*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (1920)-Thirteenth Session- On Entry Into The British Labor Party

*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (1920)-

Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (The 21 Conditions Congress) Of The CI (July-August 1920)

Markin comment:

Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.

No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.

The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:

As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.


A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International

Thirteenth Session
August 6
Zinoviev: The Bureau proposes to end the Congress with today’s session.

Münzenberg: I propose on behalf of the members of the youth organisations present the motion that the Congress should not be closed without having discussed the question of the youth movement. On the one hand the representatives of the youth movements have every interest in discussing the question of the communist youth movement and its relationship to the Communist International in a full session. On the other hand the significance of the youth movement is so great in the Communist Party that the discussion of the question in front of the whole Congress should take place. Perhaps it is possible to so so today in which case we have got nothing against the Bureau’s motion. If not, then the question of the youth movement should be discussed.

Sylvia Pankhurst: We have been sitting so long already we could continue meeting for some time more. The question that is being dealt with now has not yet been discussed enough. I am against finishing the work of the Congress.

Goldenberg: I repeat what Münzenberg has said. The youth question must be discussed before the Congress is over.

Zinoviev: I should like to defend the Presidium’s proposal. Those comrades who were unfortunately greatly delayed in coming, like Sylvia Pankhurst, know that we have been discussing the question here for the last two weeks and that we discussed it previously two or three months ago on the Executive. I therefore propose that we close today, for we cannot deal with the youth question thoroughly today. It would have been very useful for dealing with the youth question if the representatives of the youth movements had been present for the whole discussion. Perhaps it would he advisable for the youth movement and for the whole International if we have a discussion and the comrades who have already been away from home for two weeks should go back. Therefore we want to finish today and solve the question quickly and without debates. [The proposal is adopted.]

Zinoviev: Comrades, we have decided to close the Congress today. Therefore we must use our time economically. Moreover, we already have twelve speakers registered for every question. I propose the following. New amendments which have not been dealt with in the Commission will only be published and not discussed. Secondly on the question of entry into the Labour Party only two speakers for and two against will be allowed.

Wijnkoop: Comrades, I am against this proposal, for the question of the Labour Party and the BSP is of the utmost importance. Because this is so, and not for Britain but for the whole world, it seems to me to be necessary to be able to discuss the question really freely. If only two speakers for the one standpoint and two for the other are allowed here, then in fact only the British delegation will be able to have anything to say about this matter. Two perhaps against, one for and perhaps another party apart from the British will have the opportunity to say something; that is no good. The workers of the whole world have the right to know why we take one side or the other. This is of the very greatest importance and I would therefore be in favour of free discussion on this question. But even if we do not decide to have a free discussion I think that two speakers for and two against are too few. We should in any case give a few more parties the opportunity to express their standpoint. I propose against the Presidium to have a free discussion on this matter. [Vote. Zinoviev’s proposal is adopted.]


Pankhurst: It is quite impossible to tell workers what difference there is between the Communist Party, the BSP and the Labour Party. It is very characteristic of Britain in general that no clear demarcation lines exist in politics there which would give the workers in particular the opportunity to distinguish one party from another. Therefore it is difficult to explain to workers how the supporters of the Communist Party are distinguished from those to whose party they themselves belong. Think of the example of Comrade Williams of whom it was thought that he adopted the standpoint of soviets. We had to discover that he was in favour of English workers loading munitions for Poland.

I say this in order to show how easy it is to be wrong. On the one hand one claims to belong to a tendency and on the other hand one is forced by membership of the Labour Party to carry out such policies. If we think of the position at any phase in the election campaign a fine of demarcation must exist between the candidates. That is to say that one would like to know who the candidates are and what programmes they represent. I deny that it is possible because of the structure of the Labour Party which is dominated by old traditions. There is also the question of paid officials there. Moreover, all members of the parties which belong to the Labour Party are subjected to the strictest discipline and when it is a question of making a showing in parliament on this or that question then they are officially subordinated to Party discipline.

In the elections, too, a local organisation can choose its candidates, but when it is a question of being put up as a candidate one must be confirmed by the Labour Party headquarters. It is the same with the individual speeches and votes. This way of doing things has also forced the members of the Independent Labour Party to understand that it is very difficult to be a member of the Independent Labour Party and at the same time belong to another party because one is tied down too much by the discipline.

I refer to an expression of Comrade Lenin’s, who said, one should not be too extreme. I think, however, one should be even more extreme than one is. Particularly in England there is a lack of courageous people. Although I am a socialist I have fought for a long time in the suffragette movement and I have seen how important it is to be extreme and to have the courage to defend one’s ideas. A candidate of the Independent Labour Party who was also very radical was put up as a candidate and read his manifesto, his programme, to his electors before he was Proposed to the Labour Party. When he read his manifesto once more to his electors after it had been checked by the Labour Party there was great excitement for the Labour Party had changed its member’s manifesto.

I emphasize once more the great degree of dependency and discipline within the Labour Party. If you speak of the Labour Party then you must also speak of its extremely ossified structure and of the structure of the trades unions which belong to it which are also bureaucratic, ossified organisations. Thus you find quite a different structure from what you thought. It is impossible to remain inside the party and change this organisation in any way.

In the parliamentary arena one is in a very difficult situation in Britain. We are dealing with a country with a parliamentary tradition that goes back many years and with really democratic traditions. These traditions are rooted in the workers too and if you propose to them to participate in the elections in order to do damage to the Labour Party then the English workers would not understand such advice. That will not get through to them because they have been worked on by the bourgeois press. You cannot compare these experiences with experiences in Russia. In England every worker reads the bourgeois press. I myself have seen – and I was one of those speakers who came out most often on the question of the Russian Revolution that the most difficult thing to teach the workers was the attitude towards parliamentarism. They asked why the Constituent Assembly had been convened and then afterwards dispersed. I believe that the democratic prejudices which one will have to take into account are deeply rooted in the English workers. There is another reason why I am against the point of view taken here by the International. If one were to say to the parties that they should join the Labour Party and allow themselves to be tied by a common discipline and action one would thus give the fate of the English proletarian revolution into the hands of the old trades unions. All the arguments that have been advanced here are against that and one can see daily how difficult it is to breathe a new spirit into the old trades unions.

If the English Communists are required to affiliate to the Labour Party the fate of the trades unions and the soviets would thus be given into the hands of the old ossified trades unions. The special conditions must be taken into account under which people in Britain live. The most extreme points of view must be defended in politics. That was proved in the question of support for the soviet power in Britain and everywhere that it was a question of coming out boldly. I stand by my point of view and therefore ask you not to adopt the motion on entry into the Labour Party.

McLaine: What has been said here is nothing new because Comrade Pankhurst’s attitude towards parliamentarism in general is known. The decision proposed here to the Congress by the Commission is only a logical development of those decisions that have already been taken on other questions. It is no mere coincidence that precisely those who have come out most of all in favour of affiliation of the Communist Party to the Labour Party are the representatives of a country in which the dictatorship of the proletariat already exists. They were mainly Russian comrades. What is this Labour Party really? The Labour Party is nothing other than the political expression of the trade union-organised workers. The workers in the Labour Party defend the economic standpoint in one question or another. Nine tenths of those who belong to the Labour Party simultaneously belong to the trades unions.

Comrade Pankhurst’s example is childish. She has chosen the most reactionary of all trades unions. By and large there can be nobody who does not see that the workers, organised in the trades unions, are developing to the left. One can see the trade union movement change under the pressure of time and of events. One cannot regard the trades unions and their members as something eternally fixed. I remember the great strike of engineers in Manchester in 1917. Various comrades took part in it. The Communists emerged there and represented the standpoint of the strikers in the light of the Communist movement. We obtained the best possible results. In the beginning it was moved that the Labour Party itself should affiliate to the Communist International but the motion did not come to a vote. Nevertheless the fact that the question was raised aroused great political interest for this question was discussed everywhere in England, in all the sections of the Labour Party who otherwise never heard anything. A tremendous agitation was developed this way.

In contradiction to what has been said here and despite the fact that the BSP has become a member of the Labour Party, it still retains complete freedom of criticism. I myself and my party comrades have repeatedly criticised the press, and on other occasions at various congresses, the leaders of the Labour Party without that leading to any consequences at all. I insist on two points: first of all that the Labour Party is the political expression of the workers organised in the trades unions and must be conceived of as a political organisation, and secondly that within the Labour Party the supporters of another party retain their complete freedom of movement and of criticism.

Gallacher: I regret that this Congress has to concern itself with the same threadbare phrases that have been discussed for twenty years inside the British workers’ movement. And, moreover, on the part of the British Socialist Party that defended the same point of view that is defended here today. It is said that the particular reason that this affiliation to the Labour Party is encouraged is that it is thought possible thus to get into contact with the masses. We are in contact with the masses. One must distinguish between those who really want to get into contact with the masses and those who do not want to do so. [...] It was we who organised big demonstrations in Glasgow in Scotland. The greatest orators in England came to Scotland and tried to make social-patriotic speeches there. They had brought their clique with them – the worst section of the population. They had support. And although the representatives of the ILP suggested we should keep quiet, the comrades there managed to prevent the speakers in question from getting a hearing. The biggest popular meetings were organised although we didn’t want the speakers to get a hearing. I emphasize this kind of direct contact with the masses.

I refer to the experiences during the war, when the Scottish workers, despite the prevalent chauvinism, took good care that the wives and children of German internees were given the opportunity to live in a humane way while the other workers’ parties, whose freedom of action was limited by their bending to the bourgeoisie, could not participate in this. I should also like to point to the various internationally famous social-patriots like Thomas and Henderson who have betrayed the working class in a variety of ways. How would it look if we were to come out in the name of the same party whose representative Henderson is? I have clarified my views in my article against chauvinism. The paper which at the time was not prepared to publish this article was the Call. It was very strange to me to hear Comrade Lenin and others adopting the standpoint of Comrade McLaine here. The responsibility that Comrade McLaine has taken on himself is probably very weighty since he has converted the other communists to this point of view which does not correspond to their interests.

