 Well, the Communist Party of Great Britain, as it was founded, was founded 99 years ago and it was founded under the impact of the Russian Revolution and under the impact of the foundation of the Communist International, the Common Turn, which was the international organisation built for the purpose of spreading revolution around the world. The early years of the Communist Party of Great Britain are referred to it as the Communist Party of Great Britain, interchangeably throughout. It contains, its early years contain many lessons about the methods and the tactics that you should use and that you shouldn't use in the building of a revolutionary party. The fact is that in the period of the 1920s, the Communist Party could have become a mass party of the working class and it could have led the struggle to successfully overthrow capitalism in Britain. But it was shipwrecked and it was shipwrecked by Stalinism. Now, the founding conference of the party took place in the summer of 1920 and it came about thanks to the pressure applied by Lenin and the leaders of the Common Turn to the small socialist and communist groups that existed in Britain at that time. Unlike in Europe, the Communist Party in Britain was not formed out of mass splits in the social democratic organisations. It was formed by a merger of lots of smaller organisations bringing together all the people who had been inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution. Now, one of these groups was the British Socialist Party. This was an organisation that had grown up out of an organisation called the Social Democratic Federation. Now, that organisation had existed for quite a long time. Engels actually had some very harsh criticisms of the Social Democratic Federation which became this British Socialist Party. Engels criticised them as being abstract in their understanding of Marxism and mechanical in their application of Marxist ideas to the class struggle. For example, the SDF, the Social Democratic Federation, routinely opposed strike action. It had this formal mechanical approach to Marxism which was seen as something distant and abstract from the day-to-day struggle of the working class. They really had very little to do with the trade unions in Britain but nevertheless actually they were affiliated to the Labour Party and had been since 1916. There's much more that could be said about the British Socialist Party but I'll leave it there for the time being just to give a sketch of one of the organisations that became part of the Communist Party. Another group was the Socialist Labour Party. This group's headquarters were in Scotland and they played a leading role in the Red Clyde side industrial movement throughout the 1910s. They came from a different tradition in the British working class. Much more along the lines of syndicalism and revolutionary industrial unionism. Many of their members saw a difference between politics and economics, between political parties and trade unions and they preferred to focus their energy on the latter and paid comparatively little attention to the former and participating in the discussions around forming a Communist Party and having those discussions with the British Socialist Party led to a big split in the ranks of the Socialist Labour Party over the tactical question of whether they should combine with the British Socialist Party which was an organisation affiliated to the Labour Party. A large section of the Socialist Labour Party refused to do that because they were opposed to the Labour Party. They preferred to focus on the trade unions on this kind of syndicalist approach that they had. These were the two big organisations that went into the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain but there were a number of others as well, smaller ones. They didn't all actually participate in that founding conference in the summer of 1920. A number of them came along a little bit later. Sylvia Pankhurst's organisation after Pankhurst herself had many discussions with Lenin over the role of parliamentarianism for example and the way that communists should use Parliament. She had a lot of discussions with Lenin about that. She had some reservations about the Marxist approach to it. In the end those were overcome through these discussions and her organisation affiliated also in 1921 to the Communist Party and there were others as well. The party had around 3,000 members at its birth. It claimed more but in reality it was around 3,000. This was far from a mass party of the British working class clearly. But what it lacked in quantity, this party really made up for in quality. The calibre of the people who made up the foundation of this party was spectacular. It was really the cream of the cream of the leaders of the British working class at that time. Just a few examples. There was a man called Tom Bell who was a very experienced workers leader. He was on the Clyde Workers' Committee, leader of a very militant and radical movement up in Scotland. He was also the president of the associated Iron Moulders organisation. Arthur McManus also on the Clyde Workers' Committee. He had a reputation. He had been arrested for agitating against conscription in the First World War. There was a figure called JT Murphy, a key figure, a leading figure in the shop stewards movement, which was very radical at this time. Willie Gallagher, chairman of the Clyde Workers' Committee, also a leading figure in the shop stewards movement. The list can go on and on. The point that I'm making here is that these people who formed that first 3,000 of the Communist Party were serious class fighters. They commanded the respect of broad layers of the working class. They had proven track records of an ability to organise and to fight in the interests of working class people. They were inspired by the Russian Revolution. They saw an example of a revolutionary movement that put power in the hands of the working class. This is what they wanted to emulate in Britain. In other words, you couldn't really have asked for better raw material to begin the building of a Communist Party in Britain at that time. Of course, these people didn't come from a tradition of Marxism or not in the way that we understand it. Some of them came out of these organisations that did call themselves Marxist, but as we've heard, were a little bit formal