Tribune, 14 December 1990
The Communist Party of Great Britain decided not to disband
last week. But, writes Paul Anderson, it seems merely to have postponed its
collapse
The tiny Communist Party of Great Britain last weekend
looked death in the face – and then averted its gaze.
A vast majority of the 300 delegates at its 42nd Congress
at TUC Congress House in London rejected a proposal, put forward by Marxism
Today supporters, to dissolve the 70-year-old party into a loose political
association. A rather smaller majority rejected calls for "renewal"
of the party on Leninist lines.
Instead, the CP will continue, putting a change of name and
rules to next year's congress and encouraging the eventual emergence of a
"new political formation". But it is difficult to see how this fudge,
backed by the party's executive committee, can possibly stem the CP's decline.
It now claims 6,000 members (down from 30,000 in the sixties), some not paying
their dues, most of them inactive and many of them retired.
More important, the formal debate and informal discussion
at the 42nd Congress showed clearly that the few comrades who remain are
terminally disillusioned, with no coherent common political project. The party
has survived merely because Britain's communists are afraid of life without
it.
Saturday morning's debate was supposed to discuss the
general political situation in which the CP now finds itself, with an
executive committee document based on Marxism Today's analysis of "New
Times" as its focus.
Instead, after an opening speech from the party's general
secretary, Nina Temple, in which she declared that "1990 has seen the
Bolshevik era end in disaster", the debate concentrated on the legacy of
1917.
Delegates heard a string of stinging denunciations of the
whole Leninist tradition. One speaker told the congress: "The crimes
committed in the name of communism can never be explained away." Another,
attacking democratic centralist party organisation, announced blithely that
"Leninism helped to grease the skids for Stalinism".
Such sweeping dismissals of party tradition were too much
for some older delegates, who treated the congress to diatribes on the unchanging
nature of imperialism, but resistance was weak. No one was prepared explicitly
to defend the "actually existing socialism" that once inspired the
CP, and attempts to prevent the party from disowning its past were voted down.
That left the afternoon's session to determine the way
forward, but here proceedings almost ground to a halt. Everyone agreed that the
CP was in crisis, and nearly everyone backed a pluralist politics of “broad
progressive alliances", but no two speakers seemed to concur on what
should happen next.
One man, supporting the executive commitee's proposal that
the party be kept going for the time being, pinned his hopes on a Labour defeat
at the next election, which would lead to a "fundamental review of left
politics" in which Greens and Liberal Democrats would play a key role. Another,
also backing temporary continuation, said that the CP could help Labour win.
Yet another thought that a "renewed" CP, the
option favoured by (mainly London-based) Leninist hardliners, should throw in
its lot with the Socialist Movement and the Labour hard left. A woman advocate
of dissolving the party into a political association said that political
parties were a thing of the past; a male colleague saw the political
association as a means of providing strategic thinking for Labour.
In the end on Sunday the congress supported the executive
fudge by a large majority, but there was little enthusiasm among delegates for
their own decision. Many among the Marxism Today faction who favoured
dissolution voted for the compromise only to defeat the hardline Leninist
faction; many who didn't want change, particularly from the Scottish party,
backed the compromise only to defeat the liquidationists.
Far from resolving the crisis, the outcome of the congress ensures that the argument over the CP's
future will continue for another year, and many members, particularly those
who believe that the party should call it a day, have simply had enough. That
means that further resignations are on the cards, which in turn means that the
influence of the Leninist hard-line block, which increased its representation
on the executive in elections on Sunday, will grow still further.
As the CP's death agonies continue, last weekend will
almost certainly look like a missed opportunity for painless suicide.
Friday, 14 December 1990
Friday, 7 December 1990
AND IN WITH WHAT?
Tribune, 7 December 1990
John Major's accession to the Tory leadership could make it more difficult for Labour to provide effective opposition, writes Paul Anderson
The Tories' choice of John Major as leader has already had a dramatic effect on British politics.
