24.02.2005

Tawdry attractions

Should Andrew Murray join the SWP? The idea is not as weird as it sounds, thinks Alan Rees

That the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain is in profound crisis is beyond dispute. Rumours that it had got itself into a financial hole appeared to be confirmed recently when the party HQ was shifted from north London to Croydon, apparently to save on rent. But, whatever the scale of its money worries, the political crisis most clearly presents itself as fault lines dividing the organisation over what attitude to adopt towards the left-of-Labour opposition to Blair, in particular the Respect-SWP formation fronted by George Galloway. On one side, we have the pro-Labour 'traditionalists' associated with leading figures such as John Foster, the CPB's top man in Scotland, industrial organiser Kevin Halpin and chair Anita Halpin. For these forces - as comrade Foster put it in a head-to-head polemic with the organisation's general secretary (and leading pro-Respect innovator) Robert Griffiths - the dispute involved "principled differences", not just those of tactics (Morning Star January 8 2004). The 'innovator' wing includes not only Rob Griffiths (who underlines the depth of his commitment to the CPB by retaining his lecturing post in Pontypridd), but also Morning Star editor John Haylett and Andrew Murray, the chair of the Stop the War Coalition. There have been bitter complaints that, despite CPB congress votes to reject collaboration with the SWP's latest front organisation, these comrades have not submitted to 'party discipline'. Via the pages of the Star and elsewhere, they have continued to agitate for the CPB to embroil itself in Respect - a move that would spell the end for this inert sect. Two recent developments have dramatised the extent to which the bureaucratic discipline of this small group is coming apart at the seams. First, there was the bitter controversy in the Star over the occupation of Iraq and the role of the Iraqi Communist Party. Second, the behaviour of Andrew Murray in the STWC - a role in which he is viewed by many as little more that a right-inclined SWPer ("Nick Wrack without the charm", one comrade wickedly observed to me). These tensions and divisions are evidently all real. However, we must look beneath the surface signs of crisis to the core reasons that have propelled this organisation to the edge of the abyss. For the otherwise deathly dull CPB serves as a vivid general warning to the left of the dangers of programmatic incoherence - a malady over which it can hardly claim a monopoly. On one level, it is hard to seriously believe that the Respect-SWP initiative could have so disorientated this organisation. After all, despite the overblown claims by leading members, Respect represents a very marginal force in British politics, with a slim chance of making any appreciable impact in the coming general election. Part of the myth world of the CPB dictates that it must to present itself as the 'serious' left, with a 'realistic' programme (the British road to socialism) to counterpose to the frivolous and flighty mini-adventures of the 'ultra-left'. So how has an important section of the core leadership of this stolid, 'official communist' Stalinite organisation now lurched so obviously into the orbit of the SWP? How could its 2004 emergency congress vote by a margin of just 60% to 40% to reject engagement with Respect, when this would have meant abandoning this sect's programmatically enshrined commitment to Labour as the engine of socialist progress in Britain? The fact that minority trends within the CPB are being pulled towards Respect is beyond doubt. At the 2004 special congress mentioned above, the majority did indeed take a 'traditionalist' stand against the prospect of SWP osmosis proposed in practice by the innovators. It is worthwhile recalling the four interlinked factors that were decisive in a winning this majority. * Fear. Instinctively, CPBers are aware of their profound ideological weakness, even compared to the semi-educated philistines of the rest of the left. Bluntly, the average member would be easy meat for the cadre of other groups - organisational survival demands a degree of isolation. * Fiefs. The lack of CPB political coherence dictates that internal relations are highly personalised and parochial. The sect is a patchwork of petty fiefdoms, overlorded by the squabbling political nobles. (Thus, Wales - where Robert Griffiths rules - voted almost as a bloc for the Respect turn. Scotland - led by John Foster - did the exact opposite). * Safety first. The Respect project was seen as high risk and unstable: indeed a number of the delegates attending the 2004 special congress - including the veteran Monty Goldman - told our paper-sellers that the intervention of the Weekly Worker had been an important influence in negatively shaping their view of the coalition. (Of course, we told them they should get involved anyway). Conservative stalwarts such as Anita Halpin also skilfully manipulated the organic terror of such elements against bold moves, writing that a short-lived Respect would be at best "a diversion", a longer lasting version positively "dangerous" (Morning Star January 12 2004). * Programmatic inertia. The CPB was actually founded in 1988 on the basis of a defence of the BRS against further encroachments by the right wing of the CPGB as was, particularly the Eurocommunists. At the very core of this document's strategic vision for achieving socialism is loyalty to Labour, a tradition the programmes of the CPGB under its opportunist leaderships enshrined all the way back to 1943. We were clear that the politically flimsy nature of this platform dictated that the 'party unity' achieved last January would be a highly unstable, temporary equilibrium between irreconcilable political trends. When Griffiths offered his resignation in the first executive after his humiliating congress defeat, this leading committee expressed its "full confidence" in him and unanimously voted the man back into post. Farcically, rather than the cementing of party unity, this was actually an expression of the fact that there was no figure from the party majority - certainly not the one serious candidate, John Foster - who was actually prepared to do the job. It seems that a lukewarm attitude to the CPB is not the exclusive preserve of the innovators. The nature of the looming trouble was revealed in the contemptuous manner that pro-Respect editor Haylett treated the 2004 congress in the pages of the Morning Star - it rated only the most perfunctory of mentions in a report of the CPB's executive committee meeting. And as we pondered at the time, "looming over this insultingly short item was a generously large photo of George Galloway "¦ Coincidence?" (Weekly Worker January 22 2004). Clearly, it was nothing of the sort, given what we have seen since, both in the pages of the Star and in the political behaviour of particular