29.03.2000

Confusion reigns

Till Robert Griffiths, part-time general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, published his contrite article 'X marks the spot', frustration must have been rife amongst the majority of his rebellious executive committee (Morning Star March 29).

Having overthrown the anti-Livingstone line of the political committee, which includes comrade Griffiths of course, they must have seethed in anger while the Morning Star blithely carried on as if nothing had happened. For weeks the paper refused to campaign for the new CPB line of support (albeit 'qualified') for Ken Livingstone as London mayor. An eerie silence also hung over the CPB's "communist and progressive" proportional representation list for the Greater London Assembly.

Frankly, while these shenanigans point to big differences at the top of the CPB, it is par for the course. The Morning Star is not the CPB's paper. On the contrary, the 'party' belongs to the paper. The CPB was formed precisely as the Star's 'party', upholding the independence of the paper from party control - in fact leaving it prey to whichever bureaucratic clique captures the Peoples Press Printing Society, the cooperative which owns the Star.

It was the parting of the ways between former Morning Star editor Tony Chater and the CPGB's Eurocommunist-dominated political committee that created the present CPB mess. In the early 1980s Chater fatefully dismissed the Communist Party as 'an outside body', and went on to announce the Morning Star's unilateral declaration of independence from control by the CPGB. Instead of denouncing this petty bourgeois power grab, the majority of the CPGB's centrist opposition gravitated around Chater. They formed the Communist Campaign Group, which 're-established' itself as the CPB in 1988 (the left opposition around what is now the Weekly Worker retook the full historic name of our Party).

What in particular characterises the CPB, and its predecessors, is the naive belief that the Labour Party is the fundamental agent of socialist transformation in Britain - that socialism can only be realised through a process of ever lefter Labour governments. Not surprisingly then the race for London mayor has thrown the CPB into crisis. After all the CPB exists, not as a replacement for the Labour Party, but as a ginger group, dedicated to promoting its supposedly inevitable left trajectory.

Predictably therefore, as soon as Ken Livingstone launched his mayoral campaign as an independent, the Star editorial column (March 7) weighed in with a virulent anti-Livingstone stance - presumably reflecting the Labour-loyal view of Rob Griffiths and Morning Star editor John Haylett, who dominate the CPB's political committee.

This line was overturned by the, much larger, executive committee a week later, which voted for "qualified support" for Livingstone. While the decision was reported in a page four news item (March 13), no editorial support for the new line was expressed. Instead, for the next two weeks the Morning Star's dwindling band of readers had to endure completely neutral reporting of the mayoral contest. Sniping at Livingstone was even continued (editorial, March 14, and Andrew Murray's 'Eyes Left' column, March 17, for example). The only concession to the pro-Livingstone CPB majority was that anti-Dobson sniping was also permitted - witness industrial correspondent Ian Morrison's 'Dobson's friends in low places' (March 7).

Dissent found its only expression in a minimalist and ill-informed discussion in the letters column (300 words maximum). Here readers were allowed to vent their indignation at the anti-Livingstone line and to debate the CPB's divisive decision to field a fourth left PR list for the GLA. On March 18 - five days after the report of the dropping of the pro-Dobson line - a number of letters appeared attacking the March 7 editorial against Livingstone.

"In your editorial ... you seem to imply that Ken Livingstone should never have stood against the official Labour Party candidate ... Mr Livingstone has made a courageous step in the name of democracy, socialism and ordinary Londoners" (Nick Childs, London). "The editorial ... was an unsurprising but nonetheless depressing read ... It seems unfortunate that, niceties aside, the Morning Star is calling for Mr Dobson to be supported. Questions have to be asked when supposed loyalty ends up supporting something repulsive" (Bruce Rafeek, Newcastle).

Readers were obviously confused. But the editor did nothing to bring enlightenment. No one was told why letters were being published so late - presumably they were originally suppressed as damaging to the Star's pro-Labour, anti-Livingstone position, and only brought out for publication reluctantly, under pressure. Nor was there an editor's note to explain that the line had changed.

