The Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation (APCF) was a communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 group in the Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. It was founded by the group around Guy Aldred

Guy Aldred

Guy Alfred Aldred - often Guy A. Aldred - was a British anarchist communist and a prominent member of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation...

's Spur newspaper - mostly former Communist League

Communist League (UK, 1919)

The Communist League was a small organisation of the far left in the United Kingdom. It was founded in March 1919 by the London District Council of the Socialist Labour Party and various anarchist groups in London and Scotland. These included Guy Aldred's Glasgow Anarchist Group...

 members - in 1921. They included John McGovern.

The group sent delegates to the Third Congress of the Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

, but refused to join the Communist Party of Great Britain

Communist Party of Great Britain

The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...

 on the grounds of the latter's parliamentarianism

Parliamentary system

A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....

 and aim to join the Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

. The APCF later declared itself against "Leninism

Leninism

In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...

", which it claimed had distorted any gains made by the October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

.

The group began publishing Commune, with contributions from left communist

Left communism

Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International...

s across Europe, and moved towards council communism

Council communism

Council communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...

. Aldred left in 1933, claiming that parliamentarianism was finished, and there was therefore no point in an anti-parliamentary group. He later founded the United Socialist Movement

United Socialist Movement

The United Socialist Movement was an anarcho-communist political organisation based in Glasgow. It published a journal, The Word.The group's roots lay in the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation. Guy Aldred, a leading figure in the group, came to believe that Parliamentarianism was essentially...

.

Adopting an increasingly anarcho-communist

Anarchist communism

Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...

 outlook, the group supported the Spanish Popular Front

Popular Front (Spain)

The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....

, working with Freedom, but later some anarchists in the APCF split away, and the group adopted a more critical approach to the CNT

Confederación Nacional del Trabajo

The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...

. In 1941, the group renamed itself the Workers' Revolutionary League.

The League opposed World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, during which it published the Solidarity newspaper, but dissolved in 1945 when the revolutionary upsurge they had predicted failed to occur. Some former members founded a Workers' Open Forum to continue political activity. This continued until the late 1950s.http://www.gcal.ac.uk/radicalglasgow/chapters/mcdougal.html