Source: Revolutionary History, Volume 9, no 3, 2006.
Dear Comrade Pollitt
When the Daily Worker published the report of your remarks on TV to the effect that you thought it was an anti-fascist war then, and you still think so, [1] I wrote a letter to the Editor. This has not been published, which I don’t complain about, but has not even been acknowledged, though it was posted over a week ago. It seems to me that it would probably have been more sensible to write to you in the first place!
Until your TV statement appeared, the last declaration from you concerning the character of the war in 1939 which most of us had read was your letter published in World News and Views at the beginning of December 1939. [2] In this you said you had been wrong in supporting the war, having underestimated the role of British imperialism and seen German fascism as the main enemy; now you unreservedly supported the Party’s line of opposition to the war. Basing themselves on this document, many comrades have until now defended the party line of those days whenever it was attacked, and kept any private doubts they may have had to themselves. In February 1946, as you will certainly recall, Stalin mentioned in an election speech that the Second World War had assumed an anti-fascist character from the very outset, this having only been strengthened when the USSR came into it. Shortly afterwards, I attended a school for people just out of the forces, held at King Street under the tutorship of Douglas Garman. [3] I was amazed to find that he presented the story of our changes of policy during the war like this: at first we thought it was an anti-fascist war, but then we realised it wasn’t yet, and began trying to transform it into such a war. This extraordinary version of history was supported by a document which proved to be a Party manifesto issued after the Fall of France - but with the culminating slogan ‘For a People’s Peace’ cut out! [4] When I brought along the issue of WN&V in which this had originally appeared, and when I further pointed out that between October 1939 and May 1940 our policy had been what it had been (for example, the DW’s handling of the Norwegian campaign), and also reminded the comrades about the People’s Convention in January 1941 and its line, I was given The Treatment and more or less exposed as a crypto-Trotskyist wrecker and provocateur. I must confess that my Communism has been a good deal tinged with cynicism ever since then!
You know, I'm sure, a lot better than I do, that it’s not only Frank Owen [5] that brings up this episode of 1939-1941, but a very large proportion indeed of those with whom one discusses the Party, including people one tries to recruit to it. Now that you have said what you did say on TV, and since your mention of questions of Party history as being exactly the matters we should be discussing (in the ‘Lessons for Us’ section of your World News article), [6] it seems to me that the whole business should be ventilated and no longer treated as a dirty secret or the subject of ‘official myths’.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Comrade
Thank you for your letter, addressed to Harry Pollitt. You understand of course the reason why he cannot answer it himself. [7]
However, the proposition you make did come up at our Executive meeting during last weekend when we were considering the lessons of the Twentieth Congress. The Executive is against a discussion on this matter at this stage. We entirely agree with you that it is of course an important question, and precisely because of that it could not be simply a matter for one or two comrades; the whole Executive would have to be involved, discussions would have to take place at length throughout the Party and all committees and Party organisations, and we are of the opinion that all this would seriously hamper discussion on future policy which we are now initiating, and would not be helpful to the Party.
In addition, of course, I think you understand - with your knowledge of these matters - that this is not only something of concern to our Party.
It is for all these reasons, therefore, that we think it would be inadvisable to proceed with a discussion at this stage.
With best wishes
Yours fraternally
General Secretary
Mr Harry Pollitt has succeeded in stirring up something very like class conflict inside his own party. This feat he has achieved by his remarks at the recent Communist Congress to the effect that only the ‘intellectuals’ among party members are disturbed by the revelations concerning events during Stalin’s 20 years of personal rule, and want to discuss their implications, whereas the ‘workers’ are indifferent, regarding the whole matter as irrelevant to their tasks as Communists.
The reaction of the rank-and-file to this statement has not, curiously enough, taken the form of indignant protest by working-class party members against the slander on themselves. On the contrary, the implied incitement to reach for their spanners, so to say, and give those egg-heads a bashing, appears to have been widely and enthusiastically taken up.
If British workers who are Communists are indeed unconcerned about tyranny and injustice in the socialist countries, and interested only in improvements in material conditions which have been made there, this suggests that they must be singularly unrepresentative of the British working class as a whole. All who know Britain can testify that the incidence of cynicism and callousness is, in point of fact, far less among her working people than among other social strata. During the 1930s, though a few intellectuals were fascinated by Hitlerism, the workers of Britain were little impressed even by Hitler’s abolition of unemployment in Germany. What made and kept them anti-Nazi - after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact no less than before - was their hostility to the Gestapo and all that it stood for in German life. A growing suspicion, now confirmed from the best of sources, that something of that kind existed in countries under Communist control, too, was what (more than anything else, perhaps) has kept them away from the Communist Party here.
It is worth recalling, incidentally, that when the British Communists had their ‘line’ on the war changed for them at the end of September 1939, it was the ex-boilermaker Mr Pollitt - then still close to the moods and feelings of the British proletariat - who felt such grave qualms that he gave up his party job for some months. The party leader who, without batting an eyelid, came out at once with a pamphlet explaining why the war was a bad one, after all, and ought to be stopped forthwith, was that veritable High Brahmin among intellectuals, Mr RP Dutt. [8]
In the early and middle 1930s the Communist Party recruited extensively in the universities, with important positive results for itself in a variety of fields. Since, however, the ‘great purge’ trials and related developments in the USSR (together with the official explanations that were given of these matters) began straining the credulity and consciences of civilised people, there has been a fairly steady drift of professional men and women out of the party and a falling-off in its influence in opinion-forming circles. This has been associated - partly as cause and partly as effect - with increasing obscurantism within the party. An attitude towards intellectuals has grown up which is oddly reminiscent of that of Wilhelm Weitling, [9] the arch-proletarian ‘professor-eater’ of the 1840s, towards Karl Marx; and rarely does it meet with Marx’s brisk retort that ‘ignorance never did anyone any good’. Those intellectuals who have remained within the party have felt themselves becoming prisoners in its framework and have grown more than reluctant to bring their colleagues into contact with it, let alone ask them to join, knowing as they do that they would soon find they must leave their minds outside. And whatever changes may have begun in Russia, Poland or such places (not so long ago the models to be copied in every particular), there are deeply entrenched forces in the British Communist Party determined to keep things that way, no matter what the cost, and to use any sort of cheap demagogy and inverted snobbery to this end.
Marxist
The self-critical resolution issued by the Executive Committee of the Communist Party [10] reflects the ‘revolt of the sheep’ (to use Reginald Reynolds’ [11] phrase) which has broken out, belatedly but vigorously, in a section of the party’s ranks. The leadership seems to have taken fright at the prospect of losing the last remnants of its following among professional people. So far as it goes the document can only be welcomed by everyone who desires progress towards unity of the socialist forces. Yet it would be premature to assume that anything fundamental has happened while self-styled ‘unrepentant Stalinists’ are still hard at it, and occupying key positions.
At the time of writing, the Daily Worker has conspicuously failed to report the statement made by a Soviet police official to visiting French Socialists to the effect that the concentration camp network in the USSR is now in process of being wound up. It must, of course, come rather hard to admit the abolition of something one has repeatedly (and abusively) denied the existence of; and especially, perhaps, when one is not all that pleased to see it abolished, for there should no illusions that it was not precisely the police-state aspect of Stalin’s system that above all fascinated a certain type of party member.
Though Mr Pollitt has retired from the post of General Secretary, Mr RP Dutt, who fought his way into the leadership in close association with him, remains Vice-Chairman. That fact alone must give cause for hesitation in accepting that any very important change is likely to occur yet in the Communist Party’s atmosphere and methods. In the current Labour Monthly, Mr Dutt dismisses the Khrushchev revelations with the characteristic phrase: ‘That there should be spots on any sun would only startle an inveterate Mithras-worshipper.’ [12]
One recalls what happened in 1929, an earlier occasion when pressure from Moscow combined with a revolt by part of the membership compelled a change in the British Communist Party’s line. At the Tenth Congress, held in Bermondsey in January of that year, the leaders went through the motions of adopting the new line. Thereafter, however, they dragged their feet so outrageously when it came to applying the line in practical terms that another congress (the Eleventh, held at Leeds) had to be convened in December of the same year to ensure that a real turn in the party’s activities took place. This was done by ousting Mr Andrew Rothstein [13] and the late Albert Inkpin [14] from the top leadership and replacing them by Messrs Pollitt and Dutt. The next few months will show whether an upheaval comparable to that is necessary and, if necessary, possible - in the Communist Party of today.
Marxist
Many comrades will know GDH Cole’s article [in the New Statesman and Nation - Ed], [15] only through the summaries which have appeared in our publications. It is important that they should know that besides identifying four points of fundamental agreement between socialists and Communists, Cole also lays down certain ‘minimum requirements’ in the sphere of political democracy and civil liberty.
No system can be truly socialist, he affirms, which does not ‘allow wide freedom for the expression of divergent opinions, within limits that are bound to exist in any society and will vary according to the situation: it must allow freedom to organise for the furtherance of such opinion, within similar limits; and these freedoms must include personal security for those who advocate the various opinions against arbitrary arrest or liquidation’.
In entering into discussion with Labour Party people on the basis of Cole’s article we must be prepared to say what we think about these matters.
The value of an open repudiation of past errors such as is being carried out in the USSR today is that it offers at least some sort of guarantee against repetition of the same errors in the future. A ghost which haunts our relations with Labour Party people is the policy we followed in 1928-35, that is, between the Sixth and Seventh Congresses of the Communist International - the policy of all-out fight against Labour as the ‘third capitalist party’. Though this policy was changed in 1935, it was never admitted to have been wrong at the time, and Labour people can be forgiven for suspecting that we may be keeping the door open for a return to that policy one of these days. (There was a partial, short-lived return to it in 1949-50.)
We should get clear and make clear where we stand today in relation to that episode. A lead to re-examination of the Sixth Congress policies was given at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU by Kuusinen, [16] when he observed that the Sixth Congress theses on the colonial struggle ‘had a tinge of sectarianism even when these theses were worked out’.
