ABSTRACT
The Left had always been distinct from the rest of the labour movement in refusing to accept the limitations of Parliamentary democracy and gradual reform. The Communist Party, in its first application to affiliate to the Labour Party, had stated its belief in the Soviet system, that is for government through ‘workers’ committees’ instead of parliaments, for the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and for the use of Parliament only as a propaganda platform rather than as a legislature. The anti-parliamentary tendency in the CP led by Gallacher and Sylvia Pankhurst had been criticized by Lenin as ‘Left Wing Communism’ but, despite this criticism, there remained a suspicion of parliament inherited from the syndicalist movement.1 The Communist Party Central Committee favoured ‘the Soviet (or Workers Council) system as a means whereby the working class shall achieve power and take control of the forces of production’. It saw ‘parliamentary and electoral action generally as providing a means of propaganda and agitation towards the revolution’.2
