View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sussex Research Online A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Children of the Red Flag Growing Up in a Communist Family During the Cold War: A Comparative Analysis of the British and Dutch Communist Movement Elke Marloes Weesjes Dphil University of Sussex September 2010 1 Statement I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature:……………………………………… 2 Abstract This thesis assesses the extent of social isolation experienced by Dutch and British ‘children of the red flag’, i.e. people who grew up in communist families during the Cold War. This study is a comparative research and focuses on the political and non-political aspects of the communist movement. By collating the existing body of biographical research and prosopographical literature with oral testimonies this thesis sets out to build a balanced picture of the British and Dutch communist movement. The study is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the political life of communists within the wider context of the history of British and Dutch communist organizations (i.e. both communist parties and their youth organizations) from 1901-1970. Part II discusses the private and public life of British and Dutch communists in the period 1940-1970. The latter draws upon oral testimonies and questions if non-political aspects of communist life were based on a Soviet model. The experiences of communist children are explored into detail within the context of the following topics; political and cultural upbringing, prescription and aspirations, neighbourhood, school & education, work & employment, money & poverty and friendships & relationships. The interviews are being used as a means of testing the accuracy of two authors in particular; Jolande Withuis and Raphael Samuel, who both published pioneering works on communist mentality. The originality of this project rests in its approach; it is a comparative research inspired by both oral history and memory studies. Instead of emphasizing the idea of a unified and centralized (international) communist movement, this thesis argues that cultural, social and political differences between Britain and the Netherlands fundamentally influenced the nature and form of their respective communist movement and explain the discrepancy between the Dutch and British respondents’ experiences. Applying the comparative approach this study challenges the existing definitions of communist identity and as such it contributes to recent comparative studies of the communist movement as well as studies of communist mentality. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Sources and methodology 15 Arguments and structure 21 Part I - Communist Organisations Chapter One - The Founding History of the Dutch and British Communist Party Introduction 28 Pillarisation 29 The origins of the British and Dutch Communist Party 30 WWI and the Russian Revolution 34 British and Dutch Trade Unions 36 CPGB and the CPN in the 1920s and 1930s 40 WWII 1939-1945 49 The Cold War 60 Conclusion 76 Chapter Two - Communist Youth Organizations, 1901-1970 Introduction 78 History of the Dutch and British Communist Youth Movement; Founding to 1945 80 The ANJV and YCL 1945-1948 90 The Cold War: Isolation 1948-1958 93 Détente and Cooperation 1958-1970 99 Conclusion 125 Part II - Communist Identity Introduction 127 Family Tradition? 128 Chapter Three - WWII & The Year 1956: Impact and Aftermath Introduction 133 WWII 133 ‘1956’ 143 Conclusion 149 4 Chapter Four - Private Spheres: Communist Homelife Introduction 151 Politics at home 152 Cultural upbringing 159 Prescriptions & aspirations 163 Spock vs. Makarenko 166 Conclusion 172 Chapter Five - Public Spheres: Neighbourhood, School and Work Introduction 174 Neighbourhood 175 School and education 183 Work and employment 193 Money and poverty 205 Friendships and relationships 209 Conclusion 212 Epilogue: Looking back 214 Conclusion 220 Bibliography 224 Appendix I List of abbreviations 232 Appendix II Membership CPN/CPGB and General elections results 234 Appendix III List of respondents 238 Appendix IV List of interview questions 240 5 Acknowledgments In the course of preparing and writing this thesis I have incurred many debts to members of the history department, colleagues, friends and family. I register here my grateful thanks to my supervisors, Alun Howkins and Ian Gazeley, who have supported and guided me in the past four years. A very special thanks goes out to Lucy Robinson and Andy Durr; I would not have embarked upon a research degree, if they wouldn’t have encouraged me to do so four years ago. I am grateful to the Sussex history department for awarding me with a postgraduate bursary, which enabled me to complete