What happened to the Coulmunist Party in the election? We are pleased to carry this short reby one of its revolutionary the Party's misfortunes militants. For obvious reasons he has to remain anonomous.
The Communist Party has been hit by galloping inflation. It appealed for £40,000 for its General Election Fund, and rather fewer than this number of votes were cast for its 58 candidates; an average of about el per vote a seller's market.
The C.P.'s vote in the election dropped 40% (just as it did in the recent ocal elections). The drop provides an interesting trend for the Party's headquarters in King Street. Steady declines in Party membership and readership of the Morning Star' (in small-almost microscopic-print 'Incorporating the "Daily Worker" provide other similarly ineresting figures.
The CP went into the election doing the job that the social-democratic Left of the Labour Party is too incompetent to do for itself: that is to offer something that differs from Wilsonism even if only quantitatively. qualitative difference such as would be shown by raising the demand for socialism, is utterly beyond the Labour Left, and was mentioned only in passing by the CP in its election material and right at the end of the two election broadcasts; whose feeble content was only matched by their feeble presentation.
Bert Ramelson, in his with Tony Cliff some months ago, seemed, in his summing equate electoral with political work; when he defended the Party's policy of contesting elections on- a wide scale. In many areas the election (and election work in general) was and is still seen by the majority of CP members as a substitute for consistent political work among the A vicious circle is set up when the Party vote falls; enthusiasm and morale within the Party falls and there is less inclination on the part of many members to do the hard political work required. stead, public activity hinges on a few individuals. Even so, the Party still lost votes in those areas where it is (comparatively) strong and active.
The lack of success cannot, therefore, be put down to just a lack of consistent work. Nor can it be put down to, as some inside the Party will claim, a misapplication of tactics. The tactics themselves were determined by the overall strategy of the Party's guiding document, the *British Road to Socialism'; in the light of the Party programme they were quite correct.
The sharp decline in the Party's vote must be seen for what it is, a defeat. A defeat that calls into question the entire strategy British Road. Revolutionaries in the Communist Party must not flinch from this. The question has been raised before, but since no theoretical analysis of an anti-revisionist nature has been made of Britain from within the CP for more than a generation, no alternative strategy has been put forward. So anti-revisionist challenges have been defeated with ease. For example, a somewhat negative reconfidence.
So as usual, without a moments thought, the British left responds by "taking up the fight." This time against the "Tories." By so doing it helps to reproduce the parliamentary dichotomy-and so benefits Labour. This "fight" is a political trap. The main enemy is the British State. The Party which blocks the working class from seeing this, which blocks the working class from starting to take political power into its own hands, is the Labour Party.
The question of the lefts strategic response to the change in government is of the upmost Importance, and we will be pleased to publish discussion on it. For an odious wave of sentimental attachment to the Labour Party has swept the left. Already those on the Black Dwarf collective who refuse to vote Labour have been challenged-did they really mean it? Don't they really prefer Labour? If there is one outstanding feature of the British left it is that it is a glutton for punishment. Within hours of the defeat of the wretched and reactionary Labour administration the left was singing its praises. Only relatively of course, but that makes difference. The men who renaged on every socialist principle cannot be fondly appreciated by genuine revolutionaries. And if we all know that they are not Socialists, if that goes without saying, then why SHOUTI their passing any more than that of the Liberal Party (also 'marginally better')? Sentimental attachment to a Party of betrayal is the wide open road to yet another epoch of defeat and isolation.
Just as it is the Labour Party which must be attacked and smashed, so within the Labour movement this debate must be taken up by militants so as to strike down the Labour "left.' Bor the immediate situation is an extremely favourable one quite unlike 1951 after the defeat of the Attlee administration. The Cold War Then the Labour Party was openly split and contained a vivid rhetorical "left' leader in Anauran Bevan. Meanwhile, Stalin ruled in Moscow and British troops fought in Korea. The Korean consolidated the Cold War, the essential ideological structure which kept the socialist left both anti-communist and contained within the Labour Party. Within this context the combination of Bevan and Stalin development of revolutionary whilst the Korean which the Conservatives inherited, demoralised the massive following already disheartened by years of apolitical bureaucratic austerity.
Twenty years later there is still an imperialist war in South East Asia, but of a quite different character.
S.N.P. Well, it was worth a try.
At a public meeting in a church hall during the last election, a tweedy S. N. lady got up and announced to an amazed audience of fishers and crofters that she had seen wild animals being captured by firing anaesthetic bullets into them-on the television programme "Daktari":
our policemen to provided with these anaesthetic bullets to fire at criminals? When the laughter had died down and the speaker (NOT S.N.P.) had politely rejected her, the lady got up to say, indignantly, well, anyway, it was an idea.
The Scottish National Party itself is, in essence, a collection of 'well anyway' ideas. There are the obvious jokes-such as the gans of "criminals, drunks drivers and layabouts" who were to be employed to drive more roads through the Grampians, and the idea of nationally "pure" Scottish capitalism (you must be Scottish to invest in Scotland, take away your foreign gold). . But anart from these for Tory leadership.
Twenty years later Wilson, who was one of the "left' cabinet ministers who resigned from Attlee's government, is leading the Party, with the 'mantle" of Bevan around his shoulders. Twenty years later it is the Communist bloc which is divided while genuine Marxist currents are making revolution across the world. Most important of all Vietnam has smashed the ideological barriers of the Cold War.