or mechanical in their approach to it. They were on quite a low level of political understanding. Good fighters, good class fighters, good agitators, but on a low level of political understanding. They didn't really have an understanding of Marxism as theory or as tactics. Lenin and Trotsky, their Bolshevik party, had obviously been through decades of applying Marxism as a theory to guide the day-to-day action of class struggle, and as a theory that could be used to guide tactical or answer tactical questions. So Lenin and Trotsky, as leaders of the Communist International, set themselves the task of educating the British comrades in these methods. It wasn't just the British comrades, of course, who had questions and limitations on this point, but many of the parties of the Communist International at that time. This was the task that Lenin and Trotsky set themselves. It was to overcome the limitations of these different trends and tendencies that went into the formation of the Communist Party. We have to understand a little bit more about what these trends and tendencies looked like that needed to be overcome. There had been waves of strike action and industrial melitancy throughout the 1910s, and this was coupled amongst the working class with a real fury at the actions of the Liberal government. That fury was made even deeper because this Liberal government was being supported by Labour MPs. This led to a big gap opening up, a big schism between the leaders of the Labour movement and the rank and file of the working class. It was in these conditions, these are the years leading up to the formation of the Communist Party, it was these conditions that really gave rise to, really encouraged the rise of syndicalist ideas. The idea that politics was secondary to industrial struggles, the politicians aren't going to do anything for us, look at the way that they're behaving. We need to organise ourselves as in unions, in workplaces, and that's sufficient, that's enough, was the argument. In the build up to a miners lockout, there's a big lockout of mine workers in April 1921, this ended in a terrible defeat for the British Labour movement, a day known as Black Friday. I'll come back to that in a bit more detail later on, it becomes relevant to something I'll say later. In the run up to that, the people who were to become key leaders of the Communist Party and who were to join the Communist Party and so on, and obviously by that time had joined the Communist Party, the main thing that they were arguing for in preparation for this big struggle, this big struggle between the miners and the government, which reached its culmination in 1921. The main thing that they were arguing for was an organisation that could just kind of coordinate all the different workers' struggles. In other words, they weren't talking about the need for political leadership, they didn't pose this struggle between the mine workers and the government as a political struggle. They posed it purely as an industrial question and the only organisation that was required on top of the unions was something to just coordinate the action rather than to give it a political lead. This was where a large number of the activists who began to make up the Communist Party, this was the direction that they were coming from. Another trend in the mix of the early British Communist Party was a certain empiricism in the attitude of these activists and quite a large layer of the British working class towards the struggle for socialism. Theory had always been a weak point of the British labour movement, and this is tied up with the early development of British capitalism. It was one of the first capitalisms on the scene, one of the first bourgeois revolutions, and as a result the struggle for socialism and the theorising about this struggle was done in a bit of an empirical way. They didn't start with theory, they didn't exist before, they were developing it as they went along basically. Any theories of class struggle or Marxism that there were in the British labour movement at that time were quite abstract and formalistic. They were not intimately tied up with the day-to-day action and struggle of the working class. Marxism and communism were seen as something distant for the future, not for something that can guide the day-to-day or week-to-week struggles of the class. In other words, the communism that went into the early British Communist Party was propagandistic. It was more akin to standing on street corners shouting about communism rather than applying it to the day-to-day struggles of the working class. Now this trend of syndicalism and this trend of propagandism obviously fed off each other and both tendencies hamstrung the early work of the Communist Party in Britain. Leninotrotsky set themselves the task of helping the British Communists overcome these limitations, these tendencies. Now at the first Congress of the Communist Party the question of affiliation to the Labour Party was very hotly debated. On the second day of the Congress, the text of Lenin's left-wing communism arrived in Britain and was rapidly translated as the Congress was going on, it was being translated so that it could be communicated to the delegates. In this text of left-wing communism, Lenin urges the British Communists to affiliate to the Labour Party because he says, affiliating to the Labour Party is a tactic, not a principle question. It's a tactic to spread the ideas and the influence of communism to a broader layer of people. It doesn't mean abandoning revolutionary socialist principles. It is possible to go into an alien social democratic milieu as a communist and win people over to those communist ideas. If you don't go into that milieu then you don't really stand much of a chance and just shout from the sidelines you don't stand much of a chance of winning these people over. As I say this was hotly debated and in the end the vote at that Congress went in favour of affiliation to the Labour Party 100 votes to 85, so by quite a small margin. Unfortunately despite the vote a large number of people were not won over by the arguments at the Congress and so a letter was written to the Labour Party by the Communist Party asking for affiliation but it was written in very ultimatumist terms. It was, here's our program, take it or leave it and the Labour Party said, well we'll