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The CPGB and the collapse of socialism, 1977-1991
This PhD thesis The Communist Party of Great Britain and the collapse of socialism: the CPGB, 1977-1991 was successfully completed at the University of Manchester in 2003.
This thesis examines the evolution of what became a terminal decline in the fortunes of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), as it struggled to respond to the threats posed by a compound 'triple crisis', which, from the late 1970s onwards, began to threaten the domestic left and labour movement; the continental European communist movement; and the system of 'actually existing socialism' in the eastern bloc.
The thesis combines a political history of the CPGB in its final decades with a study of the activities with which its members were engaged in the context of their organisation's deepening malaise. In particular, it scrutinises the work of the CPGB's industrial activists within the trade union movement, and also the different campaigning and ideological initiatives that party members threw their energies behind as the party itself unravelled. The impact that divisions within the party had on the political purchase of the CPGB and its members is a recurrent theme of this section of the work. A study of the North West District of the CPGB explores how far the institutions and cultures of the party affected the choices that dissatisfied members were able to make as the party's crisis developed. In its conclusions, the thesis critiques existing explanations for the CPGB's demise, rejecting both monocasual and determinist accounts of the CPGB's failure, and urging an appreciation of just how complex the tensions between the institution of the party and the agency of its members became as the CPGB disintegrated.
The year 1977 offers an effective starting point for a study of the unwinding of the British Communist Party for a number of reasons. In many respects, the year was the centre of a brief political interregnum for the British left poised between the peak of the left's advance between 1968-1974 and the arrival of Thatcherism and the 'triumph' of the neo-liberal right after 1979. In 1977, traditional British 'labourism' appeared to be stalling, but the position of the British left and its labour allies did not yet appear to be in jeopardy. For the CPGB itself, 1977 was the year that the party redrafted The British Road to Socialism accepting amendments to the party's programme which expressed the rising hopes of both party 'reformers' and party 'traditionalists' that the 'advances' of the early 1970s could be reflected in consolidation and growth in the 1980s, if the party oriented its work in the 'correct' way. In 1977, there was no disguising the political disagreements which divided CPGB members but for the party majority those conflicts remained either latent or manageable, kept in check by the shared experience of the left's 'forward march', and by a collective belief in the political agency of the Communist Party. Large scale public events organised by the party in that year, most notably the 'People's Jubilee' celebrations at Alexandra Palace in June, help to maintain the party's sense of its own significance and political potential.
The party's sense of its own worth had risen considerably in the early 1970s. During that time, British communists active in industry had been carried along in the upsurge of workplace unrest which characterised the industrial relations environment of the period. In the field of intellectual and ideological work, British communists had worked, with some success, to rehabilitate the reputation of the CPGB as a 'generator of ideas', fluent in the politics of Eurocommunism and feminism, and aware of many of the key issues now demanding responses from the left. Yet a critical problem facing the CPGB was that these different elements of the party's work did not automatically translate into a coherent political agenda. In particular, the advances secured in the area of industrial politics and those engineered in the field of intellectual work appeared increasingly disjointed. Communist industrial militants rallying to bring down the Social Contract, secure the return of 'free collective bargaining', and win Labour to a programme of 'genuine' alliance with the unions did not appear to share the same political agenda as party theorists organising the Communist Universities and immersing themsleves in the samizdat culture of an intra-left debate which crossed party lines. To some in the CPGB, it became starkly apparent that building on the party's advances in the intellectual and the industrial arena now required policies that were in sharp conflict.
After 1979 the ideological, organisational and strategic coherence of the CPGB began to diminish, with both the party's 'traditionalist' and 'reformist' wings themselves becoming less stable coalitions. Alongside plunging membership figures, the party found that its influence was on the wane, and that increasingly bitter internal battles were draining the CPGB's resources still further. Until the early 1980s a 'tentative evolution' in party policy held the CPGB together change was evident enough to encourage those committed to a programme of party reform, yet limited enough to reassure party members of a more orthodox hue. Inevitably, however, the consensus collapsed under multiple pressures and the party fragmented.
A chapter on the domestic political history of the party documents the unfolding inner-conflict after 1977, scrutinising the schism between the Executive Committee and the Morning Star; studying the differing perceptions of party members of the role played by 'factionalism' in the party's ills; examining the impact of the concerted disciplinary campaign undertaken by party leaders; and exploring the political and procedural controversies that accompanied the party's endgame, and the CPGB's 'transformation' into the 'post-communist' Democratic Left in 1991. Combining the oral testimony of party members with material from the official party archives, the study challenges existing typologies of political division within the party during this period; questions some of the persistent 'counter-factuals' of the party's demise; and concludes with a discussion of some key distinctions between the institution of the party and the wider culture of its members, which informs the remainder of the work.
