Work in Progress
Many Thanks
THE Editorial Board of Revolutionary History thanks Steve Parsons for giving us a copy of his MA thesis, Crisis in the British Communist Party: The Impact of the Events of 1956 on the Membership With Particular Reference to Trade Unionists (Warwick University, 1981), which will be made available on our website in the near future. Once again, we request anyone who can help with technical work on our website to get in touch with us.
News From France
AS always, the Editorial Board is happy to draw our readers’ attention to the excellent work of our fellow historians in CERMTRI in France. They are marking the half-centenary of 1956 with no less than four publications, two each of the Cahiers du movement ouvrier and of the Cahiers du CERMTRI. Admirably productive, they have also produced one issue of each of their Cahiers on the revolutionary strike wave of June 1936, which time and resources have not allowed us to discuss. CERMTRI, 28 rue des Petites-Ecuries, 75010 Paris, France.
Other material from CERMTRI has included Cahiers du mouvement ouvrier, no. 29, which covers a wide range of topics. Especially interesting are a short autobiography of Mikhail Boguslavsky (the Decist condemned to death at the second Moscow Trial of oppositionists), and an article by Pierre Roy on the campaign of vilification against Pierre Brizon, the SFIO deputy who attended the 1916 Kienthal conference of anti-war socialists, and voted in the French parliament against war credits. A recent issue of Les Cahiers du CERMTRI reproduces key documents from 1919 to 1935 on the teachers’ union in the CGT-U, drawing out key strands in the argument between the Trotskyists and syndicalists.
J.J. Plant
The Marxist Internet Archive
Readers will be glad to know that recent additions to ETOL (Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line, www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/index.htm) include complete indexes by issue of articles in the following theoretical journals: the American New International, 1934–57, the British Workers International News, 1938–48 (Revolutionary Communist Party) and Labour Review, 1952–63, of the group around Gerry Healy that became the Socialist Labour League in 1959. This last was originally a very fine and very open paper, but became less tolerant, and changed its name in 1963. None of these journals has ever been indexed before in its entirety.
Quite a number of articles from these journals have also been put in digital form, and can be accessed from the index by a click. These include, for example, all the excellent historical writing of Brian Pearce in the Labour Review. Although an index has been available for New International up to 1940 when Max Shachtman split from the Socialist Workers Party and took the theoretical journal with him, this has been sadly lacking from 1940 onwards. The Marxist Internet Archive would be delighted if more of these articles could be made available and would appeal to anyone who thought there were pieces of value therein to scan and proof them and send them in as attachments. I would be glad to advise on this and how best to do it.
Ted Crawford
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