AS Epitomes
John Gollan: What is the Socialist Way Forward?
Abstract
Introduction
In summer 1970, the Harold Wilson Labour government lost power to Edward Heath’s Tories. Just as they are today, things looked grim for the left and Labour Movement in Britain. In September, the Communist Party of Britain issued this pamphlet by its General Secretary, John Gollan, in which he analyzed the situation, which was remarkably similar to today’s. Gollan’s and the CP’s prescriptions were ignored, following the militancy of the seventies, the Labour leadership did its usual thing—selling out its own voters—the TU leadership turned back to the right, Margaret Thatcher got in, and just when it looked as if she had overplayed her cards and would lose an election, she showed her military card, sank the Belgrano and invaded the Falkland Islands to give the media something with which to praise her. Thatcherism was the British equivalent of Reaganism in the US, the turn to the right that led to deregulation of the banks, more militarism still, increasing outsourcing of work to cheap labour countries, and the economic defeat of the USSR by means of an arms race, the Soviets should probably have known they could not win, and China has replaced them as the super power opponent of the US. US and Israeli aggression in the Middle East has replaced the war in Vietnam, and the Israeli apartheid against Palestinians has replaced apartheid in South Africa.
The British ruling class was sufficient bothered by the CPGB that, through its secret service, it infiltrated it, placed its own men inside and succeeded in getting it wound up in the early 1990s. It leaves us where we are now, with workers standards under attack in the UK, and throughout the western world, while the rich fraction of a percent are richer than they have ever been, and now do truly own the world. Though not as extreme, the nature of capitalism was clear enough then to Britain’s Communists, and the direction of travel could be seen, and the medicine should have been taken. Perhaps we can this time, though it is now much harder. The Communist Party in Britian has been reformed as the CPB, and naturally is weak, but it may not have had better opportunities in the last half century to be influenctial, with the gross attacks of the ConDems on the working people.
What is the Socialist Way Forward
At the Trades Union Congress, in his fraternal address, Harry Nicholas, Secretary of the Labour Party, said in effect that the job now facing the movement was to get Heath and the Tories out, and Wilson and Labour back in.
Certainly the urgency of the need to throw the Tories out can’t be over stressed. The outcome of the election was a big political setback. But would anything really be solved by the return of another Labour Government, with the same policy as before?
One thing, however, can be said right at the start. There’s only one way to get the Tories out, and that is by struggle. The organisation and waging of this struggle is the first necessity facing the Labour movement.
This is a ruthless government directly representing big business. Of the 18 principal ministers, there is only one who hasn’t come direct from the big business boardrooms. Between them they hold 45 directorships. All but three come from public schools. As The Times Business News (July 3, 1970) put it, “the Tory Front Bench is now in the throes of departing from the boardrooms of business enterprise”. By law, of course, they must. But what they’ve done is merely to exchange the boardroom for the Cabinet room, to administer the rule of the millionaires.
So the big pusinessmen control Parliament. They control the economy by virtue of their ownership of the key big firms now rapidly becoming multinational giants. The State machine is run by their hand-picked nominees or people of their own kind. They own and control the mass media and the daily press, with the sole exception of the Morning Star.
Who is surprised, therefore, at Tory policy so far announced? Heath and Co are out to wage war on the unions and introduce anti-union legislation, to hold back wages, boost the monopolies an cut back nationalisation. They are out to slash the social services, expand the means test, and make people pay increasingly and directly for social services.
On foreign affairs they’ll back up Nixon as far as we will allow them to go; they’ll sabotage the new moves to European detente and are hell-bent on getting into the Common Market. They refuse to legislate for civil rights in Northern Ireland. Arms for South Africa sums up their attitude to national liberation. To think of Sir Alec Douglas Home dealing with British policy in the Middle East crisis is frightening.
All their talk about acting in the national interest is a cover for acting in the millionaires’ class interest. And in the wings is the ugly sickness of Powellism, with racial demagogy. Behind the slogan of “Law and Order”, democratic liberties are under attack.
Tory policy will not solve the continuing crisis of the capitalist economy which is on a world scale. It will more likely worsen it. No one can rule out mass unemployment as we had in the 1930s. But whatever the lines of development, the movement has got to fight for its whole alternative policy. The more successfully it fights, the more it can prevent mass unemployment.
