'The argument seemed to be that a minority had no right to advocate views or at least organise in an effort to become the majority party loyalty supreme in the Labour Party.
Michael Foot on the expulsion of Stafford Cripps in his biography of Bevan.
The third annual conference of the National Left Wing Movement in September 29 1928 agreed, in effect, to support Consulusl Labour candidates. days after, the Labour Party conference took further measures against the communists.
affiliated from supporting non Labour candidates; and denied the right Labour tartes inviting speakers from organisations not eligible for affiliation to the Labour Party.
This decision gave the CPGB the excuse it was looking for to wrap up the National Left Wing Movement although its demise was to drag on for several HONILS.
Wing Movement had been built in the heyday of the CPGB. In October 1926 had 10,730 members December 1929 this had 3,200.
The CPGB was a revolutionary party with mass support, particularly in tne umons. successfully build the NL WM and the Minority Movement and why important sections of the labour movement were prepared to defend them. But as Macfarlane points out: 'The National Left Wing Movement was a valuable tool for carrying out the earlier Communist policy of changing the Labour Party from within. When this policy came to be seen as neither desirable nor possible, the National Left Wing became an encumbrance.' The communist thrown away a tunity. Hundreds of thousands of were prepared to risk disaffiliation rather than sacrifice their class principles. Over time these class instincts would have led them to socialism, which was itself by the leadership given in both the NL WM and the Minority Movement.
But these militants still saw the Labour Party, even with its treacherous leadership, as the only vehicle for reaching their fellow workers and forming a governThey were not willing follow the Communists into the wilderness.
point 1926. The to reigned the transport Union, later had changed its secretary, Labour Party Korean War.
candidates A few These measures organisations of platform banned Socialist from the Cabinet.
The National Left but by fallen to istence ...
why it could Party had historic opporSKVISES. revolutionary proving it had Luvill. tempted ko to The breakaway THE BATTLE for the Labour Party took a different course in the '50s. The mid-twenties had been a high working class struggle, culminating in the General Strike in fifties saw an economic boom in the wake of the Korean War. McCarthyism was finding a foothold in the British labour movement.
Tribune in 1948 had supported the ban on communists holding office in but one year position. The paper attacked the TGWU general Arthur Deakin, who had demanded the outlawing of the Communist Party and the suppression of the CP's Daily Worker. There was an upturn in the class struggle; the wage freeze had all but broken down.
But the biggest issue facing the leadership was the The 1951 budget cut made cuts in the health service as a direct consequence of the arms programme necessitated by the war and demanded by the United States.
Trotskyists inside the Labour Party were organised within the Socialist Fellowship, which produced a paper, Socialist Outlook. Its modest successes in organising anti-war rallies put it on the list of proscribed organisations. It was the same national executive that Fellowship that voted for Gaitskell's budget of cuts. Three days later Aneurin Bevan, John Freeman and Harold Wilson resigned 'We cannot allow this to go on and free controversy and free newspapers to be stamped out of exMichael Foot speaking at a protest meeting against the proscribing of Socialist Outlook 1954.
The next two years saw an intensification in rank and file opposition to right wing leaders of the party and The Parliamentary Labour Party banned the Bevanite group on The parliamentary group disintegrated after the ban but mass work and propaganda flourished.
Bevan had hoped to deflect the right wing by winding his group up: but the witch-hunt now got 1954 saw the proscribing of Socialist Outlook and the expulsions of TrotThe issue of the rights of all tendencies to put their views in the party had become a vital one for the Michael Foot denounced the ban against the Bevanites in Tribune and the 'new tinpot Torquemadas' who were leading the witch-hunt. As the class struggle gained momentum, as trade unionists, led by the dockers, atdeal their •Wil leaders, so the witch-hunt intensified.
dockers had union from the TGWU, the blue collar NASD union. It was Wilson, Bevan and Mikardo - 1951 sedate the mittee Bevan. and his successors — capitulated. But Marxists make the opposite mistake of pointing to his capitulation and ignoring the huge mass working class movement that supported him "To the leaders, opposition meant a more or less presentation of their case in the House of Commons, coupled with the development of a practical programme be offered at the next A great gulf seemed to be fixed between the politics of the streets and the politics of Westminster comrooms. Bevan's whole striving in the thirties was to find a bridge between the two'. Michael Foot in his biography of In reality, Bevan was organising in an entirely different context to today. The working class was able to ad. vance without a life-or-death strug gle, because the postwar boom - and imperialist profits - could finance an expanding welfare state The only basis on which Bevan could have forged an independent working class movement, given the lack of political millancy to which this gives rise, was by strikout with an independent foreign policy. he The tremendous of CND in the in changing the climate the Labour Party, demonstrated this.
Bevan was unable to establish an independent foreign because he knew that American economic support, and Britain's world role, depended on staying in the Western Alliance Unable to see any alternative than straightforward incorporation into the Russian camp - unable, in to chart a revolutionary foreign policy he could not defeat the right wing.
Further reading
Communism in Britain By Woodhouse and Pearce pb New Park £2 Bevanism: Labour's High Tide pb Spokeman £4.95 The British Communist Party Aneurin Bevan Vols 1 & 2 pb Paladin £2.95 Socialist Challongo. 24 June 1962 pago s