For Socialist Revolution or National Liberation?

Abstract

In the post-war period, several world events, such as the installation of the so-called People’s Democracies in Eastern Europe, the victory of the Chinese Communist Party and the beginnings of decolonisation across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, led the international communist movement to foresee a period of socialist advance, frustrated by the outbreak of the Cold War. As the Party at the centre of the largest empire at the time, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had become a conduit between anti-colonialists across the empire and Moscow. While a number of scholars have focused on the role of communists in national liberation movements in the colonies, this chapter focuses on how links with these movements and broader anti-colonial rhetoric was developed by the Communist Parties in the settler colonies, particularly South Africa and Australia. These Communist Parties acted as local representatives of the international communist movement within their spheres of influence, assisting in the anti-colonial struggle in surrounding areas. From the late 1940s until the 1960s, the CPGB, alongside the CPSA and the CPA, were greatly involved in building solidarity with anti-colonial movements across the British Empire. This chapter seeks to uncover the transnational links created by these parties in the era of decolonisation and the ways in which the Communist Parties in the Dominions worked with fraternal organisations in the colonial sphere.