The University of Manchester Research

Communists and British Society 1920-1991

Document Version Proof

Link to publication record in Manchester Research Explorer

Citation for published version (APA): Morgan, K., Cohen, G., & Flinn, A. (2007). Communists and British Society 1920-1991. Rivers Oram Press.

Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on Manchester Research Explorer is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Proof version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version.

General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Explorer are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.

Takedown policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please refer to the University of Manchester’s Takedown Procedures [http://man.ac.uk/04Y6Bo] or contact [email protected] providing relevant details, so we can investigate your claim.

Download date:30. Sep. 2021 INTRODUCTION

A dominant view of the communist party as an institution is that it provided a closed, well-ordered and intrusive political environment. The leading French scholars Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal discern in it a resemblance to Erving Goffman’s concept of a ‘total institution’. Brigitte Studer, another international authority, follows Sigmund Neumann in referring to it as ‘a party of absolute integration’; tran- scending national distinctions, at least in the Comintern period (1919–43) it is supposed to have comprised ‘a unitary system—which acted in an integrative fashion world-wide’.1 For those working within the so-called ‘totalitarian’ paradigm, the validity of such ‘total’ or ‘absolute’ concep- tions of communist politics has always been axiomatic. Cruder recitations of the party ‘line’ have typically adopted them unquestioningly. More recently, fuller documentation of the Comintern’s apparatus of controls, seemingly replicated in all but their most extreme forms by individual communist parties, has prompted renewed interest in the encompassing character of communist commitment. At the same time, traditional emphases on the instruments of authority have been supplemented and enriched by culturalist approaches and the growth of interest in commu- nist mentalities. In a British context, Raphael Samuel provided a virtuoso rendition of such themes in an acclaimed series of articles published in 1984–5. Tellingly, like the doyenne of French communist historians, Annie Kriegel, he took as his theme not the mentalities of the party’s followers, but ‘the’ mentality, singular. Brilliantly depicted as a ‘lost world’, it seemed self-contained and almost frozen in time, with evidence from decades and communities apart placed together like fossils in a cabinet.2 What many of these accounts convey is a sense both of enclosure and of what Studer calls the ‘fusion’ between the individual and the party. ‘To be a Communist was to have a complete social identity, one which tran- scended the limits of class, gender and nationality’, Samuel argued. Studer describes it not as a party but as a destiny, ‘at once a community, 2 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INTRODUCTION 3 an order, a family—a way of life’.3 It meant inhabiting ‘a little private of cultural or political capital which allowed more negotiated relationships world of our own’—Samuel’s recollection—or being ‘shut up’ in a party with the party. Specifically in the British case, Samuel acknowledged that cell; and to the strong opposition of inner citadel to the ‘outside world’ ‘party-mindedness was not easy to impose on a membership so heteroge- is added an emphasis on the total overhaul of one’s personal identity that neous in its origins, and overlapping at so many points with the labour and adhesion to the party involved. Sandro Bellassai, writing of the Italian trade union movement’, though without himself exploring the ‘real if communist party, describes this as ‘the exemplary perception and presen- limited autonomies’ which resulted from this.11 tation of one’s own life story divided into “before” and “after” entering These are critical distinctions. Perhaps they help clarify the over- the party. This “event” alone marked an existential watershed between the familiar historiographical exchanges in which conflicting generalisations kind of hazy and defective personal “prehistory” and a new season of as to autonomy or control have corresponded to, or predetermined, a focus completeness and maturity...’4 In the autobiographies of French commu- on different aspects of the communist experience. They also allow the nists the process is often described as a ‘second birth’, indispensable in possibility of genuine comparison, so that Pennetier and Pudal can stress the formation of the ‘total’ communist and even involving the ‘killing’ of the specificity of French communism in the degree to which it conformed the former self.5 In Britain, according to Samuel, ‘joining the Party was to the master narratives of the Comintern era.12 Pointedly, a major histor- experienced as a momentous event, equivalent in its intensity—to taking ical survey to which both they and Studer contribute bears the plural title, a decision for Christ’.6 A century of communisms. In the global perspective which its editors adopt, It is this idea of a rarefied world, defined by sharp temporal and asso- the characterisation of communism in terms of diversity held together by ciational boundaries, which suggests the analogy with the total institution. a common project seems unarguable.13 In a more limited way, it is the In Goffman’s definition, cited by Pennetier and Pudal, the total institution assumed singularity of the communist experience, in the double sense of is ‘a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated its oneness and distinctiveness, that we examine more closely here, even in individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of the case of a single national variant like the communism of the CPGB. time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life’.7 There is no doubt that the idea of a single overriding commitment had What Goffman had in mind were prisons, barracks, monasteries, labour a tremendous significance for communists themselves. The British theo- camps, to which one might certainly add the intense segregation of the retician R. Palme Dutt described it to 1930s’ student recruits as a Comintern’s International Lenin School (ILS), attended by some 160 comprehensive ‘life-outlook’: British communists between 1926 and 1937. The aim, in the words of an early CPGB syllabus, was that of a party hammered out of steel; but for Communism is a complete world conception covering every the little band of British communists, who even in their heyday were scat- aspect of life, and transforming all our thinking and activity; the tered across the outside world in proportions of a thousand to one, an comradeship of Communism draws us into a great collective absolute sense of enclosure must have been especially difficult to maintain.8 movement, in which all can find their realisation, and in which In sensitive accounts, the notion of totality is therefore always qualified. the old distinctions of politics and life, of political activity and Pennetier and Pudal thus describe western communist parties as ‘open’ private life, disappear and lose their meaning.14 total institutions, albeit with uncertain implications given the predication of Goffman’s original conception upon confinement and the condition of Dutt himself was a brilliantly gifted Oxford graduate whose intellect, the ‘inmate’. The same authors also propose a variant of Kriegel’s conscience and career prospects were all subordinated to the party, and concentric rings model of communist organisation, identifying the total who gave to it something like the ‘24 hour-a-day’ commitment it is held institution more specifically with an inner kernel of activists and func- to have demanded.15 In this sense, traditional historiographical emphases tionaries.9 Studer too distinguishes the ‘true’ communist in this way, while convey the spirit of countless party texts, exactly as Klehr’s definition of Harvey Klehr, in his study of the American communist party elite, has the ‘real’ communist mirrors the attempts at cadre formation of commu- suggested that most rank-and-file party members were not ‘real’ commu- nist parties themselves. Nevertheless, the extent to which these ambitions nists in the Leninist sense.10 Crucially, Pennetier and Pudal also introduce were realised needs to be shown even in the lives of these ‘real’ commu- the notion of ‘critical distance’ to describe the independent accumulations nists, if only to establish which the real ones were and how they acquired 4 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INTRODUCTION 5 this quality of authenticity. Where distinctions of life and politics disap- tively relaxed approach to recruitment and the oversight of members’ peared, nothing will be lost in testing the claim against the evidence now activities. This was symbolised by the party’s general secretary, the available to us. Where this was not the case, or only partly so, then the Lancashire boilermaker Harry Pollitt (1890–1960), a former shop stew- tensions between them may provide a more effective way of exploring ard and secretary in the 1920s of the trade union-orientated Minority both communist history itself and the wider issues of left-wing political Movement, whose labour-movement credentials and command of the activism which it raises. vernacular made for a distinctly expansive conception of communist Consequently we have adopted an ‘open’ research methodology politics.18 Not least because the CPGB’s institutional presence was so unconstrained by circular definitions of the real, the formative and the much weaker than its counterparts in Weimar Germany or post-war significant. Though it seems to us that this open methodology is needed France or Italy, the viability of communist politics in Britain depended to demonstrates the existence even of a closed society, no doubt this also as much on its interactions with the world beyond as on the bonding of reflects the specificities of the particular ‘communism’, or set of commu- the excluded. It was Pollitt’s great political strength that he recognised nisms, with which we are dealing. This does not mean that the CPGB was this. somehow sui generis.Formed in 1920, the CPGB was based on the same Quite apart from these transnational distinctions, the succession of highly centralised organisational principles as every other section of the clearly delineated phases in these forms of interaction meant that the Comintern. Nationally, the party’s King Street headquarters in London’s ‘before’ and ‘after’ of communist party membership was experienced in Covent Garden exercised immense formal authority, exactly as the different circumstances by different generational layers, coexisting within Comintern’s Moscow apparatus did internationally. This apparatus of the party where they provided another form of interaction. In a country controls reached a peak during the sectarian ‘Third Period’, or Class like Britain, historians have become used to this idea of political identi- Against Class (c.1928–34), when a stance of independent revolutionary ties as complex, shifting, often negotiable and not necessarily cotermi- leadership involved the attempted establishment of a separate commu- nous with a single institution. Perhaps in the most extreme human nist subculture, sealed from contaminating influences by exacting party conditions claims of class, gender, nationality and generation can be disciplines and the sort of commitment to reeducation exemplified by the imagined being set aside, as Samuel suggested. More routinely and Lenin School.16 systematically, communist parties with the power to do so sought to ‘tran- Internationally, this period has figured prominently in discussions of scend’ them by means of coercion. This,however, was patently not true ‘Stalinisation’, heavily influenced by the German case.17 If anything, this of an organisation like the CPGB, and in establishing how the party func- has been reinforced by the opening of the Moscow archives, which natu- tioned methods need to be avoided by which such elementary distinctions rally are most abundant for the periods in which the Comintern’s inter- are obscured. Definitions of the ‘real’ communist tell us little if they ventions were most intensive. Nevertheless, in contrast to the German generate circular lines of argument by which the ill-fitting is disregarded party (KPD), it was precisely in the Class Against Class period that the or automatically assigned a secondary significance. Notions of a rebirth, CPGB recruited fewest members and reached what, by most indicators, or of a Kremlin-like aspect to the outside