1952-1959
Steve Coleman and Stan
Parker
FORUM's relatively brief
life as a Party publication spanned a period of great controversy. In the early
1950s a small number of members were beginning to question what might be called
"the word": the idea that the acid test of a socialist was whether he
(it was almost always a "he") agreed in literal terms with the
Party's 1904-drafted Declaration of Principles or not. The disputation spread
to a number of other areas, not all of them "internal" because many
of them were concerned with how to "make" socialists more
effectively. At that time the spoken forums preceded and ran alongside the
printed FORUM. Meetings were held almost every Saturday at Head Office on a
wide range of subjects such as whether the Party should contest elections, how
best to present the Party case, whether there would be mass production or a
division between town and country in socialism, and so on.
Rise and fall
The launching of FORUM in
October 1952 was by no means a straightforward affair. The formal procedure
started with a series of motions tabled at the Executive Committee meeting on
25 March that year. The wording and fate of those motions speaks volumes about
the atmosphere in which FORUM was born:
"That provisionally
the IPJ consists of theoretical articles, controversial or otherwise, from
Party members
concerned with the
Party's object and policy and that it be for circulation within the
Party." Lost 6-7. ,
"That the Committee
prepare a draft of the letter they propose to send out to branches and submit
it to the EC"
Carried 10-4.
"That the terms of
reference of the IPJ Committee be as follows, 'To publish a journal containing
articles of a
controversial,
educational, or informative nature which may be of use to members in relation
to the Party's case
and organisation
generally'" Carried 7-6.
"That a synopsis of
the first issue be submitted to the EC prior to publication" Lost 5-7.
So by the narrowest of margins the EC decided
that it did not need to vet the articles submitted to FORUM and that the IPJ
Committee could be left to carry out its terms of reference more or less
unsupervised. Three members— Price, Waite and Parker-—were appointed to the
Committee in March, but Price resigned at the end of April, Waters being
appointed shortly after. During the next few months the Committee was busy
preparing the first issue. They obtained quotes for printing: 1,000 copies of a
4-page issue would be £17; 500 would be £14. The EC cautiously voted 6-5 for
500 copies and agreed the price to be 6d (2.5 new pence).
The first issue of FORUM appeared in
mid-October and aroused much interest in the Party. The Committee was able to
report to the EC on 28 October 1952 that 850 copies had been sold. The
Committee had gone for a print run of 1,000 against the EC's instruction
because branches had responded well to the invitation to place orders and there
were more sales than the pessimists expected. The 11,000 words in the first
issue were in rather small type and the EC agreed to the Committee's proposal
that the second issue should be 8 pages in more readable type.
After that the EC was called on to deal with
only a few matters concerning FORUM. They authorised changes in the membership of
the Committee. There was a concern among some members that FORUM should not be
offered for sale to non-members and this view was endorsed in a ruling by the
EC.
It is probably fair to say that the middle
Party (the majority view at any given time) was never happy with the forums or
with FORUM. The EC minutes record dissatisfaction with the holding of Head
Office forums by one branch on the grounds that this took members' time away
from propagating socialist ideas amongfworkers—an opinion not confined to one
branch. In 1954 Camberwell Branch wanted to suspend publication of FORUM in
view of the Party's "serious financial position". The last and 43rd
printed issue of FORUM appeared in May 1957, although four later duplicated
issues were published, the last in May 1959.
Content
To read through the
nearly half-a-million words published in FORUM is to gain considerable insight
into the nature and activities, the problems and the controversies in the SPGB
as it reached its first half-century of existence. All socialist life was
there: the scholarly and the knockabout, the authoritarian and the libertarian,
the declamatory and the defamatory, the clever and the too-clever-by-half.
The star of the show for almost the first
two years of publication was arguably the intermittent series of articles by
Frank Evans under the title 'The Nature of the Socialist Revolution'. In eight
parts, some in sections spread over different issues of FORUM, this series was
impressive in its historical and imaginative sweep. Critics complained that
Evans often failed to make his meaning clear: his sentences were long, his
style varying from the lyrical to the opaque. His critical examination of
received Party wisdom was never confrontational, often conciliatory, but
ultimately hard-edged. It would lead to his retaining party membership only for
a period after the 1955 upheaval, of which more below.
1
The early and middle issues of FORUM dealt
with a variety of more-or-less contentious matters. Most of them could be
construed as connected in some way with putting the case for socialism more
effectively to gain new members. The Party had recently bought 52 Clapham High
Street and, while its facilities were appreciated by some members, others noted
that it was proving costly to run and wanted it sold and the money used to
publish more literature, advertise and run meetings, etc.