leave it in that case, we're not particularly interested. The Communist Party, Julie just brushed that aside. They published in their newspaper, well it's the Labour Party's funeral, it's their funeral not ours. They took quite a hostile sectarian approach to the Labour Party which despite the vote at their Congress and despite Lenin's advice was really contrary to that advice. Further evidence of this attitude and this approach came in March 1921. There was a by-election in East Woolwich in London and in that election the Communist Party agitated for abstention. They said Labour and the Tories are the same, Marxism has nothing in common with Parliamentarianism, and people therefore shouldn't vote. The result was that in that by-election the Labour Party candidate lost by just 683 votes when 27,000 votes were cast. So a very small number the Tory candidate got in and the Communist Party celebrated this result as a victory for their campaign of abstentionism. Actions like this left unchecked would have cut the party off completely from the broader layers of the working class. It would have left them very much on the fringes of the movement. The logical end point of tactics like this could actually be seen in that same month in March 1921 in Germany. Because based on the idea that Communists by their actions alone can spark the working class in, can win the working class over to revolutionary ideas, can spark a revolutionary movement in Germany, the German Communist attempted an armed uprising in that month. Which was violently repressed and resulted in a massive fall in support for the Communist Party. It was the emergence of this trend amongst Communist parties not just in Britain, also in Germany and elsewhere. This trend that was developing in some Communist parties of isolating themselves from the mass of the working class by their tactics that caused Lenin to use the Third Congress of the Communist International, the Third Congress of the Common Turn, which took place later that year in 1921. He used that to discuss tactical questions and to try and correct this ultra-left tendency that had developed in a number of Communist parties. Now the authority of the World Communist Movement that was on display at this Third Congress of the Common Turn made a big impression on the British Communist Party. The Common Turn adopted at that Congress under the guidance and through the argument, it wasn't an easy argument to win, but nevertheless Lenin and Trotsky did win this argument at the Third Congress of the Common Turn, that what was required was a tactic known as the United Front tactic, which was for Communists to ally themselves on specific issues and for specific aims with social democratic organisations and broader layers of the working class. Whilst maintaining their revolutionary programme and revolutionary perspectives and demands, and in so doing exposed the limitations of social democracy to actually deliver the things that this particular campaign or specific issue wanted to deliver, and so prove the necessity of revolution basically in the process of this United Front tactic. Now after this was adopted by the Common Turn, the British Communist Party began to correct some of its muddled tactics they had had previously. Actually it began to become one of the most, its activists became the most determined fighters for working class unity, and at the same time advocating this kind of revolutionary approach. By this point in 1921, world capitalism had stabilised after a period of revolutionary upheaval after the end of the First World War. An offensive by the employers was underway in most countries, including in Britain, and the mood of the working class was one of unity, a desire for unity to defend themselves against this bosses onslaught. In other words, sectarianism and vote splitting under these conditions was not the way to win support of a broad layer of the working class. The Communist Party realised this thanks to the education that they had received by the Comintern, and they developed, the Communist Party developed a series of very good demands, not just shrill denunciations from the sidelines, not just being angry at people who disagreed with them, but also positive demands that could be taken in to the movement. They demanded that the trade union congress, the TUC, the umbrella body for all the trade unions in Britain, they demanded that that be reorganised as a genuine parliament of workers, not just a talking shop, but a parliament of workers, an alternative to the bourgeois parliament. And they introduced that demand alongside a slogan of back to the unions. There had been a bit of an emptying out of the trade unions, and the Communist Party said we need to get back in the unions in order to use them as weapons to defend ourselves against the bosses. They also began to breathe life back into the local trades councils in every town and city, local organisations that brought together the local trade unions, to turn them into councils of action basically, proper, locally organised groups that could direct the struggle of the working class in every town and city. Actually, that campaign was very successful. By October 1922, there was a national conference of trades councils convened in Birmingham, and that was basically thanks to the efforts of the Communist Party, so this was good work that they were doing. In the history of the struggle for socialism in Britain, this stuff is really significant because no political party had ever tried to organise itself within the trade unions before. Obviously, some of the mistakes that were made by the Communist Party this time, they might seem silly or obvious to us now, but you've got to remember that no one had ever done this before. No political party had ever linked itself with the organised working class in this way, and so the work they were doing is extremely significant. In August 1922, the Communist Party withdrew the candidates it had been planning to stand against the Labour Party, which obviously was its previous sectarian tactic. They withdrew that tactic, and partly as a result of that, and the good work they were doing in the trades councils and so on, support for the Communist Party to be allowed to affiliate to the Labour Party, you remember it had been rejected before, support for them to be allowed to affiliate to the Labour