The Communist Party of Great Britain and Eurocommunism: a Brief Encounter

GEOFF ANDREWS The Communist Party of Great Britain and Eurocommunism: A Brief Encounter Much of the recent historiography on the final years of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) has concentrated on the divisions between the so- called Eurocommunists and ›Traditionalists‹ or ›Stalinists‹, identifying both the Party’s terminal decline and inability to re-form in another incarnation, as down to their irreconcilable differences. Although these divisions did reflect some common patterns in other European communist parties indicative of contrasting attitudes towards the Soviet Union, (for example over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and in tone or extent of criticism of the social- ist countries) and greater or less enthusiasm for the politics, ideas and strategy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), I will argue that the fateful split which led to the demise of the Party in the late 1970s and 1980s had more to do with interpretations of class and attitude towards the labour movement. The ideas of Antonio Gramsci, one of the PCI’s former leaders, and influential thinker, certainly inspired the arguments of one side during the 1970s and into the 1980s, generating a rationale among particular cohorts for reforming the Party’s policy and in providing a critique of the Party’s official strategy. They were most influential in the 1970s, and led in the 1980s to rival slates for leadership positions, conflicts and eventual rupture. However, the clash was framed by differences over the meaning of class, the role of social movements like femi- nism, and above all the prospects facing the labour movement in the midst of the economic and political crisis which started from the mid-1970s. Moreover, these disputes began to reflect wider divisions on the British left, while their lasting legacy have caused some of the leading Gramscians to revisit what they perceived as a missed historic opportunity.1 In fact the main dividing lines within the CPGB during the 1970s and 1980s, I will argue, were between what I have called ›Militant labourists‹ and ›British Gramscians‹, that is to say ones shaped by more domestic concerns.2 After 1956, the Soviet Union became less of a concern as the 1960s and 1970s developed, even if a fading outright Stalinist minority continued to vociferously endorse its central political line and the CPGB leadership itself remained de- fensive when it became under scrutiny and loyal to its heritage as the first so- cialist state. At the same time, while the influence of Antonio Gramsci from the early 1970s was crucial in the critique of economism and the argument for progressive class, democratic and social alliances, it only managed to penetrate 1 See P. Devine/A. Pearmain/D. Purdy, Feelbad Britain, London 2009. 2 For my original longer outline of this argument see G. Andrews, Endgames and New Times, London 2004. 222 Geoff Andrews the Party’s long-standing official political strategy, The British Road to Social- ism (BRS), in 1977; and then it was quickly followed by a conservative backlash. By the time Marxism Today put forward a Gramscian critique of Thatcherism, articulated notably through the writings of Stuart Hall, the ›magazine‹ as it had become known, had gone far beyond the Party’s political strategy and was primarily concerned with that of the wider left.3 Moreover, the Eurocommunist turn, brief and partial as it was, was not indicative of any informed European- wide strategy; its links with other significantly larger parties, such as the PCI and PCF, which enjoyed greater electoral presence and public recognition, were mainly confined to political and cultural exchanges, while, on the more specific question of European politics, the Party continued to oppose EEC membership throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The questions remain then: what factors prevented the earlier emergence of a deeper critical reformist leadership and why was the Eurocommunist strategy so short-lived? In addressing these questions, we will need to consider the breach with some of the notable intellectual cohort of the 1930s and the sig- nificance of the ›lost generation‹ of intellectuals in the aftermath of the events of 1956. This meant that the leadership was not challenged or refreshed suffi- ciently to be able to engage in a coherent way with changing British society at the beginning of the 1960s, but often became entrenched in conservative positions, with its intellectual work and strategic thinking largely confined to full- time functionaries whose political upbringing was formed in a very different period. Former communist intellectuals who left the Party in 1956 were play- ing an important role in the first New Left in that movement’s critical inter- rogation of British society from the late 1950s, its questioning of ›actually existing socialism‹ and in drawing on new developments in Marxism, which contrasted sharply with the limitations of the Party’s own offerings. Secondly, the continuing inadequacy of the Party’s official political strategy The British Road to Socialism was evident in its inability to address the legacy of Stalinism (let alone make Leninism applicable to British conditions): its theoretical weak- nesses were compounded by the political disparities between extending influence in the labour movement and its visibly declining electoral presence. Fur- ther, in the 1960s the CPGB no longer held the hegemonic role in the peace, anti-colonial and social movements it had enjoyed in the 1930s. The ›Lost Generation‹ The generation which embraced communism during the 1930s was the CPGB’s most vibrant, internationalist, imaginative and politically astute. The Party had a strong presence in the movements that developed during that decade of crisis: in the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) and the Hunger 3 See S. Hall/M. Jacques (eds.), The Politics of Thatcherism, London 1983; G. Andrews, Endga- mes, 224-246; and A. Pearmain, The Politics of New Labour: a Gramscian Analysis, London 2011. .

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