nationally, of a leadership which has earned the respect of the members. [109] The Majority made a final offer: let the Minority enter the ILP and make a formal repudiation of the Communist League. It could still work under the direction of the National Committee. Refusal must mean exclusion from membership. There is no record of any attempt to take the offer up. So ended the first phase of British Trotskyism. It had been a brief marriage of very different experiences. In the end most of those who had not been in the CPGB remained in, or returned to, the ILP. The ex-communists opted for an open organisation. There was also a differential willingness to follow Trotsky's advice and that of the International Secretariat. By the end of the discussion the Majority were speaking of both in very critical terms. They had not participated in the long struggle of the Left Opposition against Stalin, and they did not feel under compulsion of loyalty. Did Trotsky himself see more future for the ILP than for the Communist League as a revolutionary alternative? His writings underpin this accusation to a certain extent. Ironically, none other than Trotsky himself had criticised Stalin for expecting in 1926 a mass revolutionary current from left wing members of the General Council of the TUC rather than from the CPGB, and Minority Movement. The first split had come ominously soon. It occurred over an issue which history failed to resolve and was to bedevil Trotskyist politics for