Costo total

Ibid., 10 Ibid.

Ibid., 33. Bill Rust was imprisoned along with 12 others, in 1925. He had lived in Moscow with his wife and three year old daughter, Rosa. See Macleod, The Death of Uncle Joe. 3-12. Rust worked for the Youth Section of the Comintern. In the late 1920s. He led the YCL in Britain and later became editor of the Daily W orker.

Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism. On the Problems of Leninism. 228- 246. Deutscher, Stalin. 389.

gained revolutionary credibility. Whilst the policy was extreme in its sectarianism, it was neither revolutionary nor left wing.

The other aspect of Fishman’s thesis which requires comment is her coupling together of Pollitt and Campbell as the key figures in formulating and overseeing the Party policy towards the trade unions.’^® Campbell "became habituated to translating Pollitt’s emotional and subjective reactions’, wrote Fishman, claiming that ‘non-Party historians...failed to discern their partnership.’^® This partnership rescued the Party from "class against class’ as "Pollitt pulled the British Party back from the brink of repudiating trade unions’.®® Whilst there is no doubt about each man’s contribution, the idea that they acted consistently in tandem does not always coincide with the facts. Noreen Branson referred to the London District Committee’s response in April 1928 to J.T. Murphy’s proposal calling for a dilution of "class against class’. On the question of affiliation to the Labour Party, "the ... Committee responded with a resolution urging that the affiliation fight be abandoned, a view...supported by Harry Pollitt.’®^ Branson continued, "Campbell and Gallacher both urged continuation of the...fight for affiliation.’®® On the Central Committee, Campbell was one of nine voting in favour of continuing to seek affiliation, whilst Pollitt was one of nine voting against. Far from pulling back from the brink, Pollitt further argued that in by-elections, "if the Labour candidate rejected the Party’s united front demands, electors should be urged not to vote for him or her.’®^ Only three members agreed with this expression of the Stalinist line. At the Party’s 1929 Congress, "it was decided, this time unanimously, that the demand for Communist affiliation to the Labour Party be dropped.’®® Branson described Pollitt as ‘the member of the Central Committee most convinced of the correctness of the new policy.’®® Brian Pearce said of Fishman’s characterisation, "It’s all presented in a Manichean way. Everything she approves of is associated with Pollitt and Campbell, everything she disapproves of is associated with Dutt and Rust’.®^ Pearce suggested that Fishman appeared to want to "exonerate Pollitt and Campbell

Fishman, The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions. 4. Ibid., 6.

®® Ibid., 10.

®^ Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927-1941. 31. ®^ Ibid.

®® Ibid.

®"* Ibid., 32. Published italics. ®® Ibid., 33.

®® Ibid., 34.

from any activities which she thinks were a mistake’.^® The significant partnership during this period, as John Callaghan implied, was between Pollitt and Dutt.®®

This was the only time that the CPGB attempted to break with traditional trade unionism. For most of its life, the Party retained ‘trade union loyalism’ which people like Pollitt, Gallacher and Campbell had imbibed...with their first experiences of work and economic conflict’.'^® The Party attempted to reconcile the often conflicting ideas of loyalty to the institution and rank and file militancy. As time passed, however, it avoided locating where the potential for this conflict lay. The Party consistently attacked right wing union leaders’. It saw potential conflict, however, as arising from these expressed political positions of right and left, rather than as a conflict inherent within the very different social conditions of a trade union bureaucrat on the one hand and a rank and file activist on the other.

The two poles of British trade unionism were expressed, in the 1920s, by the National Minority Movement (NMM) and ‘Mondism’. The NMM had grown in the South Wales and Fife coalfields, which ‘recorded support for the Red International of Labour Unions’.'*^ It held its founding conference in August 1924 with Tom Mann as President and Pollitt as Secretary. Addressing this conference, Pollitt cited the aims of the movement in specifically Soviet terms as he stated ‘Our sole object is to unite the workers in the factories by the formation of factory committees’.^*^ On the other hand, he stressed that the movement was ‘not out to disrupt the unions, or to encourage any new unions’, but continued to talk of the creation of a real General Council’ which would lead to ‘complete workers’ control of industry.’^*® Following the General Strike, the TUC urged unions against affiliation to the NMM. The 1926 TUC Congress at Bournemouth began a series of bans and proscriptions on Communists and NMM members from holding office in some unions."*^

In 1927, at the TUC in Edinburgh, President George Hicks invited ‘ “a direct exchange of practical views” between those entitled to speak for both sides of

®® Ibid.

