sim was to make the British revolution.
are fighting each other.
and charts their futures. AT THE END of the second world war the Communist Party, revelling in the popularity of the Soviet Union's war effort, had 50,000 members. Today it has only fifteen and a half thousand, many of them inactive. The Morning Star has just announced a price rise to 30p, and its ability to survive its acute financial problems is in doubt this is despite the hidden subsidy of thousands of copies distributed in Eastern Europe. The Young Communist League has all but ceased to exist.
In this atmosphere of crisis the Party met this weekend. Its decline has given rise to the most open and vicious factional struggle 1956.
The contending groups at the conference boil down to four identifiable tendencies. First, the Eurocommunists grouped Marxism edited by Martin Jacques. This journal gives a platform to ideologues like Eric Hobsbawm and Bob argue for a Labour-SDP coalition, and denounce left as damentalist' and 'ultra-left'.
On the extreme pro-Soviet wing is a group of unregenerate around the journal Straight Left. Their views •яге allisity from the pro-Soviet New Communist LAST WEEKEND the British Communist Party met in Congress — a sad caricature of the party that was formed in 1920 and '21 whose declared Its revolutionary ideals have long been discarded, its membership and influence are in decline and its Stalinist wing and its Eurocommunist wing This week PHIL HEARSE looks at the tendencies at the Congress, explains their meaning BOB PENNINGTON explains how the Communist Party evolved from a party of hope and idealism into a party of class collaboration, whose past lies buried under the debris of cynicism.
The central munists their head.
one of his staffers, dustrial organiser Mick Costello. enough 'positive' since secretary Ken Gill.
None of Today, Party none of them break from Rowthorn who been 'funToday's rightism Stalinists Labour Pary and the SDP;
indistinguishable Party still further.
Socialist Action 18 November 1983 leadership group around Gordon McLennan have tended CP in the past period to give the EurocomOpposing them, adopted and this is by far the most significant development, is the grouping around Morning Star editor Tony Chater and former CP inChater and Costello argue that the Partv has. in folowing the Hurocom. munists, failed to place sufficient emphasis on industrial work, the centrality of the working class, and failed to say things about the This grouping powerful backing from TASS general nism. these groups offers any way forward. In searching for a solution to the problems of the Communist the 'popular frontist' strategy which has led to the CP's impasse. The Party has outflanked by the rise of 'Bennism' in the Labour Party. Marxism incapable party independent of the a move back towards Moscow will isolate the There was nothing basically new in the CP's Eurocommunist turn in the mid-1970s. Ever since 1951, when the adopted The British Socialism - and in reality ever since it popular frontism in mid-1930s — the Communist Party has disavowed socialism as the strategic ob. jective of the working class struggle. Its programme adopted replaced the 'anti-monopoly alliance' (a very broad category, that) with the even more nebulous 'broad democratic The Eurocommunists 'progressive' forces everywhere, just in the growing women's, peace and anti-racist movements, but even as far right as the SDP. The problem was that just at the moment the CP turned even further right and loosened its links with Moscow, a real mass left wing arose in the Labour Party in the form of BenUndeterred, the Eurocommunists took the Italian CP's 'historic compromise' to heart, and tried to apply it in a British context. The results have been spectacular. We have had the extraordinary spectacle of Hobsbawm lecturing the Labour Party that it lost the election because its proleft wing, blaming the Bennites for the Tory vicA symptom of this development was the recent Marxism Today review by John Bloomfield of Peter Hain's new book The Democratic Alternative.
Hain represents the most right wing current to have emerged from nism. But for Bloomfield Hain's book still had unfortunate traces of left funthe damentalism' with socialism and working class struggle.
1977 Historically the CP has been based on a network of trade union militants saw organised since the late 1950s in the not broad lefts.
itself heavily in decline, has been the least associated with Eurocommunism. It is no surprise therefore that people at the forefront of the CP's industrial work should come forward to oppose the drift of the leadership. But if people like asse ciate the deeline of the Mick Costello fluence in industry munist poncies ten wey are wrong The old CP-led broad lefts, especially in the AUEW were essentially election machines for left bureaucrats, which Eric went into bankruptey Scanlon-Jones wing of the bureaucracy capitulated to the 1974 Labour governopenly ment's 'social contract'.
New broad lefts have arisen generally led by the Labour left. The Communist Party has dustrial policy which prioritised rank and file struggle above the election of Ben- ie an undue concern network, Ken Gill CP's inwith Eurocomthe bureaucratic when the quick time The of the never had an in Mick Costello eyes turned towards Moscow - just like the 'good old days'. upper and middle bureaucrats. when, in 1970 and 1971 the CP did lead a rank and file movement which could mobilise thousands, the LCDTU, it pul lid on it in double Eurocommunist policy since the mid-1970s did have the merit of making some sort of critical appraisa Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, albeit a mealy-mouthed one But it could never build an independent party. Why join the Communist Party if the strategic objective is a Labour
WIARD (Report) ANDREW