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‘Class Against Class’
Matthew Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain between the Wars, London: I B Tauris, 2002, ISBN 1-86064-747-2, pp352, hbk, Ł39.50.
This is a volume that not only specialists in the history of the British Communist Party (CPGB) but anyone interested in the twentieth century communist movement is obliged to read; it brings fresh illumination not only to the career of the CPGB during this period but to the operating methods of the Communist International as well. Although it does not quite overthrow the received interpretation of the party’s strategy and actions between 1928 and 1933, summarised by the author as, ‘...Stalin moulded communist policy, the CPGB did as it was told; the party became alienated from the British working class’ (p13), this volume certainly modifies that interpretation very substantially.
As that quote emphasises, the consensus, shared by both hostile and sympathetic historians (including myself) held that the ‘Third Period’ or ‘Class against Class’ or the ‘New Line’ was an unmitigated disaster for the Comintern and all its constituent parties, including the British — where membership collapsed, positions of strength in the labour movement were lost, the party was torn with internal division, and antagonisms were created with other left-wingers that were never subsequently forgiven. With the deployment of massive documentary evidence drawn from the local, national and international spheres, Worley demonstrates that matters were rather more complex and nuanced. The standard interpretation, as indicated, also holds that the ‘Class against Class’ strategy was forced upon a reluctant CPGB by Comintern (ie, Soviet) diktat — this volume demonstrates that that, too, is at least an oversimplification.
It becomes perfectly evident that if the ‘New Line’ was a disaster (and the eventual judgement, however modified, must be that this was the case) then it was a disaster waiting to happen and most certainly did not fall out of a clear sky. Even the most notorious aspect of Class against Class — the accusation of ‘social fascism’ levelled against any left winger not wholly compliant with the CP — though wholly unforgivable, was not quite what it seemed, for among British communists at any rate, a sharp distinction was made between ‘social fascists’ and real ones (p260).
The evidence leaves no doubt that there was in the CPGB by 1928 a very strong current which enthusiastically welcomed the New Line and viewed it as a confirmation of their experience on the ground. While it is impossible to know, these might even have constituted a majority of the then existing members. Party membership had fallen severely in the aftermath of its surge during the General Strike and miners’ lockout, (from 7,909 at the beginning of 1927 to 2,350 in mid-1930) and while much of this was down to decline in the industries where its strength was concentrated, some of it was also due to the intensifying persecution the party met with from the official labour movement in both its political and trade union forms. When Class against Class was launched, only the most determined and committed were left and they were increasingly anxious to confront uncompromisingly their TUC and Labour Party enemies. Similar points have already been made by other historians of the Party, especially Noreen Branson and Mike Squires, but Matthew Worley produces the detailed chapter and verse. Without any doubt the CP leadership had much more trouble from British members who accused them of dragging their feet than from those who doubted the applicability of the New Line, and Pollitt and his colleagues frequently had to call the Comintern leadership to justify their interpretations and applications of the strategy against vociferous demands for more intense sectarianism. Worley concludes, ‘In such a context, we must regard the CPGB’s adoption of “class against class” as and understandable, if evidently unsuccessful, attempt to adapt itself to the changing conditions in which it sought to forge the revolution.’(p44).
This last issue leads on to a further consideration. There was plenty of scope for interpretation in how Class against Class should actually operate — it was not a monolithic, inflexible requirement that dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’ like a set of military orders. It was combined with a programme of establishing united fronts ‘from below’ — though no doubt it increased the difficulty of achieving such ambitions. The party appears to have been genuinely convinced of the correctness of the strategy and was puzzled and dismayed when the presumed upsurge of revolutionary sentiment — in whose reality it had every confidence — failed to produce the concrete results that were expected. Certainly its attempts to lead industrial struggles were failures at best (Scotland), more often fiascos (London, Lancashire, North-East England) and this record was compounded by the constant barrage of criticism to which it subjected its one considerable trade union leader of the time, Arthur Horner of the Welsh miners, on account of his barely concealed scepticism regarding the policy — even going so far as to invent an ideology of ‘Hornerism’.
Yet even here there are ambiguities. Worley suggests that these failures, like the more general ones of evaporating membership, the decline of the Minority Movement into insignificance, the extinction of the National Left Wing Movement (which united communists and dissident Labour Party members) were due as much to circumstances over which the party had no control — such as that seventy per cent of its membership was unemployed — as to its own errors. He argues this persuasively, though in this instance perhaps a little less convincingly than elsewhere. Nevertheless the record was far from one of total failure. The CP’s great success was its leadership of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, (pp281-6) though this might have been greater but for the sniping at its leader Wal Hannington because of his suspicious coolness towards the New Line.
Moreover, the attempt arising from the analysis of Class Against Class to establish class alternatives to forms of bourgeois popular culture, while it did not achieve any great breakthroughs, attained modest successes, with theatre and film groups, ramblers, and sporting leagues. ‘While not forging a conspicuous alternative to “professional” or “capitalist” sport the BWSF [British Workers Sports Federation] represented a remarkable expression of British communist initiative and dedication.’ (p213). The party’s own intensive political and theoretical education of its members must also stand on the credit side. Most unanswerably no doubt, membership (5,400 in early 1933) was rising again by 1932 and passed that of the highest figures previous to 1926, and the party by then had, in the teeth of immense difficulties, successfully established a daily newspaper.
Indeed by 1932 there was a growing appreciation within the party and its leadership of the sectarian errors which had been committed and their invidious results:
a world poised for revolution had been proclaimed, class enemies had been delineated and abused, and a dwindling membership had displayed a militancy that alarmed even those, such as Rust and Dutt, who sought to guide the CPGB towards the ‘correct interpretation’ (p143).
Consequently greater emphasis began to be laid upon the ‘left danger’, the enthusiasm of the hottest partisans of the New Line both local and national to be curbed, and those leaders who had been censured for insufficient zeal to be regarded more favourably. It is interesting to note that the Balham Group, the original nucleus of British trotskyism, split away from the party because of its passionate attachment to Class against Class — which Trotsky at the time was denouncing with all his might. Certainly it is important to realise that, ‘Taken as a whole, the Third Period passed through a series of stages and should not be considered as an unchanging era of untrammelled sectarianism’ (p314, emphasis added).
Nevertheless he emphasises that he ‘does not propose to turn history on its head’ (p17), and that ‘The Comintern did insist on the CPGB’s adoption of “class against class” and the CP functioned within strict theoretical and practical guidelines sanctioned within the Comintern in Moscow’ (ibid). However the conclusion which seems to emerge from this meticulously researched account — though Worley does not quite say so — is that the foundations for the acclaimed era of the Popular Front in the later thirties were laid during the despised years of Class against Class. That remains contentious; would the CP not have done better, despite all the objective difficulties if it had pursued a less sectarian and isolationist strategy? I continue to think so, and also think that the role of Stalin and the situation in the USSR is somewhat underplayed here; but what is indisputable is that after the publication of this volume our traditional conceptions will have to be substantially revised and that Class against Class, at least so far as the CPGB was concerned will now have to be understood in a very different light from formerly.
It is regrettable that Matthew Worley has not been well served by his publishers on this occasion. It has emerged that in a number of the published copies fifteen pages (pp103-118) are missing. The index is a name index only and not a subject one, and is not always accurate. In addition, the blurb on the back cover is seriously misleading in its claim that this is ‘the first major study of the Communist Party of Great Britain between the wars’ — something that L J Macfarlane and Kevin Morgan would be astonished to discover. None of that, however, should detract from the excellence of the text itself