world, need where appropri- was its lowest point of influence between the wars. Despite the superfi- ate to accommodate evidence of continuities or competing forms of asso- cially favourable circumstances of mass unemployment and economic ciation. Mentalities need to be recognised other than those defined by a slump, in purely numerical terms the entire national party membership single set of institutional boundaries, and the unifying codes of a ‘closed of 1930 may be compared with one of its second-rank districts at the society’ also have to be reconciled with the ‘capillarity’ with the outside time of the CPGB’s wartime membership peak. Albeit at a much higher world which Kriegel acknowledged without actually exploring.19 membership level, the insulating tendencies of the Class Against Class Rather than fashion a distinct set of parameters for the writing of period were then revived during the early Cold War, which marked the communist history, we have therefore drawn upon insights and method- end of what we refer to here as the CPGB’s recruiting ‘heyday’ from the ologies from a range of disciplinary contexts and subject areas. Although early 1930s to the mid-1940s. Crudely speaking, this intervening period now rather dated, the strength of Kenneth Newton’s Sociology of British was one of popular-front politics and an adaptation to the prevailing Communism (1969) was to demystify the CPGB by subjecting it to what cultures of the left, including what, by communist criteria, was a rela- were then standard procedures of sociological enquiry.20 More ambitious 6 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INTRODUCTION 7 in its lines of enquiry, there is also a rich body of work on French (and Though lacking the more draconian associations of the total institu- Francophone) communism drawing on a wider tradition in political soci- tion, the congruence of such a concept with standard accounts of ology and providing an important stimulus and point of comparison for communist politics, particularly the notion of the communist counter- our own work.21 At the same time, we have drawn from writings about community, is apparent. More than that, used discriminately as a vari- popular politics and social movements in Britain an appreciation of issues able over time and place, multiplexity suggests the possibility of a of language and representation, of the significance of transitions and genuine comparative typology of communist parties. At one extreme trajectories in the political life history, and of the need in complex soci- might be placed the ruling parties, whose domination of civil society eties for a multi-contextual approach to human relationships, focused on forced a sort of multiplexity through the pervasive presence of the party patterns of conflict and interaction at several levels. Moving between these and the obliteration of Dutt’s distinction between politics and life. different levels, we have kept in mind the idea of roles as well as contexts; Backed by the resources of state power, multiplex social relations were that is, both the extent to which communists involved in multiple rela- linked across the system by the vertical integration of the party-state and tionships and forms of association necessarily took on different roles, and the denial of autonomous spaces, even, theoretically, at the level of the how far these were successfully subordinated to, or conversely under- family. Without venturing into the battles of revisionist and post-revi- mined, the unitary structures of democratic centralism. Famously in The sionist historians of Soviet Russia, Stalinism can be seen in this compar- Making of the English Working Class,Edward Thompson insisted that class ative context as a coercive and systemic variation on multiplexity, was not a ‘thing’ but a relationship occurring historically.22 In this legitimised or at least embellished by the spurious notion of a single research, we have taken the same approach, not only to gender, genera- overarching community interest. tion and other social relationships, but to party membership itself, and In an intermediate position were parties enjoying mass support in have tried to convey not just the fluidity but the synchronicity and inter- conditions of legality like, for most of its existence, Kriegel’s PCF. dependence of these relationships. Party membership in our view is best Lacking means of coercion, these larger parties nevertheless controlled thought of not as a ‘fusion’ but as what Pennetier and Pudal call a extensive counter-communities comprising, inter alia, party sections, social ‘complex transaction’, both between the party and the individual, and movements, union confederations, recreational networks, newspapers, between international communism and the British left as mediated by magazines and party businesses. Even kinship networks, and the ideal of these individuals. As such it provides a case study in both, each modified the party family, served to reinforce these ties as often as they counter- by the other. balanced them, creating what Kriegel called an ‘imperviousness to the Consequently, no claims are made here regarding either the typicality other world’.25 Across extensive red belts or party heartlands, communist or the atypicality of the British case. Instead, as a contribution to a control of large swathes of local or regional government provided a broader comparative framework we propose as a possible line of differ- further source of influence and patronage, notably in post-war France entiation that suggested by the anthropologist Max Gluckman’s notion and Italy. In these extended counter-communities, the French and, quin- of multiplexity. Deriving from the study of tribal societies, and subse- tessentially, the Italian parties (PCI) were ‘multiplex’ and deliberately so, quently drawn upon by historians of community in industrial Britain, for multiplexity was the associational counterpart to the PCI’s guiding multiplexity refers to the extent to which a group of individuals is linked strategic notion of hegemony. Organisationally, the links were buttressed together in several different types of relationship, so that influences of in both cases by the thousands who were directly or indirectly dependent kinship, neighbourhood, work and religious or political association tend upon the party for their employment.26 to reinforce each other.23 Multiplexity therefore suggests cohesion