Outlook for the Seventies
On a global economic scale the 1970s will see an enormous strengthening of the economies of the socialist countries, especially that of the USSR, and their growing weight in the world. On the capitalist side the US economy will remain a power with Japan emerging as its serious competitor. For British capitalism the dream is to build a third capitalist economic bloc based on Europe via the Common Market and the multinational firm. Inter-capitalist competition will grow with attacks on working class conditions.
All the more reason for the working class movements of Europe to combine to challenge the great trusts, for independent economies based on nationalisation and real East-West co-operation, the liquidation of rival military blocs and All-European security.
In Italy and France where mass Communist Parties exist, these Parties have posed the issue of the unity of the Communist, Socialist and Progressive forces for alternative left progressive governments, including the Communists, with programmes based on the demands of the workers and the people generally, which would extend real democracy, make decisive inroads into monopoly power, and carry through progressive foreign policies and open the way to Socialism.
The great social service issues, and the new issues, such as pollution and conservation, will be found increasingly difficult to solve within existing capitalist limits. The front of the challenge will be extended.
In foreign affairs bearing in mind the relation of world forces between socialism and capitalism, the strength of the working class movement, if united and active, will find that real possibilities exist to end the war in Vietnam, to prevent imperialism re-establishing its power in the Middle East and to assist the growing forces of national liberation.
It is on this background that we must view the anti-Tory struggle, which will require enormous effort. However at the same time, the Tories and big business are not as strong as they look. The forces exist to cut them down to size.
The Labour movement is stronger and more united for progressive and left policies than in Macmillan’s day. The TUC has rejected both wage restraint and anti-trade union legislation. The youth and students are a force to be reckoned with. Big movements exist on the social issues.
The big thing is to unite these varied forces in the class confrontation and struggle now opening up. The aim should be to challenge and defeat the Tory Government and big business by mass struggle, drawing the widest numbers and organisations into the fight, including the youth and students.
We need an offensive, not a defensive strategy. In our appeal to all sections of the movement for united anti-Tory struggle, the Communist Party Executive Committee in September put forward the following programme of action:
- Higher Wages at the expense of profits; a prices, rents and fares freeze; expansion of the economy; take over the monopolies and strengthen the nationalised industries.
- Defend the Trade Unions and Democratic Rights.
- Higher Pensions and social payments; expand, not cut social services and the housing programme; a wealth tax and cuts in military spending.
- End US Aggression in Indo-China; begin negotiations for an All-European Security Conference.
- Keep out of the Common Market.
- No Arms for South Africa.
But the big issue is, what is to be the political expression of this struggle? Simply back to a Labour Government with the policy as before, that will do in the 19705 more or less the same as the Tories? Or is there some other way forward? It is with this question that this pamphlet mainly deals.
The Big Question
We must first examine why Labour government inevitably seems to result in the return of the Tories. This has not only been the outcome of the Wilson Government. It has been the outcome of all periods of Labour Government. And we have had four Labour Governments following six eleetions. We had the short-lived 1924 Macdonald Government-followed by the Tories. We had the 1929-31 Macdonald Government-followed by the Tories. We had the 1945-51 Attlee Governments followed by the Tories. And now the 1964-70 Wilson Governments followed by the Tories. Unless we learn the lesson, we are going to get nowhere.
It could be argued that in 1924 it was a minority Government, that the 1929-31 Government resulted in a betrayal and split in the Labour movement from which it took years to recover. But the 1945 Attlee Government won a clear majority following on the heels of the victory in the anti-fascist war. It was the biggest majority of any post-war Government. There was nationalisation and the Health Service. Aneurin Bevan said: “We are the masters now”—but come ’51 and Churchill was back.
On the eve of the 1970 General Election, some commentators were arguing that we were entering an era in which the Tories would be the normal Opposition Party and Labour the normal Party of power. But came the election, and Wilson was out.
This question was analysed and answered in the Communist Party’s programme, The British Road to Socialism (1968 edition—under the heading “Why Labour Governments fail”). I make no apology for quoting at length:
Labour Governments, like Tory Governments, have in fact subordinated all their essential policies to the needs of the great monopolies. They have left the overwhelming bulk of the basic means of production, distribution and exchange in private hands. They have facilitated the growth of monopoly…
They have accepted, lock, stock and barrel the existing state machine. They have worked within it, become its prisoner.
Tory and Labour Governments alike have strengthened the capitalist state, created new Government departments, adapted old ones, formed new public bodies… On all of them the representatives of the great firms play the decisive role and advise the government on policies and practice.
