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a group of these organizers devised a plan to take PUL in a more explicitly political
and socialist direction. PUL, they felt should take up "independent political action"
by running and independent PUL slate of local candidates with a socialist program
in the 1934 election. The organizers contrasted the PUL as a massive interracial
organization present in every working-class neighborhood of the city, with the all
white Socialist Party and its six "struggling" ward clubs. They argued that, while
PUL members were open to socialism and the General Council would very likely
endorse Socialist Party candidates, PUL members were loyal to PUL and could not
be mobilized en masse for the SP. Additionally, they were concerned that PUL's
nonpartisan stand was allowing major party candidates to visit locals and build
bases of support; they were particularly concerned about the attraction of Black
members to the Republican Party. The idea of a slate of candidates officially
endorsed by PUL would end the major party threat in the organization. Finally, the
PUL militants proposed that the independent ticket would be a coalition effort —
one in the spirit, they said, of SP's Continental Congress — and that they could get
backing from the ACW and from groups in the Black community.™*

Given the heightened level of struggle in the working class in 1933 and 1934,
and the re-emergence of the Black freedom movement as a major force in those
same years, the plan for independent socialist political action in the election of
1934 may well have resulted in a united front of progressive Blacks, labor, and
unemployed, and provided the foundation for the later development of a local left
electoral party. This was not, however, to be. In early March 1933, Frank Trager
wrote Norman Thomas to get his support for the plan, and Thomas wrote back
warily. By mid-April, the plan was dead: local SP leaders were, according to
Trager, "unsympathetic," undoubtedly fearing the competition of an independent
political form. Even Elisabeth Gilman, usually a close ally of the younger militants,
saw no "compelling reasons" for independent electoral action.*^

How far could the militants' plan have gone if it was instituted? No one can