[The following article was written before the Thirty-fifth Congress of the British Communist Party (see box). It appeared in the November 24 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly news bulletin published by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) is undergoing the most far-reaching discussion in its history. Already this ferment has resulted in a split (the formation of the so-called New Communist Party-NCP) and there is an extremely vocal opposition inside the party which is conducting an organized public struggle for its views.
The present discussion ostensibly revolves around a new draft of the CPB's program, The British Road to Socialism, issued in preparation for its Thirty-Fifth National Congress due to be held in mid-November this year. However, the implications are far broader: at stake are fundamental questions concerning the party's history, strategy, and even its continued existence. This discussion has been conducted at a number of levels: in public and internal party meetings; in the columns of the CPGB's daily newspaper, the Morning Star; and in Comment (a fortnightly catering to CPGB activists).
The discussion around the new draft program is a continuation of a previous public debate that shook the party during much of 1976. This was initiated by a 20,000-word article on the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet CP by the late John Gollan, the CPGB's former general secretary. The article appeared in the January 1976 issue of the CPB's theoretical monthly Marxism Today under the title, "Problems of Socialist Democracy," and was followed by a year of discussion in the columns of that journal. The views expressed in this debate ranged from extremely strident hard-line pro-Moscow outpourings to others calling for the right of tendency and for a study of the writings of the Old Bolsheviks, including Bukharin and Trotsky. The debate was also taken up in a series of meetings throughout Britain; at some of these, Gollan was assailed as being "Trotskyite," "anti-Soviet," etc., because of his insipid criticism of some of the crimes of Stalinism.
The turmoil in the CPGB is, of course, an integral part of the international crisis of Stalinism and shares the features outlined in previous Inprecor articles on Eurocommunism. However, it is also necessary to take into account some of the specific features of the CPB which greatly influence the particular form taken by this party's crisis.
Features of the CPGB
A more detailed examination of the CPGB's origins belongs elsewhere, but for the purpose of this article it is necessary to note:
a. Unlike many other Communist parties of Western Europe the CPGB did not develop from the emergence of a left current in an existing mass organization of the working class. Instead, it came into existence in 1920 as a result of the bringing together of a number of small propaganda groups, some of which were marked by sectarian deviations and practices.
b. The CPB has throughout its history been confronted by the Labour Party, which has had a nearly 100% grip on the political representation of the organized working class. At no time has it been seen in the eyes of the masses as a serious political alternative to the Labour Party. Moreover, the CPB has never developed a strategy for dealing with this situation. Instead, it has oscillated between opportunist tail-ending of Labour Party and trade-union lefts and a sectarian dismissal of the Labour Party. Usually both elements have coexisted, and both are present in the current discussion.
c. Notwithstanding its political weakness, the CPGB is relatively strong in the industrial field and has the allegiance of thousands of shop stewards and trade union militants. The CPGB inherited a strong influence in the shop stewards movement from its founding components; but in addition, its policies and methods of struggle have often expressed the thinking of layers of workers with a militant sectoral consciousness. Considerable numbers of bureaucrats are part of the CPB's trade-union trade-union election alliances for opportunist reasons.
d. Owing to the peculiar structure of the labor movement in Britain, with affiliation of most trade unions to the Labour Party at all levels, the historic split between Social Democracy and the forces of the Third International was a protracted process. Indeed, because of this federated structure and the unitary trade-union movement, it was never completely consummated. As late as the 1923 general election five leading members of the CPGB stood as official Labour parliamentary candidates (in the 1922 general election, one CPB member, Saklatvala, was actually elected as an official Labour Member of Parliament). It was not until 1926 that members of the CPGB were barred from individual Labour Party membership. Even today, most CPGB members can indirectly take part in formulation of Labour Party policy through their trade-union structures.
The CPGB leadership considers the party to be within the framework of Eurocommunism. General Secretary McLennan took the opportunity of the discussion around the Kremlin's criticism of Carrillo to spell out the CPB's position. In an interview in the July 4, 1977, Morning Star he gave the most precise definition of the party's views to be published so far. Explaining his dislike of the term Eurocommunism, McLennan went on to say that those who use it were really referring to the "fact that a number of CPs have independently arrived at broadly similar views on how to open up the road to socialism in their respective countries." These broadly similar views include:
• The road to socialism will be a revolutionary process based on mass democratic struggles encompassing a combination of parlia mentary and extra-parliamentary activity.
• The essential aim of this struggle will be to democratically transform the state.
• The struggle will be led by the working class in alliance with other classes and social forces, and the unity of working class parties will be forged in the process.
• The CPs will play a leading role in the struggle but will not exercise exclusive leadership.
• In the transition to socialism and after socialism has been won, democratic rights will be extended in a situation where all democratic parties, including parties hostile to socialism, will contest in elections. The CPs will accept the verdict of the electorate.
