02.03.1995

Socialist unity

Extracts from a resolution of the British Socialist Party executive, published in its weekly paper, The Call, March 4 1920

THE EXECUTIVE Committee of the BSP adhere to the views their delegates have expressed as to the relations of the Communist Party to the Labour Party and the industrial organisation of the working class. Nevertheless they feel that this question, important though it is, is secondary to the need for uniting in one Communist Party all those organisations in this country that adhere to the Third International, and accept the Soviet system, and the dictatorship of the working class. For this reason they are prepared to make a further concession in order to carry the negotiations with other bodies to a successful issue, and express their willingness to withdraw that clause in the original unity recommendations referring to a referendum three months after the formation of the Communist Party on the question of relations with the Labour Party.

This offer of the BSP executive is, of course, made without prejudice to their freedom inside the Communist Party to advocate affiliation to the Labour Party, and to submit a full statement of their view on this question to the central executive committee of the Third Inter-national at Petrograd.