and the In Britain, too, the party had its ‘little Moscows’, in Fife, Stepney or aggregation of group loyalties into a single collectivity. In Craig the South Wales coalfield, though their very isolation could set local soli- Calhoun’s words, instead of the fragmentation of ‘discrete and wholly darities against the external imperatives of the party. More importantly, independent individuals’ with their ‘many separate social dramas’, it beyond these few exceptions the CPGB does not really fit the model at tends to give rise to ‘social persons subject to innumerable constraints on all. Heavily bureaucratised by conventional standards, it is true that a their individual autonomy’, while at the same time benefitting from layer of party workers can be identified living their lives largely within powerful collective supports.24 the party. In London and perhaps Glasgow, there also existed the critical 8 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INTRODUCTION 9 mass to sustain a network of social and cultural institutions as well as a Rosenhaft to the red suburbs of Weimar Germany, where Geoff Eley has central party apparatus. As even a Fife communist could put it after a also argued that the party’s very size made discipline difficult to main- few days in London, it was worth the visit to dispel the feeling that one tain, the same logic might explain the relative independent-mindedness sometimes had at home—‘that the Party only exists in one’s imagina- of the Italian party within the world communist movement, or of a party tion’.27 Even for those whose work, residence and main area of political stronghold like the Rhondda within the CPGB.31 On the other hand, activity linked them with non-communists, the moral imperatives of Kriegel’s PCF suggests a rather different pattern: that whereas in Paris party commitment, for longer or shorter periods of their lives, could be the ‘communist social fabric’ was ‘rather strictly observed’, in many consciously set above all other affiliations, precisely as Leninist precepts provincial sections, ‘where the local militants have to be treated with kid required. Nevertheless, for those outside of the nomenklatura, the party gloves because there are not too many to choose from’, a greater degree provided only one of a number of possible relationships, not always the of autonomy existed.32 Kriegel did not expect this to take the form of most important of them, and it was abandoned by as much as a tenth organised factionalism, which is rarely found either in Britain or in the of its current membership in almost every single year of its existence. French provinces. No doubt it is a misreading of the motivations of Multiplexity, like the total institution, was effective to the extent that one communist activists to expect that a sense of greater independence was confined to the multiplex community. Despite the well-attested should necessarily take this form. Perhaps too it is the taking off of kid mortifications of leaving the party, the CPGB by this criterion was a gloves that encourages factions to cohere. Regardless of the explanation, veritable sieve.28 the CPGB, while never greatly prone to factionalism, was in this respect This aspect of a continuous interaction between British communism more like one of the PCF’s provincial sections than it was the formida- and its host society has been recognised by every sensitive observer, what- ble apparatus of Paris Rouge. ever their political or intellectual perspective. Writing in the late 1950s, In producing such variations, there is more to multiplexity than the American historian Neal Wood, no admirer of the communists, membership density and the viability of communist subcultures. Just as noted how the CPGB had ‘never become a closed society with distinc- critically, the formation of countervailing roles and relationships tive mores isolated from the rest of society’, how its trade unionists read- depended on the openness to communists of other forms of association: ily fraternised with other trade unionists, and how for its intellectuals that is, the ability to find employment, pursue careers, avoid arrest and ‘bonds of family, school, university, profession, and club’ sometimes participate relatively unhindered in trade unions and other social move- bridged the gaps that resulted from ideological differences. ‘British ments beyond the party. Wood also observed that in Britain no great communists’, he summarised, ‘seem more moderate in their outlook, less stigma attached to the Labour MP—or, be it said, most other types of engrossed with theoretical questions, and less hesitant to associate with ‘progressive’—who openly consorted with the communists, and that non-communists than communists of other nations’.29 It was precisely school or college loyalties could benefit even the communist who repu- thus that there arose the hoary old cliché, already familiar in the diated such marks of distinction.33 In the closing off of these other rela- Comintern of the 1920s, of the especially marked disproportion between tionships, it may be that the parties of Weimar Germany and the CPGB’s diminutive size and its much wider political influence.30 McCarthyite America, despite the disparities of size, had more in Such an interpretation runs counter to certain commonsense assump- common with each other than they did with the CPGB. tions about the political left. Reflecting the generic traits of political sects, This does not mean that British communists were not more subject it might be imagined that the smaller the communist party, the weaker to victimisation, prosecution and forms of social ostracism than almost its appeal to ‘instrumental’ adherents and the greater its sense of enclo- any of their British contemporaries. The most recent academic study sure and detachment from surrounding realities. Linked with a corre- reminds us how unconstrained by legal principle the state was in its deal- sponding dependence on Moscow, this may be found exemplified by the ings with the early CPGB, adding that ‘nothing can begin to justify the later US communist party. Conversely, Eve Rosenhaft has argued that it relentless effort which was undertaken to suppress and crush what ‘was in…Communist strongholds that it was possible to be Communist remained a relatively small political movement’.34 Even so, in an inter- without following the Party line, precisely because being a Communist national perspective it is the relative mildness of such treatment which meant more than adopting the current policy as one’s own’. Applied by communists themselves privately cited in resisting the setting up of a 10 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY

‘Red Aid’ organisation in the 1920s.35 Even incidents designed to isolate the party, like the banning of its newspaper or the imprisonment in CHAPTER 1 1925–6 of twelve of its leaders, immediately prompted protests from much wider constituencies. Bonds of social class, whether Oxbridge look- A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? ing to its own or the industrial solidarities that helped ward off proscrip- tion in the early war years, both cushioned and fragmented the party by a process of acculturation. Perhaps there was even something of the ‘moral consensus’ which Thompson discerned in an earlier age of wars and revolutions, establishing limits beyond which the authorities could not step with impunity.36 Even the so-called Whitehall ‘purge’ of the McCarthy era meant principally blocked promotions or job transfers.37 Anything resembling a purge in the sense which historians of commu- Albert Hawkins might have been described as a ‘typical’ CPGB founda- nism must ascribe the word was something outside of the experience of tion member. A BSP member since 1912, leading figure in the National most British communists. Union of Ex-Servicemen, communist councillor in Edmonton and a Organisationally and psychologically, the disciplines of the party itself ‘Lansbury’ by marriage—his wife was Nellie Lansbury, the King Street were thus insensibly attenuated. ‘When all the world goes mad, one must office manager—he represented several of the indigenous strands that accept madness as sanity, since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but went into the making of British communism. On the other hand, what the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.’ Thus Bernard Hawkins sought in communism was not the continuation of these home- Shaw during the First World War, and similar observations have often spun traditions but their transcendence or even repudiation. Already in been made of the seeming irrationality of closed societies.38 To the extent 1920, he called not just for solidarity but for total conformity with the that communist parties provided a simulacrum of a whole world, this was Bolshevik model. ‘The Russian Party has achieved its present posi- true of them too: hence the interdependence of counter-culture and the tion…[as] a closely knit organisation, answering to suggestions and analogy with the total institution. Nevertheless, for reasons not of its own instructions from its centre in the same way that a complicated mass of making, the CPGB for many of its members, though far from existing machinery answers to the touch of a single lever’, he wrote in the only in their imagination, did not amount to such a world. Communist. ‘It is in this quality of discipline that the movement has shown Though he was hampered by lack of data, Newton’s underlying itself deficient in the past’; and only by acting with ‘a single mind and approach holds up well in the light of our own research. Instead of a total- voice’ would Britain’s communists too ‘fit themselves for the task of guid- itarian model of atomised individuals finding their sole means of social ing the unthinking masses’.1 Evidently the CPGB’s founders were not integration in the party, Newton discovered that communists tended to be seduced by Bolshevism unaware of its authoritarian aspects. Ellen more than usually integrated into a wide range of formal and informal Wilkinson was a leading light of the students’ and guild socialist move- relationships. Looking at longer-term trajectories, including those going ments and a full-time organiser for the co-operative employees’ union, beyond the period of party membership or the demise of the party itself, representing a different, though in its way no less typical, combination of it is noticeable how often the record of activism continues even without influences. Nevertheless, she too held that the special strengths of the the CPGB as one of its vehicles. Newton’s argument from such premises communist party were ‘discipline’, ‘obedience’ and a conscious rupture was that ‘radical movements operating in pluralist conditions seem to lean with past habits. ‘[I]f we were going in for a revolutionary party’, she towards the political style of their pluralist milieux.’39 This, however, does stated roundly at the party’s founding congress, ‘we must have a general not quite capture the ambiguity of the phenomenon, for it was not so staff and be willing to obey it’.2 much pluralism to which the CPGB leant, but the complex interactions Expressed with such clarity at the party’s origin, here were the features that pluralism represents. It is the continuous tension between these inter- which have been held to distinguish this self-designated ‘party of a new actions, and the Bolshevik conception of a party hammered out of steel, type’. ‘Rigid’ discipline, unity in action, depreciation of the ‘masses’ and that we hope in these chapters to succeed in conveying. emulation of the Russians, all can be found dressed in military or 12 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 13 mechanical metaphors, if not yet underpinned by the apparatus of actually comprised. Where membership has often been approached as a controls which sought to bridge the gap between metaphor and reality. A ‘thing’, and hence as particularly susceptible to quantification, we have vast literature on communism has taken this model of party organisation regarded it as a relationship, both between the individual and the organ- as its starting point. In contrast to the wider historiographical trend away isation and between the individuals making up the organisation.4 from institutional histories, the obsession with cohesion of communist Numbers are relevant, and in the form of the proverbial party card, parties themselves has seemed to justify or demand a more traditional line membership was identified as and with a thing. Nevertheless, approach- of approach. Though the worst forms of reductionism are usually ing this ‘thing’ as the expression of a relationship, or set of relationships, avoided, it is as a complicated mass of machinery that the typical commu- allows a number of important and sometimes neglected