In the summer of 1939, the Tientsin incident unleashed a nationalistic outburst in defence of British prerogatives over China. Labour and Stalinist leaders advocated for a "firm" defence of British interests and China against Japan. Ted Grant vehemently rejected their chauvinism and warned "We cannot trust the British capitalists to carry out any act in the interests of the workers of Britain and the world."

As armaments were piled up in preparation for the Second World War Ted Grant explained that, “This war machine is for the defence of the trading interests and the colonial loot of British imperialism, for what is making for war is the intensified and sharpened struggle for markets between the different countries of the world.”

This is an introduction to Trotsky's pamphlet, "The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning" (1937), written by Ted Grant in collaboration with Ralph Lee while they were in the Workers' International League: a predecessor to the International Marxist Tendency. Ted and Ralph's introduction was praised by Trotsky himself in a letter to the WIL in 1938, which was suppressed and hidden for 80 years before finally being reunited with its rightful owners.