Firstly, executive, the congress to 137 to committee to callic fortunes of the Morning Star. Secondly, it decided to establish a commission on inner party democracy to report to its congress in 1979.
The confident conclusion editorial in the January 1978 Marxism Today, now under the editorship of the Euro-communist Martin Jacques was:
*...the overwhelming defeat of the sectarian challenge (to the new version of the British Road to Socialism decisive marked position in the party's evolution.' This was to prove somewhat premature.
The decisions of the settled nothing.
which was division and the party's decline, merely obscured the different positions. What were une acnieve. Events were soon to show Central to the debate leading up to the thirty-fifth congress and after was an attempt to get the party to broaden its definition of the working class and to commit far greater resources to building alliances with the political movements than earlier. involved the arguing that whilst: participating in these movements be drawn from a number classes. because OT preponderance of the working class it is from this class that the participants are drawn.
Hence the democratic alliance was a '...fuller and deeper... one than that of the monopoly alliance' since'..it avoids the danger of pretation...namely of an alliance at the economic level in which the context of the alliance is provided by a common economic antagonism capitalism.' Strategy Marxism Today, July 1977).
The perceived danger by opponents of this course was that it would lead to the party concentrating its efforts on recruiting and building amongst layers other than the industrial and commercial proletariat.
These debates had obvious repercussions for the CPGB's publications. It was under the editorship Jacques that Marxism Today moved to a bold orescuilallon communist mierpretation of the briusn Road DOCTORAYM committee on the reported in April 1978 it too called for a change coverage reflect the new version of the party programme. What next, the 'fundamentalists' asked themselves?
Cent pay Pulls identified with the mere votes against the advice of the voted by establish subthe ailing of the Led) defeat for this thirty-fifth Indeed the of a section of the executive, the Euro-communists trying to social really Euro-communists *The individuals of different Dally the numerical majority of tained concept of a broad aNU- have economistic interstriking monopol Structure Alan Hunt, Today. that aeep and Not Martin Sw nen the subMorning Star to more clearly What introduced by Une after the general election of 1979, he argued '...the present phase of militancy is overwhelmingly trade unionist and economistic, mainly on the issue of relation which exists between wages and the political struggle and how the wages struggle is to be integrated into the wider struggle of which it is only one part. I believe, that this is the crucial problem which faces the labour movement today."
Further comments on the divisive character of "sectionalism', tendency of "straight" trade unionism to take the capitalist system as given... and the importance of recognising that even militant trade union action could *..be quite divorced from political consciousness...' captured the tone of many of the contributions to the debate.
Mike le Cornu, a shop steward at Heathrow airport, drew conclusions the party's intellectuals seemed unprepared to state. In April 1979 he wrote: *Perhapsat this late stage we can adopt a self-critical posture and examine whether there was a failure on our part to apply a creative Marxist analysis to the new situation.
•We well conclude that our the movement should have been united in mobilising the rank and file to mount the greatest pressure to ensure that the politically progressive demands conthe Social Contract were carried out by the Labour government.
In other words communists should campaigned for measures Labour promised, and accepted wage restraint in return!
At the same time as Hobsbawm was out against another theoretician was engaging in a new analysis of "Thatcherism' was to dominate the pages of Marxism Stuart Hall's conclusion was Thatcherism was. qualitatively new in British politics which had '...succeeded on the back of a profound among ordinary people with the very form of social democratic "statism" to which previous governments, in their different ways, have been committed.' The left's response necessitated: *The formulation of a new conception of socialism... unification of the working class... and Consuicion which alone is capable constituting the "social force" which could turn the tide of Thatcherism (Thatcherism — A new stage, Stuart Hall, Marxism Today, February 1980).
content the euro-communists would fill Hall's formulas with was soon to become clear Developing this notion of an historical alliance against Thatcherism has occupied centre stage in the debates of this historical Socialism.
..the phenomenon aressed as La series or long involving OuT the lundamental left in the labour the 'economism', ..something disillusionment therefore ...the a historical is a ruling passion. Their politics have the same social roots as Trotskyism and respect produce poisonous fruit with perhaps fewer red berries.' (The Crisis in Our Communist But the debate over the necessary encapsulated political divisions that emerged in the debate around the British Once again the communists made the running in the pages of Marxism Today.
Their starting point was Thatcher's victory in 1979 and the steady decline in share of the vote now ad.
Hobsbawm
'Labour's Lost Millions'.
Their conclusion was that this was no mere electoral swing but the product of term developments fundamental, structural, historical and ecologist factors recomposition of working class was underway fracturing the old relations of representation.
Many of the practices of traditional sections of the working class had in fact exacerbated this problem. The Labour Party could not defeat Thatcherism on its own. It had to '...construct a historic bloc of forces for progressive change clearly equally emergent carl 1920s organisation, Churchill in 1941 to 1945 cratic, "patriotic, the Road to Euroin that line avidly by Moscow. It is delightfully ironic all WILd the first place.
politics that led to it. and for a better society'. Such a formula extend to antiThatcherite forces including the newly Social Democratic Liberal Alliance. This was the formula which Hobsbawm made his own.
In a sense the Communist Party has come back to its home. It started in the La revolutionary But it rapidly became house-trained by Stalin. The party then followed faithfully for 40 years every twist and turn dictated by the Kremlin whether that policy was the ultra-lef lunacy of the third period of 1929 tc 1933 or the extreme rightism behind But one policy above all dominated the politics of the party that of the popular front. To seek out the demo'anti-American' any other 'progressive' section of the bourgeoisie was the almost continuous hine ot party for most of the 60 years since the mid-1920s. It was encouraged that the CB today should have found that force in the SDP of David Owen and the Liberals of David Steel. Even more ironic and logical, that those advocating these forces now demand a complete break with Moscow to achieve it. The party has now turned round to bite the hand which has been feeding it for 40 years and the force which pushed it in this direction in the Marxism Today is no bolt from the blue. It can legitimately claim to be the direct descendant of the popular front the almost 60 years. The rottenness of the oftspring should lead those who want to think to go back and reject the long road
; Socialist Action 1 March 1985
----- pull-quotes -----
Then theoname or an autume of industrial militancy against the five per-
But one policy above all dominated the politics of the party - that of the popular front. To seek out the 'progressive' section of the bourgeoisie was the almost continuous line of the party for most of the 60 years since the mid-1920s.