The following chapter assesses the significance of developments within western and eastern european communism in explaining the division and decline of the British CP. The importance afforded to 'international solidarity' work had, by the late 1970s, become another of the lines of cleavage around which CPGB members had become separated. For many 'traditionalist' members, identification with the eastern bloc and of 'Sovietism' remained definitional to their identity as Communist Party members. Work in organisations such as British-Soviet Friendship Society remained a vital component of communist political work up until the late 1980s. Such members could immerse themselves in the publishing culture supported by the party bookshop Collets taking titles like GDR Today, Soviet Weekly and other state-sanctioned eastern bloc titles, and the pamphlets of the Novosti 'English Language' Soviet publishing house. Such members could also involve themselves with 'pro-Soviet' campaigning organisation in the West prioritising work on disarmament issues, for example, through the World Peace Council and retaining a critical distance from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
For those party members enthused by the potential of Eurocommunism, their principal reference points were on the west european side of the Iron Curtain such members tended to see the work of the 'official' 'solidarity' organisations as either irrelevant or actually harmful to their own political project. Indeed, many sought actively to reduce still further the residual iconography of Sovietism in the culture of the British party. Amongst party 'reformers', it was not until the era of glasnost and perestroika that a specifically Soviet 'culturalism' was again re-appropriated with very different intent in the 'bolshevik chic' design and marketing work of Marxism Today. In many respects, the interest that CPGB 'reformers' and 'traditionalists' expressed in the communist movements of Europe, and the political work in the which they engaged, had separated existing in parallel and held together, however loosely, only by the CPGB leadership's exercises in compromise and management. However, despite general secretary Gordon McLennan's efforts to eschew use of the term, it became all but impossible to prevent existing divisions within the British party from hardening over the question of continental 'Eurocommunism'.
And yet, the ability of the CPGB to emulate the strategies of other west european communist parties (had the party been able to unite behind such a course of action be it to pursue the 'transformism' of the Italian PCI; the retreat into 'traditionalism' of the French PCF; or to match the ideological 'isolationism' of the Portuguese PCP) was restricted for a whole number of interlocking reasons. Whatever view the British party were to take of the Eurocommunist 'option' the construction of a counter-hegemonic political and cultural coalition, able to win participation in governmental partnerships through the forging of new alliances and the extension of its programme it was scarcely an 'option' open to the CPGB. In 1975, the British communist party comprised less than 30,000 members. The CPGB had no significant electoral constituency with which to bargain, and no trade union confederation to mobilise in support of its efforts. The party had no MPs and a bare handful of councillors. The Labour Party's dominance of the left was reinforced by the absence of a proportional voting system that might better reflect the interests of minor parties but there was anyway no reciprocity for the CPGB's appeals for 'Communist-Labour Unity'. The CPGB's resource base was small, and the cultural resonance of the party was, in mass terms, minimal. The absence of a credible 'European option' for a 'rejuvinated CPGB' was in itself a stimulant to the inner-party crisis as the political fragmentation of the party intensified in conditions from which there appeared to be 'no exit'. In many respects, in comes as no surprise that the advocates of Eurocommunism within the British party themselves subsequently divided as its supporters differed, in the light of the sclerosis and decline of continental Eurocommunism, on the consequences of the evident 'unsuitability' of the CPGB for a British emulation of its perspectives.
The chapter also explores the response of party members to Soviet 'action' in Afghanistan in 1979 ('invasion' to some members, 'fraternal intervention' to others), and to the rise of Solidarnosc in Poland in 1980-81, scrutinising the lines of division caused by such events and assesssing their domestic impact on the fortunes of the CPGB. The study then focuses on the significance, for British communists, of the rise of Soviet reform under Gorbachov. Unlike the party's experiences with Eurocommunism, Soviet reform initially served to reduce CPGB disunity, as to the evident relief of the McLennan leadership both 'traditionalists' and 'reformers' championed Gorbachov's programme as their own. Inevitably, as threats to CPSU monopoly, communist social and civic hegemony and the integrity of the USSR multiplied, opinion within the party polarised once again. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the responses of party members to the 'revelations' of the existence (until 1979, in the British CP's case) of 'Moscow Gold', and of Stalin's 'involvement' in the drafting of the original British Road to Socialism, which gained wide publicity in the weeks before the CPGB's demise. Here again, it discovers political divisions far more complex than any bi-polar model of the party could hope to accommodate.