What matters is to bring the masses to an understanding of the present moment through agitation and through action. One should call forth the indignation of the proletariat, bring the masses to action by all ways and means, and not choose such diversions, such means that could divert them from their revolutionary struggle.

I shall close my speech with the appeal that the motion that is put here, and which would cause the Communist Party to distort its character, should not be accepted. I ask the comrades who represent the various parties here not to be too hasty in this question. We should be given the opportunity to found a true Communist Party on a true communist basis and to find the ways and means of speaking to the masses. Then they will be given the opportunity to decide this question too. It cannot be demanded of us that we should deny and work against everything for which we have been fighting for years. That is the decision between the revolutionary and the communist elements. The position of the Scottish comrades should not be made difficult and intolerable by a decision being forced upon them which they cannot defend in their position because it contradicts everything that they have defended previously in their lives and everything that they grew up with.

Lenin: Comrades, Comrade Gallacher began his speech by expressing regret at our having been compelled to listen here for the hundredth and the thousandth time to sentences that Comrade McLaine and other British comrades have reiterated a thousand times in speeches, newspapers and magazines. I think there is no need for regret. The old International used the method of referring such questions for decision to the individual parties in the countries concerned. That was a grave error. We may not be fully familiar with the conditions in one party or another, but in this case we are dealing with the principles underlying a Communist Party’s tactics. That is very important and, in the name of the Third International, we must herewith clearly state the communist point of view.

First of all, I should like to mention a slight inaccuracy on the part of Comrade McLaine, which cannot be agreed to. He called the Labour Party the political organisation of the trade union movement, and later repeated the statement when he said that the Labour Party is ‘the political expression of the workers organised in trades unions’. I have met the same view several times in the paper of the British Socialist Party. It is erroneous, and is partly the cause of the opposition, fully justified in some measure, coming from the British revolutionary workers. Indeed, the concepts ‘political department of the trades unions’ or ‘political expression’ of the trade union movement, are erroneous. Of course, most of the Labour Party’s members are working men. However, whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does not depend solely upon a membership of workers but also upon the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only that determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat. Regarded from this, the only correct point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noses and Scheidemanns.

We have also heard another point of view, defended by Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst and Comrade Gallacher, who have voiced their opinion in the matter. What was the substance of the speeches delivered by Gallacher and many of his friends? They have told us that they are insufficiently linked with the masses. But take the instance of the British Socialist Party, they went on. It is still less linked with the masses and it is a very weak party. Comrade Gallacher has told us here how he and his comrades have organised, and done so really splendidly, the revolutionary movement in Glasgow, in Scotland, how in their wartime tactics they manoeuvred skilfully, how they gave able support to the petty-bourgeois pacifists Ramsay MacDonald and Snowden when they come to Glasgow, and used this support to organise a mass movement against the war.

It is our aim to integrate this new and excellent revolutionary movement – represented here by Comrade Gallacher and his friends – into a Communist Party with genuinely communist, i.e., Marxist tactics. That is our task today. On the one hand, the British Socialist Party is too weak and incapable of properly carrying on agitation among the masses; on the other hand, we have the younger revolutionary elements so well represented here by Comrade Gallacher, who, although in touch with the masses, are not a political party, and in this sense are even weaker than the British Socialist Party and are totally unable to organise their political work. Under these circumstances, we must express our frank opinion on the correct tactics. When, in speaking of the British Socialist Party, Comrade Gallacher said that is is ‘hopelessly reformist’, he was undoubtedly exaggerating. But the general tenor and content of all the resolutions we have adopted here show with absolute clarity that we demand a change, in this spirit, in the tactics of the British Socialist Party; the only correct tactics of Gallacher’s friends will consist in their joining the Communist Party without delay, so as to modify its tactics in the spirit of the resolutions adopted here. If you have so many supporters that you are able to organise mass meetings in Glasgow, it will not be difficult for you to bring more than ten thousand new members into the Party. The latest Conference of the British Socialist Party, held in London three or four days ago, decided to assume the name of the Communist Party and introduced into its programme a clause providing for participation in parliamentary elections and affiliation to the Labour Party. Ten thousand organised members were represented at the Conference. It will therefore not be at all difficult for the Scottish comrades to bring into this ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ more than ten thousand revolutionary workers who are better versed in the art of working among the masses, and thus to modify the old tactics of the British Socialist Party in the sense of better agitation and more revolutionary action.

In the Commission, Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst pointed out several times that Britain needed ‘Lefts’. I, of course, replied that this was absolutely true, but that one must not overdo this ‘Leftism’. Furthermore she said that they were better pioneers, but for the moment were rather noisy. I do not take this in a bad sense, but rather in a good one, namely, that they are better able to carry on revolutionary agitation. We do and should value this. We expressed this in all our resolutions, for we always emphasize that we can consider a party to be a workers’ party only when it is really linked up with the masses and fights against the old and thoroughly corrupt leaders, against both the right-wing chauvinists and those who, like the Right Independents in Germany, take up an intermediate position. We have asserted and reiterated this a dozen times and more in all our resolutions, which means that we demand a transformation of the old party, in the sense of bringing it closer to the masses.

Sylvia Pankhurst also asked: ‘Is it possible for a Communist Party to join another political party which still belongs to the Second International?’ She replied that it was not. It should, however, be borne in mind that the British Labour Party is in a very special position: it is a highly original type of party, or rather, it is not at all a party in the ordinary sense of the word. It is made up of members of all trades unions, and has a membership of about four million, and allows sufficient freedom to all affiliated political parties. It thus includes a vast number of British workers who follow the lead of the worst bourgeois elements, the social-traitors, who are even worse than Scheidemann, Noske and similar people.

At the same time, however, the Labour Party has let the British Socialist Party into its ranks, permitting it to have its own press organs, in which members of the selfsame Labour Party can freely and openly declare that the party leaders are social-traitors. Comrade McLaine has cited quotations from such statements by the British Socialist Party. I, too, can certify that I have seen in The Call, organ of the British Socialist Party, statements that the Labour Party leaders are social-patriots and social-traitors. This shows that a party affiliated to the Labour Party is able, not only to severely criticise but openly and specifically to mention the old leaders by name, and call them social-traitors. This is a very original situation: a party which unites enormous masses of workers, so that it might seem a political party, is nevertheless obliged to grant its members complete latitude. Comrade McLaine has told us here that, at the Labour Party Conference, the British Scheidemanns were obliged to openly raise the question of affiliation to the Third International, and that an party branches and sections were obliged to discuss the matter. In such circumstances, it would be a mistake not to join this party.

In a private talk, Comrade Pankhurst said to me: ‘If we are real revolutionaries and join the Labour Party, these gentlemen will expel us.’ But that would not be bad at all. Our resolution says that we favour affiliation insofar as the Labour Party permits sufficient freedom of criticism. On that point we are absolutely consistent. Comrade McLaine has emphasised that the conditions now prevailing in Britain are such that, should it so desire, a political party may remain a revolutionary workers’ party even if it is connected with a special kind of labour organisation of four million members, which is half trade union and half political and is headed by bourgeois leaders. In such circumstances it would be highly erroneous for the best revolutionary elements not to do everything possible to remain in such a party. Let the Thomases and other social-traitors, whom you have called by that name, expel you. That will have an excellent effect upon the mass of the British workers.

The comrades have emphasised that the labour aristocracy is stronger in Britain than in any other country. That is true. After all, the labour aristocracy has existed in Britain, not for decades but for centuries. The British bourgeoisie, which has had far more experience – democratic experience – than that of any other country, has been able to buy workers over and to create among them a sizeable stratum, greater than in any other country, but one that is not so great compared with the masses of the workers. This stratum is thoroughly imbued with bourgeois prejudices and pursues a definitely bourgeois-reformist policy. In Ireland, for instance, there are two hundred thousand British soldiers who are applying ferocious terror methods to suppress the Irish. The British socialists are not conducting any revolutionary propaganda among these soldiers, though our resolutions clearly state that we can accept into the Communist International only those British parties that conduct genuinely revolutionary propaganda among the British workers and soldiers. I emphasize that we have heard no objections to this either here or in the Commissions.

Comrades Gallacher and Sylvia Pankhurst cannot deny that. They cannot refute the fact that, in the ranks of the Labour Party, the British Socialist Party enjoys sufficient freedom to write that certain leaders of the Labour Party are traitors; that these old leaders represent the interests of the bourgeoisie; that they are agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement. They cannot deny all this because it is the absolute truth. When Communists enjoy such freedom, it is their duty to join the Labour Party if they take due account of the experience of revolutionaries in all countries, not only of the Russian revolution (for here we are not at a Russian congress but at one that is international). Comrade Gallacher has said ironically that in the present instance we are under the influence of the British Socialist Party. That is not true; it is the experience of all revolutions in all countries that has convinced us. We think that we must say that to the masses. The British Communist Party must retain the freedom necessary to expose and criticise the betrayers of the working class, who are much more powerful in Britain than in any other country. This is readily understandable.

