During the period that Murphy was based in Moscow as the CPGB representative on the ECCI, his relationship with the British Communist Party leadership, already tense in the wake of the post-General Strike debate, continued to be very strained. Involved in monitoring the political situation in Britain and advising the CPGB on strategy and tactics, he gradually became embroiled in major arguments concerning a contrasting assessment of the political situation inside the British labour movement in the wake of the General Strike and the attitude communists should adopt towards the Labour Party, as well as over the question of the role of the national bourgeoisie within colonial countries in the struggle for national liberation. This internal party conflict was to culminate eventually in the party's adoption of an ultra-left ‘new line’ of refusing to collaborate with social democrats. Before exploring the nature of these arguments and their implications for the policy of the CPGB, it is necessary, as with the previous chapter, to understand the broader political context in which they took place, namely the internal struggle for power inside the USSR and the Comintern, and the way this profoundly shaped Murphy's role in the whole process.

THE RUSSIAN CONTEXT

By late 1927 Russia faced an immense economic and political crisis, a result of problems that had built up during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. Between 1921 and 1925 the NEP enabled the economy to grow at considerable speed. This was because both industry and agriculture were able, partially, to recover from the devastation of the civil war period. On the basis of this economic recovery, a stabilisation and improvement in social life in general occurred. But the very success of the NEP period hid from the rising Stalinist party leadership deepening problems below the surface, namely the weaknesses in agriculture (especially in grain production), a low per capita output of industrial goods, very high levels of unemployment in the cities, and a high rate of inflation. Also the low level of military expenditure left the country very poorly defended if one of the western states were to launch an attack. Such conditions made imperative more rapid industrialisation, but there were not sufficient resources to accomplish this.