In the post-war period, this policy of the USSR, of seeking to conciliate imperialism, so called peaceful coexistence, was the bedrock of soviet foreign policy, and involved not just not promoting proletarian revolution, but actively sabotaging it, where it occurred. Globally, the USSR sought to ally with bourgeois nationalist forces, including some of the most anti-working class forces, simply on the basis of a supposed struggle against colonialism. And, the national communist parties, themselves allied with bourgeois parties, and with the petty-bourgeoisie, on the basis of popular fronts, to supposedly fight against fascists, or against monopoly capitalism, for example, the so called “anti-monopoly alliance”. As Lenin set out in Left-Wing Childishness, this latter is a thoroughly reactionary venture, because it is this monopoly capitalism, which is the basis for socialism, the rung on the ladder that precedes it, and the main threat to socialism arises not from monopoly capitalism, but from the petty-bourgeoisie.
So, when it came to the question of Britain's membership of the EEC (Common Market), in the 1960's, and 1970's, the British Communist Party, and its Tribunite/Bennite fellow travellers, adopted the same nationalist stance, allying with the “British” capitalists, as against the European capitalists, just as, in the Alternative Economic Strategy, a 1970's equivalent of the Mosley Memorandum, they sought to resolve the problems of British capital, by allying with it, and protecting it with import controls and so on, as well as the concomitant of that, immigration controls. Of course, much as with the ghost class that the Popular Front sought to enlist in Spain, the same was true in Britain. The British ruling class, the bourgeoisie, far from opposing EEC membership, were all in favour, because the reality of capitalism, in the age of imperialism, is that it needs such large single markets. It was only the dwarfish capitals of the petty-bourgeoisie that opposed such development, because they saw in it, their more rapid destruction, and descent into the ranks of the proletariat.
So, a look at the line up of those opposing EEC/EU membership (by the time of the 1975 Referendum, the legislation to proceed to the EU, as against just the EEC, had already been enacted) showed that, besides the Communist Party, and its Tribunite/Bennite fellow travellers, in the LP and the unions, it was joined by the likes of Enoch Powell, the National Front, and other such right-wing political representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie. Disgracefully, however, they were also joined by sections of the Left, such as The SWP, and Militant, who capitulated from their former stance, on the basis of the fact that they had begun to recruit significant numbers of militant workers in the industrial and political struggles that erupted in the early 1970's, and feared losing them, in conditions where a general “Left” consensus was created by the established forces of Stalinism.
At the time, it was clearly symbolised for me, as a young industrial militant, and shop steward for ASTMS. The union General Secretary, was Clive Jenkins, a fiery Welsh opponent of EEC membership. In the next office to the one I worked in, sat two blokes in their fifties, together at a desk, side by side. At dinner time, I'd go and sit with them, and listen to the radio, and talk about various things. One of them, Bill, spoke about how, in the 1930's, he'd attended meetings, and a youth club run by Oswald Mosley in Longton. The other one, Maurice, each week used to bring me a copy of The Morning Star, and Socialist Worker.
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