the closure of the campaign for a marxist party

Dave Spencer situates the end of the CMP in the context of the British Left – and reflects on some of his experiences of communism from below, and bureaucracy from above, since the early ’60s

New Interventions has published two accounts of the demise of the Campaign for a Marxist Party by two comrades who were centrally involved and were in the minority who opposed the closure – Phil Sharpe and Steve Freeman. Both take an admirably serious look at the political differences within the CMP and how these developed. However, in my opinion they both let the CPGB off the hook. In my view the main reason the CMP was closed down was the sectarian and bureaucratic centralist methods used by the CPGB. There was never any fraternal discussion of political differences. The CPGB deliberately misrepresented the views of those they considered rivals and carried out a policy of gossip and character assassination among their members and contacts and in the Weekly Worker. On the CMP website they encouraged the use of personal abuse — not amongst themselves of course but targeted on minorities or individuals they thought were not winnable to their organisation. Phil Sharpe and Steve Freeman were in particular recipients of this method.

unite picket: trotskyist snowmen’s protests melt away

by David Broder

Political confusion and London’s most severe snowfall for a decade conspired to undermine a picket of the Unite headquarters called by opponents of the oil refinery strikes. The two people who had organised to counter the picket were the strongest force at the union’s Holborn building throughout most of the evening.

The initiative for the picket came from a prominent member of the Trotskyist group Workers’ Liberty (AWL), who sent out a text and mass email on the evening of Sunday 1st: “Please let me know if you can come tomorrow for an urgent picket of the Unite union office to demand that this wave of nationalist protests stop. Theobalds Road, Holborn. Workers should fight the bosses not migrant workers and demand freedom of movement, equal rights and jobs for all… [details]… Nothing so seriously reactionary has happened in the movement while I’ve been alive…”

where next for the LRC?

This article was commissioned as a discussion item for Stroppy Blog and as such only represents my own opinions, not necessarily those of anyone else from The Commune – David Broder.

The turnout at the Labour Representation Committee conference on November 15th reflected the role of the current economic crisis in pushing people long involved in the left back into activity: numbers were up from 200 last year to around 270 (not as reported on our website), even though the number of young people involved has declined.

There were several positive steps made at the conference that could breathe fresh life into the organisation, not least its call for a series of discussions on workers’ self-management, social ownership and what we mean by socialism – developing the work begun by the Left Economics Advisory Panel on breaking from Old Labour and Stalinist conceptions of socialism – and the LRC’s affiliation to Hands Off the People of Iran. Hopefully both steps will allow the membership of the LRC to be more involved week-to-week and month-to-month.

report on lrc conference

by Chris Ford

Over two-hundred people attended the conference of the Labour Representation Committee held under the title of ‘The Future of the Left’. On the one hand the LRC conference took some very positive steps and on the other we had a full display of many of the negative traits of the traditional left.