CP90 DAVID GROVE REFLECTE ON ""A SENSE OF HISTORY""

David Grove - joined the CP in 1941 and is still amongst its most active members. We asked him to read the new CP pamphlet and give us his views.

Confronting the ConDem onslaught on what remains of our post-war gains, the British working class has never had more need of Communist leadership. Yet our party is small in numbers and weak in influence.

It hasn’t always been so. When I joined, the party had recently celebrated its 21st birthday. It had all the signs of maturity. With 50 000 members, there would soon be two Communist MPs and hundreds of local councillors. Cynics say we’ve gone downhill ever since. But winning elections isn’t the first priority of a revolutionary party. In several periods the party’s influence in the labour movement, the peace movement, and elsewhere, has been wide and deep.

You can read all about it in the new pamphlet90 years of struggle, in which Robert Griffiths and Ben Stevenson tell the inspiring story of the Communist Party 1920-2010

Since that first unity conference, the party has been feared and hated by the ruling class. Their monopoly capitalist state has continually used the police and security forces to hamper and intimidate party members. A glance at some of the strands woven into the party’s history shows why the bosses were so concerned.

Daily Worker/Morning Star– Launching a daily paper in 1930, keeping it going in the face of the wholesalers’ ban, setting up a coop with lots of trade union members, defying revisionist attempts to destroy it, turning it into the impressive newspaper of the left that it is today. This is probably the party’s greatest achievement.

Against Fascism and War– In the 1930s promoting a people’s front against fascism and war – organising the British section of the International Brigade and aid for Spain – collecting a million signatures for the Stockholm appeal – helping to develop CND as a mass movement – playing a leading role in the campaigns against war on Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The party has always been at the forefront of the peace movement.

For militant trade unions– The main arena of class struggle is in workplaces and unions. Communist shop stewards and union officials led epic strikes and successful campaigns against a series of attempted wage freezes and attacks on trade union rights. Only when the party was weakened and divided by Eurocommunism did Thatcher win victories against the working class.

Against imperialism and racism – The party recognised that struggle against British (and other) imperialism implied support for colonial liberation movements, opposition to colonial wars in Malaya, Kenya, Viet Nam, and action against racist tendencies in our own labour movement.

The greatest challenge to the party has been how to fight against the dominant reformist ideas of social democracy while at the same time striving to build a united labour movement and elect a left Labour government. The new pamphlet provides vital resources for the continuing battle of ideas, alongside recent pamphlets by Robert Griffiths and John Foster that are still well worth reading – and selling.

Fuente: Morning Star/PrensaPopularSolidaria
http://prensapopular-comunistasmiranda.blogspot.com/
Correo: pcvmirandasrp@gmail.com