The Communist Party of Great Britain is a

political group A parliamentary group, parliamentary caucus or political group is a group consisting of members of different political parties or independent politicians with similar ideologies. Some parliamentary systems allow smaller political parties, who a ...

which publishes the ''

Weekly Worker The ''Weekly Worker'' is a newspaper published by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) (CPGB-PCC). The paper is known on the left for its polemical articles, and for its close attention to Marxist theory and the po ...

'' newspaper. The CPGB (PCC) claims to have "an internationalist duty to uphold the principle, 'One state, one party'. To the extent that the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

becomes a state then that necessitates EU-wide trade unions and a Communist Party of the EU". In addition, it is in favour of the unification of the entire

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

under a new

Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...

. It is not to be confused with the former

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

, the

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist) The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist), abbreviated CPGB-ML, is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in the United Kingdom, active in England, Scotland, and Wales. The CPGB-ML was founded by Harpal ...

, or the current

Communist Party of Britain The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) is a communist party in Great Britain which emerged from a dispute between Eurocommunists and Marxist-Leninists in the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1988. It follows Marxist-Leninist theory and su ...

Formation

The origins of the CPGB (PCC) lie in the

New Communist Party of Britain The New Communist Party of Britain is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in Britain. The origins of the NCP lie in the Communist Party of Great Britain from which it split in 1977. Opposed to Eurocommunism, the party was ...

(NCP) which split from the

(CPGB) in 1977. Under the influence of a faction of the Communist Party of Turkey, a handful led by NCP youth section leader John Chamberlain (who uses the pseudonym Jack Conrad) attempted to rejoin the then CPGB. Few actually regained party cards but the grouping began to publish ''

The Leninist The ''Weekly Worker'' is a newspaper published by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) (CPGB-PCC). The paper is known on the left for its polemical articles, and for its close attention to Marxist theory and the po ...

'', first as a journal, then as a more or less monthly paper. Initially ''The Leninist'' appeared to some to be a Stalinist publication in its politics, but over time it mutated into something very different. This may be due to their interaction with various

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

groups including a series of exchanges with the

Spartacist League The Spartacus League () was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. It was founded in August 1914 as the International Group by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and other members of the Social De ...

. The faction developed a critique of the Stalinist states as well as the bureaucratism and political liquidationism of the old CPGB.

Post-CPGB dissolution

After the dissolution of the official CPGB in 1991 and its relaunch as the Democratic Left, the group declared their intention to reforge the party on what they declared to be "firm Leninist principles". They organised an "emergency conference", at which they claimed the CPGB name, but not its assets. They also changed the name of their paper, increasing its regularity to weekly. By the early 1990s the group was working closely with the tiny Trotskyist

Revolutionary Democratic Group The Revolutionary Democratic Group (RDG) was a socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. It was founded in the early 1980s in a split from London and Scottish branches of the Socialist Workers Party, of which, for many years, it considered i ...

and the discussion magazine ''Open Polemic''. It also sought to deepen its links with a group of recent ex-members of other Trotskyist groups such as the Socialist Workers Party who called themselves the International Socialist Group. The CPGB (PCC) described this process as "Communist rapprochement". The attempt failed as the ISG collapsed and ''Open Polemic'' briefly enrolled a few of its supporters in the CPGB (PCC), only for them to quit in a row over money. During the 1992 general election campaign,

Ken Livingstone Kenneth Robert Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is an English former politician who served as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until the council was Local Government Act 1985, abolished in 1986, and as Mayor of Londo ...

claimed that the members of the CPGB (PCC) were "

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

agents". In 1999, the group stood candidates for two UK constituencies in the

European elections Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's. Until 2019, 751 ...

. Prevented from using the CPGB name it stood as '

Activities

The group was for a short while embedded in the Socialist Labour Party, but left to join the Socialist Alliance in which they came to work closely with the

Alliance for Workers' Liberty The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), also known as Workers' Liberty, is a Trotskyist group in Britain and Australia, which has been identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna throughout its history. It publishes the newspaper ''Solidarity''. ...

and proposed a merger of their papers, rejected by the AWL. The two have since politically drifted apart. In 2004, the group affiliated to the Respect Coalition. A minority disagreed with the tactic of working within Respect and formed a faction called the Red Platform. The new faction called instead for the CPGB (PCC) to rejoin a Socialist Alliance reform current called the

Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social ...

. The Red Platform won their aim but the CPGB (PCC) majority continued to work within Respect. Members of the Red Platform subsequently left to create the Red Party in August 2004 over a disagreement about their views being published in the paper. The group was active in the

Campaign for a Marxist Party The Communist Party of Great Britain is a political group which publishes the ''Weekly Worker'' newspaper. The CPGB (PCC) claims to have "an internationalist duty to uphold the principle, 'One state, one party'. To the extent that the European U ...

