Graham Stevenson

The YCL 1966-1980 - anatomy of decline

A 53,000 word study of the last years of the Young Communist League of Great Britain, by a leading participant. It is an analysis of self-destruction, wrought by experimental revisionism that would later destroy the parent Communist Party of Great Britain.

ANATOMY OF DECLINE

The Young Communist League
of Great Britain

- the final years

by

GRAHAM STEVENSON

PREFACE

"The tasks ... of the Young Communist Leagues ... might be summed up in a single word: learn ... the youth in general, who want to advance to Communism, should learn Communism."

"It is the task of the Youth League to organise its practical activities in such a way that, by learning, organising, uniting and fighting, its members shall train both themselves and all those who look to it for leadership; it should train Communists."

V I Lenin "The Tasks of the Youth Leagues". Speech delivered at the Third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League on October 2nd 1920.

"It is a quality of youth to be receptive, to be warm-hearted, to glow with enthusiasm. It is a characteristic of age to become opinionated, dictatorial...”

Tom Mann 1921

"Young people who come into contact with us, and they are many, choose not to join us partly because we don't have our house in order yet and partly because of the minority of "revolutionary Marxists" who rant on endlessly about the glories of the Soviet Union or the Bulgarian wheat harvest at YCL meetings, rather than grapple with the dilemma that feminism, lesbian and gay liberation and the black community pose to the established structures, theories and practices of the YCL. The YCL must change if it is to continue in existence."

Mark Ashton General Secretary of the YCL in a letter to the Morning Star published 21st March 1986.

Contents

1 Bursting the Bubble
2 Turning Rebels into Revolutionaries
3 World Youth Festivals
4 The Ideological Base of Inner-League Differences
5 The 1970 Leadership Contest
6 Retribution Against Opposition
7 Three Cardinal Questions
a) Young Workers
b) School Students
c) Challenge
8 Age and the YCL
9 Division and Decline
10 Euro-Communism as a Distortion of Gramsci?

Appendices

1 Officers of the YCL
2 YCL Membership by Districts and National totals 1967-86
3 Graph of National Membership of the YCL 1967-86
4 YCL membership as a percentage of the CPGB membership
5 A personal note

1 BURSTING THE BUBBLE

From a strength of 6,031 members in 200 branches at its modern peak in September 1967, the Young Communist League ended the Eighties as an extinct force, long before the end of Eastern European Communist governments. The confusion, disappointment and despair arising from all this enabled the Communist Party of Great Britain, by a majority vote in its final Congress to vote itself out of existence. But it had been bereft of a YCL for the best part of a decade earlier. How had such a situation arisen? Why a study of the YCL?

The YCL largely mirrored - sometimes in advance - the decline of the Communist Party. The "adult" body had 30,000 members in 1,200 branches in the mid-Sixties, yet entered the Nineties with less than four thousand members. The problems faced by the YCL had been the same as those faced by the Party, yet interestingly the youth organisation anticipated its "parent" body by several years in parallel circumstances. There is a sense in which the CPGB leadership "experimented" with the YCL before trying out ideas inside the Party itself. Therefore, in this case, to understand the child is to understand the parent. Not the least since many key figures in the leadership who presided over the YCL's demise, were later to become part of the Party's leadership at its very core. This section of the CP's leadership provided much of the leadership of Democratic Left, the rump, revisionist organisation which the CPGB transformed itself into during the 1990s. This body has now voted itself out of existence, after an inglorious period of continuing to disseminate confusion. Whilst the considerable assets of the CPGB remain in the hands of a tiny element constituted as a “network” in support of “pluralist politics”! The very name of the CPGB has become purloined by a handful of strange ultra-leftist, unconnected with its illustrious namesake’s past. The historic CPGB (but not its youth wing) has now become the preserve of writers, in search of new territory for PhD’s and their by-products, who rarely acknowledge the re-establishment of its finest traditions as the Communist Party of Britain. This was itself the product of attempts to prevent the Party from going the way of the YCLGB. In recent years, a renewed YCL has once again been established as the parallel youth organisation of the CPB. A study of the YCL in its final years thus repays itself for those who are interested, in a deeper understanding of the suicidal and homicidal tendencies displayed within the CPGB in its own last years.

The beginnings of the end are to be clearly identified in the 1960s. Yet this decade was a period of growth for the YCL. It would be followed by a period of intense decline in the 1970s. As a result, its 1960 membership of 1,796 was roughly equalled in 1976. The 1960s boom followed a difficult period. Membership had fallen dramatically from the 1957 figure of 3,000, reflecting the problems after the Khrushchev revelations over Stalin and the events in Hungary. A clear period of growth took place as the Communist movement began a process of recovery. By 1962 the YCL was a third larger than it had been a mere five years before and it more or less held on to the gains for a short period. But, during the course of 1965 the YCL grew by around a quarter-fold and the trend to expansion seemed to be holding steady.

YCL national membership 1957-67

1957 3,000
1959 1,700
1960 1,796
1961 2,702
1962 4,019
1963 3,989
1965 4,276
1966 5,420
1967 6,031
Figures are for November of each year, except for October 1967

The growing popularity of CND and the struggles of engineering apprentices contributed much to this. In retrospect 1967 was the beginning of a terminal slide to self-induced oblivion. 1966-7 was ostensibly a good period for recruitment, membership lifting by 611 from 5,420. Yet there are reasons to seriously query the accuracy of the 1967 peak, actual membership was probably just below 5,000. The issue of membership cards for that year (membership cards lasted for a calendar year and the renewal of cards was called a "card exchange" or "card issue") had been largely postal and the normal 20% turnover rate was not realistically faced up to until 1968. In this period, the CPGB tended to have a turnover rate of half that of the YCL, remarkably stable in terms of leftist political groups. (Significantly the turnover rate of the CPGB in the 1980s became very high indeed.) Paradoxically, whilst it was at its most vigorous for years that summer of 1967, the League was already in decline, but did not know it.

There are other considerations as to the accuracy of membership figures. A considerable overlap always existed between the Party and the League. Although some YCLers over the minimum age of 18 years did not always also join the Party, while those that did could get counted twice in any attempt to assess the overall strength of British Communism. More relevant to the League as an organisation was that its greatest difficulty was the 'shooting star' syndrome. That is to say frequent, wild and sudden upsurges of activity as a new and enthusiastic recruit directed the pace of events at a local level. Posed against this positive, if typically youthful feature, were the big drops associated with the loss of a particularly valued cadre.

Unlike the Party, the YCL never had the luxury of a stable leadership at any level of its organisation. Perhaps this was partly due to the very nature of young people. Intensely mobile in social, geographical, occupational and personal terms as they are. Such phenomena gave rise to an uneven pace of development and/or decline in particular sectors of the organisation, accentuated most sharply in times of decline.

However, the absence of a clear policy of cadre development by both the League and the Party, coupled with an often puzzling and arbitrary - certainly inconsistent leadership policy with regard to the League by the Party contributed to instability. The CPGB often neglected the League, but it never let it range free. The Party's leadership seemed often more concerned to weed out 'oppositionalists' from the YCL, especially was this so in 'purges' of Party members from leading positions in the League in 1973 and 1975. Individuals in a number of districts were pressured to a greater or lesser degree by Party functionaries to leave the YCL, either simply in spirit or by actually leaving their League membership to lapse, in favour of predominantly or completely working inside the Party. In this sense the League was always subject to arbitrary and artificial assaults on its ability to thrive, very rarely compensated for at all, but sometimes insufficiently compensated for by the periodic thrusting of young Party members into key roles in the League, without having 'grown up' within the organisation.

2 TURNING REBELS INTO REVOLUTIONARIESThe key notion of the League in the mid-Sixties was to translate the self-evident mass rebelliousness of the generation of young people then receiving a high profile in society at large, into Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries. Seizing on the mood of the times, the YCL launched its "The Trend is Communism" campaign in 1966. For which the leadership grouping became abused as being "Trendies" by the more traditional elements inside the League.

400,000 gaily-coloured folders were produced and a full-time field worker sent out into the country, to tour the coffee bars. The League planned a novel approach for its 26th National Congress due in 1967 at Skegness, in keeping with this carefully cultivated image of modernity. One thousand delegates and visitors attended what was in fact an international youth festival, grafted onto the usual Congress. There were competitions in the arts - painting, poetry, short story writing, plays, photography, cartooning, song competition, even a beat group contest. Amongst the judges were the journalist and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge, Arnold Wesker the playwright and Adrian Mitchell, the poet. Positive though all this undoubtedly seemed, a debt of £1,097 was left owing to the Derbyshire Miners Holiday Camp after the event, a very large sum indeed at the time. This debt was not cleared by the YCL for four years and remained a source of embarrassment for Communists active in the NUM. (To gauge the seriousness of the debt, the figure should be multiplied by at least ten times to account for inflation.)

This lively, enjoyable style began to be presented as an essential component of the League's policies. Even to the extent of YCLs in Bristol, London and Surrey organising coach trips to the seaside! The YCL in Manchester was able to get a team on 'Juke Box Jury' - a sort of forerunner of the 'Top of the Pops' - on BBC TV. Christian-Communist dialogues, debates with the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) and Young Liberals, letters to the local press became a feature of YCL work. More solidly, the League also began to be deeply involved in solidarity work with other youth groups, around the issue of peace in Vietnam. The YCL launched the Medical Aid for Vietnam appeal in 1965 and was the first organisation to donate £1,000 in medical aid. Subsequently a national charity with very broad support was set up.

A Youth for Peace in Vietnam Committee, uniting 14 national youth organisations was set up, although it did not have stable, parallel organisations at regional level. Against a background of rising concern at the appalling levels of death and injury to civilians in Vietnam as the US became more actively involved in bolstering up its puppet government, the League had little difficulty in mobilising interest in its independent activities on Vietnam. The YCL organised a 'US Out Of Vietnam' petition with a target of 100,000 signatures, and planned a culmination of the campaign with a demonstration to Downing Street to present the petition to the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. Over the same weekend another jamboree was set up in the same vein as the Skegness congress. The Round House at Chalk Farm in London was taken over for an event encompassing poetry, films, arts exhibitions, theatre, dancing, jazz, folk music and so on.

As the war progressed and the liberation forces made headway, for all the sophisticated military hardware of the USA, a wave of international resentment at the carnage emerged. Amongst young people in particular, interest in radical and revolutionary ideas grew apace. 1968 became a year famed for left-wing youthful protest. The flavour of YCL publications now took on a decidedly revolutionary, even military, character. The armed struggle as practised by Vietnam and Cuba were popular amongst many young people. Poster portraits of Che Guevara were all the rage.

The Vietnamese had always insisted that the best form of solidarity would be for Communists in the advanced capitalist nations to press for their country's disassociation from the actions of the US in Vietnam, to breach the solidarity of capitalism. Only revolutionaries would be in favour of full-bloodied victory for the liberation forces and this line - of pressing for the British (Labour!) Government's disassociation from the US - proved popular. Opinion polls by 1968 were showing two-thirds support for such a proposal. In such a climate, and with a new phase of the war entered by a general offensive of the liberation forces in 43 urban centres in Vietnam, the YCL began to feel that it was "not sufficient to ask only for disassociation".

Groups that saw themselves as to the left of the CPGB/YCL did not accept this subtle approach. This saw the Medical Aid campaign as appealing to the widest sections, the disassociation campaign as building on this and the most advanced sections only being won on a position which accepted the military victory of the National Liberation Front (NLF) as the solution.