®® Callaghan, Raiani Palme Dutt. 116.

Fishman, The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions. 10. A. Hutt, British Trade Unionism (London, 1975), 99-100.

Cited in ibid., 99 n.1. "*® Ibid.

^ In 1926 these included National Union of General and Municipal Workers, the Railway Workers, Transport Workers, the Electrical Trades, as well as the Boilermakers (Pollitt’s own union). Hutt, British Trade Unionism. 117.

industry'/^ This was accepted by Lord Weir, who wrote to Ernest Bevin on behalf of a group of leading industrialists. The result was the Mond -Turner talks of 1928, which sought to rationalise collective bargaining and to standardise agreements across industries. In opposition, the Minority Movement convened in April 1931, a Convention in London endorsing the NMM’s ‘Workers Charter’. A month later 2000 delegates met in Manchester to demand the 40 hour week and to pledge resistance to wage-cuts.

Largely through the NMM, the CPGB had influenced the calling of the General Strike. Its limitations were exposed, however, following the TUC’s ending of the strike in May 1926. The Party had neither the numbers nor the influence to exploit rank and file disillusionment with its leadership. Class against class’ exacerbated the effects, both of the TUC bans and of Mondism. The CPGB either had to accommodate to the official move to more formalised negotiations or attempt to initiate a new alternative on the basis of remaining rank-and file organisation. The Party’s failed attempt at the latter coincided with class against class’. Following its abandoning of the NMM, it adopted a dual strategy which attempted to reconcile rank and filism with trade union loyalism. The CPGB, according to Fishman, ‘became expert in dispensing token formal rhetorical obeisance to Independent Leadership and then directing members’ attention to the mundane practical issues of the economic struggle’.'*®

Programmatically, the Party’s trade union strategy fell into two phases following World War II. These two phases were marked by the 1951 and 1958 versions of The British Road to Socialism.'*^ The second phase, following 1956, coincided with rising industrial struggle within Britain. This programmatic change was a shift in emphasis, however, and did not correspond to a change in the Party’s practice. This programmatic realignment was articulated, in 1957, by Abe Moffat, the Scottish Miners’ President who wrote that there was a tendency in our Party that our new approach in the use of Parliament to achieve the peaceful transition to socialism ...would come through this means only and without mass struggle of the people outside Parliament.’ '*® The revised text’ said Moffat, must emphasise the centrality of ‘mass struggles...to take power from the present ruling class’.'*® The 1951 programme

'*® A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin [2 vols.], vol.1. Trade Union Leader 1881- 1940 (London. I9 6 0 ). 392.

'*® Fishman, The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions. 39. British Road to Socialism (London. 1951 and 1958).

'*® A. Moffatt, ‘Mass Struggle and Peaceful Transition’, World News Discussion Supplement [In preparation for 25**’ Congress] (23 February 1957), 2, Manchester, CP/Cent/Cong/10/05.

emphasised that ‘the path forward...will be to establish a People’s Government on the basis of a Parliament.’^® Whilst delegating ‘a key role’ for the unions, this version proposed confining this role within specifically trade union limits. The one paragraph devoted to the unions envisaged them restoring ‘full powers of collective bargaining ...ensuring the basis for steadily advancing wages and conditions.’®^ They would also ‘participate in the work of the ministries of Labour and National Insurance and ensure the operation of the labour laws’, functions similar to those they had undertaken during World War II. The 1958 version, by contrast, was clear that ‘working class power is the essential condition for far reaching change’.®^ The new • version continued to emphasise the centrality of Parliament’ where a ‘socialist Labour and Communist majority’ would ‘establish a Socialist government’.®® It now stated that ‘this change can only be brought about through struggle’ and, in two pages devoted to The Communist Party and the Labour Movement’, said that the advance to socialism requires the building up of the movement in struggle.’®^ The 1958 version saw trade unions leading the working class from the immediate struggles under capitalism right up to the struggle for political power and the building of socialism.’®®