A disagreement about whether the ballot
could or should be used to achieve socialism involved our American comrades,
particularly Cantor and Rab. One side insisted that the ballot is the only way;
the other allowed that in certain conditions "the majority will use
whatever other means are at hand to introduce socialism" (October 1952).
Differences about the Party's attitude to trade unions emerged when the
Standard published an editorial condemning the workers at D.C. Thomson for
refusing to print an article supporting the employer's side in a trade dispute.
Contributors to FORUM supported and opposed the views expressed in that
editorial (October, November 1952).
Another early controversy was whether the
Party should contest elections. This one would run and run. Trotman got off the
mark in the first issue, arguing inter alia that we got better value from small
adverts. He received a robust reply in the next issue from Horatio, the pen
name preferred by Harry Young (except in the April 1955 issue, when he
"outed" himself). In January 1954 Paddington Branch criticised as
negative the by-election address sent out by the party. In June the branch
offered its own draft address for the general election, and in July D'Arcy
wrote a strong criticism of that address.
The topic of what socialism will be like
really involved two controversies: should we talk about it all and, if so, what
should we say? The topic had featured in several Head Office forums, but S.R.P.
(Stan Parker) started the ball rolling in FORUM in December 1952 by asking Will
There Be Mass Production? and answering in the affirmative. Tony Turner replied
in February 1953 disagreeing, and arguing that with socialism the distinction
between town and country would be abolished. In March S.R.P. came back on both
issues, and in April J.M. Roe made his case for socialist mass production. On
the wider question of whether we should in our propaganda try to give some idea
of what socialism will be like, Peter Newell (July) agreed with this and
accused some members of not wanting socialism at all but only a glorified
capitalism.
The question of whether
socialist propaganda should be selective or not was aired in FORUM. Turner
claimed (March 1953) that "it is untrue that there are people who have
little or nothing to gain by the establishment of socialism" and that
consequently we should not be selective in our propaganda, for example by
addressing the working class alone. In the next issue John McGregor didn't
directly attack that position but did make the point that "differing
environmental backgrounds make for differences of viewpoint among people, which
render some more receptive to socialist propaganda than others".
Then there was (and still is) the question
of whether capitalism produces increasing misery for the working class and the
allied question of whether workers have become better off. Horatio (October
1953) argued that things had generally got worse for workers; a mysterious
writer called H. (November) countered those arguments in a style bearing a
close resemblance to that of Hardy. Horatio had another go in May 1954,
asserting that "The increasing misery of the workers is a linchpin of Socialist
economics." E.W. (Wilmott) joined in the fray in June with a carefully
reasoned account of Marxian economics, doubting whether workers' conditions
have worsened or will worsen.
This brief review of FORUM controversies
cannot end without reference to the mother and father of them all: that between
those who wanted to change the D of P because they felt it did not adequately
express the contemporary case for socialism and those who wanted to preserve
that declaration because they saw it as the basis of membership of the Party
and disagreement with it as grounds for expulsion. A full account of this
controversy would take more pages than we have allocated for the whole of this
historical review. At least 20 members wrote to FORUM on one aspect or another
of the controversy and more attended the Saturday forums which dealt with it.
Here, by way of summary, we reproduce the main points from the joint statement
(April 1955) by Evans, Parker, Rowan and Turner which led to the latter three
leaving in the Party after threat of expulsion, together with statements by
four representatives of the Party status quo at that time:
"We suggest that the
basis of membership could be agreement on principles somewhat as follows:
UNDERSTANDING that social
change in continuous, and that change in men's attitudes and their social
institutions is one
process;
RECOGNISING that the
development of present (capitalist) society includes the changing of the
institutions
of property and authority
(the institutions of class and power and privilege) in the direction of
socialism;
RECOGNISING AND DESIRING
socialism as a way of life characterised by production solely for use as an
integral part of a freer,
more equalitarian and more harmonious society; and
UNDERSTANDING that the
purpose of Socialist Party is to urge on the emergence of socialist society by
encouraging in the growth
of socialist tendencies in attitudes and institutions." The authors
explicitly denied that they put forward those principles 'as an ultimatum or as
a programme to be now adopted . . . We are concerned only that this alternative
statement of socialist principles and policy should be discussed by the
membership as a whole, without haste, and for so long as it takes to bring out
all that it implies.'"
The statements upholding the 1904 D of P and
attacking its critics included those by H.B. (Harry Baldwin) (May 1954), D'Arcy
(June 1954), J.G. Grisley (January 1955) and Harry Young (April 1955):
"... since the
working class is that last subject class in history, it alone can dispossess
the capitalist parasites (or are they going to abdicate?), this dispossession
will be the final act of class struggle (the act to end classes): a struggle
carried on unceasingly throughout the life of capitalism. The capitalist class is
a reactionary class of plunderers: the working class is alone the revolutionary
class." (Baldwin.)