Brian Pearce
It is to be hoped that the intense discussion now in progress in Communist circles about the meaning of Stalin’s 20-year dictatorship, and its ending and repudiation by the present leaders of the USSR, may result before long in some serious analytical work of general value to the labour and progressive movement, comparable to RP Dutt’s Fascism and Social Revolution of more than 20 years ago. So far there is, alas, no sign of this happening; for a very long time indeed it has not been the done thing to apply Marxist method to the study of Soviet society, and that inhibition may not be easily overcome. Yet already there is quite a considerable amount of material to hand indicating that profound social changes are accompanying the political and ideological changes that began in 1953.
Among the very first actions of the new regime which succeeded Stalin and Beria [17] was a sweeping reform in policy towards the peasantry, whose conditions had worsened in the postwar years. Taxes falling upon them were slashed, with cancellation of arrears, while the prices paid to them for the compulsory deliveries to the state were greatly increased. The ominous talk of an approaching prohibition of private trade in favour of a ‘products exchange’ system ceased abruptly. A host of measures have followed since designed to level up conditions in the countryside and enhance the peasant’s material incentives to produce and sell. More recently, the lower-paid sections of the working class have become the objects of benevolent attention by the authorities. Substantial levelling up of wages has begun, with Mikoyan [18] declaring at the party congress that the notoriously wide gap between wage levels, which had long ceased to have any economic justification, is to be ended. The housing of the very poor, together with the provision of adequate pensions for their aged dependants and of free education for their sons and daughters, have acquired high priority in the allotment of public resources. Along with the changes to the advantage of the peasants and the lower-paid workers, a number of blows have been struck at the overgrown, overpaid and over-privileged managerial bureaucracy (with its academic and other hangers-on) that constituted to some extent the social basis of Stalinism - ranging from large-scale reduction in central government staffs, and measures of decentralisation, to clamping down on the abuse of public transport for private purposes.
At the party congress, emphasis was placed on the much greater proportion of workers from the bench and working peasants among the delegates, and on the new policy (or rather, revived old policy) of giving preference to these groups in recruitment to the party. Steps such as the repeal of Stalin’s law of 1936 penalising abortion show a greater responsiveness by the new leadership to the real problems and wishes of the ordinary people of the USSR. Associated with the trend to decentralisation is the marked falling-off in the arrogant assertion of Great-Russian hegemony, denigration of national heroes of the non-Russian peoples, and similar pathological phenomena of the chauvinist order which developed after 1934 and with especial force in the postwar period. The announcement of laws to make effective a number of provisions of the 1937 Constitution which have hitherto existed only on paper - such as the power of electors to recall an unsatisfactory deputy - gives promise of democracy reaching right down to the man in the street.
Perhaps we are seeing at last the beginning of the end of all those distortions of socialist society in the USSR to which André Gide directed attention in his Retour de l'URSS [19] and which for so long were felt both as a burden by the Soviet masses and as an obstacle to friendship and solidarity by progressive people in other countries. All those distortions hung together as a single system; and a scientific study of how this system grew up and became consolidated, and how it was eventually overthrown and dismantled, would help to ensure that nothing of the same kind ever even starts to happen elsewhere.
Marxist
Mr Andrew Rothstein is indignant with you for having accused Communists of misrepresenting the document known as ‘Lenin’s Testament’. Surely he cannot have forgotten the pamphlet entitled The Truth About Trotsky, by RF Andrews, which was published by the Communist Party in 1934? [20] On page 68 the content of ‘Lenin’s Testament’ was thus explained: ‘He [Lenin] gave a personal criticism of Stalin as “too rude” to be a good secretary... But when he came to Trotsky, Lenin said that his “non-Bolshevism” was “not accidental,” that is, he gave a decisive political criticism.’
This is, of course, sheer misrepresentation. What Lenin wrote was: ‘I will only remind you that the October episode of Zinoviev and Kamenev was not, of course, accidental, but that it ought as little to be used against them personally as the non-Bolshevism of Trotsky.’ And it seems somewhat sharp practice for a writer who knows the whole text of ‘Lenin’s Testament’ to conceal from readers, in a passage purporting to give Lenin’s final opinion about Trotsky, his description of him as ‘the ablest man in the present Central Committee’.
It is a sign of grace, however, that Mr Rothstein admits in his letter to you the ‘editing’, as he calls it, of Stalin’s speech of 23 October 1927 in the authorised version of his works: that is, the omission of the quotation from ‘Lenin’s Testament’. Mr Rothstein conspicuously refrained from mentioning this in his communications on the same subject published recently in the Daily Worker. It is, of course, only one of a number of such pieces of ‘editing’ in Stalin’s Works. One of the most glaring occurs in the article on the first anniversary of the October Revolution, which Stalin wrote in November 1918. Comparing the version given in Volume 4 of the Works with that which appeared in the collection called The October Revolution published by Lawrence and Wishart in 1933, one finds that the following sentences are simply omitted:
All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.
Mr Rothstein has long been famous as an exposer of error and falsification in books critical of Stalin’s Russia; but he has never, I think, drawn attention to the tampering with texts which is a feature of the 13-volume official edition of Stalin’s Works.
Marxist
The Communist Party headquarters has demanded the cessation of The Reasoner, the lively little journal of information and discussion that began to appear this summer under the editorship of the historians Edward Thompson and John Saville. This ultimatum has been issued in spite of the fact that The Reasoner propounds no policy, merely seeking to supplement the restricted facilities of the party press for publishing important statements by American, Polish and other foreign Communists and providing an extended forum for discussion on current problems.
One recalls that when, in 1928-29, Mr RP Dutt was striving to effect a change in British Communist policy he did not need to start a new publication, he already had his Labour Monthly. Moreover, through the good offices of the Comintern’s representative in this country he was able to compel the unwilling majority of his colleagues on the party’s Central Committee to publish his criticisms in the official Communist periodical - and to supplement this with articles by himself and his associates in the Communist International magazine, published outside British Communist control. Messrs Thompson and Saville probably would not wish to see the Comintern back; but they must sadly reflect that it had its uses.
Marxist
One striking feature of the effort to ‘overcome the cult of the individual and its consequences’ now being made by an important section of the Soviet Communist Party is the serious re-examination of the party’s history that is under way. Already a number of well-documented articles have appeared in the Communist, Problems of History and other periodicals, traversing episodes in the pre-revolutionary period, during 1917, the Civil War and the Second World War; the demolition has begun of that edifice of lies about Stalin’s role which Beria founded in 1935 with his lecture booklet On the History of the Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia.
Other Communist parties, too, including the British, are giving attention to their respective histories in the light of the Twentieth Congress revelations. It is to be hoped that among these separate national investigations the history of the Communist International will not escape scrutiny. Many crucial moments in the record of individual Communist parties can be understood only against the background of the highly centralised and disciplined international organisation, dominated by the Soviet Communist Party, to which they all belonged until its dissolution in 1943.
While the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party obviously have a certain amount of justification when they point to the victory of Hitler in Germany in 1933 as a factor making possible the establishment of Stalin’s dictatorship in Russia in the immediately following years, there remains something more to be said on this score. Were not the Soviet Communists, through the Comintern, to some degree responsible for the victory of Hitler - owing to the policy pursued, under their guidance, by the German Communist Party?
One of the events which helped to clear Hitler’s path to power was the so-called ‘Red Referendum’ in Prussia, held on 9 August 1931. Initiated by the reactionary ex-servicemen’s organisation, the Stahlhelm, with the backing of the Nazi and Nationalist Parties, the purpose of this referendum was to force the resignation of the social democratic government of this province which embraced the greater part of Germany. It received the epithet by which it is generally known when the Communist Party decided to support it. Communists and Nazis campaigned and voted together against the social democrats. Most people expected that they would poll the necessary majority; when the result showed them to be some three million votes short of it, the explanation generally believed was that that number of electors who usually voted Communist had on this occasion felt unable to obey the party’s call. The effect of the affair was, nevertheless, to dig a gulf deeper than ever before between Communists and social democrats.
Now this was no domestically conceived prank of the German Communists. An editorial in the Communist International written on the eve of the referendum hounded them on: ‘There is at present not the slightest doubt that if French imperialism is now the chief danger to the revolution from the outside, social democracy is the chief menace to the German revolution within the land. We must seize social democracy by the throat...’ After quoting Stalin on the need to direct the main blow against the social democrats, the writer declared that ‘in no country does the development of the revolutionary crisis depend so much upon the rate at which the mass basis of social democracy is destroyed as in Germany’. Not a word in the article about the Nazis - instead, the confident assertion that ‘the path taken by the national movement in Germany against the Versailles system and for bread, freedom and liberty, is clearly the road to proletarian revolution’.
The establishment of Stalinism cannot be understood without taking into account the victory of Hitlerism; but that, in turn, cannot be understood without taking into account the policy of the Comintern. The chain of cause and effect passes through Berlin, but it returns to Moscow in the end.
Marxist
The theory accepted, apparently, by ‘Marxist’ that Stalinism arose as a sort of reflex action in response to pressure by Hitler’s Germany has been challenged, well in advance, by Mr DN Pritt, QC, [21] in his book Light on Moscow, published in 1939. Mr Pritt there argues that during the crucial years 1933-34 Germany’s attitude towards the USSR was ‘friendly and even cordial’. He quotes speeches to this effect by Hitler; the grant of credits amounting to 200 million marks to the USSR in March 1933; the ratification in May of that year of the 1926 Treaty between the two countries which had remained unratified for some years before Hitler’s accession; and other facts. The deterioration in Soviet-German relations appears as the result of the action of the USSR in adopting a policy of ‘collaboration with the Western democracies’, towards the end of 1934.
There is more direct evidence than ‘Marxist’ cites that the German Communists’ support for the Nazi referendum against the social democratic government of Prussia was Comintern-inspired. Piatnitsky, Dimitrov’s [22] predecessor as Comintern chief, mentioned the affair in his pamphlet Fulfil the Decisions! (that is, of the Twelfth ‘Plenum’ of the Comintern Executive), revealing that the German Communist leadership were at first opposed to taking part in the referendum, but changed their minds with the aid of the Comintern.
Many hitherto secret archives are being opened in the USSR just now, and historians are beginning work upon them, as ‘Marxist’ points out. The Comintern archives should throw much light on the history of the interwar years, especially the archives for the period approximately 1927-33, when ‘Moscow’ intervened so often and so forcefully in the affairs of a number of Western Communist parties.
