Open warfare in the CPGB preliminary to the discussion of the effectively fourth, "The British Road to Socialism' (Fergus Nicholson, MT, December 1976).
Indeed, no sooner had this discussion been closed in the January 1977 issue
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) is undergoing its most serious crisis since 1956. Just one year after its thirty-eighth congress, described as 'outstandingly successful and inspiring
Gordon McLennan, the faction fight within the party has reachsecretary, ed breaking point.
On the one side are the 'eurocommunists' who now control the Party's
Executive Committee
Marxism Today (MT). On the other, are 'fundamentalists' grouped around
Tony Chater and the party's daily, the Morning Star, which he edits.
Since the following article was written in December, 1984, events in the CPGB have taken a new and decisive turn. At its January meeting the Executive of the party expelled the editor, Tony Chater, the assistant editor, David Whitfield and four other members of the London District
Committee: a special national congress of the party has been called for
May 18, 19, 20.
The CPGB has never been a mass party. Whereas many its counterparts in Western Europe arose from splits in the mass social democratic parties, the
CPGB was formed in 1920 through the unification of a number of small propaganda groups. Up until the British General Strike of 1926 it experienced a modest growth in membership to 10,730. With the defeat of the General Strike membership declined and it was only in the 1930s with the rise of fascism, the Spanish Revolution and the threat of war that it began to grow again exceeding 10,000 in
1936 and, according to official figures, reaching 17,756 in
July 1939.
decisive growth occured, however, after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the Anglo-Soviet
Mutual Aid Pact of the following month.
By the end of the year membership had reached 22,738 and in the first three of 1942 a further were made. Official figures
56,000 members by
1942, the height of the CPB's influence.
over 100% to class collaborationism.
gave full support to the national government of Winston Churchill, denounced strikes and fought for increased produc tion in support of the bosses war effort.
declined and although it picked up in the
1960s, by 1968 it numbered only 32,492.
The debates that opened up in the
European communist parties during the
1970s represented a stage in the process of programmatic codification of the
CPGB's reformist practice. In a number of ways the CPGB had pre-empted its
Attempts to
"anglicise the party had been evident since 1945 and first version of its programme, the British
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
' by its national Road to Socialism' (BRS), which appeared in 1951. Approved personally by Stalin this document abandoned any talk of revolution, the destruction of the bourgeois state, soviets or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead it spoke of transforming '
... capitalist democracy into a real People's Democracy, forming parliament, the product Britain's historical struggle for ocracy, into the democratic instrument will of the vast majority of her
When in 1975 the CPGB decided to open up discussion on a new draft of
BRS the Eurocommunists in ranks definitely had history side. The changes they were to argue for were a logical extension of the party's practice and its programme previous 25 years. January 1976, John Gollan, a former general secretary of the party took the first step by initiating a discussion in the pages of MT on "Problems of Socialist Democracy'. The the twentieth anniversary of the Kruschev revelations. The debate lasted a year and covered the dictatorship of the proletariat, the relationship between party and state in societies, independent trade unions, the character of Stalinism and inner party democracy. With some one of the contributors argued "This discussion is in substance with the Italian Communist Party's policy of 'historic compromise based on their pessimistic and negative estimate of the prospects for socialism in Italy. It is not unconnected with the attacks by the leaders of the
Communist Portuguese Communist Party at critical moments in Portugal's national democratic revolution. More generally, it is French Communist Party to drop the of MT than the debate around the issues confronting the November 1977 (ThirtyFifth) Congress began. By now the party had become polarised all of the central questions: the definition revolutionary process and the concept of
'anti-monopoly alliance' in the earlier section of the party determined to check this process of revisionism' it became a struggle for the future of the CPGB. In July, four months before the Congress, the most vehement critics of the new draft, based around Sid French and the leadership of the party's Surrey District, split. The CPGB claim this involved less than 2% of their 25,300 members whilst called themselves, claimed 65 branches Thirty-Fifth congress settles nothing
Those who opposed the new draft and remained in the CPGB went into the Thirty-Fifth Congress numerically 'splitters'. In an attempt to remit the new draft, and the 2,600 amendments submitted to it, to the 1979 Congress they mustered a mere 48 votes compared the EC's 330. Yet it was also clear that the battle was not over yet. Firstly, against the advice of the EC, the Congress
193 votes to 137 to establish fortunes of the Morning Star. Secondly, it decided to establish a Commission on Inner Party Democracy (IPD) to report to its Congress in 1979. The confident conclusion of the Editorial in the January 1978 Marxism Today, now under the editorship of the 'Eurocommunist' Martin Jacques, that '... the overwhelming defeat of the sectarian challenge [to the BRS] marked a decisive this position in the Party's evolution,' was to prove somewhat premature.
