02.06.2004

Voting for war criminals

The Communist Party of Britain congress stuck to its old line of auto-Labourism for the next general election - despite opposition from leading members

Delegates - and there were no more than 50 of them - trickling into the congress of the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain, over May 30-31 were met by our comrades selling the Weekly Worker and leafleting for Respect. Some could barely contain their anger. We were variously advised to undertake tasks that were either politically unlikely ("Fuck off and join the SWP"), or - in at least one instance - physically impossible.

However, a few CPBers did stop to talk and buy papers. These comrades were generally at pains to emphasise the uncontroversial nature of the weekend's business - "Everyone is united, we are all happy with the direction of the party," one assured us. Yet even going by the report that appeared in the Morning Star on June 1, it is obvious that the CPB is at war with itself.

The organisation is split between 'innovators' and 'traditionalists'. The innovators are headed by incumbent general secretary Robert Griffiths, the Morning Star's editor, John Haylett, and its circulation manager, Ivan Beavis. Joining them are the Johnny-come-latelys who came over from Straight Leftism by way of the Communist Liaison faction in the early 1990s. Ideologically ultra-Stalinite, the Straight Leftists operated deep in the structures of the 'official' CPGB during the 1970s and 80s and still publish an ostensibly Labour Party paper. Amongst the CPB's ex-Straight Leftists are people such as Nick Wright, CPB London district secretary, and Andrew Murray, now, of course, chair of the Stop the War Coalition.

Nowadays innovators are heard arguing in defence of the Socialist Workers Party. With the Soviet Union gone, Trotskyism, they say, can no longer seriously be accused of constituting a counterrevolutionary fifth column. Spurred on by the scale of the STWC's demonstrations in 2003 - and meanwhile depressed by the continuing grip of Blairism over the Labour Party - these comrades have gravitated closer and closer towards the SWP and the idea of a populist electoral alliance.

Specifically, the innovators disagree with the majority's insistence on giving blanket support for the Labour Party at the next general election ('blanket', that is, except, of course, in those three or four constituencies where the CPB itself manages to field candidates). Both Griffiths and Haylett put their authority on the line in the attempt to win delegates to back their amendment. It envisaged the CPB "entering into an electoral alliance" with progressives and anti-imperialists such as Respect. A similar amendment was moved by Steve Johnson of south west London.

John Haylett demanded the "most resolute struggle" to prevent the "re-election of the New Labour war cabinet". Given that the CPB had "made clear that, far from being in No10, Blair should be in the dock of a war crimes tribunal", it was logical that an electoral challenge should be mounted. What, he bluntly asked the traditionalists, is the alternative? Should the Morning Star headline be expected to flip from "End the occupation of Iraq" one day to "Vote war criminal" the next? A pithy formulation, encapsulating the stark choice facing the CPB.

Not that the innovators have abandoned the standard call for the return of a Labour government - a programmatic perspective laid down by the CPB's hopelessly reformist British road to socialism. By standing against war criminals such as Blair, the innovators merely hope to pressurise the Labour Party and in time return it to its allotted role as the main vehicle for socialism in Britain.
Officially representing the innovator-dominated Welsh committee, Griffiths told the congress that they should fight for a Labour government come the next general election. However, he insisted that more had to be done: "If we restrict ourselves to simply saying 'vote Labour' in all circumstances, we will have an electoral policy that is virtually indistinguishable from that of New Labour." Which begs the awkward question as to how the CPB's auto-Labourism in 1997 and 2001 was distinguishable, of course.

By a clear 60-40 margin the traditionalists had, at the CPB's special congress in January, already defeated moves by Griffiths and Haylett to enter into negotiations with Respect. Since then the balance on the executive committee has shifted from an 11-11 stalemate to a slim majority for the traditionalists.

Hence, speaking for the executive, Communist Review editor Mary Davis moved the key resolution, 
'Unite for a national leftwing programme against New Labour'. She branded New Labour as an "unmitigated disaster" for working people, especially women. Poverty has become "feminised". Amazingly Blair's philosophy is not socialism: rather it is a "radical liberalism" - which, though it contains a "measure of redistribution", is fundamentally based on privatisation. However, she said, it would not be "appropriate" to revise the CPB's electoral strategy. Cementing a deal with Respect would "break the unity" of the class that is needed if New Labour was going to be defeated.

She was vigorously supported by John Foster, the CPB's international secretary and leading personality in Scotland. Voting either for Respect or the Scottish Socialist Party "only creates a platform for those who oppose our strategy within the labour movement". In other words, they were undermining "unity" (by which is meant unity around Labourism, not communism, of course).
Other traditionalists were no less robust. Anita Halpin insisted that salvation lay not with will-of-the-wisp diversions like Respect. The CPB should support the Labour Representation Committee on July 3, which aims to 'reclaim' the Labour Party. Kevin Halpin confidently spoke of the trade unions already having New Labour on the run and that is why it would be folly to break with the existing strategy of auto-Labourism.

Martin Levy, north-east England district secretary, lampooned any suggestion of "parachuting" into Sedgefield and other ministerial constituencies. He said such an approach would be a "diversion" from the necessity of getting the unions to take the lead in selecting other, more progressive, candidates. This marks something of a conversion. In 2003 Levy had been amongst those sympathetic to mounting a wide electoral challenge against New Labour. Showing which way the wind is blowing on the executive, he has thrown in his lot with the traditionalists.
Finally, Graham Stevenson, replying for the executive, accused those - such as his general secretary and the editor of his daily paper - who oppose the executive committee majority of flirting with "class against class" ultra-leftism. A ruinous line adopted by the 'official communist' movement under Stalin's orders in the late 1920s and early 30s, which saw social democrats being contemptuously dismissed as 'social fascists'.

Stevenson's charge actually contains more than a grain of truth. In his general secretary's address to congress, Griffiths described New Labour in a lurid manner, using phrases normally used to describe fascism in the lexicon of 'official communism'. Blair and co were hysterically branded "labour lieutenants of the most aggressive, most expansionist and most reactionary circles of the capitalist class in Britain." A conscious, albeit crude, echo of Georgi Dimitrov's definition of fascism made famous at the 7th congress of the Communist International in 1935.

Griffiths, it has to be said, is a highly unstable and mercurial character politically. He travels light and has travelled far. In the 1970s he was known as a fiery, leftwing Welsh nationalist. He wanted to conduct his own national liberation struggle against English domination. Ireland was the model. In the 1980s Griffiths emerged as if from nowhere as an anti-British road communist. He championed the idea of the working class creating its own "organs of state power" as against parliament. And from that standpoint he denounced social democracy, both right and left, as an "obstacle - not an ally - in this process." 

By the 1990s, though, he had become a conventional British reformist communist and clawed his way to the top of the CPB. Now, in the 21st century, Griffiths seems to be on the move once more - this time in the direction of John Rees and his version of SWPism.

The traditionalists trounced the innovators at the CPB's congress. Their main resolution was "overwhelmingly carried" (of course, that was after the innovators' amendments had fallen). It is also highly significant that Andrew Murray is no longer a member of the CPB's executive committee, which is now heavily tilted against Haylett and Griffiths. This month's election of officers by the executive could therefore prove of some interest.

The Haylett-Griffiths faction came to power through an executive coup which ousted the old guard of Mike Hicks and Mary Rosser. Are they now just about to go the same way and by the same methods? And, if so, will the Morning Star's editor declare UDI, just like Tony Chater did before him?