WeeklyWorker

20.01.2011

Wedded to left reformists

Chris Strafford argues that nothing positive can be learnt from the National Left Wing Movement and the Communist Party's intervention in the Labour Party in the 1920s

Labour Party work and communist intervention and affiliation has been a central theme of recent debates at CPGB aggregates and within Communist Students. In this article I will look through the history of the early CPGB with specific focus on leftwing organisation within the Labour Party, as this forms the historical basis of the approach of Jack Conrad and others to Labour work for communists today and in the future. They have attempted to build a strategy on an understanding of the early CPGB that is flawed and is removed from the experiences and realities of the period.

It was only after pressure from Lenin and the Comintern that the CPGB was won to seek affiliation and take up work in the Labour Party. The world war and the shift of working class support from the Liberals to Labour created the conditions for massive growth in the Labour Party. In 1924 Labour won almost five and a half million votes, compared with the half a million it received in 1920. The growth of the Labour Party, coupled with its peculiar structures, where revolutionaries had freedom of action and criticism, opened up a key space for struggle by communists. This did not mean that the Comintern was rejecting the organisational split between reformism and revolution. It also rejected the idea that the Labour Party could be transformed for revolutionary ends. The affiliation tactic was based on an optimistic belief that exposing the reformists by struggling against them within Labour could be a way to build a mass party around the numerically weak revolutionary core represented by the CPGB.

With its fulsome embrace of the market, privatisation and the bureaucratic domination of the rightwing bureaucracy, the Labour Party of 2011 is a world away from the 1920s party. This has been the trajectory of this bourgeois workers’ party over the last 80 years. Yet the stranglehold of the right wing has not resulted in Labour being transformed into the third party of the bourgeoisie; it remains a bourgeois workers’ party. It remains so through its formal links with the common defence organisation of the working class, the trade unions, and through the belief held by millions of workers that the Labour Party is still their party. Understanding the lessons of communist intervention should not be considered abstract, as the Labour Party has proven time and time again that it can be resuscitated. With Labour now in opposition these lessons and this debate are important to all communists.

Organising the left

The National Left Wing Movement began life shortly after the 1925 Labour Party conference, but only became a serious organised force in January 1926. The NLWM took up the fight against the rightwing Labour leadership and gained vast support by tapping into the anger of workers against the betrayals of the Labour leaders. Amongst other things, it fought for the reversal of the bans against communists and for militant action against the reactionary blows the working class had been dealt since 1921.

The NLWM was organised under the direction of the CPGB and from 1924 produced The Sunday Worker. It projected the politics of the leftwing bureaucracy through the newspaper, which - like today’s Morning Star - was supposedly a non-party publication. Its “serious financial deficit was met by funds supplied by the Comintern - £4,000 in 1925 alone”.[1] The paper was edited by party member William Paul and later Walter Holmes and had a circulation of around 100,000. The Sunday Worker and movement were weakened by being politically wedded to the fake left leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions. It gave space to articles by Purcell, Cook and Lansbury, occasionally offering timid and opportunist criticism. This tailism of the left bureaucracy is a common feature amongst nearly all of the socialist groups left in the Labour Party and trade unions today; it is exemplified by the opportunist positioning of the offspring of the Militant Tendency, the Socialist Party, in the trade unions and Socialist Appeal within Labour.

Whilst Labour work for the CPGB in the early 1920s was sporadic and dependent on whether the branch was controlled by former British Socialist Party comrades or more critical members, communists played an integral part in Labour Party life throughout the period and beyond. This cannot simply be put down to the continuation of the BSP’s attitudes. It requires an appreciation that Labour was a mass party and, if communists are to win the masses, it necessarily means engaging with Labour on a serious basis.

The advice given to British communists by Lenin in the aftermath of the October revolution was half-heartedly enacted and the request to affiliate to the Labour Party was dismissed by the Labour leadership. The rejection was made easier by the polemical and vitriolic tone of the letter requesting affiliation. Though even with a toned-down request and a change of name, the Labour leaders would have rejected the affiliation of the Bolsheviks’ sister organisation. Nevertheless, many CPGB members remained not only within the Labour Party, but were chosen as candidates and elected openly as communists. It is necessary to stress how embedded communists were in the party and how much workers saw them as being part of the big Labour family. The union and Labour leaders’ anti-communist witch-hunts was answered by wide support to keep communists within the existing structures and to allow them to stand not only for trade union positions, but as parliamentary and council candidates.

