Mr. Clynes’s interview with his subordinate, the chief of the political police. During the interview, Mr. Clynes feels as if he were undergoing an examination, and is afraid that he will not seem firm enough to the examiner, or statesmanlike or conservative enough. Thus it needs little ingenuity on the part of the chief of the political police to prompt Mr. Clynes to a decision that will be greeted with full approval in the conservative papers next day. But the conservative press does not merely praise it kills with praise. It mocks. It does not take the trouble to conceal its disdain for the people who so humbly seek its approval. No one will say, for instance, that the Daily Express belongs to the most intelligent institutions in the world. [16] And yet this paper finds very caustic words to express its approval of the Labour government for so carefully protecting the “sensitive MacDonald” from the presence of a revolutionary observer behind his back.
From Chapter 45 of My Life (1930)
Trotsky: Doesn’t Britain realize that her industrial success is now so in the balance that it depends entirely on how soon she throws aside her quarrel with Russia? America does and if Great Britain is not careful she will find the ground cut away from under her feet; the second-comers will only get the crumbs.
Daily Express: What are your views on resuming relations?
Trotsky: My views? Well Great Britain is apparently blind but she will get a serious knock very soon that will restore her sight when it is too late and this knock will come from America. Great Britain’s fear of communism reminds me of a child which closes its eyes when it is frightened yet she is big enough to act like a man and grapple with anything she considers menaces her. With Anglo-Russian relations resumed she will still be able to say who shall enter her territory. Every government has this prerogative: look at me, I am not wanted so out I have gone. Then again the fact of Great Britain being on friendly terms with Soviet Russia would give her an advantage in getting friendly consideration of her desires. But to continue her stand for reparations for alleged damages will only result in Great Britain being outrun by America. Russia has a score of millions of millions marked up against Great Britain for blame for the bloody revolution attaches to her or rather to her soldiers and her gold. To persist in making Russia only a debtor will never lead to any good and the sooner this is realized so much the better for England.
Daily Express: Where are you going after leaving Turkey?
Trotsky: I have as yet had no reply from Germany. I suppose it is because of the cabinet crisis there but I have no doubt they will give me a visa. I only sent in my request after Herr Loebe’s [17] favourable speech. Reports that I have applied to France, Czechoslovakia and Holland are lies. I wonder what would be the result if I asked to go to England. You know I spent a happy period in London visiting the British Museum in 1902 and I sometimes think I would like to see it again. Apparently the mere mention in the House of Commons of the possibility of my requesting a visa for England was sufficient to bring the House down in laughter. I have studied what appears to be the joke for some time but I fail to see the point of it.
From an interview given to the Daily Express, 18th March 1929
My state of health has obliged me to decline all interviews during the past few weeks, but I now desire to receive a representative of an English newspaper, especially after false information concerning me has been spread throughout the world by a prominent London newspaper from its Constantinople correspondent [18], and in view of its inconceivable refusal to publish the formal denial which I forwarded to it immediately this information came to my knowledge.
It is untrue that I have addressed a demand to return to Russia to the Stalinist faction, which for the moment governs Soviet Russia. Nothing is changed in my situation as an exile, and it ought not to have been necessary to make a denial to the fantasy of a poor imagination, which is without scruples concerning so-called plans in the Orient and the Extreme Orient. The Near East begins in Turkey, and my sojourn here has shown that I understand the right of refuge.
I have just addressed a request to the British government for permission to go to England. This is not because I have any reason to complain of the treatment which I have received at the hands of the Turkish authorities. On the contrary, they have shown themselves to be perfectly loyal and hospitable. I should not dream of leaving Turkey were I not compelled to do so for a number of important reasons.
My state of health and that of my wife demands treatment which it is impossible to obtain here. Furthermore, residence in London would allow me to pursue my scientific work and enable me to superintend the publication of my books in English. Here I am deprived of the necessary sources of information. The smallest verification entails a great loss of time.
I do not wish to conceal that there is besides, at this moment, a special interest for me to go to England, where a great political change has just taken place.
The party which for the second time assumes power in Great Britain believes that the difficulties created by private ownership can be surmounted through the medium of democracy. [19] I want to see how it will be done.
I do not think that democracy which believes it can solve the gravest problems by democratic methods can begin by refusing the right of asylum—a democratic institution—to an adversary who has no intention of interfering with or intervening in British political affairs, but who desires only to observe and to learn.
