Cliff never really understood the British labour movement
I joined the Socialist Review Group [forerunner of today's SWP] in 1952 and drifted out about 1960. I was a left-wing socialist who believed that social ownership and democratic control should be extended. I believed in international socialism. I was utterly repelled by the Stalinist show trials in Eastern Europe. That put me off the Communist Party. When I was approached by an organisation which was left-wing and clearly opposed to Stalinism, I was attracted. The other organisations in the Trotskyist movement believed that the Stalinist states were degenerated workers' states which should be...