What's The Communist party of Great Britain all about then?

[cockneyrebel]

I remember the pomposity of CPGB conferences

What like this:

If we are to fulfil our patriotic and internationalist
this 49th congress is, above all, a congress to
formally move the report of the Party’s outgoing
Long live the international working class movement!
Long live Marxism-Leninism!
Long live the Communist Party of Britain!

http://www.communist-party.org.uk/downloads/CPB_49th_Congress_Report.pdf

I strongly suspect that the 72 "delegates" were actually delegated by no-one but themselves......from this report I think we can probably confidently say they've got 72 members who are in any sense active.

 

[Pete the Greek]

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/documents/cpgb/what.html & http://www.cpgb.org.uk/documents/cpgb/draftprog.html would seem good places to start

i like the way they clearly bullet point their policies. Very clear, although predictably ridden with contradictions

silly sods.

There used to be quite a popular Communist Party in Britain in the 70s. And also an influential NF.

 

[Fullyplumped]

What like this:



http://www.communist-party.org.uk/downloads/CPB_49th_Congress_Report.pdf

I strongly suspect that the 72 "delegates" were actually delegated by no-one but themselves......from this report I think we can probably confidently say they've got 72 members who are in any sense active.

It was 25 years ago or so when I last attended such an event but not much seems to have changed. The most depressing bit was this -

INTERNATIONAL GUESTS AND GREETINGS
The 49th congress was attended by representatives from the Communist Party of Venezuela, the Tudeh Party of Iran, the Iraqi Communist Party, the Communist Party of Ireland, the Party of the Progressive Working People of Cyprus (AKEL), the Communist Party of Chile; and the embassies of the Republic of South Africa, the Republic of Cuba, the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.​

The thing that I remember most vividly from the eighties was Mick McGahey and his like applauding fraternal dictators from China and the then USSR. I don't remember North Koreans, but they're there now.

 

[joevsimp]

What is that armed Marxist-Leninist organisation banned in the EU, with Kurdish as well as Turkish members? Some of them did base themselves in London.

the Kurdistan Workers Party? PKK?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

what do you think of Pinter?

I've never really studied his plays.

 

[Pete the Greek]

I've never really studied his plays.

I asked what do you think of Pinter, not what do you think of his plays, dear Donna.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Well I've never met him.

 

[Pete the Greek]

Well I've never met him.

you've never met me, and you've found occasion to call me 'unpleasant' and 'silly'.

I'm still offended by your unpleasant remark, you know

*harrummppphh*

 

[Donna Ferentes]

We have communicated, have we not? Yet I have never undergone this experience with Mr Pinter.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

I agree with Ian Bone that Pinter & his Hampstead friends are one of the major obstacles to any revolutionary action in this country--although I think Ian put it more graphically than that........(not got his book to hand).

 

[Pete the Greek]

We have communicated, have we not? Yet I have never undergone this experience with Mr Pinter.

I want an apology for the 'unpleasant' remark.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

How much oppression and how many de...[/QUOTE] Is that a skill-testing question?

 

[militant atheist]

Is that a skill-testing question?

I don't know what a 'skill-testing' question is. My comment is merely a response to boredom at hearing how many deaths are attributed to 'communism', when I never hear a counter-allegation to how many have died under capitalism. What are the statistics related to? Are the deaths through poverty, malnutrition, US initiated wars as a consequence of capitalism ever collated in this way?

 

[Geoff Collier]

the SP left the SA long before any 'financial irregularities' (which were simply the misuse of signatures for checks on spending everyone agreed was legitimate), at least a year or more before. They didnt like the SWP taking it over and running it (down) according to their latest whims.

What the Socialist Party walked out for was that they wanted the Socialist Alliance purely as an electoral non-aggression pact. That would have meant SP campaigns for SP candidates using all the members in a particular region. In fact this is what happened in 2001 as far as I understood things. I don't believe any other elements of the SP wanted that. Or am I wrong?

