Communist Party Of Great Britain Research Articles

“Once it was Ireland, Now it is Kenya”: anti-colonialism and internationalism in the pages of the Connolly Association’s Irish Democrat in the 1950s–60s

ABSTRACT Irish Democrat was the paper of the Connolly Association, a diaspora organisation established to build support for Irish republicanism within the British labour movement. The Connolly Association and the Irish Democrat had strong links to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which advocated for a peaceful mass movement to challenge the British presence in Northern Ireland and to remove discrimination faced by Catholics in the Six Counties. Encouraged by the wave of decolonisation across the British Empire in the 1950s-60s, both the CA and the CPGB saw the struggle against Unionist rule in Northern Ireland as analogous to events in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This paper explores the narration of anti-colonial and national liberation movements elsewhere in the British Empire in the pages of the Irish Democrat and the overdetermination of Irish national questions by post-war discourses of radical decolonisation. It also traces the formation across difference of specific solidarities between the Connolly Association and other migrant communities within the multicultural political geography of post-war Britain, including out of campaigns against racial discrimination, the “colour bar” and post-war immigration controls.

‘Uncomradely and Un-communist’: Breakdown in the Communist Anglosphere? The Communist Party of Great Britain and Communist Party of Australia Debate, 1947–1948

‘Uncomradely and Un-communist’: Breakdown in the Communist Anglosphere? The Communist Party of Great Britain and Communist Party of Australia Debate, 1947–1948

Activism in Isolation: The Tudeh party of Iran in British Left Discourse during the Long 1980s

In 1983, the arrest of Noureddin Kianouri, the first secretary of the Tudeh Party of Iran came as a shock to the international community. In a letter of condemnation, communist parties from Indonesia to Jamaica pledged solidarity with their Iranian comrades. The optimism initially brought by the 1979 revolution was severely reversed and the suppression of the Iranian Left by the Islamic government was regarded as an attack on the international Left. A significant voice of opposition came from Britain, with the Communist party of Great Britain (CPGB), the British Labor party, the trade unions and solidarity groups coming out in full support of the Tudeh and to take on the cause of Iran as their own. Although interest had existed since the 1940s, it was the 1979 revolution that firmly placed the Tudeh within the discourse of the British Left, energizing the movement and solidifying its internationalist credentials. Similarly, for the Tudeh, which had become side-lined in Iranian politics and had lost members to more radical strands of the Iranian Left, the attention it received helped renew its activism and sense of purpose.

The Trials of Ormond Uren: A Study in Security and Spy Mania

In 1943, Ormond Uren, an army officer employed in the London headquarters of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, was court-martialed and imprisoned after disclosing secret information to a senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The episode has become a staple of writers interested in tales of espionage and questions of loyalty, with Uren’s actions routinely presented as those of a spy and traitor. Drawing on MI5 records and other sources, this article argues that those routine images lack convincing evidence to support them; but it also demonstrates that the case retains importance as an example of the risks that secret organizations run when employees’ loyalties lie elsewhere.

Bolshevization, Stalinization, and Party Ritual: The Congresses of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–1943

This paper examines the national congresses of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in the period of the Communist International (1919- 43). Both in Britain and internationally, communist party congresses in this period lost any independent decision-making role and became a mechanism activated and controlled from above. Not surprisingly, they have attracted little serious scholarly notice in their own right, but this paper identifies three themes deserving consideration: first, that of the congress as a field of tension between inherited notions of delegatory democracy and the Comintern’s top-down version of democratic centralism; second, that of its growing importance as a site of symbolic demonstration and ritualized group action; and third, that of bolshevization and Stalinization as processes that can be traced through these changing conceptions of the congress’s role. Each theme is considered here in a separate section. These employ a three-party periodization that supports an argument of the CPGB’s early but protracted bolshevization. Further watershed moments in the late 1920s and the mid-1930s can both in different ways be identified with Stalinization. These, however, did not so much resolve as displace the tensions with wider labour movement practices.