Labour Governments have developed nationalisation in such a way that it strengthens capitalism, helps it to work.
Like Tory Governments, they have ’managed capitalism’. They have introduced reforms, often material and important, but never taken decisive steps to end the power of the monopolies and the private exploitation of the country’s resources and transform the state.
Attempting to work within the framework of capitalism, to make capitalism work, they have ended by leading the attacks on the working class…
The so-called prices and incomes policy aims to freeze wages… weaken organisation in the workshops and undermine the right to strike.
If Labour Governments and Labour leaders accept the role of the managers of capitalism, if they content themselves with restricted nationalisation controlled by a state loyal to capitalism, then inevitably monopoly is strengthened and Labour Governments end in fiasco" (pp 20-21).
This is the reason why the Wilson Government led to the Tory victory, just as the Macdonald and Attlee Governments did before. Two things follow from this analysis. We have to defeat the Tories—Yes. But the Government to replace it must have a fundamentally different policy from that of the right wing, one which makes decisive inroads into capitalism. Second, we will never get this as long as the political side of the movement is in the grip of the right wing. How to smash the right wing grip, how to further change the balance of power in the movement to the left? This is the issue.
The Trends in the Movement
In many ways the problems we have posed here were already coming up sharply in the trade union and Labour movement, and in particular in the Labour Party. To understand what is going on one must grasp the character of the British Labour Party with its mass trade union affiliated basis.
Writing long ago on the character of the British Labour Party, Lenin, who knew the British movement well, analysed the social and economic basis of right-wing reformism in Britain in the following way.
Developing the analysis of Marx and Engels, Lenin showed how British imperialism with vast colonial possessions and a virtual world monopoly led to the temporary victory of opportunism in the British Labour Movement. British imperialism was able to give a small share of its super-profits to an upper, privileged section of the working class, who turned aside from the class struggle, worked within the confines of the capitalist system, and who became identified with it. This gave birth to the right-wing outlook and leadership which despite much struggle and the emergence of a Marxist revolutionary trend, came to dominate the Labour movement.
Henceforth, Lenin argued, there would be a ceaseless conflict between the Marxist revolutionary and the reformist right-wing trends in the movement. “It is in the struggle between these two trends”, he wrote, “that the history of the Labour movement will now inevitably develop”. He had this in mind when he supported the affiliation to the Socialist International of the new Labour Party formed by the trade unions at the beginning of the century.
The Labour Party, he said, “represents the first step on the part of the really proletarian organisations of Britain towards a conscious class policy, and towards a socialist workers’ party”. He clearly understood the mass trade union base of the Labour Party. But, he added, in prophetic words, this did not mean that the Labour Party was actually waging a consistent class struggle, or that it was sufficient for the organised workers to form a separate Labour Group in Parliament “in order to become independent of the bourgeoisie (the ruling class) in the whole of their conduct”.
All experience since Lenin wrote those words has proved his warning beyond doubt. In all this we find the key to understanding today’s problem of the Labour movement and of the failure of Labour Governments, which we have already analysed, and how they result in the regular return of the Tories. The whole history of the movement, as Lenin observed, has hinged on the right wing/left wing struggle within it.
It has two related aspects. The foundation and growth of the Communist Party, and the recurring left-wing movements in the unions and the Labour Party. This year we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Communist Party, which brought together the main Marxist trends in the Labour movement. Throughout the years the Communist Party, part of the British Labour movement, has consistently battled against this right-wing grip for a socialist ideology, tactics and orientation in the movement, for a break with reformism, and for an internationalist position. At the same time left wing movements and groups have repeatedly appeared in the Labour Party. These various left movements have fought, gained political successes, they have had their ups and downs.
The Central Issue
For the Communist Party the central issue has always been to get the mass (essentially trade union) elementary class basis of the movement acting as a real force to break the right-wing grip. This grip rested on the control of the mass union vote (the so-called block vote) in the Labour Party by the dominant right wing leadership of the unions, and the petty bourgeois right-wing domination of the political and parliamentary wing of the movement (Macdonald, Snowden, Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Jenkins).
The essential weakness of the successive left movements in the Labour Party, apart from differences on important issues of policy, was that they were largely isolated from the unions. In the Aneurin Bevan days in the 1945 period, this expressed itself in the idea that the Labour Party had to be “freed” from the domination of the block vote.
