Communist Party of Great Britain
Encyclopedia
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 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.
decided that greater attempts should be made to establish communist parties across the world. The CPGB was formed by the merger of several smaller Marxist parties: the British Socialist Party
, the Communist Unity Group
of the Socialist Labour Party and the South Wales Socialist Society
. The party also gained the support of the Guild Communists faction of the National Guilds League, assorted shop stewards' and workers' committees, socialist clubs and individuals and many former members of the Hands Off Russia campaign. Several branches and many individual members of the Independent Labour Party
also affiliated. As a member of the British Socialist Party, the Member of Parliament
Cecil L'Estrange Malone
joined the CPGB.
In January 1921, the CPGB was refounded after the majorities of Sylvia Pankhurst
's group the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International)
, and the Scottish Communist Labour Party agreed to unity.
The party increased during a period of increase of political radicalism in Britain just after the First World War
and the Russian Revolution
, and was also represented in Britain by the Red Clydeside
movement.
During the negotiations leading to the initiation of the party a number of issues were hotly contested. Among the most contentious were the questions of "parliamentarism" and the attitude of the Communist Party to the Labour Party
. "Parliamentarism" referred to a strategy of contesting elections and working through existing parliaments. It was a strategy associated with the parties of the Second International
and it was partly for this reason that it was opposed by those who wanted to break with Social Democracy
. Critics contended that parliamentarism had caused the old parties to become devoted to reformism because it had encouraged them to place more importance on winning votes than on working for socialism
, that it encouraged opportunists and place-seekers into the ranks of the movement and that it constituted an acceptance of the legitimacy of the existing governing institutions of capitalism
. Similarly, affiliation to the Labour Party was opposed on the grounds that communists should not work with 'reformist' Social Democratic parties. These Left Communist
positions enjoyed considerable support, being supported by Sylvia Pankhurst, Willie Gallacher
and other notable activists. However, the Russian Communist Party took the opposing view. In 1920, Lenin argued in his essay "Left Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder that the CPs should work with reformist trade unions and social democratic parties because these were the existing organisations of the working class. Lenin argued that if such organisations gained power, they would demonstrate that they were not really on the side of the working class, thus workers would become disillusioned and come over to supporting the Communist Party. Lenin's opinion prevailed eventually.
Initially, therefore, the CPGB attempted to work within the Labour Party, which at this time operated mainly as a federation of left-wing bodies, only having allowed individual membership since 1918. However, despite the support of notable figures (such as the Independent Labour Party leader, James Maxton
) the Labour Party decided against the affiliation of the Communist Party. Even while pursuing affiliation and seeking to influence Labour Party members, however, the CPGB promoted candidates of its own at parliamentary elections.
Following the refusal of their affiliation, the CPGB encouraged its members to join the Labour Party individually and to seek Labour Party endorsement or help for any candidatures. Several Communists thus became Labour Party candidates, and in the 1922 general election
, Shapurji Saklatvala
and Walton Newbold
were both elected.
, intended to suggest that the Communist Party in Britain was engaged in subversive activities among the armed forces and elsewhere, the forgery's aim being to promote the electoral chances of the Conservative Party. It was probably the work of SIS (MI6) or White Russian
counter revolutionaries.
Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s the CPGB decided to maintain the doctrine that a communist party should consist of revolutionary cadres and not be open to all applicants. The CPGB as the British section of the Communist International was committed to implementing the decisions of the higher body to which it was subordinate.
This proved to be a mixed blessing in the General Strike of 1926 immediately prior to which much of the central leadership of the CPGB was imprisoned. Twelve were charged with "seditious conspiracy". Five were jailed for a year and the others for six months. Another major problem for the party was its policy of abnegating its own role and calling upon the General Council of the Trades Union Congress
to play a revolutionary role.
Nonetheless during the strike itself and during the long drawn out agony of the following Miners' Strike the members of the CPGB were to the fore in defending the strike and in attempting to develop solidarity with the miners. The result was that membership of the party in mining areas increased greatly through 1926 and 1927. Much of these gains would be lost during the Third Period
but influence was developed in certain areas that would continue until the party's demise decades later.
The CPGB did succeed in creating a layer of militants very committed to the party and its policies, although this support was concentrated in particular trades, specifically in heavy engineering, textiles and mining, and in addition tended to be concentrated regionally too in the coalfields, certain industrial cities such as Glasgow
and in Jewish East London. Indeed, Maerdy
in the Rhondda
Valley along with Chopwell
in Tyne and Wear were two of a number of communities known as Little Moscow
for their Communist tendencies.
But this support built during the party's first years was imperiled during the Third Period
from 1929 to 1932, the Third Period being the so called period of renewed revolutionary advance as it was dubbed by the (now Stalinist
) leadership of the Comintern
. The result of this "class against class" policy was that the Social Democratic and Labourite parties were to be seen as equally as much a threat as openly fascist
parties and were therefore described as being social-fascist. Any kind of alliance with social-fascists
was obviously to be prohibited.
The Third Period also meant that the CPGB sought to develop revolutionary trade unions in rivalry to the established Trades Union Congress affiliated unions. They met with an almost total lack of success although a tiny handful of "red" unions were formed, amongst them a miners union in Scotland and tailoring union in East London. Arthur Horner
, the Communist leader of the Welsh miners, fought off attempts to found a similar union on his patch.
But even if the Third Period was by all conventional standards a total political failure it was the 'heroic' period of British communism and one of its campaigns did have impact beyond its ranks. This was the National Unemployed Workers' Movement
led by Wal Hannington
. Increasing unemployment had caused a substantial increase in the number of CP members, especially those drawn from engineering, lacking work. This cadre of which Hannington and Harry MacShane in Scotland were emblematic, found a purpose in building the NUWM which resulted in a number of marches on the unemployment issue during the 1930s. Although born in the Third Period during the Great depression, the NUWM was a major campaigning body throughout the Popular Front
period too, only being dissolved in 1941.
After the victory of Hitler
in Germany the Third Period was dropped by all Communist Parties as they switched to the policy of the Popular Front. This policy argued that as fascism was the main danger to the workers' movement, it needed to ally itself with all anti-fascist forces including right-wing democratic parties. In Britain this policy expressed itself in the efforts of the CPGB to forge an alliance with the Labour Party and even with forces to the right of Labour. Having positioned itself to the left of Labour during the Third Period the CPGB had now moved to the right of that, far larger, party.
In the 1935 general election
Willie Gallacher was elected as the Communist Party's first MP
in six years, and their first MP elected against Labour opposition. Gallacher sat for West Fife in Scotland
, a coal mining region in which it had considerable support. During the 1930s the CPGB opposed the Conservative government's policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. On the streets
the party members played a leading role in the struggle against the British Union of Fascists
, led by Sir Oswald Mosley
whose Blackshirts tried to emulate the Nazis in anti-Semitic actions in London and other major British cities – though the party centre tried to stop them taking part in the defence of Cable Street from the Blackshirts, such that they had to operate under the cover of the 'Ex-Servicemen's Association', and on the day, the party put out a leaflet for another demonstration in Trafalgar Square to draw members away from the East End.
in 1939, the CPGB initially continued to support the struggle on two fronts (against Chamberlain at home and Nazi fascism abroad). However, thanks to direct intervention by the Communist International (initiated by Stalin), this policy was quickly changed to fall in line with other Communist Parties; campaigning for peace, and describing the war as the product of imperialism on both sides, and in which the working class had no side to take. This was opposed within the CPGB by Harry Pollitt
and J. R. Campbell
, the editor of the Daily Worker, and both were relieved of their duties in October 1939. Pollitt was replaced by Palme Dutt
. From 1939 until 1941 the CPGB was very active in supporting strikes and in denouncing the government for its pursuit of the war.
However, when in 1941 the Soviet Union
was invaded by Germany, the CPGB reversed its stance immediately and came out in support of the war on the grounds that it had now become a war between fascism and the Soviet Union. Pollitt was restored to his old position as Party Secretary. In fact, the Communists' support for the war was so vociferous that they launched a campaign for a Second Front in order to support the USSR and speed the defeat of the Axis
. In industry they now opposed strike action and supported the Joint Production Committees, which aimed to increase productivity, and supported the National Government that was led by Winston Churchill
(Conservative) and Clement Attlee
(Labour). The patriotic stance of the CPGB was such that in 1943 at a by-election in Cardiff they actively campaigned for the Conservative Party
candidate against Fenner Brockway
, the Independent Labour Party
candidate. The Party attacked striking militants as 'Trotskyist agents'; William Wainwright's pamphlet Clear out Trotsky's Agents warned: You must train yourself to round up these other more cunning enemies... they are called Trotskyists'.
In the 1945 general election
, the Communist Party received 103,000 votes, and two Communists were elected as members of parliament
, one of whom was the aforementioned Gallacher, the other being Phil Piratin
, who won Mile End
in London's East End. Harry Pollitt failed by only 972 votes to take the Rhondda East constituency. Both Communist MPs however, lost their seats at the 1950 general election
.
Still, the Party was keen to demonstrate its loyalty to Britain's industrial competitiveness. At the 19th Congress, Harry Pollitt asked rhetorically, 'why do we need to increase production?' Answering 'to pay for what we are compelled to import. To retain our independence as a nation.'
The party's membership peaked during 1943, reaching around 60,000. Despite boasting some leading intellectuals, especially among the Communist Party Historians Group
, the party was still tiny compared to its continental European counterparts. The French Communist Party for instance had 800,000 members, and the Italian Communist Party
had 1.7 million members. The Party tried, unsuccessfully, to affiliate to the Labour Party in 1935, 43 and 46.
In 1951 the party issued a programme called The British Road to Socialism (officially adopted at the 22nd Congress in April 1952), which explicitly advocated the possibility of a peaceful reformist transition to socialism – but only after it had been personally approved by Stalin himself. The importance of this document is that it implicitly renounces the revolutionary purpose for which the party was founded in the first instance. The BRS would remain the programme of the CPGB until its dissolution in 1991 albeit in amended form and even today is the programme of the Communist Party of Britain
which claims political continuity with the CPGB.
