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Communist Party of Great Britain | |
|---|---|
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| Leader | Collective leadership (Central Committee) Mark Fischer (National Organiser) Jack Conrad (Chairman) |
| Split from | New Communist Party of Britain |
| Headquarters | London,United Kingdom[1] |
| Newspaper | Weekly Worker |
| Ideology | Communism Leninism Anti-Stalinism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| Colours | Red |
| Website | |
| www | |
| Part ofa series on |
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TheCommunist Party of Great Britain is apolitical group which publishes theWeekly Worker newspaper. The CPGB (PCC) claims to have "an internationalist duty to uphold the principle, 'One state, one party'. To the extent that theEuropean Union becomes a state then that necessitates EU-wide trade unions and a Communist Party of the EU".[2] In addition, it is in favour of the unification of the entireworking class under a newCommunist International.[2] It is not to be confused with the formerCommunist Party of Great Britain, theCommunist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist), or the currentCommunist Party of Britain.
The origins of the CPGB (PCC) lie in theNew Communist Party of Britain (NCP) which split from theCommunist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1977. Under the influence of a faction of theCommunist Party of Turkey, a handful led by NCP youth section leader John Chamberlain (who uses the pseudonym Jack Conrad) attempted to rejoin the then CPGB.[3]
Few actually regained party cards but the grouping began to publishThe Leninist, first as a journal, then as a more or less monthly paper. InitiallyThe Leninist appeared to some to be a Stalinist publication in its politics, but over time it mutated into something very different. This may be due to their interaction with variousTrotskyist groups including a series of exchanges with theSpartacist League. The faction developed a critique of the Stalinist states as well as the bureaucratism and political liquidationism of the old CPGB.[4]
After the dissolution of the official CPGB in 1991 and its relaunch as theDemocratic Left, the group declared their intention to reforge the party on what they declared to be "firm Leninist principles".[5] They organised an "emergency conference", at which they claimed the CPGB name, but not its assets. They also changed the name of their paper, increasing its regularity to weekly.
By the early 1990s the group was working closely with the tiny TrotskyistRevolutionary Democratic Group and the discussion magazineOpen Polemic. It also sought to deepen its links with a group of recent ex-members of other Trotskyist groups such as theSocialist Workers Party who called themselves the International Socialist Group. The CPGB (PCC) described this process as "Communist rapprochement". The attempt failed as the ISG collapsed andOpen Polemic briefly enrolled a few of its supporters in the CPGB (PCC), only for them to quit in a row over money.[citation needed]
During the1992 general election campaign,Ken Livingstone claimed that the members of the CPGB (PCC) were "MI5 agents".[6]
In 1999, the group stood candidates for two UK constituencies in theEuropean elections. Prevented from using the CPGB name it stood as 'Weekly Worker'.[7]
The group was for a short while embedded in theSocialist Labour Party, but left to join the Socialist Alliance in which they came to work closely with theAlliance for Workers' Liberty and proposed a merger of their papers, rejected by the AWL. The two have since politically drifted apart.
In 2004, the group affiliated to theRespect Coalition. A minority disagreed with the tactic of working within Respect and formed a faction called the Red Platform. The new faction called instead for the CPGB (PCC) to rejoin a Socialist Alliance reform current called theSocialist Alliance Democracy Platform. The Red Platform won their aim but the CPGB (PCC) majority continued to work within Respect. Members of the Red Platform subsequently left to create theRed Party in August 2004 over a disagreement about their views being published in the paper.
The group was active in theCampaign for a Marxist Party (2006–2008) and is critical of theCampaign for a New Workers' Party and theConvention of the Left.[8] The CPGB (PCC) was heavily involved in founding theHands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) campaign. Mark Fischer, formerly National Organiser of the CPGB (PCC), is HOPI secretary.[9] The CPGB (PCC) also enjoys close links with Communist Students.
The CPGB (PCC) endorsed theLabour Party in theJune 2009 European Parliament elections and criticised theNo to EU – Yes to Democracy coalition as "left-wing nationalist".
Non-members such as former Soviet dissidentBoris Kagarlitsky,Matzpen founderMoshé Machover and ProfessorHillel Ticktin, editor ofCritique and chairman of theCentre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements,University of Glasgow, have spoken at CPGB (PCC) events.[10]
The Campaign for a Marxist Party was a campaign (founded 4 November 2006) run by the CPGB-PCC and other organisations on theBritish left for a political party with explicitly Marxist goals as part of a rebuilt workers' international.[11] Its members wereCritique (who proposed the campaign initially), CPGB (PCC) and theDemocratic Socialist Alliance. The IrishSocialist Democracy group welcomed the CPGB (PCC).[12] Similar socialist campaign groups includeCampaign for a New Workers' Party andConvention of the Left.