But the Communist Party argued, on the contrary, that the unions (as the mass base of the Labour Party) had to be won for progressive policies, that progressive leaderships had to replace right-wing leaders, so that the unions, the elementary class organisations of the working class, would become a force for the left development of the Labour movement and the Labour Party. In other words, the key to the Communist Party strategy was to change the balance of power in the Labour movement from the right to the left as the first step in the process of ending the right wing domination in the movement.
Considerable progress has been made both during the period of the Gaitskell right-wing leadership, and especially during the Wilson right-wing leadership. In all of this the Communist Party and the Morning Star have played an outstanding part along with the other forces of the left.
The essence of this strategy was summed up at the 27th National Congress of the Communist Party (in 1961), which said:
What is needed here? To carry forward progressive policies and leadership in the trades unions; to end anti-Communist bans in those unions where they still exist; to build up and consolidate a firm and consistent majority of unions supporting socialist policies and with progressive leaderships; to end the reactionary domination of the General Council of the TUC; and establish a progressive majority; and to reflect this advance of the unions in the political fIeld, especially in the Labour Party and in parliamentary representation.
It is all too easy with the advance which has been made to forget both the effort it has entailed and the fact that without clarity as to this strategy there would have been no sense of direction in the movement.
Big changes have been won in the AEF and the TGWU and other unions with the development of progressive leaderships and policies. Important amalgamations have taken place. The removal of bans and proscriptions in the TGWU has also posed this question sharply for the remaining unions where they operate. The so-called block vote is beginning to be used in part on the left in the TUC and Labour Party Conference. There is a progressive group on the General Council, an advance in the character of the annual TUC, and progress in the Labour Party Conference, especially to the extent they have been won for left policies.
The Need—Real Political Unity
There is an advance in the recognition of the role and position of the Morning Star, and its Annual Rally. There are better relations generally on the left between trade unionists, left Labour people and Communists. By spelling this out, however, we can see how much more has to be done.
The biggest weakness still is that there is no real political unity of the left including Communists, and while progress has been made in the unions and at the Conference level in the movement, the Parliamentary situation is still dominated by the right, despite the struggle of the left MPs, so Cabinet and Government policy was right wing. The right still controls the Labour Party machine.
So virtually on the eve of the General Election we had the confrontation and crisis in the movement provoked by the Government’s anti-trade union legislation, which was the biggest clash within the movement for years. The right was forced to retreat, but the essential problem remains.
Not only is there a steadily growing left wing challenge, which will grow in the class confrontation with the Tories—at the same time increasingly broad agreement has grown on the left on the nature of the alternative policy needed. Here it is only necessary to sketch the character of the main lines of the policy rather than the details, a policy which the Communist Party has done so much to promote. The essential prerequisite to its success is the defeat of anti-trade union legislation and the protection of all union rights and democratic freedoms.
On the economic front the policy not only rejects all restrictions on wages and demands a wages offensive, it also challenges the accepted strategy of the ruling class on the economy, the balance of payments and monopoly. It aims to end restrictions on growth to reduce unemployment, cut investment abroad, nationalise the monopolies, win elements of workers’ control. It aims at the defence and extension of the social services, the introduction of a wealth tax and a cut in military expenditure.
In foreign affairs it demands opposition to the Common Market, an East-West Security Conference, and end to the Vietnam war, and general support for peoples struggling for freedom from imperialism. This increasing and fundamental divergence of the policy of the left in the movement from that of the right, highlighted by the failure and defeat of the Wilson Government, raises logically the question of the character of the next Government to replace the Tories.
To restore a right wing Government of the Wilson type won’t solve the problems and would open the way for further setbacks in the movement. We have got to consider urgently the next steps needed to win still greater changes in the balance of power in the movement to the left, of such a degree that they can affect the policy and composition of the Government. In our view this requires the further political unity of the left. The point is, in the conditions, development and realities of the British political situation, to search out the ways, means and forces which can take us in this direction.
It is here that the importance of the battle for the victory of the alternative programme of the left should be seen.
A Working Class Policy
An alternative economic strategy to that of the right wing means in effect the advance of the working class against the rich. The change in the approach to the balance of payments which we suggest, means a challenge to the role and power of the banks and the trusts.
Slashing military expenditure and a new foreign policy of peace hinders imperialism and militarism. Taking over the super-trusts means ending the economic and social power of the monopolies, and a big step to making democracy more real.