 

[lewislewis]

I'd love to see photos of these factions' meetings, would the members all be considered 'wierdos' (rightly or wrongly) by societal norms?

 

[cockneyrebel]

To be fair I've met a couple of really nice people in the CPGB (the Weekly Worker lot), who aren't strange at all.

 

[yield]

I'd love to know how the Revolutionary Communist Party became the libertarian LM group.

 

[tbaldwin]

thanks guys,

but seriously, on a tangent (largely because of my other memory of that bleak day in Hyde Park) what do you think of Pinter?

Hes tewwibly left wing in a liberal living in a millionaire mansion sort of way....

 

[Fisher_Gate]

What the Socialist Party walked out for was that they wanted the Socialist Alliance purely as an electoral non-aggression pact. That would have meant SP campaigns for SP candidates using all the members in a particular region. In fact this is what happened in 2001 as far as I understood things. I don't believe any other elements of the SP wanted that. Or am I wrong?

I presume you meant SA in the penultimate sentence?

The SP insisted on the right to select and stand whatever candidates they desired in any constituency, whatever the views of the rest of the SA, locally or nationally. As a result the SA refused endorsement of several candidates chosen exclusively by the SP in the 2001 General Election and they stood as 'Socialist Alternative', the registered name of the SP for elections.

That's not even an electoral non-aggression pact ... 'support-our-party-on-our-terms-or-bugger-off' pact would be a better description. The SWP are not a model of democratic functioning in any sense, but they and the rest of the SA were right to refuse this approach. I find it hard to believe that the Campaign for a New Workers Party would function in any other way, if it ever had any real existence rather than a figment of the SP's vivid imagination.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Hes tewwibly left wing in a liberal living in a millionaire mansion sort of way....

He was quoted by the Guardian in 2001 as saying he would be voting for the Socialist Alliance at the General Election, but someone pointed out they were unlikely to be standing in Kensington and Chelsea constituency...

 

[Geoff Collier]

I presume you meant SA in the penultimate sentence?

The SP insisted on the right to select and stand whatever candidates they desired in any constituency, whatever the views of the rest of the SA, locally or nationally. As a result the SA refused endorsement of several candidates chosen exclusively by the SP in the 2001 General Election and they stood as 'Socialist Alternative', the registered name of the SP for elections.

That's not even an electoral non-aggression pact ... 'support-our-party-on-our-terms-or-bugger-off' pact would be a better description. The SWP are not a model of democratic functioning in any sense, but they and the rest of the SA were right to refuse this approach. I find it hard to believe that the Campaign for a New Workers Party would function in any other way, if it ever had any real existence rather than a figment of the SP's vivid imagination.

Yes, I meant SA rather than SP.

The SP branch in Hull didn't seem to want a Socialist Alliance at all. We had months of tedious negotiations. The SP leader in Hull admitted to one of your comrades that he was trying to prevent it developing then we (Hull North) got included in the list that they, at a national level, wanted to stand their own candidates for. That pissed off a number of independents. Then (Feb 2001) they ran the candidate in a council by-election within the constituency on a Socialist Alternative ticket. She got 18 votes and the SP no longer had a candidate in the general election. We had to find another candidate at short notice and got virtually no help in the campaign from the SP. They went 50 miles or so to support their own candidate at Wakefield.

And I imagine they treated the 2005 so-called Socialist Green Unity Coalition in exactly the same way

 

[Geoff Collier]

He was quoted by the Guardian in 2001 as saying he would be voting for the Socialist Alliance at the General Election, but someone pointed out they were unlikely to be standing in Kensington and Chelsea constituency...

However in the 2005 general election, there was a candidate from the Alliance for Green Socialism iirc. Did he vote for them?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

What the Socialist Party walked out for was that they wanted the Socialist Alliance purely as an electoral non-aggression pact.

Yes you are wrong, and what's more you are well aware of it.

The Socialist Party left the Socialist Alliance in December 2001, only after the SWP had converted it into a front entirely under their ownership and control. The SP argued at the time that the Socialist Alliance had no future as a front and that its other affiliates and members would soon find themselves outside it. Which was, I think you'll agree a prediction borne out entirely by events.

