24.03.2011

Accountable to the party

At the first CPGB congress, delegates ranged from rank-and-file industrial militants to conscious, communist politicians

After an overwhelming 186-19 vote in support of the principle of parliamentary action, the delegates to the first congress of the CPGB, the Communist Unity Convention, reconvened to consider amendments.^[1] The first two were trivial and were voted down. The third provoked a debate around the key question of balance in the new organisation between centralism and local initiative and was of more interest, even though there was confusion on both sides of the argument.

In many ways, this and other discussions underlined that in 1920 these comrades had yet to fully internalise the lessons Bolshevism could teach (or, indeed, even be aware that these problems had been successfully addressed by the Russian comrades at all - much of the literature was still unavailable in English). For example, here is Lenin on the ticklish question of autonomy, in a polemic against the Bund: “The party as a whole, its central institutions, lay down the common fundamental principles of programme and tactics; as to the different methods of carrying out these principles in practice and agitating for them, they are laid down by the various party organisations subordinate to the centre.”^[2]

The fact that amongst the delegates were advocates of a form of federalism illustrates that many still operated more at the level of rank-and-file industrial militants - determined to guard local independence against a stifling central bureaucracy - rather than conscious, communist politicians.

J Hamilton Liverpool Communist Group) said he considered altering the words, “representatives of the party elected to parliament” [who were to be accountable to the party], to “members of the party contesting or elected to parliament” would help prevent careerism; and the introduction of the word “contesting” was important, because it made it explicit that the rule applied both before and after election. They had another amendment, to delete the words, “according to national or local circumstances”; because they considered this phrase would give an opportunity to evade the candidate’s being tied down by the resolution so far as tactics were concerned.

W Mellor opposed the amendment, and drew attention to what he considered a danger in the resolution as it stood. What was meant, he asked, by the phrase, “laid down by the party”? Did this refer to the party in delegate conference or to the executive? It seemed to him that the clause as drafted would lead to centralisation of the worst possible type, endangering local initiative and setting up a bureaucracy which future conferences would be always criticising.

The convention did not accept the idea that local circumstances did not count, or alternatively, that the people at head office understood all local circumstances. From the head office manifestos, leaflets, speakers, etc could go out for ever; but unless there was a response inside the localities all such efforts would be in vain. Neither the amendment nor the resolution as it stood safeguarded local life, local initiative, local control, and he asked the delegates to consider seriously whether the last two sentences of the resolution expressed what the convention wanted.

He thought the amendment should be rejected because of the deletion of the words “according to local or national circumstances”; but there was a more vital question before them than that. They were faced with the whole question of the relationship of the local groups of the Communist Party to the executive, and the resolution was giving the executive an awful amount of authority. He did not think it wise for the Communist Party at its birth to begin by bureaucratising its administration.

A MacManus, the chair, said that they were only deciding the tactical policy of the Communist Party for a few months. When the convention was finished, the first obvious duty of the executive would be to issue a call for resolutions that would be embodied in a draft constitution. That skeleton would be sent out to every member of the party in order to ascertain every point of view as to what the constitution of the party should be, and a later draft would be prepared for further examination and criticism.

AA Watts said he did not think the party could lay down to the local branches throughout the country all items of policy for their local conduct. The resolution meant that the comrade elected to a particular body would represent the party as against the electors, and that if he went from the policy of the party he should no longer be regarded as one of its members. Mellor had read into the resolution an entirely different meaning. A national party could not lay down all the things that were to guide the party throughout the country. The party locally must decide on local affairs, and nationally on national affairs, but its members would sit on public bodies as representing the party, not their constituents.

J Grierson (BSP Openshaw) supported the amendment. They could not have one thing in Essex and another in Northumberland, but must have a Communist Party with rigid discipline. In the British Socialist Party we had seen some branches supporting Labour candidates, while others opposed them, and on one occasion Hyndman^[3] had come down to Openshaw and supported a Labour candidate in preference to a BSP candidate run by the local branch. Such things would happen again if we were not careful.

H Webb said local autonomy would lead to confusion. In the north they would have half a dozen towns in close proximity to each other, but all pursuing different policies.

Mrs Kennedy (BSP Erith) said that if local autonomy was not allowed, more damage might be done to the Communist Party than otherwise.

Miss E Wilkinson^[4] (Manchester Guild Communist Group^[5]) said if we were going in for a revolutionary party we must have a general staff and be willing to obey it. After the revolution we could have local decentralisation. The present discussion was important, because if the convention was laying down the lines on which the Communist Party was to be formed, and if it was got into the heads of the people who were to draft the constitution that they were to go on the same old lines, we could not have a revolutionary party, much less a revolution. A revolution meant discipline and obedience. JE Thomas (Aberdare Communist Unity Group) said, on this point of rigid discipline, he would like to know how far the conference could tie the hands of a member of a trade union who was also a member of this party if he was run as a candidate.

FW Llewellyn (BSP, Plymouth) said he supported the amendment. He had been asked only last week to run as a Labour candidate for one of the wards in Plymouth, and had replied that he would only stand as a communist candidate. Members of a trade union who were also members of the Communist Party must stand by their communist principles. There was too much local autonomy now. Elections were fought on local questions, but we wanted to have them fought on the principles of the party, and our candidates must run on a common platform.

