ANNEXD Copy
of Document found at CPGB Headquarters when raided by the police on
14 October,
1925 MemoranduDl The Situation in and the IDlDlediate Tasks of the British CODlDlunist Party
In our article on the Fifth Anniversary of the Comintern we stated that one of the most important tasks now confronting the Comintern is to create a mass communist party in Great Britain. Without exaggeration the creation of such a party in Great Britain would be of great historical significance. Correctly speaking the problem of establishing a mass communist party exists since the time of Marx. The difficulty of the task was attributed to important objective causes, the most important of which was that the wealthy British bourgeoisie extracting huge profits from its colonies and semi-colonise bribed the upper strata of the working class. The situation changed somewhat in the last four years, particularly aft r the war of 1914-18. The priveliged (sic) position of the British bourgeoisie has been shaken. The economic situation in the country at the time of the formation of the so-called Labour Government of MacDonald is such that the opportunist upper strata of the working class cannot fail to lose its influence in the British Labour Movement. Speaking briefly, for the first time real objective conditions are being created for the establishment of a real revolutionary mass communist party in Great Britain. However, it must be said quite frankly that the British Communist Party is far from having come up to this task. The editorship of the weekly organ is far from satisfactory. Except for general phrases about the 'United Front' one rarely finds anything important in it. The former dogmatic hostility to the idea of the Communists joining the Labour Party is now substituted by a noncritical and sometimes inopportune repetition of banal phrases about the United Front. Even while comrade Newbold was a member of Parliament, certain influential British comrades seriously discussed the questions as to wether (sic) this sole communist in the British Parliament may sometimes vote against the Labour Party, or wether (sic) for the sake of the United Front he must constantly act with the Labour Party. It need not be said that such a point of view has nothing in common with the actual exploitation of revolutionary parliamentarism. 102