In the 1950s the CPGB’s Reuben Falber received around £100 000 a year from the CPSU
, and into the seventies was still being paid around £15 000 "for pensions", according to historian Geoff Andrews, who adds "recipients included Rajani Palme Dutt".
From the war years to 1956 the CPGB was at the height of its influence in the labour movement with many union officials who were members. Not only did it have immense influence in the National Union of Mineworkers but it was extremely influential in the Electrical Trade Union and in the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers the key blue collar union. In addition much of the Labour Party left was strongly influenced by the party. Dissidents were few, perhaps the most notable being Eric Heffer
the future Labour MP who left the party in the late 1940s, and were easily dealt with.
The death of Stalin
in 1953, and the uprising in East Germany
the same year had little direct influence on the CPGB, but they were harbingers of what was to come. Of more importance was Khrushchev
's "Secret Speech" at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in which he denounced Stalin. Labour unrest in Poland in 1956 disrupted not only the CPGB, but many other Communist Parties as well. The CPGB was to experience its greatest ever loss of membership as a result of the Warsaw Pact's crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
. This event was initially covered in the CPGB-sponsored Daily Worker
, by correspondent Peter Fryer
, but as events unfolded the stories were spiked. On his return to Britain Fryer resigned from the Daily Worker and was expelled from the party.
, Arthur True and Sammy Moore (NUM) Lou Lewis (UCATT) and Max Morris (NUT). Ken Gill became the party’s first elected officer in 1968 and ex-Communist Hugh Scanlon
was elected president of the AEU with Broad Left support the previous year – defeating Reg Birch
, the Maoist ex-party candidate. The Broad Left went on to help elect Ray Buckton (Aslef) Ken Cameron (FBU) Alan Sapper
(ACTT) and Jack Jones (TGWU) in 1969. Gerry Pocock, Assistant Industrial Organiser described the industrial department as "a party within a party", and Marxism Today editor James Klugmann
would routinely defer to Industrial Organiser Bert Ramelson
on matters of policy.
The party's orientation, though, was to the left union officers, not the rank and file. Historian Geoff Andrews' explains ‘it was the role of the shop stewards in organising the Broad Lefts and influencing trade union leaders that was the key rather than organising the rank and file in defiance of leaderships’ and so the party withdrew from rank-and-file organisations like the Building Workers Charter, and attacked "Trotskyist" tactics at the Pilkington Glass dispute in 1970.
Still the party's efforts to establish an electoral base repeatedly failed. They retained a handful of seats in local councils scattered around Britain, but the CPGB's only representative in Parliament was in the House of Lords, gained when Wogan Philipps, the son of a ship-owner and a long standing member of the CPGB, inherited the title of Lord Milford when his father died in 1963.
The Daily Worker was renamed the Morning Star in 1966. At the same time the party became increasingly polarised between those who sought to maintain close relations with the Soviet Union and those who sought to convert the party into a force independent of Moscow.
The international split
between Moscow and Beijing in 1961 led to divisions within many Communist Parties but there was little pro-Beijing sympathy in the relatively small British Party. Perhaps the best known of the tiny minority of CPGB members opposed the Moscow line was Michael McCreery, who formed the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity
. This tiny group left the CPGB by 1963. McCreery himself died in 1965 in New Zealand. Later a more significant group formed around Reg Birch
, an engineering union official, established the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
. Initially, this group supported the position of the Communist Party of China
.
Divisions in the CPGB concerning the autonomy of the party from Moscow reached a crisis in 1968, when Warsaw pact forces intervened in Czechoslovakia. The CPGB, with memories of 1956 in mind, responded with some very mild criticism of Moscow, refusing to call it an invasion, preferring ‘intervention’. Three days after the invasion, John Gollan said ‘we completely understand the concern of the Soviet Union about the security of the socialist camp … we speak as true friends of the Soviet Union’.
Even this response provoked a small localised split by the so called Appeal Group
which was in many respects a pre-cursor of the 1977 split which formed the New Communist Party. From this time onwards, the most traditionally-minded elements in the CPGB were referred to as 'Tankie
s' by their internal opponents, due to their support of the Warsaw Pact forces. Others within the party leaned increasingly towards the position of eurocommunism
, which was the leading tendency within the important Communist parties of Italy and, later, Spain.
"The mid-1970s saw Gramscians" otherwise known as Euro-Communists "take leading positions within the party". Sue Slipman, Executive Committee 1975, and Marxism Today editorial board; Jon Bloomfield, former Student organiser became West Midlands District Sec.; Dave Cook became National Organiser in 1975; Pete Carter prominent in UCATT; Beatrix Campbell
and Judith Hunt active in National Women’s Advisory; Jacques, on the EC since 1967 and replacing James Klugmann on Marxism Today in 1977; Sarah Benton was a "heresy" favouring editor of Comment; critics from the past, like Eric Hobsbawm
and Monty Johnstone, got more influence.
The last strong electoral performance of the CPGB was in the February 1974 General Election
in Dunbartonshire Central, where candidate Jimmy Reid
won almost 6,000 votes. However, this strong result was primarily a personal vote for Reid, who was a prominent local trade union
leader and gained much support because of his prominent role in the Upper Clyde Ship Builders work-in, which had taken place a few years earlier and was seen as having saved local jobs. Nationally the party's vote continued its decline: according to a contemporary joke, the CPGB at this time pursued the British Road To Lost Deposits.
The Euro-Communists in the party apparatus were starting to challenge the authority of the trade union organisers. At the 1975 Congress, Dave Purdy proposed that "the labour movement should declare its willingness to accept voluntary pay restraint as a contribution to the success of the programme and a way of easing the transition to a socialist economy" – a challenge to the Industrial Department's policy of "free collective bargaining."
The growing crisis in the party also affected the credibility of its leadership, as formerly senior and influential members left its ranks. In 1976, three of its top engineering cadres resigned. Jimmy Reid
, Cyril Morton and John Tocher had all been members of the Political Committee, playing a crucial role in determining the direction of the party. Like another engineer, Bernard Panter, who left a few months before them, they jumped a sinking ship.
According to the Party's official historian this period was marked by a growing division between the practitioners of cultural politics – heavily inspired by the writings of Antonio Gramsci
and party's powerful industrial department which advocated a policy of militant labourism.
The cultural politics wing had dominated the party's youth wing in the 1960s and was also powerful in the student section. As such many of its members were academics or professional intellectuals (or in the view of their opponents, out of touch and middle class). They were influenced by the environmental and especially the feminist movement.
The other wing were powerful in senior levels of the trade union movement (though few actually reached the very top in the unions) and despite the party's decline in numbers were able to drive the TUC's policy of opposing the Industrial Relations Act. In the view of their opponents on the cultural or eurocommunist wing, they were out of touch with the real changes in working people's lives and attitudes.
As the seventies progressed and as industrial militancy declined in the face of high unemployment, the tensions in the party rose even as its membership continued to decline.
decided that they needed to form their own anti-revisionist Communist party. Some speculated at the time that they would receive the backing of Moscow, but such support appears not to have materialised. The New Communist Party of Britain
was formed under the leadership of Sid French
, who was the secretary of the important Surrey District CP, which had a strong base in engineering.
Another grouping, led by Fergus Nicholson, remained in the party and launched the paper Straight Left
. This served as an outlet for their views as well as an organising tool in their work within the Labour Party. Nicholson had earlier taken part in establishing a faction known as "Clause Four" within Labour's student movement
. Nicholson wrote as "Harry Steel", a combination of the names of Stalin ("man of steel" in Russian) and Harry Pollitt. The group around Straight Left exerted considerable influence in the trade union movement, CND
, the Anti-Apartheid Movement
and amongst some Labour MPs.
Under the influence of Eric Hobsbawm
on the opposing wing of the party Martin Jacques
became the editor of the party's theoretical journal Marxism Today
and rapidly made it a significant publication for Eurocommunist opinions in the party, and eventually for revisionist tendencies in the wider liberal-left, in particular for the soft left
around Neil Kinnock
in the Labour Party
. Although circulation of the magazine rose it was still a drain on the finances of the small party.
As early as 1983, Martin Jacques "thought the CP was unreformable ... but stayed in because he needed its subsidy to continue publishing Marxism Today." Jacques' conviction that the party was finished "came as a nasty shock to some of his comrades" like Nina Temple, who "as unhappy as Jacques himself, stayed on only out of loyalty to Jacques."
In 1985 a factional struggle broke out in the CPGB. Members loyal to the Party's programme, the British Road to Socialism, established a network of Morning Star
readers' groups and similar bodies, calling themselves the "Communist Campaign Group". In 1988 these elements formed a splinter group, based on the British Road to Socialism, known as the Communist Party of Britain
.
In 1991 when the Soviet Union
collapsed, the Eurocommunist-dominated leadership of the CPGB, led by Nina Temple
, decided to disband the party, and establish Democratic Left
, a left-leaning political think tank
rather than a political party; Democratic Left
itself dissolved in 1999, to be replaced by the New Politics Network
(which in turn merged with Charter 88 in 2007).