Jimmy Reid: A Clyde-Built Man

Jimmy Reid: A Clyde-Built Man

‘Class Against Class’: The leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Comintern’s Third Period, 1928–1934

ABSTRACT A prosopographical survey employed statistical analysis of data detailing the origins, occupations, prior affiliations, political careers and destinations of the 66 leading Communists who served on the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) during the Comintern’s Third Period, 1928–1934. There was significant innovation in composition: consonant with transformed politics, around 62% of CC representatives were newcomers, turnover accelerated significantly compared with 1923–1927 and the Old Guard was discarded. The committees were younger, although mean age only declined from 37 to 34 years, and female representation more than doubled. The CC remained overwhelmingly working-class – slightly more than in earlier years – with strong representation from skilled manual workers and miners. Only a small minority met the Comintern prescription that the committee be revitalised by electing factory militants; by the end of the Third Period, 90% of members were paid party workers. Short-term change failed to produce an enduring renewal of the Communist leadership. Some 75% of Newcomers during the ‘Class Against Class’ years failed to survive beyond them as CC representatives, with negative implications for the construction of an experienced cadre. A core of 12 who served before, during and after the Third Period was reinforced by 10 Newcomers who continued in the leadership after 1934. In succeeding decades, none of them challenged in prominence and prestige the core of leaders in place prior to 1929.

The Comintern, Communist women leaders and the struggle for women's liberation in Britain between the wars: a political and prosopographical investigation, part 2

This is the second part of an article which explores and contextualises in revolutionary theory and practice the lives and careers of a highly unusual group of women, many hitherto hidden from history, who took a leading part in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) between 1920 and 1939. The first instalment discussed the historiography and outlined a prosopographical approach to the subject. It traced the theory of women's liberation which informed the early Comintern and its national affiliates from its roots in the work of Engels, the German Social Democratic Party and the Second International; outlined developments in CPGB policy on the question over two decades; and presented a statistical analysis of 15 of the 18 women who figured in the party leadership between the wars. This second instalment provides mini-biographies of these Central Committee (CC) members. It examines their origins, ethnicity, religion, education, occupation, previous affiliations, political attitudes and career in the CPGB. Recuperation confirms that the group as a whole embraced Communism as a break with earlier women's politics – including those with direct experience of the suffrage movement. They rejected feminism but exhibited little interest in Marxist theory beyond Comintern pronouncements. Committed to the party and the policies of the Soviet Union as it moved from Lenin to Stalin, they were practical organisers and agitators who, on the whole, respected conventional gender roles. They exercised the right to be politically active, even in the face of domestic commitments, and engaged in the general activities of the party as well as specialist work with women. But they offered no explicit critique of the family, prevailing sexual mores or the subordination of women members within the CPGB.

The Comintern, Communist women leaders and the struggle for women's liberation in Britain between the wars: a political and prosopographical investigation, part 1

The literature on Communist women is sparse and touches tangentially on the lives of female activists, even those who participated in the Communist Party leadership. This is the first part of a two-part article which examines 15 of the 18 very unusual women who figured on the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) between 1920 and 1939. It outlines Communist perspectives on women's liberation documenting their roots in the Marxist analysis associated with Frederick Engels, August Bebel and Clara Zetkin, pioneered in the Second International and the German Social Democracy (SPD), taken up by the Bolsheviks, and adopted in the early 1920s by the infant Comintern. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses displayed by this theoretical tradition and its critique of its rival, feminism. It traces attempts to translate it into practice in Britain thwarted by the resilience of conventional consciousness and the development of Stalinism. In that context, the article adopts a prosopographical approach. It provides a statistical survey of the leading women who made up a mere 13% of CC membership between the World Wars. High turnover hindered female cadre building; 83% of our subjects served only a single term. The cohort was more middle-class than male CC representatives or women in the party at large. While 60% had Communist partners, in a surprising 70% of these cases the woman was more prominent politically. Children and family did not preclude high levels of activism and greater loyalty to the CPGB measured by longevity of party membership than their male CC counterparts. The second part of the paper explores the lives and careers of individual women leaders.