The decisions of the Thirty-Fifth Congress settled nothing. Indeed the antics of a section of the EC, which was eager to • minimise the division and the party's merely obscured the different munists trying to achieve?
It is impossible to give a full answer to this question within the scope of article. However, central to the debate leading up to the Thirty-Fifth Congress and after was an attempt to get the
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BRITAIN
party to broaden its definition of the working class and to commit far greater resources to building alliances with the mass social and political movements we referred to earlier. This involved the Eurocommunists in arguing that whilst "The individuals participating in these movements may be drawn from a number of different classes, ... because of the numerical preponderance of the working class it is from this class that the majority of participants are drawn.' Hence the concept of a 'broad democratic alliance' was a *... fuller and deeper ...' one than that of the 'anti-monopoly alliance' since '... it avoids the danger of the economistic interpretation namely of an alliance at the economic level in which the content of the alliance is provided by a common economic antagonism to monopoly capitalism' ('Class Structure and Political Strategy, Alan Hunt, MT, July 1977). The 'fundamentalists' were horrified. As two contributors argued such a definition of the working class could extend to include '... clergymen; members of the army, navy and airforce; civil servants; High Court judges; university professors; and even our friends in MI5' ("Definitions of the Working Class', Ernest Eisler and Michael Seifert, MT, November 1977). The perceived danger was that this would lead to the party concentrating its efforts on recruiting and building amongst layers other than the industrial and commercial proletariat. The forward march of Labour halted ?
These debates had obvious repercussions for the CPB's publications. Under the editorship of Martin Jacques Marxism Today moved to a bold presentation of the Eurocommunist interpretation of the BRS. When the sub-committee on the Morning Star reported in April 1978 it too called for a change in coverage to more clearly reflect the new version of the BRS. What next the 'fundamentalists' asked themselves. The answer came in the autumn of 1978. In the context of an upsurge of industrial militancy against the 5% pay norm, introduced by the Labour government of Jim Callaghan, historian Eric Hobsbawm produced an article in Marxism Today entitled The Forward March of Labour Halted?' In a critical survey of the development of the British working class he focused on the limitations of 'trade union consciousness' and the economic struggle in a situation where the . ... political class movement ..? was in decline ie., the wages struggle was not reflected in a growth in membership of or support for the Labour Party, the CPGB or other groups on the left. Summarising the year long debate, after the General Election of 1979, he argued '... the present phase of militancy is overwhelmingly trade unionist and economistic, mainly on the issue of wages ... What is unclear is the type of relation which exists between 18 wages and the political struggle and how the wages struggle is to be integrated into the wider struggle of which it is only one part. I believe that this is the crucial problem which faces the labour movement today?
Mike le Cornu, a shop steward at Heathrow airport, drew out the conclusions the party's 'intellectuals' seemed unprepared to state. In April 1979 he wrote 'Perhaps at this late stage we can adopt a self-critical posture and really examine whether there was a failure on our part to apply a creative Marxist analysis to the new situation. We may well conclude that our party and the left in the labour movement should have been united in mobilising the rank and file to mount the greatest pressure to ensure that the politically progressive demands contained in the Social Contract were carried out by the Labour Government.' In other words communists should have campaigned for the social measures Labour promised and accepted wage restraint in return!