Brian Pearce
Tito has recently reminded us that the origins of Stalinism are to be sought in the period of the First Five-Year Plan, 1928-32, when the Soviet trade unions were made subordinate organs of the state, the peasants were dragooned into collective farms, and Stalin, with his famous speeches against ‘equality-mongering’, gave the bureaucracy their Magna Carta.
Stalin in those years imposed his views and methods, not only upon Russia but also upon the international Communist movement. The European Communist parties had a fantastically left-sectarian policy imposed upon them which made them break with their own national traditions. Leaders who jibbed were either got rid of or brought to heel.
In Britain the year 1929 saw a crisis in the Communist Party. After many of the best elements had left the party, the leadership began showing signs of revolt against the policy - anti-Labour Party and anti-trade union - which was so clearly leading to disaster.
At the Tenth Plenum of the Comintern, Executive Molotov and Manuilsky [23] replied with an ultimatum. The British Communists must purge and reorganise their leadership in the direction approved by Moscow, or their party would cease to be recognised as the British section of the Comintern. They got what they wanted. RP Dutt became the party’s chief theoretician and Harry Pollitt its chief practical leader, positions they have held ever since.
This historical background helps one to understand why the top leadership of the Communist Party is resisting so doggedly the movement among the rank-and-file to draw the full conclusions from the Soviet Twentieth Party Congress and the events in Poland and Hungary.
I Browse
Why did Walter Holmes [24] (Daily Worker, 15 December) go out of his way to deny assertions in the letter of I Browse (Tribune, 7 December)?
Browse wrote that Harry Pollitt and RP Dutt became the most important leaders of the British CP in 1929 as a result of Comintern intervention.
The facts are on record, after all, however one may choose to interpret them.
That Dutt and Pollitt were members of the Executive Committee well before 1929 is well known, and they may well have received, in 1922, the votes mentioned by Holmes. The point is, however, that Pollitt did not become General Secretary until August 1929; and in March 1928, he and Dutt were so far from being the dominant figures on the Executive Committee that they published ‘minority theses’ on party policy, in opposition to the views of the Campbell-Inkpin-Rothstein-Horner [25] group then in the majority.
It was the general election of May 1929 that led to the changes in leadership to which I Browse referred. Carrying out the ‘line’ of the Communist International, the British Communists fought the election in sharp opposition to the Labour Party, running 25 candidates and calling on their supporters in constituencies where no Communist was standing to spoil their ballot papers.
The election results were disastrous from the Communist standpoint, and the party found itself more isolated than ever from the mass of the workers. Nevertheless, the Comintern insisted that the ‘line’ be maintained and even strengthened; in particular, the British Communists were directed at a special meeting with a Comintern representative, held in Berlin, to remove from their Political Bureau certain leaders who were known to be critical of this ‘line’ (Walter Tapsell, [26] article in International Press Correspondence, 8 November 1929). Instead of obeying Comintern instructions, the Political Bureau removed from its membership four men who were known to be especially strong supporters of the Comintern ‘line’: JT Murphy, [27] William Gallacher, [28] RP Arnot and William Rust. [29]
It was this act of defiance that produced the ‘ultimatum’ speeches by Molotov and Manuilsky at the Comintern Executive’s Tenth Plenum in July 1929, mentioned by I Browse.
Brian Pearce
Because fascist elements participated in the struggle in Hungary at the end of October and beginning of November, and tried to exploit it for their own purposes, some observers have tried to deny the national and popular character of the struggle as a whole. One is reminded of Lenin’s reply to the Marxists who in 1916 disapproved of the Easter Rebellion in Ireland because of the variety of groups taking part in it.
Lenin then wrote:
The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a bourgeois-democratic revolution. It consisted of a series of battles in which all the discontented classes, groups and elements of the population participated. Among these there were masses imbued with the crudest prejudices, with the vaguest and most fantastic aims of struggle; there were small groups that accepted Japanese money; there were speculators and adventurers, etc. Objectively, the mass movement broke the back of Tsarism and paved the way for democracy; for that reason the class-conscious workers led it.
And he went on to put it to his comrades that:
... if on the one hand, we were to declare and repeat in a thousand keys that we were ‘opposed’ to all national oppression, and, on the other hand, we were to describe the heroic revolt of the most mobile and intelligent section of certain classes in an oppressed nation against its oppressors as a ‘putsch’, we would be sinking to the stupid level of the Kautskyists. (The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up)
A certain would-be ‘realistic’ school of thought on the question of Hungary bases itself on Stalin’s proposition in 1923 that:
... there are cases when the right of self-determination conflicts with another, a higher right - the right of the working class that has come to power to consolidate its power. In such cases - this must be said bluntly - the right of self-determination cannot and must not serve as an obstacle to the working class in exercising its right to dictatorship. The former must yield to the latter. That was the case in 1920, for instance, when in order to defend working-class power we were obliged to march on Warsaw.
That was in 1923. It is not so widely known as it should be - though Mr Andrew Rothstein quotes this passage in his Pelican History of the USSR - that during the campaign Stalin had expressed more moderate views:
I consider the boastfulness and harmful self-conceit displayed by some of our comrades as out of place: some of them, not content with the successes at the front, are calling for a ‘march on Warsaw'; others, not content with defending our republic against enemy attack, haughtily declare that they could be satisfied only with a ‘Red Soviet Warsaw’.
More interesting still is the view about the ‘march on Warsaw’ expressed by Lenin to the German Communist Klara Zetkin, [30] when it had failed disastrously and an armistice had been signed with Poland on terms very unfavourable to Russia. Klara Zetkin records the conversation in her Reminiscences of Lenin. After admitting that ‘in the Red Army the Poles saw enemies, not brothers and liberators, and that there had been not only military but also political “miscalculations"’, the founder of the Soviet state went on, in his characteristically generous way, to mention that:
Radek [31] predicted how it would turn out. He warned us. I was very angry with him, and accused him of ‘defeatism’. But he was right in his main contention. He knows affairs outside Russia, and particularly in the West, better than we do, and he is talented. He is very useful to us.
Summing up the considerations that led his government to wind up the conflict with Poland, Lenin declared:
In the present situation Soviet Russia can win only if it shows by its attitude that it carries on war solely in self-defence, to protect the revolution: that it is the only great country of peace in the world; that it has no intention whatever of seizing territory, suppressing nations or entering upon an imperialist adventure. But, above all, ought we, unless absolutely and literally compelled, to have exposed the Russian people to the horror and suffering of another winter of war?
Brian Pearce
Those whom your special correspondence calls ‘the bureaucrats of King Street’ have recently published in pamphlet form an interesting and important article from a Chinese newspaper entitled More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This article subjects to reasoned criticism the speeches made by Tito and Kardelj [32] wherein these Yugoslav Communist leaders discussed the Soviet actions in Hungary and went on to raise certain fundamental questions regarding the social and political system of the USSR - to seek, in fact, the ‘roots’ of Stalinism.
The article was published in China only after readers had been given the chance to study the speeches that were being criticised. When, however, I ventured to suggest to JR Campbell, editor of the Daily Worker, that a similar procedure should have been followed here - or, at least, that the Yugoslav speeches ought to be published now - I was told that the Communist Party ‘is not to be transformed into a Communist University’, and that ‘the time has come to turn to home affairs’.
Two comments on this reply suggest themselves. First, it is not apparent by what principle publishing the Chinese critique of Tito and Kardelj is not ‘transforming the party into a university’, whereas the publication of Tito and Kardelj would amount to doing this. Second, no account is taken of the contribution which some of the points made by the Yugoslav leaders can make to current discussion on improving the British Communist Party’s programme, The British Road to Socialism.
In general, the notion that the study of the lessons of Eastern Europe is in some way a diversion from the task of ‘getting socialism here’ is a strangely unreal one. On present showing, for example, a worker (let alone one of those revolting intellectuals) may well remark when offered The British Road to Socialism: ‘What does it say about the tanks - the Russian ones that are to put you back in power if we should ever want to get rid of you?’
Brian Pearce
While agreeing with Edward Thompson [The Newsletter, no 3, pp 21-22] that gratuitous bitterness only does harm in discussions among socialists, I must disagree with him regarding the need for sharp and cold analysis where questions of political principle are concerned.
It was once said that the British Communist Party was a ‘society of great friends’, in which ‘good relations with persons’ took precedence over ‘good relations with principles’. [33] Perhaps there was something in the charge, and it may be at the root of some of our current troubles.
Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re [34] is an excellent motto, provided one pays attention to the second part as well as to the first. In this connection, it seems to me that the epithet ‘sectarianism’ is being used as loosely and harmfully by some as ‘revisionism’ by others.
Though by no means of the opinion that Lenin was always right, I feel sympathy with his point of view in the story he tells in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back:
I cannot help recalling... a conversation I happened to have at the Congress with one of the ‘Centre’ delegates... ‘How oppressive the atmosphere is at our Congress!’, he complained. ‘This bitter fighting, this agitation one against the other, this biting controversy, this uncomradely behaviour!’
‘What a splendid thing our Congress is’, I replied. ‘A free and open struggle. Opinions have been stated. The shades have been made clear. The groups have taken shape. Hands have been raised. A decision has been taken. A stage has been passed. Forward! That’s the stuff for me! That’s life!’
‘That’s something different from the endless, tedious word-chopping of your intellectuals which does not terminate because the question has been settled, but because they are too tired to talk any more...’
The comrade of the Centre stared at me in perplexity and shrugged his shoulders. We were talking in different languages.
Now is a time for examining both past and present problems of the socialist movement with fresh eyes. It is hard, though, to examine objectively ideas for which we have made sacrifices and which have come to symbolise our own youth.
There is a temptation to get angry with people who insist that such an examination must be made - but this temptation ought to be resisted.
To label certain conceptions as ‘Trotskyist’ does not help in the least. Some of the ideas that Comrade Thompson has recently been expressing are easily recognisable to the student of Communist oppositions as ‘Lovestoneist’ (or ‘Brandlerist’) [35] but how does that help us either in understanding or refuting them?
Brian Pearce
The following letter was sent to the Daily Worker on 13 June.
John Gritten’s [36] analogy between the position of the Welsh in Britain and that of the Tamils in Ceylon is misleading.
It is not true that the Tamils live ‘mainly in the north’: two-thirds of them live not in the Northern Province but in other parts of the country.
