CHNN 22, Spring 2008 - School of Social Sciences

they were marched out and the doors were locked behind them. It was a shameful episode, which
really broke their hearts. They were loyal party members who’d gone through the procedure. But
Eddie and I did not. I didn’t appeal. They then wrote and asked me for my party card, so I wrote a
letter, which was published in the Morning Star, saying that they could expel me from the party,
but my party card, which I’d then held for 45 or something years, was mine — and I kept it, and I
have it. I have unbroken membership.
The need to save the party, to keep the party going, was why the CPB [Communist Party of Britain]
was formed, to ‘reclaim the party’, because we could see it disappearing. Don’t forget that these
comrades had been working together, albeit it in local branches, as a district, and people had
known each other for years, at [Morning Star] Bazaars, the Free Trade Hall, been on May Day
parades and demonstrations, and were very close comrades who saw the need to keep together, to
maintain the branch name if nothing else, which is all we have done. I mean, at some stage in life, if
there is a need for a communist party, or if a party is formed which is called ‘the Communist Party’
— it’s there. It doesn’t need to be the same communist party, or the same comrades in it, but the
communist party has been maintained, and that was the intention of the CPB.
The emergence of perestroika and glasnost initially led to a renewal of enthusiasm. I don’t think it
manifested itself in recruitment particularly. I haven’t the figures on that, I don’t really know.
Certainly, I think, everybody really hoped that that was something that was happening. Looking
back I can realise that we were terribly slow to recognise and react to obvious signs. We never
believed that there was anything [seriously amiss] going on in the Soviet Union, when there
obviously was. Although, everybody knew that the whole of the politburo had been obliterated, and
so on and so forth. But somehow or other we were always able to rationalise that. I don’t know why.
Misplaced loyalty? Which is one reason why I say I don’t think we were particularly successful over
the century.
The British party always was a conglomeration of individuals, obviously. And from time to time
there were splits off in one way or another. There always had been schisms. It’s a feature of the left
— it does fragment. But I would say I don’t think it was that there were simply ‘two factions’, and
also comrades who’d remained in the Democratic Left I’m perfectly friendly with and there’s never
been antagonism on their part, although there has been on the part of some others. The library has
been, I think, a cohesive factor, hopefully. It’s also that comrades come here like bee to a honey pot.
Because there isn’t a district or an ‘organisation’ that’s seen as such, a lot of people come to the
library as friends and helpers and so on, because they see it as a progressive organisation.
I still have absolute confidence. No question. What annoys me most is when people talk about the
Soviet Union as if it were communist, or even socialist — which it certainly wasn’t — as if a socialist
society would inevitably suffer the same drawbacks that that did. It’s not so. We’ve got to find the
way. In the back of my mind I’ve got a feeling it can’t be done in huge conurbations, in huge
numbers. It’s got to be broken down, because it’s got to be democratic. People have got to
participate. And unless you have it in small enough numbers so that everybody can participate,
then you don’t get socialism. And if you have it in such a way that you get delegates, who are
delegated; who are delegated; who are delegated, you get the ‘professional delegates’, who then
become your professional bureaucrats.
I don’t believe that the British communist party has ever been democratic — in the terms that I
consider democracy. It has been centralist, yes, but not democratic centralist. I don’t think that
there is such a thing as ‘democratic centralism’. I accept that in an illegal situation, it may be
necessary to have centralism. But we’re not illegal and never have been, and we shouldn’t have
gone along those lines. And we’re still making the mistake. It was a handicap to the party, that way
of organising.
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