Title: A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930-1950

Author: Rachel Barrowman

Publication details: Victoria University Press, 1991, Wellington

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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Spreading the Doctrine of Socialism

The Left Book Club in New Zealand, as in England, combined an insistence on the non-partisan nature of its policy and membership, and the stated aim of providing an 'open forum' for debate, with a commitment to socialism. There was some contradiction between its publicly stated role as a medium of education and its function as a political organisation.

The majority of its members would have perceived the club as a socialist organisation, while probably a greater number of the public would have labelled it communist. An invitation to join the Christchurch study group on political economy, for example, was clearly addressed to those who were already of left persuasion: In that argument yesterday, did you misquote, maim and otherwise mangle Marx? Do you really know anything about Socialist theory?'; and left one in no doubt about the group's political purpose: 'Yes, we said the correct theoretical knowledge—meaning Political Economy based on the teachings of Marx and Lenin.'⁶⁴ Topics such as 'That the formation of the Labour government will inevitably lead to socialism', debated by the Oamaru group, or 'What we are prepared to do to advance the cause of socialism', which was discussed at the Auckland group's weekend summer school held in January 1939, similarly make explicit the club's political orientation. Wrote the secretary of the Hororata group, writer J.W.D. Hall, to the editor of the Left News: 'We have a little group , in the country here which started around the Left Book Club and endeavour to spread the doctrine of socialism'.⁶⁵

Occasionally the club adopted a more direct political role: during the 1938 general election Christchurch members spoke on Labour Party platforms. The Communist Party, of course, saw the Left Book Club as one of several progressive organisations in which it should maintain an influence through the participation of individual Party members, but in keeping with the united front strategy was mindful not to dominate. The Left Book Club was appreciated by the Workers' Weekly as 'a real factor in the drive to the Left', while a club member and Workers' Weekly reader saw it as a means of 'forging the necessary page 83 link between the workers in the city and the working farmers'.⁶⁶

Publicly, however, the Left Book Club maintained a non-threatening, Popular Front line, and particularly sought to distance itself from Communist Party association. In an article published in Tomorrow in April 1940 the club sought to clarify the 'confusion' it perceived in the public mind as to its function and aims. It was emphatically stated that, The "Left Book Club" is strictly a publishing organisation run by Victor Gollancz of London', and that, The activities of the Left Book Club Groups are not political; they are educational.' The article also reprinted a conference resolution that 'affirms that the Left Book Club organisations of New Zealand as such have no political associations in New Zealand or elsewhere, and do not enter upon organised political activities, or collective expression of opinion on political issues.'⁶⁷ The first national conference of the association heard 'an important debate. . . on the policy on which it was strongly laid down that nothing must deflect the groups from their main purpose—that of education. It was therefore decided that political entanglements should be carefully avoided', while Left Book Club pamphlets were to carry a note that they were 'intended to form a basis for Discussion' and were not statements of a 'Party line'.⁶⁸

Such assurances did not satisfy all of the club's critics, needless to say. A hostile reaction to the Palmerston North group's performance of Waiting for Lefty in December 1939 sparked an acrimonious debate in the correspondence columns of the Manawatu Evening Standard, a debate which quickly focused on the club's suspected political affiliation rather than on the play itself. A correspondent signing himself 'Gladiator' and a member of the Right Book Club, for example, accused the club of being 'a branch of the Communist International, existing for the specific purpose of propagating Marxist ideals in the British Empire.'⁶⁹ Such charges drew from members of the group a definition of the club's aims which underlines the inclusiveness of the Popular Front position as it sought to appeal to 'all opponents of Fascism and friends of democracy':

Broadly speaking the Left Book Club exists to propagate the truth about capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, war, peace, and anything else that complicates, hinders, or may help in the progress of humanity.⁷⁰

The club's secretary, S. J. Bennett (a teacher), declared that: 'the club is strictly non-party and exists solely to promote the spread of essential knowledge of all progressive thought, of Nazism and of Fascism, by discussion and by reading. It is definitely not a Communist organisation, but contains men and women of all shades of political opinion and of none'; its aim was simply to 'assist members to equip themselves as active members of a progressive community'. Another letter concluded a spirited condemnation of the intolerance demonstrated by Gladiator and other correspondents with an invitation to

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come along to the club's meeting some time and tell us what you know; we are out to seek knowledge,... we will guarantee to give you a fair but good 'go' in debate. We wind up and cap the debate by having a nice cup of tea and biscuits and [are] waited on by the lady members.⁷¹

One can only speculate on the likelihood of 'Gladiator' having accepted this invitation from the Palmerston North group to attend its next meeting; that is, on the extent to which the Left Book Club attracted a membership representative of 'all shades of political opinion', and fulfilled its primary purpose of political education by appealing to an unpoliticised audience. C. F. Saunders certainly had a more positive appreciation of the club's impact as a medium of political education than of its performance in fostering a left-wing culture: 'To measure the real achievement of the Left Book Club one has but to notice the impingement of Left literature on the material for the reading public to be seen in the shelves of the commercial lending-libraries.'⁷² It is probably fair to assume, however, that the Left Book Club had as little success in attracting a membership representative of 'all shades of opinion' as did the editors of Tomorrow in soliciting contributions from people on the political right. The impression one gains of the central Wellington group is that it appealed to an educated, left and liberal-left audience, one composed primarily of academics, civil servants and professional people. The convenor of one Wellington study group complained of 'the difficulty of all those attending having substantially the same viewpoint.'⁷³ This gives a slightly different impression from the Left Book Club's statement in Tomorrow quoted above, which described how 'at Group meetings one may hear violently conflicting views put forward with energy and earnestness.'⁷⁴ Reports of the activities of rural groups, meanwhile, suggest that the club functioned outside the main centres more as a kind of mutual support group for the progressively-minded than as an effective mass political force. An abbreviated account from the Tauranga group in the 1940 annual report read: 'Doing some educational work in frightfully reactionary district. Meetings are rallying grounds for left opinion.'⁷⁵

Certainly the active membership of the club was not large. But how wide the Left Book Club's influence was, in terms of the numbers who read the books, and who attended the public meetings, is impossible to determine. A Ruawai member writing in the Workers' Weekly congratulated the club on the attendance at a public meeting 'considering that the district is purely rural and in Gordon Coates's backyard so to speak'.⁷⁶ It is difficult to say, however, whether a turnout of 70-100 people in rural Northland to hear Gordon Watson on 'What is Socialism?' should be interpreted as significant as a measure of political opinion, or at least as an expression of genuine interest, or more as an expression of curiosity and the lack of other social attractions on a summer's evening in Ruawai.