17.11.2011
Call for ILP to join Communist International
Communists counter the apathy that was devastating the ILP
In last week’s paper, we saw how the Communist Party of Great Britain attempted to orientate to the Independent Labour Party, the relatively large left reformist group that had been instrumental in the formation of the Labour Party. This group was then in a period of flux and political re-evaluation following the inter-imperialist carnage of World War I and the formation of the Communist International.[1] The majority of ILP members saw the old Second International as hopelessly compromised by the fact that most of its affiliates supported their own side, their own bourgeoisie, during the bloodbath of 1914-18 and the ILP formally disaffiliated in the spring of 1920.
However, despite the efforts of revolutionaries in its ranks, the 1921 ILP annual conference decisively rejected affiliation to the Third International by 521 votes to 97. Following the vote, around 200 supporters of the defeated left faction - including leading figures such as Emile Burns, Rajani Palme Dutt and Shapurji Saklatvala - left the ILP and joined the Communist Party. Instructively, however, they did not leave the Labour Party itself. In 1922, for example, Saklatvala was actually elected the Labour member for North Battersea (he lost his seat in 1923, but regained it in 1924).
Undoubtedly, this was the correct decision. The Russian Revolution had imparted a powerful momentum towards the international unity of Marxists and it was necessary to draw a sharp line of demarcation against the social imperialist parties of the Second International. However, as recognised by the Communist International, British conditions were unique and particularly challenging.
The new Communist Party remained numerically small, although composed of the class’s best fighters. Unlike the Marxist social democratic parties across much of the rest of Europe, the Labour Party had never embraced the politics of class war. However, as a federal party it allowed organisations such as the British Socialist Party to freely operate, and it retained the loyalty of the mass of class-conscious workers, not least through the affiliation of the big battalions of the trade union movement. Clearly, balanced tactics and a long-term perspective of work were needed to deal with the particular tasks and problems this posed.
The central pillars of Labour’s system of bans and proscriptions was put in place during the 1920s, as the rightwing sought not only to drive out the communists, but intimidate and silence honest leftwing voices too. In comparative terms the purging of Militant Tendency in the 1980s was almost a storm in a teacup. The CPGB was a constant thorn in the side of the Labour leadership. Through the National Left Wing Movement and its paper The Sunday Worker, the party was able to conduct a real dialogue with the Labour left. Circulation of the paper, edited by open CPGB member William Paul, reached 100,000 at its peak. The NLWM was a real united front between communists and the left of Labour, which hugely extended the influence of communist ideas. The Labour bureaucracy responded with mass expulsions and the closure of many CLPs.
Although they never came close to a majority, motions to allow communist affiliation received substantial votes at Labour Party conferences throughout the 1920s. Communists continued to work as individual members of the Labour Party, though they had been barred from individual membership since 1924.
The NLWM (1925-28) fell victim to the ‘third period’ turn, of course. As for the ILP, its 1932 special conference voted to disaffiliate from Labour - following the disastrous Ramsay Macdonald government and the formation of a National Labour-Liberal-Tory coalition. In 1932, the ILP’s membership stood at 16,773; by 1935, it was down to 4,392, and, though it took a long time coming, it formally dissolved itself in 1975.
Anyhow, the stirring manifesto of the Left Wing Group - issued on the eve of the pivotal 1921 conference and republished in the CPGB’s The Communist - challenged the ILP to stir itself “from the apathy that is devastating your opportunist organisation” and to plunge itself into the “restless activity of a revolutionary movement”. In effect the forthcoming split had already happened.
Manifesto of the ILP Left Wing
Comrades of the ILP, At the party conference you will be called upon to decide the future international relations of the ILP. MacDonald, secretary of the Second International, which the ILP definitely repudiated last year, has not dared to ask the party to follow him in his allegiance. MacDonald, Mrs Snowden, and other prominent figures in the ILP whose faith remains in the Second International, and who privately scoff at the Vienna proposals, will nevertheless use their influence to secure the party’s approval of the Vienna venture.
Their motive is quite simple. As long as the ILP can be kept out of the Third International, there is hope for a return to the Second International. The Vienna proposals will be the means of restoring credit to the bankrupt Second International ...
Comrades, do not let yourselves be deceived. An ‘all-inclusive’ international is no longer possible. The Vienna proposals may attract some new sections, such as the British Labour Party, the German Majority Socialists and the Belgian Socialists. These sections may go to Vienna because they know that their own organisation, the Second International, has completely broken down. But the sections now affiliated to the Third International will have nothing to do with Vienna ...
Comrades, how can you place your faith in what at best can be nothing but a revival of the organisation you have already repudiated? In facing the decision between Vienna and the Third International, look also at the world situation.
Surely you have learned something from the dismal failure of the League of Nations, from the tyranny in India, from the terror in Ireland? Surely you understand the merciless character of the class war revealed in this imperialism and the systematic attack on wages that is now in progress?
Surely you realise that only the international alliance of its class-conscious elements can save the workers’ movement and secure the downfall of capitalism? If you do, then you will no longer hesitate: you will vote for immediate affiliation to the Third International, and thus take your stand with the revolutionary workers throughout the world.
Comrades of the ILP. We summon you from the apathy that is devastating your opportunist organisation to the restless activity of a revolutionary movement. We summon you to join in the last great campaign against capitalist imperialism, in the task of establishing world communism!
The Communist March 26 1921
The manifesto was signed by EH Brown, Emile Burns, HS Button, W Coxon, Helen Crawfurd, R Fouls, P Lavin, HR Lay, JT Walton Newbold, Marjory Newbold, CII Norman, JR Payne, Shapurji Saklatvala, Mark Starr, C Williams, AV Williams and JR Wilson.
Notes