A delegate writes: British Communists, no less than other sections of the left, are faced with the problem of taking an attitude to the Labour Government. ‘Why has the Labour Government been unable to provide even the basis for solving problems in which not only its own future but the future of the nation is at stake?’: this question opens the Political Resolution endorsed overwhelmingly at the Communist Party Congress. The answers to the Government’s problems are also phrased along national rather than specifically class lines and further on the Resolution states the necessity of arousing ‘the patriotism of the British people’ to remove us bases. Throughout Congress a clear division was made between the ‘imperialist’ policy of the present and the potentialities of the Labour Party itself within which ‘there is a growing revolt against that policy’. The decisive role of the cp is seen in developing its influence on the lp and the trade unions.
Thus the Congress made its most important appeal that for a United Left: one that it has been making fairly consistently since its formation. The eight point appeal adumbrated by John Gollan in his opening address and agreed to in the final stages of Congress is essentially a moderate one: few socialists could not agree on the ending of the incomes policy; opposition to rent and price increases; support for steel nationalization; rejection of the Immigration Bill; rejection of American and British imperialist policies; and various social advances dependent on a cut in military expenditure.