Some Scottish members formed the Communist Party of Scotland
, others Democratic Left Scotland
and Democratic Left Wales Chwith Ddemocrataidd, which still continues. Supporters of The Leninist who had rejoined the CPGB in the early 1980s declared their intention to reforge the Party, and held an emergency conference at which they claimed the name of the party. They are now known as the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)
, although they commonly call themselves the Communist Party of Great Britain, and publish the Weekly Worker
, although the Communist Party of Britain
are the designated 'Communist Party' in the UK by the Electoral Commission
. In 2008 members of the Party of the European Left
, which contains several former 'official' Communist Parties in Europe, established a non-electoral British section.
|-
! Year
! Name
! Location
! Dates
|-
! 1920
| align="center" | First Congress
| align="center" | London
| align="center" | 31 July – 1 August
|-
! 1921
| align="center" | Second Congress
| align="center" | Leeds
| align="center" | 29–30 January
|-
! 1921
| align="center" | Third Congress
| align="center" | Manchester
| align="center" | 23–24 April
|-
! 1922
| align="center" | Fourth Congress
| align="center" | St Pancras Town Hall, London
| align="center" | 18–19 March
|-
! 1922
| align="center" | Fifth Congress
| align="center" | Battersea Town Hall, London
| align="center" | 7–8 October
|-
! 1924
| align="center" | Sixth Congress
| align="center" | Caxton Hall, Salford
| align="center" | 16–18 May
|-
! 1925
| align="center" | Seventh Congress
| align="center" | St Mungo Hall, Glasgow
| align="center" | 30 May – 1 June
|-
! 1922
| align="center" | Eighth Congress
| align="center" | Battersea Town Hall, London
| align="center" | 16–17 October
|}
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.
Formation
The Communist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1920 after the Third InternationalComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
decided that greater attempts should be made to establish communist parties across the world. The CPGB was formed by the merger of several smaller Marxist parties: the British Socialist Party
British Socialist Party
The British Socialist Party was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war Right Wing...
, the Communist Unity Group
Communist Unity Group
The Communist Unity Group was a small communist organisation in the United Kingdom.The origins of the group lay in the Socialist Labour Party...
of the Socialist Labour Party and the South Wales Socialist Society
South Wales Socialist Society
The South Wales Socialist Society was a federation of communist groups in Wales, with many of its members being coal miners. It was formed as the Rhondda Socialist Society in 1911 by participants in the Miners Reform Movement, which opposed right-wing trade union leaders., It enthusiastically...
. The party also gained the support of the Guild Communists faction of the National Guilds League, assorted shop stewards' and workers' committees, socialist clubs and individuals and many former members of the Hands Off Russia campaign. Several branches and many individual members of the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
also affiliated. As a member of the British Socialist Party, the Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Cecil L'Estrange Malone
Cecil L'Estrange Malone
Cecil John L'Estrange Malone was Britain's first communist member of the House of Commons.-Early years:Born in Dalton Holme, Yorkshire on 7 September 1890, a rector's son, he joined the Royal Navy in 1905 and attended the Royal Naval College at Devonport. In 1912 he learned to fly and gained his...
joined the CPGB.
In January 1921, the CPGB was refounded after the majorities of Sylvia Pankhurst
Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was an English campaigner for the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom. She was for a time a prominent left communist who then devoted herself to the cause of anti-fascism.-Early life:...
's group the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International)
Communist Party (British Section of the Third International)
The Communist Party was a Left Communist organisation established at an emergency conference held on 19–20 June 1920 at the International Socialist Club in London . It comprised about 600 people....
, and the Scottish Communist Labour Party agreed to unity.
The party increased during a period of increase of political radicalism in Britain just after the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, and was also represented in Britain by the Red Clydeside
Red Clydeside
Red Clydeside is a term used to describe the era of political radicalism that characterised the city of Glasgow in Scotland, and urban areas around the city on the banks of the River Clyde such as Clydebank, Greenock and Paisley...
movement.
During the negotiations leading to the initiation of the party a number of issues were hotly contested. Among the most contentious were the questions of "parliamentarism" and the attitude of the Communist Party to 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...
. "Parliamentarism" referred to a strategy of contesting elections and working through existing parliaments. It was a strategy associated with the parties of the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
and it was partly for this reason that it was opposed by those who wanted to break with Social Democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
. Critics contended that parliamentarism had caused the old parties to become devoted to reformism because it had encouraged them to place more importance on winning votes than on working for socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, that it encouraged opportunists and place-seekers into the ranks of the movement and that it constituted an acceptance of the legitimacy of the existing governing institutions of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. Similarly, affiliation to the Labour Party was opposed on the grounds that communists should not work with 'reformist' Social Democratic parties. These 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...
positions enjoyed considerable support, being supported by Sylvia Pankhurst, Willie Gallacher
Willie Gallacher
William "Willie" Gallacher was a Scottish trade unionist, activist and communist. He was one of the leading figures of the Shop Stewards' Movement in wartime Glasgow and a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain...
and other notable activists. However, the Russian Communist Party took the opposing view. In 1920, Lenin argued in his essay "Left Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder that the CPs should work with reformist trade unions and social democratic parties because these were the existing organisations of the working class. Lenin argued that if such organisations gained power, they would demonstrate that they were not really on the side of the working class, thus workers would become disillusioned and come over to supporting the Communist Party. Lenin's opinion prevailed eventually.
Initially, therefore, the CPGB attempted to work within the Labour Party, which at this time operated mainly as a federation of left-wing bodies, only having allowed individual membership since 1918. However, despite the support of notable figures (such as the Independent Labour Party leader, James Maxton
James Maxton
James Maxton was a Scottish socialist politician, and leader of the Independent Labour Party. A prominent proponent of Home Rule for Scotland, he is remembered as one of the leading figures of the Red Clydeside era.-Early years:...
) the Labour Party decided against the affiliation of the Communist Party. Even while pursuing affiliation and seeking to influence Labour Party members, however, the CPGB promoted candidates of its own at parliamentary elections.
Following the refusal of their affiliation, the CPGB encouraged its members to join the Labour Party individually and to seek Labour Party endorsement or help for any candidatures. Several Communists thus became Labour Party candidates, and in the 1922 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1922
The United Kingdom general election of 1922 was held on 15 November 1922. It was the first election held after most of the Irish counties left the United Kingdom to form the Irish Free State, and was won by Andrew Bonar Law's Conservatives, who gained an overall majority over Labour, led by John...
, Shapurji Saklatvala
Shapurji Saklatvala
Shapurji Saklatvala was a British politician of Indian Parsi heritage. He was the third Indian Member of Parliament in the Parliament of the United Kingdom after fellow Parsis Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Bhownagree....
and Walton Newbold
Walton Newbold
John Turner Walton Newbold , known as Walton Newbold, was the first Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom to be elected as a Communist.-Early years:...
were both elected.
1920s and 1930s
1924 was marked by the affair of the forged Zinoviev LetterZinoviev Letter
The "Zinoviev Letter" refers to a controversial document published by the British press in 1924, allegedly sent from the Communist International in Moscow to the Communist Party of Great Britain...
, intended to suggest that the Communist Party in Britain was engaged in subversive activities among the armed forces and elsewhere, the forgery's aim being to promote the electoral chances of the Conservative Party. It was probably the work of SIS (MI6) or White Russian
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
counter revolutionaries.
Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s the CPGB decided to maintain the doctrine that a communist party should consist of revolutionary cadres and not be open to all applicants. The CPGB as the British section of the Communist International was committed to implementing the decisions of the higher body to which it was subordinate.
This proved to be a mixed blessing in the General Strike of 1926 immediately prior to which much of the central leadership of the CPGB was imprisoned. Twelve were charged with "seditious conspiracy". Five were jailed for a year and the others for six months. Another major problem for the party was its policy of abnegating its own role and calling upon the General Council of the Trades Union Congress
Trades Union Congress
The Trades Union Congress is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in the United Kingdom, representing the majority of trade unions...
to play a revolutionary role.
Nonetheless during the strike itself and during the long drawn out agony of the following Miners' Strike the members of the CPGB were to the fore in defending the strike and in attempting to develop solidarity with the miners. The result was that membership of the party in mining areas increased greatly through 1926 and 1927. Much of these gains would be lost during the Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
but influence was developed in certain areas that would continue until the party's demise decades later.
The CPGB did succeed in creating a layer of militants very committed to the party and its policies, although this support was concentrated in particular trades, specifically in heavy engineering, textiles and mining, and in addition tended to be concentrated regionally too in the coalfields, certain industrial cities such as Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
and in Jewish East London. Indeed, Maerdy
Maerdy
Maerdy is a village and community in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, and within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, Wales, lying at the head of the Rhondda Fach Valley.- History :...
in the Rhondda
Rhondda
Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley , is a former coal mining valley in Wales, formerly a local government district, consisting of 16 communities built around the River Rhondda. The valley is made up of two valleys, the larger Rhondda Fawr valley and the smaller Rhondda Fach valley...
Valley along with Chopwell
Chopwell
Chopwell is a village in Tyne and Wear, located approximately three miles west of Rowlands Gill and one mile north of Hamsterley.Traditionally an area of coal mining, Chopwell was nicknamed "Little Moscow" because of the strong support for the Communist Party...
in Tyne and Wear were two of a number of communities known as Little Moscow
Little Moscow
Little Moscow was a term used to describe towns and villages in capitalist societies whose population appeared to hold extreme left-wing political values or communist views...
for their Communist tendencies.
But this support built during the party's first years was imperiled during the Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
from 1929 to 1932, the Third Period being the so called period of renewed revolutionary advance as it was dubbed by the (now Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
) leadership 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...
. The result of this "class against class" policy was that the Social Democratic and Labourite parties were to be seen as equally as much a threat as openly fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
parties and were therefore described as being social-fascist. Any kind of alliance with social-fascists
Social fascism
Social fascism was a theory supported by the Communist International during the early 1930s, which believed that social democracy was a variant of fascism because, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model, it stood in the way of a complete and final transition to communism...
was obviously to be prohibited.
The Third Period also meant that the CPGB sought to develop revolutionary trade unions in rivalry to the established Trades Union Congress affiliated unions. They met with an almost total lack of success although a tiny handful of "red" unions were formed, amongst them a miners union in Scotland and tailoring union in East London. Arthur Horner
Arthur Horner (politician)
Arthur Lewis Horner was a Welsh trade union leader and communist politician. During his periods of office as President of the South Wales Miners Federation from 1936, and as General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers from 1946, he became one of the most prominent and influential...