innovators. There has been the politically damaging split in the ranks over the collaborationist role of the Iraqi Communist Party as - despite the votes of CPB congresses, even in the face of angry protests from the Iraqi Communist Party itself - the Morning Star has essentially peddled a variant of the SWP/Respect line of 'troops out now'. For instance, in the lead-up to the Iraq elections, a front page of the Morning Star penned by Louise Nousratpour uncritically reproduced a denunciation of the poll as a "cruel farce" by Labour left MP Alice Mahon. Hussein al-Alak of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign - who called for a boycott of the elections - was also favourably quoted. He said that "if the US is funding the elections and the Iraq opposition groups, people should ask: what will the US want changing in the Iraqi constitution after the elections?" (Morning Star January 22 2005). And just in case no one had got the message, this lead article that day ended with a quote from "Respect MP George Galloway", who stated unequivocally that "the elections are rigged" and thus "will only make matters worse". Of course, the ICP - the CPB's fraternal party - enthusiastically took part and gave legitimacy to this "cruel farce" of an election that would "only make matters worse". For many in the CPB - trained in the school of diplomatic internationalism that stipulates no criticism of the domestic politics of any fraternal organisation (in the name of the spurious principle of "non-interference in the internal affairs" of other communist parties) - this must read like treachery. There had already been an angry exchange in the paper last year with correspondents such as John Cox denouncing "armchair ultra-left pundits in Britain" who had used the pages of the Star to criticise the ICP's participation in the interim government and its attitude to armed resistance to the occupation of the country (Morning Star December 24 2004). Indeed, the ICP waded in with an interview in the paper. Its spokesperson expressed his "[annoyance] with criticism of his party's strategy from within Britain" (Morning Star December 11 2004). The latest expression of division came at the recent STWC conference. As STWC executive member and Green party rep Paul Ingram reported in last week's paper, the draft motion on the forthcoming general election originally proposed by the coalition's officers - including comrade Murray - would have committed the coalition to urge people to vote exclusively for candidates who did not support the war, who did not back the occupation. Clearly, this runs counter to the stated position of Murray's organisation (or rather, his current organisation), the CPB. The leadership of the CPB recently reaffirmed its call for a Labour vote in the vast majority of constituencies, with the small caveat that the organisation would not "call for support for those members of the war cabinet most closely associated with the brutal, unprovoked attack on the sovereign people of Iraq" - namely, "prime minister Tony Blair, deputy prime minister John Prescott, chancellor Gordon Brown, foreign secretary Jack Straw, defence secretary Geoff Hoon, former home secretary David Blunkett and cabinet pro-war spokesman John Reid" (Morning Star January 17). In other words, the CPB would be calling for an unconditional vote (ie, without consideration for the candidate's attitude to the war) for the rest of the "war cabinet" - and every other Labour candidate (apart from the handful of constituencies where it will be standing itself). Clearly, comrade Murray and his co-thinkers are beginning to find the restrictions of such 'party lines' increasingly irksome. The comrade spoke in favour of the STWC officers line at the February 12 executive of the coalition before the annual meeting, but was pressurised to change his mind subsequently and spoke strongly against the position - that had just recently been his own - of advocating support to candidates conditional on their attitude to the war and the occupation. Of course, in this he was in solidarity with his Socialist Workers Party co-thinkers - who had also been leant on by sections of the pro-Labour trade union bureaucracy affiliated to the STWC to soften its position on the forthcoming general election. Indeed, why this comrade feels his career lies outside the SWP at all is a matter of some bemusement to many of his fellow members of the CPB. Would such a shift be impossible? Not at all, even for such an unrepentant (though understandably unforthcoming) Stalinite as Murray. We have already witnessed the rather odd spectacle of Nick Wright - another man with a history of viewing the murderous regime of Stalin as the pinnacle of socialist achievement - author an article in a 2003 issue of Communist Review (the very occasional CPB journal) that told us that it was time to move on from the Trotsky-Stalin division on the left. The collapse of the USSR had rendered this schism effectively obsolete. (Note - he did not repudiate the side he had supported historically). In short, how could the 'Trots' be "counterrevolutionary" these days when there was no USSR to ferment counterrevolution against any more? And, given the positive role played by the SWP in the STWC (an assessment that should make any self-respecting SWPer cringe, given its source), it was time to put old divisions behind us, he generously suggested. In an odd, very historically specific manner, it is possible to see in the likes of Murray and Wright the playing out of the political logic of one strand within the old pro-Soviet centrists who once politically dominated the 'official' CPGB. What attracted many of these comrades was never political principle or the genuine communist conviction that the liberation of the working class was the task of the working class itself. No, these comrades worshiped power. That power could take the form of the Soviet army, the trade union bureaucracy or the Labour Party. Only the substitutionist method remained a constant and was codified in every single edition of the opportunist British road to socialism programme from its very first in 1951. In today's post-USSR world, with a domestic political scene dominated by a qualitatively weakened trade union movement and a deLabourised Labour party, some of these elements display a near farcical disorientation. The SWP and its tawdry political schemes such as Respect, appear to have displaced the USSR in the vacuum at the core of these comrades' world-view where the revolutionary working class should be. Quite how much longer such a deeply compromised political amalgam as the CPB can now hold together is moot and - in the larger scheme of things - utterly irrelevant. The only positive contribution it can now make to the workers' movement is to reveal - through a study of the pathology of its crisis and death - how the drawn out programmatic crisis of the revolutionary movement in the 20th century should be positively addressed.