CL Gibbons (Ferndale Socialist Society) said that number one resolution had been carried unanimously, and the convention had thereby agreed to the soviet or workers’ council system. A part of that system was the right of local recall - not party recall.^[6] It was going too far in paternal government for the party to undertake to keep the representatives in order. If the man was not elected in a communist constituency there was no point in the party controlling him, because he would not get in unless he compromised.

T Bell said there was no contradiction in advocating the workers’ councils idea and determining the tactics that would be adopted once our representative was returned to the House of Commons. The soviet idea was our alternative to parliamentary institutions when we had achieved our revolution. We participated in local and parliamentary elections for agitational purposes.

Different localities varied from each other; in parliamentary constituencies situations were continually arising that called for particular tactics to be adopted, always with a view to fomenting our revolutionary agitation. In the past members of parliament had divorced themselves from the party that had sent them there. We wanted to ensure that our representatives on local and national bodies should keep in close contact with the Communist Party executive, and that the executive should have regard to the general situation, whether industrial or political, and should collaborate with those representatives upon the tactics that were to be adopted in order to achieve the best values as far as revolutionary agitation was concerned.

It seemed to him that the movers of the amendment had no case whatever. The Joint Committee would not quarrel about the words “members” and “representatives”. Where the resolution spoke of the “party” it meant the national executive, as appointed by the party in conference; provision would be made in the constitution to see that that executive was elected in a properly constituted and democratic manner.

W Mellor asked if there would be the same measure of control over local as over national representatives.

T Bell replied that all the localities did not have the same degree of civic and social development as each other. There were variations of development in municipalities and so forth, and these would very largely determine the policy and tactics that would be most efficient for our propaganda purposes. That was what the Joint Committee had in mind when they used the phrase, “according to local circumstances”.

W Saltmarsh (Cardiff Communist Unity Group) said it seemed to him wrong that the majority of the members took parliamentary and political action seriously. If they were to abide by what they had already decided they were going to treat it as a joke. He recognised that the greatest part of the value of the work would be the educational side of the constituency. If by chance a candidate was returned and took his seat, he would be sitting on rotten eggs and nothing would come of it.

The amendment was lost by 56 to 122.

J Fitton then moved to add to the resolution the words: “In the event of any representative violating the decisions of the party as embodied in the mandate which he or she has accepted or been instructed upon, he or she shall be called upon to resign his or her membership of parliament or municipality and also of the party.” He said those who talked about party discipline ought to support the amendment.

The amendment was then voted upon and carried, 84 being in favour and 54 against. The resolution was adopted as follows:

“The Communist Party repudiates the reformist view that a social revolution can be achieved by the ordinary methods of parliamentary democracy, but regards parliamentary and electoral action generally as providing a means of propaganda and agitation towards the revolution. The tactics to be employed by representatives of the party elected to parliament or local bodies must be laid down by the party itself according to the national or local circumstances. In all cases such representatives must be considered as holding a mandate from the party, and not from the particular constituency for which they happen to sit. In the event of any representative violating the decisions of the party as embodied in the mandate which he or she has accepted or been instructed upon, he or she shall be called upon to resign his or her membership of parliament or municipality and also of the party”.

Notes

See Weekly Worker March 17.
VI Lenin CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, p95.
Henry Mayers Hyndman (1842-1921) founded Britain’s first socialist party, the Social Democratic Federation, in 1881. Although Eleanor Marx was a member, Engels was distinctly lukewarm and regarded Hyndman’s pretensions to ‘Marxism’ with considerable suspicion. Hyndman - a rich man, who generously funded the SDF - treated the organisation as a piece of personal property. Thus, while the SDF propagandised widely for socialist ideas and scored some respectable results in council and parliamentary elections, its politics tended to reflect the unhealthy programmatic appetites of its ‘proprietor’, Hyndman - most noxiously, an incipient jingoism.
In 1900 Hyndman led the SDF into the Labour Representation Committee, the body tasked with setting up the Labour Party. But the SDF withdrew (a tactical blunder) when the LRC refused to accept socialism as an objective. Later, he successfully expanded the SDF by winning over a layer from the left of the Independent Labour Party. This resulted in the formation of the British Socialist Party in 1911.
Hyndman’s jingoism reached its logical conclusion in 1914, when he backed Britain’s imperialist ‘war effort’. The internationalists in the BSP rebelled, issued their own factional paper, The Call, and sought to defeat Hyndman and the social-imperialists. At the Easter 1916 conference of the BSP the internationalists won a majority. The Call became the official BSP paper and the organisation went on to play the leading role in the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920.
Hyndman slipped off into political obscurity via the ominously named National Socialist Party and spent much of the rest of his political career fulminating against the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks.
Ellen Cicely Wilkinson (1891-1947) left the CPGB in 1924 and went on to be a Labour MP for Middlesbrough and later Jarrow. She was a prominent supporter and publicist for the small and ineffectual Jarrow march against unemployment of 1936, which was designed as a cynical charity-mongering alternative to the militant work of the genuinely mass, communist-led National Unemployed Workers Movement (see Mark Fischer’s ‘Lessons of the NUWM and UWC’ Weekly Worker January 28 2010).
The Guild Communists were a faction of the National Guilds League. Guild socialism was a political movement advocating workers’ control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds (an association of ‘craftsmen’ in a particular trade). Robin Page Arnot and Ellen Wilkinson were associated with the group.
This is an ongoing debate amongst communists, as regular readers of the Weekly Worker will be aware. See our brief report of the party’s programme conference in Weekly Worker January 27 this year, for example.