This line lead to severe tensions between Communists and leftist groups. Strongly influenced by the International Marxist Group (IMG) - notable personage, Tariq Ali - and the International Socialists (IS - later Socialist Workers Party or SWP) - notable personage, Paul Foot - was the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. This body however contained a range of radical groups, including the YCL and the CPGB National Student Committee (CPNSC). It was symptomatic of the period that the Scottish YCL congress in 1968 invited a fraternal delegate from the VSC. Even so, he was strongly criticised for over-estimating the mobilising powers of his organisation and for "an under-estimation of the importance of other sections of the peace movement and the need to unite them in action". [YCL Internal Bulletin, hereafter YCLIB, September 1968]

An international campaign for practical and material aid to Vietnam was launched by the World Federation of Democratic Youth set up in 1945 by delegates from 63 countries in London - a sort of latter-day Comintern, without the power, of YCLs and Marxist-Leninist youth organisations throughout the world. Ultra-leftists pondered upon the possibility of a reply of the kind of international solidarity shown in Spain in the Thirties, in the form of the International Brigades. Communists were more realistic and asked the Vietnamese what they needed. Foreign volunteers, untrained in jungle warfare and unfamiliar with the territory, the people and their language and culture, was the last thing required.

Material aid in the struggle was however crucial. The WFDY campaign - entitled "Victory to the Vietnamese People for their Freedom, Independence and Peace" - was geared to raising money for the purchase of particular, militarily useful commodities, difficult to get hold of in war-torn Vietnam. Bicycles were a popular item to purchase, being easy to acquire in the west, yet possessing an unimaginable strategic value on the jungle trails. Supply lines from the more conventional warfare zones were very extended. To get medicines, food, ammunition and so on to the underground in US dominated areas was a very difficult task. Everything had to go by foot, so the bicycles, stripped down, were very useful as transporters of goods. But there was also a need for cameras, radios, typewriters and even motorcycles.

The YCL entered this campaign with considerable gusto at all levels, and often brought considerable imagination to fund-raising as well as vigour. Leeds YCL bought rolls of cloth which would make uniforms for the NLF, Bristol and SE London aimed for a £250 motorbike each. Bletchley aimed for two transistor radios, Hatfield and Luton for a walkie-talkie set each, Stevenage for a field operation kit. There were scores and scores of bicycles - Dundee YCL for example bought 5, Coventry 3.

Newcastle, which had been dormant for six months, collected £90, Bristol £80, Coventry £26, Manchester £30, Dundee £81, Croydon £30 - each of them in less than the first eight weeks. Eventually over £6,500 was raised and perhaps as a measure of the relative worth of this amount it would be well to bear in mind that a wage of £15 to £20 a week would considered very acceptable to most people at this time.

A lorry was bought with which to collect all these items in a round-Britain celebratory tour. Over June 14th to July 19th 1968 a couple of dozen locations were visited. These were: Newcastle, Stockton, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Scotland, Luton, Wales, Bristol, Oxford, Southampton, Brighton, Chatham, London.

The campaign partially climaxed in a 15,000 strong demonstration on July 21 supported by 17 national organisations. While the material was transported by bus across Europe to Bulgaria, the YCL’s lorry having now become a write-off as a result of a road traffic accident. Once safely there the goods were presented, along with the aid from other WFDY affiliates, in symbolic ceremonies at the World Youth Festival then underway in the capital, Sofia. It was reported at the 27th Congress that a shipment of over £4,000 of goods had gone to Vietnam.

However, without doubt, the culmination of the victory for Vietnam campaign was the October 27th 1968 demonstration. The YCL and the CPNSC participated with the VSC, IS, the Young Liberals and the British Peace Committee (a body strongly influenced by the Party which campaigned on questions of international security) in the October 27th Ad Hoc Committee - the only degree of unity feasible. Despite the provocative and irrational actions of a tiny number of Maoist-led demonstrators, which received significant press and media attention, some 250,000 marched peacefully in London. Rather stupid suggestions that this was the signal for a leftist putsch emanated from the gutter press, yet this was the biggest protest since the war probably, certainly since Suez.

The atmosphere generated by all this, particularly the YCL's own solidarity campaign, laid the basis for much potential growth. 150 of the YCL's 200 branches took part in the campaign and no less than 323 applications for membership were received nationally during this period. This was very important for the YCL, which had begun to appreciate severe membership problems.

The YCL saw the 1967-68 card exchange, as Colin Yardley reported to the YCL National Committee (NC) in March 1968, as "a serious set-back for us”. The League's 200 branches were in 19 Districts, all but three of which had functioning District Committees. Comparing these to the last non-postal card issue, nine districts were up in membership, three were about the same and seven had suffered a loss. The two biggest districts, London and Scotland, had experienced severe losses.

Nationally, the drop in 1966 was 16%, by 1968 it was 29%. Two year's losses almost had been collected in one year. Moreover, this was part of a long-term trend. There had not been a 100% result in the card issue for nine years, while the Average Dues Paying Membership (ADPM) - the value of membership stamps bought by districts from centre divided by official membership figures - was only 24% in 1967. The YCL congress felt obliged to note that "the decision to post cards to members has created more problems than it has solved".

At the start of the card issue, the League noted in December 1967 that "many districts have reported losses through people going into the Party, through people moving and leaving no forwarding address. So far only a tiny amount of direct political losses have been reported. It was thought that recruits could replace every loss. "If members are lost, then they must be replaced by new members." Every branch was very strongly urged to achieve 100% membership. "Anything less", wrote Barney Davis, the National Secretary of the YCL, "is not just a loss to the branch but a loss to the whole communist movement". [YCLIB No3 December 1967]

There was thus a contradictory, confused yet still largely positive position. New branches were being formed all the time. Ebbw Vale, Bristol (Lawrence Weston), Balham, Barnsley, Dover, Hemel Hempstead, Wigan, Sale and several in Scotland were all reported as being set up by January 1968. While there were a number of branches making large numbers of recruits: - Mansfield 13, Bristol 22, Catford 15, St Pancras 13, Newham 12, Hampstead 12 and Edinburgh 60.

Birmingham YCL had an explosion of branches, 6 or 7 being set up out of one in no time at all, although it turned out that there was not a sufficiently strong basis for these. They were not maintained long and soon disintegrated back into the one. The YCL in Birmingham finished the card issue with 109 members, having made 20 recruits during the campaign. The district - the Midlands YCL - achieved 330 members by April 1st and was "recruiting 20 new members per month". A district target of 600 members in 30 branches might have been ambitious, but it did not seem unnecessarily unrealistic, even if later such targets became mechanical ambitions, from sheer enthusiasm. After all branches were springing up all over the place in the Midlands, as elsewhere.

In January a Mid-Warwickshire branch was formed, based on Leamington and Rugby. In June, two branches of 10 members each were set up in Wolverhampton. A branch of 10 was established in Lichfield, which began working in Tamworth, Burton -on-Trent and Walsall, where there was a small group of five members needing encouragement. The aim of setting up a South Staffordshire organisation was decided upon.

Groups emerged in the smallest of towns - Stourbridge (8 members), Worcester (8), Hereford (14). Political activity naturally reflected this mathematical increase. A Midlands YCL district school in the spring of 1968 on the Party's programme, the British Road to Socialism (BRS), was organised with the expectation of getting some 45 in attendance, in the event 65 turned up! Three members of Birmingham YCL were involved in the Youth Parliament, an establishment body which involved a very wide range of youth organisations. Wolverhampton YCL was selling 50 copies of the YCL's paper, "Challenge", in the first half of 1968, but 400 in July.

In the East Midlands, 25 delegates to the YCL's 4th District Congress in 1967 heard how membership had rocketed from 127 in 1965 to 230 in 1967 in 7 new branches. Though how much of this reflected the postal card issue is naturally a factor to be born in mind.

At the 26th National Congress there had been much concern at the position in Wales, traditionally a strong area for Communism - in the mining valleys at least. In the Sixties it had become a "very weak area and on the verge of collapse" for the YCL. More positive was the fact that the Welsh YCL had been able to organise a weekend school with 12 present from 4 branches, the average age of those attending being 19 years 2 months. [YCLIB September 1967]

A little late in the day, the North East YCL was reformed in 1970, but rapidly doubled membership and tripled Challenge sales, with new branches at Darlington and Sunderland. The West of England District Congress held in September 1968 was the first for 12 years. During the course of that year the district had achieved the fastest rate of growth of any. There were now 93 members, 60 of whom were recent recruits. Bristol Central YCL was selling 600 Challenge - enormous for a branch of about 20 members. The 20 delegates at the congress came from 5 branches in this widely scattered, largely rural district.

Yorkshire YCL was 267 strong in 1966, but mushroomed to 422 in the following year, with three branches alone in Leeds. South East Midlands doubled in size in one year, reaching nine branches. The Scottish YCL Congress in May 1968 was attended by 76 delegates from 24 branches, together with some 30 odd consultative and fraternal delegates, yet this represented a weaker position than the previous congress two and a half years before. Then there had been 100 delegates. This reflected a severe organisation weakness, akin to that experienced by Wales. 500 members had been lost and the full-time YCL District Secretary's position was reduced to that of a part-timer. (Doug Bain had been the full-timer from 1963 to 1968, Andy Sweeney was the part-time replacement.)

The Scottish YCL spent the next couple of years grappling with what was essentially a financial problem. The League, perhaps like the Party, in Scotland had real and popular support in some areas, but translating what was often a family, almost tribal, commitment into organised activity was another matter. Both the Midlands and the Yorkshire YCLs planned full-timers, but only the latter was able to achieve this by creating a full-time post which was in fact jointly part-time with the Yorkshire Communist Party. Generally it was only through such mechanisms that the YCL could fund district full-timers. Whilst the CPGB part-funded the YCL nationally by means of a "grant", the districts were obliged to raise their own finances and usually were only treated to implicit subsidy by the Party, perhaps for example by writing off literature debts to CP owned bookshops.

Like the Party, the League saw left unity as being built to the extent to which the CPGB and the YCL grew in size and influence. "The paramount task is to lay the basis for the immediate and rapid growth of the Young Communist League ... The revolutionary character of every young communist must now be tested by his or her part in achieving the 4,000 membership in this 1970 card exchange." This was how the YCL national leadership put it, just as it became clear that the 1968 bubble had burst. [YCLIB January 1970] Motivating much of the YCL's work was a belief in the special revolutionary character of youth. As George Bridges put it: "Youth are free from reformist illusions. They develop new uninhibited forms of activity immediately corresponding with their mood". [George Bridges August 1969 Marxism Today] This concept underlay a blind faith that mass membership was there to be won and it would only take hard work to achieve it.

Size became an all-important feature of the League's work and as the organisation did not gear itself to consistent long-term work, immediate startling publicity became the most sought-after objective. That is to say, imaginative events that attracted national, establishment media attention. Bob Allen, London YCL District Secretary, and Tony McNally, YCL National Organiser, late in 1969 protested outside a seminar of British generals against their suggestion to re-introduce conscription, in such a way that Fleet Street took notice. With membership at 3,686 in November 1969 - 2,300 down on the 1967 position, a thousand down on 1968 - the League began to become more than a little concerned. The number of branches was down to 181 in April 1969.

The aim of 4,000 members was established as a supposedly realistic benchmark and 100,000 recruitment leaflets produced, as the organisation set itself to remedying the problem. But there were serious internal difficulties that were in part a product of long-term decline, but were also largely the cause of fundamental damage to the organisation in the 1970s. These arose out of the sharpening political differences which were to, as Doug Chalmers, the then YCL General Secretary put it at the 1983 CPGB Congress, "to paralyse the work of League". [Author's personal contemporary notes] These differences were eventually treated in so fractious a manner as to cause outright personal hostility between individuals of such a character that the work of the organisation was de-stabilised. But it was not always so.