In winning such advances—and they can be won by a struggle—an important change in the relationship of class forces in the country could take place, with the strengthening of working class and middle sections compared with the capitalist class, of the socialist and democratic forces compared with Toryism and reaction. It is in this sense that we see the connection between the immediate struggle and the strategy for a socialist revolution outlined in our programme, The British Road to Socialism. The struggle for this immediate policy helps to create the political conditions for an advance to socialism.
As against this general analysis the right wing argue that the issue is consensus politics, that Labour policy should be diluted to attract the “centre” in British politics, sometimes referred to as the “floating voter”, but never defined in social political terms. This argument is spurious from beginning to end. The fact is that, even confining the argument to the past twenty years, in the last seven elections the Tories have won 42 to 49 per cent of the total votes cast. Many millions of these votes are working class. If more of the working class was won solidly for anti-Tory policies, the Tories could never win a Parliamentary majority. This still remains the crux of the problem.
In 1964 and 1966 millions voted Labour for something different, better pensions and wages, an attack on bad housing, limitations on the power of the big firms, a new approach to international problems. Because of the right wing policies they got none of these things and many expressed their disappointment by not voting Labour last June.
Is the watering down of policy going to attract the lower paid? On the contrary, one of the outstanding features of the recent past has been the revolt of the low-paid against Labour Government policy. The more policy is anti-capitalist and the more the legitimate demands of the lower paid are won, the more likely it is that those in such sections who now vote Tory can be won to vote anti-Tory.
Even with the white collar and middle sections which the Tories seek to influence, it is revolt against bad conditions, and challenge, which is making them militant and potential allies of the working class. Look at the white collar unions, NALGO, the ATTI and NUT and so on. What has attracted them to affiliate to the TUC? Their struggle and growing militancy. Would diluting policy help? On the contrary, they are allying themselves with the industrial working class in struggle. All this is important because of the growing number and weight of such sections in the population as a whole, because of automation and the technological revolution.
Equally with the youth, the students and the NUS. The growing feature here is their militancy. Anything less likely to attract them than consensus politics is difficult to imagine. Such sections above all would be attracted to association with the working class by anti-monopoly and socialist policies. Indeed, if this is not done, the existing anti-political mood among the young will grow and their distrust of all politicians and political parties.
The essential need in this situation, following the election, is the complete rejection of right-wing consensus politics for class politics. We need class confrontation and struggle. To bring into battle the entire organised forces of the Labour and progressive movement against the Tories and capitalism. It is this which will help to consolidate the left and rank and file grass roots of the movement and increasingly win over those influenced by the Tories. It will win the middle sections, the youth and students around the working class. It will help to develop the broad alliance against the Tories and the monopolies led by the working class and the left. It is this which is the first essential in winning further political change in the Labour movement.
The Limits of Militancy
To get the big changes needed depends above all on the action and activity of the militants, shop stewards and activists in the factories, on the sites, and in the localities. We have seen the big wages movements, the struggle against anti-trade union legislation among the higher paid, tbe lower paid and white collar sections.
There have been the important actions on Vietnam, the Stop The Seventies Tour against apartheid and racialism. Noteworthy here has been the contribution of the youth and students. These mass movements are the essential basis of all progress. They will grow and must grow even stronger under the Tories. The Communist Party and the Morning Star will do all in their power to help them.
But we have also got to understand the limits of militancy in the economic struggles and even on the wider social and foreign policy issues. Each wage battle has to be followed by another in a year or two years’ time. The boss, and the system of capitalist exploitation remains. The State remains the bosses’ State.
We can get sites and factories where the shop stewards and militants have built up real power and won significant wages and conditions. But they haven’t shifted a single millionaire. When they turn on the TV, it’s the bosses’ TV; society remains capitalist society.
Even with the valuable movements on social issues and foreign affairs, improved conditions are won, wars ended, but as society remains capitalist society, new dangers, new social problems arise.
The big issue is to extend the aims and scope of the struggle, for every militant to realise that the supreme purpose of the working class struggle is the winning of political power, the ending of capitalism and the carrying through of the socialist revolution. Again, we are not arguing that this is on the immediate order of the day. But it must be the aim of the movement. The struggle for immediate demands, important though it is, can’t be an end in itself. That struggle must be extended to create conditions in the Labour movement and the politics of Britain where we can win a Government reflecting the left policies and forces in the Labour movement, a Government which would be at least a step in the direction of socialism.