Comrade Gallacher is wrong in asserting that by advocating affiliation to the Labour Party we shall repel the best elements among the British workers. We must test this by experience. We are convinced that all the resolutions and decisions that will be adopted by our Congress will be published in all British revolutionary socialist newspapers and that all the branches and sections will be able to discuss them. The entire content of our resolutions shows with crystal clarity that we are representatives of working-class revolutionary tactics in all countries and that our aim is to fight against the old reformism and opportunism. The events reveal that our tactics are indeed defeating the old reformism. In that case the finest revolutionary elements in the working class, who are dissatisfied with the slow progress being made – and progress in Britain will perhaps be slower than in other countries – will all come over to us. Progress is slow because the British bourgeoisie are in a position to create better conditions for the labour aristocracy and thereby to retard the revolutionary movement in Britain. That is why the British comrades should strive, not only to revolutionise the masses – they are doing that splendidly (as Comrade Gallacher has shown), but must at the same time strive to create a real working-class political party. Comrade Gallacher and Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst, who have both spoken here, do not as yet belong to a revolutionary Communist Party. That excellent proletarian organisation, the Shop Stewards’ movement, has not yet joined a political party. If you organise politically you will find that our tactics are based on a correct understanding of political developments in the past decades, and that a real revolutionary party can be created only when it absorbs the best elements of the revolutionary class and uses every opportunity to fight the reactionary leaders, wherever they show themselves.

If the British Communist Party starts by acting in a revolutionary manner in the Labour Party, and if the Hendersons are obliged to expel this Party, that will be a great victory for the communist and revolutionary working-class movement in Britain.

Zinoviev: A vote must now be taken on the question of the entry of the English parties into the Labour Party. All those in favour of the Commission’s motion, that is to say for affiliation to the Labour Party, please raise your hands. [The motion is adopted by 58 votes to 24 with 2 abstentions.]

We now wish to take the vote on the whole resolution but first to give the floor to some comrades to make statements.

Serrati: I declare that I shall vote against the theses because of the attitude on the English and American question and because of the criticisms that have been made of the leadership of the Italian Party. I should not like to hold up the Congress with a long statement but I shall hand over a long statement to the Presidium for the minutes.

Graziadei: We propose that the 17th thesis should be formulated as follows:

‘As far as the Italian Socialist Party is concerned the Second Congress of the Communist International recognises that the revision of the programme that the Bologna Party Congress adopted in the last year marks an important stage in its transformation to communism, and that the proposals that were presented to the General Council of the Party by the Turin section, and published on May 8, 1920 in the newspaper Ordine Nuovo, are in agreement with the fundamental principles of communism. The Congress asks the Socialist Party of to check the above proposals and all the decisions of the two Congresses of the Communist International, particularly those concerning parliamentary action, the trades unions and the non-communist elements in the Party, at the next Congress which has to take place on the basis of the Statutes and the general conditions of affiliation to the Communist International.
Signed., Graziadei, Bombacci, Polano.’

Zinoviev: On behalf of three members of the Russian delegation, Lenin, Bukharin and myself, I declare that we accept this wording by Graziadei and hope that the majority of the Commission will also accept this wording.

Wijnkoop: I should like to state here that I shall vote for these Theses although they are against my views on the English question, because they take up a very sharp position against the opportunists and because, in the Commission, they were sharpened up even further precisely on the Italian question.

Serrati: Despite the statement that has now been made by Graziadei and the members of the Commission, I still stand by my statement that in fact there is no difference between what has been said in the Theses and what has been said now. Perhaps a lawyer could read a difference in or out of it but we are not a Congress of lawyers but of communists. These theses mean a disavowal of the Italian Party leadership and of Avanti. We should say that straight out.

Zinoviev: I must state that Serrati is right. In fact it is the same. But this is a proposal by the Italian comrades and we have gone halfway to meet it. We are always prepared to make concessions in form for comrades who want to fight against lawyers and say on this question the members of the Commission and the Congress are on the S side of Comrade Serrati.

Bordiga: On behalf of the left wing of the Italian party I declare that I am not at all concerned with the form or the style but only with the content.

And I believe what emerges from all the speeches made by Lenin and Zinoviev is that the Italian party is being criticised because at the Bologna Congress it did not do its duty on the question of parliamentary activity. Should the Italian party have the opportunity to do justice to the obligations it has assumed here it will do so. The Central Committee will be able to gain acceptance of the decisions that have been taken here.

Zinoviev: We now come to the vote on the Theses as a whole. [The Theses are adopted with 3 votes against and 1 abstention.]

The question is thus settled.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Liverpool: A City That Dared to Fight- A Review

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Hammer"-On The British Labour Party, Circa 2010- A Guest Commentary

*Click onthe headline to link to a Workers Hammer article from Spring 2010 on the British Labour Party and the then upcoming elections.

*From The "Spartacist" Journal Archives-"British Communism Aborted:The Far left: 1900-1920"- A Guest Book Review/Commentary

Markin comment:

The following is an article from an archival issue of the Spartacist journal, Winter 1985-86, that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Spartacist periodically throughout the year.

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"British Communism Aborted:The Far left: 1900-1920"- A Guest Book Review/Commentary

A REVIEW
The Origins of British Bolshevism
by Raymond Challinor Croom, Helm Ltd., London, 1977

If knowledge is not always power, ignorance is always weakness. With the deteriorating American school system calculated to produce ignorant youth in a period of reaction and Cold War, education of Marxist cadre is a crucial task for a Leninist organization. In this spirit, the Spartacist League/U.S. has instituted a nationally centralized program of internal education in Marxism and general knowledge.

As an aspect of this educational program, a significant part of the Central Committee plenum of the S L/ U.S., held last August, was devoted to a consideration of Raymond Challinor's The Origins of British Bolshevism. This is a study of the British Socialist Labour Party (SLP) from its origin around 1900 to its rapid disintegration in the early 1920s, following the organization's refusal to participate in the formation of the British section of the Communist International. Also as part of the education program Ed Clarkson of the SL Central Committee gave an educational presentation on Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder to a National Committee plenum of the Spartacus Youth League, the SL's youth section (reprinted as "Leninist Tactics and the Road to Workers Power" in Young Spartacus Nos. 130 and I3l, October and November 1985). We print below an edited version of a presentation to the plenum by comrade George Foster of the Sparta cist League Central Committee on Challinor's book.

This study of the British SLP illuminates in one important, concrete case the historic problem of forging Communist parties in the West out of the subjectively revolutionary elements in the pre-1917 socialist and anarcho-syndicalist movements. It also adds appreciably to our understanding of why the Communist Party in Britain was stillborn. The sterility of the CPGB and absence of a real Leninist tradition in Britain have been key negative conditions for the complete hegemony of Laborite reformism over the workers movement right down to the present.

The Third International

Much of the discussion focused on Challinor's parochial and nationally limited conception of revolutionary organization. The very title conveys a false understanding, as if a genuine counterpart of Russian Bolshevism was spontaneously generated on British (or Scottish) soil. Unlike the British SLP, the Russian Bolshevik Party was forged as an instrument to struggle for power amid the universal revolutionary ferment of the last years of the tsarist empire. It was this which set the Bolsheviks apart from even the best pre-World War I socialist parties in the West. In the discussion one conference participant pointed out:

"...[T]he Communist International does not fall from the skies, it comes from the experience of the Russian workers movement and the Russian Revolution— [T]he combination of a great empire; a central ethnicity that was not to be threatened, but massive national oppression; the growth of a great, raw, militant proletariat; pressures given the autocracy such that every member of the intelligentsia went through a selection process—all this churned up through wars, agrarian issues—[thus it was] that of all the parties of the Second International the Russian Social Democrats had the vanguard of experience."

The Bolsheviks' revolutionary experience was generalized and codified in the famous 21 Conditions for membership in the Communist International.

The British SLP was an example of a small Marxist propaganda group, originating and developing under relatively stable conditions of bourgeois democracy, which was then confronted with convulsive events, namely, the first imperialist world war and the Russian Revolution. The SLP had become so habituated to its prewar situation that it failed to make the turn toward the tasks of a new, far stormier period of social struggle.

Presentation

Comrades all have the study guide, the questions that were prepared to be thought about in conjunction with reading the book of Challinor.

For some of these questions the answers are quite clear; others are complex and require a lot of evaluation, thought and weighing; and at least one of them ought to frighten you a bit—which is, how does a party prepare for unanticipated and perhaps unprecedented events in a situation where the tasks posed by those events may for a period be far beyond your capacity? And the simple answer that comes to mind is: go through the experiences of the Bolshevik Party. Which may seem like a tautology, but isn't. And that's the point of this talk—that comrades Lenin and Trotsky and the first four congresses of the Communist International provide us with at least the political method and structure whereby we can forge a party which has both the program and possibly the capacity to make the rapid changes and adjustments necessary to lead to the revolutionary victory of the workers over the bourgeoisie.

I'd like to begin discussing the book by reading a quote from James Cannon, pioneer American Communist and Trotskyist, which 1 think sets this book in its context. And the quote is from Cannon's review of The Roots of American Communism by Theodore Draper. You'll find it in the book The First Ten Years of American Communism. Cannon says:

"The traditional sectarianism of the Americans was expressed most glaringly in their attempt to construct revolutionary unions outside the existing labor movement; their refusal to fight for’ immediate demands' in the course of the class struggle for the socialist goal; and their strongly entrenched anti-parliamentarism, which was only slightly modified in the first program of the Communist Party. All that hodgepodge of ultra-radicalism was practically wiped out of the American movement in 1920-21 by Lenin. He did it, not by an administrative order backed up by police powers, but by the simple device of publishing a pamphlet called "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. (This famous pamphlet was directed in part against the Dutch theoreticians who had exerted such a strong influence on the Americans and a section of the Germans.)"

Cannon goes on:

"The 'Theses and Resolutions' of the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 also cleared up the thinking of the American communists over a wide range of theoretical and political problems, and virtually eliminated the previously dominating influence exerted by the sectarian conceptions of De Leon and the Dutch leaders."

