Communists and the British Labour Party

Part Two: Lenin Intervenes, 1921

In 1920, the Communist movement in Britain was sharply divided on the question of the Labour Party. The recently formed Communist Party of Great Britain, the largest group, had voted to apply for affiliation to the Labour Party—but a large minority of its members opposed this move. Sylvia Pankhurst’s Communist Party (British Section Third International) was opposed to having anything to do with the Labour Party, as was the Communist Labour Party, based in Scotland.

The Communists who opposed any support to the Labour Party were quite aware that Lenin disagreed with them. The Communist International, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, was profoundly different from what it became under Stalin’s control. Where Stalin insisted that the Communist Parties obey his instructions without question, Lenin and Trotsky wanted to build an international of intelligent, thinking revolutionary activists. These men and women would not to be dictated to—if they were wrong, they would have to be convinced.

As William Paul said at the founding convention of the CPGB:

"There is no one in this audience to whom I yield in admiration for Lenin but, as we said yesterday, Lenin is no pope or god. … on local circumstances, where we are on the spot, we are the people to decide" (quoted in Klugmann, History of the CPGB, Vol. 1, p. 46).

The local Communist leaders were the people on the spot—but that did not mean that their decisions would automatically be correct. Many of them were inexperienced; others had been miseducated by years of involvement in a variety of sectarian or opportunist parties. The Bolsheviks had gathered the most dedicated revolutionary militants into a new International. Now they faced the far more difficult task of educating these militants in the art of revolutionary politics.

What kind of party?

What was at stake was not just a difference over affiliation to the Labour Party, but a much more important question: What kind of party would the Communist Party be?

J.T. Murphy, a former leader of the Socialist Labour Party, expressed the essence of the question in his account of his experiences at the Second Congress of the International, held in Moscow from July 23 to August 7, 1920:

"My experience in Russia ... had shown me the real meaning of the struggle for political power. Instead of thinking that a Socialist Parry was merely a propaganda organization for the dissemination of Socialist views, I now saw that a real Socialist Party would consist of revolutionary Socialists who regarded the Party as a means whereby they would lead the working class in the fight for political power." (quoted in Woodhouse and Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, p. 52).

From that point of view, it could be seen that much of the discussion on the Labour Party had taken place in the wrong context entirely. The central question was not what opinion Communists held of the Labour Party, nor whether affiliation by itself was a good policy. The question was: How were communists going to win a hearing from the millions of workers who were loyal to the Labour Party despite its program and leadership?

A group which sought only to make propaganda for socialism could ignore that question, but a group which seriously sought to win mass support had to put it at the top of the agenda.

"Left-Wing" Communism

Lenin sought to win the British Communists (and the rest of the International) to this point of view in his pamphlet "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, first published in June 1920. In it he polemicized against the sectarian and ultraleft policies which were coming to the fore in many countries, most notably Germany and Britain. The section on Britain, focusing on the Labour Party, remains a basic text on the Marxist approach to parties of this type. The pamphlet as a whole is one of the most important essays on revolutionary tactics ever written.

The key point in the pamphlet—Lenin stated it over and over again—was later summed up in the slogan of the Third Congress of the International: "To the masses!"

"If you want to help the ‘masses’ and to win the sympathy and support of the ‘masses,’ you must not fear difficulties, you must not fear the pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution on the part of the ‘leaders’ but absolutely must work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of every sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the most ultra-reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found" (Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 403 [emphasis in all quotations is in the original]).

The parties of the International, Lenin wrote, should learn from the history of the Bolshevik party, which won the allegiance of the Russian working class precisely because it learned "how to work legally in the most reactionary parliaments, in the most reactionary trade unions, cooperative societies, insurance societies and similar organizations." (p. 381)

"For the whole task of the Communists is to be able to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them by artificial and childishly ‘Left’ slogans." (p. 404)

The Communists are convinced that Parliament and the Labour Party are institutions which only hinder the fight for socialism—but the vast majority of workers don’t agree, Lenin wrote. And the workers will not give up their faith in these institutions just because the Communists propagandize against them: "revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, and this change is brought about by the political experience of the masses, and never by propaganda alone." (p. 430)

The Communists know that the Labour Party, in power, will inevitably betray the faith that the workers have in it. The tasks of Communists, then, is to hasten the day when the workers of Britain learn this, through their own experiences:

"If we are the party of the revolutionary class, and not a revolutionary group, if we want the masses to follow us (and unless we do, we stand the risk of remaining mere windbags), we must, first, help [Labour leaders] Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill …; secondly we must help the majority of the working class to convince themselves by their own experiences that we are right, that is, that the Hendersons and Snowdens are absolutely unsuitable ...; thirdly, we must bring nearer the moment when, on the basis of the disappointment of the majority of the workers with the Hendersons, it will be possible with serious chances of success to overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once …." (p. 431)

Tactical proposals

In "Left-Wing" Communism Lenin made concrete proposals for British Communist tactics toward the Labour Party. The British Communists, he suggested, should propose an electoral alliance with the Labour Party—an agreement not to oppose each other’s candidates, with each party having full freedom to put forward its own program.

If the Labour Party agreed, then the Communists would gain a wider hearing among workers sympathetic to the Labour Party, and would be able to hasten the day when the Labour Party leaders demonstrated their political treachery in office.

If the Labour leaders rejected an alliance, then too the Communists would gain, by demonstrating to the masses in practice that the Labour leaders prefer their close relations with the capitalists to unity of all the workers.

If Labour refused an electoral alliance, Lenin suggested, the Communists should run candidates only in constituencies where their candidacy would not cause the defeat of a Labour candidate.

"We would take part in the election campaign, distribute leaflets in favour of communism, and in all constituencies where we have no candidates, we would urge the electors to vote for the Labour candidate against the bourgeois candidate." (p. 433)

By following this approach, Lenin argued, the Communists would be able to gain a hearing from workers who supported the Labour Party. They would gain the opportunity to explain to these workers what Communists think is wrong with the Labour Party and its program. The revolutionists would, in effect, be saying to the British working class: "You believe that the Labour Party can satisfy your needs—we disagree, and here’s why. Let’s work together to put Labour in power, and then we’ll see which of us is right."

The Communist Party ought, Lenin said in a conversation with CPGB leader William Paul, to issue:

"an official manifesto in every constituency … urging the workers to vote for the Labour Party in order to prove that the Hendersons, Thomases, MacDonalds and Snowdens, could not solve the manifold problems confronting society through the Parliamentary machine.

"In a word, the Communist Party in Britain ought to assist the Labour Party to demonstrate its own futility." (Lenin on Britain, p. 473).

Affiliation

In "Left-Wing" Communism Lenin took no position on the question of affiliation to the Labour Party on the grounds that he did not have enough information to decide the question. Conversations with British revolutionaries soon made up his mind; in a letter published in England less than two weeks before the founding convention of the Communist Party of Great Britain he declared: "Personally I am in favour of participation in Parliament and of affiliation to the Labour Party, given wholly free and independent communist activities." (Lenin On Britain, p. 428)

Lenin took this policy to the Second Congress of the Communist International, and debated them at length with the British delegates. After several weeks of intense discussion—the Labour Party question was one of the most contentious at the congress—the International adopted Lenin’s approach by a vote of fifty-eight to twenty-four. It called on the British Communists to unite on the basis of this policy. In January 1921 the major Communist forces united into a single party.

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