WHEN THE CP SUPPORTED THE TORIES

The Labour peer Lord Brockway — former MP Fenner Brockway, member for Eton and Slough, and chairman of the Movement for Colonial Freedom - was the guest of honour at a reception held in Lancaster recently by the local Constituency Labour Party.

The occasion was the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1922 General Election, when Brockway stood as the first Labour candidate ever to contest Lancaster.

Among the old Labour Party members who gathered to swap reminiscences, some recalled the second occasion on which Brockway stood for election in Lancaster.

This was in the wartime by-election of October 1941. The Labour Party at this time had entered a political 'truce' with the Tories and did not contest the Lancaster election. But Brockway was at this period in his career a member of the Independent Labour Party, and stood as an ILP candidate.

The Tory candidate in the y-election was Brig-Gen Fitzroy Maclean. He was supPorted messages from churchil call. lcosakeo trom ing on the electors to vote for him to show their support for the government.

An Independent also stood in the election, a naval Lieutenant Ross, who had Liberal support. He said he was standing to oppose the stifling of political discussion during the war and also to demand more aid for the Soviet Union.

20 per cent The result of the Lancaster election was that the Tories held the seat, while the Independent candidate came second. Brockway came bottom of the poll, but he did succeed in obtaining more than 5,000 votes, almost 20 per cent.

1 his is more amazing when we consider that Lancaster was not traditionally "left-wing' constituency and the war was on, but that the ILP candidature ran into particular opposition and obstacles. The local Trades Hall management committee, for instance, refused to allow the ILP to use its premises for a committee room. There was also an attempted smear campaign to suggest that Brockway wanted "Peace with Hitler' at any price.

The Brockway campaign letter sent to him from east London ARP workers, thanking him for his help in getting them 72-hour maximum week and wishing him success. He also produced a letter from Soviet Ambassador Maisky, ( thanking him for donating the royalties from bonat of his to the Soviet Red Cross.

Nevertheless, the *proHitler' smear continued to be used. And those who were most assiduous in spreading it, not only at Lancaster but nationally, were were the Stalinists of the British Communist Party. Having fully supported Stalin's GPU in its colossal former leaders inst smear campaigns the shevik Party at the time of the Moscow Trials, the British Stalinists showed that they could fully emulate their master when it came to vilification and unscrupulous attacks on their opponents on the left in this country.

Having previously correctly characterized the war as imperialist-and used this to defend the Soviet-Nazi pact— the Stalinists turned, once the Soviet Union had been invaded, into the most fervent supporters both of the war and of Churchill.

Outraged by the fact that the ILP was daring to oppose the Tories, in however limited a way, they denounced both Brockway and Maxton as "Trotskyists and (Bearing in mind the previous record of these centrists, their opposition to the Fourth International and their inclination to compromise with Stalinism, the description was ludicrous; but perhaps some of those centrists who are flirting with the CP today might care to reflect on Stalinist 'gratitude!) Then they went a little further, and coined the slogan 'A vote for Brockway is a vote for Hitler'.

Only matter of months after their policy Daily Worker was while the still banned by the Tory government, the Communist Party members turned up to smash an ILP election meeting in Lancaster, and then went along to offer their help to the Tory, Brig-Gen Maclean.

Lancaster in 1941 was not an isolated incident. It was the first of a number of wartime by-elections in which the Communist Party gave full support to the Tories.

Again, in Cardiff, the following year, when Brockway Pous called the vor, the Staine out up for the ILP. the Stalir Tory, and used the 'proHitler' slander against Brockway.

Around the time of the Lord Brestry, who In 1941 alood an en Indapardant Labour Party candidale in the Lancaster byelectlan. He was faced with a combined opposition of Stalinists and Tories. Union and of communism. Yet the following year, in 1942, when there was a by-election in Wallasey, and Moore-Brabazon was the Тогу, the Communist Party in that part of Merseyside publicly declared that they would campaign on behalf of Moore-Brabazon!

The Tories were defeated in that election by an Independent. In fact, it became evident - in the by-elections in 1942 that a wide section of the electorate welcomed any opportunity to express discontent with the government.

In 1944 the Trotskyist Re. volutionary Communist Party fought a by-election at Neath, South Wales, and polled some 1,700 votes on a straight anti-imperialist policy.

So clearly the Stalinists were not only drifting along as opportunists with a mood of patriotism and 'national unity'; they were using their influence wherever they could to, drum up support for the Tories.

This was, of course, particularly reflected in industry. The employers were still exercising their right to make profits during the war, and, as in every war, many of them did particularly well, as did the black marketeers.

(In fact, up to the outbreak of hostilities, a number of British firms were quite cheerthe height of class-consciousness! They went st 1942, wil course. In August 1942, William Wainright—now deputy editor of the 'Morning Star'produced his infamous pamphlet 'Clear Out Hitler's Agents' in which he alleged that Trotskyists in the factories were a 'fascist fifth column', out to sabotage industry on behalf of Hitler. Wainwright urged his readers to 'expose' every Trotskyist they came across and to 'treat him as you would an open Nazi'.

In one north London engineering factory engaged on munitions, worker who opposed the Stalinists actually caught them trying to plant blueprints in his overcoat.

Needless to say, Wainright was never able to offer a shred vide For is cos witch-hunt, wa though as the case above indicates, some CP members were willing to manufacture some if they could.

But there was plenty of evidence that the Stalinists had become Churchill's agents!

In Palme Dutt's publication 'Labour Monthly', articles appeared calling on the government to take more vigorous action against strikers and offering detailed advice on legal means to be used. The same journal carried articles by such 'progressives' as the Tory MP Sir Thomas Moore -who had been notorious before the war as an outspoken supporter of Franco, the Anglo-German Fellowship, and Mosley's Blackshirts.

The Stalinists joined enthusiastically in attempts to whip up patriotic reaction against strikes, to help 'our boys' at the front, even though it turned out that the "boys' were by no means convinced that the right to strike should be surrendered.

'Socialist Appeal', the Trotskyist paper was able to reproduce the front page of an issue of Eighth Army News' with the headline, reporting a debate among Royal Engineers, 'Right to strike is one of the rights we fight for' • and quoting the soldiers as coming out against any wartime ban on strikes.

In fact, the growing anti-Tory mood observed in. the 1942 by-elections was, if anything, a great deal stronger among the forces. There was the famous event of the 'Cairo Forces Parliament', which came out of discussion-groups run for political education in Loyalty mock 'Election' held among troops stationed in Egypt resulted in a sweeping victory for 'Labour', on a programme of nationalization of the basic industries! The War Office got a report, took fright and that was the end of the 'Cairo Forces Parliament'!

But if the Tories were losing their popularity among the troops, they could still rely on one dedicated band of supporters — the Communist Party. Right up to the end of the war, the Stalinists maintained their policy of loyal support to Churchill. CP general secretary Harry Pollitt called for a new 'National government' to be formed after the war, to include 'progressive Tories' like Churchill and Eden!

Those who, like the Trotskyists, called for 'Labour to Power' were, at the very least, denounced as "sectarian'.

In the event, of course, the British working class apparently became, to a man, 'sectarians' in 1945, and threw the Churchill government out on its ear!

In fact, after the war, at the 1946 Labour Party conference, Herbert Morrison was able to oppose the CP's request for affiliation, telling delegates that the CP pre-election policy had been 'full co-operation with capitalism and a complete desertion of socialist principles . . . They are not a Party of the Left as far as I can see' From supporters of Stalin and his lies and murders, the British Communist Party had become supporters of Winston Churchill and British imperialisr.