That is to say, whatever the particularities of the fate of the British Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the impact of that on the viability of the Communist Party of Britain as it was constituted, its importance is far less of a factor than Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Lenin's work is literally a handbook of communist tactics which solved many of the problems of the American movement—the question of "boring from within," the question of the connection between parliamentarism and industrial action, the question of industrial unions, the question of conservative-dominated craft unions, the question of dual unionism. Unfortunately for most militants of the British SLP, afflicted with many of the very same political diseases, the lessons of Bolshevism were not assimilated. This was not, as Challinor maintains, a consequence of a misinformed Lenin's attempt to arrange a shotgun wedding of unsuitable partners to found the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), but rather a consequence of the SLP's parochial failure to grasp the world-historic significance of the 1917 October Revolution.

Roots of SLP: Britain and America

Now, the British SLP, as comrades read, arose out of a split with the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) (later to become the British Socialist Party). And the split was a good split. It entailed the question of Millerandism, of Ireland, and of the SDF's very opportunistic courting of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In the first section of his book Challinor lays out the political issues very clearly. The SDF was a rotten creation of a man named H.M. Hyndman who was not one of Marx's favorite people. Comrades, if they've read the book by Pelling on the origins of the British Labour Party [Henry Pelling, The Origins of the Labour Party}, know that Hyndman started out as a Tory radical. He was a fervid supporter of British imperialism, the monarchy and parliamentarism. He was also an anti-Semite and a dedicated opponent of militant class struggle, especially strikes. Himself a wealthy businessman, he and his cronies owned the SDF's newspaper, Justice. It was not until April 1916, under the bloody impact of the imperialist war, that the BSP— the product of a 1912 fusion of the SDF with the small left rump of the Independent Labour Party—got rid of Hyndman. Hyndman and his cohorts then formed a group called the National Socialist Party! A man before his time!
The U.S. SLP played a very big role, of course, in the formation of the British SLP. The American SLP was founded by immigrants of German and Jewish origin. Following Daniel De Leon's rise to leadership the party grew rapidly—controlling over 70 trade unions in the New York Central Labor Federation. The SLP wielded sufficient influence to secure (in 1893) adoption by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) of an eleven-point socialist program. By 1894 it had ousted Samuel Gompers from the presidency of the AFL. Gompers was not pleased. Within a year he was back in office and the SLP was out.

Which caused De Leon to renounce the tactic of "boring from within." As he put it, "the hole you're likely to bore from within is the one you're going to exit through." [Laughter.] And from these experiences came his hostility both to craft unionism and his very strong adherence to industrial unionism. The SLP attempted to set up their own industrial union federation which was called the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, which had 13,000 members. This formation rapidly disintegrated.

De Leon later refined his conceptions of industrial unionism and actually foreshadowed, in aspects at least, the idea of soviet rule of society—rule based on industrial workers organized in industrial enterprises, i.e., Soviets. And as comrades know, De Leon played an important role, along with Debs, in forging the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW.

The British SLP when it arose was concentrated overwhelmingly in Scotland and comrades may wonder why that was the case. Why was it that Glasgow, and in particular the Clydeside industrial belt, was the scene of the SLP's greatest strength and most influence in the proletariat? In his very detailed and interesting book called The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-21, Walter Kendall aptly observes:

"Scottish radicalism also had its roots deep in a separate native cultural tradition. At the time of Charles I Scottish nobles and Calvinist clergy had combined to prevent the re-imposition of episcopacy in Scotland. In ensuing centuries the Church of Scotland retained a narrow, rigid theology, continually in conflict with English orthodoxy, a factor which gave a specifically different outlook and flavour to Scottish intellectual life. The Scottish educational system, given an initial impetus by the teachings of John Knox. remained in advance of the English until well into the twentieth century. Religion, the ideology of the establishment in Britain, had in Scotland a more striking record of national struggle. Penetrating deeper into the culture of the people, it gave them a penchant for the cut and thrust of logical argument, an appreciation and enthusiasm for dialectics not to be found in England. As John Knox was acolyte to Calvin, as John Carstairs Matheson to de Leon. So, in later years, Campbell and Gallacher were first to Lenin and then to his successor Stalin."

This is a polite way of presenting the Scottish psyche. [Laughter.]

There were other factors also ably cited by Kendall. There were a very large number of Irish immigrants in the Clydeside area, many of whom were active supporters of Sinn Fein. And as comrades know, the great Irish revolutionary James Connolly was indeed one of the founders of the SLP. Large-scale capitalism came late to Scotland and a large proportion of the proletariat of Glasgow had been uprooted from the countryside and pushed into the city, which like Petrograd had enormous engineering plants. So for a number of reasons the SLP sank its roots very deeply into Scotland and had very close links with the Irish struggle, and also, because of the large Scottish and Irish emigrations to North America, with the class struggle in the United States.

Impact of 1905 Russian Revolution

One of the enormous international impacts of the 1905 Russian Revolution was to turn the attention of socialists to the power of mass political strikes. In Germany Rosa Luxemburg and her followers seized upon the weapon of the mass strike as an answer to the social-reformist passivity of SPD [Social Democratic Party] tops, while failing to grasp the critical differences between the activities of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the 1905 upheavals in Russia [see "The Russian Revolution of 1905," Workers Vanguard Nos. 288 and 289, 11 and 25 September 1981]. The experience of 1905 was very directly connected with the founding of the IWW in the United States in that same year. This inspired subsequently similar efforts on the part of the British SLP.

However, the British SLP's Advocates of Industrial Unionism (AIU) never managed to rise to the level of the IWW despite a very strong swing toward syndicalism on the part of the British proletariat in the period from 1905 through 1913. In those years of stormy class conflict, a response to a massive rationalization and further concentration of British capital at the expense of the workers, trade unions in Britain grew enormously. This upsurge hit its high point in 1912 with the great miners strike.

During this period the AIU managed to only hitch a ride on this elemental wave of class struggle. But this was sufficient to blood its militants in the class struggle, and root them deeply in the militant proletariat in the sprawling Clyde engineering plants. This was to place them in a strategic position during the tumultuous strikes that ripped the region both in 1915-16 and early 1919.

In comparison with its British competitors, e.g., Hyndman's BSP and the ILP, the British SLP was impressive. Indeed it compares favorably to the American SLP of De Leon. The British SLP rejected De Leon's sectarian disavowal of "immediate demands," and played an important role in the class struggle. De Leon found himself isolated from the labor movement with his split with the IWW in 1908. Already in 1900 Hillquit, Berger and Debs had led a split out of the SLP to found the Socialist Party (SP). Cannon asserts in The First Ten Years that the SLP even before 1905 was well on its way to becoming a sect, noting the SP not only pulled in all the reformists, but also most of the left, vital revolutionary elements of the American proletariat.

Forging a Bolshevik Party

Challinor definitely misleads his readers by implying that the De Leonist SLP was two-thirds or three-quarters of the way to being a Bolshevik-type party. He says, "Clearly, the SLP was among the first to see the need for an organisational and ideological split from social democracy." In discussing this matter it's particularly useful to look at the SLP through the lens of Lenin's What Is To Be Done? About a year before the SLP was born,

Lenin wrote his work. If "Left- Wing" Communism constitutes a handbook on communist tactics, What Is To Be Done? contains the blueprints for the construction of a party and a cadre. So that the whole struggle against economism, the struggle for a party of professional revolutionaries, the struggle which Lenin talks about at great length in "Left-Wing" Communism—for a political party to be a tribune of the people, to master politics in many arenas—all this is laid out of course in What Is To Be Done? You don't see anything at all like this in the SLP.

On everything from press questions to forms of organization the differences are clear. In particular they are clear on the necessity of constructing a cadre of full-time professional revolutionaries. The British SLP had difficulty keeping a full-timer and a lot of the time didn't have one. I found it a source of great irritation that Challinor holds this up as a virtue. Referring to the valiant work of SLP leader MacManus during the war, he says:

"It is hard to imagine how great the strain upon certain individuals must have been. For example. Arthur MacManus was editor of The Socialist, and in I9l5,when the Clyde Workers' Committee was formed, he became its chairman. As spokesman for this rank-and-file organization, the most powerful of its kind in the country, he played a leading role in the creation of a National Workers' & Shop Stewards' Movement. All this was done in his spare time: he also had a full-time job as an engineer at G. & J. Weir's Cathcart works, where he was the most well-known militant. Besides these commitments, which would have been more than enough for half a do/en men with only a normal amount of energy. MacManus found time to help in the struggle in Ireland. In 1915, James Connolly visited Glasgow and told his old SLP comrades that the authorities had suppressed their journal, the Irish Worker. So the SLP undertook to print it clandestinely on the Party's press at Renfrew Street. In his autobiography Tom Bell stated, 'Comrade Arthur MacManus was especially keen on doing this; working night and day to get it out, and arranged for the shipment of the paper, which he took over personally to Dublin'."

Heroic MacManus indeed was. But the inability of the SLP to provide for full-time party workers was a source of abiding weakness. It prevented the cohering of a cadre around a program, and prevented that leadership from jelling. One gets the impression of a lot of very talented, capable, tough-minded, experienced propagandists and trade-union agitators who tended to be more an association than a party. I think this explains one of the big questions that this book raises. Why was it that those elements of the SLP who were for a fusion with the Third International, who wanted to bring the SLP in as part of the Communist Party of Britain and who themselves were among the most pre-eminent of the SLP leaders, actually had the organization taken away from them and were incapable of effecting any significant split for Leninism? The answer is to be found in their inability to construct a party with the resources, but above all the perspective, of maintaining a cadre of professional revolutionists.


If the SLP started out as a good split from the SDF, on the eve of World War 1 it had a very murky split, reflecting above all the political incapacity of De Leonism to serve as a guide for revolutionary action. In 1912 the SLP lost over half its members in a dispute over whether or not it was permissible for the party to support reforms—e.g., should an SLP councillor in Glasgow cast a vote for more money to the unemployed. Defeated at the Manchester conference, the anti-reform "impossibilists" walked out of the party, taking a majority of the membership with them.