, the Communist leader of the Welsh miners, fought off attempts to found a similar union on his patch.
But even if the Third Period was by all conventional standards a total political failure it was the 'heroic' period of British communism and one of its campaigns did have impact beyond its ranks. This was the National Unemployed Workers' Movement
National Unemployed Workers' Movement
The National Unemployed Workers' Movement was a British organisation set up in 1921 by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It aimed to draw attention to the plight of unemployed workers during the post World War I slump, the 1926 General Strike and later the Great Depression, and to...
led by Wal Hannington
Wal Hannington
Walter "Wal" Hannington was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and National Organiser of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, from its formation in 1921 to its end in 1939, when he became National Organiser of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.-Political career:In...
. Increasing unemployment had caused a substantial increase in the number of CP members, especially those drawn from engineering, lacking work. This cadre of which Hannington and Harry MacShane in Scotland were emblematic, found a purpose in building the NUWM which resulted in a number of marches on the unemployment issue during the 1930s. Although born in the Third Period during the Great depression, the NUWM was a major campaigning body throughout the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
period too, only being dissolved in 1941.
After the victory of Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in Germany the Third Period was dropped by all Communist Parties as they switched to the policy of the Popular Front. This policy argued that as fascism was the main danger to the workers' movement, it needed to ally itself with all anti-fascist forces including right-wing democratic parties. In Britain this policy expressed itself in the efforts of the CPGB to forge an alliance with the Labour Party and even with forces to the right of Labour. Having positioned itself to the left of Labour during the Third Period the CPGB had now moved to the right of that, far larger, party.
In the 1935 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1935
The United Kingdom general election held on 14 November 1935 resulted in a large, though reduced, majority for the National Government now led by Conservative Stanley Baldwin. The greatest number of MPs, as before, were Conservative, while the National Liberal vote held steady...
Willie Gallacher was elected as the Communist Party's first MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
in six years, and their first MP elected against Labour opposition. Gallacher sat for West Fife in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, a coal mining region in which it had considerable support. During the 1930s the CPGB opposed the Conservative government's policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. On the streets
Battle of Cable Street
The Battle of Cable Street took place on Sunday 4 October 1936 in Cable Street in the East End of London. It was a clash between the Metropolitan Police, overseeing a march by the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, and anti-fascists, including local Jewish, socialist, anarchist,...
the party members played a leading role in the struggle against the British Union of Fascists
British Union of Fascists
The British Union was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by Sir Oswald Mosley as the British Union of Fascists, in 1936 it changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists and then in 1937 to simply the British Union...
, led by Sir Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
whose Blackshirts tried to emulate the Nazis in anti-Semitic actions in London and other major British cities – though the party centre tried to stop them taking part in the defence of Cable Street from the Blackshirts, such that they had to operate under the cover of the 'Ex-Servicemen's Association', and on the day, the party put out a leaflet for another demonstration in Trafalgar Square to draw members away from the East End.
1940s to 1970s
With the beginning of the Second World WarWorld 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...
in 1939, the CPGB initially continued to support the struggle on two fronts (against Chamberlain at home and Nazi fascism abroad). However, thanks to direct intervention by the Communist International (initiated by Stalin), this policy was quickly changed to fall in line with other Communist Parties; campaigning for peace, and describing the war as the product of imperialism on both sides, and in which the working class had no side to take. This was opposed within the CPGB by Harry Pollitt
Harry Pollitt
Harry Pollitt was the head of the trade union department of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the General Secretary of the party for more than 20 years.- Early life :...
and J. R. Campbell
John Ross Campbell
John Ross "Johnny" Campbell , best known as "J.R. Campbell," was a British communist activist and newspaper editor. Campbell is best remembered as the principal in the so-called Campbell Case...
, the editor of the Daily Worker, and both were relieved of their duties in October 1939. Pollitt was replaced by Palme Dutt
Rajani Palme Dutt
Rajani Palme Dutt , best known as R. Palme Dutt, was a leading journalist and theoretician in the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Early years:...
. From 1939 until 1941 the CPGB was very active in supporting strikes and in denouncing the government for its pursuit of the war.
However, when in 1941 the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was invaded by Germany, the CPGB reversed its stance immediately and came out in support of the war on the grounds that it had now become a war between fascism and the Soviet Union. Pollitt was restored to his old position as Party Secretary. In fact, the Communists' support for the war was so vociferous that they launched a campaign for a Second Front in order to support the USSR and speed the defeat of the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
. In industry they now opposed strike action and supported the Joint Production Committees, which aimed to increase productivity, and supported the National Government that was led by Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
(Conservative) and Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
(Labour). The patriotic stance of the CPGB was such that in 1943 at a by-election in Cardiff they actively campaigned for the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
candidate against Fenner Brockway
Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway
Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway , was a British anti-war activist and politician.-Biography:Archibald Fenner Brockway was born in Calcutta, India, which was at that time under British Imperial rule...
, the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
candidate. The Party attacked striking militants as 'Trotskyist agents'; William Wainwright's pamphlet Clear out Trotsky's Agents warned: You must train yourself to round up these other more cunning enemies... they are called Trotskyists'.
In the 1945 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1945
The United Kingdom general election of 1945 was a general election held on 5 July 1945, with polls in some constituencies delayed until 12 July and in Nelson and Colne until 19 July, due to local wakes weeks. The results were counted and declared on 26 July, due in part to the time it took to...
, the Communist Party received 103,000 votes, and two Communists were elected as members of parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, one of whom was the aforementioned Gallacher, the other being Phil Piratin
Phil Piratin
Philip Piratin , known as Phil Piratin, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and one of their few Members of Parliament....
, who won Mile End
Mile End
Mile End is an area within the East End of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross...
in London's East End. Harry Pollitt failed by only 972 votes to take the Rhondda East constituency. Both Communist MPs however, lost their seats at the 1950 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1950
The 1950 United Kingdom general election was the first general election ever after a full term of a Labour government. Despite polling over one and a half million votes more than the Conservatives, the election, held on 23 February 1950 resulted in Labour receiving a slim majority of just five...
.
Still, the Party was keen to demonstrate its loyalty to Britain's industrial competitiveness. At the 19th Congress, Harry Pollitt asked rhetorically, 'why do we need to increase production?' Answering 'to pay for what we are compelled to import. To retain our independence as a nation.'
The party's membership peaked during 1943, reaching around 60,000. Despite boasting some leading intellectuals, especially among the Communist Party Historians Group
Communist Party Historians Group
A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain , from 1946-1956 the Communist Party Historians Group formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below." Famous members included such leading lights of 20th-century British history as...
, the party was still tiny compared to its continental European counterparts. The French Communist Party for instance had 800,000 members, and the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
had 1.7 million members. The Party tried, unsuccessfully, to affiliate to the Labour Party in 1935, 43 and 46.
In 1951 the party issued a programme called The British Road to Socialism (officially adopted at the 22nd Congress in April 1952), which explicitly advocated the possibility of a peaceful reformist transition to socialism – but only after it had been personally approved by Stalin himself. The importance of this document is that it implicitly renounces the revolutionary purpose for which the party was founded in the first instance. The BRS would remain the programme of the CPGB until its dissolution in 1991 albeit in amended form and even today is the programme of the Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Britain
The Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Great Britain. Although founded in 1988 it traces its origins back to 1920 and the Communist Party of Great Britain, and claims the legacy of that party and its most influential members Harry Pollitt and John Gollan as its...
which claims political continuity with the CPGB.
In the 1950s the CPGB’s Reuben Falber received around £100 000 a year from the CPSU
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
, and into the seventies was still being paid around £15 000 "for pensions", according to historian Geoff Andrews, who adds "recipients included Rajani Palme Dutt".
From the war years to 1956 the CPGB was at the height of its influence in the labour movement with many union officials who were members. Not only did it have immense influence in the National Union of Mineworkers but it was extremely influential in the Electrical Trade Union and in the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers the key blue collar union. In addition much of the Labour Party left was strongly influenced by the party. Dissidents were few, perhaps the most notable being Eric Heffer
Eric Heffer
Eric Samuel Heffer was a British socialist politician. He was Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1964 until his death. His working-class background and consciousness fed in to his left-wing politics, but to an extent disguised the depth of his knowledge: with 12,000 books in...
the future Labour MP who left the party in the late 1940s, and were easily dealt with.
The death of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in 1953, and the uprising in East Germany
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany
The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16. It turned into a widespread anti-Stalinist uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day....
the same year had little direct influence on the CPGB, but they were harbingers of what was to come. Of more importance was Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's "Secret Speech" at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in which he denounced Stalin. Labour unrest in Poland in 1956 disrupted not only the CPGB, but many other Communist Parties as well. The CPGB was to experience its greatest ever loss of membership as a result of the Warsaw Pact's crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
. This event was initially covered in the CPGB-sponsored Daily Worker
The Morning Star
The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....
, by correspondent Peter Fryer
Peter Fryer
Peter Fryer was an English Marxist writer and journalist.-Early life:Peter Fryer joined the Young Communist League in 1942 and the Communist Party in 1945. On leaving school in 1943 he became a reporter on the Yorkshire Post, and was dismissed by the paper in 1947 for refusing to leave the...
, but as events unfolded the stories were spiked. On his return to Britain Fryer resigned from the Daily Worker and was expelled from the party.
1960s and 1970s: Decline of the party
After the calamitous events of 1956, the party increasingly functioned as a pressure group, seeking to use its well-organised base in the trade union movement to push the Labour Party leftwards. Trade unionists in the party in 1968 included John Tocher, George Wake, Dick Etheridge and Cyril Morton (AEU) Mick McGaheyMick McGahey
Michael "Mick" McGahey was a Scottish miners' leader and life-long Communist, with a distinctive gravelly voice. He described himself as "a product of my class and my movement".-Early life:...
