Weekly Worker 672 Thursday May 10 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

CPB unity ‘surge’

The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, by its own standards, adopted a relatively ambitious approach to the elections. It stood candidates on each of the five regional lists for the Welsh assembly and contested Glasgow Govan in the elections for the Scottish parliament, as well as standing for a number of council seats across the country. Lawrence Parker reports

The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, by its own standards, adopted a relatively ambitious approach to the elections. It stood candidates on each of the five regional lists for the Welsh assembly and contested Glasgow Govan in the elections for the Scottish parliament, as well as standing for a number of council seats across the country.

The latter included a few wards in Leicester and Chelmsford, where the CPB joined with the Association of Indian Communists GB (Marxist) in a new alliance - Unity for Peace and Socialism.

Elections have traditionally been a problematic area for the CPB, particularly as it has a significant section (maybe still a majority) of members who look askance on any attempt to ‘split the Labour vote’, fully in accord with the programmatic impulse of the British road to socialism. However, the impact of New Labour and a faction that is looking for political avenues other than auto-Labourism has infused more flexibility into CPB electoral policy (see ‘Ever-decreasing circles’ Weekly Worker June 8 2006).

An awful performance in the Welsh regional lists - where the CPB had results ranging from 0.5% to 0.1% (derisory even by the standards of left candidates in British elections, particularly in view of its TV and radio broadcasts) and was comfortably beaten by the phantom Socialist Labour Party on every list - has led to some fairly desperate spin. The Morning Star blithely informs us that “one voter in every 200” voted for the CPB in Wales (May 7) and that there has been a “surge” of membership applications. Spin aside, these results must be severely disappointing for general secretary Robert Griffiths (whose CPB base is in Wales) and could yet undermine his leadership if the CPB’s auto-Labourites look to score points off the failure of his more ambitious strategy.

There were brighter sides to the CPB’s votes elsewhere. Its candidates won 14% of the poll in Linacre, Sefton (Merseyside) and 9% in Yeo, Devon. In Leicester, the two Unity for Peace and Socialism candidates both obtained around 7% of the vote: in Coleman ward Parmjit Singh Bhandal won 319 votes, while Mohinder Singh Farma won 283 in Evington. As a comparison, these votes were dwarfed by the performance of Respect’s candidate in Spinney Hills, Sadia Jabeen, who scored 1,227 votes. Mind you, we hear that relations between Respect and Unity for Peace and Socialism have been very friendly during the election.

Which leads us to the question as to what Unity for Peace and Socialism is. It is seen by some CPB members, not least the ‘innovators’ faction around Morning Star editor John Haylett, as a means to gently introduce the benefits of a Respect-type venture to the organisation’s old guard. A ‘Unity’ venture presaged on a presumed appeal to a particular ethnic group in certain localities, standing on a sub-reformist programme (in this case the CPB’s Left-Wing Programme - a subset of demands from the British road to socialism), has more than a passing similarity to Respect.

The implicit message from the relative successes in Leicester could be that the CPB, rather than scuffing around for derisory votes on its own ticket, ought to look in the direction of George Galloway’s party.

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