The Communist Technique in Britain

[front cover/inside flyleaf:] BOB DARKE, Hackney Borough Councillor, and for eighteen years a leading Communist until he resigned in May 1951, explains how the British Communist Party can exert an influence vastly out of proportion to its numerical strength. This is not an ex-Communist intellectual's expose' but the plain, factual account of a working man who tells us CONTINUED INSIDE how Union after Union in the East End fell under Communist control. He explains the Communist technique of taking over a Union, organizing strikes, getting rid of non-Communist Union leaders. He reveals that the Peace Campaign sprang directly from Cominform instructions, and he accuses it of deception and forgery. He tells of his role as a Parliamentary agent when the Party tried desperately to win the South Hackney seat in the 1945 General Election. His story is authentic. As a member of the Party's important National Industrial Policy Committee he knew more of the Party's tactics than the average comrade. But perhaps the most damning thing of all is his account of the corruption of family life and family loyalties, of the Party's imposition of an iron and uncompromising discipline. [rear cover:] Councillor C.H. 'Bob' Darke of Hackney is an East Ender who has spent the whole of his life in the political struggles of his borough. For eighteen years, until May 1951, he was a member of the British Communist Party. He served on its influential Industrial Policy Committee and its National Transport Advisory Council. He was a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service during the war and sat on the Executive of the Fire Brigades Union. He left the Fire Service to act as Parliamentary Agent to the Communist Candidate for South Hackney during the 1945 General Election. Later he became a bus conductor. He held office in the Hackney Trades Council and the London Trades Council. Well known and well liked in the East End, he is married, with two daughters. He lives with his family in a block of council flats in Homerton. *Why is it impossible to argue with a Communist?* He will only argue on his own terms. He is right. You are wrong. You are wrong because you have not accepted his belief that the Marxist interpretation of life is the only one. If you have not accepted it you are on the other side. You cannot be speaking the truth. --p.15 Since the Party considers finance of the highest political importance it also regards defaulting in this sphere as among the gravest of crimes. --p.97 The Party held a post-mortem on the election. It was, in the jargon of the Party, a 'bashing'. . . . We were called to order sharply by the chairman. 'Comrades! What is a parliamentary election? If you have mastered your Marxism you will know that Communism cannot hope to gain power by methods which were expressly designed to protect a bourgeois society. Our role is one of constant agitation, constant propaganda, of building a party of all classes of workers, of scientists, doctors, writers, and artists. We are an octopus with tentacles that must close about the machinery of the state.' --pp.127-8 We have built up a movement which is based on man's right to be heard and represented in whatever way he chooses, a movement which is based on man's fundamental belief in the decency of his neighbour. Communism will replace this with a society based on man's fundamental fear of his neighbour. Freedom of conscience and will is an inheritance we take too lightly, even after the Nazi war. . . . We face a conspiracy against such intangible values. . . . I do not believe it will be defeated in Westminster. It will not be defeated by Fleet Street or by disapproval in the middle-class suburbs. It *can* be defeated in the trade unions, for it is in the unions that the Party is determined to fight its one-party battle. If it is defeated there its power will weaken.' --p.159