The trade union leaders now became important public figures, and an integral part of the war machine. They were aspiring statesmen, who yearned for Establishment recognition. They constituted “the rise of the ancient lowly to authority and power”, to use the words of John Burns. This fact was acknowledged by Ernest Bevin: “We represent probably the most vital factor in the state: without our people this war cannot be won, nor can the life of the country be carried on,” he noted. Within fifteen days of taking office, Bevin had called a meeting of 2,000 leading trade union officials from the largest 150 trade unions in Central Hall, London. It was the biggest gathering of union officials since the General Strike, but their purpose was entirely different. Class war had been substituted by world war. Nevertheless, in a distorted way, this meeting also showed the potential power of organised labour, which was now harnessed, care of the union leaders, to Churchill’s war machine. “Thereafter there was complete co-operation between government, employers and trade unions at every level”, stated historian Francis Williams.
Under these new conditions, the Shop Stewards’ Movement, which had been in decline, quickly re-established itself in the larger engineering factories and combines. However, fearing this new development, lest it become a focus of opposition, the union leadership strove to integrate the “semi-official” Shop Stewards’ Movement into the newly-established Joint Production Committees, representing both workers and employers. Given the perception that the war was against fascism, the workers were prepared to toil long hours for the war effort. Nevertheless, they constantly came up against the demands and interests of the employers who were eager to boost profits at their expense.
At the beginning, the only organised forces that opposed the war were the Independent Labour Party, the Communist Party, and the small groups of Trotskyists, primarily the Workers International League. Although the war was regarded as a continuation of the imperialist war of 1914-18, the British ruling class hid its real intentions and aims under the cover of a “war against fascism”.
The leadership of the British Communists during the Thirties had slavishly followed every twist and turn of the Kremlin on all questions. Originally, in the first few days of the war, the Communist Party supported it as a “just war” against fascism. This appeared as a logical continuation of their Popular Front line. However, they had failed to appreciate one thing: Stalin’s accommodation with Hitler in the Soviet-German Pact signed a few days before the outbreak of world war. So to support Stalin’s new friendship with Hitler, the CP was forced to change its pro-war policy within days, and come out in opposition to Britain’s war with Germany. For the next two years, the CP leaders effectively campaigned for a policy of “peace on Hitler’s terms”. The Daily Worker, for instance, justified Stalin’s military conquest of Eastern Poland with the headline: “Red Army Takes Bread to Starving Peasants”, whilst ignoring Hitler’s seizure of the remainder of the country.
The ILP’s anti-war opposition was based primarily on pacifist lines as in 1914-18, and a revulsion against war in general. Pacifism was a long-standing tradition within the British Labour movement. In the First World War, it expressed itself in the protest of those refusing to serve in the armed forces, namely the Conscientious Objectors. Courageously, they preferred to go to prison rather than answer the call-up. However, this action served to effectively cut them off from the growing anti-war feelings at the front. This was the line supported by the leaders of the ILP at the time. Even Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden took this pacifist position. But pacifism, in face of the menace of fascism, could not answer the problem of how to defeat Hitler and defend the democratic rights of the working class, and so had little influence on the broad mass of workers.
The Trotskyist opposition to the war, on the other hand, was based upon revolutionary opposition to imperialism and its aims. The Second World War was regarded as a continuation of the First World War, as a struggle between imperialist blocs for world domination. However, the workers were not pacifist. The working class correctly recognised the need to fight Hitler fascism and to defend their democratic rights and organisations. This “defencist” feeling was particularly prominent after the fall of France in the summer of 1940. As a result, the Workers International League (WIL) advocated a revolutionary military policy, attempting to link up the “defencist” outlook of workers with the need to fight for workers’ interests. Although small in number, the WIL began to make its mark as the war dragged on, and in particular, as the CP leaders became, after 1941, the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the Churchill government.
The programme of the WIL not only included day-to-day demands relevant to workers, but a whole series relating to the war. They advocated clearing out the reactionary, pro-fascist, and anti-Labour officer caste in the armed forces and Home Guard; the election of officers by the ranks; the establishment of military schools by the trade unions at the expense of the state for the training of worker-officers; the arming of the workers under the control of workers’ committees elected in the factories, unions and in the local communities; for the defence of the democratic rights of the workers from reactionary attacks by the enemies of the working class at home and abroad. It also declared total opposition to the Churchill government, for Labour to break the Coalition, and a general election to put Labour in power on a socialist programme with the aim of pursuing a “revolutionary war” against Hitler. This revolutionary programme found an echo amongst a growing layer of advanced workers that was disillusioned with the war effort and the erosion of living standards, and who in the past had looked to the Communist Party as an alternative.