Party was growing, in particular amongst the trades councils, in particular in London and in Glasgow, and the Miners Federation also supported the Communist Party in this regard. They were very supportive of the Communist Party. The Communist Party had a strong position within the Labour Party in general at this time, although the Communist Party was not affiliated to the Labour Party, individual members of the Communist Party were allowed to be members of the Labour Party, and in some cases, Communist Party members founded Labour Party branches. They were very closely linked, they had a very solid position in the Labour Party at that time, and support for Communist influence within the Labour Party was growing thanks to this work that they were doing in the trade unions, with the demands that they were raising and so on. In other words, through the patient application of this United Front tactic, after the Third Congress of the Common Turn, this tactic obviously explained how to use Marxism as a tool for the day-to-day struggle of the working class, and as a result of the application of that, the Communist Party was able to build itself up, build a position as a legitimate trend within the British Labour movement, and it had begun to overcome the weaknesses that had plagued it since its foundation. These weaknesses have kind of narrow syndicalism, only focusing on the trade unions, they weren't doing that, they were building a position in the Labour Party, and also this abstract approach to Marxism as something distant, as something not really relevant to the struggle today, so I'll move away from that also and apply it through the United Front tactic to their day-to-day work. Now, an uptick in rank-and-file industrial movements led to a conference on British Communist Affairs in Moscow in July 1923, and that created an industrial committee of the Communist Party, another step forward in this pioneering work of linking politics, basing politics on the struggles of the working class in the trade unions, and that, in turn, that industrial committee of the British Communist Party led to the creation of what was known as the National Minority Movement. Now, that was a movement within the trade unions, which sought to bring together all the rank-and-file industrial movements that were springing up, it was the kind of the unofficial, the opposition, the left opposition within the trade unions in Britain was brought together by the Communist Party under this banner of the National Minority Movement. This was mirrored by the development of what was known as the left wing movement in the British Labour Party, which sought to bring together, coordinate and organise the lefts within the party. The Communist Party had enormous influence in both of these things, and in fact, in particular with the National Minority Movement, was very much the driving force behind that. Now, in August 1924, there was the first conference of the National Minority Movement, that had people attending, which represented 200,000 workers. So, this was an enormous position that the Communist Party had managed to conquer, an enormous influence that it had at this time. The demands coming out of that first conference of the National Minority Movement were basically just an extension of the Communist Party's demands, including the setting up of factory committees, rank-and-file control of the industrial struggle, developing trades councils as centres for coordinating local working class action. In particular, the National Minority Movement demanded that the general council of the TUC, the executive, the leading body of the trade union congress, be strengthened with powers that would allow it to coordinate and call a general strike. Now, this followed that defeat that I mentioned earlier, Black Friday, April 1921, because what happened there was that there was a triple alliance of unions. Rail, transport and mining unions had a pact known as the triple alliance. If one of them was attacked, the others would all go on strike to defend them and that was seen as unbreakable. That was seen as the gold standard of working class, of the defence of the working class. The reason April 1921 is known as Black Friday, that defeat is known as Black Friday, is that that triple alliance was broken and miners were betrayed by the leaders of the rail and transport unions. The lesson that the Communist Party and the National Minority Movement was trying to draw from that was that we need a stronger body that can properly coordinate general strike action in the event that any particular group of workers comes under attack. However, this demand was accompanied when it was first raised by the Communist Party by a very significant and important warning because the tendency towards bureaucracy at the tops of trade unions was as strong then as it is today. The National Minority Movement and the Communist Party heavily emphasised the need for rank and file control over the TUC to ensure that any new powers that were given to the general council were exercised in the interests of the rank and file and not in the interests of the trade union bureaucracy. This is present in all of the Communist Party's literature heavily emphasised from this time. Of course, it wasn't just a case of asking the TUC to do more. Just say, well, just give them the powers and then we'll publish articles asking them to do more. The Communist Party actually did something to build a position in the movement that would then force the TUC to act in this particular way. They were building factory committees. They were building trades councils. They were building a vibrant position, a vibrant militant working class organisation at every level of the movement which, when push came to shove, would then be able to force the TUC to act in a particular way. They did not limit themselves at this time to just finger wagging and denunciatory statements or requests to the TUC to use things in a particular way. They built a position in the movement that could be used as a springboard to force the TUC to act in a particular way when the time came. Ultimately, as well, everything in the Communist Party's literature at this time, or from this time, envisaged that through the development of the class struggle and through the development of the national minority movement, the working class would come to see