It is well known that the German Government refused to give me a visa for Germany. I was therefore unable to receive that lesson in democracy which Herr Loebe, the President of the Reichstag, had promised me. The right of asylum exists in Germany only for its political friends, which means that it does not exist at all, despite the fact that it is continually affirmed that Germany is the freest country in the world.
The Norwegian Government, which, by the way, I had not approached, declared itself unable to undertake responsibility for my personal security. Suffice it to say that I am the only private person whose security is dependent on oneself and one’s friends. To put the question on a humane basis, I demand that less importance be attributed to my security and more to my health.
I asked M. Trotsky then how he would reconcile the offer of refuge by Great Britain to a man exiled from Russia with a renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He replied that he saw nothing in that connection whereby difficulties might arise.
“On the contrary,” he said, “for the British Government, clinging firmly to the principle of non-intervention, the right of refuge is entirely one of an internal order. Equally am I sure that with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations the British Government would not think of demanding that the Soviet Government should modify its internal regime.”
He added laughingly that of course he would never have dreamed of asking for permission to enter England while Sir Austen Chamberlain [20] was at the Foreign Office. “Sir Austen,” he said, “for some reason has a personal objection to me which he has aired on not a few occasions.
“Yes,” he continued, speaking of the question of resumed relations, “I hope the new Government will repair the mistake committed by its predecessor. That British industry should be made to suffer merely because of discontent with the Communist International is a thing I cannot understand. I believe, moreover, that this is also the opinion of British industrialists, who found it necessary to send an important delegation to Russia to study the situation.”
M. Trotsky spoke of his works which are now in preparation, citing especially that which has for its subject the world situation since the war. notably the situation of the United States vis-à-vis Europe in general and in particular vis-à-vis Great Britain. ’What is my opinion, “he concluded, “concerning the possibilities of the new Socialist Government and the perspectives open before it? It is precisely these questions which I shall treat in my new book on world politics.
“The great experiment which begins with Mr. MacDonald’s new Cabinet will furnish me with new elements for appreciation and discussion.”
Interview with the Daily Express, 19th June 1929
1. Founded in 1893 under the leadership of Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, the ILP aimed at securing Parliamentary and local government representation for the working class independently of the Liberal Party. But in its programme and practice it never entirely broke from liberalism. It played an important role in the establishment of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, and provided the main centre of local political life in the Labour Party until the formation of constituency organizations in 1918. Took a pacifist stand in the war and thereafter put up the main opposition to the right wing policies of the Labour leaders, eventually disaffiliating in 1932. It soon became involved in the “London Bureau” (see note) of parties trying to take up an intermediate position between the Second and Third Internationals. Its further political evolution from a brief courtship with revolutionary politics to a hardened centrist position can be followed in Part Two of this volume. The early history of Trotskyism in Britain is in large degree the history of its struggle with this current.
2. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Scottish Labour politician, member of Independent Labour Party (ILP), adopted pacifist position during World War I, prime minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits, served as prime minister until 1935.
3. J.R. Clynes (1869-1949), British trade unionist and Labour politician; supporter of British involvement in World War I; became leader of the Labour Party 1921-22; served as Home Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-31), but split with Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 over the proposed austerity measures.
4. The Persian bourgeois revolution which began in 1905 eventually deposed the pro-Russian reactionary Shah Muzaffor Ud-Din in 1907, after he had made a number of attempts to hold back the tide of reform. He fled to Russia after being deposed, and was protected by Tsar Nicholas. In July 1911 the ex-Shah led an army of invasion which was defeated. Later in the same year Russian forces intervened, and they remained there until after the October 1917 revolution.
5. King Amanullah was forced to flee from Afghanistan in 1929 following the success of a palace coup backed by British imperialism. After a brief period in India, he arrived in Rome in July and, under the protection of the fascist regime, occupied the Afghan embassy.
6. The 1927 Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act, passed by the Tories in the wake of the General Strike, had, among other attacks on trade union rights, declared illegal all sympathetic strikes as well as those considered to be “calculated to coerce the government”, or to inflict “hardship upon the community”. It was repealed in 1945.
7. The Prime Minister of Norway at this time was Johan Mowinckel (1870-1943), leader of the so-called “Left Party”, who presided over a coalition of various bourgeois parties from 1928 to 1931. Trotsky was to fare little better with the subsequent social-democratic government, which in 1935 permitted him to enter Norway only then to subject him to detention and deportation.