• The judiciary and trade unions will be independent of political parties and the state, and there will be a clear differentiation between the function of political parties and those of the state.
The new draft program attempts to concretize these policies as well as provide a long-term framework for the CPGB's strategy. The draft speaks of a "broad alliance" "reflected in parliament" which must be the political expression of the "struggles in defense of gains and for the extension of democracy" and adds that "parliament has to be won by the people. It goes on: "In this way, the growth of the broad alliance will result in a parliamentary majority enabling the formation of left, and eventually socialist governments." "Thus the possibility exists of advance to socialism without armed struggle. Democracy can be carried to its utmost limits, breaking all bourgeois restrictions to it, through the democratic transformation of society, including the state, in all stages of struggle." "The next stage," says the draft, "is to expand and unify all aspects of the working class and democratic struggle, and raise its aims to the winning of a Labour government carrying out a left policy."
Nothing Really New
There is nothing especially new in these positions. As CPGB leaders have been proud to point out, their party was the first in Western Europe to specifically adopt a "peaceful road" program. In the issue of Comment that launched the discussion on the draft program, the late James Klugman tried to establish the pedigree of the present edition of the draft by citing discussions which took place in the international Stalinist movement in the immediate post-Second World War period. Klugman quoted extensively from the 1946, 1947, and 1950 writings of Harry Pollitt, long-time general secretary of the CB, to show that the latter stood for the peaceful transition to socialism and for an overall struggle for democracy to establish a "People's Democracy." The latter term was written into the first draft of The British Road to Socialism, issued in 1951, but dropped at the Twenty-Fifth (Special) Congress of the CPGB in 1957. No doubt the aim of achieving a "people's democracy" was felt to be inappropriate in the year after the Hungarian revolution.
Klugman was also very anxious to establish that the 1951 version of the program had advocated the parliamentary road to socialism. According to him the following extract expressed the essence of the 1951 draft: "Britain will reach socialism by her own road. ... The people of Britain can transform capitalist democracy into a real people's democracy, transforming parliament, the product of Britain's historic struggle for democracy, into the democratic instrument of the will of the vast majority of the people."
It is hardly necessary to polemicize against these revisionist views in the columns of Inprecor, but it is worthwhile considering to what extent the new draft codifies the reformist theory and practice of the CPB leadership. Of course, the essence of the revisionism of the new draft is the idea that the capitalist state can be transformed into an instrument for workers power by the use of bourgeois-democratic institutions. In this respect, the new draft does not markedly differ from earlier versions—none of these subscribed to the need to destroy the bourgeois state and replace it with one based on soviet-type bodies.
The pro-Moscow critics of the draft raised a hue and cry in the early stages of the debate about the dropping of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." The response of supporters of the leadership was devastating and unanswerable-with great glee they pointed out that no draft of the program had used this term. Thus the critics were obliged to move to a safer terrain. They accused the new draft of replacing the "antimonopoly alliance" with the "broad democratic alliance"; of revising the concept of the working class by including intermediate strata in the "broad" definition of the proletariat; of liquidating the leading role of the vanguard party by being hazy about the respective roles to be played by the Labour and Communist parties; of "not learning the lessons of Chile" by dismissing the possibility of the need for a violent overthrow of capitalism; of not understanding the class nature of democracy because of the pledge to respect the results of elections even if they resulted in a "left" or "socialist" government being turned out of office; of not being "internationalist" (and, by implication, being anti-Soviet) because of the scanty reference to the "achievements of the socialist countries," etc.
These criticisms-some of which are formally correct-have been expressed in a most abstract manner; in hardly any case have they been related to the practice of the CPB or to living political questions. Thus in all the contributions on the question of "peaceful" versus "violent" overthrow of capitalism only one referred to the struggle in Ireland. The daily use of violence by the British state to defend a relatively small part of its interests has gone unnoticed by most of these doughty opponents of revisionism. In all the letters devoted to the superiority of the antimonopoly alliance, the need to have a "narrow" definition of the working class, etc., there has been scarcely a reference to the consequent implications for day-to-day politics, in trade-union struggles for example.
Actually, the nuances of formulation in the new draft of The British Road to Socialism can be explained in terms of the following pressures on the CPGB:
• The complete failure of its electoral policy;
• Its determination to maintain its alliance with Labour and trade-union lefts when the latter have offered no real opposition to the Labour government's increasingly right-wing policies;
• The impossibility of defending or ignoring the crimes of Stalinism in the same old way;
• The decline of the CPB's influence and membership;
• The complexity of the class struggle in Britain and especially the rise of struggles over social issues;
• The decisive change in the relation of forces between CPGB and the far-left groups.
