Noreen Branson, The History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1941–1951. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1997. vii + 262 pp. $22.50 paper.

Abstract

This is the fourth volume in an ongoing series. James Klugmann brought his history of the British Communist party through the general strike of 1926 in two initial volumes. Noreen Branson covered the years 1927–1941 in volume three. Now she takes the story up to the fall of Clement Attlee's Labour government in 1951. It is an important story she wishes to tell, for the Communist party was influential out of all proportion to party membership, especially during the war years, which, in retrospect, were something of a climacteric. The party's precipitous fall from grace during the early years of the Cold War marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. The period Noreen Branson treats in the present volume was a crucible.