FRENCH YOUNG COMMUNISTS ATTACK PARTY LEADERSHIP by Ian MacDonel?
Alike perhaps in little else, the leaders of the French C.P. and of the British Labour Party share one problen, At of keeping in check their respective youth movements. In recent months French C.P. has first refused to print an issue of Clarte, the journal of the Union of Communist Students, which contained an article by Togliatti offensive to the party leadership, and second to permit the appearance of the fourth number of La Iutte published by the Young Communists of Bezons (a suburb of Paris), on the grounds that an article attacking the Church might lose the party veluable Catholic votes in Bezons,.
The editorial board of La Lutte retorted by bringing out a special nutiber in which they announced that "in view of the bureaucratic and antidemocratic methods of the party" they sre withdrawing from the Young Communists. Their declaration, reprinted in the current issue of La Voie Communiste, the organ of a Communist opposition group, makes it plain that the they regard the banning of their paper merely as the worst in a series of frustrating experiences, Listing their differences with the official view they object that in establishing separate organisations for girls and for boys (respectively, Union des Jeunes Filles de France, and Jeunesses Communistes) the party is “leaning upon bourgeois prejudices instead of fizhting them" though in order "to drow opposition" it does unite all youth groups at the top.
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For British Youne Socialists the other complaints have a familiar sound. Of political education there is "absolutely none"; the activists "are content to organise dances, outings (and) the sticking up of posters .. The 'Communist' activity of the Jeunes Filles...consists of talking about cloéthesnand hanging about the clonakrooms at dances." The stress upon social activities, particularly in recruitment, results in many branches with a very large nominal membership having only a handful engaged in political work. The official journal of the Young Communists devotes only 10% of its space to "more or less political acticles" and the remainder to™blown=-up photos and biographies of 'teen-age idols! (end to) competitions for guitars."
It is, claim the editors, because La lutte, “basing itself upon the class struggle," attempts to involve young people in politics snd because those responsible for its production believe that "young people can be interested in other problems than guitars and 'ye-ye'" that the paper so displeases the leadership of the party and leads them to attack it.