"My own view is that
the very nature of the question 'Socialism—what will it look like?' is an
absurdity. You can only describe social systems, including Capitalism and
Socialism, from their economic basis, the relations of people to the means of
production. In short, the description contained in our object." (D'Arcy.)
"There is nothing wrong with our propaganda—thousands of debates and
public meetings have proven that. There is nothing wrong with our Declaration
of Principles—years of criticism have been unable to shatter them. The trouble
lies in the majority of people who have not heard the Party's case or, having
heard it, do not respond." (Grisley.)
"If, even now, a
majority of the members of the Party will not expel an avowed opponent merely
because he was
once a good speaker,
those who do support the Declaration of Principles, and are not concerned with
personalities, will have
to seriously consider the formation of a Socialist Party." (Young.)
After April 1955 and the "troubles" had died
down, the content of FORUM changed markedly. The
controversial issues that
had taken up so much space virtually disappeared. The pre-purge FORUM had
contained
"educational"
material (for example, a series of five "Notes on crises" by E.W. but
the proportion of this was now
much increased. The new
IPJ Committee, notably Bob Coster, proclaimed its editorial policy: "We
believe there is
scope for FORUM as a
medium for Socialist education, information and instructive discussion"
(July 1955,
emphasis in original).
That issue contained a long article on economics by E. W., an even longer one
as part 3 of a
series on Marxism and
literature by Coster, and hints on public speaking by Ambridge. The Aug-Sep
1956 issue had
Coster on The meaning of
education, E.W. on Do we need the dialectic? (Apparently we don't), and A.W.I,
on the
novelist John Steinbeck
("always interesting, and sometimes rings the bell").
The last printed issue of FORUM was still
subtitled "Socialist Discussion Journal". But 6'/2 of its 8 pages
were devoted to an annotated survey of the writings and speeches of Marx and
Engels and the remaining 1 lA pages consisted of an extract from Engels's
pamphlet Principles of Communism, 1847.
After a gap of 15 months the first number of
volume 2 of FORUM was published in duplicated form. An editorial under the
heading THE NEW FORUM stated:
"The last
Inter-Party Journal, although it published much that was useful and worthwhile,
unfortunately degenerated into an organ that was largely concerned with
anti-party polemics and recrimination. In the later issues of the journal this
trend was stopped but the damage had been done, and FORUM foundered for lack of
worthwhile material."
The issue contained Evans's lecture notes on
a Socialist Approach to History, Willmott on value, Jarvis on Dylan Thomas, and
two controversial pieces, Trotman on the Party's attitude to rent control and
Hackney Branch on the Socialist Standard ("We claim that the Socialist
Standard is an inferior paper today, and we appeal to the Party membership to
do something about it... We are not offering positive proposals here: that is
not our point.")
The last gasp of FORUM was in May 1959. It
could be argued that FORUM didn't want to die, because it announced the
intended contents of number 5 (Trade unions, Value re-examined and Let the
Party sing). The contents were an excerpt from Engels and the wages system,
Trotman still on about rent control, some facts and figures from the USA
concerning the old folk—and 12 of the 22 pages on the resurrection of the saga
of WB of Upton Park (1910-11), after 4 pages on that ancient controversy in the
previous issue.
WB of Upton Park wrote to the Standard in
1910 asking "What would be the action of a member of the SPGB elected to
Parliament, and how would he maintain our principle of 'no compromise'?"
The items reprinted in FORUM consisted of the Executive Committee's reply to
WB, an open letter by 7 members (the "Provisional Committee for advocating
the revocation of the reply given to WB"), the EC's reply to that open
letter (August 1911) and finally the Provisional Committee's reply. The editors
of FORUM justified their republication of these documents by stating their
belief "that the documents relating to this controversy have a very real
bearing on similar, though fortunately slighter, controversies in the Party
today. In any event, they are of historic interest and define what has been the
Party's position on reforms and reformism since its inception".
The Provisional Committee opposed the idea
that democracy is essential to the establishment of socialism ("..-. the
workers if once revolutionary class-conscious would and could under any form of
Government, even if autocratic, bureaucratic, or plutocratic seize the
political machinery, thereby becoming the dominating class in society."
—Emphasis in original). FORUM's last Editorial Committee gave the last word
(and incidentally more than 10 of the 16 pages) to the Provisional Committee.
They didn't take sides for or against that Committee and the EC. They didn't
say in what ways they thought the 1910-11 controversy had "a very real
bearing" on the controversies at the time they were writing.