8. Before his deportation from the Soviet Union Stalin’s Politburo informed Trotsky that his application to visit Germany had been refused by the Müller government (see note). Soon afterwards Paul Loebe, Social Democratic Speaker of the Reichstag, made a speech asserting that Trotsky would be granted asylum in Germany. He therefore requested asylum, but the application was repeatedly blocked. Trotsky was told he could enter the country only if in need of medical treatment; when he replied that he was, the government decided that he was not ill enough for them to be obliged to grant entry. As Trotsky relates in My Life: “I could thus appreciate the full advantages of democracy only as a corpse. “
9. Emil Vandervelde (1866-1938), Belgian right-wing socialist and one of the leaders of the Second International. During the First World War he was one of the most extreme social-chauvinists, becoming Prime Minister, and was extremely hostile to Soviet Russia, acting in 1919 as Belgium’s signatory to the Versailles Treaty. Made a special visit to Moscow in 1922 to act as a defence witness in the trial of the Right Social-Revolutionaries.
10. Philip Snowden (1864-1937), British Labour politician; member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP); pacifist during World War I; Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first (1924) and second (1929-31) Labour governments; proposed the cut of unemployment benefits that split the government in 1931, went with Ramsay MacDonald to form the National Government, a coalition with the Conservatives. – Ethel Snowden (1880-1951), British socialist and feminist campaigner, member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), wife of Philip Snowden.
11. During the visit of the British Labour Delegation of that year. The delegation was sent as a the result of a motion passed at a special meeting of the Trades Union Congress on 10th December 1919 deciding to initiate an independent and impartial inquiry into the industrial, political and economic conditions in Russia. Its members arrived there in May 1920, and remained for three to six weeks respectively. Those representing the Labour party included Ethel Snowden and Robert Williams, and the TUC delegates included A.A. Purcell. They issued a generally favourable report later in 1920, though Mrs. Snowden published her own hostile account called Through Bolshevik Russia. Philip Snowden was not a member of the delegation, nor was Bertrand Russell, though he was one of many British visitors to the Soviet Union at about this time, and produced his own unfriendly picture in The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.
12. Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky (1878-1952), originally a Menshevik, joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and became Secretary of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions. Because of disagreements over the question of trade union independence and exclusively Bolshevik government, he set up, an organization of his own for a time, but rejoined the Communist Party in December 1919. Thereafter he was a leading official of the Red International of Labour Unions and a consistent supporter of Stalinist policies. Later he became a Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs and head of the Soviet information Office. One of the few major figures of the 1920s to survive the purges of the 1930s, Lozovsky was seized and shot on Stalin’s orders at the age of 74 during an anti-semitic campaign.
13. George Lansbury (1869-1940), British socialist politician and newspaper editor; helped found the Daily Herald in 1912; edotor (1912-22); opposed World War I and welcomed the February and October Revolutions; as Mayor of Poplar in East London he led the Poplar Rebellion in 1921, when councillors refused to forward rates (property taxes) collected to the london County Council and distributed them to alleviate poverty – the councillors were jailed and council meeting had to be held in Brixton Prison; the revolt led to changes in local government financing to the benefit of poorer areas; leader of the Labour Party 1932-1935.
14. Sidney Webb (1859-1947) and Beatrice Potter Webb (1858-1943) were leaders of the Fabian Society, which was an explicitly reformist and gradualist group that had great influence on the development of the Labopur Party; during the 1930s they expressed great admiration for Stalin.
15. Trotsky was exiled in February 1929, arriving on the island of Prinkipo the following month. The Webbs arrived to visit him on 29th April 1929.
16. This paper was of course known for its right wing views even before a controlling interest was taken in it in 1916 by Sir Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook). Thereafter it was closely identified with various reactionary causes, notably with strong support for the maintenance of the British Empire.
17. Paul Löbe (1975-1967), German Social Democrat and jopurnalist; editor of Breslauer Tagewacht 1900-1920; briefly leader of the SPD in 1933.
18. The Times, 10th May 1929: “He [Trotsky] has just sent a request to Moscow for permission to return to Russia and support Stalin and the ruling clique.” The Times, 30th May 1929: “Trotsky has been given permission to return in July to Russia.” The Constantinople correspondent alleged that Trotsky had left Russia only to do secret work on Stalin’s behalf.
19. The second minority Labour Government was returned to office in the General Election of May 1929.
20. Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937), British Conservative politician; Foreign Secretary 1924-1929.
Last updated on: 2.7.2007