WeeklyWorker

16.12.2010

The trouble with Browder

Lawrence Parker continues his exploration of the CPGB's inner-party life following World War II

In the first part of this article I began to trace the political contours of the widespread rebellion around the Communist Party of Great Britain’s November 1945 congress, putting this in the context of a section of the party having been traumatised by its experiences during World War II and the leadership’s gallop to the right. In particular, I looked at the opposition around the issues of dilution from mass recruitment, a lack of inner-party democracy and the difficulties of enforcing a ‘no-strike’ policy during and immediately after the war.[1]

In this second instalment, I want to look at the dissent around the CPGB’s attitude to the 1945 Labour government, its March 1945 call for a continuation of the wartime coalition and the question of ‘Browderism’, before moving on to a broader analysis of the post-war opposition.

One issue that was briefly aired in the first part was that of ‘tailism’. Contributions to the congress debate placed this error in the context of the CPGB’s passive attitude to the 1945 Labour government and its reactionary foreign policy.[2] FM (Frank) Roy of Welwyn Garden City wrote in the CPGB weekly, World News and Views: “Regarding the attitude of the party towards the Labour government, I feel we have been failing to give real leadership ... How is it that [Ernest] Bevin [Labour foreign secretary] is getting away with a policy that is 100% reactionary?”[3] Bob Liddell of Leith branch said of the CPGB that “after the thing happens, we start roaring and trying to do something, once again trailing behind instead of leading”. He added: “This ‘watchdog’ attitude is not one that befits a Marxist party, and not one that will arouse and inspire our members to build a mass party so essential in the bringing about of a socialist Britain.”[4] Bob McIlhone wrote: “... both general support for a Labour government and the fight for unity must be conducted in a revolutionary manner, not an opportunist manner.” He added: “It is necessary to raise this most sharply, because this failure to criticise Bevin in an objective fashion is also reflected in the most dangerous tendency to minimise the real differences which exist between social democracy and the position of the Communist Party.”[5]

There was a whole slew of branch resolutions to the 1945 congress that were critical of the CPGB’s attitude to the Labour government, alongside, in some, a generally supportive tone in regard to progressive measures being undertaken by that administration. A Paddington borough aggregate was “of the opinion that the Communist Party should take a vigorous lead in exposing the weaknesses of the Labour government. At the same time we should in no way slacken in our support of the Labour government and should make every effort to assist the government in carrying through progressive legislation”.[6] Cheltenham branch was “concerned at the lack of clarity as to the role of the party in the period ahead, particularly in relation to the Labour government ... we feel there is a tendency to tail behind the workers and the Labour government, a tendency to await developments.”[7] Salisbury branch said: “The party will neither further the unity of the working class, strengthen the Labour government, nor further the cause of socialism by allowing the name, prestige, members and policy of the party to become subservient to the immediate tactical interests of any one sect or section of the Labour movement.”[8]

The CPGB’s inability to tackle the imperialist foreign policy of the government was also addressed in a number of resolutions. Wimbledon branch proposed: “Congress declares the need for the party to adopt a more constructively critical position on the foreign policy of the Labour government, so as to strengthen democratic forces all over the world.”[9] Chippenham branch proposed: “This congress condemns the foreign policy of the Labour government, and is of the opinion that the Communist Party should take a strong line in its indictment and agitate for a policy to break up reactionary designs for a western bloc and the suppression of democracy in Europe and the east.”[10] There were many other resolutions confronting the need to condemn and fight against the Labour government’s foreign policy.[11]

