Moderation Is Sweet

The British Communist Party went out of its way last week to show how British it is. At its first annual convention since the Comintern was dissolved, the Party:

>Published a detailed balance sheet to convince skeptics that no gold comes to it from Moscow;

>Changed the Central Committee's title to National Executive Committee;

>Reiterated full support to Winston Churchill and the war effort. >Defined its final goal as a "Socialist Britain."

Party Leader Harry Pollitt made the big speech, and more significant than what he said was the non-Communist reaction to it. Wrote the Manchester Guardian: "Mr. Pollitt was on his mettle, for this is the first conference since the Party became entirely respectable. It was a speech that would have adorned the chair at any Labor Party conference. It breathed the highest patriotism and the sweetest of moderation. The references to the war were fervid, those to Russia not overdone. . . ."

In the past year, before it was adjudged "entirely respectable," the British Communist Party upped its membership from 53,000 to over 62,000. Now, breathing "the highest patriotism" and recruiting among Britons who admire the strength of Soviet Russia, British Communists expect the future to be rosier.

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