Amongst the tutors at a YCL national school in October 1967 were Sid French and Eric Trevett, the Surrey full-timers for the Party, long-time critics of the BRS's programme of parliamentary transition without civil war and eventual first and second leaders of the breakaway New Communist Party. Their presence at the school ensured that "the discussion thrived and even became heated. In fact ... it was generally felt that some of the tutors were more "off the line" than the students", commented the YCL's internal bulletin rather mildly. Such a possibility - of major dissidents lecturing a national cadre school - would later become unthinkable. [YCLIB December 1967]

Dissent was tolerated sufficiently for one participant on a 40 strong YCL organised holiday trip to the Soviet Union to comment in the bulletin in the following terms. "There were no holds barred in our talks and our Russian hosts spoke freely about issues on which their country has been heavily criticised in the West...on the question of the treatment of the Jews in the Soviet Union, which was raised in a British Communist Party statement, they (i.e. the Soviets) were all agreed that our party had been duped by capitalist press reports." [YCLIB December 1967 - article by Mike Ambrose]

There would be little of such comment - other than in a letter printed to reveal the quirkiness of the dissidents - in YCL publications in the 1970s and beyond. Articles sympathetic to the Soviet Union would be excluded as 'not being of interest to young people' and individuals who differed with the League leadership on these questions would find themselves excluded from leadership roles. Some YCLers adopted pro-soviet views that conflicted with reality as even seen by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but the process of squeezing fundamentalist assessments out of the League even inhibited balanced - and accurate - analyses and reinforced a cynical but vigorous anti-Sovietism in the leadership.

The Party and the League had of course been no strangers to political dissent, particularly arising from the need to protect the organisation from outside interference and policies. There had been a brief period of Trotskyist involvement in some YCL branches when the Socialist Labour League (later Gerry Healey's Workers' Revolutionary Party - WRP) had infiltrated cadres. Then the split between China and the Soviet Union had resulted in the whole new tendency of Maoism, which actively sought to split and infiltrate Communist movements. The YCL had its share of trouble from these quarters. There had been plenty of tensions and differences before, over major policy questions, but minority opinions had usually been minuscule. Most of those who had left over Hungary had done simply that, resigned or lapsed from membership. Factionalism, whether informal or semi-organised, had not been strongly evident in British Communism for the bulk of its existence. (Early Trotskyite internal dissent had been marginal.) So the ruthless crushing of different views inside the organisation, by ostracising large numbers of branches or even whole Districts, had not been an obvious feature of Party life. The much publicised prohibition, a decade before, of Party members such as Edward Thompson from publishing a non-Party journal, the New Reasoner, had led to a small number leaving to involve themselves in the New Left. No leadership led wholesale purge of dissent had ever occurred and there had been little need for administrative action to silence critics. There had been differences of course, largely at leadership level and consequently much internalised, and these had often been debated with sharpness, but personal vindictiveness was not a hallmark of the CPGB/YCL at that stage.

As J R Campbell had told the Comintern functionary, Manuilsky, "it is not the tradition of the British Communist Party to divide the Party into goats and sheep". Manuilsky replied by comparing unfavourably the British Communists with the Germans who allowed "no deviation from the line, they attack the least deviation, respect no persons... Yet in the British Communist Party there is a sort of special system which may be characterised thus: the Party is a society of great friends..." [Noreen Branson "History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927-1941" pp45-6 (1985).] What went for the Party in a traditional sense also went for the YCL of course.

However, questions of democracy in socialist countries, attitudes to errors and distortions, controversies, differences in social, historical or political traditions between the western liberal-democratic style and the rather more basic aspirations of second and third world peoples, all became highly significant debating points in the YCL. Indeed in the Party also, even if the latter took a more restrained view of things.

Without doubt, the single most significant happening in this period, which forced along the pace of division inside the YCL, was the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The YCL immediately distinguished itself as having a sharper line than the Party did. The CPGB characterised the affair as an "intervention"; the YCL preferred the more emotive "invasion". The Party sedately called for district aggregates to debate the matter behind closed doors in sombre, thoughtful discussions. The Midlands aggregate was enlivened by a call from one of the leading YCLers of the time, later a pillar of the Birmingham Labour Party, for the CP's resignation from the Comintern, which had of course been dissolved in 1943!

The YCL leadership saw their position as more clear-cut, less a case of debating the matter in the branches as "Fighting For The Line", as a series of articles in the Internal Bulletin put it. Moreover, for the League it was less a case of making careful condemnatory press statements concentrating on matters of high diplomatic and international legal principles and tenets, and much more a case of campaigning to distance the organisation from the Soviet Union. An Emergency National Committee of the YCL decided to organise a series of public meetings in solidarity with Czechoslovakia - or at any rate Dubcek's Czechoslovakia. "Challenge" came out with a front cover irreverently and irrelevantly decorated by a psychedelically dressed young woman who informed the reader that: "If you think Communism means that tanks can roll in at anytime, you're bloody wrong." [Magazine Series: Issue No 9]

Nonetheless more weighty matters had to be borne in mind at the 27th National Congress of the YCL in Scarborough in April 1969, when the policy of the League had to be put to the test. Despite the distortions of popular myth in the YCL in the 1970s, the conflicting positions actually voted on at the Congress were not baldly for or against the actions of the USSR and its allies. The National Committee's sharp characterisation of the affair as an invasion was actually faced with an alternative position of opposition to the events on the basis of international communist principles. An alternative motion from Harrow supported the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the other Warsaw Pact powers, on the basis of their statement after the events of the summer of 1968. This jointly agreed Czech-Soviet position largely affirmed much of the demands in the NC resolution for a spirit of harmony. There was no simple choice - oppose the `intervention/invasion’ or support it, for the congress reflected the more complex realities of Communist life. Many, on all sides, later reflecting on that Congress simply forgot that.

The policy of the League on Czechoslovakia was increasingly seen as a totem, perhaps even to the extent that the actual nature of the policy was less relevant than its observance. For the CPGB, the whole issue was a question of a fundamental and principled difference over the nature of territorial integrity between socialist states. This was a difficult question for believers in world socialism. Strictly speaking, differences over the question need not necessarily colour other areas of work. Yet, for the YCL, attitudes to Czechoslovakia became a substitute for support or otherwise of the concept of a mass League; i.e. a YCL of size and influence working for socialism within the BRS's tactics and strategy.

Differences in the League over the mass YCL concept actually became confused as positions polarised. London full-timer for the YCL, Laureen Mason (later Hickey) put it well. While complaining about the "eternal labelling of individuals in one camp or another" (a case of goats and sheep?), she argued that "it is possible for instance for a member to believe the Soviet Union were correct about Czechoslovakia but still play a positive role in the league". [YCL Pre-Congress Discussion Document 1971] Others in the YCL's leadership thought differently.

Indeed, there is a sense in which Czechoslovakia became a matter almost of obsession to the leadership of the YCL, exceeding the relevance of the issue to young people in a continuing way far into the 1970's. At its crudest, the obsession was based on a simple belief that the events of 1968 had cost the League its popularity. That the membership problems which soon emerged in a most obvious way were inter-linked somehow with a juxtaposition of the '68 spirit. YCL national leader for nearly all of the next decade, Tom Bell, made his view clear as early as 1970. "The invasion of Czechoslovakia set us back more than we realise. Thousands of young rebels who could have been won to the YCL were turned to Ultra-Leftism and cynicism, they less than ever looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration." [Cogito No1 1970 "Time for Change"] Bell made a similar point in the YCLIB in January 1971 concerning death sentences, albeit subsequently withdrawn, of would-be Jewish plane hijackers. The affair had received hysterical press condemnation and the whole was assessed by Bell thus: "our struggle has been made harder".

The League issued statement after statement on Czechoslovakia, following events there with dogged persistence. After the congress had endorsed the NC's position, the leadership issued a statement in September 1969. There was another in April 1970, expressing concern at the Czech Party disciplining Dubcek and his associates. (This statement was endorsed by the NC on a vote of 15 to 5, with one abstention.) There was another in March 1971, another in August 1972, and another in October 1976. The latter statement was in protest at trials of rock musicians in Prague. In a calculated rebuff to the Czech YCL (the SSM, or Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Movement), it was decided not to actually go so far as to sever normal relations with that organisation but to refuse the offer of exchange delegations. Another statement came out in February 1977, when the YCL decided to look into the possibility of affiliating to Amnesty International. The tenth anniversary of the 1968 events was marked by the YCL by a special statement and an article in "Challenge" - most YCL members by that stage would have been in primary school when the Dubcek government was in power.

Differences of the kind experienced by the YCL occurred in other countries, although these, where they were exaggerated by special conditions, could explode into splits which in turn posed problems for fraternal organisations. For example, which grouping to support?

In common with the vast majority of Communist Parties and Youth Leagues in the world, the British Party and YCL were estranged from the Chinese during the Sixties. The Chinese YCL representative at Budapest to the World Federation of Democratic Youth was "withdrawn" as the YCL Internal Bulletin put it, rather ominously perhaps. Like most YCLs, the British organisation had "some difficulty" in locating the Chinese YCL, refusing to recognise the Red Guards as a formal organisation, so the YCLGB simply lost touch. Concern over maintaining relations noticeably rose in the early 1970s, as the tensions over Czechoslovakia mounted, the leadership grew more anxious to prove that it was not coat-tailing Moscow by appearing open-minded over China. In 1970 the YCL felt impelled to specifically state that for its forthcoming Congress "fraternal delegates from overseas be invited, including Chinese". [YCLIB 18th November 1970] Although this was later qualified to make it clear that such a Chinese organisation be the "Communist youth organisation if it existed". [YCL 28th Congress documents 1971]

In Australia, the Communist Party and YCL moved rapidly through Maoist and Trotskyist influences, only to find much of the trade union base of the movement splitting off after major expulsions into the Socialist Party of Australia and the Young Socialist League of Australia - seen as new replacement Marxist-Leninist organisations. The YCL in Britain had no difficulty in refusing to recognise the YSL in August 1974, despite the appearance of representatives of that body at WFDY meetings. Interestingly, the Australian Communist Party, at this stage certainly, preferred an analysis of the socialist states as being "post capitalist societies" or "socialist based".

In Greece, differences over the conduct of the anti-fascist struggle against the army junta then in control, merged with international controversies inside the Communist movement. Two Communist parties and youth organisations emerged, but here - partially because of certain strong links with the British Party on the part of both groups - the CPGB decided to maintain relations with both. The YCL was loath to follow such a course, having strong political allegiances to the revisionist student movement, Rigeos Ferros - which was what later would be called the Euro-Communist tendency. The Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) had many contacts in London, not the least through the strong Cypriot presence there - a presence which had always been dominated by Communists. The YCLGB decided in June 1975 to keep contacts with both groups in line with the CPGB's position, but the League was cool with the KNE at national level, while the 'opposition' in the YCL was very much taken with it.

Increasingly, the YCL found itself isolated along with a group, mainly west European, at WFDY meetings which was distant and cool with the majority. Questions of Soviet policy were seen by this minority group as prime matters of concern. In consequence of the minority with which the Italians, Spanish, British, Japanese and others found themselves they began to query the role of WFDY.

The periodic world gatherings of WFDY were every five years, with a general council meeting yearly in between. Mike Power, the British delegate to the 8th world assembly in 1971, reported to the YCL that WFDY "had never really become a broad all embracing youth movement" and that there seemed "very little likelihood of it doing so". He felt WFDY to be "following a tired pattern". WFDY's recognition of both Greek youth movements was seen by him as "support to splitting activities". Moreover, the insistence of the majority of organisations in WFDY that the notion of peaceful "co-operation" between states be included in a statement on European security irked Power. Because of this he complained that it was "hard to decide whether the Assembly is a gathering of international youth against imperialism, or a meeting of young diplomats". Power saw the fight for European security as "a class battle and part of the struggle for socialism". [YCL NC Minutes January 2/3 1971] Rather ironically, the early 1980s debate about the direction the Party should take was initially and partially symbolically centred on whether peace is a class issue or a democratic issue. (Mike Power subsequently became the editor of the short-lived Democratic Left's even shorter-lived journal "New Times".)

3 World Youth Festivals

The most significant role of WFDY was to organise the massive cultural and political festivals held periodically in differing parts of the world. There have been 16 Festivals, the most recent being in Venezuela in 2005. From the original 63 founding countries of WFDY, it had affiliates from 72 countries at its first festival and 112 by the 1959 Vienna event. These festivals aimed to involve youth organisations other than of the Communists and were moreover always spectacular in character - a memorable event in each generation's experience.