Not big enough

The thrust of general secretary Harry Pollitt’s reply to the many critics was that the CPGB was simply not big enough to force any of these issues: “Nobody would be happier than I if I thought the influence of this party was as great as McIlhone makes it out to be. But I refuse to deduce wrong policies as a result of a wrong estimation of the forces going to carry the policies through.”[12] Pollitt, blithely ignoring the issue of ‘tailism’, commented that the British working class was not disillusioned with the Labour government, thus implying the CPGB’s supine attitude was correct. “Look at the by-elections taking place. Are they revealing a disillusionment with the Labour government on home and foreign policy? Of course they are not. The political instinct of the masses is too sound.”[13] And, in a judgement that history has unfortunately stamped on in relation to the 1945 Labour government, Pollitt said: “Everything is not black in the realm of foreign affairs, despite what Bevin is attempting to do, because there are bigger things in England and other countries than Ernest Bevin.”[14]

Of course, there is a certain irony around the likes of Pollitt becoming such loyal sergeants of the Labour Party. The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain writes: “The Communist Party’s impressive campaigning in the factories, localities and labour movement inspired masses of workers with the conviction that the war could be won, the reactionaries decisively weakened and a Labour government elected to bring about great changes after the war.”[15] In fact, to the consternation of many of the CPGB’s rank and file, in March 1945 the executive committee had called for a continuation of the wartime coalition into peacetime, not for a Labour government. In the middle of a huge upswing of support for Labour, one critic, G Clark, talked of the “energy that was spent persuading many sceptical branches of the need for a post-election national coalition” and that, when “it was realised that this was incorrect, one had an odd sensation of being led to the left by the Labour Party”.[16]

Opposition was also heard in branch resolutions. Portsmouth proposed: “That this congress considers that the results of the [1945] general election showed that our party underestimated the deep political change among the people.”[17] Hyde Park branch (London) proposed: “That this congress views with grave concern the mistake in policy of the EC on the question of including Conservatives in a Labour government. It asks that in future greater care be given to the consideration of such important questions of policy. It also strongly disapproves of the undemocratic manner in which branches were stampeded into hasty acceptance of this policy.”[18] Cambridge branch said that the “party has not cleared up its attitude to the question of national unity after the war and the role of the so-called progressive Tories”.[19]

Given that Pollitt was now posing as someone very much ‘for’ the Labour government, it is perhaps unsurprising that this ‘error’ on the CPGB’s part was conceded, being related to “the point legitimately made about ears being closer to the ground”. He added: “I believe we failed to grasp this fact: that in the course of this war ... the working class, the professional and middle classes ... were thinking, in our lifetime capitalism has only brought us poverty and unemployment, and now it has brought us this war. And on the other hand, they were thinking also of the miracles being performed by a socialist country through its Red Army ... That was what caused a basic political mental change in the outlook of millions and led them to take that historical initiative of which we had not taken due cognisance.”[20]

Some of the comrades opposing the leadership’s initial take on continuing the wartime coalition broadened out their criticisms to take on the theoretical reasons why this had happened. Merlyn Morgan of Abertillery wrote that the CPGB’s errors over the ‘national unity’ issue - ie, reliance on progressive Tories and an underestimation of the contradictions of capitalism - “were not accidental, nor merely tactical: they sprang from what I can only describe as opportunism”.[21] Others were quick to locate the root of this opportunism in the diplomatic shifts of World War II. The Yalta conference (sometimes called the Crimea conference) of the Allied side of February 1945 produced a communiqué that Pollitt, speaking to the CPGB’s executive committee, hailed in the following terms: “Here you have got a categorical statement ... a formulation hitherto only found in Marxist literature ... in which the greatest perspective ever given to world humanity stands before you - the abolition of the causes of the war.”[22]

It was this idealistic drivel that the CPGB warmed over for its proposal that the wartime coalition should be continued into peacetime and that the labour movement could rely on the ‘progressive’ wing of the capitalist class. The Soviet Union was, of course, at this stage in the game looking to maintain its cordial relations with Britain and the US as long as possible after the end of World War II, in order to maximise its national and strategic advantages.