PRESENTATION OF THE COLLECTIVE MONOGRAPH “COMINTERN AND THE EAST: TO THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE COMINTERN” IN THE INSTITUTE OF ORIENTAL STUDIES, RAS

The collective monograph “Comintern and the East: To the 100th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Comintern” focuses on the activities of the Comintern in the Eastern countries. Based on the newly discovered documents and materials from Russian and foreign archives, the collective of authors proposes to look at the events of the early 20th century from the perspective of the 21st century, and to expand the understanding of the place and role of the Communist International in the context of internal political, geopolitical, economic, national liberation processes as well as the main directions of its policy. Presented monograph is based on the talks of the international academic conference “The Comintern and the East: To the 100th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Comintern”, organized by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The book consists of five sections. The first section opens with the studies on the relationship of the Comintern and the first Middle Eastern Communist Parties in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The second section researches the relationship of the Comintern with the countries of the Far East: Japan, China, and Korea. The third section analyzes the role of the Comintern in the history of Russian / Soviet-Mongolian relations in the 1920s — early 1930s. The fourth section extensively covers materials on the liberation movement in India, where M. N. Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and others played prominent roles. The fifth section contains studies about the relationship between the leaders of the Comintern and the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920–1924.

‘A new and disturbing form of subversion’: Militant Tendency, MI5 and the threat of Trotskyism in Britain, 1937-1987

ABSTRACT This article examines how the rise of Militant Tendency transformed MI5’s perception of Trotskyism’s ability to pose a threat to the British state. Militant’s emergence in the 1970s as an entryist organisation within the Labour Party and its subsequent influence on Liverpool City Council in the early 1980s led security officials to consider it as an equal if not greater subversive threat than the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Drawing on newly released files, the article adds to the understanding of counter-subversive investigations in Cold War Britain and assesses how, between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Militant became the first and, so far, only Trotskyist group to be considered by MI5 a significant subversive threat to British internal security.

The ‘core’ leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1923–1928: their past, present and future

ABSTRACT Building on a previous study of the executive committee (EC) of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in the 1920s, the 19 activists who formed the ‘core’ of the party leadership – a category defined by service on four or more of the five committees elected between 1923 and 1928 – were analysed. Biographical material and statistical data were utilized to explore their origins, age, occupation, education, earlier allegiances, party experience and future destinations. The entire cohort, the 19 ‘core’ leaders, together with the 20 Communists who served less frequently on the EC, 1923–1928, were then compared on the above variables with the group which had sat on the committee during the CPGB’s foundation period, 1920–1923. Those born in England decreased from 69% in the first period to 50% in the second; the proportion of Scots increased from 22% to 36% while the Welsh remained below 10%. Both cohorts were overwhelmingly white, male and working-class. Aggregating the two groups across the 9 years from 1920 to 1928, skilled workers made up more than 40% of the CPGB leadership – 26.4% were metal workers. Less than 16% of the leadership were miners, considerably less than among the membership generally, while 11% had attended university. Only 5.4% were female although women constituted 16% of CPGB members. Only two men of colour featured on the EC while more leaders than members came from middle-class backgrounds. At least 27% had not only left the EC but the CPGB itself by 1930; at the other end of the spectrum, 35% of the 1920’s leadership appeared on the committee beyond this period while four, the ‘core of the core’ served into the post-war years. There was diversity but ultimately political uniformity. CPGB leaders either accepted the authority of the Comintern or alternatively left the party as individuals. Constrained by the context, a dysfunctional model of organization and Soviet policy, they fell short of the Bolshevik model of the revolutionary leader.

