19.10.2011

Lessons from 'history'

Laurence Parker reviews Robert Griffiths and Ben Stevenson, The Communist Party 1920-2010: 90 years of struggle for the working class and humanity (CPB History Group, 2010, pp44,

The introduction to this pamphlet from the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain is, at first glance, a strange concoction. Strange, that is, until the reader has perceived the ideological constellation upon which this ‘history’ is constructed.

Robert Griffiths (CPB general secretary) and Ben Stevenson (executive committee member) refer to the ‘cottage industry’ that has grown up around the history of the ‘official’ CPGB. They write: “The crucial flaw in these bourgeois, liquidationist and anti-communist accounts - apart from them not being written from a Marxist dialectical and historical materialist perspective - has been their fundamental misunderstanding of the role and record of communists, collectively and individually” (p2). They add: “It is not surprising, then, that the narrative they strive to present is one of a party which is the cat’s paw of the Kremlin, incapable of asserting independent political thought or action.”

This is downright misleading. The dominant trend in this ‘cottage industry’ has been of the opposite stamp: downplaying the international affiliations of the CPGB in favour of emphasising its native, British traditions. For example, Kevin Morgan writes of Harry Pollitt: “It might disturb our cruder notions of both Englishness and communism, but how very English a phenomenon was Stalinism in the shape that Pollitt gave it.”[1] Nina Fishman, who had been a member of Democratic Left (the organisation set up by the Eurocommunist faction of the CPGB that attempted to liquidate the party), argued: “Further research is likely to show that, at the municipal and community level, party activists continued to make positive contributions: a radical, progressive, democratic aspect of CPGB life which has been insufficiently emphasised by historians.”[2]

In fact, Griffiths and Stevenson constantly enshrine the same methodology, emphasising the native, rooted nature of the CPGB’s activity (and there are huge, undigested blocks of text that simply record this activism), as against its problematic international affiliations: for example, in relation to the cold war, they argue: “Many thousands of party members were active trade unionists, as required by party rules, often occupying key positions as shop stewards, convenors, branch and district officers and full-time officials at district and national level. Industrial organiser Peter Kerrigan impressed on them the need to win the respect of workmates by being efficient in their job and conscientious in fulfilling their trade union responsibilities. Such an approach, combined with the re-emergence of economic downturns and oppressive management, helped communists to combat cold war prejudices within the trade union movement” (p24).

This method spreads through Eurocommunist-inclined historians such as Fishman, the ‘official’ communism of the likes of the CPB, across to Socialist Workers Party historians such as James Eaden and David Renton. They argue: “No matter how opportunist or sectarian its leadership, the CP remained a mass workers’ party. Among its ordinary members there was a real desire to change the world. Communists often acted against or despite their formal politics, and the majority played a positive role, building trade unions, and also often promoting the interests of the rank and file.”[3]

Thus, in all these accounts, in spite of their formal politics and suspect international affiliations, CPGB members could and did play a positive role in the domestic class struggle. That the CPGB, despite geographical and sectional limitations, was, through most of its history, an important section of the advanced part of the working class (in contrast to Trotskyist organisations to its left and latter-day pretenders such as the CPB) is not up for dispute. What is up for question is the progressive nature of this often relatively depoliticised ‘activity’, which itself played a not insignificant role in the attempted liquidation of the CPGB that proceeded through the 1980s. Despite the bluster of Griffiths and Stevenson in regards to the ‘cottage industry’ and the never-ending guff about the ‘ultra-left’, there is nothing particularly unique in the CPB’s perspective on CPGB history, in that it shares a similar methodological underpinning in the politics of defeat and disorientation.

Uncomfortable

To attempt a serious debate around the CPGB’s history, some uncomfortable truths have to be faced by Griffiths and Stevenson (despite the no doubt spluttering indignation that such ‘revelations’ will provoke among a core of elderly members and sympathisers).