Festival number, location, date, numbers and countries attending, main slogan

1st, Prague, 25 July - 17 August 1947, 17,000 young people from 71 countries: "Youth Unite in the struggle for a lasting peace!"

2nd, Budapest, 14 – 28 August 1949, 20 000 young people from 82 countries: "Youth Unite! For a lasting peace, democracy, the national independence of peoples and a better future”

3rd, Berlin, 5 - 20 August 1951, 26 000 young people from 104 countries: "Youth unite against the danger of a new war for a lasting peace!"

4th, Bucharest, 2 - 16 August 1953, 30 000 young people from 111 countries: "We say No to Death and Devastation!"

5th, Warsaw, 31 July - 15 August 1955, 31 000 young people from 114 countries: "For peace and friendship!"

6th, Moscow, 28 July - 11 August 1957, 34 000 young people from 131 countries: "For peace and friendship!"

7th, Vienna, 26 July - 4August 1959, 18,000 young people from 112 countries: "For peace and friendship!"

8th, Helsinki, 28 July - 6 August 1962, 18, 000 young people from 137 countries: “For Peace and Friendship”

9th, Sofia, 28 July - 6 August 1968, 20, 000 young people from 138 countries: "For solidarity, peace and friendship!"

10th, Berlin, 28 July - 5 August 1973, 30 000 young people from 140 countries: "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship!"

11th, Havana, 31 July - 15 August 1978, 18 500 young people from 145 countries: "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and Friendship!"

12th, Moscow, 27 July - 3 August 1985, 21 000 young people from 157countries: "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship!"

13th, Pyongyang, 1 - 8 August 1989, 18 000 young people from 157 countries: "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship!"

14th Havana, 28 July - 5 August 1997, 12 325 young people from 132 countries: "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship!"

15th Argel, 8 - 16 August 2001; “Let's globalise the struggle for peace, solidarity, development, against imperialism!"

SYMBOLS OF THE INDIVIDUAL WORLD YOUTH FESTIVALS
FROM THE 1ST TO THE 15TH FESTIVAL

Some 14 organisations were involved in the Sofia 1968 British Preparatory Committee, the link up with the Vietnam campaign making this possible. Organisations like the Young Liberals, Young Oxfam and the Student Christian Movement joined up with the YCL in sending some 300 delegates to Bulgaria. The League saw this as an especially important development for its work in Britain. So much so that it approached the 1973 Berlin Festival with great plans for massive broad youth unity in the British Preparatory Committee, one thousand delegates were aimed for. Already, the previous year, a Vietnam Youth Committee had been set up under the auspices of the British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam. This brought together the National Union of Students (NUS), the Young Liberals, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (Technical and Supervisory Staffs) (AUEW/TASS), the United Nations Youth and Students Association and of course the YCL. All of these organisations and others were easily won to involvement in the World Youth Festival, the NUS being a particularly important body. The NUS had supported the 1947 Youth Festival, but had not done so since due to governmental and other pressures associated with the cold war.

Apart from some tensions within the British delegation arising out of the presence of a Gay Liberation banner, the whole event did much to break down barriers artificially erected by the cold war. (The banner had been rather frowned upon by the East Germans, but supported vigorously on a point of principle by both the Young Liberals and the YCL national leadership, perhaps with tactical considerations back home being very much in the collective mind of the latter.) Major changes in the official youth movement in Britain were on their way. Together with the positive gains of the Berlin Festival, these laid the basis for even more significant unity. The main resolution at the YCL's 29th Congress in 1973 saw "the preparations (as) an example of the broad youth unity, albeit embryonic" that it sought generally in Britain.

Of tremendous significance for the next World Youth Festival after Berlin was the disaffiliation of the British Youth Council (BYC) from WFDY's cold war rival, the World Assembly of Youth (WAY). This was to open up the possibility of much wider involvement in youth unity activities. It had become public knowledge that WAY had been at least partially funded by the CIA for much of its life and the BYC's links with that body grew more and more tenuous. The BYC itself had been set up in 1949 and it was funded by various British government departments, as well as by the subscriptions of the affiliated organisations. These included such groups as the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Boys’ Brigades, Young Farmers, Young Conservatives and a variety of Christian youth organisations, as well as the Labour Party Young Socialists and the Young Liberals. In 1976, with the link with WAY now dissolved, the YCL and other progressive organisations like the Co-operative movement's Woodcraft Folk, the NUSS and the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) all decided to affiliate to the BYC. At his first attempt, Tom Bell narrowly failed to obtain election to the executive committee of the BYC.

Preparations for the 11th World Youth Festival, to be held from Friday 28th July to Saturday 5th August, were already underway and it was clear that, especially with it being held in Cuba, that there would have to be a tremendous effort to avoid the massive organisational and travelling difficulties. Indeed the Festival was put back a year to allow for all of this. 23,000 delegates - 18,500 from outside Cuba - from 145 countries were expected, along with 1,000 journalists. There were 3,200 from West Europe, 800 from Africa, 3,800 from the Americas, 1,600 from Asia, 800 from the Middle East, 1,000 from the USSR, 750 from the GDR (East Germany) and 3,050 from East Europe. After an initial expectation of a higher number, it eventually became clear that the British delegation would only number 180 and it would cost £310 to send each one.

The BYC agreed to participate in the Festival on the understanding that the British Preparatory Committee would support the right of its individual member groups to raise whatever issues they wished and that the BPC itself raise certain issues of controversy with respect to democracy in socialist states. The BYC was under great pressure before the event from the Federation of Conservative Students and the Young Conservatives to withdraw its support, indeed these groups themselves refused to participate. Even so, several Tories remained on the delegation as representatives of the Churches, in particular in the Methodist camp. While the Foreign Office refused to give a £5,000 grant for a cultural delegation from Britain.

The NUS was to play a particularly important part in this BPC. Charles Clarke, who had recently been the National President of the NUS, landed the job of permanent British representative in Havana for a year before the Festival. While the leader of the delegation was Trevor Phillips, 24 year old NUS President. His deputy was Peter Mandelson, noted then only for being personally related to the former Labour Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison and tipped, like Phillips, to go on to greater things. (Mandelson had been a member of the London YCL for about nine months in the early 1970s.)

For both of these the whole affair was an important test. As the Sunday Telegraph, rather bluntly put it, "both plan careers in mainstream politics, and Mr Mandelson felt that a heavily Stalinist British contribution in Havana could have serious career repercussions for him. Messrs Phillips and Mandelson, therefore, were determined that Britain would raise the issue of human rights." [Sunday Telegraph August 6th 1978] In particular, they planned that leaflets on the status of Soviet dissidents, Shcharansky and Orlov, should be distributed at the Festival. Mandelson, of course, notoriously became Labour's key media man under the Kinnock leadership; Clarke was the key figure in Kinnock's personal political advisory team. Phillips went on to become a TV producer and occasional presenter. All three ended up as key figures in the Blair project.

In a heavy-handed move of supremely unconscious irony, the BPC leadership decided to rid itself of any delegates who would be too obviously opposed to the plan to seek publicity for an anti-Soviet position. What involvement there was on the part of the YCL in the original calculations remains undefined, but how else could the non-communist leadership of the BPC be aware of identity of the most outspoken Communists hoping to be part of the delegation? Who told Phillips and Mandelson which were the key people to exclude? Whatever the position, seven CPGB and NCP members were literally banned from going to Cuba. Trevor Phillips, as Chair of the BPC, and Tom Bell, as its Secretary, wrote to at least three of these who then made the whole affair public. They were Dave Smith (ASTMS), Will Gee (FBU) and Lysandras Lysandrou (United Cypriot Youth Organisation - EKON).

They were told that there were travel difficulties and that as they were nominated by organisations not in membership of the BPC and that the "trade union section of the delegation is already fairly heavily subscribed to" it was not possible to accept their nomination. More decisively, and the strongest clue to where the objections were coming from, "it has been questioned by a member organisation of the BPC whether your approach to the Festival, given the basis of your past political record and activity would be entirely in line with the tenets and spirit of British participation in the Festival, as agreed and delineated by the British Preparatory Committee". [Letter dated 14th July 1978] Which "member organisation" was not publicly revealed, but clearly non-communists could only be aware of what was essentially a criticism of their differences with the YCL's line on socialist democracy from the YCL leadership.

After receiving the Phillips-Bell letter, two of the excluded met with the BPC's organising committee and offered to travel by other means, if travelling was the problem. The committee voted by 3 to 1 not to reverse their exclusion - leaving the matter of their political suitability as the key objection. A simple reference to the balance of the delegation reveals a high proportion of students and a rather small trade union delegation.

Student Bodies

National Union of Students 38
National Union of School Students 1
Communist Party National Students Committee 3
National Organisation of Labour Students 3
Student Christian Movement 4

Trade Unions

AUEW/TASS (engineering workers and staff) 4
ACTT (cinema technicians) 1
EEPTU (electricians) 1
ASTMS (managers/technicians) 2
NUT (teachers) 4
NUPE (public employees) 2
NUM (miners) 5
AUEW (engineers) 1
AUT (university lecturers) 1
TGWU (transport & general) 5
NATFHE (college lecturers) 1
NALGO (local government) 1
APEX (clerical workers) 1
Greater London Association of Trades Councils 1
Haringey Trades Council 1

Community and Miscellaneous Bodies

Returned Volunteer Action 1
Melting Pot Foundation 1
British Council of Churches - Youth Unit 4
CBSLC (identity unknown to author) 1
British Preparatory Committee 10
Young Farmers 1
BLF (identity unknown to author) 1
Legal Staffs Association 1
National Assembly of Women 1
National Film School 1
Afro-Caribbean Education Resource Project 1
Community Service Volunteers 1
Jubilee Hall Recreation Centre 1
National Association of Indian Youth 1
Southall Youth Movement 2
Indian Youth Association 2
EKON (Cypriot Youth) 2
RCA Film School 1
Woodcraft FoIk (Co-op) 1
Cultural Delegation 8
Young Friends (Quakers) 1
Women in Manual Trades Group 1
National Association of Youth Clubs 1
British Youth Council (BYC) 5

Campaigning and Political Bodies

YCL 16
Labour Party 2
LPYS 4
Young Liberals 4
Campaign Against Youth Unemployment (CAYU) 1
Anti-Apartheid Movement 1
Chile Solidarity Campaign 1
Young European Left 1
Namibia Support Committee 1
Namibia International Peace Centre 1
African National Congress 1

SUMMARY

Category No. %

Student Bodies 49 30
Trade Unions 31 19
Political/Campaigning 34 21
Community/Miscellaneous 49 30

Total 163 100

Given that travelling was not really the problem, although there were difficulties these were not insurmountable, and that if any group needed thinning down it was the student element of the delegation, how could the BPC's banning of the dissident element be justified? The community sector could not lend itself to reduction, as there were generally only one or two delegates per group. If the TGWU with two million members could be easily represented by 5 delegates, how could it be that the NUS with perhaps half or a third of that number needed 38 delegates? In truth, delegates were often simply people who had both the interest and the money to pay. Their sponsoring organisation had simply endorsed them as delegates, at no cost to the organisation. Apart from measures to ensure that each single organisation was at least once represented, very little tinkering with the overall delegation was really necessary. Therefore, there could only seriously remain the matter of the political objection. Two of the excluded delegates produced statements, revealing the full details of the affair, including copies of the correspondence. They declared that the BYC had given an ultimatum to the BPC to veto the likes of them and that they had been removed for political reasons "without any opportunity to reply to the allegations." In the Morning Star, Reuben Falber for the CPGB was pressed by their statement to publicly respond for the Party that it understood travel problems. But that it was regrettable that, in making the difficult decisions to thin down the delegation, it was implied that some were excluded because of their politics.

Bob Lentell, speaking for the YCL as its National Organiser, made a similar point as Falber over the travel arrangements question. But the YCL had disagreements on some parts of the festival preparations and felt that the BPC, having laid down its political principles at an early stage, had the right to ensure "that the British delegation adhered to these principles". Implicit in this was some degree of sympathy for the exclusions.