, Arthur True and Sammy Moore (NUM) Lou Lewis (UCATT) and Max Morris (NUT). Ken Gill became the party’s first elected officer in 1968 and ex-Communist Hugh Scanlon
Hugh Scanlon
Hugh Parr Scanlon, Baron Scanlon was a British trade union leader.Scanlon was born in Melbourne, Australia to parents who had emigrated from Britain...
was elected president of the AEU with Broad Left support the previous year – defeating Reg Birch
Reg Birch
Reg Birch was a British Maoist trade unionist.Born in Kilburn, Birch became a toolmaker and joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union . He became active in the union and also in supporting the Republican government of Spain against the fascist invasion and coup...
, the Maoist ex-party candidate. The Broad Left went on to help elect Ray Buckton (Aslef) Ken Cameron (FBU) Alan Sapper
Alan Sapper
Alan Sapper was a British trade unionist.Born in Hammersmith, Sapper studied at the Latymer Upper School, then worked as a botanist at Kew Gardens while studying with the University of London External Programme...
(ACTT) and Jack Jones (TGWU) in 1969. Gerry Pocock, Assistant Industrial Organiser described the industrial department as "a party within a party", and Marxism Today editor James Klugmann
James Klugmann
Norman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
would routinely defer to Industrial Organiser Bert Ramelson
Bert Ramelson
Baruch Rahmilevich Mendelson, commonly known as Bert Ramelson was an industrial organiser and politician for the Communist Party of Great Britain...
on matters of policy.
The party's orientation, though, was to the left union officers, not the rank and file. Historian Geoff Andrews' explains ‘it was the role of the shop stewards in organising the Broad Lefts and influencing trade union leaders that was the key rather than organising the rank and file in defiance of leaderships’ and so the party withdrew from rank-and-file organisations like the Building Workers Charter, and attacked "Trotskyist" tactics at the Pilkington Glass dispute in 1970.
Still the party's efforts to establish an electoral base repeatedly failed. They retained a handful of seats in local councils scattered around Britain, but the CPGB's only representative in Parliament was in the House of Lords, gained when Wogan Philipps, the son of a ship-owner and a long standing member of the CPGB, inherited the title of Lord Milford when his father died in 1963.
The Daily Worker was renamed the Morning Star in 1966. At the same time the party became increasingly polarised between those who sought to maintain close relations with the Soviet Union and those who sought to convert the party into a force independent of Moscow.
The international split
Sino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
between Moscow and Beijing in 1961 led to divisions within many Communist Parties but there was little pro-Beijing sympathy in the relatively small British Party. Perhaps the best known of the tiny minority of CPGB members opposed the Moscow line was Michael McCreery, who formed the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity
Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity
Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity was a small British Marxist-Leninist group, that had left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1963. CDRCU was led by Michael McCreery. CDRCU was sympathetic towards the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania...
. This tiny group left the CPGB by 1963. McCreery himself died in 1965 in New Zealand. Later a more significant group formed around Reg Birch
Reg Birch
Reg Birch was a British Maoist trade unionist.Born in Kilburn, Birch became a toolmaker and joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union . He became active in the union and also in supporting the Republican government of Spain against the fascist invasion and coup...
, an engineering union official, established the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
The Communist Party of Britain is a British communist political party. The small party was formed in 1968 by Reg Birch as a split from the Communist Party of Great Britain, siding with the Communist Party of China...
. Initially, this group supported the position of the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
.
Divisions in the CPGB concerning the autonomy of the party from Moscow reached a crisis in 1968, when Warsaw pact forces intervened in Czechoslovakia. The CPGB, with memories of 1956 in mind, responded with some very mild criticism of Moscow, refusing to call it an invasion, preferring ‘intervention’. Three days after the invasion, John Gollan said ‘we completely understand the concern of the Soviet Union about the security of the socialist camp … we speak as true friends of the Soviet Union’.
Even this response provoked a small localised split by the so called Appeal Group
Appeal Group
The Appeal Group was a small group of Marxist Leninists who broke away from the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1971 on the basis that the CPGB had abandoned revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and that, after many attempts, it was impossible to change it from within except by breaking the rules...
which was in many respects a pre-cursor of the 1977 split which formed the New Communist Party. From this time onwards, the most traditionally-minded elements in the CPGB were referred to as 'Tankie
Tankie
Tankie was a pejorative term referring to members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who followed the Kremlin line, agreeing with the crushing of revolts in Hungary and later Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks...
s' by their internal opponents, due to their support of the Warsaw Pact forces. Others within the party leaned increasingly towards the position of eurocommunism
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the influence or control of the Communist Party of the Soviet...
, which was the leading tendency within the important Communist parties of Italy and, later, Spain.
"The mid-1970s saw Gramscians" otherwise known as Euro-Communists "take leading positions within the party". Sue Slipman, Executive Committee 1975, and Marxism Today editorial board; Jon Bloomfield, former Student organiser became West Midlands District Sec.; Dave Cook became National Organiser in 1975; Pete Carter prominent in UCATT; Beatrix Campbell
Beatrix Campbell
Mary Lorimer Beatrix Campbell, OBE is a British campaigning journalist and author.Since the mid 1970s, she has published numerous articles and book reviews in such publications as Marxism Today, Red Rag, Time Out, Feminist Review, New Statesman, New Socialist, The Guardian, The Independent,...
and Judith Hunt active in National Women’s Advisory; Jacques, on the EC since 1967 and replacing James Klugmann on Marxism Today in 1977; Sarah Benton was a "heresy" favouring editor of Comment; critics from the past, like Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
and Monty Johnstone, got more influence.
The last strong electoral performance of the CPGB was in the February 1974 General Election
United Kingdom general election, February 1974
The United Kingdom's general election of February 1974 was held on the 28th of that month. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the first election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party,...
in Dunbartonshire Central, where candidate Jimmy Reid
Jimmy Reid
James "Jimmy" Reid was a Scottish trade union activist, orator, politician, and journalist born in Govan, Glasgow. His role as spokesman and one of the leaders in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in between June 1971 and October 1972 attracted international recognition...
won almost 6,000 votes. However, this strong result was primarily a personal vote for Reid, who was a prominent local trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
leader and gained much support because of his prominent role in the Upper Clyde Ship Builders work-in, which had taken place a few years earlier and was seen as having saved local jobs. Nationally the party's vote continued its decline: according to a contemporary joke, the CPGB at this time pursued the British Road To Lost Deposits.
The Euro-Communists in the party apparatus were starting to challenge the authority of the trade union organisers. At the 1975 Congress, Dave Purdy proposed that "the labour movement should declare its willingness to accept voluntary pay restraint as a contribution to the success of the programme and a way of easing the transition to a socialist economy" – a challenge to the Industrial Department's policy of "free collective bargaining."
The growing crisis in the party also affected the credibility of its leadership, as formerly senior and influential members left its ranks. In 1976, three of its top engineering cadres resigned. Jimmy Reid
Jimmy Reid
James "Jimmy" Reid was a Scottish trade union activist, orator, politician, and journalist born in Govan, Glasgow. His role as spokesman and one of the leaders in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in between June 1971 and October 1972 attracted international recognition...
, Cyril Morton and John Tocher had all been members of the Political Committee, playing a crucial role in determining the direction of the party. Like another engineer, Bernard Panter, who left a few months before them, they jumped a sinking ship.
According to the Party's official historian this period was marked by a growing division between the practitioners of cultural politics – heavily inspired by the writings of Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
and party's powerful industrial department which advocated a policy of militant labourism.
The cultural politics wing had dominated the party's youth wing in the 1960s and was also powerful in the student section. As such many of its members were academics or professional intellectuals (or in the view of their opponents, out of touch and middle class). They were influenced by the environmental and especially the feminist movement.
The other wing were powerful in senior levels of the trade union movement (though few actually reached the very top in the unions) and despite the party's decline in numbers were able to drive the TUC's policy of opposing the Industrial Relations Act. In the view of their opponents on the cultural or eurocommunist wing, they were out of touch with the real changes in working people's lives and attitudes.
As the seventies progressed and as industrial militancy declined in the face of high unemployment, the tensions in the party rose even as its membership continued to decline.
1977–1991: breakup of the party
By 1977 debate around the new draft of the British Road to Socialism brought the party to breaking point. Many of the anti-EurocommunistsEurocommunism
Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the influence or control of the Communist Party of the Soviet...
decided that they needed to form their own anti-revisionist Communist party. Some speculated at the time that they would receive the backing of Moscow, but such support appears not to have materialised. The New Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
The New Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Britain. The origins of the NCP lie in the Communist Party of Great Britain from which it split in 1977.-Formation:...
was formed under the leadership of Sid French
Sid French
Sid French was a British communist activist and organiser, former Surrey district secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the founding general secretary of the New Communist Party of Britain.-Early years:...
, who was the secretary of the important Surrey District CP, which had a strong base in engineering.
Another grouping, led by Fergus Nicholson, remained in the party and launched the paper Straight Left
Straight Left
Straight Left was a left-wing newspaper. The phrase was also the generic name given to a political faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain who disagreed with the leadership's emerging Eurocommunist politics, and were responsible for the production of the newspaper...
. This served as an outlet for their views as well as an organising tool in their work within the Labour Party. Nicholson had earlier taken part in establishing a faction known as "Clause Four" within Labour's student movement
Labour Students
Labour Students is a student organisation affiliated to the British Labour Party.Membership comprises affiliated college and university clubs . Membership of Labour Students is through membership of a university or college Labour Club. Affiliation is open to any Labour Club generally supportive of...
. Nicholson wrote as "Harry Steel", a combination of the names of Stalin ("man of steel" in Russian) and Harry Pollitt. The group around Straight Left exerted considerable influence in the trade union movement, CND
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
, the Anti-Apartheid Movement
Anti-Apartheid Movement
Anti-Apartheid Movement , originally known as the Boycott Movement, was a British organization that was at the center of the international movement opposing South Africa's system of apartheid and supporting South Africa's Blacks....
and amongst some Labour MPs.