J. V. Stalin and The British Road to Socialism

ABSTRACT Joseph Stalin exerted substantial influence over the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the largest Communist party in the U.K. between 1951 and 1991, as well as its intellectual successor, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), which has operated since 1988. This article explores Stalin’s impact upon The British Road to Socialism (BRS), the official programme of the CPGB and CPB. It does so by examining primary documents from the CPGB and Russian State archives – especially the minutes of meetings and letters between Stalin and CPGB General Secretary Harry Pollitt between 1950 and 1951. These documents reveal that Stalin was not only instrumental in changing the scope of the CPGB strategy, from short-term electoral platforms to a long-term programme. He was also influential in determining the content of this programme, which became the BRS. All of Stalin’s suggestions were implemented in the BRS when it was published in 1951. Stalin’s ideas were inherited by later editions as well. Although some were revised in 1958 and 1977, his core policies have returned in the most recent edition of the BRS, published by the CPB in 2020. This indicates that Stalinism is alive and well in the Communist Party of Britain.

Communist International and Independent Labour Party of Great Britain in 1933 — Early 1934

The article is mainly based on the archival data, Comintern publications and British periodicals. The author examines the relations between the leaders of the III, Communist, International and the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1933 — the beginning of 1934. A. Prokopov paid much attention to the analyses of public correspondence between the leaders of the Communist International and the ILP, he also investigates some secrete recommendations (related to the ILP) which the authorities of the Comintern had sent to the chief members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). On the basis of the information from these sources the author could make a conclusion that the policy of the Communist International in Britain in 1933 — the beginning of 1934 was mainly directed to secure affiliation of the ILP to the Comintern in the capacity of a sympathizing party; moreover, Moscow also tried to unite the ILP and the CPGB framed in one party. The main aim of these plans was to eliminate the far left party (ILP) which was competing with the CPGB and to strengthen the position and to enlarge numbers of British Communists in the most favorable, as in Comintern believed, circumstances, when the British state was still suffering many problems caused by the world economic crisis (1929—1933). A. Prokopov also investigates the reaction of the chief members of the ILP towards these actions of the leaders of Comintern.

Intellectual lives, performance and persona: The making of a people’s historian

The most important aspect of British historian Raphael Samuel (1934-1996) was his entire way of being a historian. Samuel, a former youth member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, is best known as a founder of the first British New Left (1956-62), the driving force behind the first History Workshop movement (1963-79), which pioneered a distinctive 'history-from-below', and as the author of Theatres of Memory (1994), an idiosyncratic exploration of the past in contemporary culture. Despite all this, he did not advance an especially ground-breaking historical argument or historiographical theory. He set his sights elsewhere, on the democratisation of history making. To achieve this end, he created a distinctive persona as a people's historian through which he projected a radical transformation of what it meant to study history. Yet posterity was both condescending and neglectful, and until recently the full …

Nationalism, internationalism and anti-capitalism : left-wing opposition to the European Union

Right-wing opposition to the European Union has frequently been in the headlines in the past two decades and has dominated debates about the future direction of the United Kingdom regarding Europe. However, some strands of the labour movement have been fiercely opposed to the United Kingdom’s membership of the E.U. and have preferred withdrawal. Leading figures of the left wing of the Labour Party campaigned in favour of a ‘no’ vote in the 1975 referendum, and in the early 1980s Labour officially championed withdrawal, before adopting the aim of reforming European institutions from within. The Communist Party of Great Britain evolved in a similar manner. Consequently, by the early 1990s, organised opposition to the E.U. came mainly, but not solely, from Trotskyist groupings. In the 2009 and 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the No2EU lists brought together trade unionists, Trotskyists, Communists, Socialists, and left-wing ecologists. The 2016 referendum on British membership of the E.U. also saw left-wing alliances advocating withdrawal. This paper will situate these alliances in the context of long-standing left-wing opposition to the EU, establishing the specificities of its positions and analyses in relation to right-wing Euroscepticism. It will then examine the difficulties it has faced in making itself heard and its relative lack of success in influencing public debates about the UK’s membership of the E.U.

