PRO-CHINESE TENDENCY IN BRITAIN MAKES GAINS
By Sean Reed _. The tendency in the Communist party of Great Britain [CPGB] and its periphery which is grouped around the monthly paper Vanguard and .the "Committee to Defeat Revisionism" has disappointed those people who, some months,ago, were ready to. dig its grave,
Almost half a year: after breaking with the official King Street leadership, the tendency is still holding weekly meetings in London, with attendance averaging about fifty, while their paper has appeared in a second 16-page issue. Declarations of support show no sign of diminishing even though to sign one means expulsion from the party.
Support has come from some industrial militants in the labor unions, especially the Electrical Trade Union {eTu]. Last month the CP.. leadership expelled.Andy. O'Neill, an.old-time member of- the Irish and, in the last ten years, the British party. He has opposed King Street on the so-called "British Road to Socialism," on the CPGB's overlordship of the two Irish parties, and on the question of the unsavory way the former CP leadership of the ETU conducted themselves with regard to the union ballot box and cash account,
In the London local government elections, the King Street leadership is faced with another embarrassment, for some of their candidates have either refused to stand or have declared for the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, It is not excluded that two Communist candidates may contest for the same seat,
‘But it is among the colonial workers in the CP; i.e., the Irish, African, West Indian workers, etc., that the greatest number a oan. be expected to break from, King Street at this time.
. For instance, the bulk of lrish members of the CPGB in the Lon-. don area refuse to. support the party's official Irish front outfit, the Connolly Association, because of its support of the ruling Fianna Fail party in Ireland,
_ At first the Committee to Defeat Revisionism made many anti+”
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Trotskyist statements, Of late, these have been reduced, Trotskyist speakers have been allowed to take the floor at their meetings and put their case freely.
However, by refusing to face up to Stalints true role in theinternational Communist movement, they have cut themselves off from the possibility of moving ahead rapidly among the ranks of the Com munist intellectuals and youth. One looks in vain in their ranks for the type of intellectual who broke from the party after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956,
In particular, the attacks by members of the Committee on Yev~ tushenko and Mayakovsky tend to drive young intellectuals away from them and back into the arms of King. Street. . In the last analysis, their. capacity to overcome this weakness will prove orucial. to their chances to build an alternative leader~ ©. ship to the present clique running the CP,
ATGERIAN