this research. I am also very grateful to all those people who agreed to be interviewed for this research project. Furthermore I want to thank a number of people who provided practical help and support; Margreet Schrevel, Ian Bullock, Kevin Morgan, Ben Jones, Paul Betts, Eugene Michail, Claire Langhamer, Nick Funke, Ruth Charnock and Pol Side, Mark Fonseca Rendeiro. I was fortunate to have the support and assistance of the Labour History Study and Archive Centre, the Working Class Movement Library and the International Institute for Social History. Lastly I want to thank my friends and family for inspiring and motivating me whenever I needed it most. I particularly want to thank my parents Sietze and Janny Weesjes and my siblings: Marie-Jose, Siebrand, Maaike, my friends Lennart Post, Nine Ludwig, Rachel McHale & Mike Ott, Tom Akehurst, Chris Kempshall, Becca Searle, Kevin Reynolds, Shad Khan, Raphael Hallett, Roger Johnson and Amanda McKeever. 6 Introduction To be a communist was to have a complete social identity, one which transcended the limits of class, gender and nationality. Like practicing Catholics or orthodox Jews, we lived in a little private world of our own, or, like some of the large or extended families of the period, ‘a tight….self-referential group’.1 (Raphael Samuel) Raphael Samuel (1934-1996), historian, socialist and ‘child of the red flag’, published three individual essays on British communism in New Left Review in the mid 1980s, which were later brought together in The Lost World of British Communism to mark the tenth anniversary of his death. The essays, which give an illuminating insight on many aspects of the British communist movement, are a captivating mixture of personal experiences, observations and archival research. Samuel gives a very personal history of the CPGB, but also describes the construction of a communist mentality around certain values and practices. This history of British communism ‘from below’ is also based on interviews with members of the author’s own family. In the Netherlands a study similar to that of Samuel was published in 1990. In that year the sociologist Jolande Withuis, also a ‘child of the red flag’ published Opoffering en Heroiek. De mentale wereld van een communistische vrouwenorganisatie in naoorlogs Nederland 1946-1976 (Sacrifice and heroism.The mental world of a communist women’s organisationin the post-war Netherlands 1946-1976)2, which is an extensive work on the Dutch communist women’s movement in the post war period based on archival research as well as life histories and other biographical sources. Withuis, who soon became (and still is) a leading authority in her field, focused on a generation of women born around 1920 who became active in the Nederlandse Vrouwenbeweging (Dutch Women Movement NVB) after the war. Her subjects were women who started families during and after WWII and who tried to give their children a communist upbringing. Her book, which describes the history of the NVB, is not about the political significance of this organization, but about 1 R. Samuel, The Lost World of British Communism, London: Verso 2006, p. 13. 2 J. Withuis, Opoffering en Heroiek. De Mentale Wereld van een Communistische Vrouwenorganisatie in Naoorlogs Nederland 1946-1976, Amsterdam: Boom, 1990. 7 what politics meant in its members' lives. Her research results in an interesting picture of the mentality and culture of Dutch communists in the Cold War period. Withuis, who was inspired by a number of foreign authors who did similar studies, notes in her introduction that her observations are very similar to those of Samuel, albeit less nostalgic.3 Samuel’s essays and Withuis’ Opoffering en Heroiek were in many ways the missing link between ‘traditional’ communist party histories and the numerous autobiographical narratives from ex-communists and communist activists. Unlike Withuis and Samuel authors of these ‘traditional’ party histories generally underplayed the social and cultural aspects of the communist movement by solely focusing on the political aspects.4 Withuis and Samuel are different because they both explore what politics meant in party members’ lives. By discussing political, cultural and social aspects, they built up a more complete yet personal picture of the communist movement. In Britain there are many political histories of the communist party. In their article on the historiography of the British Communist Party, John McIlroy and Alan Campbell, explore contributions to party history by CPGB cadres and their political antagonists and several academic contributions.5 McIlroy and Campbell discuss the work of cadres like Tom Bell, who wrote the first extended history of the CPGB in 19376, and journalists Allen Hutt7 and Robin Page Arnot8.