07.05.1998

Cold War babies

Phil Watson reviews ‘Children of the revolution - communist childhood in Cold War Britain’ by Phil Cohen

It is no exaggeration to state that the practice of CPGB history has reached an impasse. The recent generation of CP historians (Kevin Morgan, Nina Fishman et al) have rightly rejected the outworn dogma of the Trotskyites, intent on picturing the Party as the mere reflex of the CPSU - all in all, a very useful polemic. However; the distinct under-theorisation of both schools has meant that there has been little advance in addressing the epistemological questions inherent in the subject.

Utilising the recently opened Comintern archives, contemporary researchers have largely followed an agenda whereby the CPGB is seen as having ‘relative autonomy’ from the diktats of Moscow. None of this has been allowed to disturb the morbid functioning of Trotskyist orthodoxy. In a review of a conference on the subject of the British Party and the Comintern, Bruce Robinson writes that the “new material ... does not provide the basis for any major changes in the picture of the CPGB as the willing servant of Moscow from the mid-1920s onwards” (Revolutionary History Volume 6, No2-3, p260). Telling a Trotskyist that the CPGB was not a puppet of Moscow is obviously a bit like telling Rod Hull that Emu does not exist anymore. Robinson asks the question of whether a prominent communist like Arthur Horner would have returned from Moscow if he had been summoned during the period of the purges, suggesting an answer in the negative (ibid p258). In fact Horner would have had a good chance of arriving back in Britain, in that the disappearance of this organic proletarian leader would have led to awkward and compromising questions in the South Wales workers’ movement.

This is not to suggest that awarding the CPGB with a good dose of ‘relative autonomy’ vis-à-vis the USSR is any more helpful. The British road to socialism or not, ‘official communism’ was an international movement, in which it is ultimately impossible to dissect what was ‘domestic’ and what was ‘external’. The BRS is a classic case, a much trumpeted totem of the CPGB’s independence, closely supervised by none other than Joseph Stalin.

Animated though this debate may be, the fact is that both schools rely on similar theoretical preconceptions. Karl Marx writes in The German ideology of the “apparent stupidity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness” (K Marx Selected writings Oxford 1977, p185). Both the Trotskyite and the ‘revisionist’ standpoints employ essentially the same abstract methodology in ordering the experience of communism in Britain. It is imperative that new contributions to the history of the CPGB are judged on their ability to disrupt the rather sterile dualism that disfigures the contemporary debate, and upon their willingness to countenance the Party’s past as the relation of a dynamic totality. With this in mind we can turn to Children of the revolution.

Cohen’s work focuses on the experience of children from Communist Party households growing up in 1950s Britain - a problematic with a great deal of potential. Familial communism was, and still is, an important arbiter of identity and Party culture. The text of the book represents a set of transcribed interviews, with some minor editing in the interests of grammar and style. This has a tendency to make the narrative seem a little garbled at times. In choosing such a presentation the author’s aim is clearly that of empathy. However, one does wonder whether a commissioned choice of more considered recollections may have been of more aid in engaging the reader.

Cohen has assembled a reasonably interesting set of interviewees, including Alexei Sayle, Brian Pollitt, Hywel Francis and Nina Temple. Cohen elaborates the conceptual framework behind this selection in the introduction: “One of the reasons for writing this book is that with the demise of communist parties in Europe ... our generation will be the last to have this unique kind of upbringing. Growing up in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, our children will inherit a very different world” (p16).

Cohen is clearly intent on the manufacture of an essentially teleological method. As Althusser argued, such an epistemology runs the distinct risk of floundering into the realms of reductionism. This has particular ramifications for the structure of this text in that it is primarily concerned with the ordering of memory. Communism and the CPGB feature very little in the contemporary identity of the people featured here, disrupting any notion of the Party as a lived process. The author of this review encountered similar evidential difficulties whilst researching a thesis on the Communist Party in South Wales. By far the best interviews were provided by those comrades who still considered themselves communists. Even for members of Party splinters such as the CPB or NCP, the contested history of the CPGB was branded into the heart of their political being. This resulted in recollections that were alive with passion and controversy - priceless material for any researcher.

Children of the revolution on the other hand too often restricts Party activity to a set of frozen, and at times rather nostalgic, cameos: “We went on the Daily Worker May Day march every year; my parents have recollections of me in a pushchair on marches with a Daily Worker keeping the rain off my hat ... On the Monday morning after the May Day march I used to come to school with the Daily Worker May Day badge, and I remember when I was about nine I came to school with it and Mr Baggs, the deputy head of my primary school, said: ‘Oh, we’re communists, are we?’ ” (p53).

