ommunist Party for publication (SV2); of course, Peter Heathfield is not a member of the CP. Thanks to all those many readers who pointed out the mistake!
Knives out as
Othe 250 London District delegates. November 24, delegates this EC decision: but they wanted to express a view on it. CP General Secretary Gordon responded on behalf of the EC by closing down leading a walkout of what the Star describes as "just under half" of the delegates. Those behind passed a resolution condemning the EC and asking for a District Congress "within 3 months". ecutive decided to suspend 22 of the leading members involved for continuing the meeting. unsucat the were old District
members. The EC then decided to replace them on the London DC with appointees nominated by the EC itself. And on December 3 the three full-time workers among the 22 were *Cead toile the Pety o District Meanwhile the new Committee has not been allowed to meet, while "irregularities" in their
as a of this
were
CP.
When the Congress convened on accepted Mike Hicks, MacLennan the Congress and who remained magazine, The following weekend the CP Ex- Most of those has Committee the split. paper's weeks ahead. Many Bernie to the Congress. As towards forces, brickies" Stalin — mentor of both wings of today's Socialist Viewpoint, No. 3, February 1985. Page 20
Congress are investigated.
On December 19 the three EC members among the suspended 22-
Maggie Bowden and Winston Pinder - made a defiant public statement, refusing to speak to the EC individually.
On January 13 the EC voted to expel Hicks and three others of the 22, along with Chater and his assistant editor David Whitfield. The effective admission of failure to win back the Party's own newspaper was linked to a decision to launch a new weekly
Focus, reflecting the Eurocommunist line, and to be mailed direcly to eve A special congress one of the CP's 15,000 members.
been called in May presumably to carry through the purge of Moscow-liners and formalise
Certainly Chater's editorial line in the Star had got quite out of hand 90% of the letters published have been coming from his supporters with the Moscow line receiving front-page treatment, while positions of the EC majority have been tucked away inside. But the decision by the EC to set up a rival publication must herald a determined move to destroy this weapon in Chater's hands: the
monthly appeal fund and sales are likely to take a pasting in the
Cof the letters are from leading figures or long-standing CP members, including Bill Alexander,
Tess Gill, leading members of the TGWU, print and public sector unions. The three EC members among the pro-Moscow 22 came Ist, 2nd and 4th in the elections
Executive at the last CP the split widens, the "political" basis to the animosity is emerging. On the one side, the "Euro" Executive looks unashamedly
"broad fronts" with other including the SDP and other elements. But is Chater on the other side — any more principled?
We should remember that both sides embraced the "bishops and
Kline of seekinc out 'progressive Tories" in the Peoples
March of 1983. Now Chater wheels
out as the advocate of his "theoretical case" none other than 86-year old
Andrew Rothstein and 94-year old Robin Page Arnot. Stalinists are hailed as "the two remaining delegates who voted for the formation of the Communist Party at
its toundation Congress (Unity Con-
vention) on July 31, 1920" so far had 3 articles of over ½ a page in length published in the Star.
The central point they make is that the CP Executive's real crime is its departure from "internationalism" By this, Rothstein and Arnot mean the CP's failure to give unstinting support to every action of the Soviet bureaucracy. These old hacks defend everything. They quote Willie Gallacher in defence of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. They claim that the leadership of the British CP "knew nothing what was going on in Trials. And where "difficulties" do occur over Soviet policies,
Not only did Page Arnot previously know many of the defendants in Stalin's Moscow purge trials of the mid 1930s, he had even written a book in 1923 on the Russian Revolution, which had shown Trotsky's true role. Yet a few years later he could write:
"Trotskyism is now revealed as an ancillary of fascism. The ILP is in great danger of falling into the hands of TrotSascism. He skyists becoming a
He claimed that Rakovsky had been in the pay of the British since 1924, and Trotsky in German pay since 1941. Moscow Irials prosecutor, Vyshin. sky, however, (a Menshevik until 1920) was described by Arnot as "a credit to his calling."
Arnot, a member of the International Executive of Stalin's Comintern, survived in that position because he became a servile back for Stalin. He sat on the same Comintern Executive which in 1933 endorsed the suicidal sectarian
"really friendly": These veteran ficially but privately." So while the • They have on. the Moscow Stalinist Worker! article about the Moscow they say | to the House of Commons! Chater is | course of the German CP that allowed Hitler to ride to power over a divided Germna working class. Two years later he just as obediently endorsed the new "line" of the cross-class Popular Front. ingeing subservience to Stalin. a book jointly reviewing Stalin, Gorky, Gamarhik and Bulnov. Rothstein was tactful enough to refer to of others edited bec wing as because Bulnow were currently facing frame-up charges. Rothstein Trials as agents". And in' USSR" he justified the trials of all of the major leaders of the Russian Revolution "German agents" as "really friendly" to the Moscow ship of the day: it is hard to be anything else. These Moscow Trials - they cheered them on.
that British criticisms should be
"Between 1920 and 1939 they conveyed this type of really friendly criticism more than once, quite of
Boshevik Party's leadership was put before the firing unsavoury. squad, the British CP leaders were "really friendly" to the executioners!
In fact the two authors of these articles know a lot more than they let
They knew many of the old Bosheviks who were shot or sent to the camps in Stalin's purges. Page Arnot knew even more: he was AT
Trials, writing craven reports for the British Daily
It is conspicuous that the Morning Star has become less and less critical of Moscow. One day saw a /⅓ page
from these old Stalinists, together with half the front page on the Gorbachev visit, while the whole of another page reprinted his speech
Rothstein's record was of a similar cr-
When edited by "Stalin, Gorky and Gamarhik and described the Moscow and in his 1950 History oN the been trials of "Nazi
ally trendy to the Moscow leader
Fmen did not criticise the Socialist Viewpoint, No. 3, February 1985. Page 21
PSSST! HOW MUCH LONGER? THIS CHERNENKO SUT IS GETTING HOT! obviously gambling on Moscow sup-
This battle with the Party "Euros". But the Moscow punters will watch the form a little longer before hey commit themselves.