The campaign agreed three founding political principles at the founding conference:
Its seven-member executive mainly consisted of members of the CPGB (PCC) and theDemocratic Socialist Alliance criticised the party for its "hijacking" of the campaign.[13] A group of members became known as the Trotskyist Tendency. The campaign publishedMarxist Voice.[14]
In November 2008, it was announced that the CPGB (PCC) would move to wind up the campaign at its December AGM.[15] Having done so, it claimed it will establish a new committee to promote "unity of Marxists as Marxists".[16] A minority of members objected to the dissolution of the campaign including in published articles by Dave Spencer,[17] Phil Sharpe[18] and Steve Freeman.[18]
In 2013, the CPGB (PCC) intervened in the campaign for a new left party initiated by film directorKen Loach. They accused the campaign's initial appeal of making "Keynesian platitudes"[19] and called for a new formation on the left to have an explicitly Marxist programme.[20] The CPGB (PCC) described the "politically decrepit"Socialist Resistance as "the one 'insider' group" in the campaign[21] and accused the group of attempting "to relive old Labour-style Keynesian welfarism".[22]
In the run up to theLeft Unity (LU) founding conference in November 2013, the CPGB (PCC) launched the Communist Platform in response to the Socialist Platform "[obscuring] the differences between Marxism and a left reading ofclause four-type politics".[23] They launched the Communist Platform as a permanent tendency in Left Unity on 8 February 2014.[24] On 29 March 2014, CPGB memberYassamine Mather was elected to Left Unity's National Council at the party's first policy conference.[25]
In February 2016, the CPGB (PCC) dissolved their Platform and left LU.[26]
In 2015, the CPGB (PCC) supportedJeremy Corbyn in his successful campaign to be elected leader of the Labour Party.[27][28] The CPGB (PCC) has been a supporter of Labour Party Marxists (LPM), which promotes many of the ideas of theWeekly Worker to a Labour Party audience through its website and occasional print bulletins. Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Party Marxists, was expelled from the Labour Party in June 2017 for his association with LPM.[29] The CPGB (PCC) has also promoted the work of another Labour Party organisation, Labour against the witch-hunt, in theWeekly Worker.[30] In 2020, the CPGB (PCC) suffered the resignation of a number of members around its work in the Labour Left Alliance. The leadership of the CPGB (PCC) have argued that this was due to a departure from communist principle on the part of those members; this has been strongly rejected by the leadership's internal critics.[31]
Every year the CPGB (PCC) organises a weeklong summer school called Communist University. They invite speakers from in- and outside the CPGB (PCC) to discuss a range of topics. Amongst the regular speakers are Scottish computer scientistPaul Cockshott, Iranian scholar and activistYassamine Mather and a founder of the Israeli socialist organisationMatzpen,Moshé Machover. Recurring themes, amongst others, are international politics, theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict and the Labour Party.[32]
The party has been involved in a rethinking of the class nature of the formerSoviet Union. Despite its origins in theNew Communist Party of Britain,The Leninist advanced sharp criticisms of the Soviet Union and theEastern Bloc countries while strongly opposing movements it considered to be in support ofcapitalism.[33] Today, leading member Jack Conrad calls these societies forms of "bureaucratic socialism"[34] in a view strongly influenced byHillel Ticktin and theCritique journal[35] while Mike Macnair argues that the Soviet Union was a peasant based society frozen in transition fromfeudalism to capitalism.[36] However, the CPGB (PCC) does not formally endorse any particular theoretical analysis of the Soviet Union.
During theKosovo War of the late 1990s, the party supported the ethnic-AlbanianKosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and supports the complete secession ofKosovo fromSerbia. The party refers to Kosovo as Kosova, the Albanian andOttoman Turkish name for Kosovo.[37]
The party formerly listed the abolition of the age of consent among its immediate demands, with alternative legislation to protect children from sexual abuse.[38] In 2021 it amended this demand: "Young people are entitled to develop their sexual lives free from parental, police or religious control. We favour legislation which protects children and young people from sexual exploitation by those who are substantially older than them, especially by those in authority over them."[39]
The CPGB (PCC) has informal ties with the DutchCommunist Platform, which shares a similar political point of view. Members of the Communist Platform have visited the CPGB's Communist University in the past.[40][41]
The Marxist Unity Group, an internal caucus within theDemocratic Socialists of America, draws significant ideological inspiration from the CPGB (PCC).[42] Other international organisations with similar ideology and ties to the CPGB (PCC) and Weekly Worker include the Revolutionary Communist Organisation inAustralia and Akcja Socjalistyczna (Socialist Action) inPoland.[43][44][45]
{{cite web}}:|archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)The 2008 annual general meeting, held in London on December 6, agreed a motion proposed by the national committee to dissolve the campaign. As the motion explains, some members of the CMP intend to establish a committee in the new year with the aim of promoting the study of Marxism and the unity of Marxists as Marxists. Not the unity of Marxists in yet another crazy halfway house project.
When that strategy was abandoned, so was the 'socialism' of social democracy. Its material support had disappeared. Thus the Keynesian platitudes offered up by Hudson, Loachet al arefantasy politics. No objective basis exists for them.
Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin (important driving forces) would have liked the proceedings to have gone differently. After all, the Stop the War Coalition and Respect – organisations both comrades were prominent in – were far more choreographed. But, ironically, bureaucratic coherence in fronts like these was provided by the likes of the Socialist Workers Party, part of the organised left to which LU is to a great extent a reaction. The politically decrepit Socialist Resistance – the one 'insider' group – is no substitute.
Comrade Thornett is effusive in his praise for Ken Loach's filmThe spirit of '45, which is "a big defence of socialist and collectivist ideas, and in particular public ownership and public services". That just about sums up SR's attitude and what kind of party it hopes will emerge – one that forlornly attempts to relive old Labour-style Keynesian welfarism.
Logically therefore, the original drafting committee does not believe in these politics and have presumably framed the original text in a way that would obscure the differences between Marxism and a left reading of clause four-type politics.
Socialism and communism do not raise the workers to the position where they own the planet and stand over it like a conqueror. Mimicking the delusions associated with capitalism - as witnessed under bureaucratic socialism in the Soviet Union - brings constant disappointment, ecological degradation and the certain revenge of nature. Humanity can only be the custodian.