The majority of the pro-Moscow critics have no answer to these problems; they yearn for the "good old days" when they could get away with a line based on slavish adherence to the positions of the Soviet bureaucracy. They take refuge in the sectarian heritage of the CPB, although their day-to-day practice is just as opportunist as that of the leadership. One different element, however, does exist in part of this current: a desire to return to the days of the CB as a cadre organization (i.e., before the adoption of the "mass party" line in 1935, with the resulting preponderance of a card-holding, inactive membership).
We will refer later to other currents which do challenge some aspects of the CPGB's day-to-day politics, but it is now necessary to look more closely at the various facets of the crisis facing the party.
As noted before, the CPB has always been politically weak in relation to the Labour Party. As a consequence of its sectarian origins, its inability to adopt a strategy to confront the Labour Party's grip on the organized working class, and its Stalinization, the CPGB never developed even a political toehold in the parliamentary arena. In this respect it is weaker than most of the other small West European Communist parties. At no time has the CPGB had more than two MPs in a House of Commons of over 600 members. Even in 1945, at the height of the CPB's influence and size, when it did have two MPs elected in its own name, this was the result of special circumstances and both seats were lost in the next election in 1950. In the period since then the decline in the CPGB's electoral support has been continuous. It is extremely doubtful that there is one single seat where the CPGB could get back its deposit (parliamentary candidates in Britain forfeit their £265 deposit if they gain less then 12.5% of the votes cast).
It would seem that there is some mathematical relationship between the CPB's commitment to the parliamentary road to socialism and its electoral support. The relationship is an inverse one: the more emphasis the CPGB puts on winning seats in parliament the less votes its obtains.
CPGB Votes per Parliamentary Candidate in General Elections: 1945, 21 candidates, 102,000 votes, 4,857 votes per candidate; 1950, 100, 91,000, 910; 1951, 10, 21,000, 2,100; 1955, 17, 33,000, 1,940; 1959, 18, 30,000, 1,666; 1964, 36, 45,000, 1,250; 1966, 57, 62,000, 1,087; 1970, 58, 37,000, 638; 1974 (Feb.), 44, 32,000, 727; 1974 (Oct.), 29, 17,000, 586. (Votes rounded to the nearest thousand.)
The decline is even more dramatic if one considers West Fife, a seat which the CPGB held from 1935 to 1950. (The constituency ceased to exist before the 1974 general elections):
West Fife, CPGB % of votes: 1945, 32.5; 1950, 18.5; 1951, 9.2; 1955, 10.1; 1959, 6.8; 1964, 5.4; 1970, 1.7.
But it appears that an even more humiliating situation is possible. Results in recent by-elections and local government elections indicate that it is not unlikely that candidates of the revolutionary left (especially those of Socialist Unity) could get as many if not more votes than CPGB candidates. (This has already happened in one case; the CPB was beaten by the IMG in the May 1977 Greater London Council elections in the Lambeth Central district.)
This electoral decline is matched by a crisis that affects nearly all aspects of the CPGB's work and organization (some exceptions will be dealt with later). One of the telling indicators is membership. As noted before, the CPGB operates on the basis of the "mass party" line as far as membership is concerned. This leads to a situation where only a small minority of the official membership is active. In an interview given just before he split from the CPGB, Sid French claimed that the actual membership was around 4,000 out of the (then) official figure of some 25,000. Membership fees are nominal and even attendance at the monthly branch meeting is not a condition of membership. There is considerable evidence that a fair number of members do not read the Morning Star (some CPB district organizations like Yorkshire have reported sales of the paper that are lower than their membership). Thus there seems little reason to doubt French's figures.
Even on this basis there has been a steady decline in official CGB membership in the last ten years. In 1967, the figure was just under 33,000, by 1972 this was down to 28,500, and this year's July Executive Committee received reports giving a figure of only 25,293. This Executive Committee report tends to confirm French's figures: it gives only a 56% level of dues payment, despite the fact that these payments are fixed at only 25 pence per month (about US$.43). The financial report for the years 1975-76 indicates an even worse position: average dues payment per member is a mere 50 pence (US$.88). (Actual payments are probably some what higher, since local party units retain a percentage.) The situation in the Young Communist League (YCL), the party's youth wing, is even worse, as these membership figures show: 1967-5,642; 1972-3,000; and down to 1,638 as of July 1977.
The Executive Committee's report for the two years up to July 1977 does not give circulation figures for the Morning Star, but comments: "There have been some good sales of the paper on special occasions (but) the grave decline in circulation has not yet been halted." In earlier reports covering the period between February 1974 to January 1976, this "grave decline" was an average loss of 4,300 in daily circulation; this decline continued through 1976 with a further loss of over 600 copies per day. By mid-1976, daily circulation was down to 40,796 (an unofficial report gives 38,533 as the latest figure).
