I found a couple of links for the article on the history of the CPGB and its various divisions since the winding up of the official organisation in 1991. The link to the Marxist Leninist List is: http://www.eGroups.com/group/marxist-leninist-list/4119.html The original document can also be found at: http://www.raisio.se/igeldard/LA/political/moscom.txt and was originally published by Britain's right-wing Libertarian Alliance. It is entitled "THE BRITISH COMMUNIST MOVEMENT AND MOSCOW: HOW THE DEMISE OF THE SOVIET UNION AFFECTED THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND ITS SUCCESSOR ORGANISATIONS". There is a long selection (the original being 30 odd pages) below. If anyone know of another history which is also relatively (for a right-wing organisation) un-biased on the Communist parties in Britain please let me know. Thanks, John 8 The Party's Dissolution - Democratic Left On the 22nd of November 1991 the Party was finally dissolved, at its 43rd Congress (Mercer, 1994). All the crucial votes here were won by the reformers with two-to-one majorities. Nina Temple believes that she managed to get majorities of this size for her proposals partly due to the Moscow Gold disclosures. As mentioned above, many of her natural supporters had left the Party already. This meant the internal balance within the Party had shifted to those members - generally the older ones - who were not necessarily against reform, but who were emotionally more strongly tied to the Party's traditions. Moscow Gold had nevertheless shown to this type of member that the game was now truly up. The Congress which dissolved the Communist Party also launched its official successor organisation, the Democratic Left. This organisation is still run by Nina Temple. It is not a political party and does not put up candidates for election. Nina Temple believes that, with the British electoral system, a group such as theirs could be more effective building political alliances and campaigning on issues rather than operating as a fully fledged political party. It has had some success in building political alliances around the issues of anti-Tory tactical voting, with their GROT - "Get Rid Of Them" - campaign and their electoral reform campaign, which has gained the support even of the Conservative MP John Biffen. The political outlook of the Democratic Left is very much the open radical one envisaged by the modernisers within the old Communist Party. Issues surrounding feminism, ethnic minorities and gay rights are very important to the organisation. It is also very keen on the idea of European federalism, so long as it has a socially aware agenda. One can see the extent to which the modernisers have tried to distance themselves from the other currents within the old Party by the fact that the Democratic Left's constitution does not even mention Marxism. There is a `Marxist-Leninist Forum' within the Democratic Left - it is not clear to me if this is a splinter of the old `Straight Left' faction, but this does seem likely - which is, however, very much marginalised within and in no way represents the mainstream of the Democratic Left. Even an attempt to put a commitment in the organisation's constitution to public ownership was defeated; this occurred nearly four years before a similar commitment was ditched by the Labour Party. Democratic Left talks much today about its commitment to `radical democracy' both within its internal structures and also within society at large. All in all these are extraordinary changes for a group with its origins (interview with Nina Temple, 1995). Democratic Left is a far smaller organisation than the Communist Party ever was. It has 1,370 members according to its own figures, while the Communist Party had 4,600 members at its very end. Organisationally it has also declined. Democratic Left has a permanent staff of three and small modern offices near King's Cross station; when Nina Temple took over as general secretary in 1990, the party had fifty full-time staff and large offices in Covent Garden (Temple, ibid). Financially the organisation survives on the income from the assets it inherited from the old party. The value of these assets have been put to me at variously £2,500,000 by Nina Temple and £4,000,000 by Brian Denny, the national organiser of the Communist Party of Britain. Indeed many of the detractors of the Democratic Left argue that the only reason for its continued existence is to keep its hands on these assets. It is even felt that the modernisers only stayed within the Party in order to control the Party's money and kept it out of the hands of the traditionalists (interviews with John Haylett, Brian Denny and Andy Brooks, 1995). The modernising faction of the old Communist Party thus responded to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by abandoning their remaining commitment to Marxism. The only vestige of the old days which is still their is the involvement of some of the leading members of the Democratic Left in pro-Cuba campaigns. As noted before the `Straight Left' faction had stayed within the main Communist Party to the bitter end. After that they formed themselves into various local holding organisations, grouped around something called `Communist Liaison'. This is currently being dissolved, and its members are now joining the Communist Party of Britain (interview with Brian Denny, 1995). To some degree joining up with this Party is a defeat for the `Straight Left' supporters, as they had always opposed The British Road to Socialism, while this is the programme of the Communist Party of Britain. Before moving on to the other successor organisations, it is worth looking at the career of Martin Jacques since leaving the Communist Party in 1991. Marxism Today ceased publication in December 1991, arguing that it had outlived its usefulness. In 1993 Jacques established a new non-partisan think tank, called Demos, committed to modernising Britain's government structures as well as the structures of society at large. This think tank is funded by many large city firms, including British Gas and ICI (Demos Prospectus, 1993). In September 1994 Martin Jacques became deputy editor of The Independent. It has been said of Martin Jacques that he is the only person for whom joining the British Communist Party was a good career move (Beckett, 1995). --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
