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about the ETU leadership, suggesting ‘I doubt that they ever saw a local [Party] branch m e e t i n g 'W a y n e added, They weren’t contemptuous of the branch, but they had no relationship with what they were doing’. I t was also illustrated by successive resolutions to the 23"^ Congress of the Party in 1954. Shipley Pit Branch called for ‘more industrial branches’ and for ‘the strengthening of the factory branch" so that work could be directed ‘towards the trade union, the women, apprentices, rank and file, or shop-steward and trade union officials etc.’^^'* Whilst it was possible, as with the ETU’s series of ‘guerilla strikes’ in 1954, to lead from the front in confrontations with employers, such activity was possible only on the basis of wages and conditions. The Party’s Industrial Department alluded to such limitations when it noted that ‘experienced Communists could get the support of active members...because it was widely known that they had no ambitions beyond being efficient officers of the union’.

Communists in positions of leadership relied upon a credibility, gained through being ‘efficient officers of the union’. In the eyes of a trade union membership which was generally non-socialist and often conservative, the maintenance of this credibility could be in conflict with left wing ideas and positions. Communist leaders constituted the left wing of the trade union bureaucracy, but the imperatives inherent within membership of that bureaucracy meant that they remained closer to their fellow leaders than to the rank and file of their unions. They even, occasionally, scored victories. At the 1950 TUC Congress, for example, the ETU proposed a motion against wage restraint calling for a reasonable limitation of profits, a positive planning of the British economy’ in order to meet ‘wage increases... without... increased prices’. T h e motion won narrowly by 220,000 votes (3%) and, according to Wrigley, ‘resulted in the first defeat for the General Council for many y e a r s . T h e resolution’s need to accommodate to the idea of profits and positive planning’, however, demonstrates limitations as far as socialist leadership was concerned, for Communists operating within such circumstances.

W olf Wayne, interview, 10 February 1999. Ibid.

Shipley Pit Branch, ‘Resolution to 23^^ Congress of the C PG B ’, no.71 (1954), 11, Manchester, CP/Cent/Cong/08/05.

Industrial Department of CPGB, 'Did Communists Control the ETU ?’ (September 1961), Manchester, CP/Cent/IND/1/5.

ETU Motion to 82"*^ Congress of the T U C ’, in C. Wrigley, British trade unions 1945-1995. 2. Ibid.

Wolf Wayne emphasised that for ‘Industrial comrades...it was union affairs, it was factory affairs they argued about.’^^® Asked if the Party ever attempted to translate industrial strength into political influence he replied, ‘it did, but it never really got anywhere with it.’ He explained how he would attempt to draw political implications from the struggle for wages and conditions, but added ‘it didn’t cut much ice and not all our members did it, especially the industrialists.’^^® Wayne concluded that pressure on shop-stewards when union issues arose on a daily basis was such that ‘you had no time and you had no thought for the higher ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin...I think basically the Party gave up on that stuff...we just made a nod in that direction, but that’s about it’. This, Wayne added, was common to the Party...from the top to the bottom.’^®® Similarly, former ETU Communist, Jim Layzell, recalled ‘about 20 members of the Communist Party’ in his union branch, but they were ‘not all political’. Layzell added ‘This was the peculiar thing about the CP...a lot of people in it are not political ...they might manoeuvre a bit on different policies’.

Stan Smith, a congress delegate in 1957, wondered why Communists are elected as shop stewards and convenors...not on the political line of the Communist Party but as ordinary workers and trade unionists’.^” This was. Smith continued, because ‘workers think they are the best and they have been elected on the basis of this activity in industry. When it comes to winning the workers politically, let the same shop steward or convenor stand in the local election and he gets 100 v o t e s . T h e Party leadership admitted in 1961, that ‘hundreds of thousands of miners voted for Mr Paynter as General Secretary of the miners...Quite a different result would have been registered if they had been voting for the Labour Party versus the Communist Party.’” ®

W olf Wayne, Interview, 10 February 1999. Ibid.

Ibid.

Jim Layzell, Interview with Louise B rod le (5 September 1995), NSA C 739/01-05 C l F4901- Ibid.

S. Smith (London), ‘Speech to 25‘^ 'Special' Congress of the C PG B ’ (19 April 1957), Manchester, CP/Cent/Cong/10/05.

Ibid.

'Did Communists Control the ETU?’, 3. Paynter was Communist President of the Welsh miners from 1951. He was elected NUM General Secretary In 1959. Paynter Introduced a book on British trade unionism with a section headed "A Personal Testament’. Whilst referring to the National Unemployed Workers Movement and Its Communist Secretary, W al Hannlngton, at no time did Paynter reveal his Communist Party membership. W . Paynter, British Trade Unions and the Problem of Change (London. 1970), 16-27.

The existence of the Party ‘machine’ which allowed members to attain leadership positions obscured the reality of the Party’s political weakness.

