The British Communist Party’s belated conversion to Eurocommunism maybe a tactical device. And certainly a party which has seen its electoral support drop over the past quarter century from 91,000 votes (0.3 per cent of votes cast) in 1950 to 32,000 votes (0.1 per cent of votes cast) in 1974 must be casting around pretty desperately for some new tactics. But the cries of anguish from within the Communist Party suggest that something much more basic may be happening.

Pro-Moscow fundamentalists, who make up perhaps 10,000 of the party’s 28,000 members are convinced that the party is now rotten with anti-Soviet revisionism. At an unprecedented mass meeting on Thursday they gave themselves until the next congress, in November, to force a change of line back to uncritical support of the men in the Kremlin. If they fail the likelihood is that they will resign en masse and set-up a pro-Soviet breakaway party.



The next step would be for the rebels to petition Moscow for recognition as the legitimate Communist Party in this country. The Russians, fed up with constant sniping by the Communist Morning Star about persecution of dissidents in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the rest, would be tempted to oblige. On the surface it looks like an attractive deal. The net cost to Moscow is nothing – the mere transference of concealed subsidies, like cheap travel and the massive purchase of party publications, from one UK organisation to another. In return Moscow would gain the eternal loyalty of the new party whilst losing the increasingly critical sympathy of a party which has negligible electoral impact.



And yet the Kremlin might be well advised to think twice before abandoning its long-established links with the existing Communist Party of Great Britain. Admittedly its membership is a joke – 28,000 compared with 1.6 millions in the Italian party and 250,000 in France. Its electoral failure is overwhelming and its impact on the intellectual mainstream of the nation declined rapidly with the Nazi-Soviet pact and has never revived. And yet the Communist Party remains a significant – in some respects an increasingly significant – force in the political life of this country. In student affairs, in anti–racist groups, in the unions and, increasingly on the fringes of the Labour Party itself, the Communists are a force to reckoned with.



The Labour Party still maintains its ban on united front activities with Communists. But, in many areas an informal united front is operating. It is called the broad left alliance. In student circles it means Labour / Communist cooperation to keep the National Union of Students out of the hands of assorted Trots, Maoists and anarchists. In racial terms it means all joining in to drive the National Front off the streets. In big unions it means the Communist Party not running against left wing Labour candidates who are effectively kept in office by Communists votes. Nationally it means MPs like the Tribunite Syd Bidwell appearing as guest of honour at the annual Morning Star rally and moderate union leaders like David Basnett writing for the Morning Star.



The Communist Party has paid a price for this success. Its draft programme pledges the party to democratic change and support for civil liberties for dissidents in a Soviet Britain. The Morning Star is open for genuine debate about the future of the Left. And the Soviet Union is constantly harried about its repressive policies.



Even so British Eurocommunism is nothing like as liberal as its Continental counterpart. Unlike the French and the Italians, our Eurocommunists want to pull out of the Common Market and Nato. They snipe constantly at union moderates, at the social contract, incomes policy and the Labour Government’s whole economic strategy. Yet they have nothing constructive to put in its place. On balance the Kremlin may still feel it is getting good value from the present Communist leadership for all its revisionist heresies. At any rate, it looks increasingly likely that Moscow will have to choose between mild heretics and impotent purists. A diverting dilemma, comrade.