Obviously, these fractured pieces of empiricism need to be bonded together in order to produce an outlook in which the meaning of the Party’s past can be constructed. The idea of communism as a religion (or semi-religion) is a consistent theme of the narrative:

“I think faith in communism was a kind of religion ... in terms of intensity of belief, and now, with the break-up of the Communist Party, the terrible loss and the lack of faith, it is like losing your god, and people are all over the place” (pp41-42).

Of course religion and faith in this context are ultimately dependent upon invoking a ritualised other. In this context Cohen refers to CPGB members as having a “quasi-religious faith” in the USSR: “an obsessive interest - encompassing everything from its films and books to its tractor design” (p16). Two points can be made here. Firstly, the CPGB’s loyalty towards the Soviet Union was (in general) certainly based on emotional considerations. However, this should not be judged apart from the party’s rationalism, as Hywel Francis recognises in his interview (p129). Secondly, this train of argument has a certain residue of the instrumentalism so beloved of the Trotskyists. Merely having “faith” in the CPSU seems rather more suited to the rationale of a ‘fellow-traveller’ than to a militant activist in the ranks of the CPGB. These points can be illustrated by making reference to one of my own interviews with Charlie Swain:

“I was one of those who used to love Joe Stalin, I must admit, and I’ve still got a very big respect for him ... The idea of the people from the lower ranks displacing the entrenched capitalists ... landlords and aristocrats seems to me so fantastic that anybody who was at all sympathetic to that I would support” (author’s interview, Cardiff, March 7 1996).

In Swain’s narrative, support for the USSR was fundamentally bound up with the recognition of the necessity for a British revolution, thus inserting a marked kernel of rationality into his respect for Stalin. There are no doubt some critics who would just look at Swain’s opening line and find enough ammunition for a set of very traditional preconceptions. Unfortunately for these people, engaging with the mentality of British communism is a sophisticated task and one that fails to yield to one-sided formulations.

Despite these fundamental criticisms it should be allowed that Cohen has assembled some useful and at times thought-provoking material. Harry Pollitt’s son, Brian, talks about his life alongside the Communist Party’s best known general secretary. Pollitt’s prominence in the Party’s history makes this chapter interesting in and of itself. Hywel Francis offers himself as the most eloquent in exploring the various facets of CP identity in a discussion of his father, Dai Francis, one-time general secretary of the South Wales area NUM.

For anyone considering the history of the CPGB in South Wales this is always a pertinent question. Francis argues that the “trade union and the miners’ union and the Communist Party were synonymous ... For my father they were indivisible, he was a communist miners’ leader” (p124). In fact Dai Francis followed his comrades, Arthur Horner, Dai Dan Evans and Will Paynter - all CPGB members - in approaching their union tasks in a distinct syndicalist vein. On the whole communist miners focused their activities on the strategically placed miners’ lodge, rather than through the structures of the Party. This created a marked sense of loss on the part of more Party-orientated militants:

“We have outstanding figures in the Communist Party who had become, as one of our comrades put it, little tin gods in the village, but the people in the village didn’t see the Communist Party at work” (Annie Powell CPGB 24th Congress World News April 28 1956).

This is not to site miners such as Dai Francis at too distant a point from their CP identity. As Hywel Francis shows, Dai stood by the CPGB during the 1956 Hungarian crisis, although it is admitted that “he would be suspicious of people who tried to impose the Party line on him” (p134).

Possibly the worst section in this book is the interview with Nina Temple, seemingly intent on presenting her rise through the CP bureaucracy as a series of unwanted accidents. Temple’s narrative is however the source of some (no doubt unintended) humour. Nina recalls all the glitz and excitement of a 1960s YCL disco on her estate. Alas, for one young man these vicarious thrills were not enough:

“... suddenly the music went off and Fergus Nicholson gave a speech about why Russia was right to invade Czechoslovakia. I was mortified and embarrassed, so that was the end of the YCL disco” (p95).

There is always someone to spoil it for everyone. Actually this extract just about sums up Temple’s career in the CPGB - recoiling in horror from everything you are meant to represent. Another chuckle can be gleaned from Nina’s father, Landon, who tactfully informed her that the Democratic Left constitution she had been helping to draft was “crap” (p96). Next time you are down at Progressive Tours booking your jaunt to Cuba, remind Landon of that one. It’s worth a pint or two.

Although not short of practitioners, Communist Party history is beginning to suffer from a distinct methodological barrenness. Ultimately these difficulties can only be surmounted by the resurrection of a viable ideology of Partyism - a working class organisation that can adequately unify the varied and illusory disciplines of contemporary society. For the moment though you might like to try and quench your thirst with the quaint simplicities of Children of the revolution. Blistered and parched by the end, you may begin to discern the oasis. If Nina Temple’s standing there, you will know you took a wrong turning.

Phil Watson