As workers on the plantations they are very widespread in Ceylon. There is a substantial Tamil community in Colombo itself. Hence their demand for parity of rights for their language throughout the country.
John Gritten, who has visited Ceylon, of course knows these facts. While appreciating that his task was to discredit the Ceylon Trotskyists by ridiculing their policy, I would urge that the same standards of accuracy and fairness should apply in controversy with the Trotskyists as with any other section of the working-class movement.
If not, why not?
Brian Pearce
Brian Pearce
In December he (i) published a letter in the New Statesman attacking the Party policy on Hungary after the EC manifesto, under the guise of quotations from Lenin against ‘some observers'; (ii) published a letter in Tribune reinforcing the idea that the Party has always been a tool of Moscow, under the guise of correcting Walter Holmes on Party History; (iii) supported renegades and anti-Soviet elements (Bradley and his friend) at the SCR AGM (mostly non-party), who were attacking me for ‘Stalinism’. (Judith Todd and Elsie Trimbey who were present, very old SCR members, could no doubt give corroboration.) In January, by misrepresenting discussions at the Party History Commission to the historians AGM, he sabotaged the decision to invite them to collaborate (he has now virtually admitted this in a most brazen letter to Frank Jackson). Today in the New Statesman he has a letter which it would be easy enough to show is a vile attack on the Party; if you were not able to read it yourself. [37]
AR [38]
Brian Pearce, Friern Barnet(?)
Following the decision of the March DPC we raised with this comrade his letters in the New Statesman and Tribune, all of which brought inner-Party controversial matters into the anti-Communist press. We asked him to think over our points and make a statement. We also later raised with him the question of his publicised appearance at the Wortley Hall school.
No statement has been received, and in view of the extremely serious character of his actions, we propose that the District Committee write to him saying that the matter cannot be left when a proposal will be made to suspend him from Party Membership and insisting in asking him to make a statement.
TD and JM [39]
Dear Comrade
You will remember that Tom Durkin and myself recently had a talk with you about your letters in the New Statesman of 29 December and 9 February and in Tribune of 28 December.
We mentioned to you that the matter had been raised in the District Committee, which had asked for a statement from you. Since then Congress business has taken up several meetings of the District Committee. The next meeting is on Sunday, 19 May, and we should appreciate a letter from you which could come before the District Committee.
The points we would particularly like you to deal with are:
1: Do you agree that these matters raise in the non-Communist press matters which are the subject of inner-Party controversy?
2: Do you agree that these letters publicly attack the policy of the Party?
3: Our view is that these letters constitute a breach of the obligations of Party members and a breach of Party discipline. What is your view?
4: We are therefore asking you to give the District Committee an undertaking that you will not again send this type of communication to the non-Communist press.
Since our conversation you have been publicised as giving a lecture at Wortley Hall with the title of ‘Stalinism’. We should like to know whether you did give such a lecture, and what was the political nature of it. We should also like to know whether you consulted the Party Centre or the District Committee in the area where the gathering was held.
Yours fraternally
John Mahon
London District Secretary
Dear Comrade Mahon
Thanks for your letter of 10 May, with the questions you promised to send me after our talk on 4 March when we discussed certain letters of mine in the New Statesman (29 December and 9 February) and Tribune (28 December).
First, regarding the new point you raise about my presence at the Wortley Hall conference organised by the Socialist Forum movement, 27-28 April. Your informant is wrong in telling you about a ‘lecture... with the title of “Stalinism"’. As the agenda and timetable specify (no doubt your informant has a copy), there was a discussion on ‘Some Lessons of the Stalin Era’ (cf the title of Anna Louise Strong’s [40] book), and this was opened by me. As to the ‘political nature’ of my remarks, they were aimed at bringing back to the Marxist road those comrades who have drifted from it - the talk was a contribution to the struggle against revisionism, past and present. You probably know that, besides myself, there were a large number of other Party members present, including some very well-known comrades; and I think the discussion was most helpful to every one of us, Party, ex-Party and all.
I certainly did not consult the Party Centre or the Yorkshire District Committee before going to Wortley Hall. Under what Rule should I have done so? During 1954-55 I addressed some 80 meetings in various parts of the country, for the British-Soviet Friendship Society, and nobody ever raised the question of my consulting any Party HQ in connection with these meetings. What is the difference between the two situations?
In reply to your four questions I can only go over again what I said to you on 4 March:
Answer to Question 1: The matter dealt with in my letter to Tribune was by no stretch of the imagination a subject of ‘inner-Party controversy’. When Walter Holmes makes a misstatement of fact in his Notebook and a letter pointing this out fails to secure publication in the Daily Worker, that does not, surely, make the misstatement a subject of inner-Party controversy?
The two letters which appeared in the New Statesman dealt with matters which were the subject of controversy throughout the country at the time, certainly throughout the socialist movement - the only exception being a number of branches of the Party, where the attitude was, ‘What’s all this fuss about Hungary?’
Answer to Question 2: My letter to Tribune dealt with matters of history and could by no stretch of the imagination be construed as an attack on ‘the policy of the Party’. My first letter to the New Statesman made no reference to Party policy and dealt with broad questions of principle and history. My second letter to the New Statesman could, perhaps, be construed as an ‘attack’ on Comrade JR Campbell; but I am sure you do not wish me to believe that JRC and the policy of the Party are one and the same thing. Actually it was JRC who attacked the policy of the Party when he spoke out against allegedly wasteful discussion and publication of documents, at the meeting to which I referred; a meeting attended, incidentally, by a number of non-members of the Party whose presence did not inhibit JRC in any way that I could observe.
Answer to Question 3: My view is that if the first two letters (in Tribune, 28 December, and in the New Statesman, 29 December) were indeed breaches of Party discipline, it is scandalous that I was not told so sooner. I did not hear from you until 19 February, and then only about my letter in the New Statesman of 9 February. But if putting Walter Holmes right and recalling what Lenin said in 1920 constitute breaches of Party discipline we have indeed come to a pretty pass. Nor do I consider the third letter a breach of Party discipline, either, for the reason indicated above, and also for another reason. I have repeatedly tried to get letters into World News, but since the one they published last June I have been stone-walled - while others, for example, Bob Henderson, [41] have had as many as three letters published. Similarly, I have been unable to get anything into the Daily Worker since October; and I have been told by a recently-resigned member of the staff that this was not accidental - there was an office instruction that anything from me automatically went on the spike. When it becomes clear to a Communist that the Party-controlled channels of communications are being blocked by the dominant faction so as to suppress inconvenient information and arguments, he has the right and the duty to seek other means of getting what he wants to say across to his comrades. You do not need me to tell you of the highly respectable precedents that exist for such action.
It is necessary to get rid of humbug where this question of the ‘non-Communist press’ is concerned. The Party publications are freely available to non-Party members, sold in shops, pushed by Party members: they are not secret inner-Party bulletins. What is the difference between a letter appearing in World News or Tribune or the New Statesman? Incidentally, do you know whether more Party members read the New Statesman and Tribune than read World News? Neither do I, but it seems at least quite likely.
I should also mention that letters have appeared in recent months in the New Statesman and Tribune from Andrew Rothstein, Sam Russell [42] and other Party members, dealing with the same sort of thing as my letters, which have caused me as a Communist considerable embarrassment; but I have not heard that these comrades have been asked to explain themselves or warned not to do it again.
Answer to Question 4: In the absence of a clearer definition of what you mean by ‘this type of communication’ I cannot give the undertaking you ask. I have had letters in the New Statesman in the past without any question from you, and have regarded it as part of my duty to write there on matters of public interest on which I had something useful to contribute. If I accepted this vaguely-defined ban I would never know when I might not be violating it, and would feel bound to submit any proposed letter to you to obtain your imprimatur. I am sure you would not wish to be bothered with giving that. In any case, this would mean a delay that might cause the letter to arrive too late for publication while still topical. Some confidence must be shown in the good sense of rank-and-file members and some freedom to err accorded them, or the Party will be finally strangled in Rules and interpretations of Rules.
May I end by recalling Lenin’s wise warning that if one insists on getting rid of all the thinking people who sometimes make themselves a bit awkward one is bound to end up alone with a set of docile dolts?
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Comrade Pearce
Your letter of the 17 May was discussed at the last meeting of the London District Committee on 19 May.
The District Committee considers your action in carrying inner-Party controversy into the non-Party press was a breach of Party discipline.
I was asked to draw your attention to the decisions of the Twenty-Fifth National Congress and to inform you that if in future you utilise the non-Party press for inner-Party controversy the District Committee will have to consider disciplinary action.
Yours fraternally
Betty Matthews
London District Organiser
Dear Betty
Thank you for your letter of 27 May. I cannot, however, accept it as an adequate reply to mine of 17 May, addressed to Comrade Mahon.
I have been a Party member, as you know, for over 20 years, since the days when we both were students, and have never been rebuked in this way before. You do not answer my queries as to whether all my letters to Tribune and the New Statesman are to be regarded as violations of Party discipline, and if so why; and I am at loss as how to interpret your silence about Wortley Hall, since it was Comrade Mahon who brought this matter up in the first place. Is my explanation accepted?
I should be glad to have guidance from you as to what is and what is not permissible to a Party member in the present period as regards writing to the non-Party press and speaking at non-Party meetings, but your letter does not really provide such guidance. I am fearful that I may, for lack of this guidance, inadvertently render myself subject to disciplinary action with which you threaten me.
Please write me more explicitly about these matters as soon as you can. At present I feel inhibited from writing to the Press or speaking at non-Party gatherings at all, for fear of slipping up! The Political Letter isn’t much help, as it appears to say that we can and should discuss with all trends in the labour movement except Trotskyists, but the reason for this unique instance of discrimination isn’t explained, and anyway it is difficult these days to tell who is a Trotskyist and who isn’t. So many statements and conceptions we used to regard as Trotskyist seem to have become commonplace now, and any broad assembly of socialists is liable to include people who might be regarded as Trotskyists.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Johnnie
I enclose the pamphlet by ‘Joseph Redman’. Could I please have it back some time?
On second thoughts, it would perhaps not be right for me to hand over to you my correspondence from another Party member, unless asked to do so. If the EC thought it necessary to enquire into the activities of any member of our Group, I think we must then give any information asked for.
