Emergency Conference of the Fourth International May 1940
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Whereas: all reports coming from England indicate an accelerated revolutionary evolution in the working-class movement of that country; whereas a broad, unorganised Trotskyist sympathy already exists within this movement; whereas, moreover, the official British section of the Fourth International, the Militant Labour League (MLL), has made notable progress through its work inside the British Labour Party; the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International deplores the fact that no fewer than four groups claiming allegiance to the Fourth International exist outside our official section in Great Britain, and that considerable efforts and precious energy are being wasted through the maintenance of these separate organisations and their distinct press organs outside the section; these energies and material resources would be infinitely precious to a unified British section, in transforming the growing influence of Trotskyism in England into a powerful, unified, organised revolutionary force.
The conference calls upon the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), the Workers International League, the League of Labour Youth (LLY), and all other groupings claiming the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, to recognise the necessity of a single section of the Fourth International in Great Britain and to merge with the Militant Labour League to form a single, powerful organisation.
The conference invites the Militant Labour League to make to the groups claiming allegiance to the Fourth International such organisational concessions as will enable them to achieve the formation of a unified organisation, without thereby abandoning the positions of principle of the 1st World Congress of the Fourth International or infringing any of its decisions.
The Emergency Conference of the Fourth International salutes the coming birth of the unified British section. It salutes in it the vanguard of the struggle for the revolutionary socialist solution to the war: the overthrow of its corrupt and decadent bourgeoisie.