The SLP had a good line on the first imperialist war, but its activities in the unions during the war revealed weakness in the party. In short the SLP did not carry its line against the war in a way that counted into the massive Clyde strikes of 1915-1916—strikes in which the SLP played a leading role. Challinor excuses this on the grounds that for the SLP to insist that the Clyde Workers' Committee—which was running this massive strike against the Munitions Act— adopt the SLP's line on the war would have split the Workers' Committee. Again you see here a failure to grasp what Lenin later was to try to teach the British workers movement—which was that they were obligated to have their people who were working in that arena attempt to transform this strike, to agitate to infuse the strike with a political content aimed against the imperialist war and the British government. The strike was a strike against key munitions industries in wartime, and against the M munitions Act. Objectively it was a political strike against war par excellence.

Instead the behavior of SLP strike leader John Muir dragged the SLP's antiwar banner in the mud. Dragged before the bosses' court for his role in the strike, Muir cravenly swore that the strike was a purely economic struggle over shop issues and that he was for the war and war production! And the SLP tolerated this renegade remaining in its ranks! The honor of the Clyde Workers' Committee was upheld by John Maclean, the representative of the left internationalist wing of the BSP, who turned his trial into a political indictment of the bourgeoisie and its imperialist war.

British capitalism emerged from World War I profoundly shaken. Under the impact of the October Revolution the class antagonisms generated by war exploded in a massive postwar strike wave accompanied by episodic strikes and mutinies in the armband navy. In January 1919 the Clyde workers went out in a massive general strike for a 40-hour week. The government responded with armed troops. Unfortunately the strike did not spread and the strikers did not test the troops. At the time the government had only two battalions of reserves.

Challinor quotes from Aneurin Sevan's In Place of Fear, which described the famous 1919 meeting between the prime minister, Lloyd George, and the leaders of the Triple
Alliance. All I can say is, Lloyd George knew his Labour leaders [laughter]—which he ought to, since the Liberal Party and the ILP and the trade unions were very closely
linked. It reminds me of the German events of the autumn of 1918, when the troops were mutinying and forming Soviets. The German general staff pulled the same act on
the German soldiers' Soviets on the Western Front, saying, "Well, fine. You soldiers' Soviets have to withdraw two million people from France and Belgium. Here, you do it.
Are you ready?" Nope, they weren't. But that was a gamble[laughs]. In Britain a couple of the right guys in there and one might have had something approaching a 1905
situation, or at least a very big, much more massive wave ofpolitical strikes—which would have put the British workers in a lot better position both objectively and from a
standpoint of cohering a communist party. The whole incident both highlights the counterrevolutionary role of the trade-union tops, and exposes the political incapacity
of the SLP which had no idea how to overcome these roadblocks to revolution. ,

Challinor plays up the very real strengths of the SLP, while downplaying its De Leonist weaknesses—indeed, treating them as virtues. Meanwhile he presents such a compelling picture of the wretchedness of the BSP that one wonders how any chunk of this party made it into the Comintern. In fact the BSP was a heterogeneous organization that underwent a series of left-right polarizations under the impact of the war and the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

Affiliation to the Communist International

Following the 1916 split between Hyndman and E.G. Fairchild, who had a Kautskyite position on the war, the BSP moved leftward. At its April 1919 Conference the BSP declared itself for soviet rule and polled its branches on affiliation to the Communist International (Cl). Fairchild supported the Russian Revolution, but didn't consider a soviet-type revolution in Britain a serious possibility. The left majority, including John Maclean who maintained a consistent internationalist position as a BSPer throughout the war, believed the British revolution was on the order of the day and that they should link up with the Third International. The result of the ballot on affiliation to the Communist International, announced in October, was 98 to 4 in favor of affiliation.

Undoubtedly among those for the CI were a goodly number of "November Bolsheviks." Theodore Rothstein, a rotten apple, was perhaps the leading example of this layer. His trajectory was parallel to that of many left social-democratic sharpies in Europe, who thought that the Third International was the wave of the future. You had the Frossards and Cachins and scads of social democrats in the French party who went over to the Third International but didn't belong there. The main aim of the 21 Conditions was to filter such people out, and also to filter out the practices they brought with them.

The Russians were, I think, much more familiar with the BSP than SLP. All of the Bolshevik congresses except the one held in Stockholm—from 1903 to the Revolution— were held in London. Lenin himself lived for a time in London, as did some 30,000 other Russian emigres. And of those that were leftists—adherents to socialism—many belonged to the BSP. They constituted a large portion of the left wing of that organization. During the war a very large number of them were supporters of Trotsky's Nashe Slovo which was printed in Paris. Challinor makes the point that half of the circulation of that journal took place in Britain, .and the overwhelming proportion of that in London. There was also a colony of Russian exiles—and that too swelled enormously after the 1905Revolution—in Scotland, again associated with the SDF/BSP.

Litvinov and Chicherin and a number of others were associated with and had links with the BSP in London. Further, SDF members both in England and Scotland ran guns to the Russian revolutionaries from 1905 through 1907—quite a lot of them, hundreds of Brownings, millions of rounds of ammo. They would buy them in Europe, smuggle them to Newcastle, get them to Scotland, and then on to tsarist ships to smuggle them into Russia.

So not all BSPers were clones of the top-hatted and corpulent H.M. Hyndman! As with the SLP, a significant part of the BSP far left was located in Scotland. Most noteworthy was John Maclean, who as earlier indicated maintained a consistent internationalist position on the war, and played an important role in the Clyde strikes. The formidable Maclean was arguably the most capable proletarian revolutionist in Britain and a close associate of BSPer Peter Petroff, a hero of the 1905 Russian Revolution.

The Communist unity negotiations in Britain are very confusing, above all a reflection of the political confusion of the participants in the negotiations. There were three main groups and a couple of subsidiary ones. You had the SLP, Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers' Socialist Federation, the South Wales Socialist Society and the ILP left, and they all hailed the Russian Revolution—both revolutions. And some of them genuinely hailed the second one too. [Laughter.] It does strike you in reading the SLP's writings on the Russian Revolution that on the one hand, yes, they're happy it happened and... its real, main and key significance was it vindicates the SLP and its line in Britain! [Laughs.] In short, to repeat, the SLP failed to appreciate the world-historic significance of the October Revolution both in the broad sense and also in the particular communist sense that Lenin outlined in "Left- Wing" Communism.

I think Challinor makes a very good case that Lenin did not have clear ideas on everything that was going on in Britain. How could he? He was at some distance from the events, and certainly had other things occupying his mind in the immediate period after the October Revolution. Further, revolutionary Russia was blockaded by the imperialists. His information was partial.

However, Lenin did recognize something very important: that there needed to be a unified Communist party in Britain. You had all these groups claiming adherence to the October Revolution, to soviet government and for the Third International. There was an objective requirement for a Bolshevik-type party in Britain. But if there was to be such a party it had to have a policy toward the Labour Party. What gets omitted in Challinor is any policy toward the Labour Party except throwing rocks at it.

Was Britain going through a revolutionary period in 1918-1920? No. But if the Triple Alliance had decided to tell Lloyd George to shove it, we might have had something
break. But that didn't happen, and a lot of people voted Labour. There were 4 million workers affiliated to the Labour Party. The Labour Party in 1918 became socialist. You better believe that had something to do with the October Revolution and the Labour Party covering its ass. For communists the question was how to deal with this obstacle.

The most striking failure was, as I mentioned earlier, the failure of the pro-fusion wing of the SLP, the Communist Unity Group of MacManus and Bell, to carry the majority of the SLP into the CPGB. They had no conception of factional struggle for their particular position. Thus the best of the SLP, who could not understand how to conduct a faction fight in their own party, certainly could not understand what Lenin was talking about at all regarding the Labour Party. Challinor drags out J.T. Murphy's "cogent arguments" against Labour Party affiliation. These are not very cogent at all and have been answered dozens of times. Reading Murphy what comes through is: we'll either be swamped in the Labour Party or we have to destroy it. There's no conception of using class-struggle means to polarize and gut it—i.e., no conception therefore of political struggle for a political line and program. Behind that is the conception of the party as the worst sort of a passive propaganda society.

This was a fatal flaw of De Leonism, its social-democratic underbelly. The party through patient propaganda and education was to win the proletariat to its side. In the U.S. De Leon projected the SLP would eventually win at the polls and dissolve the capitalist government. Should the bourgeoisie resist, they would be "locked out" by the socialist industrial unions, which would then proceed to administer socialism. The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of a transition period and of the role of the party in that transition are absent.

So the SLP had a pretty good party in terms of—not the party that made the October Revolution—but of what was floating around in England or even the U.S. in that period. They didn't make it. What stands out is their parochialism. In the U.S. out of the left wing of the SP came the Haywood wing of the IWW, Cannon. Swabeck, John Reed, the foreign-language federations and a few of the native American workers. And out of that was forged a viable Communist Party—a little too viable in its early period. Like Cannon said, they fought like hell all the time. It was the Comintern that came in and provided the lessons and the correctives to teach the young American CP how to become a Leninist party—how to solve a lot of the problems that had tied up the American party and British and German and pre-war social democracy.

The party issuing out of the 1920 Communist Unity Convention was stillborn. And the indication of that was— no fights. The recent Euro/tankie fight is the CPGB's first serious faction fight. Very early on the British party acquired a set of leaders who seemed to live forever [laughs] and didn't get any better. The congenital incapacity of the CPGB was evident during the 1926 General Strike and since, and has also had negative impact on Trotskyism in Britain. Cannon and a section of the American CP were forged into genuine Leninists who, when the degeneration of the Comintern came, were able to pick up the banner. This was not the case in Britain. Gerry Healy tries to suck glorious origins of British Trotskyism out of his thumb, but it's a fact that Trotskyism had to be imported.