Thus we are told in relation to the post-war eastern European show trials against ‘Titoism’: “Once again, despite private reservations, most communists in Britain and around the world believed that erstwhile comrades in Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were in fact saboteurs, imperialist spies and ‘Trotskyist agents’ in league with Tito. The party in Britain paid a price for such blind loyalty, losing some allies on the left, while performing somersaults as Tito fell out of favour and then back in. It later became undeniable - especially once state, party and Comintern archives were opened - that these and previous show trials stemmed from the arbitrary abuse of power, involving severe breaches of socialist legality and gross violations of human rights” (p22).

However, in specific relation to the Soviet purges of the 1930s, we are offered a more uncomfortable mix of truth and awkward Stalinist apologetics: “The show trials of former Soviet and Comintern leaders such as Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin did little to check the growing popularity of the Communist Party and Marxist ideas in Britain … At the same time, the hostility of the imperialist powers towards the Soviet Union was well known in working class and progressive circles. Within the labour movement, the followers of Trotsky - who had been expelled from Russia - were regarded by many who came across them as anti-communist, anti-Soviet oppositionists, disrupters and defeatists. When respected lawyers, politicians and diplomats from the US, Britain and elsewhere attended the Moscow show trials and confirmed that the defendants had indeed confessed to being members of a ‘Trotsky-fascist’ campaign of espionage and subversion, Britain’s communists were not alone in believing that such plots had indeed existed” (pp15-16).

As we have seen, the CPB now thinks that such trials “stemmed from the arbitrary abuse of power”. So if that was the case, was it wrong for the CPGB to support the show trials of the 1930s? Griffiths and Stevenson, more concerned with an extended justification for those actions, do not tell us. Similarly, if “respected lawyers, politicians and diplomats” were prepared to do the Soviet bureaucracy’s intellectual dirty work, others in the labour movement (not least Trotsky and his followers) were prepared to stand up and state that the show trials were a cacophony of lies and hysteria. The CPGB did have a choice to make, even if the intellectual space in which to make that choice (and thus potentially move against the Soviet bureaucracy) was incredibly narrow, and thus highly unlikely in the circumstances of the ‘official’ communist movement at that point.

In a similar vein, the above quote says that the followers of Trotsky were regarded as “anti-communist, anti-Soviet oppositionists, disrupters and defeatists”. Was this a correct belief? This is not an unimportant question, given that many Trotskyists lost their lives due to the malice of such judgements. In fact, judging by the contemporary rhetorical bullshit of the CPB around disruptive incursions of the ‘ultra-left’, we can all guess the answer.

A more straightforward set of myths and evasions is evident in the section that deals with World War II. Griffiths and Stevenson state: “Britain’s communists threw themselves into the fight for maximum production [following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941]. While the party continued to argue for higher pay, its policy was to settle industrial disputes as quickly as possible and establish joint production committees with shopfloor participation. Sometimes, notably in the coal industry, party members found themselves representing strikers in heated disputes with their comrades in official full-time positions in the union” (p18).

This is an incredibly optimistic spin on a period in which this “fight for maximum production” in the cause of the ‘people’s war’ meant that some CPGB members actively scabbed on industrial disputes. Other CPGB members certainly represented strikers and found ways of subverting the ‘produce or perish’ imperative of King Street, but in doing so they were acting against the party line.[4] Indeed, there was a significant rank-and-file rebellion inside the CPGB in the run-up to and during its November 1945 congress, much of which can be read as a protest against the actions of the party leadership during the phase in which it had loyally backed the imperialist war effort. This opposition does not merit a mention in the pamphlet - presumably because it jars somewhat with the attempt to establish historical precedents for the CPB’s own opportunist practices.

In terms of the adoption of The British road to socialism in 1951, Griffiths and Stevenson write: “In January 1951, the Communist Party’s executive committee published a new programme … for discussion. Its main propositions had been extensively discussed and agreed with Stalin and the Soviet leadership, although the most significant features had already emerged in previous British congress resolutions and party publications” (p23). “Emerged” is a formally correct characterisation of this process, although what this paragraph is carefully hedging around is the fact that the CPGB did not have a special congress of its membership to debate the adoption of a parliamentary road to socialism.

