Richardson and Bornstein described the Marxian League of Frank Ridley, Aggra Wala and Hugo Dewar as “semi-Trotskyist” and suggested that no copies of its paper The New Man had survived.
Alison Penn’s Bibliography of British Trotskyism made the same claim but a footnote in Martin Upham’s thesis on the history of British Trotskyism led us to think otherwise…
And so a chain of lucky coincidences led us to unearth The New Man, volume 1 no1 January 1st 1932. The first British publication which could be considered, in a limited sense, Trotskyist.
However, we now have an even earlier publication!
This four page pamphlet or leaflet is from 1931. Entitled “Communism Or Chaos” it is also the work of the Marxist League, or Marxian League, as it sometimes styled itself- even in the same article!
Thanks to Staffan for providing us with this fragment of the True Cross…
Splits and Fusions 