The SLP in Britain disappeared very quickly after it stood aside from the Third International, in many ways like the syndicalist wing of the IWW did in the U.S. Cannon made the point that one would have thought, on the face of it, given the history of the IWW during the war which was as a semi-party, certainly revolutionary-minded and with many experienced militants, that a large number of them would have made it to the Communist Party. But, as he put it, it was the foreigners, the callow youth, only some fragments of the IWW that actually came to be the core of the American Communist Party. They didn't have the experience of many of the IWW, but in the end program was decisive. But there at least you had a germ cell that was fertilized and grew. I think in Britain what you had was a miscarriage; Challinor might more aptly have titled his book "The Abortion of British Bolshevism."

For Challinor, himself a supporter of the anti-Soviet and social-democratic Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of Britain, the abortionists are Lenin and the Communist International. Clearly he feels that it was erroneous to insist that the new CPGB affiliate to the Labour Party, as this blocked the majority of the SLP, whom he wrongly considers the "native Bolsheviks," from entering that CP.

Challinor's position should be contrasted with that of Lenin at the Second Congress. Lenin insisted that the question of the Labour Party be debated before the International. He insisted that the new International not repeat the experience of the Second International and let the British comrades get into a room and decide the question among themselves. The Labour Party question was not simply a British question but an international problem. It was the obligation of the Cl to come up with a policy and pursue it. If this led to some splits, so be it, but it would be good experience for the British party to try to implement these tactics.

Challinor does not take up the real difficulty in implementing the CIs policy. To carry it off successfully you needed a hard, cohesive, ideologically tested formation. And that certainly was not what the British CP was. We have a contradiction. If the CPGB had successfully affiliated, they probably would very likely have capitulated in just the way many of the SLPers feared they would. [Interjection: Adopt a position in favor of entry, and don't enter!] Right, right! A zero approximation of a position of shallow entry! [Laughter.] What you needed were Comintern reps on the scene to take these various would-be Bolsheviks by the political scruff of the neck, to teach them and fight with them. Lenin was very aware that a policy of affiliation was no automatic recipe for success. He thought this would be a good school for the CPGB, a school of political struggle, leading very possibly to splits and a fusion on a higher order.

Challinor, like all anti-Leninist centrists, invokes Lenin against Lenin. He quotes Lenin's criticism of the Third Congress Org Resolution that it was "too Russian." We've made the point numerous times but it bears repeating. Lenin thought that resolution was "too Russian" in the sense that it was too long and no one would read or understand it. But if you read on, he remarks (and this was his last speech to the Communist International):
"We Russians must also find ways and means to explaining the principles of this resolution to the foreigners. Unless we do that, it will be absolutely impossible for them to carry it out. I am sure that in this connection we must tell not only the Russians, but the foreign comrades as well, that the most important thing in the period we are now entering is to study. We are studying in the general sense. They, however, must study in the special sense, in order that they may really understand the organisation, structure, method and content of revolutionary work. If they do that, I am sure the prospects of the world revolution will be not only good, but excellent." —Collected Works Vol. 33
Better the road of Lenin than that of Challinor!

Summary

A question was raised about the attitude of the SLP to the colonial question, and in particular to the Amritsar massacre. Regarding this a British comrade has handed me a note stating that a reading of The Socialist, the SLP's newspaper, and also The Call, which was the BSP's, indicates that in fact they did take it up. He observes: "If it's possible to differentiate active internationalism in the building of the party from the tribune of the people, I think they were pretty good on the latter." In that sense I think they would therefore be with the best of the Second International. Comrades recall that last year we printed the following quote from Trotsky on this question from his 1932 essay "What Next?" He was referring to the German centrists, and Ledebour in particular:

"Ledebour demands that a battle be waged against colonial oppression: he is ready to vote in parliament against colonial credits: he is ready to take upon himself fearless defense of the victims of a crushed colonial insurrection. But Ledebour will not participate in preparing a colonial insurrection. Such work he considers putschism. adventurism. Bolshevism. And therein is the whole gist of the matter."

The American SLP hung on for years, and it's a question as to how this happened. It's not the same people who founded the party in the 1860s or the 1870s although, to look at them, sometimes you think so. [Laughter.] They became a sect, but some sects don't make it. The American SLP made it because they did have a base among some of the foreign-language groups. They stopped publication of their Bulgarian-language paper only a short while ago. It's been pointed out that the SLP probably got the Bulgarians in the U.S. because they were the closest thing to the Narrows [Bulgarian Narrow Socialist Party]. [Laughter.] Shachtman in '46 decided the Workers Party would become a small mass party in a very big country. The Bulgarians tried to be a small party in a small country and wound up a mass party.

As I said, John Maclean was probably the best of the BSP. Indeed Lenin singled him out as representing the best far-left, internationalist wing of British socialism. And he also didn't make it. He spiraled into creating a nationalist party, i.e., the Scottish Communist Party. He thought that the axis of a workers revolution in Britain would be an Irish/Scottish revolution. And London would follow—which is just plain wrong. You have to get the capital. In other times, from a very different class standpoint, this strategy was tried and didn't succeed. [Laughter.]
When the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Representation Committee were being formed it was not at all clear that they would forge a labor party which would capture the allegiance of the British proletariat. But indeed it did succeed, and by 1918 had become a formidable obstacle to proletarian revolution. Remember the Leeds Conference, where you had people like Snowden and Henderson coming out for "soviets" in Britain... adopting the protective coloration of pink.

In closing, to reiterate Cannon's point: the October Revolution marked a watershed not only in the broad international sense but also in the specific, communist sense. It was the Bolsheviks who taught us how to forge parties of a new type—vanguard parties, Leninist parties, combat parties. The experience of Bolshevism solved all the dilemmas that had arisen in the preceding period: the questions of "boring from within," parliamentary action, industrial action, etc. So that we stand far higher than the SLP did, but on the shoulders of the Russian Revolution. If we can see these things it's because we're the continuators. As Cannon said, "We are the party of the Russian Revolution"—our teachers.

*************

Are You Ready to Take the Power?

We reprint below an excerpt from In Place of Fear, the autobiography of the late Aneurin Bevan.

I remember vividly Robert Smillie describing to me an interview the leaders of the Triple Alliance had with David Lloyd George in 1919. The strategy of the leaders was clear. The miners under Robert Smillie, the transport workers under Robert Williams, and the National Union of Railwaymen under James Henry Thomas, formed the most formidable combination of industrial workers-in the history of Great Britain. They had agreed on the demands that were to be made on the employers, knowing well that the government would be bound to be involved at an early stage. And so it happened. A great deal of industry was still under government wartime control and so the state power was immediately implicated.

Lloyd George sent for the Labour leaders, and they went, so Robert told me, "truculently determined they would not be talked over by the seductive and eloquent Welshman." At this Bob's eyes twinkled in his grave, strong face. "He was quite frank with us from the outset," Bob went on. "He said to us: 'Gentlemen, you have fashioned, in the Triple Alliance of the unions represented by you, a most powerful instrument. I feel bound to tell you that in our opinion we are at your mercy. The Army is disaffected and cannot be relied upon. Trouble has occurred already in a number of camps. We have just emerged from a great war and the people are eager for the reward of their sacrifices, and we are in no position to satisfy them. In these circumstances, if you carry out your threat and strike, then you will defeat us.

"'But if you do so,' went on Mr. Lloyd George, 'have you weighed the consequences? The strike will be in defiance of the Government of the country and by its very success will precipitate a constitutional crisis of the first importance. For, if a force arises in the State which is stronger than the State itself, then it must be ready to take on the functions of the State, or withdraw and accept the authority of the State. Gentlemen,' asked the Prime Minister quietly, 'have you considered, and if you have, are you ready?' From that moment on," said Robert Smillie, "we were beaten and we knew we were."

*Once Again, On The British Labour Party Question- On "Entryism"- A Short Note

Click on the headline to link to an American Left History blog entry-From The "In Defense Of Marxism" Website Via "Renegade Eye"- On The British Labour Party- A Guest Commentary, dated Sunday July 18, 2010, for the article mentioned below and my comment.


Markin comment:

I had not intended my comment about the IMT leader Sewell’s “In Defense Of Marxism” British Labour Party article to be anything other than a short commentary. However, someone here has asked me to fill in the blanks a little about the task of revolutionaries in entering (or, alternatively, at least seriously challenging from the outside) the British Labour Party for leadership of its working class mass constituency. I mentioned in that previous comment (see linked article above)the notion of splitting that party into its component parts, reformist and revolutionary, in order to drive the class struggle in Great Britain forward. The following are a few thoughts on that issue:

Look, today, in the post-Soviet “death of communism” political landscape that we are just coming out of, despite the overwhelming objective economic situation which cries out, and cries out to high heaven, for socialist solutions we revolutionaries who follow the banner, seriously follow the banner, of Marxism, especially as it follows its Trotskyist line through the history of the international working class movement are as scarce as hen’s teeth. We pose, and rightly so, as champions of the historic needs (and historic destiny, as well) of the working class. In that sense we oppose, and oppose vigorously, all reformist roadblocks, both inside that movement and out, but mainly today inside. But our forces are small, our needs are great, and our maneuverability limited.

Nevertheless we are not without tactical possibilities. And here is where the notion of “entry” (as opposed to the formal, politically obligatory, membership of individual militants) into the British Labour Party comes into play, if such a tactic is warranted today given the political trajectory of that party. While, as stated in my previous commentary, it is not at all clear to me that there is any motion that warrants such “entry” rather than working from the outside I was asked about the rationale for doing so and that is what this comment is about.