distinctions to nist party history continues to be constructed. If the French communist be made. leader Maurice Thorez was right that this was a party ‘not like the others’, The first is that membership was just one of a number of possible rela- then no doubt its histories should be not like the others too. tionships between the individual and the organisation, some of them also Discussions of communist party membership have often shared this quantifiable, such as the reading of communist literature, support for basic institutional focus. Rather than trace different cohorts of members communist candidates and campaigns, and financial contributions to the as they pass through the party, the institution itself is described in terms party. The second is that the character of membership itself varied of generic membership traits like gender, occupation and locality, and in according to period, national or regional forms of associational culture its crudest variants aggregate membership figures are simply plotted in and the type of organisation involved. Juxtapositions of membership their fluctuations over time. While preferable to depicting the party figures for different periods of party history or entirely different simply as a single fixed political entity, the limitations of the mechanical parties—for example, the Labour Party or communist parties else- analogy remain, with membership figures functioning as a sort of fuel where—cannot therefore be taken merely at face value. Thirdly, to return gauge. Within the context of a historiography preoccupied with the to the argument of multiplexity, party membership was just one of a impact of different phases of the party ‘line’, membership figures have number of possible relationships which individuals held concurrently and been invoked as ‘hard’ or clinching evidence as to the effectiveness or which inevitably impacted upon each other. Finally, and most obviously, legitimacy of particular phases of policy. In discussions of the sectarian the idea of a relationship implies two or more sides to that relationship ‘third period’, they provide the evidence that these were either ‘good and the need to understand the relationship in terms of both. years’ or a ‘disaster’, and similar debates have occurred regarding the Membership figures do not simply indicate the willingness of potential impact of the communists’ anti-war policy of 1939–41.3 Clearly, recruits to join an organisation, but the expectations and definitions of membership figures provide crucial data with which to assess the CPGB’s membership held by the organisation itself, or its existing members. effectiveness on a comparative basis, whether over time, in relation to Although political parties are usually assessed according to inferred other British political movements or with regard to communist parties objectives of voter or membership maximisation, not all of them have elsewhere. On the other hand, comparative historians also need to be prioritised numbers. To the extent that their expectations were deter- aware of a number of possible pitfalls. One is the danger of abstracting mined by qualitative considerations, a merely statistical analysis of the a particular relationship—for example, that between party policy and results will be inadequate. membership—and inferring a line of causation between them. Another This is nowhere truer than in the case of communist parties. From the is the ascription to something like ‘membership’ of a uniform meaning first Bolshevik purge of 1921 and the ‘Lenin enrolment’ three years later, and significance, countable in so many membership-units, with details of to the similar relaxation of membership conditions which led to the context and definition barely receiving consideration. virtual doubling in size of the French communist party in the 1970s, Here a rather different type of analysis is attempted. In assessing the communist history shows innumerable instances of the valves of the varying appeals of communism according to time, place and social loca- machine being adjusted by the party itself. Even when pressures of cred- tion, the advantage of a prosopographical approach is that these can be ibility, competition and the need for resources produced ‘normal’ tenden- explored, or at least conceptualised, in terms of the countless individual cies to membership maximisation, these remained counter-balanced by trajectories which this ever-changing aggregate, the party membership, concerns with the quality and cohesion of party membership. Always 14 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 15 there was an element of what Sidney and Beatrice Webb identified as a can often be checked against its original sources.10 By excluding dubious ‘vocation of leadership’, by which membership carried expectations of and uncorroborated figures, the graph provides what at first seems a conduct and proficiency, and demands of self-abnegation were rewarded, perfectly legible guide to the party’s political fortunes.11 according to the circumstances, only by a sense of status, social purpose, But of course it is not. Even at a glance, the figures disclose the marked moral rightness or power.5 Although not really touched upon in previous anomaly by which the period of the CPGB’s highest public profile, and discussions of the CPGB’s membership, such a perspective can help us certainly of its greatest historiographical visibility, overlaps only margin- make sense of its aggregate membership figures before breaking these ally with that of its greatest membership strength. Despite the party’s down in more nuanced ways.6 notoriety, it took it the entire inter-war period to attain a membership approaching 20,000, and for much of that period it could muster only a Counting reds fraction of the membership it afterwards retained even into the ailing 1980s. Partly this suggests that the historiographical record may itself be The overall trajectory of party membership figures is familiar and is misleading, and that its post-war presence has been relatively overlooked presented here as a graph. precisely because it worked in less demonstrative, or less ‘alien’ and sensa- There is no evidence that these figures were systematically falsified in tional, ways. But what it also reveals is a basic redefinition of the terms of any significant way. For outside audiences, initially including the party membership, supplanting or surrounding