06.06.2007

'British road' dead end

Lawrence Parker reports from the AGM of the People's Press Printing Society (the body that owns and produces the Morning Star) on June 4

At the London leg of the People's Press Printing Society (the body that owns and produces the Morning Star) AGM on June 4, Anita Halpin of the Communist Party of Britain attempted to raise the morale of the assembled OAPs: "Are we downhearted, comrades?" A lacklustre "no" echoed briefly around the room. Most of the attendees (around 50-60 in total) stayed silent.

The inability of John McDonnell to get on the ballot paper for the Labour leadership was a severe blow to the Morning Star's CPB, which had been desperately hoping that the trade unions would get behind a leftwing challenge to Gordon Brown. "Unions urged to back Brown rival," read the CPB's website on May 14. Such a result goes to the very heart of the CPB's British road to socialism, premised as it is on a left-led Labour Party legislating socialism into being with the friendly assistance of Halpin and company. But what if that left shows signs of disintegration?

Despite McDonnell's failure, however, the 'modernising' wing of the CPB around Morning Star editor John Haylett and Andrew Murray has clearly given up on the idea of engaging more closely with Respect, an organisation that has not made any sort of national breakthrough and is presently mired in a set of unappetising coalitions with British Asian businessmen and 'community leaders'. In an April 13 Morning Star editorial, Haylett had already congratulated the CPB for not standing a candidate in the 2008 London mayoral election and called on Respect not to split the anti-Tory vote by opposing Ken Livingstone. Haylett amplified this message in his political report to the London PPPS AGM: now was "not the time to set up a new party" and ventures such as the Socialist Party's Campaign for a New Workers' Party were merely a "diversion".

General secretary Robert Griffiths makes the same point in his June 4 article in the Star. As a result of the domination of the Blairites, he suggests the Labour Party no longer plays the role of a "mass party rooted in the working class, which enjoys the allegiance of millions". Which means: "The historic question facing working people and their families, trade unionists and socialists, therefore, is this. Are we to have a party of labour in Britain which stands for working class and progressive interests, however partially and imperfectly?"

The obvious answer for the CPB is 'yes', but, like comrade Haylett, Griffiths dismisses groups such as Respect and the Socialist Party's CNWP - "only the most sectarian leftist" will suggest that the "enormous vacuum" caused by the dominance of New Labour "is - or could be - filled by a socialist, communist or 'new workers' party of a few thousand activists".

So have the CPB 'modernisers' rejoined the 'traditionalist', pro-BRS camp? Not quite. Comrade Griffiths is somewhat coy as to whether this "mass party of labour" (note the lower case) is going to be different from the one currently headed by Tony Blair. On the one hand, "With the continuing involvement of thousands of socialists, the fight to reclaim the Labour Party for the labour movement will continue, however faint the prospect of success at the moment."

On the other hand, "At the same time, at least one big and several smaller militant unions are not affiliated to Labour, but see the need for political representation." So what is needed, then, is "an ongoing discussion about how to ensure the existence of a mass party of labour" (my emphasis).

Despite the ambiguity, there is enough here to keep the CPB traditionalists happy: they can now safely forget about the Trots and work alongside the trade unions to 'reclaim' their beloved Labour Party (Griffiths's piece was picked up very quickly by the staunchly pro-Labour CPB Scottish committee and put on its website as 'latest news' - www.scottishcommunists.org.uk/news/?page=article&story=43). Comrade Griffiths himself is looking to the major unions (ie, to those forces who have just refused CPB advice to back John McDonnell for the Labour leadership) to broker the re-emergence of this "mass party of labour".

On one level, it might seem odd that CPB 'modernisers' have moved decisively away from Respect at the moment when the Labour left is in such obvious disarray. But if the CPB had made a choice to run with Respect back at its special congress of 2004 (it voted against, by 60% to 40% - see Weekly Worker January 22 2004), then one suspects that it would have led to disintegration, as its auto-Labourite wing either crumbled into dust or was mopped up by the likes of the Labour Representation Committee, New Communist Party and Marxist Forum.

By and large, the CPB is an organisation that looks to the past to sanction its present. PPPS AGMs are always full of fond talk of buying your first Daily Worker and references to the 'official' CPGB (this year, with an overwhelming majority of the audience in the upper age brackets, was no exception). But working with Respect is not sanctified by the past, whereas the BRS, inherited from the halcyon days of Pollitt and Gollan, most definitely is.

The problem is that McDonnell's failure throws doubt upon the Labour left's medium-term role in the Labour Party, never mind its ability to lead workers along a national road to socialism. Neither are the unions about to seriously challenge Gordon Brown - let alone even contemplate attempting to launch a Labour Party mark two.

All of which leaves the CPB at a programmatic dead end. Clearly the traditional nostrums of the BRS - underpinned as it is by a reliance on the trade unions, and ultimately the Labour Party, to do the work of communists - will not solve the CPB crisis or provide an escape from its moribund existence.

The only other vaguely interesting part of a generally dull London AGM was a motion that urged the Morning Star "to dissent in future to continue to refer to the CPB as the CP - it is not. No such organisation exists" (my emphasis). This resolution was hysterically introduced by Max McLennan, a supporter of the irrelevant and semi-defunct Communist Party of Scotland. Nevertheless, it did provoke a relatively close vote (which will be aggregated with the votes of other AGMs in Glasgow, Leeds and Cardiff) with eight voting for, 25 against, but 17 abstentions.

Tony Briscoe, secretary and treasurer of the PPPS, pointed out before the vote that the meeting had already approved the report of the management committee, which said that it was the BRS, "the programme of the Communist Party of Britain", which "informs the editorial stance of the Morning Star". It would have thus been slightly bizarre if the meeting had chosen to then constrain what Haylett called a "political relationship" between the CPB and the paper.

In other words, the Star is factional property. Despite much-touted hopes of future trade union involvement, the paper is tied to the CPB, for better or worse - and till death do us part.