C.H. Darke described how the Party ‘machine’ relied upon those ‘Communist unionists [who] always attend meetings, and because they are always in attendance the donkey work of union business is willingly handed over to them’.^^® Communists not only attended their own union meetings, but during crucial elections would attend non-Communist branches. During the 1959 General Secretary elections, ‘the communist party organised visits by ETU communists to every single London branch. Their main purpose was to give us another nauseating dose of how good Bro. Haxell is and to vilify his opponent, Bro. Byrne.’^®^ Communists developed an intimate knowledge of union rules and procedures which they utilised at, often thinly attended, meetings in order to progress comrades through the bureaucracy or to achieve resolutions favourable to Communist policy. Darke recalled how Communists eased through...resolutions on Peace, on Korea, on Russia, long after the fixed time for union business to end [when] the men who might have opposed them...have looked at the clock and gone home.’^®® The announcement in the Dailv Worker the next day might refer to ‘Twenty thousand Hackney Workers’ in support of a particular position.^®®

The lack of real support for such resolutions indicated the lack of a political basis for the Party’s leadership strategy. On the other hand, the fact that Communists were elected to such positions did reflect a reality about the way other trade unionists perceived them. This, as much as an inexhaustible stamina for bureaucratic tedium and committee work, was why workers frequently elected Party members. Even The Times admitted in 1948, when it was busy attacking Communists at Morgan Phillips’ behest, that good reasons are needed to justify the attempt to remove from office so many men who are active and industrious trade unionists.’^^® A knowledge of Citrine’s ABC of Chairmanship and the existence of the Party ‘machine’ were not sufficient in themselves for Communists to progress through trade union bureaucracies. As effective trade unionists. Communists were often elected in spite of, rather than because of their politics. As a former Communist shop-steward in the building trade

Darke, The Communist Technique in Britain. 51.

T h e Communist Technique’, October, 1959 [Circular to ETU members], MSS 137/ 157. Darke, The Communist Technique in Britain. 52.

Ibid.

put it, ‘the credibility was gained by our actions in support of their well being...they still elected us as their leaders, shop stewards and so on despite the fact that we were Communists.

Communist trade unionists met within what at different times were called Party Fractions or Communist Advisory Committees. In the ETU, the advisory committee was chaired by Frank Haxell and was attended by the Party's industrial organiser, Peter Kerrigan. With what, in retrospect, were bewildering tactics, the ETU Communists consistently denied the existence of this committee up to and including the civil action of 1961. As an anti-Communist circular had it, ‘Bro. Haxell says that there are no Advisory Committees of the communist party dealing with ETU affairs. Yet many rank and file communists...have admitted their existence. We leave you to choose who is the liar.’^“^

Wolf Wayne recalled that ‘nearly every industry had its own Advisory Committee’ but they ‘had nothing to do with politics...they were to do with internal questions of the union...about standing for elections within the trade union movement . There were district advisories which included people from the shop- floor, ‘but the national one was the one that set the tone’. In an incongruous reflection of trade union bureaucratic hierarchy, the national committees were specifically for leading industrial comrades. At ‘shop-steward and branch level you would have one or two people on, but mainly the Advisory Committees were people at the top. The leading people in the union.

Les Cannon gave some idea of the nature of such committees after his resignation from the CPGB in 1956. Cannon had been Acting Education Officer in the ETU while still a Communist and, in 1956, asked for his salary to be increased to that of a National Officer. After months of discussion. Bob McLennan, the union’s Communist Assistant General Secretary, suggested outside arbitration. Cannon agreed, but was surprised to discover that ‘in September the Communist Party National Industrial Organiser was asked to arbitrate on the matter.’^"*® The consequent meeting led to no new agreement’, but on the day of Cannon’s resignation from the

Stan Turner, interview, 9 July 1997.

‘How Much Longer’ [typed circular] (December 1959), MRC, MSS 137/150/2. W olf Wayne, interview, 10 February 99.

Ibid.

L. Cannon, Transcript of taped interview [Henceforward ‘Transcript’] (undated), 6, MRC, MSS 137/150/2.

Party, McLennan suggested arbitration by John Gollan.^'*® As Cannon had left the Party, Gollan’s arbitration was not acceptable, but this incident is indicative of the power that the CPGB could represent through its Advisory Committees.

Unity and the danger of ‘liquidation’

The British Road to Socialism stressed the need for ‘unity of the Labour movement’, whilst calling on the ‘progressive forces of the nation’ to ‘open up the way for the advance to socialism’. T h e terms on which the Party sought unity, however, were vague. Whilst the Party consistently criticised ‘right wing leaders’, the priority it gave to popular front building meant that it blurred the distinction between people with ‘progressive social aims’ and Marxists. Although contradicted by much of its practice and even under its diluted programme. Communist discourse maintained that social and economic inequalities could not be resolved under capitalism. Patrick Seyd defined the difference as one where socialists are committed to the transformation of property relationships and social democrats are committed to the modification of property relationships; Managing Capitalism set against replacing Capitalism.Unity across the labour movement meant unity with the majority who believed that capitalism could be managed. Marxism, by far the weaker force in society, specifically denied this, but in the hands of an organisation pursuing unity at almost any cost, Marxism, as reformism’s ideological alternative, was rendered vulnerable.Some were aware of the danger. Bert Ramelson wrote. The crucial question in discussing unity is - unity for what?'^®° Ramelson suggested that the Party should seek ‘unity in action on issues directly affecting the people’ but warned against sectarianism’ on the one hand, and ‘liquidation...tending towards minimising the role of the Party’ on the other.^^^ Ramelson did not identify the nature of the respective dangers, but in reality, the Party had constructed an iron curtain of sectarianism to its left whilst presenting a crumbling edifice to anything to its right. The Party called for unity across a wide spectrum of

Ibid.

The British Road to Socialism (1958), 29-30. P. Seyd, cited in Brivati, Hugh Gaitskell. 146.

Marx and Engels opposed socialism" which did not understand the ‘abolition of the bourgeois relations of production" but sought "reforms...that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour." Manifesto of the Communist Partv. 67.

B. Ramelson, ‘Problems of Unity", World News Discussion Supplement (23 February 1957), 18, Manchester, CP/Cent/Cong/10/05.