As a parliamentary-oriented party lacking any significant electoral support, the CPGB has no option other than to base itself on an alliance with Labour Party and trade-union lefts. The ideological cement of this alliance is a mutual commitment to reformist methods and a common chauvinism (best illustrated by the campaign against Britain's entry into the Common Market and the call for import controls). There have been many apparent successes for this policy: the Labour Party National Executive Committee has a majority of what the CPGB would term as lefts; Tribunite MPs (supporters of a loose caucus around the paper Tribune) and trade-union lefts have shown a much greater willingness to work with the CPGB; and a whole variety of organizations and campaigns have seen the CPGB and these lefts working side by side. Yet the CPGB's size and influence continues to decline.
The basic problem for the CPB is that it has been precisely the Labour and trade-union lefts who have been in the forefront of formulating and pushing through some of the worst anti-working-class policies of the Labour government. The social contract, with its vicious cuts in real wages, was the brainchild of Jack Jones, the most powerful of the trade-union lefts. Michael Foot, heir to the mantle of Bevan, the classic British left Social Democrat, was responsible for getting both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the party's annual conference to accept the social contract. Hugh Seanlon, leading light in the CPGB's broad left alliance in the engineering union, was responsible for the Labour government's gaining a majority at this year's Trade Union Congress for its proposal to bar new wage settlements until twelve months after previous agreements, trampling his own union's democracy underfoot in the process.
This has led to the situation where CPB members are supposed to fight the social contract on the one hand, but find themselves in electoral alliances with the very people supporting this contract on the other hand. Even when the CPB has been obliged to make mild criticisms of Jack Jones and company, it simultaneously gives them a left cover. The CPGB leadership is caught in this position because its only bargaining power is its industrial influence. This is, of course, precisely what the Labour and trade-union lefts are interested in, but they drive a hard bargain: they will associate with the CPGB in its projects to the extent that that latter shields them from the anger of the rankand-file militants. This situation is profoundly demoralizing for many CPGB members.
The Ambiguous Discovery of Pluralism
Undoubtedly, the most contentious aspect of the new draft program is the commitment to pluralism of political parties after the formation of left and "socialist" governments. This change can be explained in part by a response to the British workers' democratic sentiments. In Britain, the workers' mistrust of Stalinism expresses itself in a very striking manner: tens of thousands of British workers will vote for members of the CPGB as trade unionists, but not as politicians. In a typically pragmatic way. these workers will explain: "Brother Smith is a good fighter against the bosses, so we vote for him as a shop steward; but if we voted him and his party into parliament, we don't know if we could ever get them out again." British workers have good reasons to be suspicious. The CPGB's twists and turns on foreign policy are only part of the story; British workers have also experienced Stalinism on the domestic front, with its devious use of front organizations, sudden changes in policy due to bureaucratic deals, maneuverist behavior in labor movement organizations and conferences, and, on occasion, ballot-rigging. In addition, tens of thousands of British workers have been through the CPGB and have seen dissidents treated as "rotten elements" These practices have the common denominator of manipulative politics, an integral component of Stalinist ideology.
The aim of the new draft is to try to bury this reputation once and for all. In particular, it wants to answer "yes" to the worker who asks, "could I get you out?" Thus, in an indirect manner the new draft reflects the pressure of working-class concern for democracy. But this is only part of the story. Without doubt the formulations in the new draft also reflect the pressure of bourgeois "public opinion" mediated through the CPGB's allies. The latter find it easier to associate with the CPGB if it has taken steps to make itself more "respectable." But there are limiting factors on the CPB leadership's "conversion" to democracy. First, there is the fact that it has been directly implicated in the crimes of Stalinism. Older members of the leadership knew what was happening in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and they took a conscious decision to cover up for these crimes even when members of the CPGB were involved. This pattern was repeated in the past-war purges, etc. A recent incident illustrates the inflexibility that is imposed upon these CPB leaders by their past. The first issue of the New Communist Party's journal contained a story saying that John Gollan had originally opposed the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. There was an immediate and angry response from the Morning Star-the story was a slander, it declared in outrage. The second reason for the inability of the CPGB leadership to make a break on this front is that there are substantial political and material reasons why it cannot sever the umbilical cord connecting it to the Soviet bureaucracy.
Politically, the CB cannot afford to be simply a British party. This would leave it without any political profile to distinguish it from left Social Democracy. To break completely from the "family of communism" and from its claim to the heritage of the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions would mean its reduction to a small left Social Democratic sect. The CPB leadership knows that there is no place on the British political spectrum for such a formation. Thus such events as the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the upsurge of the Polish working class, the Kremlin's treatment of dissidents, etc., hit the CPB doubly hard. They not only fuel British working-class mistrust of Stalinism, but they also undercut the only feasible basis-other than breaking with Stalinism, which is precluded-for the CPGB to have a distinctive political profile.