At the same time as Hobsbawm was striking out against 'economism' another CPGB theoretician was engaging in a new analysis of "Thatcherism'. Stuart Hall's conclusion was that "Thatcherism' was *... something qualitatively new in British polities,' which had '... succeeded on the back of a deep and profound disillusionment among ordinary people with the very form of social democratic 'statism' to which previous governments, in their different ways, have been committed.' The left's response therefore necessitated "The formulation of a new conception of socialism ..? . the unification of the working class ...' and '... the construction of a historical alliance which alone is capable of constituting the "social force" which could turn the tide of "Thatcherism"" ("Thatcherism - a new stage'. Stuart Hall, MT, February 1980). What content the Eurocommunists would fill these formulas with was anybody's guess.
Developing this notion of an historical alliance has occupied centre stage in the debates of the CPGB since that time. True, from the General Election of 1979 up until Thatcher's re-election in 1983, there were other issues on which the CPGB divided: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where the minority won 43% of the vote at the 1981 Congress against the critical stance of the EC; Poland, where again the EC took a critical stance, provoking one critic to assert that there were those in the party *... for whom hatred of the Soviet Union and the Party leaderships in Eastern Europe is a ruling passion. Their politics have the same social roots as Trotskyism and in this respect produce equally poisonous fruit with perhaps fewer red berries." ("The Crisis in Our Communist Party - Cause, Effect and Cure, Charlie Woods, 1983). But the debate over the historical alliance encapsulated the political divisions that emerged in the debate around the BRS. Once again the Eurocommunists made the running using the pages of Marxism Today. Their starting point was Thatcher's victory in 1979 and the steady decline in Labour's share of the vote, a phenomena Hobsbawm addressed as "Labour's Lost Millions'. Their conclusion was that this was no mere electoral swing but the product of a series of long term developments involving *... fundamental, structural, historical and ecological factors ...'. A fundamental recomposition of the working class was underway fracturing the old relations of representation. Many of the practices of traditional sections of the working class had in fact exacerbated this problem. The Labour Party could not defeat Thatcherism' on its own. It had to '... construct a historic bloc of forces for progressive change. Labour had to build a broad set of alliances based on new policies, new practices and new structures. The question left unanswered was how would such a bloc express itself electorally. For many who followed the debate the answer seemed obvious. Frequent references to the period of the Popular Front and to popular coalitions underpinned by the CPB's support for proportional representation pointed to a governmental coalition embracing the .. entire potential support for democracy and for a better society'. Such a formula could clearly extend to all antiThatcherite forces including the newly emergent Social Democratic Party/Liberal Alliance. Factional struggle intensifies
It was in the context of this debate that the existing divisions in the CPGB became public. In September 1982 Marxism Today carried an article by Tony Lane entitled "Trade - Unions: caught on the ebb tide. Analysing series of problems confronting the trade unions he devoted a section to what he termed the crisis of legitimacy in the unions. This crisis, he suggested, was in part a product of the unions themselves. Talk of unions '... continuously contriving shabby compromises where equity is subordinated to exigency' and of shop stewards '... sharing in the expense account syndrome ... . and using *... their positions as a stepping stone to promotion to charge-hand and foremen' was more than many CPGB trade unionists could tolerate. But the response took the unpredictable form of a public attack on the article, and on Marxism Today for printing it, in the Morning Star by the CPG B's national industrial organiser Mick Costello. Printed with the support of the Morning Star's editor, Tony Chater, it confirmed that the paper was under the control of the 'fundamentalists and that they were prepared to use it in the factional battle that was taking place. The EC censured Tony Chater and Mick Costello, who then resigned his post as national industrial organiser for 'personal reasons' to subsequently be appointed as Morning Star industrial correspondent by the Management Committee of the People's Press Printing Society (PPPS)
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
a shares drive and establishing a national in the circulation of the Morning Star.