In a perfect working class universe under conditions of bourgeois rule we would want, and we would expect, given the viciousness of our blood-drenched opponent, to have one mass party, one mass revolutionary, party to confront the enemy. The history of our movement, however, even before Marx and his seminal work, and clarion call, The Communist Manifesto, in the 19th century has, repeatedly, demonstrated that such a situation is the exception rather than the rule. (The Manifesto itself, in its third part, is a nothing less than an intense polemical battle against those other socialist tendencies of the time for the “soul” of the European working class.)

Periodically the great divide between the prevailing, essentially parliamentary, reformist notions of the working class coming to power and an understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary takeover has created conditions where the advanced workers (and others, in their wake) follow the revolutionary party. That is our great shining example of the October Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. Even there, the Bolsheviks had to fight, tooth and nail, against the Menshevik tendency (the reformist branch of the Russian working class movement of the time, although they, at least some elements of it, were not necessarily aware of it at the time given conditions in Czarist Russia) to break the workers movement from bourgeois society.

So how do those lessons help serve revolutionaries in Great Britain today. Whether the “entry” tactic is called for, or not, today the hard reality, and the hard reality especially in Great Britain, given the dead weight of the Labour party as an obstacle to revolution (hell, even to reform lately), is that one cannot reasonably expect to split that party without a life or death fight against the reformist, no, sub-reformist leadership of that party. Trying to be an organic part of Labour, to merely attempt to push it to the left (a little) and be "militant", just will not do. Generations of British revolutionaries have broken their teeth on that concept.

And as a final caveat take this: Without a perspective, as broadly outlined above, history has also shown, and shown painfully at times, that merely trying to be an organic part of the Labour Party is the kiss of death, the "kiss of the spider woman” for revolutionaries and their organizations. Look to the example of earlier generations of British revolutionaries (and not that far back either, look at the 1980s) who were spit out, and spit out unceremoniously, when the deal went down. Whether those revolutionaries explained things to the workers, patiently and soberly, or not.

*From The Pages Of The Communist International- Reply To A Letter From The Joint Provisional Committee For The Communist Party Of Britain

Click on the headline to link to the Communist International Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.

*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- Writings on Britain: The Labour Movement 1906-1924: The Growth of the Labour Party

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.

*From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin-Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder -"Left-Wing" Communism in Great Britian"

Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- The Aylesbury By-election of 1938

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Pages Of The Communist International- Lenin's Sppech To The Second Congress-Speech On Affiliation To The British Labour Party

Click on the headline to link to the Communist International Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts on the British Labour Party.

*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- Once Again: The ILP (1936)

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts on the British Labour Party.

*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-The Trade Unions in Britain (1933)

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts on the British Labour Party.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-The United Front Tactic: Its Use and Abuse-One More Time- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to the Workers Vanguard website for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts on the British Labor Party.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-British Reformists in Action-When "Militant" Ran Liverpool- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to the Workers Vanguard website for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts on the British Labour Party. Ouch!

* From The "In Defense Of Marxism" Website Via "Renegade Eye"- On The British Labour Party- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a In Defense Of Marxism Website entry via Renegade Eye- On The British Labour Party.

Markin commentary:

A very interesting article, at least theoretically and historically, especailly on the Fenner Brockway-led Independent Labor Party in the 1930s that gave Leon Trotsky fits as it tried studiously, and with every fiber in its centrist body (I am being polite here), to avoid committing to the Fourth International. I am a little perplexed though as to why the British Labour Party is a "happy hunting ground" for leftists now that it is out of office and is badly mauled which makes me question the IMT's motives for a rush to Labourism (seemingly having been previously "bad children" they want to "come back home" after a long hiatus- back to shades of Ted Grant time). Certainly there is no apparent leftward-motion this early on that I can sense at this remove, a movement which revolutionaries would most certainly try to take advantage of with both hand. On relationships, including "entrism", regroupment, etc. and other tactics within mainstream Labour that will depend on circumstances.

What is clear though is that every militant should belong to the Labour Party, just as in the United States every militant should belong to a trade union, if possible. The British Labour Party, like the German Social Democratic, and in the past the French and Italian Communist Parties, is the mass bourgeois workers party in Britain. In the future it has to be split into its reformist and , hopefully, then revolutionary wings if the class struggle is to go forward. But revolutionaries cannot go around Labour and by this I mean go around the fight for leadership of the unions(or try, as in the 1960s and 70s, to sidestep that task by entry in the "sandbox" plaything of Labour youth leagues or constituency organizations).

Whether one supports Labour (critically, "like a rope supports a hanging man," as Lenin stated in his commentary on the Arthur Hendersen-led Labour Party days of the 1920s) in elections is a open question, depending on the politics at the time. In 2010 there was no reason, no reason at all, to call for a vote for Labour, whether eight or eight million people voted for its candidates. A simple question on that one: How, after those well-defined 13 years of Labour rule, as lap dog for American imperialism, the City of London bankers, and Her Majesty's governmental apparatus, could any self-respecting leftist call for such a vote for Labour , except to create more confusion among the advanced workers. That is our, that is we "sectarians" (read: small propaganda groups), real target right now?

By the way, as a very simple first step, although only a first step in that process, would be weaning those advanced militants away for reformism by calls for the abolition of Her Majesty's monarchy, that moribund House of Lords, and the disestablishment of those state churches. "Speak" Oliver Cromwell to those workers, for openers. To the advanced British and immigrant workers (patiently and soberly, of course) now!

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- In Defense Of History- A Word On British Tory Ideologue Niall Ferguson And Writing On Empire

*Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" Blog entry- "In Defense Of History"- A Word On British Tory Ideologue Niall Ferguson And Writing On Empire.


Markin comment:

The sun never sets on the British Empire, apparently. At least in Tory dreams. But just to make sure there is no "resurrection" revolutionaries in Great Britain should really "turn the world upside down" there. First order of business: Abolish the monarchy, House of Lords, and the state churches- and Niall Ferguson.

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-On The Origins Of British Anti-Stalinism- The Socialist League- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-British Miners Fight for All the Oppressed

Click on the headline to link to a"LibCom" website entry for the British miners' strike of 1984-85. This link is provided to give some "color" to the story at the local level from a different political prospective from mine.

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1985 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

**********

British Miners Fight for All the Oppressed

The British coal miners' strike now in its eleventh month is a crucial class battle whose outcome will shape the social and political climate of the country for years to come. Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is seeking with unrestrained savagery to bludgeon and starve the miners into submission. If the miners lose, they and the whole British working class will be dealt with in the same spirit of limitless vindictiveness that Thatcher unleashed on the helpless young Argentine sailors of the Belgrano during the Falklands/Malvinas war. Thatcher personally supervised this gratuitous war crime when the ship, miles from the war zone, was dispatched to the bottom of the icy Atlantic.

But the British miners do not intend to lose. Standing alone thanks to the treachery of the Labour Party/ Trades Union Congress tops, they have held out against everything that bloody Thatcher and her cops could throw against them. They have endured thousands of arrests and countless injuries and they are still fighting. And their courageous defiance of the vicious "Iron Lady" has won to their side the most oppressed layers of
British society. The heat of sharp class struggle has tended to forge a spirit of solidarity between the miners and oppressed sectors such as blacks, Asians and Irish.

This political point was emphasized by comrade Eibhlin McDonald, a leader of the Spartacist League of Britain, during her recent visit to the U.S. We reprint below comrade Eibhlin's remarks at a public Spartacist forum in New York last November 16 (originally published in Workers Vanguard No. 367,23 November 1984) and her speech to a national internal meeting of the Spartacus Youth League (WV No. 368, 7 December 1984).

Women have played an active role in the miners' strike. Although women do not work in the British mines, being barred by law from doing so since 1942, the miners' wives have taken their place alongside their men. And they have made their presence felt since the beginning. When one week into the strike Thatcher deployed 10,000 cops in a martial law operation, Kent women beat back a police blockade at the Dartford Tunnel aimed at sealing the Kent strikers off, and went on through to join a demonstration in Leicestershire. In addition to organizing collections of food and money for the strikers' families, the women have been active strike militants. Their participation on picket lines has been especially important given the awesome scope of police attacks, where sometimes hundreds of miners are arrested in a single swoop. When 20,000 coal field women and supporters marched through London last August 11, one prominent slogan was "No surrender!" Here in the United States, the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have been campaigning to win political support among American unionists for the embattled British miners, and to raise desperately needed funds for the miners and their families. As of February 16, a total of $16,905.63 had been raised. W&R appeals to our readers to generously support this effort. Please make checks payable to: Aid to Striking British Miners'Families; mail to: Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013.

I'm a member of the British section of the Spartacist tendency, and I'd like to take a few moments to describe to people particularly the British miners' strike which has been going on now for about nine months, I believe. In fact, we had a demonstration recently in London organized by the Spartacist League on the question of South Africa, where a number of miners attended. And we raised the slogan, "African Gold Miners, British Coal Miners— Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World Unite!" [Applause.] And this slogan had a really powerful resonance—one which is very deeply felt in Britain, primarily as a result of the experience of these miners after nine months on strike. Because you have to understand, two miners have been killed on picket lines; several others have died on the way to picket lines; and most recently people have been killed trying to salvage coal from rubbish tips in order to heat their homes. If you imagine what it's like to have been without money for your family for nine months—no money for food, they have no heating, t nothing like that.