Under the influence of Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
on the opposing wing of the party Martin Jacques
Martin Jacques
Martin Jacques is a British former magazine editor and academic. He was born and raised in Coventry. He was an undergraduate student at Manchester University, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree, and subsequently studied for a PhD at King's College, Cambridge.He was editor of the...
became the editor of the party's theoretical journal Marxism Today
Marxism Today
Marxism Today was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was disestablished in 1991. It was particularly important during the 1980s under the editorship of Martin Jacques...
and rapidly made it a significant publication for Eurocommunist opinions in the party, and eventually for revisionist tendencies in the wider liberal-left, in particular for the soft left
Soft left
The soft left was the name given to the more moderate left wing forces in the British Labour Party in the 1980s. They were first seen as a distinct movement when many previous left wingers such as Neil Kinnock refused to support Tony Benn in the election for the deputy leadership of the Labour...
around Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
in 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...
. Although circulation of the magazine rose it was still a drain on the finances of the small party.
As early as 1983, Martin Jacques "thought the CP was unreformable ... but stayed in because he needed its subsidy to continue publishing Marxism Today." Jacques' conviction that the party was finished "came as a nasty shock to some of his comrades" like Nina Temple, who "as unhappy as Jacques himself, stayed on only out of loyalty to Jacques."
In 1985 a factional struggle broke out in the CPGB. Members loyal to the Party's programme, the British Road to Socialism, established a network of Morning Star
The Morning Star
The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....
readers' groups and similar bodies, calling themselves the "Communist Campaign Group". In 1988 these elements formed a splinter group, based on the British Road to Socialism, known as the Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Britain
The Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Great Britain. Although founded in 1988 it traces its origins back to 1920 and the Communist Party of Great Britain, and claims the legacy of that party and its most influential members Harry Pollitt and John Gollan as its...
.
In 1991 when the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
collapsed, the Eurocommunist-dominated leadership of the CPGB, led by Nina Temple
Nina Temple
Nina Claire Temple was the last Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was formerly a think-tank director in the United Kingdom.-Early life:...
, decided to disband the party, and establish Democratic Left
Democratic Left (United Kingdom)
Democratic Left was a post-communist political organisation in the United Kingdom during the 1990s, growing out of the Eurocommunist strand within the Communist Party of Great Britain and its magazine Marxism Today...
, a left-leaning political think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
rather than a political party; Democratic Left
Democratic Left (United Kingdom)
Democratic Left was a post-communist political organisation in the United Kingdom during the 1990s, growing out of the Eurocommunist strand within the Communist Party of Great Britain and its magazine Marxism Today...
itself dissolved in 1999, to be replaced by the New Politics Network
New Politics Network
The New Politics Network was an independent political and campaigning think tank in the United Kingdom, concerned with democratic renewal and popular participation in politics...
(which in turn merged with Charter 88 in 2007).
Some Scottish members formed the Communist Party of Scotland
Communist Party of Scotland
The Communist Party of Scotland , also known as Pàrtaidh Co-Mhaoineach na h-Alba, was established in 1991 when the Communist Party of Great Britain was disbanded and re-formed as the Democratic Left think-tank. Many Communists in Scotland disagreed with this decision and instead set up the CPS,...
, others Democratic Left Scotland
Democratic Left Scotland
Democratic Left Scotland is the continuation in Scotland of Democratic Left, the organisation formed when the Communist Party of Great Britain was dissolved in 1991...
and Democratic Left Wales Chwith Ddemocrataidd, which still continues. Supporters of The Leninist who had rejoined the CPGB in the early 1980s declared their intention to reforge the Party, and held an emergency conference at which they claimed the name of the party. They are now known as the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)
Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)
The Communist Party of Great Britain is a political group which publishes the Weekly Worker newspaper. The party favours the creation of a unified "Communist Party of the European Union"...
, although they commonly call themselves the Communist Party of Great Britain, and publish the Weekly Worker
Weekly Worker
The Weekly Worker is a newspaper published by the Communist Party of Great Britain . The paper is well known on the left for its polemical articles, close attention to Marxist theory and the politics of other Marxist groups...
, although the Communist Party of Britain
Communist Party of Britain
The Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Great Britain. Although founded in 1988 it traces its origins back to 1920 and the Communist Party of Great Britain, and claims the legacy of that party and its most influential members Harry Pollitt and John Gollan as its...
are the designated 'Communist Party' in the UK by the Electoral Commission
Electoral Commission (United Kingdom)
The Electoral Commission is an independent body set up by the UK Parliament. It regulates party and election finance and sets standards for well-run elections...
. In 2008 members of the Party of the European Left
Party of the European Left
The Party of the European Left, commonly abbreviated to just the European Left, is a political party at European level and an association of democratic socialist and communist political parties in the European Union and other European countries. It was formed in January 2004 for the purposes of...
, which contains several former 'official' Communist Parties in Europe, established a non-electoral British section.
General Secretaries of the CPGB
- 1920: Albert InkpinAlbert InkpinAlbert Inkpin was a British communist and the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain . He served several terms in prison for political offenses...
- 1929: Harry PollittHarry PollittHarry Pollitt was the head of the trade union department of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the General Secretary of the party for more than 20 years.- Early life :...
- 1939: Rajani Palme DuttRajani Palme DuttRajani Palme Dutt , best known as R. Palme Dutt, was a leading journalist and theoretician in the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Early years:...
- 1941: Harry PollittHarry PollittHarry Pollitt was the head of the trade union department of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the General Secretary of the party for more than 20 years.- Early life :...
- 1956: John GollanJohn GollanJohn Gollan was a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain .Born in Edinburgh, Gollan joined the CPGB and the Young Communist League aged sixteen. He became a signwriter but was soon imprisoned for distributing an anti-militarist leaflet...
- 1975: Gordon McLennanGordon McLennanGordon McLennan was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain between 1975 and 1990.Born in Glasgow, McLennan worked as an engineering draughtsperson before taking on various full-time posts within the CPGB...
- 1989: Nina TempleNina TempleNina Claire Temple was the last Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and was formerly a think-tank director in the United Kingdom.-Early life:...
Congresses
-
- {| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Name
! Location
! Dates
|-
! 1920
| align="center" | First Congress
| align="center" | London
| align="center" | 31 July – 1 August
|-
! 1921
| align="center" | Second Congress
| align="center" | Leeds
| align="center" | 29–30 January
|-
! 1921
| align="center" | Third Congress
| align="center" | Manchester
| align="center" | 23–24 April
|-
! 1922
| align="center" | Fourth Congress
| align="center" | St Pancras Town Hall, London
| align="center" | 18–19 March
|-
! 1922
| align="center" | Fifth Congress
| align="center" | Battersea Town Hall, London
| align="center" | 7–8 October
|-
! 1924
| align="center" | Sixth Congress
| align="center" | Caxton Hall, Salford
| align="center" | 16–18 May
|-
! 1925
| align="center" | Seventh Congress
| align="center" | St Mungo Hall, Glasgow
| align="center" | 30 May – 1 June
|-
! 1922
| align="center" | Eighth Congress
| align="center" | Battersea Town Hall, London
| align="center" | 16–17 October
|}
Notable members
- David AaronovitchDavid AaronovitchDavid Aaronovitch is a British author, broadcaster, and journalist. He is a regular columnist for The Times, and author of Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country and Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History...
- Sam AaronovitchSam AaronovitchSam Aaronovitch was a British economist, academic, working class intellectual and senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain....
- Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
- R. Page ArnotRobert Page ArnotRobert "Robin" Page Arnot, , best known as R. Page Arnot, was a British Communist journalist and politician.-Early years:Robert Page Arnot, known to his friends as "Robin", was born on 15 December 1890 at Greenock, the son of a newspaper editor. He attended Glasgow University where he helped to...
- George Alfred BarnardGeorge Alfred BarnardGeorge Alfred Barnard was a British statistician known particularly for his work on the foundations of statistics and on quality control.-Biography:...
- Joan BeauchampJoan BeauchampJoan Beauchamp was a prominent anti-World War I campaigner, suffragette and co-founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Childhood:She was born in 1890 into a farming family in Midsomer Norton in Somerset...
- Kay BeauchampKay BeauchampKay Beauchamp was a leading light in the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1920s. She helped found the Daily Worker and was a local councillor in Finsbury.-Biography:...
- Tom BellTom Bell (politician)Thomas "Tom" Bell was a Scottish socialist politician and trade unionist. He is best remembered as a founding member of both the Socialist Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain and as the editor of Communist Review, the official monthly magazine of the latter.-Early years:Thomas...
- Leila BergLeila BergLeila Berg is a British children's author, known also as a journalist and writer on education and children's rights. She began writing in a more realistic and gritty style, for younger children, in the 1960s, in the Nippers series of readers in an influential move designed to bring children's...
- J. D. BernalJ. D. BernalJohn Desmond Bernal FRS was one of Britain’s best known and most controversial scientists, called "Sage" by his friends, and known for pioneering X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.-Origin and education:His family was Irish, of mixed Italian and Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin...
- Bill BlandBill BlandWilliam 'Barbosa' Bland was a British Marxist-Leninist and optician who was notable as a worldwide leader of a movement that backed Enver Hoxha, the Albanian communist leader, in the struggles over Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy in the later 1960s...
- Anthony BluntAnthony BluntAnthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...
- Jim BollanJim BollanJim Bollan is a councillor in West Dunbartonshire in Scotland. He is a member of the Scottish Socialist Party, and is at present its only elected representative....
- Edith BoneEdith BoneEdith Hajós Bone was an aristocrat and medical professional, journalist, and translator who later became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain....
