Socialist Register 1976 Preface

Abstract

Most of the essays in this thirteenth volume of The Socialist Register are concerned with the upheavals which made 1956 so traumatic a year for the left in general and for the Communist left in particular. The intention of this Symposium is clearly not to recall in tranquillity the events of twenty years ago: it is rather to contribute, in the tradition which the Register has established for itself, to the clarification of issues and problems of crucial importance to the socialist movement. John Saville describes how he and E.P. Thompson, in defiance of the leadership of the Communist Party, gave voice to a new opposition with the publication of what, in 1957, became The New Reasoner. Malcolm MacEwen and Margot Heinemann, from different points of view, recall the impact of the Khrushchev speech to the XXth Congress of the C.P.S.U. on the British Communist Party; and the two interviews which follow these articles also describe the reception of that speech by the French and Italian Communist Parties. Mervyn Jones surveys the main events of 1956; and Bill Lomax provides a detailed account of the little-known Workers Council of Greater Budapest in November 1956. Ken Coates reviews critically a recent compilation on The Left in Britain; and Ralph Miliband explores further the present limitations of the British left, and suggests that it should now "move on". His article extends an argument which has appeared in earlier volumes of the Register, and to which articles in future volumes will undoubtedly return.