approach from the Defence Committee. Horrabin, of whom much might have been expected, turned down a request to preside at a February meeting in a letter at once warm and frank: "I sympathise very much indeed with its object, but I feel that the success of the Unity Campaign may mean a great deal to the Movement here, and I ought not to prejudice it by any individual action which might cause friction. Believe me, I have thought this over seriously before replying." [51] Brailsford, who had been sympathetic the previous year, now refused to send a letter to the Memorial Hall. Despairing Wicks informed Dewar that their efforts looked likely to be fruitless. "Sumner" was convinced that the Unity Campaign prevented ILP and SL leaders offering any help. [52] He wrote in March: "Unlike the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky, which contains some of the best known leaders of American thought, the British Committee has remained a small body. We are doing our best to enlarge it". The American Committee was able to convene a rally 7,000 strong at the New York Hippodrome on 9 February to call for an international inquiry. The next day a British audience of 500, at the Memorial Hall, heard Sidney Silverman [53] and Garry Allingham [54] with Socialist League and Trotsky Defence Committee speakers making a further appeal for an international commission. Silverman, the main speaker, scorned the notion of a Trotsky-Japanese link, and stated that the exiled leader, and