11.06.1998

CPB factional war rumbles on

Morning Star AGM

Mary Rosser’s long struggle to install her son-in-law, Paul Corry, as editor of theMorning Star has ended at last. Corry resigned as deputy editor on June 8, immediately after the Hicks-Rosser family dynasty suffered a four to one defeat at the hands of the shareholders of the People’s Press Printing Society, the cooperative which owns the Star.

In all three parts of the PPPS annual general meeting - in Glasgow, Manchester and London - ageing ‘official communists’ of various hues had been sparked back to life momentarily on the back of the spirited five-week strike action of Star journalists against an outrageously bureaucratic and nepotistic management.

Attendance nearly trebled compared to 1997. Over 700 shareholders turned out, in the main to back the slate of five candidates put forward by the Committee to Save the Morning Star and the strikers. All were elected overwhelmingly, with the following votes: Ken Cameron (FBU leader) 573; Avtar Sadiq (president, Indian Workers Association GB; secretary, Association of Indian Communists) 556; Nicola Seyd (Camden Trades Council, GLATC, SERTUC, etc) 542; Ann Green (CPB executive) 536; Ken Thomas (RMT executive) 528. Nearest runner-up was Peter Pink with 134, followed by retiring committee members from the Rosser camp, Pat Hicks and John Thompson, with 132 and 129 votes respectively. Rosser loyalist on the CPB executive, Barney Crockett, brought up the rear with 125.

The newly elected five join Haylett and four other sitting management committee members who stood by him and the strikers - Carolyne Jones, Gareth Miles, Phil Davies and Alex Falconer MEP - against a minority of six Rosserites serving out the remainder of their three-year term of office: Joan Bellamy, Jim Friel, Terry Herbert, Anni Marjoram, Kumar Murshid and Francis Wilcox.

Rosser herself is not elected. She is appointed. The strikers and those who rallied to support them will be disappointed if the new PPPS business committee, to be decided at the first meeting of the changed management committee, does not sack her for causing the strike at the Morning Star. Haylett, however, lent her credibility by jointly moving a non-controversial rule change (the maximum individual shareholding was increased from £10,000 to £20,000), by launching a £120,000 appeal in both their names and by calling for unity “on the basis of the results of this AGM”.

Haylett, it should be remembered, is one of the leadership faction in the so-called Communist Party of Britain around new general secretary Robert Griffiths. A faction which seems intent on sweeping the Star dispute under the carpet and keeping future conflicts in the CPB from public view. That has been the history of ‘official communism’ - palace coups, disappearances and secret caucuses.

Motions for a readers and supporters groups newsletter, for the appointment of a circulation manager and for AGM voting figures to be published in the Star within seven days were easily carried. Karl Dallas’s motion was heavily defeated because it blamed both sides equally for the strike.

At the London meeting time ran out before the pro-Rosserite legalistic motion from Joan Bellamy and Francis Wilcox could be debated, and it was voted down without a hearing. The significance of this motion seems to be that the directors of the Morning Star Cooperative Society (the major subsidiary of the PPPS) are obliged by the Industrial and Provident Societies Act to look after the separate interests of the subsidiary or carry the can. As I suggested last week, this should be taken as a warning that the plug might be pulled. However, the management committee will surely now elect new directors of the subsidiary.

The key division amongst shareholders only came to the fore in the London meeting after veteran Dennis Birdseye attacked the old management’s “double standards” in the strike. This provoked an unwise speech from ousted CPB general secretary Mike Hicks. He succeeded in reminding the majority why it was such a good idea to get rid of him. In management doublespeak, Hicks explained that “suspension on full pay does not equal guilt” – the strike to defend Haylett was unnecessary. The Morning Star management committee was not Murdoch, but a “workers’ management, the elected management of a workers’ cooperative”. Those who opposed arbitration “must have had another agenda”, he declared.

Clearly, there has been no recanting on the part of Mike Hicks, Mary Rosser and their allies. They think they were right. That Griffiths, Haylett, Maybin and co have an anti-Labour Party, anti-British Road to Socialism “hidden agenda”. So the factional war continues.

At the May meeting of the CPB executive committee four EC members were suspended - Mary Rosser; management committee members George Wake and Francis Wilcox; and North West CPB district secretary Peter Ritman. Their CPB membership will be reviewed at the mid-July EC meeting.

Haylett’s tone in the PPPS AGM seems to indicate he would like to patch things up, in line with the psychology of most CPBers who, after all, would prefer to obtain socialism without struggle. Incidentally Straight Left supporters in the CPB are among those who favour strong disciplinary action to expunge the evil ones (they also fear openness). But among the former strikers it is noticeably the CPB members who least favour carrying the conflict to a final solution.

Either way the unity mobilised against the Hicks-Rosser clique can be expected to dissolve now that they have lost their power.

Ian Farrell