The CPGB’s ‘error’ over ‘national unity’ was cut from the same cloth (however, none of the leadership’s critics openly pinned their critique on the Soviet Union). Bessie Leith, writing for Marylebone branch (London), said: “There has been a tendency to over-simplification in analysing the social forces both in Britain and internationally, which led to too much reliance on the progressive role of the ‘far-sighted elements of the capitalist class’.”[23] Bob McIlhone said: “... Crimea did not mean, as was plainly stated in communist literature, a historic reconciliation between the capitalist world and the socialist world.”[24] In an earlier contribution, criticising a CPGB educational document that suggested collaboration with the capitalist class provided excellent conditions for an advance to socialism, McIlhone argued: “This is not a new ‘theory’ of the working class advance to socialism. It is the old reformist idea dressed up in some new words. What has become of the working class, the only consistently revolutionary class, the only class capable of rallying round itself all the progressive democratic forces against the imperialists, against monopoly capitalism, which has no wish to cooperate with socialism, but only to destroy socialism and its distributing influences in the capitalist countries?”[25]

Notorious revision

The CPGB’s leadership encountered particularly bitter resistance from oppositionists about its perceived lackadaisical attitude to general secretary Earl Browder’s liquidation of the Communist Party USA in 1944 in favour of the looser Communist Political Association - a move based on Browder’s expectation (thoroughly in line with that of Pollitt) that the wartime coalition with ‘progressive’ capitalists would usher in an extended period of social peace and prosperity. Despite the roots of such naive politics in popular frontism, this was jumping the gun somewhat and the leadership of the ‘official communist’ movement, while it might have been prepared to liquidate the empty shell of the Comintern in 1943, was not yet prepared to cash in its bargaining chips in the form of various national communist organisations, some of which were millions strong (an astute move, with the cold war in the offing). Thus, Jacques Duclos of the French Communist Party was entrusted with the literary task of stamping on this trend before it had a chance to fully gestate in April 1945. Duclos argued: “Despite declarations regarding recognition of the principles of Marxism, one is witnessing a notorious revision of Marxism on the part of Browder and his supporters, a revision which is expressed in the concept of a long-term class peace in the United States, of the possibility of the suppression of the class struggle in the post-war period and of establishment of harmony between labour and capital.”[26] This was clearly emboldening for critics of such politics inside the CPGB.

S Beechey (London) claimed that there had originally been an “acceptance without question of the rightness of Browder’s policy in the USA. Nowhere, except from isolated comrades of the rank and file, was there any doubt expressed ...”.[27] J Sutherland said: “When Browder was leading the American [sic] party astray, what was our attitude? We were for some time left without a lead (even without a report) until finally the Daily Worker printed an article defending and explaining Browder’s line as being correct - at least in American conditions. In view of this, it is not perhaps so surprising that tendencies of liquidationism also found some expression in the [CPGB].”[28]

And this is where the opposition sought to push home its advantage: by pointing to similarities in political outlook. Bob McIlhone argued: “Both Pollitt and Browder produced variations on the same theme: the progressive character of the capitalists who signed or supported Tehran and Crimea both at that time and in the period ahead.”[29] He added: “It can no longer be denied that Browder’s dissolution of the American Communist Party [sic] has been reflected in Britain by these serious retreats from the basic positions of a Leninist party. Thus the tendencies for the party to lose its separate identity, to become little more than a ginger group in the labour movement.”[30]

A number of branch resolutions took up what they saw as the CPGB leadership’s tardiness in dealing with the Browder issue. Wimbledon branch proposed: “This congress regrets the failure of the executive committee to give clear and correct political leadership to the party on the serious political errors that led temporarily to the liquidation of the American Communist Party ...”[31] Cambridge branch proposed: “This national congress cannot accept the executive committee’s explanation of its attitude to Browderism ... when it first appeared ... If [the CPGB] saw the nature of the Browder tendency from the beginning (we do not recall any hints that we did see this) by failing to draw the attention of our American comrades to our views, our party must now bear some of the responsibilities for this mistake.”[32]