Less than a month ago, it seemed most unlikely that the Conservatives could win the next election. The party was running consistently behind Labour in the opinion polls and was split down the middle on Europe. In Margaret Thatcher, the Tories had a leader who was an electoral liability but apparently impossible to replace without a spectacular bout of blood-letting. All Labour needed to do, it seemed, was to sit back and wait.
Today the picture has been completely changed. Thatcher has gone. The Tories have united behind Major and leapt ahead in the opinion polls. The poll tax is to be reformed and a more conciliatoryline taken on Europe. The least popular figures of Thatcher's government have been eased out of the limelight. Cabinet government is to be restored.
Of course, public enthusiasm for Major might be just a passing fad. Unemployment is set to rise as the economy enters the deepest recession for a decade, yet it is unlikely that interest rates will come down significantly for several months.
If war breaks out in the Gulf, heavy British casualties would harm the government in the short term -and in the long term the effects of a Gulf war on the economy could be disastrous. In the even longer term, the ceasefire on European policy within the Tory party will break down if the rest of Europe forces the pace on monetary and political union.
But even a mere blip in the Tories' popularity could last long enough to keep them in power for another term. If, in early January, the opinion polls still show a Tory lead, it is highly probable that Major will go to the country some time in the spring, perhaps as early as February - whatever he says now. Labour knows this, and is hurriedly gearing up its campaigning for a snap election.
This means that big changes in Labour's basic policy to counter the new-look Tories are virtually impossible: there simply isn't time for anything but minor adjustments.
It also means that, despite the speculation in the newspapers, Neil Kinnock's position as Labour leader is secure this side of a general election. The opinion polls show that Labour would do better with John Smith as leader, but the whole of the Labour leadership recognises that attempting to replace Kinnock involves greater risk than uniting behind him. Apart from anything else, the process of choosing a new leader would take longer than the minimum length of a general election campaign.
In the short term, Labour has no alternative but to force its way back into public view, emphasising the coherence of its package of policies and the competence of its leaders, doing all it can to ensure that Mr Major's honeymoon is over by the new year.
The danger for Labour is that Major's honeymoon will last until the general election, which he will then win by a comfortable margin. Major might be "the boring man with the glasses" to Spitting Image, but he has already persuaded most of Britain's quality newspaper columnists that he is a technocratic pro-European social liberal, committed to the market as well as to the welfare state - rather like David Owen, in fact, and not that far removed from the modern Kinnock.
That is bad enough for Labour. But the party's nightmare is that Major will convince skilled workers who have shifted allegiance from Tory to Labour in the past couple of years that he will replace the poll tax, get interest rates down and spend more money on education, health and transport, all without giving too much power to the unions, raising income tax or leaving the country defenceless.
The root of Labour's problem is that its political strategy over the past seven years has beer to appeal to the self-interest of affluent skilled workers while occupying the centre ground ideologically.
In the 1987-89 policy review and subsequently, Labour has adopted policies that have much in common with those of the centre parties and the pro-Europe left of the Conservatives.
Labour has abandoned the last vestiges of Keynesianism to advocate tight fiscal and monetary policies. It no longer proposes nationalisation and is cautious about any form of intervention in industry. Labour is against high taxation and for home-ownership, and its enthusiasm for the EC and Nato is unrivalled.
This strategy certainly had its critics on the Labour left, but the alternatives on offer were electorally worse (particularly the hard left's "vision" of nationalisation and a siege economy). More importantly, the strategy worked while Thatcher was in office. But the result today is that Labour does not seem to be saying much that the Tories are not saying.
This is not to claim that there are not many policy differences between Labour and the Tories: it's just that the differences suddenly seem not matters of broad principle but questions of detail within a shared framework of assumptions. That makes the big issue of the next election the competence of Britain's would-be rulers. Here the Tories are vulnerable to Labour's attacks, particularly on the economy. Only a fool would dismiss Labour's chances. But it's hardly the election campaign that Kinnock was planning to fight, and it's not going to be easy.
John Major's accession to the Tory leadership could make it more difficult for Labour to provide effective opposition, writes Paul Anderson
The Tories' choice of John Major as leader has already had a dramatic effect on British politics.