There is no contradiction in fighting for the best possible conditions under capitalism, in fighting for big policy changes, and this broader essential aim. But if the struggle is confined to elementary militancy for the best conditions under capitalism, the essential class basis of society is left untouched, the millionaires remain in control.
Our case goes further. Increasingly the issue of wages, trade union freedom, racialism, war and peace, the defence of the social services is bound up with the general political struggle, the nature of Government policy at home and abroad, state intervention and the like. Increasingly it is the capitalist system that must be challenged.
Many young people and students in revolt against the system, approach the matter from the opposite angle. They want to bring down the system, but fail to grasp the need for immediate and more limited measures, the need to bring the mass of the people into these struggles as the first step to involving them in the wider struggles, and out of that to raise their socialist consciousness. We have the ultra-left arguments which dismiss Parliament and “traditional” politics, and talk about political power without spelling the ways, means, stages and forces for getting to political power.
All this raises what is the supreme issue for the ’70s—what is to be the political organisation of the working class and its allies?
The Communist Party, more than most, recognises the importance of the trade unions. We have proved this by our work. But the unions, however much they may raise political demands, remain trade unions. They are not political parties. The political party of the working class spans all the unions, it exists to organise the political struggle for political power and socialism. In the same way united bodies for the aim of ending war, combating apartheid, advancing social conditions, all essential and indispensable, are not political parties. The political struggle must be organised. For this the political party is the instrument, with organisation, ideology and programme. Socialist consciousness can only be created by the political party of the working class. As Engels put it, the struggle has a threefold nature, economic, political and ideological. Only the political party of the working class can combine all three.
What Political Organisation?
As we have seen, the working class movement has developed in the ceaseless left wing/right wing struggle. The unions first formed the Labour Party, with its trade union affiliations providing its mass basis. In the course of this struggle, the Communist Party was formed and grew as the Marxist Socialist organisation of the working class. The big issue now is how are both the Communist Party and the Labour Party going to develop, and with them the political unity of the left.
In the course of the political battle within the Labour movement, various left groupings have developed from time to time. They were not parties, they were individual members of the Labour Party working within that body. They have had no all-national organisation, no agreed programme, no common ideology. The Communist Party, as always, views such movements with understanding and has always given them support. They have had their ebbs and flows.
The strength of the Labour left is in great measure a reflection of the development of the mass movement in all its varied forms, but particularly in industry and the trade unions, for left and progressive policies. To break the right wing grip still greater unity is needed. The development of the left movement, its degree of unity, the aims it fights for, are very much a product of the policy, organisation and activity of the Communist Party and its members, and the effect of the Morning Star. The Labour left undoubtedly plays its part in helping this development. But where would this movement be without the Communist Party and its members?
The Communist Party
The various left movements as we said have had their ebbs and flows, but the Communist Party, whatever its problems, has remained and developed. Today it is the strongest organised political force of the left. Why is this? Because it is a political party of the working class, organised nationally and locally, in the factories and other work places as well as in residential areas, with a coherent socialist outlook based on Marxism. Part and parcel of the Labour movement, it has been able to give a consistent socialist lead on all the main issues and has been to the forefront in every struggle.
It helped to found and to maintain the Daily Worker, now the Morning Star, which has played an indispensable part in all the major developments. It organises many of the best militants in the movement. Its members are a force in the trade unions and the factories. To the forefront of all immediate struggles, it has above all sought to develop the socialist consciousness of the working class and has produced the only viable strategy for a socialist revolution in Britain in its programme The British Road to Socialism.
As a party aiming at a socialist revolution, it has always kept its roots among the workers. However great the difficulties, the Communist Party has put its policy forward in the factories, the trade unions and other organisations. It has understood that the struggle for socialism demands the conduct and leadership of the daily battles, helping the workers to draw the correct conclusions from their experiences. Its mass propaganda through its press, publications, leaflets and other materials is continuous. It has provided the militants in the workshops and trade unions with a strategy and organisation without which they could not have accomplished what has been done.
Following the General Election we analysed the reasons for our lack of electoral advance, the difficulties for us of the electoral system and our own weakness. Despite these difficulties, the Communist Party has fought elections nationally and locally with a socialist and class programme. Increased representation in local councils and Communist MPs in Parliament would be an invaluable strengthening of the whole left. We fight not only for representation but to put forward our alternative socialist policy.