the trade unions not as tools to change, to improve their conditions within capitalism, but as tools to break the capitalist system as a whole. This was the character of the Communist Party's literature, its propaganda, its ideas, what it was putting out in the movement. In other words, its industrial work was closely linked to a political idea. It wasn't just about using unions to change things within capitalism. It linked that to the need to change society as a whole. It had a political character. All of this allowed the Communist Party and the national minority movement to connect with strike waves which picked up throughout 1924. All of this provoked quite a reaction on the part of the trade union bureaucracy who felt threatened by the success that the Communist Party was having through its united front tactic and through the national minority movement. That fear of the trade union bureaucracy expressed itself in a couple of ways. First of all, they began to support the right wing of the Labour Party who were trying to expel communists from the Labour Party, not even allow them to be individual members, let alone allow the party to affiliate. That went through in the end. The trade union bureaucrats in alliance with the Labour right wingers in 1925 got the Labour Party conference to agree that all members of the Communist Party should be expelled from the Labour Party. And secondly, the trade union bureaucrats also began to try and pose a little bit more left wing. They could feel the ground shifting. They could see the rank-and-file moving left under the impact of the work of the Communist Party and the national minority movement and the general conditions, obviously, the uptick in industrial struggles and so on. So these union bureaucrats began to pose more and more left. That will become significant later. Obviously, this reaction on the part of the bureaucracy indicated that the Communist Party was making progress and becoming quite a serious threat. And this fear of the Communist Party went beyond just the trade union bureaucracy into the state itself. In October 1925, 12 leaders of the Communist Party were arrested and jailed on charges of sedition. Now, this had exactly the opposite effect of what the state had intended, what the British government had intended by locking these people up. It provoked a massive wave of indignation and protest among a very broad layer of the working class and massively bolstered support for the Communist Party. Just to give a few examples, one of the jailed leaders, Wally Hannington, he was elected to the Executive of the London Trades Council whilst he was in prison. Such was the support for the Communist Party and him in particular. Every weekend there were massive marches to Wandsworth every weekend, massive marches to Wandsworth prison where the jailed leaders were being held. And at rallies outside the prison, there were many speeches, including from Labour MPs who used deliberately seditious language to try and provoke the police into arresting them as well. And 300,000 people signed a petition demanding the release of the Communist Party leaders. The position of the Communist Party with regards to the Labour Party was also strengthened in this period. In December 1925, at the end of that year, a national conference of the left-wing movement within the Labour Party, which I mentioned earlier, including Communist Party members and Labour Lefts was held, and it was reported at this conference that the decision of the Labour Party conference earlier that year to expel Communists from membership of the Labour Party, to bar them from membership of the Labour Party, had been rejected and was not being carried out by close to 100 local Labour parties. Such was the support for the Communist activists and the Communist Party's ideas and demands in general that 100 local Labour parties were willing to go against the decision of the national conference. All of this, the reaction to the jailing of the leaders, this left-wing movement conference in December 1925, it gives you a picture, gives you an idea of what existed amongst the Labour Lefts and in the broader working-class movement for the Communist Party at that time. By 1924, 1925, the Communist Party had good tactics thanks to the advice and guidance of Lenin and Trotsky, had a solid position amongst a big layer of trade unionists, actually won 66,500 votes in the general election, had an MP elected in Battersea in London. Its paper had a circulation of 50,000 copies on a membership of 4,000 people. It was the highest circulation of any Labour or socialist weekly at that time. And from the objective situation, from the point of view of the objective situation, the first Labour Government under MacDonald was formed in December 1923. It was busy, spent its few short months in power trying to prove itself fit to govern in the eyes of the ruling class, betraying the interests of the working class repeatedly. And so the opportunity for the Communist to expose the right-wing leaders of the Labour Party was obviously very favourable and the possibility for developing a radical left in the Labour Party in the working class more generally was enormous. At the same time, the industrial movement was heating up, lots more strike action in 1924. Just two years later, 1926, there'd be a general strike called as well, which posed the question of who really runs society, the capitalist class or the working class. Seismic events in other words were going to take place in the middle of the 1920s, and the Communist Party was perfectly placed to take advantage of them. It's no exaggeration to say that in the second half of the 1920s, you could have seen the overthrow of capitalism in Britain led by the British Communist Party which had made huge strides forward in overcoming the weaknesses that it had been born with just a few years previously. But that didn't happen. And so we have to ask why not and what went wrong. To answer that, we need to have an understanding of what was happening in the international Communist movement at that time, because that obviously played a role, had an impact in the Communist movement of every country. Although it had a particular impact in Britain, I would say, because of the low level of political understanding at that time, and the high dependence of the British Communists on guidance from the