(2006–2008) and is critical of the

Campaign for a New Workers' Party The Campaign For A New Workers' Party was an initiative of the Socialist Party of England and Wales that argued for the establishment of a new mass workers' party, involving trade union activists, socialists, anti-capitalists, anti-war and envi ...

and the Convention of the Left. The CPGB (PCC) was heavily involved in founding the

Hands Off the People of Iran Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) is a political organisation in the United Kingdom founded in 2007, closely associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee). It is opposed to Western military intervention in ...

(HOPI) campaign. Mark Fischer, formerly National Organiser of the CPGB (PCC), is HOPI secretary. The CPGB (PCC) also enjoys close links with Communist Students. The CPGB (PCC) endorsed the Labour Party in the June 2009 European Parliament elections and criticised the

No to EU – Yes to Democracy No2EU is a left-wing Eurosceptic electoral alliance in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 2009 when it campaigned under the campaign slogan ''No2EU — Yes to Democracy''; it was led by Bob Crow and backed by the National Union of Rail, Mar ...

coalition as "

left-wing nationalist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing poli ...

". Non-members such as former Soviet dissident

Boris Kagarlitsky } Boris Yulyevich Kagarlitsky (; born 29 August 1958) is a Russian Marxism, Marxist Political philosophy, theoretician and sociology, sociologist who has been a Dissident, political dissident in the Soviet Union and the Russia, Russian Federation. ...

Matzpen Matzpen (, lit. 'Compass'), founded in 1962, was an Israeli revolutionary socialist and anti-Zionist organisation. It was active until the 1980s. Its official name was the Socialist Organisation in Israel, but it became better known as Matzpen af ...

founder

Moshé Machover Moshé Machover (; born 1936) is a mathematician, philosopher, and socialist activist, noted for his writings against Zionism. Born to a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, then part of the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate of Palestine, Machover move ...

and Professor

Hillel Ticktin Hillel H. Ticktin is a Marxist philosophy, Marxist theorist and economist. He was born in South Africa in 1937, but had to leave to avoid arrest for political activism. He then lived and studied in the Soviet Union, where his PhD thesis, which wa ...

, editor of ''

Critique Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is frequently understood as fault finding and negative judgment, Rodolphe Gasché (2007''The honor of thinking: critique, theory, philosophy ...

'' and chairman of the ''Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements'',

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

, have spoken at CPGB (PCC) events.

Campaign for a Marxist Party

The Campaign for a Marxist Party was a campaign (founded 4 November 2006) run by the CPGB-PCC and other organisations on the British left for a political party with explicitly Marxist goals as part of a rebuilt workers' international. Its members were ''

'' (who proposed the campaign initially), CPGB (PCC) and the Democratic Socialist Alliance. The Irish Socialist Democracy group welcomed the CPGB (PCC). Similar socialist campaign groups include

and Convention of the Left. The campaign agreed three founding political principles at the founding conference: # We are in favour of a planned, democratic socialist society and against the market. # Socialism will be achieved in a single step when the working class seizes power over society, there are no intermediate "democratic" or other stages # The Campaign is against the destructive incubus of Stalinism and will seek to make clear the counter revolutionary and anti-human nature of the Stalinist regimes and Parties. Stalinism was responsible for mass slaughter, brutal incarceration and the atomisation of the people of the countries under its control. In addition the Stalinists were responsible for the most cynical and costly betrayals of the working class everywhere from Germany to South Africa – no Party which has as its aim the liberation of humanity can do other than condemn the Stalinist current and seek to undo the damage done to Marxism by it. Its seven-member executive mainly consisted of members of the CPGB (PCC) and the ''Democratic Socialist Alliance'' criticised the party for its "hijacking" of the campaign. A group of members became known as the Trotskyist Tendency. The campaign published ''Marxist Voice''. In November 2008, it was announced that the CPGB (PCC) would move to wind up the campaign at its December AGM. Having done so, it claimed it will establish a new committee to promote "unity of Marxists as Marxists". A minority of members objected to the dissolution of the campaign including in published articles by Dave Spencer, Phil SharpeNew Interventions and Steve Freeman.

Communist Platform of Left Unity

In 2013, the CPGB (PCC) intervened in the campaign for a new left party initiated by film director

Ken Loach Kenneth Charles Loach (born 17 June 1936) is a retiredhttps://variety.com/2024/film/global/ken-loach-retirement-the-old-oak-jonathan-glazer-oscars-speech-1235956589/ English filmmaker. His socially critical directing style and socialist views ar ...