Material considerations are not unimportant. According to the 1975-76 Morning Star balance-sheet, no less than 14,500 out of its total average sale of 40,796 (i.e., more than one-third) were sold overseas-overwhelmingly to the Soviet bloc. The Morning Star Marketing Board, which sells a wide range of consumer goods, gets most of its supplies from these same countries, and a big majority of the Star's advertising revenue comes from this mail order operation. The CPB's highly successful chain of bookstores rests essentially on the sale of Russian publications. It is extremely unlikely that the CPB could maintain its daily paper and bookshops, not to speak of other concerns, without such links.
But this is a two-way process. At this stage the Moscow bureaucracy needs the CPGB. It requires an organization in Britain that can assemble MPs, trade-union leaders, religious figures, and, most important of all, progressive bourgeois personalities for its international projects (the "peace" conferences, world front organizations, etc.). Under present circumstances, this means the CPGB. This explains why the CPSU is sending a delegation to Britain to participate in CPGB public functions on the eve of the party's crucial congress. This can only bolster the CPGB against its pro-Moscow critics. Should there be a substantial split from the CPGB, it is possible that the Kremlin might play this off against the CPGB in order to dampen the latter's enthusiasm for making an occasional criticism of Moscow.
The Pressure From the Left
The relation of forces between the CPB and the far-left groups started to change after the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet CP and the Hungarian revolution. A small number of the ten thousand or so people who left the CPGB in 1956 and 1957 joined the left groups. In the next few years the CPGB missed out on successive stages of the youth radicalization (anti-nuclear movement, Labour Party youth upsurge, anti-Vietnam war movement, and student struggles). In each case, it was less attractive to the radicalizing youth because of its compromised politics. Thus at each stage the relation of forces tended to evolve to the disadvantage of the CPGB. But it was during the anti-Vietnam war and university upsurges that the CPGB started to find itself outflanked on certain fronts. What was new in the situation was that the CPGB found that it had to respond to the initiatives of forces to its left. The most notable of these was the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC). After having denounced this as a "Trotskyite splitting operation," the CPB was obliged to eat its own words and join the VSC in building demonstrations under slogans which it had previously castigated, such as "Victory to the NLF."
The period of the last year of the 1964-70 Labour government and the years of Heath's Tory government brought the main focus of struggle on to a terrain more favorable to the CPGB-the industrial front. Here, the great weight of the CPGB's industrial implantation could be used to give it the initiative. But because of the effects of the CPB's alliances, the left groups were able to meaningfully point out how it was holding back the struggle. It was after the election of the 1974 Labour government that the CPGB's system of alliances made it most vulnerable to the criticisms of the left groups. Moreover, the left groups had recruited heavily in the student milieu in the earlier period, and by now these recruits were going into white-collar jobs, where there had been a big expansion of trade-unionism. Thus the left groups developed small bases in the trade-union movement. In some sectors, such as teaching, the relation of forces between the CPGB and left groups has changed drastically.
Faced with this new situation, the CPGB leadership has changed its tactics in relation to the left groups. In the war years (and before the CB characterized Trotskyists as "Hitler's agents," a clear call for state and lynch-law action against them. To this very day, there is a clause in the constitution of the CPGB which bars the recruitment of ex-members of "fascist and Trotskyist organizations" unless this is cleared by the party's Political Committee. After the far-left groups started to increase in size, the CPGB published an occasional article and pamphlet heavily caricaturing their politics, but the main tactic was that of trying to ignore these groups "because of their irrelevance."
But such tactics are no longer viable. In face of the growing impact of the state capitalist International Socialists (now the Socialist Workers Party), the CB produced a special pamphlet on the class nature of the Soviet Union. Because the party's old guard found this a difficult topic, they had to get a CPB recruit from the International Socialists, Dave Purdy, to write it. This pamphlet had to draw heavily on the writings of Isaac Deutscher and Ernest Mandel to deal with the argument about state capitalism. Subsequently, the CPB leadership sanctioned, and then encouraged, debates between the party's membership and the "ultraleft." Articles have appeared in the Morning Star examining, with a degree of objectivity, the positions of the left groups. An article on the IMG by Geoff Roberts ended with a call to IMG members to join the CPGB.
Although the new draft does not mention far-left groups, at the press conference to introduce it, General Secretary McLennan stated that although the CPB had many differences with the ultralefts, it would work with them in united actions where there was political agreement. In March this year the CPB established a study group on Trotskyism, which has produced a pamphlet attempting to answer the theory of permanent revolution. One of its members, Betty Reid, has publicly polemicized against other members of the CPGB for holding Stalin's position on Trotskyism.
