New Communist Party of Britain - Divisions Within The CPGB

Divisions Within The CPGB

Divisions within the CPGB had emerged following the Soviet intervention to quell the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the subsequent moves by the Nikita Khrushchev leadership in the USSR to denounce Joseph Stalin. The split within the international communist movement that eventually polarised between the positions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China was not a major contributing factor and the groups that supported the Chinese position had little support within the CPGB. French remained staunchly loyal to the Soviet Union though privately he opposed the Khrushchev line. What he did have in common with those who eventually left to form their own organisations was a common belief that the CPGB's policy, known as the British Road to Socialism (BRS), was a major revision of Marxist-Leninist principles and was essentially a left social democratic and reformist programme.

In the eyes of French and like-minded observers, the CPGB leadership under John Gollan used the Hungarian crisis and the denunciation of what Khrushchev called Stalin's "cult of personality" to weaken and divide the party as a whole. The British Road to Socialism, was first revised in 1957 - the start of a process culmination in 1977 which, for French, deprived it of all revolutionary content.

In 1966, the Daily Worker was re-launched as The Morning Star - French had been among those who had campaigned against this change. The CPGB leadership's decision to support the Dubček leadership in Czechoslovakia and oppose the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact intervention in 1968 that led to Dubček's removal widened the divisions within the CPGB. But while there was a significant minority that supported the Soviet position throughout the party, only a small number, largely those in French's own Surrey district, supported the critique of the BRS. The Bexley branch of the CPGB openly defied the CPGB leadership. All its members were expelled in 1971, most establishing the Appeal Group.

In 1964 Labour returned to power after 13 years of Tory rule but the new government under Harold Wilson pursued policies seen by many leftists as anti-union (including an attempt to introduce "In Place of Strife" compulsory arbitration), while in Northern Ireland the government was seen by many in the Catholic community as supporting its oppression following the collapse of the civil rights campaign. The Tories, under Edward Heath, returned to power in 1970 with policies even more unpopular with the British left, contributing to the largest number of strikes involving the greatest number of workers in British history. Miners' strikes in 1972 and 1974 featured widespread participation from the working class and other sectors. Heath was defeated in 1974 and in the eyes of many on the British left, the second Wilson government continued where it left off.

French and like-minded British communists saw the Wilson/Callaghan government of 1974-79 as implementing "class collaborationist" policies and felt this was becoming more obvious to the working class, but believed the CPGB was incapable of presenting a clear revolutionary perspective, and had no capacity to rally workers on a mass scale against the capitalist offensive. French and others believed that at a moment of profound crisis for social democracy, their party was impotent and unable to wage a struggle for communist policies.

It was during this period of struggle and change that the CPGB declined at an alarming rate. It became more isolated from the people than at any other time in its history. The decline in membership and Morning Star circulation accelerated. The Young Communist League collapsed, while the growing crisis in the party also affected the credibility of its leadership as formerly senior and influential members left its ranks. In 1976, four of the party's top engineering activists resigned: Bernard Panter, Cyril Morton, Jimmy Reid and John Tocher, who had all been members of the Political Committee. At the base of the party the crisis in organisation was even more clear. Thousands of members were no longer organised and many did not even pay their nominal 25p monthly dues.

Warring camps emerged within the party. Since the 1960s a secret faction known as the "Smith Group" and later as the "Party Group" had operated within the CPGB based around the theories of the Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci. This provided the political base for the emergence of an open Eurocommunist faction in the early 1970s. The Gollan leadership sought to prop itself up by aligning itself with the Eurocommunist forces further to their right. Within that camp was an active faction that called itself the "Revolutionary Democratic Current".

On the other side, a group led by former CPGB student organiser Fergus Nicholson was emerging that later became "Straight Left"; while French's Surrey District committee refrained from faction fighting which would have led to disciplinary action.

But the crisis came to a head the following year in the run-up to the Congress in November. The Gollan leadership had redrawn the British Road to Socialism aimed at - according to its detractors - adopting a social-democratic platform that sought the respectability and acceptance of academic and intellectual circles. The hardliners claimed it was the party's entrance fee into the reformist and social democratic traditions of the official labour movement. The publication of the draft and the beginning of the pre-Congress discussion period led to furious arguments within the party - with the majority saying that the new programme was about building a broad alliance for revolutionary social change, though implicitly or explicitly agreeing that the proposals broke with the Leninist tradition.

The Nicholson group argued that all the opposition should focus on making a stand at the November 1977 Congress. French led discussions with Nicholson and he was ready to go along with this strategy. But when it became clear that the party leadership was going to strike the first blow by expelling Sid French and a number of others in the Surrey district the formation of a new party became inevitable. On 15 July 1977 the New Communist Party was established at an emergency meeting in London called by French and other members of the Surrey district committee.

Support came largely from French's Surrey district stronghold though other supporters of his position, who had been contacted during the campaign against the new draft of the BRS, also joined immediately. But the decision to form the party in July had been made at the last moment. It took a further six weeks to organise the production of a party weekly, the New Worker, and issue the first pamphlet arguing the case for the new party.

The NCP failed to take many members in key districts of the CPGB, such as London, Scotland and South Wales in the run-up to the November CPGB Congress. There, Nicholson's supporters were overwhelmingly defeated and the new draft BRS adopted. The Nicholson group continued to oppose the CPGB leadership in an increasingly factional way while claiming that French's move had undermined the overall opposition at Congress. But the opposition had no chance of defeating the draft. Even if French's supporters had been at Congress their numbers together with Nicholson's group were still not enough to defeat the leadership bloc's support.

Some 6,000 members had left the CPGB by the end of 1977 in a membership decline that would accelerate throughout the 1980s. But only a fraction of them, put at around 700, joined the NCP.