(1). Given that the PPPS was nominally a self-governing co-operative the fundamentalists' increasingly used this body to justify the Morning Star presenting a line at variance with that of the EC. CPGB brought out the full organisational and political crisis in the CPGB. Membership of the party, which was 18,458 at its Congress in 1981, had declined to 15,691. However, even this figure is illusory. Dues payments for 1982 indicated there were only 8,270 paid up members in a situation where the dues levy is 60p per month. In the case of the YCL membership had fallen from just under 1,000 in 1981 to 623. In the General Election of June 1983 the party had polled 11,598 votes in 35 constituencies (an average of 331) compared with 16,858 in 38 constit-
1979 (an average of 444). As its resolution on trade union work noted *.. many workplace branches have been lost through closures and sackings in basic industries.' Indeed only 34 had delegates at the conference according to the credentials report. Finally circulation of the Morning Star was down to approximately 30,000 with at least half of these being 'overseas sales'. The notable exception to this trend was Marxism Today which had increased its circulation from 4,500 in 1979 to an average 10,500 per month.
In the debate around the key resolution on the party's future work, "The Facing the Labour Movement', a series of amendments tabled by the 'fundamentalists' on alliances, electoral policy, existing socialism (a euphemism for the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries) and Marxism Today were defeated resulting in the substantive resolution being passed with just two votes against. More significantly the EC's position on restoring the relationship' between the Communist Party and the PPPS was carried with 155 votes for, 92 against and two abstentions, giving the Eurocommunists 62% of the votes cast and the 'fundamentalists' 37%. Finally, in the election for the new EC both Tony Chater and Mick Costello were left off the recommended list of the
Committee and failed to get elected.
In the aftermath of the Thirty-Eighth Congress the factional struggle in the CPGB intensified. The focal point of this became the fight for control of the Morning Star. The newly elected EC decided that the paper's editor and deputy editor Tony Chater and David Whitfield, should resign to be replaced by candidates supporting the EC's line. This, stated, was essential if the editors '..responsibility of ensuring that the paper carries out its role of advocating and fighting for the policy of the Communist Party is to be effectively fulfilled.' The response of the 'fundamentalists' was to dig in. The Management Committee of the PPPS then refused to meet with the EC to discuss the substance of their resolution. Instead they pressed ahead with their plans to revamp the paper by installing a new £650,000 press, launching International Viewpoint 11 February 1985 network of readers' associations. At its March meeting the EC, not surprisingly, concluded that '.. an improvement in relations between the Party and the PPPS requires changes in the composition of the Management Committee. The stage was set for a further battle at the PPPS' June 1984 Annual General Meeting
By now those CPGB members who still had a sense of humour were refering to the battle as the 'Star Wars' saga. The EC, however, wasn't laughing. In April it published the first in a series of detailed accusations alleging that the Morning Star editor was censuring the publication of pro-EC correspondence in the columns of the paper. In May the EC took a further report on the paper, drew up a resolution for the forthcoming AGM of the PPPS and endorsed five election to its Management Committee. The main thrust of the resolution was to relieve Tony Chater and David Whitfield of their present or any similar responsibilities at the Morning Star.