But this pamphlet is not confidential. It is relevant, because it is part of the circumstantial evidence on which we base our suspicions about the leak. Last autumn Brian sent me what seemed to be an article, in his own handwriting. I returned it, keeping a typed copy (my normal procedure). I also commented on the draft, criticising the general approach, and a discussion by correspondence followed. In the spring, when the ‘Reasoner Pamphlet’ on this subject appeared, I compared it with my typed copy of the article, and found it identical except for very minor alterations.
I understand that the latest issue of the Trotskyist Labour Review carries an article by ‘Joseph Redman’ on ‘Communist Party History’, but I have not yet seen it.
So far as I know, it is not against Party rules to publish articles or pamphlets outside the Party, even under a pen-name. But the type of journal and the tone of the article or pamphlet are relevant in assessing the purpose of any Party member who does this.
I think it would be in order to tell you that several weeks ago I had a letter from G Healy, of Labour Review, asking to meet me for a discussion of ‘Communist history’ etc, and using Brian’s name by way of introduction. I stalled by postponing it for a few weeks. (Incidentally I never did meet Peter Fryer after all - he just didn’t turn up!) I am not terribly anxious to meet Trotskyists; they bore me. But I don’t want to give the impression that we have anything to run away from in our own history.
The enclosed pamphlet is also relevant to our own recent pamphlet. Having read that draft last autumn I realised what use can be made of the New Line period. I knew that others were working on that kind of history - the Trotskyists had advertised a history of the CPGB, and Pelling is writing a book on our Party, concentrating on relations with the CI. [43] But I was convinced that treated objectively the subject could be useful to our Party members, especially in counteracting the demoralising effect of the other stuff. When our pamphlet was banned I believed this fact would be publicised by newspapers (this was the pre-Congress period) in a way damaging to the Party. That was my reason for publishing. (With any other subject, at some other time, I would not have published against instructions, but would have raised the matter again for reconsideration.)
In view of this leak, is there any possibility that the PC would reconsider the ban now, so that if any questions were asked by Party members it could simply be said that there is no ban? This would not make any practical difference to the pamphlet, as it is now sold out and I would not duplicate any more. But don’t you honestly think, when you look at ‘Joseph Redman’s’ effort, that our pamphlet would have been useful to the Party members at the present time? We don’t want the history of our Party suppressed, we want it studied objectively. Can you truthfully say that our pamphlet was not objective and fair?
The most conclusive reason for our certainty about the leak is the fact that Brian did not know about the ban until last weekend. He had not attended the three committee meetings where the matter was discussed; when he attended our next meeting, by tacit agreement we all made heroic efforts to discuss our agenda in such a way that no mention was made of the ban. But at last weekend’s meeting it was, of course, impossible to proceed without referring openly to the matter. I had taken what precautions I could, by marking the Propositions ‘confidential’ (in any case we had worded them in such a way as not to mention the ban); and by stating at the beginning of Sunday’s meeting that all business discussed there was confidential and must not be reported outside. Eric also, in opening the discussion on the matter of the last pamphlet, tried to gloss over the actual ban; but of course it could not remain concealed, since the discussion hinged on it.
In the circumstances Eric is now writing to Brian to ask for his resignation from our committee. We know this will be the unanimous wish of the Group. Whether we can exclude him from the Group itself is for you to say.
I am concerned about the effect of this leak on the standing of our Group in the eyes of the Party membership. There is a great gulf between critical Party members who express their disagreements openly while continuing to work for the Party, and those who use a pen-name to write what they dare not say within the Party. (Brian sat through our meeting last Sunday without uttering a single word.) I hope that it will somehow be made clear to the Party that the rest of our Group, whatever their views on certain controversial matters, are loyal to the Party.
With best wishes
Yours fraternally
Betty Grant
Dear Betty
At the Historians Group committee last Saturday Betty Grant stated in relation to Brian Pearce:
1: He wrote the letters published in the New Statesman under the name of ‘Marxist’.
2: He sent her a manuscript copy, asking for her views, then later a typescript copy of the pamphlet, which has now appeared as New Reasoner pamphlet No 1 under the name of Joseph Redman.
3: He is connected with Labour Review.
4: She received a letter from Gerry Healy in which he used the name of Brian Pearce as a mutual friend and means of introduction.
Possibly it might be in order to suggest that Mr Pearce is not the kind of person who should sit on the History Commission.
Yours
J
Dear Betty
You sent me a letter and the pamphlet. I am returning the pamphlet.
The main thing I want to take up with you is about Brian Pearce. I told the comrades here about your letters and they felt that the Executive Committee ought to know the facts. Therefore I would be very pleased if you could give me the correspondence so as I can bring it to the attention of the Executive Committee.
About the general question of these pamphlets and articles on the History of the Party. I have asked the comrades concerned with the History to try to produce articles, in particular for our theoretical journal, covering some of these disputed phases of Party history, as quickly as possible.
Best wishes
Dear Comrade Pearce
I would like you to come and see me. I am inviting comrade Betty Grant to come along also as she wishes to raise certain questions when you are here.
Will you suggest dates and times when it would be convenient to you apart from this weekend when I shall be out of London, and I'll confirm the most suitable date and time.
Yours fraternally
William Lauchlan
National Organiser
1) Ask Betty to say what she wants cleared up. Did you supply the information on the History meeting to Peter Fryer in his Newsletter?
BG: Arises from Fryer Newsletter.
Phoned WW - asked did JG know.
Damaging History Group - certain members.
‘Leak’ from a confidential meeting.
Same evening - sheer chance met JG.
Informal discussion - said believe came from BP.
Reluctant to believe!
BG produced evidence - Reasoner!
a: Joseph Redman - JG had not read NR pamphlet.
b: Correspondence BP/BG re what ultimately came as NR pamphlet - then withdrew offer.
c: When came back from holiday letter JG for ‘evidence’ authorship NR pamphlet. Came see him & wanted to see BP with JG.
* Understands PC regards authorship NR pamphlet as serious matter.
* Contents prove authorship = also another article in Labour Review. Also by J Redman.
* Anxiety inside Historians Group re Party History Commission. Certain amount of concern re intentions of at least some comrades on Party Historians Commission.
Brian P: Reaffirms view that should been put questions in writing.
Astonished and very surprised at Betty. Surprised re showing of correspondence to JG. Whole attitude to him makes it very difficult for him to say anything re suppositions! Leak, doesn’t propose, affirm or deny.
Feels disgusted re way business handled re JM - re correspondence in NSN - Had tried to get into WN. Some people got in 2/3 times.
Felt was being accused publicity seeker. Bit much now to be accused of writing under pseudonym!
Can’t affirm or deny.
Agrees Betty re malaise in Party History Group. Not surprising pamphlets like JR appear and alleged ‘leak’.
BG: Leak causes problems for both Group and Party leadership. Understands BP: Declined to resign. Hobsbawm refuses sit in the same meeting. No other member of the Group would sit in.
BP: Background - Hobsbawm over period of time not exactly been a friend of his! Surprised at Hobsbawm letter out of blue - not challenging accuracy of report.
WL: Did you supply the info re the History meeting to Peter Fryer?
BP: In other circumstances might have given a straight yes or no - not now!
BP: At History Group meeting pre meeting PC asked if been any differences re political letter and Labour-Communist Relations - was told it was alright!
BG: For three Committee meetings BP absent - BG had reported the trouble re pamphlet
BG: At those meetings Chair (EH) had stressed not to talk re ban outside. Pre-Congress - not to cause trouble. When he approved at meeting pre discussion PC majority comrades (who might support BP position) by sheer tacit agreement decided not to discuss the ban!
BP: One omission, that is, not only members who unaware ban - that relevant.
Seems got an additional grievance!
BG: Don’t trust him because know contacts PF.
BP: What basis was there for suggesting disclosed info to PF?
At meeting HG Committee when asked re pamphlet - was tacit agreement.
What real basis was not be trusted?
BG: 1) NR pamphlet - contents, tone etc. 2) Fryer position in public meetings re HP in East London - January: Remark re role of CI.
BP: Admits he a friend of P Fryer.
Was flabbergasted re a [illegible] Ban!
Had been led to believe was not case!
His reply to EH - Had been coopted to Party History Committee, if feel should be de-coopted ‘go ahead’.
BP: In view of Betty’s attitude and other members not prepared to say yes or no! Will leave the meeting.
Dear Comrade
In view of the attitude which you and Eric Hobsbawm have adopted towards me, as you explained to Comrade Lauchlan and myself yesterday - going to the length of deliberately withholding from me information which as a member of the Historians’ Committee I had a right to receive, and even giving me what you yourself described a ‘misleading’ answer when I asked for this information (regarding the Political Committee’s ban on Labour-Communist Relations 1920-39) - I am forced to consider whether I can remain a member of the committee.
Since Comrade Hobsbawm has stated, as you made clear yesterday, that he cannot bring himself to sit on the same committee with me, which, as you have pointed out, could produce a situation of deadlock in the work of the Historians Committee, I have decided to resign - so as to prevent my personal position being used to hold up or confuse discussion of the urgent and fundamental questions now before the committee, in connexion with the attitude of the Party Centre towards Party history and related matters.
My resignation should not be taken as implying either admission or denial on my part of allegations that have been made regarding my behaviour as a member of the committee. The purpose of this resignation is, by removing irrelevant personal antagonisms from this field, to facilitate a struggle on a basis of principle for truth and frankness in Party historical work, should members wish to carry on this struggle. I will do my best to assist from outside the committee any efforts that may be made in this direction.
With all good wishes for the future work of the Historians’ Committee and regrets that I should have been compelled to end my membership of it in these circumstances.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Comrade Lauchlan
I think I should let you know that after my experience on Monday evening, I have decided to resign from the Historian’s Committee, and have written to Betty Grant to this effect. It is clear that certain comrades are prepared to allow their personal hostility to me to get out of hand to an extent which could disrupt the work of the Historians’ Committee at a crucial stage - when it ought to be taking up with the Political Committee the attitude to Party History expressed in that remark by Comrade Pollitt’s which Betty quoted to you. It seems that my departure from the scene would help questions of principle to emerge plainly without the confusion introduced by ‘personalities’.
