One picture One picture of Lenin fails to ruffle

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It was indeed a signal service to British political life for Granada TV to provide us, on a series of wet summer nights, with three hours of film of discussions held before and during the 1977 Communist Party Congress, revealing in some detail how the Stalinists propose to tie the working class more firmly to the reformists and to the 'democratic' bourgeoisie.

For those with the stomach • sit through these films, no detail was spared in inner party intrigue.

Lovingly studied

Every bureaucrat on the make was lovingly studied. Every reactionary argument was drawn out to its logical counterrevolutionary conclusion.

The life and times of the men and women who fight most relentlessly to insult the very name of communism in Britain was set out for all to see.

Make no mistake about it. The films showed clearly a seasoned Stalinist leadership taking some further steps along the road of accomodation to British capitalism.

These steps were first set out in Stalin's own policies of class compromise and sectarianism in the 1920s, of class alliances in the 30s and 40s, and were subsequently enshrined in the very first PHOTO: Report edition of The British Road to Socialism approved by Stalin himself in 1951.

The new version of this document, the 'democratic' discussion around it, and the TV films also, were part of the efforts of a Party, long since on the path of class betrayal, to win to its ranks new liberal capitulators and sections of the workers movement which can be made to tie the working class to capitalism at every turn.

Those within the Party who protested against this latest phase of Stalinist policy were shown in the films to have few differences from their annanante 'The ultra-Stalinists were disposed of, presumably by manoeuvres not seen by those who made the films, at an early stage.

They went off into the wilderness to set up their own 'New' Communist Party, which equates Stalinist terror with the dintatarchin of tha Mualotanint of the proletariat and argues for precisely the same policies of alliance with the capitalist class.

Same arguments

The opponents of the leadership who remained within the Party had not even changed their spots.

The first film showed the so-called hard finers fighting to get their views into the draft programme with precisely the same liberal arguments as the In the last film, the liberals who wanted to exclude references to 'the leading role of the Soviet Party' were shown to have drawn the logical conclusion of the paltry protests made bv the bartv leadershio adainst LN PUILT Stalinist repression by trying to cut off the few remaining links with any of the traditions of The attitude of the leadership on this question revealed clearly a fundamental truth about Eurostalinism.

The policies they pursue flow logically from and are warmly approved by the Kremlin bureaucracy.

high ranking Soviet official visited the conference to provide official blessing on the latest capitulations to British No better means could express more graphically the umbilical cord that ties• the Eurostalinists to the Soviet The films, however, were less concerned with going to the heart of such questions than with showing what happens on the surface in the making of decisions. In other words they were about the form of politics and not its content.

The success of the filmmakers in portraying this secondary aspect 'by the 'special' technique of following round with limited equipment leaders, congress delegates, branch discussions and so forth, helps to explain the almost universal praise accorded to the series in the capitalist press. This is quite apart from the way the films revealed the peaceful intentions of the Communist Party towards capitalism.

A particularly crass example of the confusion of form and content was to be seen in the 20 July issue of Socialist Challenge, where in an article about the films 'members of the far left' were warned to beware of 'our own Irene Brennans and Bert Rametsons' No doubt this could have continued with a homily about 'human nature' or how impolite it is tor people to shout at another.

The one thing that was clearly not discussed by this Pabloite was the historical and social forces from which the power of these bureaucrats is derived and their utterly counter-revolutionary nature, quite apart from human personality or, in general, the form of political discussion.

The capitalist press was also consoled to see discussion, argument and bludgeoning such as can be seen in any political They only complained that some 'hard-liners' would not admit the film-makers to their meetings.

They need not have worried, however. This Communist Party has no intention of doing any. thing so subversive as to propose a way to put an end to capitalist exploitation.

Instead they will concentrate at every step on holding back the mobilisation of the working class.

From the point of view of those who participated in them, the films will have served their purpose if they help to reassure the bourgeoisie of the peaceful intentions of Her Majesty's Communist Party.

Those who have less peaceful intentions towards the capitalist order will not of course reveal them to the full gaze of Granada TV.

Nor will they be found within the ranks of the CPGB or its Stalinist offshoots.