The early British Communist leaders, 1920–1923: a prosopographical exploration

ABSTRACT The members of its governing Executive Committee constituted the national leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Prosopographical analysis which employs both quantitative and qualitative methods is utilized to explore the origins; age; education; occupations; experience and affiliation; party career; and destination of 47 of 48 members of the committee who held office between 1920 and 1923. The survey presents, in many cases for the first time, details of their background and activity. Against previous assertions of youthfulness and Scottish and Welsh influence, it demonstrates the majority were born in England before 1890 and that while almost two-thirds were skilled workers or miners, a fifth worked in white-collar occupations. There were high rates of turnover and discontinuity: more than 80% of representatives served briefly and 71% were never re-elected after 1923. Up to half were no longer in the party by the end of the decade and only four remained in its leadership after 1932. Mini-biographies of the 33 Communists whose leading role was restricted to ‘the long foundation period’ confirm the weakness and frequently ineffective and confused nature of its leadership as well as the significant difficulties faced by early British Communism.

The Socialist Labour Party and the Leadership of Early British Communism

The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) contributed a small number of members to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) founded a century ago, compared with the considerably larger British Socialist Party (BSP). Nonetheless, some historians have claimed leading SLP members, well-versed in Marxist theory, proved to be excellent leadership material and figured disproportionately in directing the early CPGB. ‘Bolshevisation’ of the party in the mid-1920s saw them crowded out by opportunist ex-BSP activists more amenable to Moscow, with a deleterious impact on the CPGB's theoretical clarity and political fortunes. Absorption in mundane activity blunted the former SLPers’ theoretical edge and ‘will to revolution’. A statistical analysis of compositional trends on the CPGB Executive Committee, 1920–1928, combined with examination of the 19 ex-SLPers who sat on it and of major ex-SLP protagonists, confirms they punched above their weight, not just initially but through the 1920s. However, the turning point was not ‘Bolshevisation’ but the onset in 1929 of Stalin's leftist Third Period. There is scant evidence that former SLP representatives were replaced in the leadership by former BSP activists. The idea of conflicting SLP and BSP political identities persisting beyond the party's ‘bedding down’ period is exaggerated and fails to facilitate understanding of CPGB development during its first decade.

'A last stubborn outpost of a past epoch': The Communist Party of Great Britain, national liberation in Zimbabwe and anti-imperialist solidarity

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had been involved in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist campaigns since the 1920s and in the late 1950s, its members were instrumental in the founding of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM). In the 1960s and 1970s, this extended to support for the national liberation movement in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, the CPGB threw its support behind the Soviet-backed Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), instead of their rival, the Chinese-backed Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). When both groups entered into a short-term military and political alliance in 1976, the Patriotic Front, this posed a possible problem for the Communist Party and the AAM, but publicly these British organisations proclaimed solidarity with newly created PF. However this expression of solidarity and internationalist links quickly untangled after the 1980 elections, which were convincingly won by ZANU-PF and left the CPGB's traditional allies, ZAPU, with a small share of seats in the national parliament. This article explores the contours of the relationship between the CPGB, the broader Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain and its links with the organisations in Zimbabwe during the war of national liberation, examining the opportunities and limits presented by this campaign of anti-imperial solidarity.

The Unexpected Denunciation: The Reception of Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ in Britain

This article investigates how Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ was received in Britain. It looks firstly at analyses of the Soviet Union that were current at the time of Stalin’s death: the Cold War school that effectively precluded the possibility of any serious reforms being implemented, and the school of thought that was expecting, especially after Stalin’s death, the implementation of a programme of far-reaching reforms. It then looks at the press coverage of the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and the subsequent emergence of the ‘Secret Speech’. It shows the way that the differing schools of thought dealt with the speech and the changes announced at the congress, noting how they attempted to fit them into their theoretical schemas. It also deals with the response of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s leadership to the congress and speech and the way that this triggered a wave of criticism within the party membership. Finally, it concludes that the Cold War school greatly underestimated the capacity of the Soviet leadership to implement liberalising reforms, that those expecting far-reaching reforms were to be disappointed by their limited nature, and that the ‘Secret Speech’ and other events of 1956 were gradually to change the previously uncritical attitude of the Communist Party towards the Soviet Union.