Thus the potential political relationship between the left and the Labour Party is reversed. There is no credible political left inside the Labour Party. There is no monolithie Stalinist organisation blocking development on the left outside the Labour Party. And this favourable conjuncture on the left is combined with a crisis on the right. for unlike 1951, instead of boom. the Conservatives aLLe faced with an immediate prospect of an Americanled world recession, with conditions of near Civil war in Ireland, with a potential war of intervention in the Gulf and with a mass of liberals itching to mobilise over Africa. Only entry into the Common Market offers the Conservatives positive potential propoganda and possibly economic respite. Yet even that will raise the cular time, with no class or economic basis whatsoever, against the drift of European against the immediate economic interests of the Scottish working-class, was doomed to remain idealist and impotent.
They did however, attract two totally different kinds of supporters. One lot, middle-class eccentric ladies and their canny menfolk with an eye to becoming bigger fish by making the pond smaller, can be dismissed as vagrant Liberals, out of touch and/or opportunist. But the second kind of support is much more important and symptomatic. •The S.N.P. managed to invoke the vigorous, almost frenzied support of thousands of bright, intelligent, romantic idealists between the ages of 14 and 21; they, by and large, saw themselves involved in a kind of National Liberation Front driving out English and American capitalism from their native glens, following in the footsteps of Robert Owen and Keir Hardie (who actually advocated senaratism at one time). and creatinnate suspicions of the working class and will greatly assist Socialists in demonstrating the class nature of international capitalism. Fear The only serious threat to the left then, in the immediate future, is its own weakness and lack of confidence. This was vividly revealed by the fear of Labour returning-as has happened-into 'opposition.' For when Labour is in power the left can attack the leadership without attacking the Party.
This reluctance to attack the Labour Party has deep historical roots. For the last thirty years the great majority of working class militants have been active within the Labour Movement whilst the mass of the working class have been politically passive. Trapped in a defensive dialogue with Labour, deprived of the experience of mass action, every traditional instinct furrowed in the earnest brow of British Socialism still points to another dance of death with Labour.
Nothing typifies this extraordinary trance better than the Communist Party of Great Britain. There was one stark statistic In the election: every extremist did well. Enoch Powell, Mad Mitch, Ian Paisley, and some form of profit-sharing prosperity were to be enjoyed by all. All this in spite of the fact that the S.N.P. tends to be lead into battle by medium-sized capitalist, and its chairman, Wolfe, is one of the most unloved employers in Scotland.
Why was their incredible energy, their political involvement. their enthusiasm, and their imagination, channeled into this futile, unprincipled party of idea-mongers? For two reasons: firstly: most of them refuse to support the Labour Party because they have been educated to dissociate themselves from the working-class,they belong to that rising new sub-class of minimeritocrats to whom a cloth cap is a joke, and socialism either something that happens in Russia or an excuse for raising the cost of living. They expect certain safeguards from the state, and at the same time demand the freedom to exploit the rest of society as ruthlessly and rewardingly as possible. They reject Labour and Conservative ideologies alike be Black Dwarf July 7 1970 page 5 even the imposter who changed his name to Edward Heath. Nor was this a straightforward move to the right. In Mid-Ulster the one left extremist Bernadette Devlin trounced her opponents. But the CP's vote slumped.
The contrast between the CP's historie ne For Bernadette 1st For Bernadette is the first of a new generation that has experienced mass struggles, and has confidence in the militancy of the working class; no letters protesting against her jail sentence need be written to The Times! Against this the Communistsstand condemned. And condemned with them is the entire strategy of trailing the Labour Party and hurling abuse at the Conservatives.
Veneer Only two men give the CP's policies a veneer of plausibility: Scanion and Jones.
Now the 'left' union leaders are negotiating with the Conservatives and we can expect - rotton compromises and fake rhetoric over the anti-Union legislation. We need not fear denouncing them as lackeys of the Labour Party when they reach their agreements. For there is no need to fear isolation from the Labour Movement by attacking its political structures root and branch. On the contrary such an assault is vitally necessary. Class conscious workers have already shown an extreme reluctance to support the Labour Party, and in the absense of a critique from the left, one that is firm and clear and militant; one that does not fear the Conservatives, nor flinches from the destruction of Labourism, many of these workers will have no other way of expressing their fundamental dissatisfaction than by moving to the right. The new conjuncture The Election has shown that at the national level the Labour Party is totally and utterly bankrupt, that at the level of local organisations it is feeble and emasculated, that its internal ideological life is now zero, that the allegiance of the working class to it as a class had been dislocated. This tremendous movement is occuring at the same time as an unprecedented avalanche of wage demands, many stemming from sectors that have been dozey and passive for decades. The highest peak in industrial militancy since the General Strike in 1926 has coincided with the decline of the working class's traditional allegence to Labour. This double movement is not a coincidence. The Labour Party has imprisoned the workers of this country and now, as they begin to sever their allegence to that Party, above all at the level of political organisation, their own potential for militant self-organisation is released Liberals. Plaid Cymru or S.N.P Secondly, the debating-society, issueless context between the two major parties has, very properly, given them the impression that something important, something profound, something to do with the quality of living, was not being discussed? They were not sure-but patriotism was there and was different-so they went for it.
Now the S.N.P. have, inevitably, been ignominiously defeated in Scotland, these young people are in no-mans-land. Which way will they Jump? By their class characteristics and interest, they could easily move to the far right. On the other hand they know something is wrong. They are not stupid. Can their intelligence and their "idealism" ever be put to a better use than chasing bright ideas tossed up in front of them by a lot of opportunist tartan Tories? Or have the anaesthetic bullets of a bourgeois education, the capitalist "information" media, and the acquisitive instincts of a competitive
Black Dwarf July 7 1970 page 6