The Socialist Party had also made it clear in advance of the December conference that it would stay in the Socialist Alliance if the conference decided on any constitution or amended constitution for the alliance which preserved its federal nature or provided democratic guarantees for minority groupings. The SWP (along with its pliant auxilliary the ISG) mobilised to vote through its own option and to vote down any amendment which would limit their control of the alliance. At that stage, and at that stage only, the Socialist Party left.

As an aside, one of the more amusing things about Respect currently is that seven or eight years of constant bootlicking seems to have done the ISG no good at all. Now that they aren't useful to the SWP, they are treated as an irritant to be trampled on. All that work, all that unprincipled behaviour, and what do they have to show for it?

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Yes you are wrong, and what's more you are well aware of it.

The Socialist Party left the Socialist Alliance in December 2001, only after the SWP had converted it into a front entirely under their ownership and control. The SP argued at the time that the Socialist Alliance had no future as a front and that its other affiliates and members would soon find themselves outside it. Which was, I think you'll agree a prediction borne out entirely by events.

The Socialist Party had also made it clear in advance of the December conference that it would stay in the Socialist Alliance if the conference decided on any constitution or amended constitution for the alliance which preserved its federal nature or provided democratic guarantees for minority groupings. The SWP (along with its pliant auxilliary the ISG) mobilised to vote through its own option and to vote down any amendment which would limit their control of the alliance. At that stage, and at that stage only, the Socialist Party left.

As an aside, one of the more amusing things about Respect currently is that seven or eight years of constant bootlicking seems to have done the ISG no good at all. Now that they aren't useful to the SWP, they are treated as an irritant to be trampled on. All that work, all that unprincipled behaviour, and what do they have to show for it?

You ignore the constant refusal to endorse any agreed electoral tactics of the SA by the SP in your history, so your conclusion is tendentious to say the least.

Some people believe that you have to say what is right regardless as to whether you can benefit from it. After all, Militant once claimed 10,000 supporters, 3 MPs, leadership of a major local authority, the leadership of two national trade unions, every single position on the national executive of the Labour Party's Youth section, and members on the TUC General Council and Labour Party National Executive Committee. What do they have to show for that now?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Some people believe that you have to say what is right regardless as to whether you can benefit from it.

They do indeed. The ISG on the other hand believe that you have to hang around a slightly larger sect, cowering behind them and begging for scraps. But in politics as in life, such behaviour is seldom rewarded. The SWP are eternal ingrates and now the poor doddery old ISG will have to make its own way in the world again, having prostituted its self-respect and principles for nothing at all. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

They do indeed. The ISG on the other hand believe that you have to hang around a slightly larger sect, cowering behind them and begging for scraps. But in politics as in life, such behaviour is seldom rewarded. The SWP are eternal ingrates and now the poor doddery old ISG will have to make its own way in the world again, having prostituted its self-respect and principles for nothing at all.

Isnt that the strategy of the CWI in Solidarity - to hang on the coat tails of Sheridan and the SWP?

 

[Fisher_Gate]

Isnt that the strategy of the CWI in Solidarity - to hang on the coat tails of Sheridan and the SWP?

It was also the strategy of Militant in the Labour Party, which lasted for a rather long period (approx 40 years).

 

[laptop]

I'd love to know how the Revolutionary Communist Party became the libertarian LM group.

You and half the psychiatric profession...

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

It was also the strategy of Militant in the Labour Party, which lasted for a rather long period (approx 40 years).

Its a bit different tho, as the LP although on a rightward shift were actually a mass party with a significant power basis in its own right.

Solidarity are just the SWP and the Sheridanistas, with the SWP being by far the largest grouping. What the CWI hopes to gain by this unholy alliance I'll never know.

 

[mashedmaryland]

in my experience i have never met a cpb member who didnt know there way around an expensive wine rack

the cpb is a middle class public sector group of boring people