Tom Bell, in a subsequent article on the Festival in Challenge, conceded that the BPC "didn't handle every question as well as it might have done", but thought on balance the Festival overall was a positive development. While the exclusion of some people was not "handled in the best way" and some should have gone, Bell supported the right of the BPC to make the decision. [Challenge No 55 1978]

For the vast majority of delegates the first they knew of the controversy was when they arrived in Cuba. The statements of the excluded two, together with the copies of correspondence were distributed in large numbers by their sympathisers amongst the delegation. After protracted arguments a delegation meeting at the large, modern teacher training college six kilometres from Havana, which the British shared with the Irish, Scandinavian and Low Countries delegations, passed a decisive resolution to bring over three individuals excluded from the delegation. Clive Haswell of the Welsh Preparatory Committee - two of the excluded were Welsh - moved that the steering committee running affairs in Cuba amongst the delegation be instructed to reverse the ban and make arrangements to get the three to the Festival.

It had been necessary to propose a procedural motion to discuss the matter, despite an attempt by the steering committee to avoid this. Then the motion was narrowly passed. Once the issues were debated the delegation voted 84 for the critical motion 50 against. It should be noted that 73 of the delegation were either absent or abstained. The decision was of course largely symbolic, the meeting being held on the first day of the Festival at 1pm on Friday 28th August, but it was symptomatic of a large gap between the steering committee and the delegation majority. The three never got to the Festival of course.

This affair rather conditioned the atmosphere on the delegation and attitudes to the leadership of the steering committee, in particular the determination of Mandelson and Phillips to issue a delegation statement on human rights. A document, which bore all the hallmarks of a rushed and thoughtless composition, especially in the circumstances that the delegation now found itself, suddenly appeared. Very little consultation with very few people had prefaced its appearance, which drew much criticism. It was ill conceived and almost calculated to annoy most Communists.

Bell, in his subsequent Challenge article, conceded that "while some delegates wanted more time to discuss the contents of the statement, a minority were determined to prevent it being issued at all … given the sectarian, Stalinist positions they held they were not prepared to accept any criticisms of the Soviet Union or other socialist countries.”

The Sunday Telegraph reckoned that about half of the delegation – something like 80 odd people – were Communists, and their views varied. Many supported the CPGB’s position on socialist democracy, but were unhappy with the ease with which some allowed unbalanced positions to be postulated by the delegation leadership. Many, perhaps 30 to 40, were committed to one or another of the tendencies inside the British Communist movement, which repudiated the official position on these matters. An alliance between the two elements, winning support amongst the trade union and some Labour and progressive groupings, ensured that the delegation was deeply split.

Some, especially those associated with anti-imperialist causes like Ireland, were strongly opposed even to the notion of carrying the Union Flag ahead of the British delegation's representatives on the opening ceremony's 'walk past'. While the discovery that the official, identifying T-shirts bore the Festival logo coloured in with the Union Flag created some controversy. Those who objected argued that the flag was associated in half of the world with bloody imperialism, a force which the Festival was specifically in opposition to. Those who favoured the Union Flag simply viewed it as the nation's official emblem, which was known to all.

With all this, it is not surprising perhaps that the draft statement on human rights was greeted with hostility. Moreover, there was a time constraint that led to a feeling that the steering committee was trying to rush things. The BPC wanted the statement ready for a particular commission on the first Monday of the Festival. Despite an attempt to block the statement completely, the delegation voted to discuss the draft and to amend it by a vote of 64 to 60. (Noticeably, as the controversy raged, fewer and fewer people participated in the delegation meetings.) 30 to 40 delegates then walked out to draft an alternative statement. The remainder, including many who differed with much of the intent, tone and content of the originating statement determined to change it.

From 6.00 p.m. on Sunday 30th to 4.00 am on Monday 31st, during successive, strained and marathon sessions at the delegation’s lodgings, the statement was hotly debated and amended. The initial session by 6.30 p.m. had agreed on the go-ahead. Then the YCL EC members met with the CPNSC members - as no doubt did other caucuses - drafting amendments which were in the main agreed to by the delegation leadership and, subsequently, the majority of the delegation as a whole, in a midnight to four am meeting.

The original statement linked the Helsinki Declaration on Human Rights to détente, arguing that concern over human rights did not sabotage the fight for peace. Central to all this was the freedom of speech and assembly. Concern was expressed about the 1968 events in Czechoslovakia and the more recent experience of the Charter 77 group there. The case of Yuri Orlov in the USSR was raised and it was made clear that the British delegation would continue to campaign on these matters most firmly. All in all it was calculated and blunt - the intent being to clearly distance the British delegation from the socialist countries on issues of controversy in Western media. These participating nations would most certainly view the highly specific and selective statement as an intended insult in what was intended to be a Festival of friendship.

The eventual amended version put these points a little more in context. A firm distinction between those who are "genuinely committed to both détente and human rights, and those who are exploiting the issue of human rights for their own political advantage" was made. Moreover, the absence of some fundamental human rights in Britain was noted, especially with regard to Northern Ireland. It was recognised that human rights also involved some fairly fundamental economic rights and the exploitation of developing countries by the advanced capitalist nations (not specified as such however) was a pre-requisite to human rights in that part of the world.

The hypocrisy of the Western nations was thus signified in the revised statement. In particular, specific instances of abuses of human rights in the USA were mentioned, especially of black and indigenous American peoples. The original draft had called for the ending of racist political systems just in South Africa. This was implicitly widened to allow for the interpretation that this could apply to Britain also. The original had said that the delegation was opposed to particular imperialist interference from whatever quarter and this was softened to make it less an obviously contrived comment on the socialist as well as capitalist world. A positive note was also injected, linking anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world to the concrete solidarity organisations and actions traditionally associated with the British people. Criticisms of the USSR and South Africa had been made in the same breath, but were now separated and some positive features of Soviet life were incorporated, albeit that these were rather lamely highlighted. The previous condemnation of the Warsaw Pact intervention in 1968 in Czechoslovakia was turned into a statement of the fact that the intervention had been widely condemned in Britain. As was the criticism of the trial of Yuri Orlov, again, instead of the delegation being committed to condemn the USSR, it was observed that such criticisms had been made by some. While, finally, the previous commitment to campaigning on differences with the socialist world was eliminated.

The minority produced their own statement, on behalf of "a large percentage of the British delegation" they dissociated themselves from the majority statement, which they identified as being issued by the BPC - which it had not been, even in the first instance, let alone after amendment by the delegation. The minority statement complained that the majority statement did not "represent the views of the youth and students of Great Britain". Moreover that the BPC since its inception had not taken the "wide ranging opinions of the British youth into account". The exclusions were referred to and it was stated that the BPC had not "taken actions based on majority decisions either here (in Havana) or in Great Britain". The spirit of the Festival was endorsed by the statement, with the implication that a minority of the delegation, especially in leadership positions, had other axes to grind.

Not that this was the end of such controversies. Phillips, of course, made speeches and distributed leaflets of the statement. But the British delegation officially used its veto during one of the main debates against a Festival communiqué, stating that the capitalist countries were locked in a deepening economic crisis, from which the only escape could be profound political and social change. While women's liberationists distributed leaflets in Spanish, outlining their demands, which put attitudes to homosexuality that clashed sharply with the Cuban view then prevailing. (A more relaxed attitude now exists.) However, at no stage did the Cuban authorities or the World Preparatory Committee interfere with any of this. Other than a mild expression of displeasure by one of the Soviet representatives to Phillips at the discourtesy of the British delegation statement, there appears to have been only a feeling of bewilderment at the antics of the British by a number of delegations at the most and, at the least, a general lack of interest in what was largely an issue only for some on the British delegation.

In Britain however there was some interest. The Times, in an editorial, generally welcomed the British delegation's official position - arguing that even the split within the delegation must have been a lesson, though a puzzling one, on the freedom to disagree. While the East Midlands District Committee of the CPGB was more worried about the affair and wrote as much to the YCL EC. The latter however was not impressed by the lesson on the right to disagree. Two of its delegates to Havana, one of who was from the East Midlands, were "no longer to be allowed to represent the YCL at any outside event, due to events that took place in Havana". [YCL EC Minutes 14th/15th October 1978] They had of course been associated with the minority statement.

Despite the trauma of these differences, the British involvement in the Festival had been positive and a wide degree of youth unity had been achieved around the ideas of world peace and friendship. Many cold war barriers had been broken down, but for some the question would naturally be posed - at what price for the YCL's own internal unity?

Organisations as disparate as the BYC, the NUS, NOLS, the British Council of Churches, the Student Christian Movement, the National Association of Youth Clubs, the Young Liberals, Quakers, the school students union (NUSS), AUEW-TASS, Young European Left and the YCL had agreed to the statement on Détente, Peace and Human Rights. It had been issued in their names, not the BPC, however. Even though the BPC continued its work for a short while after the Festival, the YCL was edgy about its continued existence and ensured that its influence was brought to bear in winding up the organisation.

4 THE IDEOLOGICAL BASE OF INNER-LEAGUE DIFFERENCES

How had the League arrived at such a position, whereby the views of non-Communists on the problems of socialist construction - even Tories - were considered by the YCL leadership as of more consequence than the minority within their own organisation? Contrary to the simplistic impressions of media commentators it was not just the differing attitudes to socialist states, but also the matter of the analysis of the role of the working class and their organisations vis-à-vis young people, that the YCL found to be a source of inner-League tension.

The main arguments in the YCL before 1968 had centred on what kind of League there should be. Whether it should gear itself to the most advanced, most committed youth; whether it should be a mass league or a cadre league. The latter view saw the high turnover of membership as reflective of the poor quality of recruit and of the dearth of Marxist education in the organisation. It was argued that considerations of membership size should not be paramount, that "deadwood" membership - inactive cardholders - should be cut out.

The 1969 Congress of the League issued a call for a mass YCL, but saw this in terms of how the YCL branch worked rather than a demand for abstract increases in size. A mass league worked in a mass way. Three distinct approaches could easily be discerned in the motions from branches and districts to this congress. There was the tendency to oversimplify the problems of achieving a large YCL, but which nonetheless saw size and working in a mass way as crucial. This line tended to stress the value of local branch work in the community and the independent work of the YCL as a communist organisation in public as crucial. Such a tendency might be dubbed `the propagandist’ approach. Then there was the position that it was important to win a larger YCL, but that in any case the way the League worked with other movements was paramount. This position was trade union and mass movement orientated. The third position stressed the importance of having a correct Marxist-Leninist line, the size of the organisation and its relationships with other youth movements being entirely secondary. While there was a sense in which regional rivalries played a part in creating allegiances around these positions there was also an important, but underlying, theoretical clash.

The 1969 Congress called on the League in its main resolution to "Win Youth into Class Struggle". Yet the experience of the YCL's work revealed a gap between the desire to do so and the style of the YCL's campaigning activity, set by the over-conscious rejection of what was seen as old-style Marxism. The League leadership was obsessed with presentation, with creating a 'modern', untarnished image. Most symptomatic of this trend was the transformation of Challenge from a political campaigning monthly newspaper into a colourful, but rather frivolous poor copy of `youth life-style’ magazines.

For some, the experience of this trendy Challenge indicated a real need for a change to a more class-conscious, fighting journal. The National Organiser, Tony McNally, produced a short discussion paper - "Forms of Work Amongst Young People" - in September 1970. Unofficially it was by way of a manifesto, for the National Secretary, Barney Davis, was soon to retire and make way for a successor. In his analysis, McNally argued for Challenge to "go over to a more campaigning style ... that retains a popular appeal combined with articles of a deeper political, social and cultural nature".

