26.05.2004

Rediscover CPGB politics!

Ben Lewis is amongst those CPGB comrades who have recently joined the Red Platform. In doing so, he feels he is defending the politics which led him to join the CPGB in the first place.

It seems ironic that the reasons for my decision to join the comrades of the Red Platform exactly reflect the reasons for my original decision to join the Communist Party of Great Britain, during the beginning of that life-changing period of mass protest against the Iraqi war.

Flirting with the various groups on that demonstration gave me a fascinating insight into the somewhat dirty, depressing world of left politics. As somebody previously not particularly active politically, it was rather intimidating to be faced with a modern version of the Life of Brian.

Nevertheless, it did make me ask myself a number of questions about my own left politics and after some reading and investigation I found myself attracted to the CPGB and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.

How refreshing it was then, to read a brilliant article by Jack Conrad in relation to working with the Muslim Association of Britain - on demonstrations, in meetings and so forth - and criticising the rather odd politics of the AWL, which refused to march with the MAB, or engage with anything which involved them. 'March separately, strike together' was the slogan of the time - working with the MAB is fine, as long as it involves no abrogation of principle or watering down of programme. Needless to say, my membership application form was already sent to London.

Quite clearly, the Respect unity coalition's declaration not only indicates a watering down of principle to group together with reactionary associations like the MAB, but in my opinion was created with this sole intention - simply pulling in as many people as possible. If vagueness were a literary virtue, then the declaration would surely win a Nobel Prize. Indeed, the political platitudes of Respect have a little bit of everything for everyone. Opposed to war? Vote Respect. Pro-abortion? Vote Respect. Anti-Abortion? Vote Respect. This logic, involving precisely the abrogation of principle that Jack Conrad so wisely warned against only just over a year ago, is inherent in Respect.

This is why I have joined the Red Platform. I support the tactic of working within Respect in order to highlight its contradictions with the intention of creating a democratic party of the working class, using the same analysis that the Weekly Worker had been putting across before our March 21 aggregate.

The work that the CPGB has done inside Respect, in the face of calls of 'Splitters!' from certain elements within its membership, has been extremely effective. The very fact that George Galloway has been a regular on our letters page shows the extent to which a relatively small organisation like ours can punch well above its weight when it presents coherent politics.

However, there is clearly no coherence in the party's majority line on the MAB and the implications of attempting to achieve the biggest possible vote for Respect. Clearly, principles have been shed in order to get the MAB on board, and to argue that this distorted project of lowest-common-denominator politics should succeed in the name of working class consciousness and representation is not credible. John Rees summed up beautifully where Respect is coming from when he argued: "We voted for what they [the masses] want." In other words, Respect has taken on the logic of bourgeois electoralism - namely, holding up a mirror to the consciousness of the masses at a particular time, as opposed to actively seeking to challenge the bourgeois consensus (with immigration as a key example) and thereby promote the development of consciousness. That is why Respect will not succeed in the way socialist partisans want it to: that is, in making progress towards a principled working class party.

This is not the only position that Red Platform comrades are uniting around, however. As seen in previous issues of the Weekly Worker, the way in which the party seeks to expand, recruit and educate new members is another important question. Party democracy is something that the Red Platform will also enhance, bringing to the foreground the issues behind just why we have changed our position in engaging with Respect, and so forth.

The very fact that this article can be published at all puts the CPGB streets ahead of other left groups, following closely the traditions of Iskra and the early Pravda. Democracy is, however, the most abused term in the world. Bourgeois demagogues, and left sects, profess democracy; but democracy is an active process of engagement - a clash in which different ideas are won and lost. The Red Platform will only assist this process. We invite both CPGB members and those close to us to play an active role in this - seeking to reunite the CPGB with its initial analysis of Respect and how we engage with both reactionary forces and fellow socialists and, in so doing, attempting to radically influence both Respect and the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform.