08.01.2004
Divided four ways
There are deep divisions in the leadership of the 'Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain over what attitude to adopt towards the new Respect coalition. Can its forthcoming special congress resolve the contradictions? Alan Rees investigates
Towards the end of last year, we briefly referred to the differences in the leadership of the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain over the Respect Unity Coalition (Weekly Worker December 4). For example, we reported how its executive committee was split 11-11 on the issue. Half the committee were for an engagement with the new initiative; the rest were bent on upholding the old 'official communist' British road to socialism programme, with its hopeless aim of 'reclaiming' Labour for socialism.
However, it now appears that the CPB executive is not only evenly split between so-called innovators and traditionalists, but each of these factions is itself split. In other words there is a four-way division. November's CPB executive saw a frustratingly inconclusive clash of positions.
On behalf of the innovators, who have abandoned all hope in Tony Blair's party, Emily Mann argued for the straightforward perspective of quickly investigating the hows and wherefores of CPB engagement with the new coalition. Naturally this was too much for John Foster from Glasgow, who stands unmovingly for the established policy of auto-Labourism.
Along with industrial organiser Kevin Halpin, he heads the CPB's traditionalist wing. Between these two hard poles are the softs. On the one hand the CPB's part-time general secretary, Robert Griffiths, and on the other Martin Levy, the CPB's district secretary in the North East. Comrade Griffiths wants any approach to Respect to be ring-fenced with a number of important qualifications - the coalition must not oppose Labour candidates en bloc, Respect must not call for a vote for the Scottish Socialist Party or other non-Labour left candidates, etc. Comrade Levy's proposal runs along similar lines.
He demands that any cooperation with Galloway and Respect must be conditional on a shared commitment to "reclaiming the Labour Party" - given the political forces involved in Respect, this looks well nigh impossible, of course. When none of these four proposals won anything like an overall majority, it was reluctantly agreed to opt for a special congress, supposedly in an attempt to amicably resolve the matter. It is to be held on Saturday January 17, although how wise this move actually is remains to be seen.
The CPB is no more united at rank and file level than it is at the top. Passing the buck to a special congress could therefore make matters far worse for the leadership, not better. Naturally, none of this is reported openly in that staid and thoroughly boring paper, the Morning Star. Its standard fare consists of dull-as-dishwater pieces by trade union officials, friendly reports highlighting North Korea's latest diplomatic manoeuvres and putting a leftish slant on the daily news carried by the mainstream wire services and media. Not that there has been a total absence of debate on Respect.
No, one side has granted itself full publicity rights (although, by Star standards, a flurry of short letters on the subject have been published - from all viewpoints). Writing in his paper of December 20, editor John Haylett outlines - in typically obscure and unspecific terms - three lines of opinion "within the labour movement" that have been "excited" into "a level of discussion" by the Unity Coalition call. For all the clumsiness of this formulation, Haylett is clearly alluding to divisions that exist inside the CPB itself, not simply "within the labour movement".
How does he describe the lines of factional demarcation? First, he has "some people" who see Respect simply as "a divisive move that is in conflict with the efforts of those still in the Labour Party, including the affiliated trade unions, to reclaim the party" (ie, Messrs Foster, Halpin and Levy). Second, Haylett refers to those elements who have "enthusiastically welcomed Galloway's proposal" as a "fresh opportunity to build an embryonic replacement for the Labour Party" (by implication, comrade Emily Mann).
However, comrade Haylett makes clear his faction's attitude to this assessment when he sternly reminds his readers of the "already failed" attempts to achieve this in the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Party's Socialist Alternative. The third line - obviously favoured by the Morning Star editor himself - consists of those "supportive of the unity coalition", while at the same time "remaining committed to the strategic goal of taking back the Labour Party from the New Labour cuckoos". The intention is to open up, "from a progressive standpoint, an election front against New Labour". By that same logic, "the Morning Star opposes so-called 'democratisation' of the unions' political levy". Instead, the union movement "should affiliate to the limit and, most crucially, should punch its weight within the party".
Qualified support for Respect is an option only because of the weakness of communist forces compared to "a few decades ago", Haylett sadly tells his readers. Back whenever, he would have argued for standing "a significant number" of candidates - "not with the intent of damaging a Labour government's re-election", but in order to put forward "a coherent policy alternative that would be taken up in the movement and contribute to reversing the government's drift to the right".
This is no longer possible, but comrade Haylett reassures the traditionalists that Respect's politics on "imperialist wars, opposition to the euro and an EU constitution, defence of the public services, the manufacturing sector and jobs and rejection of privatisation and environmental vandalism are indistinguishable" from those of the CPB. Like his part-time general secretary, Haylett clearly leans towards possible engagement with Respect. But, given the nature of the political forces that will be numerically dominant within it, and attempts to square such a move with the CPB's continued fidelity to the increasing bizarre British road to socialism programme - which put all its eggs in the Labour Party basket - this smacks more and more of a descent into utter political incoherence.
The CPB leadership's inability to agree a unified approach to Respect is hardly unexpected. Here is an organisation of no more than a couple of hundred disorientated die-hards that has doggedly inhabited a political bunker since the collapse of the USSR over a decade ago now. Far from questioning everything, it steadfastly refuses to seriously examine and honestly deal with its own past. Stalinism and its appalling consequences is excused - not condemned and rigorously analysed. Hence any attempt to engage with the real world beyond the standard left reformist certainties of economic strikes, anti-Americanism and opposition to all things European Union must trigger profound divisions and carry the distinct threat of disintegration.
At the time of its Communist University over the weekend of June 14-15 last year, we noted the "programmatic time bomb" ticking away in the CPB's ranks. During the final session, 'The forward march of Labour resumed', Andrew Murray (chair of the Stop the War Coalition, who is widely viewed as having 'gone native' - effectively becoming an SWP sympathiser in CPB ranks) warned against illusions in old Labour even while we fight New Labour. Blair's party could not be "ignored", but - tantalisingly - he mused: "Can we build a left alternative?" A stinging rebuke came from leading traditionalist Kevin Halpin. As we reported at the time, "To loud cheers from the floor, he denounced any attempts to build a left electoral alternative to Labour as 'diversions'. Warming to his theme, he expressed his political solidarity with GMB leader John Edmunds, who had spoken of the need to 'reclaim' Labour - only 'pessimists' want to build outside Blair's party, Halpin warned" (Weekly Worker June 19 2003).
Given that the CPB is an organised combination of nostalgia for an unspeakable past and a still workable system for moving up the lower rungs of trade union power structure, it is impossible to predict how much longer it can survive. The one thing one can say with certainty, however, is that it richly deserves to die.