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In September 1968, the CPNZ carried on what the party paper People’s Voice called “a limited campaign” in municipal elections, in which it sought to work “against creating illusions on the nature of local body government.” The paper said that the parry sought seats in municipal councils “as a further base for their task of helping organize the great power of the working class that alone can bring changes.”[600]

They again named candidates in the 1969 parliamentary election, four in number. However, as usual, no party member was elected, and their total vote fell to 364, a bit more than a quarter of what they had received three years earlier.[601]

By 1972, the CPNZ was refusing to participate further in elections. Its explanation for this refusal was that “with the revolution the main trend in the world today, with struggle for both immediate gains and revolutionary policy growing every day in New Zealand, it is apparent that our forces must be used to strengthen these developments outside the Parliamentary circus.” On some occasions that year, the parry sought to disrupt election meetings.[602]

Among the most important agitational campaigns of the CPNZ in the 1960s and early 1970s was that against the Vietnam War. For instance, it was reported in 1966 that “In concentrating its propaganda and activism during the year mainly on opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the CPNZ particularly directed its members to be involved in ‘protest’ movements and, above all, in protesting the war in Vietnam. Wilcox stressed that on this issue the cooperation of persons of the middle classes, and especially the intellectuals, was easier to obtain than that of the workers.”[603]

The Communists had at best only very marginal influence within the organized labor movement. For instance, in 1971 it was reported that the CPNZ and its pro-Soviet rival, the Socialist Unity Party, each had only about 15 members who held executive posts in the unions.[604] For a short while, the CPNZ had substantial influence in the Seamen’s Union, but lost this to their pro-Soviet rivals when the CPNZ elements led a strike that was lost.[605]

In any case, the attitude of the CPNZ toward the existing trade union movement was a highly equivocal one. An article in the party’s “theoretical” publication, New Zealand Communist Review, said in early 1970 that the New Zealand unions were “a far cry from Marx’s schools of revolution” and were instead “schools of reformism and a bulwark of social democracy.” It claimed that the alliance of the “establishment” with the unions provided a “gilt-edged guarantee to ‘political stability’” and aided the penetration of foreign capital into New Zealand. However, it said that the rank and file of the labor movement were potentially revolutionary and so the CPNZ would continue to work within it.[606]

In 1973 it was reported that the CPNZ “denounces trade unions as ‘a vital and necessary part of the capitalist establishment’ and urges rank-and-file action, especially ‘short, sharp, hard-hitting struggles’ as a challenge to ‘bureaucrat unionism.’”[607]

For a few years, the CPNZ had at least marginal influence in the student movement. In 1968, it revived the Progressive Youth Movement “after several years of inaction.”[608] A couple years later it was reported that the party appeared “to have substantial influence with one left-radical group, the anti- Vietnam, war, anti-United States Progressive Youth Movement (PYM), headed by Chris Lind. The CPNZ press regularly carries reports on PYM protests and demonstrations and had defended the PYM against attacks by the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party.” However, the CPNZ apparently did not have full control over the PYM.[609]

Factionalism within the CPNZ

For several years after 1969 there were serious schisms in the CPNZ. Until the 1977 split between pro-Chinese and pro-Albanian factions, these divisions seemed to be activated more by personal struggles for power within the organization than by ideological issues.

In late 1969, S. W. Taylor, who had organized a “Revolutionary Committee Within the CPNZ” in Auckland was expelled from the party, under accusations of “Trotskyism.” At the time of his expulsion, the National Committee urged members to “accept the duty individually and collectively to study the Thought of Mao Tse-tung, the Lenin of our era, providing as it does the ideological, political and organizational guide to resolving the many problems and differences which still exist at all levels in our party.”

Then, in August 1970, Secretary General Wilcox announced that “efforts to overcome differences between the central leadership in Auckland and the Wellington district leadership had met with total failure.” As a consequence, Jack Manson, a member of the National Committee and the Politburo, and R. Bailey and four other members of the Wellington leadership were expelled. However, the Wellington leaders, with the evident support of most of the party members there, continued to call themselves the Wellington district of the CPNZ.[610] They came to be known as the “Manson-Bailey group.”

The Manson-Bailey group gained some support in other cities, including Auckland. It was noted by H. Roth in 1973 that “The group has been careful not to come forward as a rival party, because it hopes to draw the majority of the CPNZ to its side and to gain recognition from Peking as the CPNZ.”[611]

In October 1973 a further split occurred. The National Committee, which had not met in 1971 or 1972, announced the expulsion of W.P.G. McAra. H. Roth noted that this came about as the result of “a deep personality clash between McAra and Wolf,” that is, R. C. Wolf, one of the two members of the party’s National Secretariat. It was McAra who had particularly pushed in 1970 for the expulsion of the Manson-Bailey group.[612]

A further expulsion took place in 1974, of one F. N. Wright. Of this event, H. Roth wrote that “Most of these rebels against Wilcox’s leadership have kept their supporters together in a loosely organized fashion, but Wright has gone so far as to promote a miniscule new party, the Communist Party of Aotearoa (the ancient Maori name of New Zealand.”[613]

In October 1976, the CPNZ expelled S. M. Hieatt, 35-year veteran party member, who had been in the National Committee and the Politburo. This expulsion apparently arose from Hieatt’s demand that there be a new party conference—the most recent one having been ten years previously, although the party constitution called for such meetings every three years. Hieatt formed the South Auckland Marxist-Leninist Group. H. Roth noted that “They continue to support the Chinese Communist Party and claim to have no political differences with the CPNZ.”[614]

The Chinese-Albanian Split in the CPNZ