23.11.1995

Thoughts on unity

From 'The Communist', paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, November 25 1920

Why does the executive committee of the Communist International insist on a new unity conference?

THE COMRADES at the centre of the International are justifiably impatient at what appear to them to be the petty squabbles ... which keep the British communists divided into several groups ...

While they recognise that ... our Communist Party is the ‘orthodox’ organisation for Britain, they insist that no stone must be left unturned ... to bring on to the right track other elements that are not so orthodox, but nonetheless are sincere revolutionaries and genuinely devoted to the cause of communism ...

In Bukharin’s words: “If there are only 30 of them, and you bring them in, it will be worth while.”

... We can accept the decision of the International with confidence.

First, although a very few months have passed since our Party sprang to life, they have been sufficient to create in it a strongly knitted sense of discipline, a mutual loyalty and confidence of the members, from whatsoever group they came ... On the proportional system of representation which the International has fixed for the conference, we shall far and away outnumber any serious opposition ...

Secondly, it is important to attempt, this time with the final authority of the Communist International, once again to bring all communist elements together ...

Let us once again come together with the comrades of the Workers’ Dreadnought, the Worker, the Socialist, the Welsh and Irish groups, the leftwing ILP, put before them the programme and constitution our executive committee has been working out on the lines laid down by the Second Congress, and recognise the concessions they are making at the cost of their former convictions by uniting with them in the friendly spirit for which the August Unity Convention was so notable.