Pollitt was not convincing in his reply to critics at the congress. He boldly asserted, despite the facts to the contrary, that the US “comrades were in profound disagreement with the policy of our party”, claiming that a book by Browder had been refused publication in Britain by the CPGB. In dealing with the tardiness of the CPGB’s response, Pollitt implied that his party did not have enough authority in the ‘official communist’ movement: “... it may well be that the party with a million members [ie, like the French Communist Party] will have its views listened to with more respect than a party of 50,000.” Unfortunately, Pollitt did rather let the cat out of the bag with his final riposte on this issue: “And finally, to those of you who are so worried about this problem, I must draw your attention to the fact that I have not yet seen any criticism of the Browder policy in any of the theoretical organs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - not an unimportant party of the world!”[33] This would imply that Browder’s policy, and by implication that of Pollitt, who had unquestionably drunk from the same poisoned well, were still acceptable, despite the Duclos article, which the CPGB had formally accepted.

Aftermath

None of the opposition resolutions were successful at the congress. A document issued by the CPGB’s propaganda department was able to boast: “A number of composite amendments, expressing [oppositional] views were put to the vote and decisively defeated.”[34]

This is hardly surprising, given that the congress was a controlled affair - albeit this time the leadership thought it prudent to allow a frank debate to act as a safety valve (the chimera of ‘winning the congress’ was largely touted by later half-hearted oppositionists from the 1960s onwards). Judging by the fact that the opposition of autumn 1945 appeared to dissipate, this tactic appears to have paid off. Thus, opposition at the 1947 congress was more narrowly focused on the Hertford and Welwyn Garden City branches, which retained the earlier critiques of Browderism and subservience to the Labour government alongside an argument for a more strident revolutionary policy.[35]

There are a number of other factors that could explain this defeat. First, while the critique had a clear structure (ie, the question of opportunism) across individual and branch contributions, and despite the fact that we can see a fairly wide geographical spread of members and branches involved, we are not talking about a hard factional centre or anything like it. Rather what we are seeing here is the beginning of a rebellion that never came to full fruition. Opposition was generally pinched into pre-congress discussion periods and combining horizontally with those in other party organisations around a particular idea or issue was emphatically banned, which left a fairly free reign for the leadership faction, with its monopoly on inner-party communication. For example, the oppositionists working in Hertford after the war were unaware of a similar grouping with almost identical views of the CPGB’s post-war line around Edward and Hilda Upward in Camberwell, south London.

Another factor that in all probability put the brakes on the opposition was the opening of the cold war and the foundation of the Cominform in 1947. As Britain was in alliance with the US, this meant that the CPGB leadership was reluctantly yanked to the left, away from its ‘comradely’ subservience to the Labour government and its ‘no strike’ policy. Much of the reactionary ‘winning the peace by working with the progressive capitalists’ and nationalist ‘produce or perish’ nonsense disappeared, although, ironically, nothing much changed strategically. By 1951 the CPGB was to have its new British road to socialism (BRS) programme that, under the tutelage of no less than Stalin, committed the CPGB to a parliamentary road to socialism as the junior partner of a future left Labour government. The opportunism that had been highlighted by the 1945 opposition - namely, tailism and reducing the organisation to the status of a ‘ginger group’ (ie, British Browderism) - was enshrined programmatically.

Looking back on the arguments voiced against the CPGB leadership in 1945, no-one had been critical of cross-class popular frontism, the international politics of the Soviet Union and the wartime alliance with British imperialism. All of the consequences of these factors were thoroughly debunked, but it seems amazing to me (as someone who was schooled in such matters by Trotskyism, although I have not called myself a Trotskyist for many years) that the root source of the CPGB’s opportunist errors in this period went unchallenged and apparently unnoticed. It is crystal clear that Browderism and its British version under Pollitt was essentially the politics of the popular front, as practised in alliance with British and US imperialism during World War II, elaborated into a berserk opportunist strategy for ‘winning the peace’ (albeit a strategy that a more savvy Soviet leadership was not prepared to fully commit to).

