The touching devotion of the Communist Party to Parliament gets little reward. With monotonous regular. ity their votes drop from one election to the next.
With fatalistic despair they even decided this time to run 15 less candidates ates than in Februnry.
The CP election manifesto, Challenge to Big Burines- Build a New Brilain, showed the utter confusion of the party leadership and how its parliamentary road has led it to adead The manifesto was neither an action programme nor a programme for a CP government. Instead it was a series of demands-demands which it hopes will be taken up by a Left Lab our Goverment".
Most of the crucial issues were side-stepped. The social contract got one brief mention where the CP plaintively complained: "Expanding the econ omy means raising real wages and pensions, not holding them down...as envisaged in the "social contract"
Tus completely ignored the 'unTortunate fact that neither the cap italist class nor the Labour leaders are seeking friendly advice on how to build some mythical prosperous Britain, but are desperately secking a way to hold down living standards. Furthermore it did not make one single proposition on how the working class could fight the social contract.
The CP must assume therefore that a strong group of 'Left" Labour MPs supported by the odd CP member of partiament could force Wilson to change his mind about defending the interests of British capitalism.
On Ireland they call for: "No harassment of the people by the British troops, their withdrawal to barracks._ This statement assigns to British imperialism the role of peacemakers in Ireland, It is clearly based on the assumption that if there was a more "progressive government the troops would be nicer and all would eventually be well. ism- a road which depends on an ion to fight the crisis.
"left variant of social democracy, ineffectual one, East throws light on this.
votes.
ity of those people looking for an ly deserted the CP.
The reality is the reverse. The troops WHAT MARKED the election cam trops are preparing the conditions for civil war, not peace. But no independent campaign to force the withdrawal of the troops is put forwurd. to prevent this dangerous situation.
Because the CP is so committed to the parliamentary road to socialalliance with the left Labour MPsit is unable to present a programme for independent working class actIt therefore presents itself as a but this is seen by most people as a much smaller and far weaker one. People therefore prefer to vote for a big reformist party rather than an The result in Coventry North The CP candidate, John Hosey, polled 309 votes, In February he had got 838 This time the WRP stood a candidate and got 332 votes. The majoralternative to reformism had clearthe WRP helps to perpetuare divisions