Communist Party of Great Britain

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was a political party in the United Kingdom, which existed from 1920 to 1991.

The 1940s and 50s

With the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 the CPGB, in line with other Communist Parties, campaigned for peace describing it as an imperialist war in which the working class had no side to take. This was opposed within the CPGB by no less a figure than Harry Pollitt who felt so strongly on the issue that he resigned from the Central Committee of the party although he remained a member. Pollitt, temporarily, left the leadership and Palme Dutt replaced him. Through 1939 to 1941 then the CPGB was very active in supporting strikes and in denouncing the government for its pursuit of the war.

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However when in 1941 the Soviet Union was invaded by the Nazis 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 General Secretary. In fact its 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 also 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 bye-election in cardiff they actively campaigned for the Conservative Party candidate against Fenner Brockway the Independent Labour Party candidate.

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The CPGB reached its peak in 1943 and 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 one was 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.

Related Topics:
1945 general election - Members of parliament - Phil Piratin - Mile End - 1950 general election

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The party's membership peaked during 1943 reaching around 60,000. Despite boasting some leading intellectuals, especially historians, the British Communist 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.

Related Topics:
Historians - French Communist Party - Italian Communist Party

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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. 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.

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From the war years to 1956 the CPGB was at its apogee of 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.

Related Topics:
National Union of Mineworkers - Electrical Trade Union - Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers - Eric Heffer

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The death of Stalin and the uprising in East Germany were of little influence on the CPGB in themselves 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, which was first published in English in The Observer newspaper, and then the events of 1956 in Poland and Hungary. Labour unrest in Poland and then in Hungary were to totally disrupt not only the CPGB but many other CP's as well. However in Britain the CPGB was to experience its greatest ever loss of membership as a result of the intervention of the Warsaw Pact armies and their crushing of the workers uprising in Hungary in 1956. This event was covered in the CPGB sponsored paper The Daily Worker by its correspondent Peter Fryer but as events unfolded they were spiked. On his return to Britain Fryer would become one of the thousands of CPGB members to resign from the party.

Related Topics:
East Germany - Khrushchev - Secret Speech - Hungary - Peter Fryer

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