My resignation is, of course, without prejudice as to the accusation brought against me by comrades Grant and Hobsbawm, on which I intend to make no further comment. It is not the first time that I have been the object of this kind of suspicion. In 1943, when I was on the staff of HQ London District, a conference of officers was held to hear an address by General Smith, the District Commander, explaining the importance of a new programme of Army ‘Education’ entitled The British Way and Purpose. The General pointed out that the Soviet Army’s successes had led to a disturbing increase in sympathy among the troops with left-wing ideas, and the object of the new programme was to counter this trend. When a verbatim response to his remarks appeared in the Daily Worker next day, together with an editorial commenting on them ('Chuck it Smith!’), there was no little consternation at HQ. Shortly afterwards I was unexpectedly posted to India. Later I learnt from a friend who was in a position to know the facts that I had been posted because I was presumed to have been the officer responsible for the leak!
In any setting I suppose independent-minded and outspoken individuals are liable to incur this sort of persecution; it is irritating, but as Communists we must doubtless learn to expect it and react to it with dignity and discretion.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Bill
I enclose a copy of a letter received from Brian Pearce today, together with my reply. His resignation will undoubtedly be accepted by our committee at its next meeting. So far as this particular matter is concerned our Group can now regard it as closed.
I must point out that Brian’s membership of the Party History Commission is no concern of our Group. He is in no sense a representative of our Group on that Commission. His resignation from our committee, therefore, does not affect his relations with the Party History Commission.
Also, I wish to repeat what I said at our interview about the matter of the pamphlet and article written under a pen-name. The committee of our Group has taken no cognisance of this matter, which we would not regard as our concern.
My personal view of historical material published outside the Party by Party members is, as I have said before, that historical writing must be judged on its merits and it must not be assumed merely from the fact of publication outside the Party that the material is therefore inaccurate. I would also deplore any attempt to impose a general ban on the publication of bona fide historical material outside the Party, considering what great difficulties are now placed in the way of publication inside the Party.
In view of Brian’s resignation from our committee (which, to the members of our Group, will be taken as an admission of guilt) I sincerely hope that the Political Committee will regard all other members of the Group as cleared of suspicion. We ourselves, knowing each other so intimately over a period of years, are quite certain that we know where each member stands. In present circumstances, even resignation from the Party does not necessarily entail breaking faith with the members of our Group. That is why it is possible for us to maintain relations with the members we have lost, without any danger of disloyalty to the Party.
With best wishes
Yours fraternally
Betty Grant
Dear Brian
Thank you for your letter of the 27 August with your resignation from the committee of the Historians’ Group. This letter will be referred to the committee at its meeting in September. I appreciate your intention that the work of the Group should not be impeded.
As for your supposition that there has been any personal antagonism against yourself from either the chairman of the Group or myself, I can assure you that you are mistaken. As secretary of the Group, I had to report the matter of the leak to Party headquarters, and I had, for the sake of innocent members of the Group, to indicate the person I believed to be responsible and to give my reasons for thinking so. Personal feelings in such a matter are beside the point.
My own personal feeling about all this is the deepest regret that a misunderstanding on your part about what the committee of the Group was aiming at in these joint discussions with the Party leadership - that is, to remove past difficulties, not to create new ones - has led to a position where it is no longer possible for you to use your undoubted historical knowledge and concern for historical truth in the interests of the Party membership.
I would have been happier if you had chosen to clear the names of other members of the Group by admitting your own connection with the leak.
Yours fraternally
Betty Grant
Dear Comrade Pearce
Thank you for your letter of 28 August. I read it to the Political Committee after I had reported what had happened last Monday evening.
The Political Committee is not satisfied with the way the business finished on Monday evening and requested me to have another discussion with you. It is necessary to clarify the position in relation to the matters that were mentioned.
I could see you on Tuesday or Wednesday evening next week at any time that would be convenient to you. Will you let me know when you will be able to call and I'll arrange to be here to meet you.
Yours fraternally
William Lauchlan
National Organiser
Dear Comrade Lauchlan
Thank you for your letter. I don’t wish to say anything further about the matters raised by Betty Grant on Monday. In my opinion, Peter Fryer’s Newsletter is, by and large, performing a useful service, and I don’t intend to get involved in any sort of hostile inquiry into Fryer’s contacts, sources of information, etc.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Comrade Pearce
Thank you for your letter of 30 August. It does not, however, give a straight answer to the point that has come up.
I am, therefore, repeating what I said in my previous letter, namely, that I have been asked by the Political Committee to have a further meeting with you to discuss the questions raised at our last meeting and which were left unanswered.
Please let me know when it will be convenient for you to see me.
Yours fraternally
William Lauchlan
National Organiser
Dear Comrade
Following the meeting of the Historians’ Group on 7 July a report appeared in the Peter Fryer Newsletter which could only have been provided by someone in attendance at that meeting.
As you will understand this creates considerable difficulty for the work of the Historians’ Group as well as for the Party generally. The Political Committee, following consultation with Cde Betty Grant, Secretary of the Historians’ Committee, wishes to ask every comrade in attendance at the meeting on 7 July the formal question. Have you any responsibility for the leakage of this report to the Fryer Newsletter? We very much regret having to ask such a grave question but feel confident that you will understand the need to do so in the present circumstances. It is undoubtedly the best thing to do in order to clear up this matter and to avoid a general atmosphere of suspicion.
Will you please let me have your answer as soon as possible. I must apologise for the delay in writing to you but the holidays intervened and we wanted to write to all comrades at the same time.
Yours fraternally
William Lauchlan
National Organiser
Dear Comrade Lauchlan
Your letter of 11 September, addressed to all who were present at the meeting on 7 July between the Historians’ Committee and representatives of the PC, concludes with the sentence: ‘I must apologise for the delay in writing to you but the holidays intervened and we wanted to write to all comrades at the same time.’ In fact, the matter dealt with in your letter (the ‘leak’ of information to Peter Fryer’s Newsletter) was raised with me, in your presence, so long ago as 26 August - and in such an offensive manner that I felt obliged to decline to answer the question you then put to me. Subsequently you wrote to me about the same matter, on 29 August and 3 September.
You will appreciate that the pretence now made that this question is being raised with ‘all comrades at the same time’ does not make me any more cooperatively inclined.
As I wrote you on 30 August, I am in any case not disposed to join in any hostile ‘investigation’ of the Newsletter. I think it is, by and large, doing a good job by publishing news and views that ought to appear in the Party-controlled press. Sometimes it may even cause something worthwhile to be published in the Communist press that otherwise might not see the light there, judging by Len Wincott’s letter in Thursday’s Daily Worker, which I doubt would have appeared but for the piece in the Newsletter of 27 July headed; ‘Len Wincott Is Free, Working in Moscow.’ [46]
How can your circular, in any case, get you the information you are seeking, unless somebody returns an affirmative answer to your question? I have always presumed that the ‘leaks’ that appear in the press (including the Daily Worker) are due, as a rule, not so much to deliberate passing of information as to ‘careless talk’ alertly intercepted and intelligently interpreted. It could therefore well be that somebody had ‘responsibility’ for a given leak without knowing it.
The one good result that I foresee coming from your circular is that it may introduce some comrades to the Newsletter who are as yet unacquainted with this useful publication.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Brian Pearce
A report was made a few weeks ago to the PC about the response to my letter asking the comrades who attending the historians meeting their position on the ‘leakage’ of information to Fryer.
It was agreed that a report should be made to the Historians’ Committee and they should make such recommendations about BP as they might wish to put. In this connection it should be noted that Pearce has himself resigned from the Committee of the Historians’ Group. The question remains of his membership of the Group itself.
Since the report to the PC the comrades have replied, except John Morris, [47] disclaiming any responsibility for the leak.
I phoned Betty Grant to enquire when the Historians’ Committee would be meeting and she informed me that it would be on Sunday, 3 November.
It is necessary for a comrade to attend this meeting to present a report and to hear what they have to say in the way of further proposals for action.
I cannot attend as I shall be in Newcastle that weekend. In view of Bill Wainwright’s [48] association with this group it would be best if he could attend.
Yours
Bill [49]
‘The Light of the Red Moon is shining on our collection’, wrote Barbara Niven [50] in her fund column in the Daily Worker of 12 October.
Our Stalinists clearly set great hopes on the Soviet earth satellite as a means of covering up and compensating for their embarrassment over the H-bomb vote at Brighton.
The editorial in World News of 12 October dragged the satellite into the discussion around Dudintsev’s [51] novel Not By Bread Alone: ‘Readers... may wonder how it comes about, if the picture is as Dudintsev portrays it, that the Soviet Union has ever managed to manufacture even a motor car, let alone an earth satellite...’
Charitably, one assumes the writer of those lines has not read the novel in question. Dudintsev’s hero does eventually get his invention accepted, and the opportunity to work further upon it, thanks to the Soviet Ministry of Defence, and in particular to a scientist attached thereto who might have been modelled on Lieutenant-General Academician AA Blagonravov. [52]
In any case, what caused the uproar over Not By Bread Alone was not so much the picture of empire-building in the industrial and scientific spheres, and its pernicious consequences - that had been done before in other books - as the exposure of social contrasts, privilege and poverty.
The Stalinists protest too much that the satellite answers Dudintsev. It was significant, one is forced to think, that when the Daily Worker rebuked the Daily Telegraph for the latter’s editorial ‘Peasants into Spacemen’ (9 October) this sentence was not quoted or discussed: ‘For a regime that bases its reason for existence on improving the condition of the working class, a space rocket is a spectacular irrelevance.’
That the splendid achievement of Soviet scientists - based on the international development of science during the half-century, with contributions by German, Russian and other research workers, and on the similar international advance of technology - owes a great deal to the advantages of the Soviet system, even in its distorted Stalinist form, it would be idle to deny.
Absence of Crippling Rivalries: What is perhaps especially important in this connexion is the comparative absence - thanks to the nationalised property relations and economic planning inherited from the October Revolution and the Left Opposition platform - of the kind of crippling rivalries between separate ‘interests’ that have hindered progress in the same field in the USA.
But to draw simplistic, straight-line conclusions from Soviet scientific leadership in this field about the social and political set-up in the USSR would be as misleading as the treatment by RP Dutt in his Fascism and Social Revolution of the alleged negative prospects of scientific and technical achievement in Nazi Germany.