But this new approach has evoked opposition, and is only applied in certain sectors. Generally, the differences on this question have coincided with other differences. Many of the contributors to the draft program discussion have made references to the "ultraleft," usually complaining that some errors of the leadership have played into the hands of the far-left groups. Others, including the "Revolutionary Democrats," have tried to score some points by making an amalgam between the "Stalinists" and "Trotskyists" because both characterize the draft program as revisionist. However, there have been some contributions in favor of united action with the left groups. CPBer Bob Rowthorn of New Left Review (another former member of IS) criticized the CPGB's dismissive reply to the SWP's call for unity in action, while another contributor timidly called for greater unity at a local level "with Tories (sic) and the ultraleft."
The long period of virtual class stalemate, the increasing failure of the traditional organizations of the working class to even begin - to offer a way forward for the exploited and oppressed, the dramatic increase in fascist activity, the rise of such movements as women's liberation, etc., have given the class struggle in Britain a complex and multi-faceted character. In many of the new forms of struggle the CPGB cannot use its industrial implantation to gain an advantageous position. For this reason the militants of the CPGB find themselves having to respond to united action initiatives taken by other forces, even in cases where there is an overlap with trade-union struggle, such as in the Working Women's Charter Campaign.
Faced with the option of responding to this situation with either a sectarian economist response or by trying to adapt itself, the CPGB leadership eventually chose the latter course. This has not been a thoroughgoing or consistent process, but it is clear that the CPGB wants to give itself a new image. From the CPGB leadership's point of view it has been a wise choice and has paid off in terms of some limited recruitment and increased influence. The CPGB leadership has sought to project this new image by giving its militants a relatively free hand in a wide variety of campaigns and activities. Even this has had its limitations; during the summer, for instance, Link, the journal of the CPB women's department, was "withdrawn"—a fact criticized in several contributions.
The combination of greater flexibility, a flowering of specialized party journals, open conferences on topics such as "class structure," the Marxist festivals and Communist universities, the creation of a multitude of collectives and subcommittees on such questions as health, science, literature, economics, women's oppression, gay oppression, working-class history, etc., has led the CPGB to make gains in the intellectual field. It is rather extraordinary that this discredited party can make such gains in this stage of its development. The weakness of the far left partially explains this, but other factors are more important. In addition to its greater flexibility, the CB has pursued a policy of open and continuous discussion in its journals. Indeed, this policy has been so marked that International, theoretical journal of the IMG, remarked ". . . one of the most lively journals of discussion and debate today does not belong to any of the groups of the far left, but the CPGB. Marxism Today has initiated a number of important discussions and debates." These successes are related to the growth of the CPB in the student field in the past period. Steady work in student unions-ignored for a period by the left groupsand a downturn in student militancy has assisted this growth. But this growth has also been accompanied by extremely opportunist behavior, such as forming voting blocs with Tory students against far-left candidates.
These successes, which have not negated losses in other fields, are likely to bring very severe problems. The CPGB leadership will find it very difficult to reassert conformity, especially because of its emphasis on democracy. Precisely because of these successes and the methods by which they have been achieved, new opposition currents will most probably emerge. Indeed, this appears to have already started.
The group which broke away to form the New Communist Party was part of an opposition of some years standing. It first emerged as a national force at the CPB's 1969 congress where, challenging the CPGB's mild criticism of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, it obtained 118 votes against 295 for the leadership. Later, at the 1973 congress, it obtained as much as 30% of the votes. It had also been relatively strong in the YCL, obtaining a number of votes roughly equal to those of members supporting the party leadership at conferences in the early 1970s. Variously known as the "Frenchites" (from Sid French, the long-time Surrey district secretary) or "tankies" (because of their support for the Russian tanks invading Czechoslovakia), they have also taken up questions like the "neglect of industrial work" and "excessive concentration on electoral activity. " But their distinguishing feature has been-and remains-uncritical support for the leadership of the Soviet Union.
In the first stages of the draft program discussion the "tankies" presented a united opposition to the CB leadership, intervening with virulent contribution pieces in Comment and sending antidraft speakers to public meetings up and down the country. It would appear that some kind of split developed about what to do if the new draft was approved by the November CPGB congress. The May 1977 Executive Committee meeting of the CPGB received a report which claimed that party members were being asked whether "they would join a new party it would be necessary to form if the congress carried the draft." The CPGB EC, claiming that it was reluctant to initiate disciplinary proceedings in the middle of the pre-congress discussion, instructed the Political Committee to interview three members of the Surrey District Committee about the allegations. As it turned out, the formation of the NCP was announced before the interviews took place.
The launching of the new organization took place on July 17 and a weekly newspaper, the New Worker, was published in mid- September. The NCP has announced a founding conference for late October. In the period before the launching of their weekly, supporters of the NCP concentrated on selling the Russian Embassy publication, Soviet Weekly-an apt comment on their political orientation. Without inside information it is difficult to judge the motive for the hasty launching of the NCP. Two reasons have been offered: first, that the Surrey District Committee members were pushed into action by the coming investigation; second, that the splitters sought to outmaneuver those remaining in the party by having an organization already in existence at the time of the November congress.