This shift in emphasis did not represent a change in policy, as the Party retained its commitment to a general election fought on the issue of a socialist solution’.®® It was, however, a response to changing circumstances within Britain. It was also a response to 1956 and represented part of the Party’s attempt to de- Stalinise. As discussed above, the first British Road to Socialism was specifically Stalinist, as it referred explicitly to the achieving of socialism through People’s Democracy...as in the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe.’ ®^ The Party expunged reference to the Eastern European states from the 1958 version and replaced the term ‘People’s Democracy’ with Socialist Government’.®® Another factor militating towards the emphasis on struggle was the Party’s increasingly poor record at

®° The British Road to Socialism (1951). 14. ®^ Ibid., 16.

®^ The British Road to Socialism M 958). 10. ®® Ibid.

®^ Ibid., 10 and 28

®® ‘Political Resolution to the Twenty Fifth Congress’ (April 1957), 71, Manchester, CP/Cent/CONG/10/05.

®® The British Road to Socialism (1958). 10.

®^ Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1941-1951. 232. The British Road to Socialism (19511. 14.

the polls. Moreover, during the 1950s, with Gaitskell’s victory in the Labour Party and a continuing Conservative majority, the prospect of a parliamentary road looked correspondingly bleak. A rightward shift at the top of British politics coincided with an increasing recalcitrance in the rank and file of many trade unions, which culminated in 1957;*

Although the Party continued in the 1960s, to note uncontentiously that trade unions are mass organisations of the working-class' and advocated ‘the greatest possible measure of trade union activity’, it drifted away from the 1958 emphasis on unions as organisations of political struggle and repositories of workers’ power.®® By 1961, the Party had become somewhat vague as it explained that ‘wages, hours and conditions of work are determined by trade union power’ and spoke of unions as forums where ‘Communists have been more concerned with convincing the workers ...of the necessity for a socialist transformation.’®^ It would be over simplistic to see a direct relationship between levels of strike activity and the Party’s emphasis or otherwise on trade unions as vehicles for socialism, but there is no doubt that this was a factor.

A consistent feature of the Party’s industrial orientation in this period was that it continued to support the institution of trade unionism rather than challenge it as ‘the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie’.®^ The Party concentrated its fire on ‘right-wing’ leaders, seeing these individuals as the main barrier to militant organisation. At the same time, it continued to support and participate, along with such people, in those bureaucratic structures and procedures which represented the most conservative aspects of British trade unionism.

Lenin wrote that ‘the Social Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people.’®® In 1961, the Party claimed that its objective was not the winning of trade union posts for Communists...not the winning of official positions, but the winning of the support of the workers for a progressive policy’.®^ The

Durcan, McCarthy, Redman, Strikes in Post-war Britain. 66. The authors noted that ‘the number of days lost’ in 1969 ‘exceeded five million for the first time since 1957’.

®° Industrial Department, CPGB, ‘Did Communists Control the ETU?’ (1 September 1961) 15, Manchester, CP/Cent/IND/1/5.

®^ Executive Committee CPGB, The Communist Party and the Trade Unions’ (8 July 1961), 2, Manchester, CP/Cent/Math/05/02.

®® Lenin. W hat is to be Done?. 41. ®® Ibid., 80.

Party’s leadership strategy, however, was confused between a political strategy, which represented Communist trade union leaders as a socialist leadership of the working class, and the election of Communists to office as an end in itself. Wolf Wayne suggested of these leaders, ‘there was no question of enlightening the people about the aims of socialism’.®® The Party, having discovered a formula through which its members could attain office, utilised it routinely with minimal regard to political conditions or implications. Stalinism and The British Road to Socialism had closed the revolutionary door at the same time as working-class resignation towards the governing consensus appeared to choke off Parliamentary possibilities. Under such circumstances, the Party’s leadership strategy represented a barely coherent retreat into the one corner where apparent power still seemed available. Whether it served any useful purpose or not, it remained the only place the Party retained apparent institutional credibility.

