Karl Marx often commented that the weight of dead generations weighs on the minds of the living like a nightmare. The Communist Party of Great Britain has its own bad dreams: attempting to explain the betrayal of the General Strike fifty years on, when the very left' leaders they tailend today were those responsible for the 1926 defeat.
All this became readily apparent earlier this month in the pages of the Morning Star and the Communist Partv's theoretica lournal. Marxism Today. Not once was the Communist Party's major slogan in the nine months after Red Friday (July 1925) -was there criticism of the role of the left trade union bureaucrats, hot on words but going along with the rightwing Thomases and Citrines in pracInstead we had a series of articles whose main political conclusion was to build left unity, build the Communist Party, and increase the circulation of the Morning Star.
Vital Yet the lessons of the General Strike are of vital concern to every serious militant. The history of our struggles must be learnt if past mistakes are to be overcome and future errors avoided. History is not dead. The way it is written and interpreted is permeated by the political understanding of the living.
Miners protest against wartime profits of the coalowners in 1917 The Communist Party's contributions on the General Strike are in reality the 'historical' rewriting of its present political line. In the rest of this article we will look at this strategy, what it means read back into 1926, and what the real lessons of the General Strike are for today.
The underlying theme of the Communist Party's strategy for socialism is the anti-monopoly alliance. It is argued that as capitalism has developed, the ruling class has in fact become smaller and smaller - essentially restnctea to tne neads or me grea! multinational firms and the top echelons of the state bureaucracy. of the CP is to work for the political isolation of this tiny fraction of the all power to the TUC General Council population by grouping together all - mentioned and discussed. Not once other sections of society against it.
The problem of the capitalist state and the necessity to overthrow it by revolution is neatly side-stepped by reducing the state apparatus to the reactionaries that run it. Remove the reactionaries - "democratise the civil service, police and army magically the capitalist state is removed.
Within this perspective the major political problem for the CP is 'unity ing a majority of LabourJett and Communist Party MPs in the House of Commons that the necessary legislation to bring about these changes will be made possible. in itself becomes of over-riding importance and the mass movement is reduced to a tap to be turned on and off according to the ebb and flow of events in Parliament.
In the unions, this means resolution-mongering, taking action only when the left bureaucracy at least supports it, and a refusal to do more than mildly lecture these lefts when they capitulate to the Labour Government's wage cuts and mass unemployment policies.
It is this last aspect of the Communist Party's strategy that militants will be most aware of, simply because the CP's strength lies in the industrial field. The spectacle of having Jack Jones write in the Morning Star on the 35-hour week just after he had denounced a resolution at the Scottish TUC which proposed a fight for this new Rule 14 in trades councils, riding roughshod in the name of 'unity over ment to decide their own policies.
concern for 'unity' that the party is incapable of printing one line of criticism of the lefts' role in 1926. Bill Wainwright wrote of the greatest crime ever' (Morning Star, 3 May) that 'it was a classic case of the right wing in the TUC and Labour Party leadership demonstrating their role, outlook and basic policy as servitors of capitalism' (our emphasis).
Leaving aside the fact that the The aim "lefts' to a person supported the sellout, this article quietly refrains from mentioning that the CP's major slogan in the nine months between Red Friday and the General Strike was 'All Power to the General Council'. Militant resolutions galore were passed at the 1925 Scarborough Conference of the TUC, but the General any action - and unfortunately the young Communist Party fed the illusion that left rhetoric was practical reality and Pollitt In the wake of the Scarborough conference, CP leader Harry Pollitt of the left', because it is only by achiev- declared: "In view of the overwhelming decision for complete solidarity registered at Scarborough, the new General Council will simply have to prosecute more vigorously the fight 'Unity' as an end on behalf of the workers.
right wing of the Council is strengthened by the return of one or two people who do not give support to the idea that we are engaged in a class struggle, but I think that mass pressure from behind will force even them to toe the line.
ist Party today is telling the working the rights of bodies of the labour move- slogan "All Power to the General Coun It follows from the CP's dominant tion.
Calls only on 3 May.
sold out?
Council singularly refused to prepare after Red Friday True, the take' (our emphasis).
For different reasons the CommunIndeed James Klugmann, who in his history of the CPB wrote of the cil' that it "was certainly incorrect, did not mention this in his Morning Star article on 1 May. But Klugmann does claim that the CP and the Minority Movement called for preparation, indicated lines of action, emphasising the role of factory committees, trades councils, and above all councils of acThe problem is what the CP actually did. Klugmann is correct to say that mass pressure forced the strike - indeed, the TUC voted 3,653,527 to 49,911 for the strike But why in that case was it so easily The answer lies in the fact that the CP - which was small, but gaining a massive audience in the period - only called on other people, the General Council, to prepare. Indeed, while the March conference of the Minority Movement on "preparedness' called for Councils - and a tew were already in existence - the whole direction of the CP's policies was towards reliance on the existing leadership.
This was spelt out by the acting general secretary of the Minority Movement, George Hardy, in a report to a special session of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in March 1926: We are not afraid of this giving all power to the General Council should they use that powef wrongly, it only means that we have got another additional task before us of forcing them in the right direction, which direction they will ultimately have to Glynneath Soviet Level supplied strikers with next few days with any wider hot izons; concerned only on concen trating on our limited objective, defeat the civil commissioner app ointed for the region and all his strike-breaking apparatus."
It is true that in the North-Eas and particularly Newcastle the se organisation of the working class