Extremely bitter feelings have been provoked by the split. Both the CPGB and the NCP have gone to the bourgeois courts, the former to get back the Surrey district headquarters from the NCP, and the latter to obtain three years' back wages for three organizers. It is difficult to gauge the support for the new organization and the "tankies" still inside the party. The CPGB claims that it lost less than "2 percent of its 25,300 members" to the breakaway. On the other hand, the NCP claims that 65 branches were represented at its founding conference and that 300 supporters attended its first London public meeting.
A meeting held in early September under the title "Against the Split-Against the Draft" attracted some 400 participants. In addition the internal pro-Moscow opposition is reported to have strong support in Scotland (especially Glasgow) and the Midlands.
The internal opposition appears to have adopted the tactic of calling for the reference-back of the new draft at the November congress. One of its leading lights, Fergus Nicholson, stated in the October Comment that if this happened it "would be relevant to the election of the new Executive Committee." If the congress adopts the new draft, which seems the most likely variant, it is almost certain that more people would leave the CPGB. In view of the violent language with which the opposition's main leaders have denounced the draft, they would be in an extemely difficult position if it were passed.
Other Currents in the Discussion
Those supporting the new draft are extremely heterogeneous and nearly every contribution in support makes some criticism or suggestion for amendment. One of the most rightist currents in the discussion has come from within the central leadership and may be articulating the views of the majority. These people, Jack Woddis, head of the international department; Dave Cook, national organizer; and Irene Brennan, a member of the Political Committee and one of the CPB's leading philosophers, go much further than the new draft on the question of the state, alliances, and strategy. In a series of articles in the Morning Star, they have systematized and deepened the concept that the existing state machine can be transformed by changing its personnel. In an article on the class alliances, Woodis attacked "the sectarian idea" that socialism in Britain could be achieved by the efforts of the working class alone. In the absence of a peasantry, Woddis located the class allies of the proletariat as being the small antimonopoly employers. This is an extraordinary concept-these layers tend to support the right wing of the Tory Party and extreme-right formations.
Because of the CPGB's ban on tendencies and factions, people with similar views are unable to get together to elaborate alterna tive lines to those of the leadership. However, other oppositionist currents are emerging. One is around a clandestinely distributed pamphlet called, significantly enough, Out of the Ghetto. (The September 18 issue of Socialist Challenge, newspaper of the IMG, published extracts from this pamphlet.) Sometimes called the "Manchester School" (some of its leading lights come from that town), it has the support of a number of academies on the party's economic advisory committee. Basing themselves on the Italian "historic compromise," they advocate a line which amounts to support for a "socialist" incomes policy under capitalism. In the words of their representative Dave Purdy, their strategy is frankly "gradualist."
The "Revolutionary Democrats" are another current. The most coherent statement of their views has come from Jon Blomfield, Birmingham CPGB organizer. While supporting the new draft "as a step forward," he also said: "If we follow the present leadership and draft we're likely to stay in our existing sticky clay." He lists the differences with the leadership as revolving around three points: 1) the "leadership fails to grasp the real roots and strength of ruling class hegemony"; 2) "the frequent economism" of the party; and 3) the "limited role" of the CPGB and the fact that the bulk of its work "is still done through other organizations." It would appear that Blomfield is striving for an activist, non-economist Social Democratic party of the pre-First World War variety. However utopian such a project may be, this current has received support in many contributions to the discussion. The "Revolutionary Democrats" project themselves as being strongly anti-Stalinist (several of them welcomed the NCP split) and, to a lesser extent, anti-Trotskyist (accusing the latter of dogmatism).
Even before the pre-congress discussion started, the columns of Comment saw the emergence of another current, this one calling for a campaign to gain affiliation to the Labour Party. Willie Thompson, editor of the Scottish CP's journal Scottish Marxist, even went so far as to say that the "only place for a mass Marxist party in Britain is within the Labour Party as part of its federal structure." As explained elsewhere, there are powerful objective reasons for such a trend emerging within the CPGB. This trend will express itself in disputes about election policy-arguing for a very reduced electoral intervention by the CPGB.
Probably the most positive views to emerge in the discussion have been around questions of women's liberation. Contributions from individual members and CPB women's groups have attacked the draft's inadequacies in its analysis of social questions, such as its failure to analyze the family. This has led them to make explicit and implicit criticisms of the CPB's sectarianism and workerism. There seems little doubt that their views at least partly reflect the effects of working in united action organi. zations.