However, there were strong factors militating against this line of reasoning. Most oppositional figures of this period mistakenly believed in the revolutionary credentials of Stalin and the Soviet Union, as against the practice of the CPGB.

Eric Heffer said: “Looking back on our challenge to the CP, we were completely blind to the realities of Stalin and the Soviet Union. We thought that if only Stalin knew what was going on in the British CP he would be on our side. It was seriously suggested at one point that we should send someone over to tell him about our situation.”[36] This naive standpoint hobbled pro-Soviet oppositionists down the years, particularly when John Gollan, Pollitt’s successor as general secretary, unveiled Stalin’s role in the drafting of the BRS in 1964.[37]

The use of Stalin and the Soviet Union as a political comfort blanket had particularly disastrous consequences in 1956, the CPGB’s year of crisis, when many principled elements who still thought of themselves as revolutionary Marxists were sucked into sectarian oblivion by the doubtful charms of Gerry Healy. An opposition movement with some kind of realistic handle on the degeneration of the Soviet Union would have surely been able to prevent this.

To be classed as a ‘Trotskyite’ would, of course, have been an incredibly damaging label for one CPGB member to give to another, not least because the party had disgracefully spent the war equating Trotskyism with fascism. All sections of the CPGB believed (contrary to the truth of a rapidly imploding ‘Fourth International’ in the immediate post-war period[38]) that to be a Trotskyist was to put oneself in a staunch anti-Soviet position. “I need only point out that all Trotskyites without exception are opposed to Stalin and to the Soviet government ...”, as one semi-fictional CPGB oppositionist put it.[39]

Critical sections of the party had obviously been on the receiving end of the ‘Trotskyite’ label. One resolution from a Lambeth borough aggregate to the 1945 congress defensively proposed: “If the word ‘Trotskyite’ [is] used to describe any party member, a full branch meeting [should] be held without any delay to thrash out the matter.”[40] Not wanting to be labelled in such a manner was probably a contributory factor inhibiting the development of a critique of Stalin and the Soviet Union in relation to the opportunist politics of the CPGB during this period.

Clearly, the idea that the CPGB was barren territory for the development of opposition and principled Marxists is absolute nonsense. There were particular factors in the ideological structure of the CPGB that made it highly likely that such oppositions would appear. In the post-war era the influence of comrades who had been through the ‘third period’ (1928-35) was still percolating through the party. According to one opponent, “They had joined the party when it was still preaching class struggle and revolution ... they had been taught that there was an irreconcilable clash of interests between the capitalist and working classes, that parliamentary democracy was a sham and that the ruling class could only be overthrown by revolutionary means.”[41] Little wonder, then, that such comrades found the wartime politics of the CPGB incredibly difficult to stomach, particularly when the close of the conflict brought no end to the leadership’s gallop rightwards.

It is also worth noting the rather peculiar ideological foundation that the CPGB rested on. Even in the post-war period, when the organisation had practically junked much of its revolutionary inheritance, it rarely disposed of these ideas in a formalised manner. “Most of the old doctrinal [ie, revolutionary] baggage continued to coexist with the party’s declared commitment to a parliamentary reformism ...”, as John Callaghan puts it.[42] For example, the CPGB’s 1948 educational syllabus on ‘The state and democracy’ offers a reformist position on such issues, with Lenin’s somewhat-less-than-opportunist State and revolution posed as the ideological cement to hold this ramshackle edifice together.[43]

It is not difficult to see how this practice prepared the ground for the growth of rebellion. CPGB members were being asked to read texts that were in direct contradiction to the opportunist conclusions being drawn.[44] When such factors ran up against the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s, when the Chinese sought to undermine the revolutionary credentials of the Soviet Union, this ideological constellation would go on to produce more fruit. But that, as they say, is another story l

