BRITISH COMMUNIST PARTY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 83, 2 January 1930, Page 15

BRITISH COMMUNIST PARTY

CRITICISM FROM WITHIN There is acute dissension in the British Communist Party (states a Labour correspondent of the London “Times”). The central committee of the party was severely reprimanded in the plenum of the Comintern at Moscow, convicted of “narrowness iu its ideological and political outlook” —though to an outsider its real offence would appear to have been a certain reluctance to be ultra-Bolshevist—and instructed to adopt a more definitely class-against-class attitude and to conduct a more determined struggle against the Labour Party. The British spokesmen at Moscow tried to show that the Comintern’s own policy was responsible for a loss of two-thirds of the membership of two years ago, but Lozovsky and Molotoffi said no; it was “deviation” from the prescribed policy that was the cause of the British party’s failure to capture the masses. The controversy is now raging among the remnant of the party in England. The hunt is up against “such Right Wing” comrades as Campbell, Horner, and Pollitt.” Only a Communist of the strictest kind could detect much of rhe “Right” in these three fighting members of the party—nothing more than a shrewd judgment of expediency. But the criticisms reported from Moscow are being repeated with greater vehemence iu Britain. The Tyneside District Committee of the party is leading the attack. It clamours for the exposure of the Right elements, and declares that the Central Committee no .longer enjoys the confidence of the party membership. Who were the members removed from the PolitBureau? At Moscow the names of Comrades Rust and Arnot were given, but the information has -not apparently been circulated to the local branches of the British party. More names are wanted by the angry Tyneside members. Who were the live members who voted at the Executive Committee meeting preceding the General Election in favour of supporting Labour Party candidates in constituencies where there was not a Communist candidate? Who are the members of the Central Committee who followed the line laid down by the Ninth Plenum and who did not? A resolution prepared by the Central Committee on “the tasks of the Communist Party of Great Britain” is criticised for its sheltering of the- Right Wing, its failure to bring out the fact that the new Polit-Bureau “is still dominated by Campbell, Horner, and Pollitt,” and its concealment of the efforts made iu the Central Committee to discredit the critics. The Tyneside district asks: “What is to prevent the Right Wing ‘old cadres’ once again formally, and even vigorously, accepting the New Line in the discussions preceding the National Congress, in order’ to secure election?” It adds: —“It must be on the basis of the line taken by comrades since the Ninth Plenum, and not merely on the basis of the discussions preceding the Congress, that comrades must be judged. We have learned too well how the conciliators will accept any policy in words to disarm criticism.”

The secretariat of the party has immediately replied, accusing the Tyneside district members of unworthy suspicion and of throwing doubt on the motives of the Central Committee. “To only ..outline the mistakes of the party, to give the party no credit for having done anything of value in the last two years, would be to engage in a campaign, not of self-criticism, but of wanton disintegration.” Promising to provide information as to the voting in the Central Committee, the secretariat pleads with members, to pay first attention to the discussion of the main political issues, “and in connection with them to bring in the questions connected with the leadership.” That is just what the Tyneside district is refusing to do. Loyalty to Moscow is its simple standard of fitness for leadership.

The West Wales Regional Council is also calling for a change of leadership. The congress, it declares, “must elect tin honest, trustworthy proletarian executive, not from tlic ranks of the intellectuals but from our ‘rnggered trousered’ toiling and suffering membership.” The sans-culottes are making themselves heard.