A number of contributions have mentioned the need for organs of popular or workers power. Paul Fauvet of the CPB's international department accused the draft of dishonesty in not spelling out the need for new organs of state power in the revolutionary process. It would appear that both of these latter trends are very influenced by the "Revolutionary Democratic" current. In addition, supporters of the "Manchester School" have expressed solidarity with contributions from the "Revolutionary Demo crats."
Toward the end of the discussion various questions have been raised concerning inner-party democracy. A lively parallel discussion has taken place in Comment on this question. Some contributors have called for a new inner-party democracy commission, others for a thorough overhaul of congress procedures, and yet others complained about the way the question of the breakaway was handled. In many of these contributions there has been a hint of a taboo subject-the right of tendency. But one contribution from Mike Power, secretary of a London CPGB branch, made a proposal that concretizes one of the aspects of the right of tendency when he called for the bringing together of "delegates representing party organizations with amendments and resolu tions ... which have common points of substance" to work out the way their positions should be presented to the congress.
The November congress of the CPGB will solve none of the problems facing the members of that organization. Indeed, because of the Stalinist traditions of that party (particularly the ban on groupings), these questions can't be posed in a coherent manner. For this reason the discussion will continue in one form or another. The relevance of the Trotskyist program, real continuator of the tradition of the Russian revolution, to these discussions is very evident. Already, well over a thousand people attended an official debate between the IMG and the CPB (see Socialist Challenge, September 15). On another front, individual militants from the CPGB have supported Socialist Unity candidates in recent elections because they felt that this was an effective way of challenging the government-led offensive against workers' rights and standards.
Members of the IMG are very confident that increasing numbers of socialists, now trapped in the CB, will find their way to revolutionary Marxism by engaging in fraternal debate and joint activity with supporters of the Fourth International.
October 25, 1977
The Thirty-fifth Congress of the British CP
The congress of the British Communist Party concluded November 15. The leadership pushed through ratification of its "Eurocommunist" draft program without difficulty, but at the same time made clear the limitations of this tactical turn.
In the November 17 issue of Socialist Challenge, the weekly paper that reflects the views of the British Trotskyists, Dodie Weppler and Oliver MacDonald wrote:
"McLennan [the CP general secretary] also dissociated the leadership from the concept of Eurocommunism.
He declared himself as loyal to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as any other CP leader in Europe. He declared in a carefully worded statement that the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] was making a 'decisive contribution' in the world-wide movement for progress and peace."
Including a lot of formulas about the need for parliamentary democracy and pluralism under socialism, the new CP draft program has frightened the most unconditional supporters of the Soviet bureaucracy. Although such formulas are tactically useful for the CP leadership in Britain, they cannot help but imply criticism of the system that exists in the USSR and East Europe.
McLennan's response to the criticisms of the pro-Kremlin ultras was to stress the continuity of the new draft program with the past gradualist and "democratic" strategy of the party.
"Avoiding any ideological challenge to the Brezhnevite wing," Weppler and MacDonald report, "McLennan argued that the points they contested in the new Draft were either orthodox Marxism, or else they appeared in the previous versions of the British Road [the party program].
"He seemed to say 'What on earth is all the fuss about? There is nothing of any importance that is new.''
The delegates were not prevented from expressing their feelings, but the discussion was organized in such a way that the leadership's line could not be effectively challenged from the floor.
The Kremlin-first wing decided not to try to offer new amendments that would be lost in a welter of proposals, none of which could be more than 350 words long. CP rules against "factions" prevent the presentation of general alternatives.
The main speaker for the most servile pro-Moscow wing agreed that the draft should be accepted until at least 1979, and thus apparently pulled back from any threat of a split.
The Kremlin also took a conciliatory attitude toward the McLennan leadership. The congress was reported extensively and in a friendly way in the Soviet press.
Despite the inherent limitations of the congress, the leadership's talk about the right to express more than one view is having a heady effect on the membership. There was a new boldness in expressing dissent. This was increased by the lack of authority of a leadership unable to halt the party's decline.
The mood of the membership was expressed in an explosion over the CP daily newspaper, Morning Star, whose circulation has dropped another 2,000 copies since the last congress. For the first time in decades, the delegates voted down the leadership, rejecting a motion to refer the question of improving the paper to the executive.
Notes
1. It is noteworthy that the CPB seeks to restrict the concept of democracy to that of the existence of bourgeois elections.
2. Socialist Unity is an electoral alliance involving the IMG (International Marxist Group, British section of the Fourth International), Big Flame (a group which had some connection with the the Italian organization, Lotta Continua), Workers League (an organization resulting from a split in the Socialist Workers Party, the British state capitalist group) as well as local groupings and individual socialists. It has contested two parliamentary byelections, Stechford and Ladywood. Socialist Unity is holding a conference in late November which will plan its intervention in the coming election and update its class struggle action program. The conference will also aim to win other far-left groups to the alliance.