Whilst money and resources were pumped into the left wing, the CPGB was not sold on its importance. At its 7th Congress in May-June 1925, the CPGB adopted a thesis which stated that “the ‘left wing’ groups are confused and without any definite programme beyond resentment at the policy of the right wing. Its unorganised, unformed character leaves the leading spokesmen of the left in the power of the right wing, who advance them or push them into the background according to the exigencies of the situation, while maintaining control of the whole apparatus of the Labour Party. The fears and political confusion of the left wing is seen in the futile attempts to create a grouping of the left forces which will provide a centre functioning as a barrier between the Labour Party and the Communist Party.”[2]

At the 1925 conference of the Labour Party in Liverpool, the left was once again beaten by the right wing. This prompted a more serious and uniform approach to Labour work. In January 1926, the CPGB executive passed a motion which called for solidarity and coordination between the leftwing groups, the Independent Labour Party and the CPGB within the party. The executive called on members to “redouble their efforts” and join with all non-communist workers in the Labour Party in building up “a great leftwing movement to fight for the policies of: (1) mobilising the workers around a socialist programme to overthrow the capitalist class; and (2) making the Labour Party safe for socialism instead of liberalism”.[3]

This period saw growth in communist support within the broad labour movement, which did not automatically result in the transformation of the young CPGB from a propaganda group into a mass party. The NLWM strategy did bring in members and support, but it was more of a trickle than a flood. The situation changed in 1926 with the rise of the strike movement, the defeat of the general strike and the isolation of the brave miners. The CPGB, numerically small and in a state of disarray, was not up to the task of bolstering the movement to retreat in good order or to build proper support for the miners. In response to this situation, the leadership of the CPGB looked to the left leaders within the Labour Party and the possibility of mobilising the support of the broad movement through the Labour left.

The NLWM move has to be understood in the context of retreat and disorder within the workers’ movement. The CPGB suffered greatly in the lead-up to the General Strike, as the government attempted to break up any potential revolutionary leadership: “Encouraged by the Liverpool conference with its formal exclusion of the communists from the Labour Party, and its recommendation to the trade unions not to elect communists as trade union delegates, it swooped down upon the Communist Party headquarters and imprisoned 12 of its executive members. Apparently the government was under no delusion as to the influence of the Communist Party, should an open struggle take place. To put the leaders out of the way seemed an essential precaution.”[4]

Internationally, the revolutionary wave had ebbed and a series of defeats were inflicted on the movements in central Asia and Europe, in addition to the defeat of the revolutionary wing at the 5th Congress of the Comintern in 1924. The Comintern falling under the tyranny of bureaucracy and counterrevolution led by Stalin and his allies. The disorder in the CPGB was a common feature of all communist parties and the wider movement internationally. This not only created fissures and splits, but also shifting political strategies which were nothing more than ill-thought-out political get-rich-quick schemes. A way out from the frustration of an isolated Russian Revolution committing suicide was sought by reorganising other national communist parties. The policy of Bolshevisation was adopted at the 5th Congress that replaced what was left of revolutionary dynamism of the Third International parties with bureaucratic uniformity.

Learning the lessons

The obvious lesson of the NLWM and the period of struggle before, during and after the General Strike is that it is dangerous to sow illusions in left leaders. Whilst the NLWM did bring together the most militant sections of the Labour Party, it failed to imbibe these workers with the politics necessary to deliver a death blow to the Labour right and the Labour Party itself. It did show that we can win workers from reformism through fighting the bosses and bureaucrats together. It also showed what happens when communists build up and place the movement in the hands of the leftwing bureaucrats. When it comes to the crunch, these left leaders will go cap in hand to Downing Street and surrender when there is even a glimpse of revolution. Some think that ousting the Labour right and democratising the Labour Party will be enough. If the history of the British working class and its struggles with and against the Labour Party teach us anything, it is that we must carry out an unremitting struggle against the right and left leaders.

If we are to overcome Labourism positively then we must have strategy that is not based on an opportunist approach and programme like the NLWM. If the Labour Party revives itself and there is a considerable militant wing, we should fight for it to stand on communist politics, not a dumbed-down version. A struggle in the image of the NLWM is not on the cards at this time and is undesirable. We need a fundamentally different approach. We need to take on Lenin’s advice when he insisted on the condition of “complete liberty” for working within Labour.

The key lesson is one of situation. We must base our strategy and tactics in reality. The struggle of the NLWM in the Labour Party was only possible because thousands of communists were members and hundreds of thousands saw communists as part of the movement that should be within Labour. There was also a militant movement of the class striking back against the reactionary wave and assaults it had endured since the beginning of the 1920s. Building such a movement that can withstand the pressures of censorship and reformism and overcome Labourism requires mass struggles outside the Labour Party and the existence of a unified communist party that does not make the mistakes the CPGB did in the 1920s and fights for its programme.

Notes

  1. H Pelling The British Communist Party: a historical profile London 1958, p40.
  2. J Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 2, London 1969, p258.
  3. Ibid p259.
  4. CPGB The reds and the General Strike: www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/pamphlets/1926/reds.htm