Notes

  1. ‘Their finest hour?’ Weekly Worker December 9.
  2. In October 1944 Labour had supported intervention against the Greek communist resistance and the new government was committed to the retention of Britain’s imperial power, which meant that it encountered resistance from sections of the parliamentary Labour Party and the trade unions.
  3. World News and Views Vol 25, No45, November 17 1945.
  4. Ibid - original emphasis unless stated.
  5. World News and Views Vol 25, No44, November 10 1945.
  6. Branch resolutions CP/CENT/CONG/05/01.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Ibid. These included resolutions from the following branches: Aston, Banstead, Billingham, Blackburn, Bristol Central, Carlisle, Lincoln, Roydon and Uxbridge. Daily Worker editor Bill Rust sided with these critics at the congress, calling for Bevin’s removal from office, possibly because of his rivalry with Pollitt. See K Morgan Harry Pollitt London 1993, pp148-51.
  12. ‘Reply to discussion by Harry Pollitt’: CP/CENT/CONG/05/02.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Ibid.
  15. communist-party.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=263:1936-qthey-shall-not-passq-&catid=13:short-history-of-the-communist-party-&Itemid=26
  16. World News and Views Vol 25, No42, October 27 1945.
  17. Branch resolutions CP/CENT/CONG/05/01.
  18. Ibid.
  19. Ibid.
  20. ‘Reply to discussion by Harry Pollitt’: CP/CENT/CONG/05/02.
  21. World News and Views Vol 25, No44, November 10 1945.
  22. Cited in K Morgan op cit p140.
  23. World News and Views Vol 25, No41, October 20 1945.
  24. World News and Views Vol 25, No44, November 10 1945.
  25. World News and Views Vol 25, No43, November 3 1945.
  26. J Duclos, ‘On the dissolution of the Communist Party of the United States’: www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1945/04/0400-duclos-ondissolution.pdf. The Communist Party USA was re-established in 1945 under the leadership of William Z Foster.
  27. World News and Views Vol 25, No43, November 3 1945.
  28. World News and Views Vol 25, No44, November 10 1945.
  29. Ibid.
  30. Ibid.
  31. Branch resolutions: CP/CENT/CONG/05/01.
  32. Ibid.
  33. ‘Reply to discussion by Harry Pollitt’: CP/CENT/CONG/05/02.
  34. CPGB propaganda department, ‘The 18th national congress: guide for reporting back’: CP/CENT/CONG/05/02.
  35. See CP/CENT/CONG/05/06 for the resolutions. This was the oppositional grouping around Frank Roy and Eric Heffer.
  36. E Heffer Never a yes man: the life and politics of an adopted Liverpudlian London 1991, p38. See E Upward The rotten elements London 1979, p183, for similar illusions in Stalin.
  37. See L Parker The kick inside: revolutionary opposition in the CPGB, 1960-1991 London 2007, pp47-48. Gollan’s view was finally confirmed by the unearthing of the correspondence between Stalin and Pollitt over the drafting of the BRS - see L Parker, ‘In the middle of the “road”’ Weekly Worker March 6 2008.
  38. See S Bornstein and A Richardson War and the international: a history of the Trotskyist movement in Britain 1937-1949 London 1986, pp160-237. The British Trotskyist movement was grappling in microcosm with the same issues involved in the degeneration of the CPGB: namely, its relationship to social democracy, adaptations to the ‘official communists’ and the liquidation of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1949.
  39. E Upward op cit p87.
  40. Branch resolutions: CP/CENT/CONG/05/01.
  41. H Ratner, ‘Remembering 1956’ Revolutionary History Vol 9, No3, p210.
  42. J Callaghan Cold war, crisis and conflict: the CPGB 1951-68 London 2003, p293.
  43. CPGB Marxism: an introductory course in five parts course 3 - The state and democracy June 1948: www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/pamphlets/1946/ch03.htm
  44. See L Parker op cit pp6-7.