The return of the Tories to government, after the 1970 general election, demanded a sharper struggle and clearer arguments for socialism. But any change, McNally thought "should be subject to a majority decision of our branches where they could have one or more clearly defined alternatives". The journal, like the League, should gear itself to three sections of youth - school students, young workers and youth in the communities. The outgoing Yorkshire District Secretary of the YCL, Dave Cook, argued for this concept in pre-congress discussion prior to the 1971 Congress. The notion of recognising the "complex and diverse structure of working class youth" meant the way was "theoretically clear to ... more clearly identify the basic class issues, which can unite the youth of the class in mass struggle". [Cogito No1 of the 1971 Congress - pre-congress discussion document]

Or, as Tom Bell declaimed, "our generation is not a homogenous mass. It is more diverse than ever before." [Cogito No.1 (1970) “Time for Change"] Apart from those sections of the League identified with the Surrey District, there was amongst the other trends a general acceptance of this analysis in the League. However, a divergence of opinion developed about the third sector in McNally's paper - youth in the community. McNally and Cook had talked in terms of identifying with youth culture groupings like mods and rockers, as well as school students and young workers. There was obviously a dichotomy here - for mods were students and workers as well as an identifiable social grouping, and the same applied to any other section. As one YCLer with differences with the leadership defined it in pre-congress discussion in 1973, the YCL had to "aim at those in struggle and not at a block of young people i.e. the young generation". [Pre-Congress discussion document No.1 for the 29th Congress (1973)] The question began to be posed, therefore, as to whether the League was aiming at young people per se. This being on the basis that youth constituted a new, additional force in society, which could challenge right-wing ideas. Alternatively, was the YCL seeking to win those young people who could be defined as being part of the overall struggle of the working class against capitalism? Was the younger generation a revolutionary force in itself, or was the working class the revolutionary force and those young people who were a part of this the YCL's target constituency?

5 THE 1970 LEADERSHIP CONTEST

It was against the background of this debate, every bit as profound in terms of Marxist theory as the differences over the socialist states, that the 1970 leadership contest to succeed Barney Davis took place. Davis, by now 30 years of age, had raised the need for a replacement, so that he or she could prepare themselves for the forthcoming congress, at the National Committee’s inner body, the Executive Committee, on Tuesday 8th September 1970. He had course discussed this with close colleagues, including McNally, who obviously stood in a very favourable position to move one rung upwards. (Subsequently, the National Committee was renamed the Executive Committee and the Executive Committee became the Political Committee to come into line with Communist Party practice on nomenclature. The old EC and the new PC were in theory subordinate to the larger NC/EC.)

Four days later, the EC looked a variety of names: Dave Cook (Yorkshire), Bob Allen (London) and Laureen Mason (London) were considered. But the committee eventually arrived at a decision for McNally - but it was close. Tom Bell, the National Treasurer (not a full-time post) emerged with 5 votes to his credit and 2 against as second runner. McNally had 6 votes for himself and only 1 against. But this was only by way of a recommendation to the full National Committee.

Things moved very rapidly thereafter. A scheduled NC school was changed to the weekend of 3/4 October at Coppice Camp. This was an area of wooded land, which could house around forty people in some fairly basic wooden structures. There were communal kitchen facilities and a toilet block. In the Essex countryside it had been left by a CPGB member in his will as a bequest to the YCL - more formally it was the Harry Pollitt Memorial Youth Centre. (Years later, Democratic Left was to sell the site for a considerable sum.) It was decided to elect the new Secretary at this Coppice Camp event, to which a number of NC members were unable to get to. Significantly, during the business part of the weekend, when other NC matters than the election were attended to, McNally came in for some fairly heavy - and perhaps a little contrived - criticism for producing an EC statement concerning the campaign to win a Youth TUC. No less than 17 out of the 18 NC members present came into what was a controversial debate. In the end, the EC statement was endorsed by the NC except for a suggestion that "youth delegates" - i.e. not from a bona fide trade union, but from a campaign committee - attend a planned conference on the Youth TUC campaign. But McNally was criticised for the statement, the NC taking the position that YCL branches should campaign in varying ways, according to local circumstances, on this particular point.

The outcome was that McNally lost the election to Bell on two counts - there were more that voted against him than for, and Bell had two votes more than McNally positively for him. Thus:
Tony McNally for 7 against 9 abstentions 1
Tom Bell for 9 against 6 abstentions 2

There was widespread surprise at this. Bell was a 21 year old electrician from South East London and while he was a national officer, this was the Treasurer's position, usually seen as being a bit of a drudge and hardly the key political position from which to spring to the National Secretaryship. For those who were behind him there was his youth, which potentially gave for the possibility of many years' stability and also a fresh, modern approach. Probably more decisively was his more combative approach to the dissenting membership on international matters and his suspicions of McNally's talk of class battles. For some, this counted against him, as did his unrelenting advocacy of the propagandist approach and a certain flippancy of approach. There was also much talk of a stitch-up, orchestrated by the Party leadership.

While it was obviously in the interests of many to cast doubt about the validity of Bell's election, there were also real and quite genuine worries amongst a wider section in the League that all was not well with the election. At the normal NC meeting on October 31st Davies felt obliged to stop further rumours in the League, by insisting that the decision to leave had been his own. He also strongly rebutted the widespread hints of intervention by the CPGB leadership, motivated to support a more combative candidate by an anxiety to ensure the YCL would not become a preserve of the oppositionalists. Yet, in a paradoxical way, this is almost very nearly what did occur in the next four to five years. If there had been - and it is inconceivable that there was not - Party intervention then it would have come from the leadership in King Street, the central headquarters. The Party's Organisation Department was the section concerned with liaison with the YCL and the responsible official would have been the then National Organiser, Gordon McLennan. (McLennan would succeed Gollan to the General Secretaryship of the CPGB and see out its remaining years as leader, retiring in 1989 in favour of Nina Temple.)

The October 31st NC was the first with Bell as leader and the minutes record his first opening on the political situation. This "covered S African Dam, United Front in Chile, Bolivia Left, Angela Davis and Black Panthers (sounds like a pop group), linking growth of liberation movements with present situation in Britain". The sudden, unexpected and unprecedented frivolity - making a mild joke out of what was then a relatively unfamiliar and perhaps rather exotic name for the British left - in a set of official minutes was in a sense revealing. For some it marked the entrance of a modern easy-going, youthful image; others were disparaging about the stature and personality of the new National Secretary. Out with stuffiness certainly, but out with seriousness of purpose? And what purpose? That would be the test.

For the leadership were already showing signs of weakness. Only 16 full members attended that meeting - an additional four members of the leadership were co-opted onto the NC in a non-voting capacity as well. Significantly, one of McNally's proteges Peter Kavanagh, was the only one not to be co-opted unopposed. The rationale for his co-option was "the role he is playing in the young workers movement", but a vote had to be taken because of opposition of some from London and he was brought on by a vote of 11 to 4.

6 RETRIBUTION AGAINST OPPOSITION

From here on there emerged a campaign of unremitting retribution against any opposition within the organisation to the Czechoslovakia policy or for that matter, ultimately, almost any policy. George Bridges, former editor of Challenge and London District Secretary, and Tom Bell, for example, both complained to the NC that one Pete Ackerman had breached democratic centralism at a YCL school for the Camberwell branch, at which he was the tutor. Ackerman had been a key organiser in the youth section of the Movement for Colonial Freedom (later Liberation) for a couple of years and was also deeply involved in matters concerning European Security. Facing discipline, Ackerman agreed that he had breached the rules of handling dissent and was censured for this under Rule 4 of the YCL constitution, which covered democratic centralism. The formal minute of censure was rather ominously misspelt, thus: - "It was agreed: - 1 To censor (sic) P Ackerman unanimous 2 To ask him to resign from the NC - 2 against 1 abstention." [YCL NC document November 10th 1970] The essence of the complaint against him had been that he had taken his differences with policy downwards to a subordinate body within the organisation, an action incompatible with leadership."

The following March, another NC member felt constrained to resign from the leadership. John Page, from the East Anglian district, had found himself occupied with many duties associated with his responsibilities in the NUS, which made it difficult for him to continue on the NC. Although why, so close to a congress when an entirely new leadership would be elected anyway, he needed to resign may perhaps be partially explained by his second reason, that "political differences (existed) which made it increasingly difficult to continue as a NC member".

As the 1971 congress approached, more and more signs of tension were exposed. The pre-congress discussion night for the Southampton branch was deemed null and void by the NC, "due to irregularities". Tom Bell reported that "a number of CP/YCL dual members who had not previously been involved in the YCL and whose main field of activity was the CP had attended YCL branch congress nights and voted on a number of issues, against the views of comrades who had played a role in the YCL and people had been elected delegates in place of these comrades". It seems that the District Party's van had been used to facilitate the dual members attending the meetings.

Elsewhere, some like Mike Ambrose of the West Middlesex District, who had been the District Secretary but had indicated intent to move out of YCL work in favour of Party work entirely, had changed their minds. Pete Hall had taken on the Kent District Secretaryship without consultation with the national office. Les Howie, the Hants and Dorset District Secretary of the CPGB with Sid French, the Surrey District Secretary, had assisted with all of this "interference" as Bell termed it. Moreover, they had supposedly made remarks to Tony McNally and Dennis Walshe, the key YCLer in Hants and Dorset at that time, of an "insulting nature". Howie and French were barred from the forthcoming congress and the CPGB executive decided to advise all Party members in the YCL that they must “fight for Party policy, including in the YCL Congress".

The YCL leadership felt now able to act upon their complaints. Mike Laws, a long standing critic of the YCL's leadership and a Party member who had been seconded by the Surrey district to help in the YCL, was tersely told that his invitation to work in the YCL was terminated, he "being now 32 years of age". Pete Hall was interviewed by the NC "on the question of his suitability as Kent YCL district secretary". After this the NC, rather predictably, instructed the Kent YCL DC to elect another district secretary, due to Hall's "role in the League, in terms of both personal instability and ability to fight for Congress decisions". Hall said he would accept the decision of the NC, but would fight it at congress in a constitutional appeal. Significantly, almost in defiance of the opposition in the League, that NC issued a statement on the trials of 19 young political subversives in Czechoslovakia at the same time as dealing with these matters.

The pre-congress discussion documents for this period show the strident tone of the debate. Some saw mass work as activity in the youth clubs or in local football teams, almost and in some cases actually posing this arena against trade union or other mass struggles. The practical experience of some was almost calculatedly ranged against the theoretical criticisms of those who complained of an absence of Marxist study in the organisation.

One contributor queried the "limited democracy that has plagued the YCL lately because of the threat of the 'hard-liners' ", and pointed out that the only concrete example of mass work that the YCL could cite in its credit, in the most recent period up to Congress, had been the TUC Youth Conference campaign. Was selling Challenge on the local High Street, an activity much demanded by those in favour of community-style YCL work, directly mass youth work? Some in the YCL were so disgruntled at the style of the new Challenge that they had begun to boycott it in one way or another. The Camberwell branch of the League for example found its branch committee suspended from office for one month for returning the October 1969 issue of the magazine to the district office on account of the "pornography" contained within. (Photographs of `artistically’ posed female nudes were seen by the leadership as 'trendy'!) But, to return to the notion of selling Challenge as a means of locality work, one YCLer pointedly commented that London was probably the only city where 'locality' had any real meaning. In Glasgow, Birmingham, Leeds and elsewhere, if you wanted to sell Challenge successfully you went to the city centre.

Of considerable significance was the contribution to discussion from the London District Organiser, Laureen Mason. Although at the time, for reasons that we shall see next, Mason's views were rather overshadowed by a more stunning and sensational article from McNally. Mason called for unity in diversity: "the last congress saw somewhat of a polarisation of opinion ... since then to some extent the polemic has developed and within basic viewpoints many shades and shapes of opinion are coming forth". For her, a Marxist synthesis - not compromise - of clashing views should be possible. Yet rival cults and personality differences prevented this. Inflexibility could be our downfall, she argued, some have ceased to struggle in the battle of ideas and play "on the emotional feelings" of members. Implicitly, she complained that those who had differences on Czechoslovakia were not being treated fairly, "an over-reaction has arisen". Her contribution was immediately followed in the discussion document by a case in point.