Less than a month ago, it seemed most unlikely that the Conservatives could win the next election. The party was running consistently behind Labour in the opinion polls and was split down the middle on Europe. In Margaret Thatcher, the Tories had a leader who was an electoral liability but apparently impossible to replace without a spectacular bout of blood-letting. All Labour needed to do, it seemed, was to sit back and wait.
Today the picture has been completely changed. Thatcher has gone. The Tories have united behind Major and leapt ahead in the opinion polls. The poll tax is to be reformed and a more conciliatoryline taken on Europe. The least popular figures of Thatcher's government have been eased out of the limelight. Cabinet government is to be restored.
Of course, public enthusiasm for Major might be just a passing fad. Unemployment is set to rise as the economy enters the deepest recession for a decade, yet it is unlikely that interest rates will come down significantly for several months.
If war breaks out in the Gulf, heavy British casualties would harm the government in the short term -and in the long term the effects of a Gulf war on the economy could be disastrous. In the even longer term, the ceasefire on European policy within the Tory party will break down if the rest of Europe forces the pace on monetary and political union.
But even a mere blip in the Tories' popularity could last long enough to keep them in power for another term. If, in early January, the opinion polls still show a Tory lead, it is highly probable that Major will go to the country some time in the spring, perhaps as early as February - whatever he says now. Labour knows this, and is hurriedly gearing up its campaigning for a snap election.
This means that big changes in Labour's basic policy to counter the new-look Tories are virtually impossible: there simply isn't time for anything but minor adjustments.
It also means that, despite the speculation in the newspapers, Neil Kinnock's position as Labour leader is secure this side of a general election. The opinion polls show that Labour would do better with John Smith as leader, but the whole of the Labour leadership recognises that attempting to replace Kinnock involves greater risk than uniting behind him. Apart from anything else, the process of choosing a new leader would take longer than the minimum length of a general election campaign.
In the short term, Labour has no alternative but to force its way back into public view, emphasising the coherence of its package of policies and the competence of its leaders, doing all it can to ensure that Mr Major's honeymoon is over by the new year.
The danger for Labour is that Major's honeymoon will last until the general election, which he will then win by a comfortable margin. Major might be "the boring man with the glasses" to Spitting Image, but he has already persuaded most of Britain's quality newspaper columnists that he is a technocratic pro-European social liberal, committed to the market as well as to the welfare state - rather like David Owen, in fact, and not that far removed from the modern Kinnock.
That is bad enough for Labour. But the party's nightmare is that Major will convince skilled workers who have shifted allegiance from Tory to Labour in the past couple of years that he will replace the poll tax, get interest rates down and spend more money on education, health and transport, all without giving too much power to the unions, raising income tax or leaving the country defenceless.
The root of Labour's problem is that its political strategy over the past seven years has beer to appeal to the self-interest of affluent skilled workers while occupying the centre ground ideologically.
In the 1987-89 policy review and subsequently, Labour has adopted policies that have much in common with those of the centre parties and the pro-Europe left of the Conservatives.
Labour has abandoned the last vestiges of Keynesianism to advocate tight fiscal and monetary policies. It no longer proposes nationalisation and is cautious about any form of intervention in industry. Labour is against high taxation and for home-ownership, and its enthusiasm for the EC and Nato is unrivalled.
This strategy certainly had its critics on the Labour left, but the alternatives on offer were electorally worse (particularly the hard left's "vision" of nationalisation and a siege economy). More importantly, the strategy worked while Thatcher was in office. But the result today is that Labour does not seem to be saying much that the Tories are not saying.
This is not to claim that there are not many policy differences between Labour and the Tories: it's just that the differences suddenly seem not matters of broad principle but questions of detail within a shared framework of assumptions. That makes the big issue of the next election the competence of Britain's would-be rulers. Here the Tories are vulnerable to Labour's attacks, particularly on the economy. Only a fool would dismiss Labour's chances. But it's hardly the election campaign that Kinnock was planning to fight, and it's not going to be easy.
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