The study then turns to examine the work of party members in a number of key fields, beginning with an assessment of the CPGB's presence in industry. It seems clear that the evident industrial power which the CPGB exercised in the early 1970s was heavily contingent in nature. Party industrial strength was underpinned by such factors as the bargaining strength of shop stewards, the phenomenon of 'wage drift' and other expressions of a 'positive balance of class forces' on the industrial front. The CPGB's industrial influence was in a number of important senses a reflection of wider trade union strength rather than a catalyst for it. Even at the height of the new militancy, opinion within the CPGB had remained divided over its political content and trajectory, with increasingly critical voices challenging the existing consensus that the combativity of labour was innately and instinctively 'pro-socialist'. Disagreements had grown too about the strategies which guided the work of the party's own industrial militants.
The organisation and operation of communist activists within industry did, in any case, not afford the CPGB an unproblematic workplace 'presence'. The relationship between the CPGB's industrial militants and the institutions of the party could prove awkward for both a factor masked, to a degree, in periods of political buoyancy, yet revealed more clearly in times of contraction and defeat. Communists active in industry were responsive to numerous other conditioning influences besides the infrequent 'calls to action' voiced by party officials, and these often exerted a more powerful impact on their decision making. If Industrial Department officials sometimes grumbled that members in the workplace often gave priority to union and economic questions to the near-exclusion of 'socialist agitation', they were at the same time aware of an uncomfortable truth obscured by such complaints: that this 'ideological abstention' was often an important explanation for the relative success of the party's cadre communist militants gained support, and won union elections, primarily because of their industrial practice, and not their wider political affiliations. Communist officials could win support from trade unionists unaware of, indifferent about or opposed to, the perspectives of the British Road to Socialism. Some analysts have argued that the existing tendency towards semi-detachment on the part of the party's workplace activists was exacerbated by the collusion of CPGB leaders with the narrow 'economism' and acceptance of the effective autonomy of so many of its trade union militants. And yet, the assertion that more rigorous 'democratic centralist' command methods might have counteracted the tendency for communists to become immersed in the routines of trade unionism ignores an important consideration: had the party's industrial cadre been directed more forcefully from CPGB headquarters their credibility amongst fellow trade unionists could have been diminished, suspicion about their 'political agendas' intensified, and their ability to work as organisers undermined. The swift collapse of the CPGB's factory branch network after 1977 demonstrates its brittle and shallow nature, and confirms that the party's industrial militants were too weak to 'hold the line' inside a trade union movement in disorderly retreat.
In studying the interplay between party decline and party activity between 1977 and 1991, one chapter explores the work of British communists in four different political settings during that period. It examines the electoral strategies of the CPGB, documenting the contraction of the party's (always marginal) vote, assessing the debate within the party that this intensified, and scrutinising the party's inability to convincingly define its electoral objectives. The chapter then assesses the intellectual and theoretical work of the CPGB in this period, characterising the renaissance in the political reputation of the party its costs and consequences, as well as its benefits and the dilemmas that this confronted the party with. Next, a discussion of the impact of feminism on the development of party thinking in this period allows a further exploration of the relationship between the institution and the wider culture of the party in both enabling and containing the work of its members, in the context of party decline. Finally, a study of the events organised under the banner of the party, and of campaigns outside the party supported by its members, makes clear the capabilities (and failings) of British communists in the years between 1977 and 1991.
By the early 1980s, a number of new forums for political debate had opened up inside the CPGB, providing 'reformist' voices within the party an important outlet. The enthusiasm with which many party 'reformers' made use of this of this new environment was matched by the strong sense of unease with which others in the party viewed this process more naturally suspicious of encroaching 'revisionism' than excited by the prospect of political 'innovation'. What became vital to sustaining this new culture was the tolerance afforded it by party leaders, willing to excuse infractions of party norms in recognition that the new intellectual climate provided evidence of a 'dynamism' so transparently lacking in many other aspects of the party's work. The party hierarchy's tolerance of this new 'iconoclastic' culture did, it was evident, have clear limits a sense of 'conservatism' which the more impatient 'reformers' disregarded at their cost. This process clashed with, and was partly held in check by, the formal institutions of the party but began to exercise influence over the orientation of the CPGB's work despite this.
At the same time, such forums exposed the growing rifts within the party about the CPGB's political role and, in most instances, engaged the interest of only an enthused minority of party members. This was the central paradox of a showcase event like the June 1983 Marx with Sparx party festival for its organisers such public debates cast the CPGB as an organisation confident in its politics and prepared to confront the challenges facing the left in a way that might somehow offset the party's worsening organisational decline. For abstainers and critics, it confirmed the complicity of party leaders in the unravelling of the political and organisational integrity of the CPGB.
