From Noel Anderson

[p030] Noel Anderson Persuasion, not Lecturing THE section on the continued existence of the Communist Party in the editorial of the January-February issue of LABOUR REVIEW raises certain issues of tactics that in my view should not be left in the form proposed in the editorial. It is correct that the continued existence of the Communist

[p031] DOCUMENTS Party prevents its members from joining the Labour Party and fighting with the Left wing for the ending of the present Right-wing domination of that party. It is also true that the King Street ‘leaders’ can never provide Marxist leadership be- cause this would necessitate repudiating their own past. All the editorial’s analysis of the present role of the Communist Party is a scientific and carefully considered statement of fact. I also feel that it is correct to be brutally frank when exposing the role of the Communist Party to its rank and file. But is it so Marxist to call on members of the Communist Party to ‘demand and fight for the disbanding of the Com- munist Party and the entry of its members into the Labour Party’? For years the Stalinists fed people like myself with nonsense about the ‘Trotskyists’ being “destructive’ and pursu- ing a policy that would destroy the Communist Party. Now, in black and white, we give the Paime Dutts what they want —the written word. They are not concerned with the rights and wrongs of the present existence of the Communist Party. They are very much concerned with further ‘proof’ that those who oppose King Street are out to destroy, and not to build socialism. If the Communist Party leaders have enough acumen they will make a direct quote of this editorial to bolster and preserve their tottering edifice for a while longer. We say: ‘There are still inside the Communist Party a con- siderable number of workers who have yet to see that their party’s industrial policy is not based on winning victories and exposing the Right wing in industrial and political struggles.’ Do we really expect more than a handful of these very sincere people, these hard-working men and women, to ‘fight’ for the disbanding of their own party at this stage in their political development? If, instead of lecturing (one gets so sick of this very thing inside the Stalinist apparatus) the ‘serious militants’ in the Communist Party with our pearls of wisdom directed at them from our pinnacle and advising them to disband that party, Documents