- Bessie BraddockBessie BraddockElizabeth Margaret Braddock JP , better known as Bessie Braddock, was a British Labour politician...
- Noreen BransonNoreen BransonNoreen Branson was a communist activist, and historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain. She worked for the Labour Research Department from 1938, until her death, editing its magazine for 28 years....
- Peter BreareyPeter BreareyPeter Leslie Brearey was a British secularist, socialist and journalist.He was born in Dewsbury. Although his family background was Methodist, Brearey rejected religion as a teenager. He was a member of the Young Communist League and subsequently the Communist Party of Great Britain...
- Maurice BrintonMaurice BrintonMaurice Brinton was the pen name under which Christopher Agamemnon Pallis wrote and translated for the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity from 1960 until the early 1980s....
- Beatrix CampbellBeatrix CampbellMary Lorimer Beatrix Campbell, OBE is a British campaigning journalist and author.Since the mid 1970s, she has published numerous articles and book reviews in such publications as Marxism Today, Red Rag, Time Out, Feminist Review, New Statesman, New Socialist, The Guardian, The Independent,...
- J.R. "Johnny" CampbellJohn Ross CampbellJohn Ross "Johnny" Campbell , best known as "J.R. Campbell," was a British communist activist and newspaper editor. Campbell is best remembered as the principal in the so-called Campbell Case...
- Christopher CaudwellChristopher CaudwellChristopher Caudwell is the pseudonym of Christopher St. John Sprigg , a British Marxist writer, thinker and poet.He was born into a Catholic family living at 53 Montserrat Road, Putney district, south-west London...
- Bernard CoardBernard CoardWinston Bernard Coard was Grenadian Deputy Prime Minister in the People's Revolutionary Government of the New Jewel Movement, who placed Maurice Bishop under house arrest and took control of the government on 14 October 1983....
- Ken CoatesKen CoatesKenneth Sidney Coates was a British politician and writer. He chaired the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and edited The Spokesman, the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Labour Party Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1999...
- Robert ConquestRobert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
- John CornfordJohn CornfordRupert John Cornford was an English poet and communist. He was the son of F. M. Cornford and Frances Cornford.- Biography :...
- Maurice CornforthMaurice CornforthMaurice Campbell Cornforth was a British Marxist philosopher. When he began his career in philosophy in the early 1930s, he was a follower of Wittgenstein, writing in the then current style of analytic philosophy...
- Bob CrowBob CrowRobert Crow , who is better known as Bob Crow, is a British trade union leader, the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and a member of the General Council of the TUC...
- Jack DashJack DashJack Dash was a British communist and trade union leader, famous for his role in London dock strikes.Born in Southwark to a family which was often in poverty, Dash left school at 14 to work as a page boy at a Lyons Corner House...
- Edmund DellEdmund DellEdmund Emanuel Dell was a British politician and businessman.Dell was born in London, the son of a Jewish manufacturer. In World War II he served in the Rifle Corps and the Royal Artillery, leaving as a first lieutenant...
- George Derwent ThomsonGeorge Derwent ThomsonGeorge Derwent Thomson was an English classical scholar, Marxist philosopher, and scholar of the Irish language.-Classical scholar:...
- Rajani Palme DuttRajani Palme DuttRajani Palme Dutt , best known as R. Palme Dutt, was a leading journalist and theoretician in the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Early years:...
- Stewart FarrarStewart FarrarFrank Stewart Farrar , who always went by the name of Stewart Farrar, was an English screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar, and then his friend Gavin Bone...
- Peter FryerPeter FryerPeter Fryer was an English Marxist writer and journalist.-Early life:Peter Fryer joined the Young Communist League in 1942 and the Communist Party in 1945. On leaving school in 1943 he became a reporter on the Yorkshire Post, and was dismissed by the paper in 1947 for refusing to leave the...
- Gerry GableGerry GableGerry Gable is a British political activist. He was a long-serving editor of the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine.-Background:...
- Willie GallacherWillie GallacherWilliam "Willie" Gallacher was a Scottish trade unionist, activist and communist. He was one of the leading figures of the Shop Stewards' Movement in wartime Glasgow and a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain...
- David GascoyneDavid GascoyneDavid Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...
- J. B. S. HaldaneJ. B. S. HaldaneJohn Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS , known as Jack , was a British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist. A staunch Marxist, he was critical of Britain's role in the Suez Crisis, and chose to leave Oxford and moved to India and became an Indian citizen...
- Kevin Halpin
- Wal HanningtonWal HanningtonWalter "Wal" Hannington was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and National Organiser of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, from its formation in 1921 to its end in 1939, when he became National Organiser of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.-Political career:In...
- Jock HastonJock HastonJames "Jock" Ritchie Haston was a Trotskyist politician and General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party in Great Britain.-Early years:...
- Denis HealeyDenis HealeyDenis Winston Healey, Baron Healey CH, MBE, PC is a British Labour politician, who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.-Early life:...
- Gerry HealyGerry HealyThomas Gerard Healy, known as Gerry Healy , was a political activist, a co-founder of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and, according to former prominent U.S. supporter David North, the leader of the Trotskyist movement in Great Britain between 1950 – 1985...
- Eric HefferEric HefferEric Samuel Heffer was a British socialist politician. He was Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1964 until his death. His working-class background and consciousness fed in to his left-wing politics, but to an extent disguised the depth of his knowledge: with 12,000 books in...
- Margot HeinemannMargot HeinemannMargot Claire Heinemann was a British Marxist writer, drama scholar, and leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain ....
- Mike Hicks
- Jim HigginsJim Higgins (British politician)Jim Higgins was a British revolutionary socialist and leading member of the International Socialists.-Biography:Born into a working-class family in Harrow, Higgins joined the Young Communist League at 14...
- Christopher HillChristopher Hill (historian)John Edward Christopher Hill , usually known simply as Christopher Hill, was an English Marxist historian and author of textbooks....
- Jeanne HobanJeanne HobanJeanne Hoban , known after her marriage as Jeanne Moonesinghe, was a British Trotskyist who became active in trade unionism and politics in Sri Lanka. She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.- Early years :She was born in Gillingham, Kent...
- Eric HobsbawmEric HobsbawmEric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
- David HolbrookDavid HolbrookDavid Kenneth Holbrook was a British writer, poet and academic. From 1989 he was an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.-Life:...
- Albert InkpinAlbert InkpinAlbert Inkpin was a British communist and the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain . He served several terms in prison for political offenses...
- T.A. "Tommy" JacksonThomas A. JacksonThomas A. "Tommy" Jackson was a founding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and later the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was a leading communist activist and newspaper editor and worked variously as a party functionary and a freelance lecturer.-Early years:Thomas A. Jackson, best...
- Lewis JonesLewis Jones (writer)Lewis Jones, writer, and political activist of the left, was born in Clydach Vale in industrialized South Wales.Although his novels are more studied by academics now than by general readers, Jones occupies an honourable place in the history of left-wing politics in Britain, and in the ranks of...
- Pat JordanPat JordanPat Jordan was a British Trotskyist who was central to founding the International Marxist Group. He had been a full time organiser of the Communist Party of Great Britain in Nottingham who had left the party with Ken Coates after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary...
- Luke KellyLuke KellyLuke Kelly was an Irish singer and folk musician from Dublin, Ireland, notable as a founding member of the band The Dubliners.-Early life:...
- Helena Kennedy
- Pieter KeunemanPieter KeunemanPieter Gerald Bartholomeusz Keuneman was a Sri Lankan politician and a Marxist. He was the Cabinet Minister of Housing and Local Government and prominent Member of Parliament and a leading figure in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party .-Early life and education:Pieter Keuneman came from a Dutch Burgher...
- James KlugmannJames KlugmannNorman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
- Charles LahrCharles LahrCharles Lahr was a German-born anarchist, London bookseller and publisher.-Life:He was born Carl Lahr at Bad Nauheim in the Rhineland, the eldest of 15 children in a farming family. He left Germany in 1905 to avoid military service and went to England.In London he encountered the anarchist Guy...
- John LawrenceJohn Lawrence (political activist)John Gordon Michael Lawrence was a leading far left activitist in a wide variety of groups in Britain.-Early life:...
- Doris LessingDoris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
- Jack LindsayJack LindsayRobert Leeson Jack Lindsay was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane...
- James LitterickJames LitterickJames Litterick was a politician in Manitoba, Canada, and was the first member of the Communist Party of Canada to be elected to that province's legislature....
- Ewan MacCollEwan MacCollEwan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...
- Hugh MacDiarmidHugh MacDiarmidHugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
- Arthur MacManusArthur MacManusArthur MacManus was a Scottish trade unionist and communist politician.-Political career:MacManus joined the De Leonist Socialist Labour Party and began work at Singers in Clydebank, then known as part of the Red Clydeside...
- Mick McGaheyMick McGaheyMichael "Mick" McGahey was a Scottish miners' leader and life-long Communist, with a distinctive gravelly voice. He described himself as "a product of my class and my movement".-Early life:...
- Claude McKayClaude McKayClaude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
- Harry McShaneHarry McShaneHarry McShane was a Scottish socialist, and a close colleague of John Maclean. Born into a Roman Catholic family, he became a Marxist...
- Cecil L'Estrange MaloneCecil L'Estrange MaloneCecil John L'Estrange Malone was Britain's first communist member of the House of Commons.-Early years:Born in Dalton Holme, Yorkshire on 7 September 1890, a rector's son, he joined the Royal Navy in 1905 and attended the Royal Naval College at Devonport. In 1912 he learned to fly and gained his...
- John ManifoldJohn ManifoldJohn Streeter Manifold was an Australian poet and critic, known also for his interest in Australian folksongs. He was born in Melbourne, into a well known Camperdown family. He was educated at Geelong Grammar School, and read modern languages at Jesus College, Cambridge. While in Cambridge he...
- Tom MannTom MannTom Mann was a noted British trade unionist. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the labour movement.-Early years:...