. They accused the campaign's initial appeal of making "

Keynesian Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output an ...

platitudes" and called for a new formation on the left to have an explicitly Marxist programme. The CPGB (PCC) described the "politically decrepit"

Socialist Resistance The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. Following a ten-year schism, in 1963 the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat of the Fourth International ...

as "the one 'insider' group" in the campaign and accused the group of attempting "to relive old Labour-style Keynesian welfarism". In the run up to the Left Unity (LU) founding conference in November 2013, the CPGB (PCC) launched the Communist Platform in response to the Socialist Platform " bscuringthe differences between Marxism and a left reading of

clause four Clause IV is part of the Labour Party Rule Book which sets out the aims and values of the British Labour Party. The original clause, adopted in 1918, called for common ownership of industry, and proved controversial in later years; Hugh Gaitskell ...

-type politics". They launched the Communist Platform as a permanent tendency in Left Unity on 8 February 2014. On 29 March 2014, CPGB member Yassamine Mather was elected to Left Unity's National Council at the party's first policy conference. In February 2016, the CPGB (PCC) dissolved their Platform and left LU.

Labour Party

In 2015, the CPGB (PCC) supported

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who has been Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North (UK Parliament constituency), Islington North since 1983. Now an Independent ...

in his successful campaign to be elected leader of the Labour Party. The CPGB (PCC) has been a supporter o
Labour Party Marxists
(LPM), which promotes many of the ideas of the ''Weekly Worker'' to a Labour Party audience through its website and occasional print bulletins. Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Party Marxists, was expelled from the Labour Party in June 2017 for his association with LPM. The CPGB (PCC) has also promoted the work of another Labour Party organisation
Labour against the witch-hunt
in the ''Weekly Worker''. In 2020, the CPGB (PCC) suffered the resignation of a number of members around its work in the Labour Left Alliance. The leadership of the CPGB (PCC) have argued that this was due to a departure from communist principle on the part of those members; this has been strongly rejected by the leadership's internal critics.

Communist University

Every year the CPGB (PCC) organises a weeklong summer school called Communist University. They invite speakers from in- and outside the CPGB (PCC) to discuss a range of topics. Amongst the regular speakers are Scottish computer scientist

Paul Cockshott William Paul Cockshott (born 16 March 1952) is a Scottish academic in the fields of computer science and Marxist economics. He is a Reader at the University of Glasgow. Since 1993 he has authored multiple works in the tradition of scientif ...

, Iranian scholar and activist Yassamine Mather and a founder of the Israeli socialist organisation

. Recurring themes, amongst others, are international politics, the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict Israelis (; ) are the citizens and nationals of the State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Jews and Arabs, who respectively account for 75 percent and 20 percent of the national figure, followed by other ethnic and ...

and the Labour Party.

Policies

The party has been involved in a rethinking of the class nature of the former

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Despite its origins in the

, ''The Leninist'' advanced sharp criticisms of the Soviet Union and the

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

countries while strongly opposing movements it considered to be in support of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

. Today, leading member Jack Conrad calls these societies forms of "bureaucratic socialism" in a view strongly influenced by

and the ''

'' journal while Mike Macnair argues that the Soviet Union was a peasant based society frozen in transition from

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

to capitalism. However, the CPGB (PCC) does not formally endorse any particular theoretical analysis of the Soviet Union. During the

Kosovo War The Kosovo War (; sr-Cyrl-Latn, Косовски рат, Kosovski rat) was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It ...

of the late 1990s, the party supported the ethnic-Albanian

Kosovo Liberation Army The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA; , UÇK) was an Albanians, ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Republic of Serbia (1992–2006), Republic of R ...

(KLA) and supports the complete secession of

Kosovo Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe with International recognition of Kosovo, partial diplomatic recognition. It is bordered by Albania to the southwest, Montenegro to the west, Serbia to the ...

from

Serbia , image_flag = Flag of Serbia.svg , national_motto = , image_coat = Coat of arms of Serbia.svg , national_anthem = () , image_map = , map_caption = Location of Serbia (gree ...

. The party refers to Kosovo as Kosova, the Albanian and

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish (, ; ) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. ...

name for Kosovo. The party formerly listed the abolition of the age of consent among its immediate demands, with alternative legislation to protect children from sexual abuse. In 2021 it amended this demand: "Young people are entitled to develop their sexual lives free from parental, police or religious control. We favour legislation which protects children and young people from sexual exploitation by those who are substantially older than them, especially by those in authority over them."

International

The CPGB (PCC) has informal ties with the Dutch Communist Platform, which shares a similar political point of view. Members of the Communist Platform have visited the CPGB's Communist University in the past.

References

External links

Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)

Weekly Worker archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Communist Party Of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) 1991 establishments in the United Kingdom Communist parties in the United Kingdom Communist Party of Great Britain Political parties established in 1991 Communist Party of Great Britain breakaway groups Anti-austerity political parties in the United Kingdom