It was a revelatory article by Tony McNally, a contribution to discussion which was spirited, to say the least, which became the talk of the League in the run up to congress. He argued that those who disagreed with the last congress decision on Czechoslovakia had "embarked on a course of organisation, and plain mudslinging to disrupt the 28th Congress." He believed that the NC had "bent over backwards" to avoid disciplinary action, even though a leading member of the Party had referred to the disunity as "close to Civil War".

He claimed as evidence of unconstitutional factionalism the booking by Surrey YCL of 60 beds at a hotel in Scarborough for the congress, when the district had only 24 delegates - the excess beds presumably being taken up by delegates from other districts of a like mind. Home Counties and London branches of similar views were travelling in the same coaches to Scarborough. Every Sunday night these people congregated in the Metropolitan pub near the Morning Star for a "drink" as McNally contemptuously put it. The machinations in Southampton - on one side - and the measures taken against Hall and Ackerman were additionally cited as evidence of a conspiracy. It all added up to "bordering on 'organised opposition'". Sid French, McNally complained, had called him a liar and now denied saying so. French had also supposedly said that there was a need to "clear the mafia out of the YCL", referring to the leadership, presumably as a cabal, although the implication was left that it was a bizarre reference to infiltration of the YCL by the criminal society. McNally asked French to "name those comrades in the YCL who are in the Mafia". Linked to this charge was the complaint that a Hants and Dorset CP DC member, a "Mrs Moody", referred to Tom Bell as a "CIA agent". While she had denied saying this, McNally demanded the evidence or withdrawal.

Largely ignoring the fact that much of the litany of complaint had occurred in the pre-congress discussion period, when democratic centralism was supposed to be largely waived in the interests of debate, McNally charged the so-called "hard-line Marxist Leninists" with behaving like liberals and anarchists by not adhering to policy. "If we allow these activities to carry on, the end result will be the slow but sure destruction of our communist youth organisation. THIS IS WHAT IS AT STAKE." McNally took personal responsibility for his statement. But he had "found support from comrades such as Barney Davis, Pete Kavanagh, Tom Bell, Jon Dyson" … (Dyson was in his last year as Midlands District YCL Secretary. His name was followed by another name, which was deleted from the original cyclo-styled stencil leaving a blank in the duplicated text. This was presumably because the individual withdrew expected support. Another blank followed this blank in the text. These two presumed refusals to be identified with McNally's onslaught are indicative of just how controversial the attack was viewed. The original text then continues.) " … Dave Cook and many others." (Then there was a further lengthy blank in the text, which was probably some vituperative point that those who allowed their names to be used could not sign up to.) The position is now before you." It was as if McNally was speaking directly to the congress - which indeed he was! Delegates were, he told them in advance: " mature enough to discriminate between genuine criticism and proposals for concrete work ahead from any mudslinging that may unfortunately occur. " There was no irony intended. [Cogito No 3 pre-congress discussion document] Significantly, McNally later had a statement, that he considered he was "wrong to issue his contribution" to the pre-congress discussion document minuted by the NC. [11/12 September 1971 NC Minutes] But by then the purpose of its production had been achieved - the opposition had been marginalised, just when they were presenting a problem.

The congress had unanimously adopted a resolution on unity and democracy within the League, but there had been no real debate about how to achieve either. McNally presented a report to the NC of 15/16 May, in which he observed that it was "quite clear that a growing political difference within the YCL over the past five of six years has grown deeper and in this period leading up to and during the 28th Congress began to express itself in an organised form which in part was referred to in my article in No3 Pre-Congress discussion." Ending this required an identification of the objective political base that gave rise to the opposition, thought McNally. The leadership had to win those against congress decisions, overcoming its own weaknesses, but not tolerating "any activity at variance with the Congress decisions and democratic centralism." To this end the NC in July, after a further discussion on YCL unity, decided on a school on Socialist Democracy and a Cogito on the same subject - the aim being an ideological offensive in the League of official policy on these matters.

The National Committee issued a statement on YCL Unity on 26th August 1971. In dealing with the problem of the Surrey-ite faction, the NC went back to the 28th Congress. The alternative list or slate for the NC elections, for which George Reader was supposed to have prime responsibility, had " come to light " when Dave Cook discovered it circulating. The NC described this list as "a violation of rule", despite the fact that the constitution did not specifically prohibit such a list, nor did the Congress Standing Orders deal with the possibility.

Notwithstanding all this, the next step was the expulsion of Pete Hall by a vote of 25 to 8 with two abstentions. [NC minutes July 3/4 1971] Hall was accused of breaching democratic centralism on four counts: a) at a Willesden YCL branch social on 19th December 1970, "Bob Allen had to object to an attack (by Hall) on our position on Czechoslovakia"; b) Hall had attacked the YCL and Party leaderships when talking to a Komsomol delegation at a social on 21st November 1970; c) He had attacked the congress position at a Marxist study school; d) He had distributed a statement of the Austrian Communist Party (which had just had a major reversal in policy on Czechoslovakia after key leadership changes) "without consultation with the NC".

Hall was also accused of breaching 'procedure' on four counts: a) a series of "incidents" at socials; b) having opposed aspects of the YCL's work in his branch; c) being elected Kent YCL secretary without consultation with the NC, or the London YCL DC, when still a member of the Islington branch; and d) having been removed from the EPC at congress because "he refused to carry out majority decisions". (The EPC, or Election Preparations Committee, was the enabling committee responsible for preparatory work on the elections of the executive at congress.)

Further disciplinary measures were also adopted, this time more firmly perhaps, against Phil Cutler and Dick Dixon both of Surrey, who each received three months suspension from membership from the NC on a vote of 31 to 1 with 2 abstentions. [NC minutes September 11th/12th 1971] Less certain were the actions on London, West Middlesex and Yorkshire YCLers. Val Dixon, Gordon White and Sarah White were proposed for 3 months suspension from membership (Gordon White had originally been recommended for expulsion). At the July 1971 NC five names from West Middlesex had been considered - two were suspended for 3 months, and these three were to be looked at again as they had failed to attend. In the end, however, they too were faced with discipline, but a new situation had arisen. There had been a district congress and there was now a new leadership. An agreement with the District Party over these three was reached whereby no further action would be taken in these circumstances.

Bert and Margaret Strange of Yorkshire faced action. Although at first the NC, with some members being rather concerned at the apparent flimsiness of the case and others aware that the procedures had not been strictly kept to, had advised the Yorkshire DC to either take the action as far as they could themselves under rule, or come back to another NC meeting better prepared. In the end Margaret Strange was suspended from membership by 19 votes to 8 with one abstention.

More embarrassing for the leadership was the appeal of Perry Miles and Pete Ackerman against the action of the London DC of removing them from office as a disciplinary measure under rule. It was their right to go to the NC on this and the committee backed them after a lengthy argument - some 13 NC members came into the discussion. Their appeal was upheld by 12 votes to 11 with 4 abstentions. The London District Secretary, Bob Allen, came in for some stern criticism from some and it was clear that there was an element which was loosing the taste for discipline as a means of resolving the fundamental differences that beset the League.

The group around the Surrey district began to demand a recall Congress under rule as the pace of discipline stepped up. By September, five districts had formally done so (Surrey, Kent, North East, West of England, South East Midlands District Committees). But the rules required a third of the districts to make such a call. At that stage, six were needed to force the EC to call an emergency congress. Some 50 branches nationally had joined the call by the spring of 1972, but again this was insufficient, half of the total branches were needed and at least on paper there were sufficient branches not joining the call to inhibit such a development.

Going beyond all this formal disciplinary action, the leadership found other less obvious ways of curtailing the opposition. Ways which were sometimes not even immediately obvious to EC members, who voted on the seemingly abstract merits of the case. An example being the question of foreign citizens holding YCL membership. The PC recommended to the EC in September 1971 that only British and Commonwealth citizens be eligible for membership. But the EC overturned this, reasoning that this was a matter that really needed the attention of the next YCL congress, being a question of a fundamental, rather than an interpretative, nature. Only the Congress could change rules in this way, it being the EC's job to interpret them in practice, not make up new rules as it went along. This was very much against the wishes of the London YCL leadership, for they had found the activities of a number of foreigners (Germans and various Middle Eastern nationals in particular) in the YCL especially irritating and had in consequence produced the proposal to clear these out of membership. Significantly, no amendment to rule was produced banning membership on nationality grounds at any subsequent congress.

Clearly, there was a serious situation developing for the group around Bell, which had its power-base in the leadership of the London YCL, for it could no longer be certain of getting through its every whim at the EC. In fact a spirit of open scepticism had developed on the EC, almost as a reaction to the use of administrative power to control the dissidents. Almost certainly, this had some basis in the rapid changes and uncertain character of the leadership of the EC as a whole. Only 12 of the 1969 NC were elected onto the 1971 NC and only two of these were on the 1967 NC (i.e. Tony McNally and Bob Allen). There was in fact an almost unbelievable lack of experience of the national leadership at large, although after the 1971 congress the PC was strengthened by a better balance of full-timers and non-full-timers, London and provincial members. Moreover, the practice of the national full-timers and the London full-timers meeting as a sub-committee of the PC was stopped after the Scottish Committee complained that the practice was unconstitutional and accorded undue influence to a small bureaucratic elite. In truth, the London based leadership was now beginning to find itself under fire from an alliance of forces. Differences on the role of Challenge and the question of the independent role of the YCL, vis-à-vis the mass movement, began to surface inside the majority grouping which had previously been more or less united, at least so far as the Czechoslovakia question was concerned. A debate developed over how to mesh the independent YCL role with that of the wider progressive movement.

McNally had been National Organiser for three years and after the tussle with Bell it is probably not surprising that he felt the need to move on. The EC revealed, in a letter dated 8th June 1972, that "Comrade McNally has been released from the position of National Organiser of the League". Unlike Barney Davis' successor, the appointment of McNally's successor was treated with great care. No less than 21 names were considered, these being supplied by DC nomination. A short-list of six emerged with Dennis Walshe, Barrie Van Den Berg and Phil Green favoured by Bob Allen and Tom Bell. Also in the running were Brian Filling, Bill Hickey and Dave Carson, the successful candidate, favoured by McNally. Carson was a 23 year old former motor mechanic, who had been the Scottish YCL full-time secretary from late 1970. He had been a Party member since 1968 and had joined the YCL the following year.

An example of the healthy suspicion the EC had of its PC was revealed in 1973, when it had been proposed that non-contentious, but important PC items be reported generally to the League in the internal newsletter and that the subsequent EC raise any queries or concerns. Other matters not reported in the newsletter, but for the attention of the EC would be raised under the item 'YCL Newsletters' at the subsequent EC. A vote of 16 to 13 defeated the proposal, insisting that the matters for political rather than administrative decision be reported in full PC minutes to the EC as a proper item for debate.

According to rule of course, the PC was subordinate to the EC, being a sub-committee designed to administrate the business of the latter. In practice it accorded to itself substantial prestige - especially after the Scottish DC forced the demise of the semi-official London based full-timers elite - and influence over the EC simply by virtue of recommendation and the doctrine of collective responsibility of the PC. While this could never be taken for granted, especially in the 1971-5 period, careful handling of sensitive issues could and did easily deteriorate into manipulation of the less experienced and less well-informed EC.

The League faced a severe test of self-contradiction when it assumed the mantle of conscience of the socialist states. In January 1971 McNally had introduced an item at the executive on internal democracy. He expressed a desire to "avoid the grave defamations" made by some communists especially in the socialist world. Ideas on how to maximise inner-League democracy were invited from the whole of the organisation and the NC decided there and then to institute a practice of sending it minutes to all branches as well as the existing circularisation to district secretaries and of course NC members.

