Workers' International League (1937)  The Workers' International League (WIL) was a Trotskyist group that existed in Britain from 1937 to 1944. The WIL was formed in 1937 by members of the Militant Group, who had split due to false allegations from the leadership of that group that Ralph Lee (born Raphael Levy), then a newly arrived South African member, had misled a strike and used the strike funds to move to England. The split took around a third of the membership of the Militant Group and four of its branches, including Jock Haston and Ted Grant. The group remained in the Labour Party, where they published "Searchlight" edited by Gerry Healy, which in September 1938 was replaced by the magazine "Youth for Socialism", which in its own turn was renamed "Socialist Appeal" in June 1941 as a result of the WIL's turn of focus away from the Labour Party. The group also produced a theoretical journal "Workers International News". The WIL grew with recruits from the Labour Party, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Independent Labour Party and the Militant Group. The Fourth International was formed in 1938, and the WIL refused to merge into the newly formed official British affiliate, the Revolutionary Socialist League itself a regroupment of the Militant Group and others. They requested either affiliate or sympathiser status to the International but were rejected. Unlike the Revolutionary Socialist League, the WIL readily adopted the Proletarian Military Policy developed by Trotsky in his last writings and expanded upon and advocated by James P Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party. They campaigned for the creation of workers' militias instead of the Home Guard, deep air raid shelters for workers, and after 1941 against the pro-war, anti-strike position of the CPGB. Due to its adoption of the Proletarian Military Policy, the WIL argued that its members should go through the experience of the war with other members of their class by joining the army when called-up. But if this was applied to the whole membership it meant they could be dispersed and provide no real leadership and therefore the organisation took measures to preserve the leading cadres outside the forces. With the outbreak of World War II, the WIL expected to be banned and so temporarily moved a few members (Tommy Reilly, Jock Haston, Gerry Healy, John Williams and George Noseda) to Dublin. It soon became obvious that the group would not be persecuted, and they were allocated paper for their publications. On their own initiative, Arthur Carford, who had gained employment as an orderly at the Medical Examination Centre, where potential conscripts fitness was reviewed, and three other members from Sheffield attempted to steal cards to exempt the bearer from military service for medical reasons.