The PPPS AGM meetings (seven were held in different parts of Britain) were total disaster. The resolution drawn up by the EC was ruled out of order leaving EC supporters with the task of trying to include it in the agenda of each meeting. In Glasgow, where some 600 people turned up, the meeting had to be abandoned when fighting and scuffles broke out. One contributor to Focus, a monthly publication catering for CPGB activists, compdisgraceful barracking and brawling at the Wembley meeting which she acknowledged '... was the least disorderly of any of the seven .... In July the EC discussed the matter again and decided to campaign for a Special General Meeting (SGM) to resolve the issues dispute. Supporters of the EC 1,000 signatures and in the November issue of Focus which list of incidences where it alleged the Morning Star had been guilty
For delaying publication of Communist Party statements, refusing the right of reply, and manipulating the correspondence columns .... The response of the Management Committee was to refuse to convene the SGM in October and to urge its supporters to boycott any meetings convened by the requisitioners. Nevertheless, the SGM meetings were held. The result of the voting was that the four resolutions presented by the EC were overwhelmingly passed, no doubt in part due to the policy of boycott implemented by the 'fundamentalists'. In the case of the resolution proposing the appointment of EC nominees as editor and assistant editor the vote was 1,272 to 33.
The problems of the CPGB are far from over, however. In the twelve months
Thirty-Eighth Congress there has been a further decline in membership of the party, in the size of the YCL and
Meanwhile factional warfare then spread to 1984's District Congresses (the CPGB is divided into 16 districts). On Monday November 26, the Morning Star reported that the London District Congress, which had been convened for the weekend of November 24-25, after just five hours when the party's general secretary, because of a decision by the EC that the Congress should not elect a new District Committee as '... malpractices had taken place ..' in the election of delegates in two of the London branches. mentalists' at the Congress were clearly not prepared to accept such a decision without at least registering their oppos-
The Morning Star ran this story under the headline 'London Communists demand restoration of their democratic rights'. Instead, according to the Guardian of December 3, the EC'... censured 150 London delegates, suspended 22 members of the London District Comm ittee, including three members of the members of the London district staff._." The ball is now in the EC's court. In January it will meet to discuss what further action to take. Already at the November EC, Martin Jacques in
Political Situation the Labour Party Conference' had argues that a major growth in the CPGB's influence was intimately bound up with the defeat of the sectarian positions within the party and the creation of a new unity - one we have hitherto never enjoyed - based on the politics of the
Martin Jacques' report also spelt out the next steps in the party's public activ-
Of particular interest here is the increasing attention are paying to developments within the left of the Labour Party. The emergence of Eurocommunism was, of course, coincidental with the growth of the left in the British Labour Party in the period of the 1974-79 Labour government. Indeed many of the CPGB's major debates directly referred to these developments, partthose that took place around Thatcherism, alliances, proportional rep
*Labours Lost Millions' and coalitionism after the General Election defeats of 1979 and 1983.
But these defeats also had a profound effect on sections of the Labour left. In 1981, the Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC) was already engaged in a critical reappraisal of its role as a component of Labour's left. In January the Labour Party Special Conference had endorsed a number of the major Constitutional changes they and other sections of the left had been fighting for. This had lead to the split which resulted in the formation of the Social Democthe The pes was stabloved by the Cae
La self-governing. cooperative ownership scheme. Its purpose was to raise funds for further development.