the Bolshevik ideal of a Comintern, they were sometimes rounded up, or doubtful extrapolations cadre party with what, in character if not in scale, was described as a ‘mass made from branch returns.7 In periods of decline or stagnation, such as party’ accommodating widely differing levels of activity and commitment. the early 1920s and during the Nazi-Soviet pact, figures might not be As the graph shows, this transmutation can above all be identified with announced at all. Although audited accounts are available from the the years of the Anglo-Soviet alliance and the exploitation of the 1940s, following the membership haemorrhage of 1956–7 some districts favourable recruitment opportunities it provided to maintain an inflated the figures on which they sent contributions to the party centre. expanded party apparatus in the absence of Comintern subsidies. They are subsequently said to have been discouraged from striking off However, though the wartime explosion of membership marked a turn- members the moment they lapsed.8 Nevertheless, even massaged figures ing point, the tension and, to some extent, oscillation between ‘mass’ and almost always represent real trends, and are not inherently more unreli- ‘cadre’ party conceptions can be traced in varying degrees in almost any able than those recorded by the Labour Party, the ILP or the CPGB’s period of the party’s history. Indeed, because not only the party but own forerunner, the BSP.9 Moreover, the appetite for organisational data members themselves defined the terms of party membership, these of both the party and Comintern means that the published information different conceptions often coexisted, lingering on from earlier phases of its development, or previous political affiliations, or the conflicting pres-

CPGB Membership 1920–91 sures of party work. Moreover, the party as an organisation was in all 60000 periods torn between considerations of discipline and those of prestige and effectiveness. The issue of mass or cadre party thus offers at least as 50000 much of an explanation of the dramatic fluctuations in the CPGB’s pre- war membership as do the effects of different party lines, though the two 40000 should not necessarily be seen as alternatives. Rather, these different 30000 conceptions of party membership were themselves also an aspect of the changing party line, inextricably bound up with its other manifestations. 20000 Though identified above all with the Comintern period, the cadre

10000 party conception was not simply imposed from Moscow. If the term itself was of external derivation, the sense of exclusiveness was not foreign to 0 British communists, and was even regarded as one of the more 1920 1929 1939 1949 1959 1969 1979 1989 Source: CP/CENT/ORG intractable of the new party’s indigenous legacies. Already in 1921, 16 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 17 according to its South Wales organiser, CPGB branches were ‘inclined On the other hand, there were always countervailing pressures. As to be too regimental on the question of admitting new members’. Two early as 1925, Pollitt himself proposed renaming the CPGB the years later his London counterpart also complained of branches’ readi- ‘Workers’ Party’, with ‘radical alterations’ to reassure those deterred by ness to strike off members.12 Cumbersome forms of registration, train- its excessive demands.18 The following year the CPGB was set the task of ing and even examination reinforced tendencies to exclusiveness alleged doubling its membership by abandoning the ‘old involved method of to be more strongly marked in Britain than elsewhere. A 1927 report on registration…with its card index and complex statistical and analytical London branches by a Comintern worker commented on the restriction report forms’. Hitherto, the proportion of ‘candidate’ to ‘full’ party of membership to ‘100% bolsheviks’ and readiness to ‘throw out’ inac- members had been steadily increasing, comprising well over half the tive members. ‘The fact that today the party members are overloaded membership. However, in July 1925 the Comintern singled out the with so many tasks frightens many workers from the party’, he observed. CPGB in criticising excessive membership restrictions, and probationary periods, ‘arbitrary instructions’ for new recruits and the showing off of They say ‘Yes I work yet for the Party outside the party. If I am a ‘intellectual superiority’ at their expense were all discontinued or member then I am bound to give all my time, I must undertake all disavowed. ‘The doors of legal Communist Parties should stand open to functions…[’] Here we must create another atmosphere, other- all workers who want to join them.’19 wise will very many good active workers (who in other lands as Coinciding with the political stimulus of the 1926 miners’ lockout, the 100% communists are regarded) not enter the party.13 opening of these doors led to something of a stampede. All coalfield districts registered dramatic membership gains, and Tyneside leapt in a As late as 1936, the veteran impossibilist Tom Bell grumbled that in a year from having the smallest district membership to the largest—a figure small party branches were ‘only too glad to get people to join the of 1,900. More remarkably, its peak reported membership that year was Party…on general broad declarations of adherence to Party principles’.14 3,600, including 2,600 supposedly consolidated into party locals, with For some party veterans, like the Moscow-trained Scottish organiser Bob ‘considerably more’ said to have filled out membership forms in tempo- McIlhone, the indiscriminate expansion of the war years only exacer- rary displays of enthusiasm. With new recruits outnumbering existing bated such concerns.15 members fifteen to one, and with forty-eight new party locals—previously Overlaying these generational differences, there were in every period the district had only 123 members—Pollitt’s Workers’ Party had seemingly younger recruits in whom vanguardist conceptions, sometimes prefigured come into being without the formality of a name-change.20 In mining by existing social, political or religious milieux, were stimulated by the districts at least, little attempt was made to collect dues, and economic examples of Lenin, Stalin, shock brigaders and war heroes. Alfred conditions were such that many adhesions would not have withstood such Sherman was the son of a Russian-born Hackney Labour