The other political issues raised by Rothstein and Arnot are equally
• On democracy, they claim that the precutive are on for don
"in a form and on a scale without precedent, either in our party history or in that of any other Communist Party, which has existed in legal conditions since the foundation of the Communist International in March 1919".
Who are they kidding? Have they forgotten — among many murderous purges of the Stalin era which they supported - that the majority of the delegates to the CPSU Congress in 1934 were executed? That CP was not only legal, it held state power! Have they torgotten that Stalin executed the whole leadership of the Polish Communist Party? The British purge A PANT BY R. PAGE ARNOT
is small beer in comparison: and why didn't Rothstein and Page Arnot write to the Daily. Worker to protest these outrages in the 1930s?
• On the State: Arnot and Rothstein have the cheek to attack the "Euro" majority on their analysis of the capitalist state. Yet they are eager Socialism" which with Stalin's endorsement opted for a parliamentary "road to socialism" using Parliament as "the instrument of the people's will"
• On coalitions: Arnot and Rothstein argue that these should be seen as "Labour-Communist unity" coalition with other parties. But again they were active, leading members of the Party throughout the Front and wartime periods (detailed in Socialist Viewpoint No. 2) and endorsed full-scale policies of class collaboration to the extent of reluctant workers "progressive Tories"
• Class struggle politics: coming from Chater and these old hacks, this is some kind of sick joke. workers everywhere look on aghast at the TUC's refusal to mobilise action to support the miners, struggle" Morning Star has been running headline after headline creating the illusion that they are giving real support ("TUC steps up support for the miners"). In reality the talk of ser Chater's real base of sup port among certain layers of trade union bureaucrats.
Yet the pro-Moscow bureaucrats Euros Ken Gill of TAsS pulled out of the recent Austin Rover pay strike, insisting that the strike had not been
- and leaving the TGWU to face the courts alone. "class struggle" pro-Moscow wing
than any sign of class struggle by the workers of Poland or Eastern Europe against the ruling
bureaucracies: a major source of the current split was a big disagreement over whether or not to attack the Polish Solidarnosc move. ment. It is no accident that Page ArAS we go to press, the Executive has announced stringent new restrictions the North West District. The new Committee can now meet only Political Committee member is present. The agenda has to be presented to the 3 EC members in the area (2 of whom have been voted off the Committee). All three EC members and the former Area Secretary have to be invited to all meetings; and new officers have to be endorsed by the Party's Politica Committee.
Both wings of the dividing Party have announced major events for later in the year. The Morning Star is organising a festival to "celebrate the historic victory over fascism" - the 40th Anniversary of the end of World War 2. They wish to celebrate the period in Churchill was prepared to work with Stalin - and look forward hopefully to such collaboration again. Of course lit-
Stalin in the 1930s and 40s. defending the 1956 invasion mao wat tandole of the cot majority? Any and the 'Euro"-controlled in the Labour Party. are dragged into tional Development IMF (!!) programmes". alliances, tion of in organisations gressive trade and aid lock, stock and bourgeoisie!). - until June 1941 formal alliance with Hitler: so much for when a the "fight against fascism". ty is delving strategy of the policy Spanish Revolution. celebration of its Popular - whose tributed to the vicious Allende's government by , which even latest attempts to promote the policy?
DIr
Hob-nobbing with clerics began under not and Rothstein make a point of
magazine Marxism Today has offered easy meat for Chater and his supporters, who have shown it on many issues standing to the right of many left wingers 64
Cross-class alliances and coalition
PAGES every issue. In January's Marxism Today, an article on Ethiopia calls for entry work into urges the left to support the interna tina selected World anand
that "there is considerable scope for the construc-
with political those European countries which have pursued pro
policies at various times, such as the Scandinavian group and the Netherlands" (a coalition involving whole countries,
Star: tle emphasis will be placed on the tact that for the first 2 years of World War 2
- the USSR was in a
The Executive of the Communist Par-
Seven further back into the at the murky past of class collaboration, with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International which in 1935 adopted the
"Popular Front": That had catastrophic results in the An elaborate 30th anniversary in 1965 was attended by a large delega-
gressive, tion from the Chilean Communist Party
Frontist line conoverthrow of Pinochet in 1973. What will be the fruits of the CP's
Ition today. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 3, February 1985. Page 22
HAND NALS ANU/ THE POPE: 1C-095 PROTEST ACT NOW!
I' Appril 10 I'''" Wind and Heart of Britain THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY
But in hitting back against the complaints of the Moscow liners, the Euros make similar extravagant, lying claims. Mick McGahey, for example, complains about a letter of his not being published in the Morning
"In the past, the Daily Worker and the Morning Star had a reputation for ensuring a fair representation of different viewpoints among readers and shareholders."
McGahey claims this was even true
time of "the Hungarian counter-revolution" of 1956.
The reality was that the Daily Worker and the Morning Star refused to publish even the dispatches of its own staff reporter, Peter Fryer, from Hungary — because Fryer recognis ed the events, correctly, as a pro-
anti-bureaucratic revolution by the Hungarian workers. The Stalinists were deliberate, blatant liars then, and ruthlessly gagged opposition: McGahey and Chater both carry forward that despicable tradi-
A b