Anti-Communism

Following the World War II, the TUC supported the Labour government in its increasing antagonism towards the Soviet Union. The TUC owed its influence in the Cold War to three specific circumstances. First was its crucial role during the war under Walter Citrine as General Secretary and Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labour. The second was the fact that it was a Labour government which, through the Foreign Office Committee on Policy Towards Russia, initiated Britain’s early belligerence towards the USSR. The third circumstance lay in the position and political personality of Bevin who, along with Citrine, was one of the architects of modern trade unionism. Bevin had formed the National Transport and General Workers Union in 1921, had been its General Secretary between 1921 and 1940 and had been a leading figure in the General Strike. He took these credentials into the wartime coalition, where Churchill had requested his services as Minister of Labour.®® As Foreign Secretary in Attlee’s administration, his perspective in which Britain still had its historic part to play’ in the world, included showing the Soviets that there is a limit beyond which they

®® Wolf Wayne, interview, 10 February 1999.

®® Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin. 651-654. After Churchill met the King on 10 May 1940 he offered a third of the places in his government to Labour. He spoke to Attlee requesting four men “whose services in high office were immediately required”. The first name on the list waS that of Ernest Bevin’, 651.

cannot safely go’.®^ According to Allen Hutt, ‘Mr Bevin...personified those forces... which were able...to harness the trade union movement, by and large, to a Churchillian foreign policy.’®®

In 1946, Attlee’s government conceded that ‘the Soviet Union’s popularity inside the labour movement remained too strong to allow Bevin to come out openly against it.’®® The Labour Party, nevertheless, in July, again rejected the CPGB’s bid for affiliation. According to Peter Weiler, although ‘criticism of the Soviets was still to be regarded as exceptional, requiring Bevin s approval’, the CPGB remained a legitimate target.^®

Following the war, under Vincent Tewson, the TUC continued supporting Attlee’s government. It supported, for example, the White Paper, Statement on Personal Incomes, Costs and Prices’, which emerged at the beginning of 1948 as continuing wartime austerity was exacerbated by the harshest winter in living memory. Sam Watson, the Durham miners’ leader, said ‘I would advocate a reduction of wages to save the Labour Government’.^^ The TUC, at this time, ascribed all opposition and unrest to the activities of the Communist Party’ and issued two anti-Communist pamphlets.^^

By this time, signalled by the Truman Doctrine on the one side and Zhadanov’s ‘two camps’ characterisation on the other, anti-Soviet Communism was becoming as acceptable as it had been domestically.^® The most important institutional expression of anti-Communism during this period was the formation by Bevin s parliamentary under-secretary, Christopher Mayhew, of the Communist Information Department in 1948. Bevin identified this organisation’s remit as ranging across ‘the Middle East and ...Far Eastern countries’ and articulated its objective, saying that Communism will make headway unless a strong spiritual and moral lead...is given against it, and we are in a position to give such a lead.'^‘* This evolved into the Information Research Department (IRD) and for three decades poured out a stream of anti-Communist

®^ E. Bevin, cited in P. Weiiler, British Labour and the Cold W ar (California, 1988), 192-193. ®® Hutt, British Trade Unionism. 173.

®® Weiiler, British Labour and the Cold W a r. 200. Ibid., 202.

Cited in Panitch, Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy. 31. Ibid., 33. See below, 221-2.

D. Reynolds, T h e Big Three and the Division of Europe, 1945-48: An Overview’, Diplomacy and Statecraft. 1:2 (July 1990). A. Zhadanov, ‘Report on the International Situation to the Com inform'. The International Situation and Soviet Foreign Policy, ed. M. Rush (Ohio, 1970).

propaganda for domestic and (primarily) foreign consumption’/® According to Weiler, the IRD utilised British Council auspices to include the TUC in its work. This involved trade unionists visiting from abroad, mainly from ‘backward countries’, with the object of instilling the right kind’ of British trade union practice.^®

In December 1947, Labour Party General Secretary, Morgan Phillips, initiated a campaign to remove Communists from leading positions in the unions. The Times and the Dailv Telegraph ran articles about Communist influence. In January 1948, The Times reported, ‘Yesterday a committee within the Civil Service Clerical Association [CSCA] announced a campaign to unseat the whole of the present executive committee...on the grounds that they follow Communist policy’. T h e CSCA was committed to correcting the anomaly of having a communist-dominated National Executive Committee in a movement which has not more than 3 per cent Communists or fellow travellers.’ The article revealed that L.C. White, CSCA General Secretary,