- Carl MarzaniCarl MarzaniCarl Aldo Marzani was an American leftwing political activist and publisher. He was successively a Communist Party organizer, volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, United States federal intelligence official, documentary filmmaker, author, and publisher...
- William MellorWilliam MellorWilliam Mellor was a left-wing British journalist.Mellor joined the Daily Herald in 1913 as a journalist, and was imprisoned during the First World War as a conscientious objector, returning to the Herald on his release. A Guild Socialist during the 1910s, he worked closely with G. D. H. Cole,...
- Iris MurdochIris MurdochDame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
- J.T. "Jack" MurphyJ. T. MurphyJ.T. "Jack" Murphy was an English trade union organiser and Communist.-Early years:J.T. Murphy, best known by his nickname of "Jack," was born in 1888 and grew up near Sheffield and became a metal-worker...
- Alex MurrayAlex MurrayAlex Murray was the Scottish Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain between 1970 and 1975....
- Andrew MurrayAndrew Murray (campaigner and journalist)Andrew Murray is a British campaigner and journalist who has been Chair of the Stop the War Coalition from its formation in 2001. In this capacity he presided at the concluding rally of what is claimed as the largest political demonstration in British history, against the Iraq war in 2003...
- A. L. MortonA. L. MortonLeslie Morton was a prolific English Marxist historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain...
- Walton NewboldWalton NewboldJohn Turner Walton Newbold , known as Walton Newbold, was the first Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom to be elected as a Communist.-Early years:...
- Sylvia PankhurstSylvia PankhurstEstelle Sylvia Pankhurst was an English campaigner for the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom. She was for a time a prominent left communist who then devoted herself to the cause of anti-fascism.-Early life:...
- William PaulWilliam Paul (British politician)William Paul , often known as Willie or Bill Paul, was a British socialist politician.Born in Glasgow, Paul became an active socialist and joined the Socialist Labour Party . In 1911, he moved to Derby, where he ran a market stall selling hosiery and drapery...
- Wogan PhilippsWogan Philipps, 2nd Baron MilfordWogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford was the only member of the Communist Party of Great Britain ever to sit in the House of Lords.-Early life:...
- Phil PiratinPhil PiratinPhilip Piratin , known as Phil Piratin, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and one of their few Members of Parliament....
- Peter Polish
- Harry PollittHarry PollittHarry Pollitt was the head of the trade union department of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the General Secretary of the party for more than 20 years.- Early life :...
- Raymond PostgateRaymond PostgateRaymond William Postgate was an English socialist, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet.-Early life:...
- Annie PowellAnnie PowellAnnie Powell was a Welsh Communist politician.Born in Rhondda and educated at Pentre Grammar School, Powell became interested in politics while at Glamorgan Training College, Barry, in the 1920s...
- Tom Quelch
- Jimmy ReidJimmy ReidJames "Jimmy" Reid was a Scottish trade union activist, orator, politician, and journalist born in Govan, Glasgow. His role as spokesman and one of the leaders in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in between June 1971 and October 1972 attracted international recognition...
- John ReidJohn Reid (politician)John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan, PC is a British politician, who served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament and cabinet minister under Tony Blair, most notably as Defence Secretary and then Home Secretary...
- Al Richardson
- Edgell RickwordEdgell RickwordJohn Edgell Rickword, MC was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s.-Early life:He was born in Colchester, Essex...
- Michael RobertsMichael Roberts (writer)Michael Roberts , originally named William Edward Roberts, was an English poet, writer, critic and broadcaster, who made his living as a teacher.-Life:...
- Andrew RothsteinAndrew RothsteinAndrew Rothstein was a Russian-British journalist.Rothstein, who was to became a significant figure in British Communism, was born in London to Jewish Russian political emigrants. His subsequent life was always tinged by the identity of his father, Theodore Rothstein...
- William Rust
- Shapurji SaklatvalaShapurji SaklatvalaShapurji Saklatvala was a British politician of Indian Parsi heritage. He was the third Indian Member of Parliament in the Parliament of the United Kingdom after fellow Parsis Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Bhownagree....
- Raphael SamuelRaphael SamuelRaphael Elkan Samuel was a British Marxist historian, described by Stuart Hall as "one of the most outstanding, original intellectuals of his generation" . He was professor of history at the University of East London at the time of his death and also taught at Ruskin College from 1962 until his...
- John SavilleJohn SavilleJohn Saville was a Greek-British Marxist historian, long associated with Hull University. He was one of the most influential writers on British Labour History in the second half of the twentieth century.- Life and career :...
- Hugh ScanlonHugh ScanlonHugh Parr Scanlon, Baron Scanlon was a British trade union leader.Scanlon was born in Melbourne, Australia to parents who had emigrated from Britain...
- Alfred ShermanAlfred ShermanSir Alfred Sherman, KBE, was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he began life as a Communist soldier in the Spanish Civil War but later...
- Derek SimpsonDerek Simpson (trade unionist)Derek Simpson is the former Joint General Secretary of the UK's biggest private-sector trade union, Unite from 2007 until 2010. He was General Secretary of the Amicus trade union from 2002 until its merger with the Transport and General Workers' Union to form Unite in 2007.-Early life:Derek...
- Cliff SlaughterCliff Slaughter-Life:During the Second World War, Cliff Slaughter worked in a coal mine as one of the Bevin Boys. While there, he was injured when kicked by a pit pony.He later became a lecturer and writer on sociology and Marxism...
- Sue SlipmanSue SlipmanSue Slipman OBE was President of the National Union of Students of the United Kingdom between 1977 and 1978. She later joined the National Union of Public Employees...
- John Maynard SmithJohn Maynard SmithJohn Maynard Smith,His surname was Maynard Smith, not Smith, nor was it hyphenated. F.R.S. was a British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J.B.S....
- Michael John SmithMichael John Smith (Espionage)Michael John Smith was born on 22 September 1948. He was charged in the UK with four offences under sections 1 and the Official Secrets Act 1911 in 1992 and convicted on the three of charges under section 1. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This was later reduced to 20 years on appeal in...
- Ken SpragueKen SpragueKen Sprague was an English socialist political cartoonist, journalist and activist, involved in trade union, civil rights and peace movements. In later life he was also a TV presenter and a psychotherapist....
- Hedi StadlenHedi StadlenHedi Stadlen , better known in Sri Lanka as Hedi Keuneman, was an Austrian Jewish philosopher, political activist, and musicologist. She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.-Vienna:...
- Randall SwinglerRandall SwinglerRandall Swingler MM was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest.His was a prosperous middle class Anglican family near Nottingham, with an industrial background in the Midlands. He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford...
- Tilda SwintonTilda SwintonKatherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
- A. J. P. TaylorA. J. P. TaylorAlan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
- E. P. ThompsonE. P. ThompsonEdward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
- Alan ThornettAlan ThornettAlan Thornett is a British Trotskyist leader, and one of the officers of the left-wing Respect party.Alan Thornett began his career as a car worker in Cowley, Oxford in 1959. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain there in 1960 before being recruited with other shop stewards to Gerry...
- Dona TorrDona TorrDona Ruth Anne Torr was a British Marxist historian, and a major influence on the Communist Party Historians Group. Aside from her translations of many Marxist classics into English, she is perhaps best known for her unfinished biography of the important labour activist, Tom Mann, Tom Mann and his...
- Philip ToynbeePhilip ToynbeeTheodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published...
- David Triesman
- Edward UpwardEdward UpwardEdward Falaise Upward was a British novelist and short story writer and, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author.-Biography:...
- Freda UtleyFreda UtleyWinifred Utley, commonly known as Freda Utley, was an English scholar, political activist and best-selling author. After visiting the Soviet Union in 1927 as a trade union activist, she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1928...
- Harry WicksHarry WicksHarry Wicks was a British socialist activist.-Biography:Born in Battersea, London, he went to work on the railways and joined the National Union of Railwaymen in 1919. He joined the Labour Party, but after Black Friday moved to the Communist Party of Great Britain . After studying with A. E. E...
- Ellen WilkinsonEllen WilkinsonEllen Cicely Wilkinson was the Labour Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough and later for Jarrow on Tyneside. She was one of the first women in Britain to be elected as a Member of Parliament .- History :...
- Raymond WilliamsRaymond WilliamsRaymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
- Tom WintringhamTom WintringhamThomas Henry Wintringham was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was an important figure in the formation of the Home Guard during World War II and was one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party.-Early life:Tom Wintringham was born 1898...
- Robert WyattRobert WyattRobert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
See also
- Young Communist LeagueYoung Communist League (Britain)The Young Communist League is the name of both the youth wing of the former Communist Party of Great Britain and the current youth wing of the Communist Party of Britain ; an organisation that sees itself as the successor to the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Original Young Communist League...
- Communist StudentsCommunist StudentsCommunist Students may refer to two existing organisations:* Communist Students * Communist Students...
- Communist Party of BritainCommunist Party of BritainThe Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Great Britain. Although founded in 1988 it traces its origins back to 1920 and the Communist Party of Great Britain, and claims the legacy of that party and its most influential members Harry Pollitt and John Gollan as its...
- Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee)The Communist Party of Great Britain is a political group which publishes the Weekly Worker newspaper. The party favours the creation of a unified "Communist Party of the European Union"...
External links
- The 20th Congress and the British Communist Party by J.Saville. pdf file
- Short History of the Communist Party, Communist Party of BritainCommunist Party of BritainThe Communist Party of Britain is a communist political party in Great Britain. Although founded in 1988 it traces its origins back to 1920 and the Communist Party of Great Britain, and claims the legacy of that party and its most influential members Harry Pollitt and John Gollan as its...
- The Burial of the CPGB, International Library of the Communist Left
- Communist Party of Great Britain Archive Marxists Internet Archive
- [A-Z of Communist Biographies by Graham Stevenson