common turn as a result. As long as Lenin and Trotsky were giving this guidance, the British Communists were able to overcome their weaknesses to conquer quite a powerful position amongst broad layers of the working class in Britain. But as the tide began to turn in Moscow and in the communist international as a whole towards bureaucratisation and Stalinisation, guidance and discussion and debate was replaced by commands and instructions, and people who could think and discuss for themselves were replaced by yes men and yes women. Now around 1924, a struggle had opened up between Leon Trotsky and some of the other leaders of the common turn. A revolutionary opportunity had been squandered in Germany in 1923, largely due to poor advice from Stalin and Zinoviev, who had advised the German Communists to hold back at a moment when in fact they should have seized the revolutionary initiative and overthrown capitalism in Germany. Trotsky explained this and advocated new tactics to correspond to a new period in the class struggle. But Stalin and Zinoviev for prestige and others for prestige reasons were unable to admit that they had made a mistake and wasted this revolutionary opportunity, which to accept a new set of tactics would have been to accept that they had done this. Instead they insisted that nothing had changed and revolution actually was just around the corner in Germany as it had been prior to this opportunity. This was the beginning of the Stalinist practice of subordinating proper political analysis, perspectives and tactics aiming at the emancipation of the working class around the world. The subordination of all of that to the whims and the needs of a small of petty politics and factional cliques. At first in Britain the conflict of the common turn didn't really register in a big way. Actually that's also related to the low political level that there was in the British Communist Party at that time. The debates that were taking place were not really taken up by British Communist Party activists because they weren't really fully understood and theory didn't have the prominence that it did have in other European Communist Parties. At first this conflict in the common turn didn't really register in Britain and so the upward trend continued through 1924 and 25 for the development of the British Communist Party. But of course as it did in every country this conflict this Stalinization, this bureaucratisation of the Russian Revolution and of the common turn did catch up with the British Communists in the end. The first indication of that came when a delegation of left wing members of the general committee, the general council of the TUC, so some of the leaders of this overarching trade union body went to visit the Soviet Union delegation then went to visit the Soviet Union at the end of 1924 and they did that under the pressure of the left, of the rank of file basically in the trade union movement at the time. And they came back from the Soviet Union and praised it uncritically, praised it to the rafter said it was the best thing that they'd ever seen and so on. Now in these TUC lefts Zinoviev who you remember was looking for he was looking to prove that revolution was just around the corner Zinoviev saw in these TUC lefts a potential shortcut to revolution in Britain. Why he thought, why bother painstakingly building up the British Communist Party and spending lots of time and effort building what was actually still at the time certainly not a mass party when you have leaders of the British working class who are uncritically praising communism in the Soviet Union maybe the revolution he says and he raised this publicly maybe the revolution will not come through the British Communist Party but will come from somewhere else he said and he was eyeing up these TUC lefts on the basis of this visit that they had made to the Soviet Union. Now by 1925 not that long after Zinoviev was raising these kind of ideas the internal politics of the Stalinist clique in Russia had caused Stalin to move away from this idea of revolutions just around the corner. Instead he spoke about he started speaking and I don't have time to go into the reasons why the Stalinist clique's interests changed in Russia but he began to speak instead about the stabilisation of capitalism on a world scale. Revolution was no longer just around the corner actually it turns out capitalism was complete. This is just a few months later complete 180 degree turn in the outlook and perspectives because it was subordinate to the Stalinist clique's interests at the time. Obviously that meant the sidelining of Zinoviev Zinoviev who was the spokesman of revolution being just around the corner instead we had this policy of stabilisation of capitalism but nevertheless the tactic that Zinoviev had outlined in relation to Britain and these TuC lefts actually served the interests of the new line from Stalin extremely well. The TuC lefts were no longer seen as the tool for revolution in Britain but as a point of support for the Soviet bureaucracy in a period of capitalist stabilisation where the class struggled as it was on aneb and all the rest of it. So as a side point you see here a very interesting example of ultra left policies of Zinoviev in 1924 and extreme opportunism and conservative policies of 1925 having the exact same outcome the exact same policy and so when we talk about these things being two sides of the same coin here's a very concrete example of it, they're both incorrect and they both end up with the same practical consequence. So as a result the advice to the British Communist Party from the common turn as it was being Stalinised and as it was degenerating it placed more and more emphasis on the need to support the TuC lefts not do anything to antagonise them and above all to build the newly formed Anglo-Russian trade union unity committee this was a body that was formed in early 1925 of the back of this visit of the TuC lefts to the Soviet Union. And so as a result the demands and the publications of the Communist Party in Britain began to take on a different tone and approach over time. At first this Anglo-Russian committee was welcomed by the Communist Party but they said but look sitting in committee rooms together exchanging nice diplomatic letters that's not how unity is really built they said. How unity is really built is by