Written: 8 July, 1920
First Published: Published in English in The Call (London) No. 224, July 22, 1920; First published in Russian in the Fourth Edition of the Collected Works; Published according to the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 31, page 2021
Translated: Julius Katzer
Transcription\HTML Markup:
David Walters &
R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
I have received a letter from the Joint Provisional Committee for the Communist Party of Britain, dated June 20, and, in accordance with their request, I hasten to reply that I am in complete sympathy with their plans for the immediate organisation of a single Communist Party of Britain. I consider erroneous the tactics pursued by Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’ Socialist Federation, who refuse to collaborate in the amalgamation of the British Socialist Party, the Socialist Labour Party and others to form a single Communist party. Personally I am in favour of participation in Parliament and of affiliation to the Labour Party, given wholly free and independent communist activities. I shall defend these tactics at the Second Congress of the Third International on July 15, 1920 in Moscow. I consider it most desirable that a single Communist party be speedily organised on the basis of the decisions of the Third International, and that such a party should establish the closest contact with the Industrial Workers of the World and the Shop Stewards’ Committees, in order to bring about a complete merger with them in the near future.
N. Lenin
8.7.1920
[1] “Reply to a Letter from the Hoint Provisional Committee for the Communist Party of ritain” was broadcasted and published in English in The Call (No. 224, July 22, 1920), organ of the British Socialist Party. The reply was also read to the Congress of British Communists, which took place on July 31-August 1, 1920.—Editor