From R. Sherwood

[p027] R. Sherwood First Bitter Fruit JOSEPH REDMAN’S excellent article ‘British Communist History’ [Labour Review, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 106-10, July-August 1957] is a detailed and factual analysis of ‘what went wrong’ and should help many seeking to avoid the errors of the past. Like Redman, I have certain doubts about the Communist Party History Commission and have been doing a little ‘dig- ging on my own’. I would like to record a few facts to supple- ment Redman’s account. The build-up given to the ‘pseudo-Lefts’ on the General Council of the Trades Union Congress by both the Com- munist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Great Britain went to even further extremes than Redman states. For instance, writing of A. B. Swales (a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union Executive and president of the TUC General Council) the Sunday Worker could say (May 24, 1925): ‘It will be seen that he has held every high office in the trade union movement. And yet—and this is his strongest point as a Labour leader—he is still an ardent rank and filer and views every big problem from the angle of the worker at the bench. ‘Many superficial people when they are dressed “in a little brief authority” become very “uppish” and begin to ape the mannerisms of “Society”. Not so our friend Swales. He is at one with the workers, body and soul, in their every- day struggle. And he has nothing but contempt for those leaders who, when they leave the workshop, forget the masses and their struggle.... ‘At the Trades Union Congress to be held in September at Scarborough he will deliver the chairman’s speech. ... It will be something stated in plain blunt language, and it will give the whole movement a bold and clever lead. It will per- sonify the simple and rugged strength of a far-seeing and courageous leader. ‘Swales is not one of your “standoffish” kind. At a social gathering he is the soul of merriment and can sing a good song, in a splendid resonant voice, with the best of them.’ All this under the heading ‘Leaders of the Left’! Similar uncritical descriptions of Purcell, Hicks, Tillett and Co. can be found in many CPGB and Comintern publications of that period. The real tragedy was that while the CPGB was building up these ‘pseudo-Lefts’ and lulling the workers into believing that Swales and Co. could ‘give a bold and clever iead’, the ruling class was taking advantage of the nine month respite afforded by Red Friday, 1925, and preparing for the coming showdown. The OMS (Organization for the Mainten- ance of Supplies) was created, the country divided into ten areas each under a Civil Commissioner, special constables en- rolled, mobile squads organized, blacklegs trained to drive locomotives in the railway sidings of large factories, potential scabs instructed in the operation of wireless and telephones, etc. Swales, Purcell and Co. meanwhile prepared .. . speeches! How did this situation arise? Why was the CPGB (and behind it the Stalin-Tomsky faction of the CPSU) ‘building up’ the ‘pseudo-Lefts’ in this critical period? And why were

[p028] the TUC leaders at this particular time benevolently disposed towards the Russian unions? The TUC leaders needed the association with the Russians as a shield from the attacks of the genuine militants and as a smoke-screen for their fundamentally reformist policies in in- dustrial matters. The criticism from the genuine Left had be- come pretty sharp after the collapse of the Triple Alliance (miners, railwaymen and transport workers) and the betrayal _of Black Friday, 1921. What easier than to assume a little of the reflected glory of the first Workers’ State by indulging in verbal ‘leftism’...confined of course to international affairs? This took on some curious aspects, not mentioned in Redman’s article. For instance the leaders of the TUC saw it to their advantage to favour a ‘reconciliation’ with the Soviet trade unions. They began to advocate the admission of the Russians to the Amsterdam Trade Union International. When this policy was rejected at the Vienna congress of the International (in May 1924)—largely as a result of objections from the Right- wing German social-democrats—the leaders of the TUC ap- proached the Russians directly and later sent a delegation to Moscow. The Labour bureaucrats must have seen eye to eye with the budding Soviet bureaucracy. The delegation came back with a favourable report—and probably with the (correct) notion that the Russian leaders were not the great threat to the Labour hierarchy they were made out to be. The net result was the creation of the Anglo-Russian Committee for Trade Union Unity, whose subsequent role Redman has so well illustrated. The Stalinist faction in the USSR, on the other hand, were beginning to discover the advantage (to themselves) of the theory of Socialism in One Country. They used their consider- able influence in the Comintern to convert the Communist Parties in the West from revolutionary organizations to border patrols destined to ‘neutralize’ (not to overthrow) their respec- tive ruling classes, and to ‘protect’ the Workers’ State (and of course the privileges which the bureaucracy was beginning to extract from it!). They saw the reformist Labour bureaucrats in the West as useful allies in this task and proceeded to dauo them with ‘revolutionary’ red paint, assigning to them objec- tives which by their very nature they obviously could never British Labour History British Labour and the Russian Revolution, 1917-24, by S. R. Graubard (Oxford University Press, 30s.) The First Labour Government 1924, by Richard W. Lyman (Chapman and Hall, 25s.) ‘FOR the Communist Party,’ writes Dr Graubard in his bibliographical note, ‘there is no history in any way com- parable to Cole’s “History of the Labour Party Since 1914”. This is a serious lack.’ The author has combed, in an en- deavour to do-it-himself, The Call, The Communist, Workers’ Weekly and Workers’ Dreadnought and supplemented with some interesting details the account of Labour-communist relations in this period already available in Carl Brand’s book, ‘British Labour’s Rise to Power’ (1941). It is good io have recalled the lively articles which Francis (now Sir Francis) Meynell contributed to The Communist under the pseudonym of ‘John Ball’, exposing the role played by Ernest Bevin in the ‘Black Friday’ period. (Bevin must have regret- ted his triumphant revelation of ‘John Ball’s’ identity—yes, his adversary replied, he was indeed Meynell, whom Bevin had had dismissed from the Herald: ‘Did I not sub-edit in the Daily Herald the long reports of [Bevin’s] speeches for which he paid at advertisement rates?’) Nevertheless, in spite of many informative paragraphs, Dr Graubard has not written a very satisfactory book. In des- cribing the attitude of the British Labour movement towards Book Reviews 184 have fulfilled. Confusion and demoralization were sown in the minds of many genuine communist militants. The ‘red’ paint was scarcely dry before the Labour leaders revealed their true colours during the General Strike. Redman does not mention that the CPGB had for weeks been advocat- ing ‘All power to the General Council!’ Yet on the ninth day of the strike this very Council was to rush to Whitehall to discuss with the Baldwin Government how best to call a halt to the struggle. Redman records how the Stalin faction per- petuated the myth of the Anglo-Russian Committee, even after this betrayal, but he does not, perhaps, depict the full depths to which they sank in the process. For the Stalin faction to break with the Committee wouid have been tantamount to admitting that the criticism of the _ Left Opposition, that they had consorted with the worst kind of opportunists, was valid. The defeat of the General Strike was consistently ‘played down’ in the communist Press. No serious attempts were made to analyze its causes. This refusal to examine the reasons for the defeat eventually drove many militants out of the party. As Redman shows, the Soviet lead- ers refused to bury the corpse of the Anglo-Russian Committee, despite the fact that this body was now emitting some pretty foul smells. Not only did the British members of the Commit- tee, as the true social-patriots they always had been, refuse to denounce the bombing of Nanking by ‘their own’ government, but they showed their open contempt for the Russians by re- fusing even to protest at the Arcos raid. They moreover dropped the struggle for the admission of the Russians to the Amsterdam International. ; The whole sorry affair did not help either the Russian or the British workers. Nor, ironically enough, did it really be- nefit the Stalinist bureaucracy. The only winners in the business were the British trade union bureaucrats and the British ruling class. Both were helped through a particularly stormy period. This was the first bitter fruit to grow on the tree of ‘Socialism in One Country’. Swansea