By late 1952, with more than 3 000 defiers already arrested, it looked as though liberals could score an important victory through their self-appointed role as go-between. In November of that year informal discussions began between the congresses and the UP. ANC Secretary-General Walter Sisulu was approached by leading UP and Torch Commando members, directors of the Oppenheimer Trust and others.50 Influenced by growing white concern about the Defiance Campaign and the announcement of the 1953 general election, and according to John Cope, UP MP and editor of the liberal magazine Forum, the UP approached Congress leaders:
... to discover what their terms would be for calling off the passive resistance campaign on the eve of the parliamentary general election. Such a move, it was considered, would have a reassuring effect on the white electorate which was becoming anxious about the defiance campaign. It would be to the advantage of the United Party to demonstrate that it could influence non-white opinion.51
According to Cope, the ANC offered to end the Defiance Campaign in exchange for a public statement from the UP that it would repeal the six laws:
… the A.N.C. leaders did not ask for these things as a condition for calling off the passive resistance campaign. All they demanded was that the United Party, if it came to power, should undertake publicly to halt the tide of apartheid and set the flow in the opposite direction.52
By the end of November, according to Joe Matthews, Ernest Oppenheimer – ‘the highest official in the Millionaire organisation that is behind a great deal of U.P. activity’ – had joined ‘the wooing of Congress’.53 Youth League leaders were involved on multiple fronts – organising the Defiance Campaign, talking to the UP about conditions for possibly calling it off – and very possibly giving out mixed signals in so doing. In the end, this counted for little, as a growing right-wing revolt within the UP scuppered any possible deal with the ANC. In order to pacify the party, UP leader J G N Strauss reaffirmed his commitment to ‘white leadership with justice’ and a programme scarcely distinguishable from that of the National Party, with the exception that the UP accepted that the constitution was sacrosanct. The tentative UP–ANC discussions came to an abrupt end.
The parting of the ways
Calls for white support for the liberation struggle had been a strong theme of ANC and SAIC propaganda in the late 1940s. In 1947 the SAIC’s Monty Naicker called for the creation of a new party to carry the struggle to white voters. At the same time he insisted that ‘a progressive party can only be forged by unity among all progressive European Organisations’.54 At a superficial level, white support for the Defiance Campaign, including the participation of whites with no past communist links, and the growing distance between liberals and the UP (especially after talks with the ANC ended abruptly), suggested that such unity was possible.
Despite a common class background, white liberals and radicals were deeply divided by ideology and belonged to a series of small, separate and often hostile organisations and discussion groups. Relations between and among white liberals and radicals (themselves split into Marxist, Communist, Trotskyist and other splinter groups) were increasingly antagonistic, exacerbated by the NP coming to power and the growing importance of African nationalism.
Through an ideological attack and legislative onslaught on all opposition as traitorous, the government fuelled liberal anti-communism. The Suppression of Communism Act – described by Walker as providing ‘almost dictatorial powers to deal decisively with anyone who was even faintly tinctured Red’55 – placed liberals in an awkward position – they supported the aim but not the method of the legislation. Edgar Brookes claimed: ‘the terms “Liberal” and “Communist” are as separate as fire and water … You could not slander a Liberal more than by calling him a Communist’. He warned that liberals were being placed in danger since ex-communists would henceforth attempt to act ‘under the wings’ of liberal organisations.56
The Cape Argus reported the breakdown of a CRL meeting attended by some 2 000 people, called to oppose the Suppression of Communism Bill, in May 1950. One of the speakers stated that the struggle against communism would go on with or without the Bill, and that the CPSA was ‘Cominform-controlled’. Guest speaker and CPSA MP Sam Kahn objected, and the meeting descended into ‘uproar’ and some physical exchanges.57
The dissolution of the CPSA in June 1950 increased liberal suspicion of communist infiltration of their organisations, and liberal groups formed between 1951 and 1953 adopted an anti-communist ‘screening’ clause. Hostility grew in the 1950s towards the brand of ‘existing socialism’ and the close links between the disbanded CPSA and the USSR. Winifred Hoernlé, SAIRR president in 1950, stated: ‘In our own day we have seen Russia develop first into a communist state … From that time it has developed into a police state … Man in all the areas controlled by the Russian Communists is subservient to the state in all the phases of his life.’58
The notion of a Soviet-controlled South African communist party was commonly accepted among South African liberals and confirmed for them by such works as Eddie Roux’s biography of CPSA founder S P Bunting and by Roux’s history of the liberation struggle, Time Longer Than Rope, in which he claimed the CPSA repeatedly subordinated ‘the South African struggle to the needs of the world situation’.59 Coupled with the internal vicissitudes of the CPSA in the 1930s and early 1940s, the policy changes, the shift from opposing to supporting the Second World War following Soviet foreign policy dictates, and the purges and loss of membership, clearly projected the image of a party following Comintern directives rather than domestic demands. Of course this should have been balanced against the history of the party in organising among the poor, working alongside nationalist organisations supporting political demands and pushing the frontiers of racial integration, but often it was not.
Negative perceptions of the Communist Party were pervasive within South Africa, as they were beyond its borders. Such views were exacerbated by the anti-CPSA activities of former party members such as Hymie Basner.60 In the 1950s, suspicion and hostility of the CPSA would continue to be fuelled by former CPSA members who joined the Liberal Party, notably Jock Isacowitz and Eddie Roux.
Roux is said to have told stories of an attempt by KGB agents to assassinate him after the 1928 Comintern meeting (not mentioned in any of his published works), while Isacowitz warned liberals that they would be outmanoeuvred by former CPSA members if they attempted to co-operate with SACOD.61
As late as 1997, Liberal Party member Randolph Vigne would still write breathlessly of ‘Isacowitz’s experienced eye’ being able to ‘instantly identif[y] … a front for the banned Communist Party of South Africa’ and ‘warn … his liberal colleagues accordingly’.62 The dissolution of the CPSA is discussed in the next chapter and, as we shall see, it was more the result of cock-up than conspiracy. The fear of communist infiltration was, nonetheless, a reality, and an odd backhand compliment to the importance of the party in working with and for Africans in South Africa.
The ANC and the SAIC – perhaps somewhat naïve about the infighting among potential white allies – expected a significant response to their appeal for a white congress.63 The precise role that whites would play within the Congress movement was unclear; Joe Matthews stated simply: ‘The Whites will have to form a party that is prepared to make definite changes or join Congress’ – although prior to SACOD there was no way whites could ‘join Congress’.64
The Defiance Campaign Planning Council discussed the issue of white participation and, in November 1952, called a meeting at Darragh Hall in Johannesburg to capitalise on white support for the campaign. Some 300 whites attended the meeting, which was chaired by former CPSA member Bram Fischer. Although well-known liberals such as the Ballingers, Marion Friedman and others attended, many of those present were former CPSA members.
The Darragh Hall meeting proved to be a turning point in the development of white