However, they're pretty solid. They're not going back. Because they know that to go back means 20,000 jobs will be lost, and whole communities will be devastated. And, in fact, several thousand of them have been arrested, just simply for picketing. Thatcher has learned a few lessons from Botha's South Africa. They've recently adopted the tactic, instead of throwing people in prison—you obviously can't throw eight, nine, ten thousand miners in prison, because the prisons will overflow—so what they've started to do is to deport them within the country. People are sent off from English coal mines to the north of Scotland, and are not allowed to return home until after the strike.
So there was a certain identification with some of the stuff that was described recently in South Africa among the British miners. There is, of course, a scabbing operation, pretty well funded, we believe probably by the Vatican. Although if you listen to the news reports, then you could very easily be misled. Because as one miner told us recently in one of our meetings— according to the news reports there are now 3,500 scabs in his pit, which he finds very hard to believe, since only 500 people work there [laughter].

Now, there are two things that I want to draw out from the British miners' strike. One is that such a hard-fought class battle against the Thatcher government has inspired whole sections of the population in support for the miners. It's particularly noticeable among the black and Asian community. Something that is very new in Britain—you have a situation where miners, when they come into the city of London from their areas in order to collect money, of course the cops hound them throughout London, and arrest them for trying to collect money and so forth. They go along to a pub in the black ghetto, and the cops come into the pub— "Where are these miners?"—they want to arrest them. But the word had gone out that the cops were arriving, so of course the local people had hidden them. You know: "What miners? There are no miners here." Now, this kind of thing never would have happened before, because capitalism fosters those kind of divisions, and given that the miners union is predominantly white, this solidarity is a direct result of the struggle against Thatcher.

Another aspect of it is that women, mainly miners' wives and families, who'd come from pretty isolated communities, have in fact become political and taken on a leadership role in the strike and have organized themselves into strike committees.

And the other thing that I want to draw out of it is on the Russian question. It comes up most concretely and revolves around the question of Polish Solidarnosc', in Britain, and it's very sharply felt. Because the background to this miners' strike was in fact—the leader of the British miners, Arthur Scargill, happened to mention before a trade-union conference a year ago that Solidarnosc' was an anti-socialist organization. For this he was witchhunted and hounded by not only the capitalist class, the Tory party and so forth, but by a whole section of the trade-union leadership. And it has now become very clear, the people who were most outraged by Scargill's statement are today urging their union members to cross miners' picket lines quite openly. The leader of the Solidarnosc' movement in Poland has sent a message of solidarity... to the scabs. And so Solidarnosc is hated and despised, not just among the British miners, but among whole sections of the population. Which is actually quite a good thing, because it doesn't bode well for Thatcher's war preparations against the Soviet Union.

They do the same kind of thing there. Talking about the "evil empire" in Russia. Except that in Britain a lot of the population now doesn't believe it, because they have seen miners go off to the Soviet Union and have very nice holidays on the Black Sea, you know, for their families and so forth. And they see this on television, and say, well, this is "totalitarian Russia"...it really doesn't look so bad looking at it from Britain [laughter].

Now, just in conclusion. One of the things that is patently obviously missing from the situation is a revolutionary party with a policy directed to the overthrow of capitalism. Because in order to cohere together the struggle, particularly in a situation where old frameworks are breaking down within the country, to cohere and direct that struggle requires a program for the overthrow of capitalism. And that's what the existing trade-union leadership and the Labour Party in Britain doesn't have. For example, twice in the course of the miners' strike, the dockers were out on strike, and were sent back, having gained absolutely nothing. Because these leaders understand that in order to go all out and do what is necessary in order to win the strike, you must be prepared to at least play around with the question of power. And that's what they're not prepared to do.

That in a nutshell is the strategy and program that the Spartacist League has been fighting for there. Because simply in order to win this strike, it's necessary to spread it to other sections of the working class. We hope as the outcome of that kind of successful class battle that you will have the basis for building a revolutionary party. Because in Britain, in South Africa, in fact in the U.S., you can have very hard-fought class battles which may lose or in fact may be frittered away, if you're not prepared to go all the way and address the question of power, for the working class in power, like they did in Russia in 1917.

The Red Avengers [see article, page 24] is kind of a hard act to follow, but let me make one point that one comrade made in the forum in Toronto the other night: the British miners would really love the Red Avengers.

What I want to try to do is give you a flavor of the political situation in Britain, because it really is in marked contrast with Reagan's America right now. But there's something that I would like to underline, which is that the Thatcher government is in the second term of office and went in with a pretty big majority in the election in 1983, not quite as big as Reagan's. The first real opposition they ran into came from the British miners. And it's important to have the understanding and the hope that Reagan will run into the same kind of trouble, because it really does alter the political contours in the country.

You'll have noticed in the press here recently a lot of ballyhoo about a big "back-to-work" movement. And you could very easily be misled, because if you really added up the figures for people that have gone back to work then you probably would get more than is actually in the miners union, in the NUM itself. However, it is true that there has been a certain erosion within the strike recently. (Unlike what the bourgeois press tells you, it's not because of the Qaddafi connection. Miners think that it's really wonderful if they get money from anywhere, and one of them has said recently, in a meeting where someone mentioned the Qaddafi connection, "Well, you know, if we can't get money from Qaddafi, maybe we can get guns. We can use them." And it's not because of getting money from the Soviet Union—they'd love it.) But as of now, there's not much prospect of industrial struggle alongside the miners, and so they're basically now having to dig in to try and survive through the winter pretty much on their own against all the forces of the capitalist state. And that does have an effect on certain elements in the union.

Now, some of the things that are most striking about the course of the struggle. First of all, the way in which whole sections of the population who are normally deeply divided have rallied behind the miners and have seen in the miners' strike a possible solution to what they suffer under Thatcher. This is particularly true for the racially oppressed minorities. The blacks and Asians in Britain have become some of the most solid supporters of the miners. If you understand that the miners union is predominantly white, and pretty elitist in its political attitudes, for them to find allies in the black and Asian population is really quite a change in British politics. The reason for the identification is that the kind of treatment that's being dished out to the miners in the course of the strike is something that has been dished out to the black and Asian population in the inner cities in Britain for quite a long time.

And there's also the fact that the racial minorities tend to do the dirtiest, most dangerous and worst paid jobs in Britain. In actual fact British mining almost falls into that category, because you have to understand that miners or craftsmen in the British mines might take home, at the end of having worked 40 hours, less than $100 a week. And that's someone who's gone through an apprenticeship. And it's really dangerous and there's a lot of accidents. So there's that reason for identification as well.

It's also true of the Irish population. Previously if you had an IRA bombing in the mainland of Britain, regardless of what the target was, it was always followed by a wave of anti-Irish hysteria. You know, a pretty bad period. Whereas recently when the IRA bombed the hotel where a lot of Tories were staying during their conference the response was everybody cheered because one of the people who suffered most was the employment minister, Norman Tebbit. They showed these pictures on television of this guy lying under four or five floors of rubble and then being dragged out by his feet, and everybody cheered and clapped and thought it was wonderful. And someone had the response, whoever did this should be shot—for missing the target. They're really sorry they missed Thatcher.

There's also another example of the way in which the social divisions have broken down. There's an organization in London called Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners, and they have regular weekly meetings. Miners come along and address their meetings and express their solidarity with them, and they collect money and they give it to the miners. This is previously inconceivable in Britain.

And this seems true in other unions. There's a lot of workers in other unions who really desperately want to strike alongside the miners and to support them, but their leadership really doesn't want to take on that question.

The other thing that's really striking is on the Russian question— It's really clear that the miners' strike has done more to thwart Thatcher's war plans against the Soviet Union than all the peace demonstrations—and there have been a lot of them in Britain. You know, there's a big CND organization, you've had Greenham Common women, and so forth. And I tell you, the Greenharn Common women have become really insignificant by comparison with the miners' wives, who are out there organizing and fighting for support of the strike. And in more ways than one they really are the backbone of the strike.

The third thing is that, given that so much depends on the outcome of this strike, unless you're prepared to address the question of power, then you cannot even bring this strike to the conclusion that is possible. What I mean is that this strike could have been won several months ago. You had the dockers out on strike twice, and Britain is an island economy so the docks are pretty important. The dockers are a militant union. And you have this situation where the leadership of the trade-union movement and of the Labour Party itself are actually divided. The right wing of both the Labour Party and the trade-union bureaucracy—they're openly anti-Russian, anti-Communist; they were the people who really witchhunted [NUM leader] Arthur Scargill when he denounced Polish Solidarnosc'. And it's really clear today, they just tell their members to cross miners' picket lines, ignore the strike and don't give them any money.
On the other hand you've got the left wing of the trade-union bureaucracy and of the Labour Party that are not openly anti-Russian. But they simply will not call their members out on strike action. So you have a situation like when the dockers were out on strike, or the railwaymen. Several hundred members of the railway unions have been victimized, locked out and sent home, for refusing to handle scab coal on the trains. And their union is doing absolutely nothing to defend them, having originally instructed them to not handle the scab coal.

Now, the Labour Party. I believe that never before in its history has the Labour Party been more discredited. And this was as a result of the miners' strike. There's this character Denis Healey in the British Labour Party who's well known to have connections with the CIA and there's a clot of people around him, and we raised the slogan that this guy should be driven out of the Labour Party because the sort of dislocation that it would cause would be really interesting and would break the mold of British social democracy. And Tony Benn came here to New York and various other places and argued that well, of course, the last thing in the world the miners want is to see the Labour Party splitting right now. Well, I'll tell you this is a lie. Most of the miners could see these guys in hell, never mind driven out of the Labour Party. The general secretary of the TUC appeared in a meeting recently and the miners hung up a noose for him in the back of the room. Because you know, they have declared their open animosity to the miners' strike.

We're going to do this fund drive in the U.S. And there's a lot of miners that are really keen to come and meet the Spartacist League and the SYL in the U.S. They're really excited to come here and they desperately need the money. So I think that this will be really important for the international tendency. And it'll be important for the miners.