No Friends to the Left: The British Communist Party's Surveillance of the Far Left, c.1932–1980

Abstract

Influenced by developments in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the British Communist Party (CP) began to treat its rivals on the far left, principally the Trotskyists, as class rather than political enemies. Surveillance, including the maintenance of dossiers, began in 1932, but was greatly heightened in the late 1930s, as international tensions, notably the Nazi threat to the Soviet Union, increased. Less attention was paid to the Trotskyists in the later years of the Second World War and in the immediate post-war period, but was intensified during the Party crisis which followed the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Party. Later, the CP was faced with additional rivals, the Maoists, to monitor. Surveillance came to an end in the 1970s as sectarian attitudes abated and the CP entered its terminal decline.