Our view is that WB raised a question that
we still haven't satisfactorily answered today: do we reject capitalist
(partial) democracy as a reform to be opposed, or do we see (full) democracy as
an essential ingredient of socialism?
Retrospect and prospect
FORUM was published
during years that were arguably the most turbulent in the Party's existence.
Historically, controversy has never been absent from the socialist movement
(remember William Morris's wry reference to six different opinions among six
members of the Socialist League) and it is not absent today. Indeed, the
existence of differing views is a sign of political health. But in the FORUM
era controversy (or, if y6n like, introversy) was probably more widespread and
virulent than before or since. Why was that?
The party had grown rapidly after the second
World War. The political "left"—a vague and unsatisfactory term but
still with some meaning—was stronger than the "right", which had to
wait until the advent of Thatcher in 1979 to assert itself. Before the FORUM
years few inside or outside the Party would have denied that it was part of the
"left". And then a strange thing happened. The Party that up to then
had been one started to split into two. It didn't happen overnight and it
wasn't part of the usual left-right split because all, the participants wanted
and were working for socialism as their sole object, even though some on one
side denied the socialist credentials of some on the other.
In retrospect the disputants might be conceived
of as the "narrows" and the "broads". We say "in
retrospect" .because these two terms weren't actually coined (by Eddie
Grant) and used in the Party until developments in the 1980s led to the
expulsion of two branches and the formation of the Ashbourne Court group.
"Narrows" are primarily concerned with narrowly confining what the
Party stands for, and with who socialists are in contrast to non-socialists.
"Broads" are more aware of movement than of stability; they tend to
recognise shades of grey within the movement of history.
In the FORUM era the narrows and the broads
somehow forsook common ground for battleground—they each developed extreme
wings. The extreme narrows and the extreme broads couldn't live together
long-term in the same party, though they did for a hectic time. The extreme
narrows convinced a majority of the Party to take action to get the extreme
broads out, either by expulsion or by more subtle pressures. The extreme broads
(generally but not always) more confrontational and less diplomatic than
mainstream broads—responded by increasingly sharp attacks on what the narrows
regarded as their proudest possession, the 1904 D of P. (In fact, only the
literal-fundamentalist sanctity of the D of P was in dispute, not its essence.)
The narrows won the 1955 battle. The extreme broads left the Party and after
their departure FORUM lost most of its controversial bite. The Party settled in
to a not very remarkable period of relative calm, even of doldrums and
dwindling membership (it had reached 1200 in the 1950s). But another
controversy was brewing between the extreme narrows and the rest of the Party.
The details of that are beyond the scope of this history of FORUM. Suffice it
to say here that this time the rest of the Party won the day.
What happened to the extreme broads who left
the Party in 1955? Some have since died, others decided they could pursue their
life goals without Party membership—and a few, seeing the Party no longer
dominated by extremely narrow and intolerant people and outlooks, have rejoined
what they see as a fully democratic as well as a fully socialist party. These
former extreme broads have in effect become mainstream broads, in a Party which
has few visible extreme narrows, either.
Two question remain to be discussed. The
first is whether the effort put into publishing FORUM could have been better
directed to "propaganda"—making more socialists. Underlying this
question is a belief that effort directed inwards is less healthy than effort
directed outwards. If the people writing for, editing and distributing FORUM
had changed from being active propagandists to being less active or even
inactive, then there would be something in that argument. But there is no
evidence that this was the case. FORUM was given birth and kept alive by those
who were active in the Party. The defeat of the extreme broads confined FORUM
to its educational and instructive function, a laudable aim but in the end an
insufficient one.
The second question is whether we can expect
to see another FORUM-type publication in the foreseeable future. There was no
enthusiasm for it when it came up as an item for discussion at the 1995 ADM.
Who knows? We rather doubt it. Certainly we can look forward to having enough
members and resources to produce a periodic publication in addition to the
Standard. But this doesn't have to be an Internal Party journal. Hopefully we
have got past the stage when we want to hide from non-members the fact that
socialists don't see eye-to-eye on everything. We—the authors of this
paper—believe that the Party today contains some members who incline to being
somewhat authoritarian and others who incline to being somewhat libertarian. We
don't expect all members to agree with this analysis, but we don't want those
who disagree to be out of the Party.
The Socialist Party is not a monument; it is
part of the socialist movement. A forum, or a FORUM, an exchange of information
and views as part of the democratic process, is consistent with a movement, not
a monument. Even though we don't have FORUM today we must surely believe in
forums as an important way of helping the socialist movement to grow.
November 1995