We learnt the hard way how remote from reality that was during the Second World War.
One remembers also the crude deduction made by so many people in 1945 that because the Americans had discovered before the Russians how to utilise atomic energy, therefore monopoly capitalism’s superiority had been demonstrated beyond further dispute.
(The Russians rightly dwell upon the pioneer role played in rocket engineering and astronautics by their own Tsiolkovsky, [53] the centenary of whose birth was celebrated not long ago. His research was well advanced before the Revolution in spite of Tsarist oppression.)
Odd Contrast With Montagu: The World News editorial comment on Dudintsev contrasts oddly with the review of Not By Bread Alone that appeared in the previous (5 October) issue of that journal from the pen of Ivor Montagu. [54]
He wrote that ‘we British readers must be glad to have this novel, which, carefully studied, reveals to us much’. It is a ‘good book’, we learnt; with characters, settings and relationships that are sufficiently convincing to make the author’s case.
Montagu characterised Soviet society as ‘a transitional society’ (how did that get past the Stalinist censor?!) and, far from denying the existence of powerful bureaucrats like Drozdov and Avdiyev, argued that ‘Cold War’ provided them with their ideal climate.
A startling contrast with Montagu’s review is offered by Pat Sloan’s [55] review in the latest British-Soviet Newsletter. The tone here is utterly different.
In Sloan’s own words, his is ‘a mood of aggravation and disappointment’ as he reads Not By Bread Alone. ‘Nebulously drawn’, ‘not entirely credible’, ‘less and less convincing’, ‘so it drags on’, ‘piling up of improbability on improbability’ - such are his typical comments.
Somewhere between Montagu and Sloan the Line has got snarled up.
Leonard Hussey
Dear Comrade
We understand that you are taking an active part in the Socialist Forum activity and took a prominent part in the recent conference.
I should be glad if you would be kind enough to let me know whether it is correct that you are taking part in the Forum movement and whether you wish to make any statement in relation to it.
The matter will be considered by the next District Committee meeting. As such activity is not compatible with Party membership, the District Committee will have to consider what action should be taken. Any statement you make will be placed before them.
I have sent a copy of this letter to your Party Branch Secretary.
Yours fraternally
John Mahon
London District Secretary [56]
Brian Pearce
1: In 1949 Brian Pearce got out duplicated statement for the twentieth anniversary of HP as General Secretary.
This went into detail on the sweeping changes in the Party in 1929 and implied a parallel situation. It was circulated to a number of leading comrades. It formed the basis of much of the historical material used by the opposition in the pre-Congress discussion.
2: Many letters in pre-Congress period to centre and DW.
3: Wortley Hall Conference immediately after the Congress. Speech which in essence raised the Trotskyist position - called for re-examination of ‘socialism in one country’ controversy of the twenties, etc, etc.
Attack on Rothstein - cynical Stalinist who knew what was happening.
4: Many subsequent letters to Tribune and New Statesman.
5: Various letters in Fryer Newsletter, May, June, etc.
6: July article in PF Newsletter which only could have come from Historians’ Committee.
Investigation - all other members of the committee denied the leak - Pearce would make no comment - replied that he had no intention in getting involved in a discussion of Fryer’s contacts - the Newsletter pursued a useful job. Finally resigned from Historians’ Committee.
Betty Grant then made a statement that the text of an article which Pearce had at one time shown her appeared in Labour Review under the name of Joseph Redman and that she believed Pearce to be Joseph Redman author of the New Reasoner pamphlet and articles in Gerry Healy’s Labour Review.
Pearce refused to answer the question put to him on this. Discussion with Bill Lauchlan and Betty Grant.
Participation as a leading figure in London Forum meeting putting forward policy supported by Gerry Healy. (Note that another Trotskyist grouping accused Healy of rigging the Forum conference and controlling it and getting his policy through.)
Among the Communist Party members who will not be re-registering in the party for 1958 is Brian Pearce, of North London, who is being threatened with disciplinary action for his participation in the Socialist Forum movement.
A member since 1934, he was until the end of last year a regular Daily Worker seller and an industrious back-room boy in several spheres of the party’s work.
He served for some years on the staff of the Daily Worker and with the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR.
Like a number of others, Pearce re-registered for 1957 in the hope that the Easter Congress would bring about important changes in the Communist Party.
He is now convinced that this party has irreparably ceased to be a Marxist party capable of leading Britain to socialism and that no useful purpose is served by continuing his membership.
In particular, his experiences as a member of the Commission allegedly preparing a history of the party have completed his disillusionment with King Street.
The exodus from the party in considerable numbers during the last two years of experienced ‘cadres’ like Pearce is probably even more important for its future than the loss - or the retention - of certain more famous names.
Pearce has played an active part in the Socialist Forum movement which began to develop towards the end of 1956. Some readers will recall his talk at the Wortley Hall Forum conference on ‘Some Lessons of the Stalin Era’ and his successful moving at the recent London conference of the Hornsey amendments aimed at preventing the ‘capture’ of the Forums by any of the so-called ‘tendencies’.
On 5 November, Pearce received the following letter from John Mahon, London district secretary of the Communist Party:
We understand that you are taking an active part in the Socialist Forum activity, and took a prominent part in the recent conference.
I should be glad if you would be kind enough to let me know whether it is correct that you are taking part in the Forum movement and whether you wish to make any statement in relation to it.
The matter will be considered by the next District Committee meeting. As such activity is not compatible with Party membership, the District Committee will have to consider what action should be taken. Any statement you make will be placed before them.
I have sent a copy of this letter to your Party Branch Secretary.
Asked to comment, Brian Pearce said:
Whoever else may be trying to ‘capture’ the Forums, nobody can say the Communist Party is. So far as I know, none of the other socialist groups has seen fit to forbid its members to take part in Forum discussions. King Street’s obscurantist anxiety to keep its rank-and-file in a mental ghetto suggests a certain lack of confidence somewhere, in spite of Sputniks.
Discussions Pearce has had with Labour Party members, within the framework of the Forum movement, have convinced him, like many others, that the proper line for Marxists to take in the present situation is to join the Labour Party.
Alison MacLeod [57] has misread Lenin’s The Deception of the People. The Socialist Revolutionary writers and newspapers Lenin criticises in his speech of May 1919 were free and active when he spoke, and remained so for two years thereafter at least.
That Lenin’s readers had access to the publications he mentioned is indicated clearly enough by some of his expressions, for example:
No doubt you have encountered in the newspapers the names of the SRs Volsky and (I think) Svyatitsky, who wrote recently in Izvestia... Not long ago I read a splendid article in... Pravda in which were quoted the theses of citizen Sher, one of the most ‘socialist’ of the Menshevik social democrats...
White Army at the Gates: Presumably Alison MacLeod was misled by Lenin’s reference to the confiscation of certain SR publications on one particular occasion, in connexion with a conspiracy detected in Petrograd when the White Army was at the city gates.
An account of the status of the opposition socialist parties in Soviet Russia in this period will be found in EH Carr’s The Bolshevik Revolution.
He mentions, incidentally, that Lenin was criticised by a speaker at the 1919 party congress for allowing so much freedom to these groups!
It is useful that Alison MacLeod has drawn attention to The Deception of the People. This speech, though issued here in 1933 in the Little Lenin Library, was excluded from the 12-volume Selected Works which began to appear in 1934.
Unfashionable Propositions: The reason may have been that the work in question is exceptionally rich in propositions of a kind which were then being characterised as Trotskyism, for example:
Now, surely, has any of the Bolsheviks ever denied that the revolution in its final form can only be victorious when it embraces all, or at least some, of the most important of the advanced countries?
A society in which a class difference between workers and peasants remains is neither a communist nor socialist society.
In practice the issue of the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie decides everything, while the intermediate, middle classes... inevitably hesitate between one camp and the other.
Brian Pearce
Dear Jack [58]
I have read through the material and I think we should recommend DPC to expel him unless there are any procedural snags - which I gather from Johnnie there aren’t.
I think the grounds for expulsion are as follows:
1: His views as expressed in Peter Fryer’s Newsletter are no longer those of a Communist but of a Trotskyist - shown by the statements made at Wortley Hall and reported in 10 May Newsletter and never repudiated, modified or withdrawn by him, that is, 1. Soviet Union not yet Socialism; 2. Factions should be allowed in CP; 3. ‘Very idea of building Socialism in one country was perhaps revisionist... was the ideology of a bureaucracy.’ 4. Support for Trotsky - ‘Trotsky’s most valuable writings - quite uncanny to read them now.’ 5. ‘Policy of socialism in one country developed into a policy of no socialism anywhere else.’ 6. Working class held back in Spain.
2: Although he has not replied to Comrade Mahon’s recent letters he has intimated to editor Newsletter that he will not renew his card this year. ‘He is now convinced that the party has irreparably ceased to be a Marxist party capable of leading Britain to socialism.’ (Newsletter, 16 November) Surely anyone with such a view can only continue to remain in Party for dishonest reasons.
3: He has not only broken Party discipline on numerous occasions by discussing inner-Party matters and attacking Party policy in the non-party press but he must also have supplied to editor of Newsletter the personal letter sent to him by Comrade Mahon!
Will you let me know what you think of this draft and make any suggestions you have for changes or additions.
Yours
J Gollan [59]
Dear Comrade
As no reply had been received to my letter of 1 November, the District Committee postponed consideration of the matter to give you further time to make a statement.
No communication has been received from you. A copy of my letter to you appears in an anti-Communist periodical, and presumably you supplied it.
The next meeting of the District Committee will have before it a proposal to expel you from the Communist Party, for conduct detrimental to the interests of the Party. Any statement you may let me have will go before the Committee provided it arrives in time. The meeting is on Sunday, 15 December.
Yours fraternally
John Mahon
Secretary
Dear Comrade Mahon
Thank you for your letter of 6 December.
I have no comment to make except that I should like you to place before the committee my correspondence with you and Betty Matthews earlier this year - that is, your letter to me dated 10 May and my reply dated 17 May, Betty’s letter to me dated 27 May and my reply dated 3 June. Some members may be interested in the points I made and may wish to comment on the handling of the affair by Betty and yourself, as it relates to what has happened since.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Comrade
Your letter of the 11 December and the correspondence mentioned therein were before the District Committee at its last meeting yesterday.