19
ratic Party (SP). This, and the defeat lem. How does it implement such of Tony Benn in the deputy leadership perspective without many of its members contest in October, prompted the LCC drawing the conclusion that the best way to subsequently argue that *... by the of presenting a communist perspective 1981 Deputy Leadership contest it in the debates raging in the Labour was clear that there was a stalemate in Party is to leave the crisis ridden CPGB the Party between right and left.' (Labour and to join the Labour Party as Activists, Newsletter of the LCC). The individuals? LCC's solution was to look for a new Besides constituting a strong alternconsensus. After the election defeat of ative pole of attraction to CPGB militants June 1983 they became the champions the growth of the Labour left has also of the struggle for unity. But the unity indirectly affected the political debate they sought was not a return ... to the in the CPGB. In the first place this has years of stalemate, and freeze the party been evident in the debates around into another period of suspended anim- 'Labour's Lost Millions' which has lead ation. These are the conditons in which leading figures on the Labour left such only the ultra-left and the ultra-right in as Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone and Eric the party will appear active, and in the Heffer to publicly criticise the analysis long run can only serve to weaken the of the Eurocommunists. In an article on Party as a broad coalition ... Indeed we Marxism Today's recent discussion weekneed a debate aimed at a new basis for end the Morning Star gleefully reported a genuine unity of purpose and trust in a section of Tony Benn's speech where he the party attacked . the pessimism of certain
A political convergence between the labour movement commentators in the arguments of the CPGB and the LCC wake of the 1983 election defeat ... became evident, with joint events on the and ... was critical of a section of the debate around 'Labour's Lost Millions' Communist Party, which he saw as being organised. In fact, increasingly, "lining up with the Labour right." , the CPGB identified the LCC with what (Morning Star, November 5, 1984). But it now called 'the broad left' in the Lab- this impact, along with the crisis in the our Party; whereas CPGB itself, now shows signs of going Benn, Ken Livingstone and papers like deeper. In the case of some militants it the Militant and Socialist Action were has encouraged a re-examination of the associated with the 'hard left'. Martin classical positions of Marx and Lenin Jacques returned to these distinctions which have then expressed themselves, in his November 1984 EC report. Having often in a distorted form, in the debates. congratulated Neil Kinnock This is clearly reflected in the publicnising*... that this Toryism was different ations of two substantially smaller from the previous post-war Toryism, in factions with the CPGB, Straight Left contrast, for example, and The Leninists, both of whom position on this issue, he turned his produce public journals. These 'comrades' attention to the state of the broad left certainly don't mince words. Straight and the CPB's influence. 'One of the Left has, it seems, existed for about five things that struck me forcibly at the years. It is sharply critical of the CPGB's Labour Party Conference was, electoral policy arguing that It confuses number of different angles, the role of our supporters to ask them to choose the Party [CPGB] in this context. First- between two working ly, negatively speaking, there was the without solving the problem of the weakness, or virtual absence indeed in Labour Party' In the opinion of many fringe activities (which are of a Straight Left the present divisions in the peculiar importance to a Labour Party party are merely two sides of the same Conference) of a broad left position coin. At the Thirty-Eighth Congress of in respect either to the moralistic/ the CPGB, Straight Left waged a public ideological leftism [the hard left] desc- campaign in the party by circulating a ribed earlier, or the right. The broad left pamphlet by veteran member Charlie in the Labour Party remains very weak, criticisms and and essentially a pragmatic rather than a calling for support for a Political Alterworked-out, theoretically-based strategic native List' in the EC elections. As he position. How these debates lacked the argued 'There is no future for us grubbing input of a communist perspective!' His around in the intrigues of the present conclusion was '... we need to find more St. John Street set [CPGB headquarters]. points of political contact and interven- No future in trying to re-make the same tion with the Labour Party.' Such a per- omelette.' For this breach of EC decspective will undoubtedly focus on the isions, party rules and normal practice LCC in an attempt to build an alliance and a refusal to name his collaborators of forces within as well as outside of Charlie Woods, who was 83 years of age the Labour Party based on the political and had been in the CPGB since 1922, positions the Eurocommunists have was expelled along with three of those developed. This will be made all the responsible for the circulation of the easier by the fact that many of the indiv- alternative list. iduals who have left the CPGB over the The Leninists are a more recent formpast period have done so under the ation. Unlike the Straight Left group they impact of the growth of the Labour identify the present crisis in the CPGB left, have joined the Labour Party and as an element of a worldwide crisis in are clearly associated with the LCC. Here, the international communist movement however, the CB faces a further prob- and that '... there can be no denying that 20 committed to
Pus' opportunist tailism with electoral shops stock it."
of course,
Eurocommunists out this argue, faction has placed great the EC spot-
..that Party the club tof
NETHERLANDS
"renewed" Communist an independent,
Party influenced by reformist and Euro-
In any case, we are now seeing a continous process of differentiation the various currents. The reasons for this