Because of the nature of the British Labour Party, it has always been clear that the development to socialism in Britain involved not only the creation and strengthening of the Marxist organisation of the working class, the Communist Party, but also the left development of the whole Labour movement, including the Labour Party.
The Communist Party has been consistent, therefore, in promoting left unity as an essential need although there have been periods of mistaken sectarianism. It recognised that it was through the trade union movement that the decisive change in the Labour movement as a whole would be won. That is why the Communist Party has put as an indispensablt part of its general strategy the change in the balance of power in the movement to the left.
While we have and always will support every left movement within the Labour Party, we think the biggest urgent issue is the strengthening of the Communist Party. We are the first to pay tribute to the enormously valuable role played in recent and vital left developments in the movement by the left trade union leaders, by the shop stewards and left MPs. But we challenge anyone to deny the indispensable part played in this process by the Communist Party. This is not due to any claim that Communists, man for man, or woman for woman, are in any way superior to others on the left, although so many militants are in fact Communists. It is due above all to the fact that we are an organised party whose members guided by a coherent socialist ideology, can work in all the unions, the factories and other bodies as a unifying factor.
Some in this situation put forward ideas of a new party in addition to the Labour Party and the Communist Party, without spelling out what is involved. This would add to divisions on the left, whereas the real issue is to further develop left unity. It completely overlooks the realities of left development now and the potential aim of left leadership and direction of the majority in the Labour movement as the logic of the change in the balance of power in the movement now taking place. Above all the Party of socialism exists, the Communist Party. The real issue for socialists, for the whole left, is to strengthen the Communist Party and its public fight on all fronts and to develop all forms of united action with the Communist Party.
Others put forward the idea that the Communist Party should dissolve and Communists should join the Labour Party. This old argument, which has come up time and time again, ignores the indispensable role of the Communist Party and the Morning Star in bringing about the present important changes in the Labour movement. If we accepted this kind of advice, we would be dissolving the main organised and effective force of the left.
The point is simultaneously to strengthen the left developments in the Labour movement and to strengthen the Communist Party as the main organised and effective force of the left. None of this is going to happen without organised effort to increase the circulation of the Morning Star. More and more the lefts and the shop stewards, the trade union leaders and the militants pay their tributes to the Morning Star. To ask for help from everyone to increase circulation and to help the paper to overcome its acute financial problems is not begging for the paper. It is to assist the movement by strengthening the paper of the movement. It is amazing how many militants go on reading the anti-trade union capitalist press. Isn’t it time for all to see that the Morning Star gets the circulation it deserves and that the movement needs?
What should be the further steps to strengthen the movement for a further change in the balance of power?
In the trade unions everything should be done to get still further progressive development so that every major union is won for a progressive left development and position. Further amalgamations to strengthen the unions into bigger and more effective units should be examined. Every effort should be made to extend the left progressive group into a left majority in the General Council of the TUC. Factory and site organisation should be strengthened and combine committees developed. Union united action and co-operation on an all-European scale should be developed to confront the multi-national finns.
There should be a concerted drive to end all bans and proscriptions in the remaining unions that operate them, and what is most vital of all, the left should make as a major issue the right of trade unions to send who they like from anyone paying the political levy to Labour Party delegate bodies and conferences.
In general the left and Communist forces should work for left progressive victories at the Annual Conference of the Labour Party. They should support the campaign for the supremacy of the Labour Party Conference over the leadership of the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party, a demand passed by the Labour Party Annual Conference, and alongside this build up the mass pressure on the Parliamentary Labour Party. Through union affiliations, pressure can be maintained for progressive and left local and Parliamentary candidates.
This is a critical question. Alongside united campaigns on the various issues, this should be pressed until victory on it is won. As a result, a new political climate would be created in the movement, free from all remaining bans, opening up new prospects for Left-Communist political unity and agreement.
But in my view the overriding need is to build the Communist Party alongside all this, and we ask all militants, all lefts, all the rebellious youth and students to join.
I have argued the case for the Communist Party. We are proud of our record, but we are not yet big enough. Our effectiveness is limited by our present size of 30,000 members. We will not get the developments required particularly in the class confrontation with Toryism now opening up, unless new thousands join.
A bigger and stronger Communist Party is vital to spearhead the mass fight, to further promote unity and to raise socialist consciousness. Join and help.
