The IBT group in Germany was also drawn from members of the iSt who had formed the Group IV Internationale (GIVI) before joining the newly formed IBT as the Spartacus Group. The IBT section in New Zealand, the Permanent Revolution Group (PRG), was founded by former Spartacist leader Bill Logan.
Politically it claims to continue the Spartacist tradition which it is argued degenerated in the late 1970s. It is no coincidence that most of the founding cadre of the IBT were pushed out of the iSt in those years. It is also true that the iSt did abandon much of its trade union work at the same time.
After a period known as the External Tendency of the iSt the USA and Canada based founders of the IBT renamed themselves the Bolshevik Tendency. They briefly won the allegiance of a small West Coast based group called the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency only to loose them again. After a period of work with the German GIVI they fused with them and the PRG of New Zealand and became the International Bolshevik Tendency. They have since gained a tiny group of supporters in Britain who spent some time in Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party before resuming an independent existence.
The IBT publishes a journal, entitled 1917.
It is a tiny organisation, with members in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Germany.