This is to inform you that the District Committee decided to expel you from the Communist Party for conduct detrimental the interests of the Communist Party.
You have the right of appeal.
Any appeal should be addressed to the Appeals Commission, 16 King Street, WC2, within 14 days.
Yours fraternally
John Mahon
London District Secretary
Dear Comrade Mahon
With reference to your letter of 17 December, I should be glad if you would inform me:
1: Whether my expulsion has been notified to the Executive Committee, under Rule 21, and, if so, whether they made any comment;
2: Whether Friern Barnet branch has been notified of my expulsion, under rule 19c, and, if so, whether they made any comment, and;
3: What reason was given in each case - ‘conduct detrimental to the CP’ is most vague, and could mean anything.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear Comrades
I understand from Comrade Mahon that it has been decided to expel me from the Communist Party.
In view of the fact that I lapsed from membership in mid-October, when I fell 13 weeks in arrears with dues payments; that nobody since then has subjected me to the regime of ‘repeated visits’ prescribed in the Rules; and that over a month ago I announced my intention not to re-register but to join the Labour Party - the Party leadership’s action in expelling me seems to be a work of supererogation, to say the least. However, I suppose you have your compelling reasons for making this gesture.
I certainly have no intention of wasting your valuable time with any involved discussion about this matter. Doubtless you will recall, in expelling me, the long list of good Communists who have been expelled since Stalinism first set in; and how sometimes those who did the expelling were later themselves expelled - as in the case of JT Murphy, mover of the resolution expelling Trotsky from the Comintern.
Incidentally, may I say that one of the things I most regret about my 23 years in the Communist Party is that I allowed myself to be miseducated into helping in the vilification of Trotsky and his ideas - ideas which I now see to have constituted a very great contribution to the treasure-house of socialist theory. If in the last few months I have done a little, through sundry talks and writings, to encourage others in or recently out of the CP, to study and discuss the works of this eminent Russian revolutionary, I think that should be accounted to me for merit. Only through what you call ‘Trotskyism’ can people who have rightly become disgusted with Stalinism be saved, so to speak, for Marxism. If you were a real Communist Party, you would appreciate such efforts, instead of expelling members for them.
All that remains is to wish you the season’s greetings and to express the hope that 1958 will see a mighty advance of the working-class movement, in the course of which the numerous honest men and women still in your ranks will at last understand and shake off the incubus of Stalinism, in time to play their part in the real battle for Socialism in Britain.
Yours fraternally
Brian Pearce
Dear John
I enclose letter from Brian Pearce. As he is not a member of the Party and has not used his right to appeal, I see no reason why I should reply to him.
I have sent the rest of the papers to Betty, would you pass this letter on to her please.
Yours fraternally
John Mahon
1. Daily Worker, 2 May 1956. All notes have been added by John McIlroy and Paul Flewers. Spelling errors in the original have been amended.
2. World News and Views, 2 December 1939.
3. Douglas Garman (1903-1969) was a poet and literary critic, and in the immediate postwar years the CPGB’s Education Officer.
4. World News and Views, 29 June 1940.
5. Frank Owen was a prominent journalist. It was on his television programme ‘Seconds Out’ on 30 April 1956 that Pollitt made his admission about the overall anti-fascist nature of the Second World War.
6. World News, 5 May 1956.
7. On 25 April 1956, Pollitt suffered a haemorrhage behind the eyes which prompted his resignation as General Secretary.
8. Rajani Palme Dutt, Why This War, London, 1939.
9. Wilhelm Weitling was a German working-class thinker whose Guarantees of Harmony and Liberty was praised by Marx before their breach in 1846.
10. World News, 19 May 1956.
11. Reginald Reynolds was a journalist prominent in the Independent Labour Party in the 1930s, and the husband of the novelist Ethel Mannin.
12. Labour Monthly, May 1956.
13. For Rothstein, see Introduction, note 58.
14. Albert Inkpin (1884-1944) was removed as the General Secretary of the CPGB in the purge of 1929-30 which saw Pollitt installed as the new leader.
15. GDH Cole, ‘Socialists and Communism’, New Statesman, 5 May 1956.
16. Otto Kuusinen (1881-1964) was a founder member of the Finnish Communist Party. He worked within the Comintern apparatus from 1921 to 1939, joined the CPSU Central Committee in 1941, and became Secretary of its Presidium in 1957.
17. Lavrenti Beria (1899-1953) was Stalin’s police chief, he made a bid for power after Stalin’s death, but was sentenced to death and executed in December 1953.
18. Anastas Mikoyan (1895-1978) was a Soviet leader who survived both Stalin and Khrushchev, retiring as President in 1965.
19. André Gide was a radical French writer. He visited the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s, but was disappointed by what he saw. His book Retour de L'URSS (Back From the USSR, London, 1937) met with much abuse from Stalinists and fellow-travellers.
20. ‘RF Andrews’ was in fact none other than Andrew Rothstein.
21. DN Pritt (1887-1972) was a well-known barrister and prominent fellow-traveller, more Stalinist than Stalin.
22. Iosif Piatnitsky (1882-1939) was an Old Bolshevik and a prominent official in the Comintern apparatus from 1922 to 1931. He disappeared in the purges. Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949) was a leading member of the Bulgarian Communist Party who subsequently headed the Comintern from 1934 to its dissolution in 1943.
23. The Tenth Plenum of the Comintern Executive took place in July 1929. It marked Stalin’s ascendancy over the organisation. Vyacheslav Molotov had helped to consolidate Stalin’s hold over the Comintern, having been coopted onto its Executive in August 1928 at his request, replacing the disgraced Bukharin. Dmitri Manuilsky (1883-1959) joined the Bolsheviks with Trotsky in 1917, and later sided with Stalin. He played an important role in the Comintern apparatus from 1922 until its dissolution, joining its Executive Committee in 1924.
24. For Walter Holmes (1892-1973), see Introduction, note 64.
25. JR Campbell (1894-1969) and Arthur Horner (1894-1968) were, together with Inkpin and Rothstein, removed from the CPGB’s leadership in 1929-30 as unreliable supporters of the new line. In 1956, both Campbell, who was still a leading member, and Horner, by now the General Secretary of the National Union of Miners, supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
26. Walter Tapsell (d 1938) was a partisan of the Third Period line, and was later killed in Spain.
27. JT Murphy (1888-1965) was a supporter of the Comintern’s new line in 1929. He was expelled from the CPGB in 1932 for supporting the call for British credits to the Soviet Union, a position seen as ‘Trotskyist’.
28. William Gallacher (1881-1965), later the MP for West Fife, opposed then supported the Third Period line.
29. Robin Page Arnot (1890-1986) was a Comintern zealot in 1929, as was William Rust (1890-1949), subsequently the editor of the Daily Worker during 1930-32 and from 1942 until his death.
30. Klara Zetkin (1857-1933) was a leading German socialist, prominent in the Second International and later in the Comintern.
31. Karl Radek (1885-1939) played a leading role in the Comintern in the early 1920s. He later repudiated his support for Trotsky, but perished in the Gulag after being found guilty in the second Moscow Trial.
32. Edward Kardelj, a lieutenant of Tito, incurred the personal ire of Stalin in 1948.
33. The statement was attributed to Manuilsky, and was made as a criticism of the absence of a sharp political struggle in the CPGB before 1929.
34. Gentle in manner, resolute in deed.
35. A reference to the views of the so-called Right Opposition groups led in the USA by Jay Lovestone and in Germany by Heinrich Brandler in the 1930s.
36. John Gritten was a CPGB member who visited Ceylon, and wrote on the need for ‘unity’ there in the Daily Worker.
37. See Introduction, note 64.
38. References have been added by hand to New Statesman, 9 February and 29 December, and Tribune, 28 December.
39. For Tom Durkin and John Mahon, see Introduction, note 65.
40. Anna Louise Strong was an American journalist and fellow-traveller of Stalinism.
41. Bob Henderson was a constructive critic of the party leadership.
42. Sam Russell was a Daily Worker journalist and a leadership loyalist.
43. Henry Pelling, The British Communist Party: An Historical Profile, A and C Black, 1958.
44. Probably John Gollan or John Mahon to Betty Matthews (1915-2004), the London District Organiser, or Betty Reid (1915-2004), the party’s specialist on political deviancy.
45. Words abbreviated in the original have been spelt out in full for sake of convenience. BG - Betty Grant, WW - William Wainwright, JG - John Gollan, BP - Brian Pearce, JM - John Mahon, EH - Eric Hobsbawm, PF - Peter Fryer.
46. Len Wincott was an Invergordon mutineer who subsequently joined the CPGB and fled to the Soviet Union. In 1956-57, anti-Stalinists such as Walter Kendall mounted a campaign to discover what had happened to him.
47. John Morris ( -1977) was a lecturer in ancient history and a member of the Historians’ Group.
48. For William Wainwright, see Introduction, note 78.
49. Added in hand, ‘Forum/Fryer Newsletter, London’.
50. Barbara Niven was well known in 1956 and after as the fund-raising columnist of the Daily Worker.
51. For Dudintsev, see Introduction, note 80.
52. AA Blagonravov (1894-1975) was Chairman of the Commission on Space Research in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
53. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) was a pioneer of rocket science in Russia and subsequently the Soviet Union. He proposed the use of rockets for space travel as early as the 1890s.
54. Ivor Montagu (1904-1984) was an admirer of Trotsky who joined the CPGB in 1931 and evolved into an ultra-loyalist.
55. Pat Sloan (1908-1978) was another lifelong admirer of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
56. Added in hand, ‘Mrs M Saunders, 22 Woodside Grove, N12’. She was probably the Secretary of Pearce’s party branch.
57. Alison MacLeod left the CPGB in the aftermath of 1956, and is the author of a splendid memoir of the time, The Death of Uncle Joe, Merlin Press, 1997.
58. Jack Pascoe was a full-time official of the Building Workers Union who was drafted on to the CPGB’s Executive Committee to replace Brian Behan, who, like Pearce, had joined the Trotskyists.
59. Added in hand, ‘Dear Johnnie, Jack Pascoe agrees with the statement and has left you the material.’