The theoretical and intellectual work championed by Marxism Today, under the stewardship of Martin Jacques, was arguably the most prominent and conspicuous political project with which the CPGB was associated in the 1980s. Jacques' repositioning of the party's political review and determination to attract new non-party writers and readers was supported (and financially underwritten) by the Executive Committee and the wider party. Jacques and his supporters strove to revive the magazine as an 'intellectual hot-house' in which the left's own project might be rethought from first principles. The degree to which Marxism Today and its public forums 'set the agenda' for the process of self-scrutiny in which much of the British left became engaged as the 1980s progressed can be overstated (and sometimes is overplayed by its supporters), but there can be little doubt that under Jacques' editorship MT both matched and responded to the mood of an growing section of the British left in this period. Yet for party 'traditionalists' Marxism Today's 'success' came at the cost of 'sacrificing its Marxism' and providing 'intellectual cover' to those elements of the left overwhelmed by pessimism and prepared to set abandon principle. Moreover, Marxism Today's public profile was increasingly separate from that of the CPGB, and the rise in the reputation of the magazine was not accompanied by a parallel rehabilitation of the CPGB. Importantly, Marxism Today's project was the province of academics, journalists, policy advisors and political and economic pundits. If leaving aside the question of the CPGB's continuing financial subsidy Marxism Today seemed less and less something that the party was collectively engaged with, then the reverse was also true.
The reaction of CPGB members to the development of the party's crisis is scrutinised in a chapter focusing on the North West District of the party. Using Hirschman's 'exit, voice and loyalty' model, the chapter explores the decisions of party activists and officials confronted by the experience of sclerosis, division and conflict within the party district.[1] Hirschman argues that as members of an organisation (be they customers or supporters) become aware of the onset of decline within 'their' organisation they can choose to respond in one of two ways either by severing their connection with it (that is, by opting to exit), or by remaining a member but articulating their dissatisfaction with the decline (that is, by making use of voice). For Hirschman, the key factor conditioning the response of members is the influence of loyalty the strength of the sense of connection, affiliation or attachment that an individual feels to the organisation now experiencing difficulties. The focus on the phenomenon of loyalty, and its constraining influence on the deliberations of party members, is particularly apposite in the case of the CPGB. The chapter assesses the value of Hirschman's model in explaining the deliberations of CPGB members in the district, and concludes that it affords a useful explanatory framework. Gaps and imbalances in Hirschman's model are also confirmed demonstrating shortcomings in the paradigm, and also indicating some of the ways in which the identity of British communist party members might be distinguished from that of other party political actors responding to the onset of decline. This distinctiveness can be seen as a consequence of the nature of communist party organisation and culture and of the impact that organisational decline had on the coherence and integrity of the CPGB both as an institution and as an enabler of its members' political activity. Although Hirschman cannot account for the peculiarities of Communist Party membership, the gaps in his model allow some important aspects of those peculiarities to be revealed.
From the late 1970s onwards, the number of dissident internal currents (clandestine and open) and 'breakaway' organisations to emerge from within the CPGB's ranks, grew sharply. As the decline accelerated, and growing internal division and conflict rose to threaten the organisation, party leaders who themselves were far from a united force instituted a far-reaching review of party politics, strategy (and, later of party organisation) that they hoped might reconfigure the CPGB to better engage with the shifting political, economic and social contexts of the 1980s. The CPGB's own 'policy review' process both reflected and fed into the wider strategic debates increasingly pre-occupying the British left and labour movements, struggling in the hostile environment of mature Thatcherism. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and then, in quick succession, of the states of the Eastern Bloc played a critical role in convincing the party leadership majority that the CPGB (whose future was already in question because of pressing domestic considerations) had to be transformed into a post-communist organisation, which would attempt to take forward the 'most positive elements' of the British communist tradition but set aside the defining principles of democratic-centralism, traditional marxism and the vanguard party form. Those convinced of the efficacy of traditional communist prescriptions saw, in the leadership's support for the CPGB's 'self-liquidation', validation of their insistence that the 'revisionist' perspectives they had opposed since the 1970s would put the party in mortal threat.
In the context of relentless party decline, members of the CPGB proved no longer capable of acting in concert behind shared perspectives. The inability of any of the currents within the party to discover, through their own efforts, sufficient political purchase to provide an convincing domestic role for a British communist party became a decisive factor in the CPGB's dissolution.