building the trades councils building the factory committees fighting for socialism ultimately with a socialist revolution that's how you get unity real unity between the British working class and the Russian working class. But under pressure from Moscow gradually the Communist Party did sink into simply cheerleading for the Anglo-Russian committee instead of building a solid basis in the movement around it from the rank and file. Likewise the Communist Party's demand for more power to the general council they still made that demand but the needs to build factory committees at a local level build the support around this demand that began to be sidelined it began to be mentioned as an afterthought if at all. All the emphasis went on more power to the general committee and the building of positions to force the general committee to use this power in interest to the working class that began to fall by the wayside. It is true that the Communist Party, if you read what they wrote this time as this line was changing they do maintain very harsh criticisms of the TUC leaders and including the lefts of the TUC. What they write is quite good and their criticisms are quite harsh but they did nothing about it they can find themselves to writing articles and they stop building points of support in the working class that could be used to put these criticisms into practice basically. They reduced themselves to denunciations from the sidelines in other words because and I won't go into this because there's a talk on the general strike but when the general strike came in 1926 these TUC lefts who Zinoviev, Stalin and gradually the British Communist Party have put all this faith in as the shortcut, the road to revolution the point of support for the Soviet Union these TUC lefts betrayed that general strike they completely capitulated to the right wing on the TUC. The rank and file of the Communist Party in the general strike were some of the most dedicated and committed fighters for the success of that strike but their leaders stood behind these TUC lefts who had never given any indication that they were willing to break with capitalism and lead the working class to seizing power and yet these Communist Party leaders under pressure from Moscow under the guidance of Stalin stood behind these things and led that movement town to defeat Now over the next couple of years after the defeat of the general strike and the failures of the Communist Party the party was convulsed by internal debate and discussion about what a gone wrong membership was falling throughout 1927, 28, 29 there was no hiding from the fact that the Communist Party had wasted this opportunity of the general strike to build its forces that really should have been able to build up its forces from the position that it had one idea that was taken up in the party was that the party had become too close to the TUC lefts that's true so far so good but these people then began to bend the stick too far the other way and they began to say actually therefore what we need is nothing to do with at all the left wing of the trade union movement and in fact they went so far as to say the national minority movement and the left wing movement were barriers to the development and the building of the Communist Party in Britain now this was a very minority view in Britain in the British Party when it was raised but it found a big echo and big support in Moscow in the common turn who for their own reasons had done another 180 degree turn they were under pressure from the rise of the Kulak class in Russia itself there had been a defeat of the revolution in China they turned 180 degrees basically and began advocating a policy of what was known as third period Stalinism or third period policies now in Russia that had the effect of force collectivisation and a complete divorcing of the policies of the Communist Party from reality and from the mood of the masses and nationally that took the form of cutting off the Communist parties in one country after another from the social democratic organisations and from the workers who might have illusions in those organisations in Germany for example it took a very extreme form of communists allying themselves with fascists to go and break up social democratic meetings this was the extent of the madness of the third period and in Britain the common turn advocated that the Communist parties stand as many candidates as they possibly can against the Labour Party in elections because these people were just as bad as the Tories just the same thing this advice from the common turn went against the majority views in the Communist Party in particular the majority of the leadership of the Communist Party in Britain and it caused enormous confusion there were elections where the Communist Party stood a candidate against the Labour candidate and then withdrew that candidate in favour of the Labour candidate and then said actually no don't vote for anyone and we'll just stand a Communist next time which obviously created confusion amongst the working class confusion amongst the Communist Party activists themselves and generally began to isolate and distance the Communists from the working class in general but at the same time as they were messing about with trying to implement this common turn line even though the majority of the party disagreed with it they were still participating in the left wing movement within the Labour Party which was extremely it was going from strength to strength actually in 1927-28 it had big conferences with representatives from 75 or 80 local Labour parties a big base of support basically for radical left wing ideas within the broad mass of the Labour movement of the working class in Britain and actually at this second congress the second conference of the left wing movement in 1928 the left trade union leaders put forward a programme for socialist policies for the Labour Party which gained a big echo amongst a layer of people but that echo that was being gained in the movement for these kind of ideas it was not heard and certainly not understood by the leaders of the common turn in Moscow and by their stooges in the British Communist Party and so the Communist Party published an article denouncing in very strong terms this manifesto from the left trade union leaders and I don't have time to go into it basically they cut