Yet the biggest weakness was in the sudden and dramatic decline of the organisation brought in by the 1970s. Apart from a slight stabilisation of the membership decline in the first few years of the decade, the trend was very decidedly not communism - membership plummeted. The NC, in talking about the need for strengthening the organisation, should have been acutely aware of its own limitations. Of the 40 elected at the April 1969 Congress to the NC only 15 were actually functioning, according to McNally. Of the 10 EC members only 5 or 6 regularly participated, the EC sub-committee of London and National full-timers had an indeterminate status and too much power. [NC Minutes 2nd/3rd January 1971]

While in the League at large there was a serious sense of demoralisation. Bell, in the January 1971 Internal Bulletin talked of the need to "restore the dynamic that led to NLF flags flying from such notable flagpoles as the one on Nottingham Castle during our Vietnam Campaign of 1968 ... more than ever we see that we are rapidly approaching a watershed between imperialism and socialism. Not only in Britain but internationally." A new spirit certainly emerged - one of industrial militancy in the face of Heath's Tory government. 600,000 had engaged in an unofficial political strike against the Tories' anti-union Bill, with thousands lobbying Parliament that day. In Birmingham, a local day of action was called, with 45,000 out on strike and a large demonstration of some 5,000 in protest at the Bill. The TUC was forced to take a strong line on the Bill even to the length of a special recall congress at Croydon. While the government's economic policies introduced wage restraint, public expenditure cuts and other moves which struck at ordinary people.

This militancy obscured the realities of certain differences in the League. While there was still a debate about the balance of the activities of the organisation that was desirable, there was formal unanimity about the importance and value of industrial work. As Bell put it to the 29th Congress that year in his opening speech, "it would be wrong to overestimate the possibilities opening up or overstate the degree to which young people are becoming involved. But the fact is that sections of young people who hitherto have not been involved in the present level of struggle are associating with the labour movement in growing numbers. This is the definite and welcome trend among working class youth." Even more decisive was the declaration that youth and student unity, "with labour movement youth at its core", could be more and more "linked with the whole labour movement and the struggle to kick out the Tories".

7 THREE CARDINAL QUESTIONS-
YOUNG WORKERS, SCHOOL STUDENTS, CHALLENGE

These factional differences in the League were in fact rooted in deep divisions that existed inside the Party. To understand how the tensions expressed themselves in the YCL, it will be useful at this stage to look at the broader picture of what would only in retrospect be easily seen as a fundamental, even terminal, crisis for the CPGB.

There had been crises in the Party before of course. The 1929 `Bolshevisation’ of the Party saw the ending of the leadership of an older breed of socialist who had been associated with the old SDF/BSP propagandist style of work - those who were less attuned to the new internationalism and discipline of a Comintern `world party’. 1939 had seen the largely leadership orientated controversy over whether the war was imperialist in character or objectively anti-fascist. 1947-8 saw doubts about whether the wave of repression in Eastern Europe and the ejection of Yugoslavia from the socialist bloc. But this had been largely internalised, people kept their doubts to themselves. 1956 had seen the dispute over Hungary and the Krushchev revelations. These political crises and others were effectively contained and did not wreck the very fabric of British Communism. Although in the case of 1956 a third of the party membership had left, the Party had weathered the storm. Even then, after a few years, membership actually rose in the early Sixties. These earlier, seemingly larger crises, were arguably more about the way the CPGB perceived the international communist movement and the centrality of the need for the defence of the USSR than about how it saw itself as the vanguard of a British revolution. The oddity about the much deeper divisions which arose from 1968 was that, whilst ostensibly about the USSR and the socialist camp, underpinning the controversy was a deep crisis of confidence in whether or not there was a role at all for a distinctive Marxist voice within the progressive movement in Britain. Added to this was doubt about whether that progressive movement was best orientated around the labour movement or not.

Perhaps not knowing it at the time, those who were later to abolish the CPGB already doubted the validity of the concept of a revolutionary party. The present writer has it on good authority that Gordon McLennan was privately voicing to a Party school for advanced and senior cadres as early as 1972, whether there was a basis for an existence of a Communist Party in this country. Arguably, the inner-party turmoil of the next twenty years were simply about keeping hold of the assets and good name of the Party, whilst expunging the organisation of any element which would not go along with this process.

It is in this sense that the divisions were potentially, as it turned out actually, terminal. Whilst the actual experience of those divisions in the YCL display for posterity the larger and later experience of the Party. Since 1929, the Communist movement in Britain had rarely had such fundamental differences emerge so openly, and so deeply across the Party and YCL, in such a way as to raise a doubt about what constituted failure to fight for decisions. In practice it was but a thin line between excluding candidates on the basis of failing to fight for majority decisions and excluding those who had minority opinions. For it would increasingly become a severe impediment to leadership hopes in the YCL (and later in the Party) to have strong dissenting views. Moreover, the leadership itself began to operate in a factional way - opposition versus executive (or to be more precise Political Committee) - excluding those from amongst its number who could not be relied upon, in an increasingly wider frame of definition.

The entire spirit behind the notion of democratic centralism abhorred the creation of factions. Whilst the notion of the recommended list, in theory, worked on the basis of consensus on what kind of leadership was required. Even so, there was no bar as such to any delegate proposing an alternative list of one, two, three or thirty candidates. Indeed, at the 1979 CPGB Congress Dave Cook spoke for a long list of alternative names by the simple expedient of naming them in his speech during the closed session debate on the EC elections. The recommended list system however presumes, as the NC statement on YCL Unity put it that "having a minority viewpoint is not in itself a basis to be excluded from positions of leadership, but failure to fight for majority decisions ... is such a basis".

The process of election was wide open to PC fractional influence - despite the theory that the congress was supreme in its choice. Initial ideas on a recommended list would be put by the General Secretary to the PC, which in turn put its view to the EC, which in turn produced a list for the Election Preparations Committee, which in turn produced such a list for the Congress. While there would inevitably be alterations - and that was the point of the system - between each of these stages, individual candidates could emerge as the process unfolded; a leadership bent on exclusion of a given trend could easily do so. The EC was thus increasingly more unrepresentative of the whole YCL, albeit representative of the majority of the congress, and the complaint of the opposition increasingly centred on such a suggestion. The repudiation of the leadership of this accusation was simply that a minority view was not a condition for membership of leading committees.

Differences did exist however over the question of industrial activity, especially on the degree of its importance - some saw it as central, others as important to a lesser or greater degree. If activity amongst young workers was relevant then of course so was the other key area of YCL membership - school students. Inevitably, the character of Challenge then current raised much concern especially in the context of what the journal of the YCL was for. A groundswell of opinion in the League was to build up around the simple notion that Challenge ought to reflect the work of the League in these spheres, both as an independent organisation and as part of movements specific to these spheres. These three cardinal areas of difference were set to provide the League with an explosive situation. Differences around the League's position on international matters, a serious test of the leadership' ability to maintain unity in diversity and to translate that into a healthy, positive and expansive atmosphere all came together in a critical moment of doubt. In particular, Tom Bell, as national leader, faced the most taxing assessment of his own role in the organisation he ostensibly led. How then did these three factors contribute to this situation?

a) Young Workers

The British Labour Movement had long displayed a history of a contempt for youth, assigning militancy to the follies of immaturity, and assuming a studied disregard for the particular problems of young people which face them by virtue of their age as well as class. Unlike many working class movements in other countries, British counterparts have rarely considered the need to establish special bodies, sub-committees, conferences and the like, for youth. More especially is this so for trade union organisations.

One of the first real attempts to reverse this contempt was put to the TUC in 1928 by the AEU, which has always displayed an interest in youth matters, by virtue of an endemic concern for apprenticeships of a craft nature. Indeed the AEU, later the AEF and then the AUEW (Engineering Section), long maintained a youth structure of its own, part and parcel of the "adult" machinery of the union. However, that early attempt came to naught, but the Scottish TUC decided to hold an annual youth conference from 1937 and this has been so for all but the war years ever since. In 1947 the British TUC General Council discussed the experiences of these Scottish TUC Youth Conferences, but went no further. The following year a motion was put to set up some form of a youth structure, but this was defeated. The issue would not go away though - in 1954 the General Council was forced to prove its interest by making a statement urging more participation of younger union members.

Under pressure from the AEU in 1955, the General Council told the union that it considered that there was enough being done in respect of youth. The next year, the clerical workers union, CAWU, and the AEU presented a motion favouring the establishment of a youth conference and committee of the TUC. The advisory body would be comprised of young workers elected at an annual youth conference and some General Council members, but the notion was just too much for the TUC and it failed to win sufficient support.

Throughout the 1950s there were sporadic and significant apprentices strikes in engineering and shipbuilding, testament both to the organising influence of the Communist Party in these industries and to the growing awareness of strength and the contradictory lack of say on their lot amongst young workers. Attempts to channel this discontent into more long-term organised forms took off only in a few areas. Engineering youth committees in Sheffield and the Clydeside, trades council advisories in Coventry and Birmingham and youth unemployed committees in the North East were amongst some of the products of this period. But the official trade union youth structure was largely limited to the AEU and to the draughtsmen's and technicians union (AESD, then DATA, later TASS), which were briefly in the AUEW/TASS federation, which was later to split. This loose and short-lived alliance contained the anomalous position of the AUEW having a national youth conference but no national committee, while TASS had a national youth committee, but no national youth conference.

The YCL had been fairly well involved in the engineering struggles of youth in the North, the Midlands and Scotland in the Fifties and early Sixties, while it had engaged in campaigns around youth unemployment in the 1962-3 period, especially on the Tyneside. By the late Sixties, the League had begun to once again centre its attentions on these matters. Challenge sponsored a largely London based conference on automation and youth in 1967, while towards the end of the year a one day YCL national industrial conference was called with 39 attending - it had been hoped that some 60 would attend. The Party had a clear presence, Julie Jacobs from the National Industrial Department was there with a colleague, to hear the conference assessment that the YCL had "not worked amongst young workers for a long time" and its determination to change that. [YCLIB December 1967]

There were exceptions, which highlighted some very interesting possibilities for the YCL. It was able to boast that Mick Shepherd, convenor of stewards at the Sheffield factory of Shardlows, was a member. Despite being unusually young for such a position, he was substantially assisted in obtaining the convenorship by being a Communist. There were then 73 Communists out of a workforce of 1,300. 100 copies of the Morning Star were sold every day inside the factory, apart from the many Party members who had it ordered at their local newsagent, and there was even a Party factory newspaper called Crankshaft.

In Dundee, a Junior Workers Committee of the AEU had been set up with YCLers playing a leading part. There were YCLers active in a variety of such committees throughout the country in both the AEU and DATA. The League very soon found itself with a small industrial group on the largest building site in Europe - Thamesmead. While Sheffield Trades Council, in October 1969, led by Communists, sponsored a city-wide youth conference, which subsequently resulted in a re-vamped youth committee. Similar conferences were set up elsewhere, at Ealing for example.

There was a very real, rising tide of protest amongst young people at work at the effects of the Wilson Labour government's policies on the economy. For the first time, young people felt they had a voice and used it in the face of attacks on their precious and newly acquired standard of living. Young women in particular established a reputation for 'having a go'. At Fords in Dagenham, BSR in East Kilbride and the nurses’ 'Raise the Roof' campaign (both young women’s struggles), all contributed to this trend. The League produced a Young Workers' broadsheet and quickly sold 2,000 copies.

When in February 1970, the vote at 18 years of age was eventually conceded, more as a piece of Wilsonian trickery than any genuine response to a much needed democratic reform, the young worker in particular became significant political potential in the eyes of society at large. There were no less than 5 million young workers less than 25 years of age in the early 1970s.

Against this entire background, the AEF (as the AEU was now called by virtue of an amalgamation with the foundry workers) Junior Workers' National Conference in March 1970 called for the TUC to set up a national youth conference for the whole of the movement. YCLers were predominantly involved in the work to win this call and the League did not waste much time advancing the case further. The 7th September Lobby Committee was formed to co-ordinate youth to demonstrate outside the Brighton TUC that year in support of the AEF's call.

Some 350 people, representing one million trades unionists wer