Thus we can largely concur with Morgan’s judgement: “For several months a handful of party leaders met in secret conclave, guided only by the advice they received from Moscow and never dreaming to consult their own British party membership.”[5] Indeed, one does wonder why a special congress was not called, as the post-war rebellion against ‘Browderism’ and related issues had, it seems, ebbed away by 1951. Judging from party journals such as World News and Views from the period, either this opposition had been defeated and gone underground; or, at the very least, the leadership felt confident and secure enough to exclude such arguments from the public life of the CPGB (in direct contrast to 1945).

Griffiths and Stevenson go on to state: “Within three months, more than 150,000 copies of The British road to socialism had been distributed. It stimulated a huge debate throughout the labour movement …” (p23). This “huge debate” must be doubted, as the BRS failed even to inspire much discussion inside the CPGB, judging from the contributions made in the run-up to the April 1952 congress (intended to rubber-stamp an already adopted BRS), where the fundamental strategic shift of the CPGB towards ginger-group reformism was barely mentioned.[6]

Pollitt himself was privately disappointed at the seemingly perfunctory debate at the congress. He remarked to his executive committee comrades in a meeting on May 10 1952 that, although he thought the congress had been “one of the best”, there had not been enough political discussion and the absence of criticism and self-criticism and the discussion around the BRS “had been disappointing in the extreme”.[7] One only shudders to think what the worst congresses must have been like. None of this should be particularly surprising, given that the manner of this programme’s ‘emergence’ and ‘adoption’ would have militated against any genuine and burgeoning welcome in the ranks of the party and the labour movement.

Differences

There is some evidence that sections of this pamphlet are being used to settle differences of opinion inside the CPB - or at least to police the rhetoric of the left-leaning sections of the organisation. For example, in relation to the CPGB’s popular frontism of the 1930s, Griffiths and Stevenson argue: “It is a self-serving myth peddled by ultra-left anti-communists that the CP in Britain, or in France for that matter, abandoned principled positions in order to chase after middle class allies for the people’s front” (p14).

Unfortunately, these “ultra-left anti-communists” would probably include CPB members such as Andrew Murray, who has strongly hinted that principled politics were at least an issue in the era of popular frontism. Back in 1995 he argued: “More generally, certain shifts in the party’s attitudes in the late 1930s did lay the basis for the subsequent growth of reformist and chauvinist ideas within the party. The appropriation of the cultural symbols of the ruling class and of the giants of bourgeois history, the prolonged strategy of alliance with sections of the bourgeoisie shifted the party onto new terrain, often more immediately fruitful but often also away from the fight for socialism as the party’s real raison d’être.”[8] Murray’s work has actually been included in the somewhat anorexic ‘Further reading’ section (p44), presumably so that CPB members can ruminate on their very own ‘ultra-left’ to their heart’s content.

As an attempt to try and muscle in on a broader debate about the historical meaning of the CPGB, this is a pretty desperate affair, mired as it is by an effort to establish the legitimacy of the CPB by reference to the bad old ideas and practices of the past, and caught as it is in a movement between the geriatric hacks of yesteryear and a reasonably muscular (if flawed) academic debate

Notes

1. K Morgan Harry Pollitt Manchester 1994, p128

2. N Fishman, 'Essentials and realists: reflections on the historiography of the CPGB': www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/chnn/CHNN11ERF.html.

3. J Eaden, D Renton The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920 Basingstoke 2002, p112.

4. See L Parker, 'Their finest hour?' Weekly Worker December 9 2010.

5. K Morgan op cit p170.

6. Fred Westacott's claim that there "was a great deal of discussion within the party prior to the adoption of the BRS" is not backed up by any other source. Westacott was district organiser of the East Midlands CPGB at the time - see F Westacott Shaking the chains Chesterfield 2002, p271.

7. CP/CENT/EC/02/08, notes on discussion by George Matthews and James Klugmann.

8. A Murray The Communist Party of Great Britain: a historical analysis to 1941 Liverpool 1995, p79.