themselves off in this way with these kind of tactics this messing about with candidates denouncing this manifesto for socialist policies in the Labour Party put forward by left trade union leaders that lots of people were interested in they said that's rubbish now general election in November 1928 the vote for the Labour Party increased and the vote for the Communist Party decreased the majority in the British Party saw this as evidence that this ultra-left this third period tactic was very damaging for the Communist Party meanwhile the ultra-lefts in the British Communist Party said oh this is just proof that you're not implementing this tactic quickly enough and so this debate continued to rage at the Communist Party Conference in January 1929 resolutions were passed advocating that the party should cut itself off from the left-wing movement and if the party declared itself the only genuine party of the working class then the masses would flock towards it these resolutions were passed in January 1929 but that was against big opposition especially from a majority of the leadership of the Communist Party at that time there were more elections in May 1929 just a few months after these resolutions were passed the Communist Party ran 25 candidates and advocated abstaining anywhere that a Communist Party candidate wasn't running again in the face of big opposition now those 25 big opposition within the party those 25 candidates got 50,000 votes between them which is about a third of what they were expecting and for comparison in 1924 the Communist Party ran six candidates and got 41,000 votes in 1929 it runs 25 candidates and gets 50,000 votes the average vote per candidate went from 7,000 to 2,000 the majority of the party's central committee at this time really put its foot down and said this is a disaster we can't continue down this ultra-left third period line we need to go back towards this united front tactic which had built our position in the national minority movement in the Labour movement more generally but the common turn leaders were having none of it they also put their foot down and they began the manoeuvring the intrigues that is obviously a hallmark of Stalin's and they began to invite their favoured stooges to Moscow and they began to put direct pressure and indirect pressure on the British Party and long story short Stalin got his way in the end and he achieved the removal of the majority of leaders in the British Communist Party who were opposed this ultra-left third period policy the next party congress at the very end of 1929 really registered the final victory of the Stalinist faction in the British Communist Party the central committee was cleared out of those who had opposed the third period policies and they were replaced by ultra-left and sectarians on the party contrary to what was promised this didn't reverse the declining membership of the party or the declining press circulation all that happened was that the left wing movement in the Labour Party and then also the national minority movement were allowed to wither on the vine and eventually die in this way the party threw away the positions that had been conquered over the last few years by enormous sacrifice and dedicated work by countless communist party members this big position that they had conquered in the Labour movement was tossed overboard none of the lessons that could be taken from the experience of the general strike from the experience of the national minority movement none of those were preserved by the party that was all thrown overboard in the interests of the Moscow bureaucracy so the enormous potential that existed with the formation of the communist party was wasted and all that work that went into overcoming those weaknesses that first existed also was wasted precisely at a time when British capitalism could have been finally done away with at this moment these people wrecked the entire project so what can we take away from this? in a nutshell we need a good grasp of Marx's theory this is the starting point if we need a high level of political understanding and we also need a clear understanding of revolutionary tactics not enough just to have the right ideas we have to know how to get them into the movement how to win more people over to them first of all we need to understand then that capitalism, this is our starting point capitalism is the root cause of our problems and only a fundamental break with capitalism and the establishment of a socialist society is the way forward this is the principal communist position it's not enough just to understand that though we have to take that understanding into the mass movement of the working class to participate in every mass movement of the working class fight for concrete gains for working class people and for the labour movement as a whole all the while retaining these principles building support for our revolutionary approach and exposing the limitations of reformism and proving actually the only way to guarantee these reforms that we're fighting for is through socialist revolution and above all we need to realise the importance of good revolutionary leadership at the decisive moment the working class was ready to fight in 1926 for example but their leaders at that time on the TUC the working class's leaders on the TUC were found wanting the communist party leaders at that time should have built themselves a position from which they could take over the leadership of that movement at that moment when the betrayal of the TUC leaders came and they could have offered a lead to strike that final decisive blow against capitalism our job is to learn the lessons from the best examples of the history of the communist party this is our history we don't call ourselves the communist party the communist party exists in another degenerate form these days the early years of the communist party the best examples of the early years of the communist party this is our history and we should claim that we need to learn from that prepare for the next decisive showdown with capitalism in this country and in every other country so that when that moment comes again to strike that decisive blow when the reformist leaders are found wanting we are in a position to be able to step up take over that leadership and throw capitalism in Britain and internationally into the dustbin of history