The CPB's own GLA election campaign - while supporting New Labour in the 14 constituencies - was similarly relegated to exchanges in the inadequate letters column. Mike Squires (March 18) proposed reviving the 1945 CPGB slogan, 'Vote as left as you can', which for him meant Livingstone for mayor and a communist (ie, CPB) PR list, but not Labour's "hand-picked Blairite" constituency candidates. He might - or might not - have meant backing the unmentioned London Socialist Alliance candidates. In the true spirit of Morning Star-style glasnost, Mike could not bring himself to say who he meant - or was he censored?

The task of defending the party line fell to comrade Nick Wright in the March 20 letters column - yes, 300 words maximum! - even though he was writing in his present capacity as London district organiser of the CPB. Like Andrew Murray, comrade Wright hails from the blindly pro-Soviet stable of the Straight Left CPGB faction - which stayed inside the CPGB when the New Communist Party split in 1977 over the latest version of the reformist British road to socialism. Through Communist Liaison, comrades Wright and Murray eased their way into the CPB and rose rapidly under the Griffiths-Haylett dynasty which has held sway since the 1998 Morning Star journalists strike. It was Nick Wright, the keen CPB activist, I recall, making use of Morning Star equipment for party work - a perfectly natural thing for a communist to do - which provided the excuse for Mary Rosser's sacking of editor John Haylett and sparking off the strike.

In his capacity as district organiser, Wright formulated a three-track policy of supporting Livingstone for mayor, standing a CPB PR list and voting New Labour in the first-past-the-post constituencies. It was this line that he tabled and won on the executive committee. Having waited for well over a week to see that change reflected in the pages of the Morning Star, he fired off his semi-diplomatic letter.

Wright made no direct complaint against lack of Star coverage of CPB election plans: "Some readers [in characteristic Star style, he leaves us to guess who he is arguing with] ... have missed the point about the Communist Party's position over the London elections" (March 20). Indeed they might.

Comrade Wright then proceeds to explain his carefully crafted three-pronged tactic. "The first priority", he says, "is to block further privatisation of public transport." Hence the "qualified support" for Livingstone as mayor. "The second priority is to stop the Tories" - that's two negative reasons - "and maximise the influence of the labour and trade union movement" in the assembly. Hence, vote for the hand-picked Blairites in the constituencies, who will be "more subject to influence from the unions and working people" than the other parties - although quite how London Socialist Alliance candidates are less susceptible to working class influence than hand-picked Blairites is not explained.

Similarly with the proportional representation list: "Only the communist candidates make the essential connection between privatisation, the drive to reduce public spending and the Maastricht convergence criteria for joining the euro." Totally untrue! He fails to mention the fanatically anti-European Scargillite list standing as the SLP. Nor do the LSA member organisations favour the Maastricht criteria - and not a few of them share similar illusions to the CPB in a British national road to socialism. Crucially there is nothing to prevent the CPB joining together with us in the London Socialist Alliance, while remaining free to express its own particular views. This would mean practising the left unity it preaches.

Comrade Wright, however, while decrying "narrow party advantage", in fact upholds the most crass sectarianism. His tactics - now imposed on Griffiths - are completely contradictory. By putting forward the internal struggle within the Labour Party as a key principle, Wright/Griffiths can dismiss the "sectarian" LSA - "some of whose components make the SWP look like paragons of principle and consistency" (Griffiths famously praised the forerunner of this paper - The Leninist - in writing). Yet at the same time Wright/Griffiths claim that a CPB PR vote is a "vote for working class and democratic policies against big business" - as if the LSA's much bigger vote would not send the same signal - but far more powerfully. Finally there is a call to vote Livingstone.

A "victory for Livingstone" would indeed "deal a bloody nose to Blair" (Morning Star March 29). But it also poses the necessity of a mass split from Labour rather than the hopeless quest of making it the vehicle of socialist transformation.