Support for a united front with the Communist Party developed gradually among Labour left-wingers, as tension between the Socialist League and the NEC increased, the international situation deteriorated and the Communist campaign gained momentum. The Socialist League backed Communist overtures to the NEC from the start. As early as April 1933, Cole, Tawney and Wise signed a letter to the Labour Movement calling for a united front. While the Socialist League was still in its early ‘loyal grousing’ stage, however, it was not prepared to make a definite stand on the issue in the face of official hostility. A resolution at the League's first Annual Conference in 1933 favouring joint action by the League with the Communists and the ILP was defeated. For the next two years the Socialist League continued to approach the issue cautiously: although it supported a united front in principle, as late as June 1935 it refused to be ‘directed into activities definitely condemned by the Labour Party which will jeopardise our affiliation and influence within the Party’. This attitude soon changed.

FASCISM AND THE LABOUR LEFT

As the domestic economic situation stabilised, and from 1934 began notably to improve, the Socialist League's cataclysmic message lost much of its relevance. Hitherto the most telling argument for a fully socialist policy, as against a gradualist one, had been that the capitalist system was on the point of collapse. Now it appeared that ‘we have seen that the system has more kick in it than we had thought; we have seen that it will not die of its own accord’.