councillor, who a test. Already in 1924, one of the largest party locals, covering South as founder of the Centre for Policy Studies was one of the later architects West London, had noted that members recruited at public meetings were of Thatcherism. A Bolshevik enthusiast who had fought in Spain as a ‘by a large margin the least reliable and most ready to lapse’.21 It is there- teenager and joined his initials with Lenin’s in the pen-name Avis—Alfred fore not surprising that the gains of 1926 proved equally short-lived. Vladimir Ilyich Sherman—Sherman felt nothing but disgust at the party’s Arthur Horner’s claim that in South Wales the party’s real strength had wartime dilution. ‘It is taken for granted that the Communist is the not changed ‘to the extent of 10 members’, must overstate the case: even commando of the working class movement, that he is more active and despite the loss of victimised miners to other districts, later records from better informed, that whatever else they may think of the Party, they Tyneside show more recruits surviving from 1926 than the previous five admire the energy, activity and sincerity of its personnel’, he wrote in years combined.22 Nevertheless, in many districts membership quickly November 1945; ‘are we to destroy this reputation for the sake of a few returned to pre-General Strike levels, suggesting that its underlying more names on our books?’16 The same month McIlhone also warned stability was often greater than surface fluctuations might suggest.23 The against ‘loose talk about a “mass” Party’, while at the national party Scottish district, in contrast to Tyneside, had more than twice as many congress Pollitt accused delegates of not wanting a larger party, but one members dating from the pre-1926 period than from 1926 itself, and in of ‘exclusive Marxists’.17 Of some of them at least, this was obviously true. the Fife pit village of Cowie the membership is said to have sunk back 18 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 19 almost immediately from a peak of ninety-eight to the six members it had The Cold War before the lockout.24 In South Wales, several branches formed in the ‘stormy days of 1926’ never even met.25 Despite the many overlapping and conflicting tendencies, the Second Throughout the inter-war period this broad correlation was World War still remains a watershed. In contrast with the convulsive char- discernible between ‘mass’ and ‘cadre’ conceptions of the party and its acter of inter-war communist politics, notably as the product of levels of recruitment. That does not mean that this alone ‘explains’ the Comintern interventions, the post-war decades saw the systematisation fluctuations in the party membership. Indeed, to the extent that ‘cadre’ of a mass party model and general avoidance of more extreme forms of conceptions tended to prevail in those periods of ‘isolation and radical sectarianism. The early Cold War years were something of an exception externalisation’ which Annie Kriegel identified with relative party failure, in both respects, while the general shedding of illusions about Soviet then political and organisational factors may be seen as reinforcing each socialism made the CPGB’s continuing commitment to it appear even other, whether in an upward or downward direction.26 Certainly, more of a distinctive attribute, only gradually attenuated over a period membership losses from the ‘new line’ adopted in 1928–9 were accentu- of decades. Even so, in general terms the CPGB was now set on a more ated by the more stringent attitudes taken towards the registration and or less unbroken reorientation towards the norms of the British left, striking off of members in key districts like Sheffield and Glasgow.27 including a pragmatic and even laissez-faire view of its members’ respon- Sectarianism could also be manifested in a wariness towards untested sibilities. Moral pressures to be active remained strong, but many party recruits. As a recent local secretary of the Junior Imperial League, it is members did not actually accede to them and there is little evidence of not surprising that Ernie Trory was questioned closely before being them being struck off or disciplined as a consequence.31 With the dimin- admitted to the party in Brighton in 1931. More suggestive of the ished significance of wider impediments to recruitment, and the relative period’s sectarianism, Marian Jessop encountered considerable resistance security against victimisation provided by full employment, the limits to to her acceptance as a party member in Leeds, where, as the daughter of the party’s growth were now basically set by the availability of new a prominent Labour councillor and herself a Labour defector, she was recruits and the willingness of members to recruit them. regarded as a possible infiltrator from the enemy camp.28 And yet the machine went into reverse. Beginning with the onset of the Nevertheless, even during Class Against Class, Third-Period fantasies Cold War and the denunciation of Tito, the party’s defining political of mass radicalisation bred countervailing impulses towards sweeping in moments henceforth served not to draw converts and sympathisers into the previously unorganised. These were most notably manifested in the the party, but to provide disaffected or inactive members with the occa- unemployed crisis of 1931 when party membership is supposed to have sion to leave. In Louis Fischer’s phrase, these were ‘Kronstadts’, named trebled though with little discernible impact upon the state of party after the first big disillusionment in Bolshevism in 1921. The biggest organisation.29 As well as oscillations over time between competing defi- Krondstadt of all was that of 1956, when Khrushchev’s admission of nitions of ‘the party’, the same differences were therefore manifested at Stalin’s crimes at the CPSU twentieth congress was followed at the begin- any one time in different layers of activists, sometimes coinciding with ning of November by the suppression of popular revolt in Hungary. distinctions of age or locality but never wholly reducible to them. In Though many communists had no premonition of the crisis, others had crude sociological terms, there was little to distinguish Sherman from the already become quietly demotivated by the public degradations of redoubtable Joe Kerstein, also young, also male, also Jewish and also from Stalinism or the party’s faltering progress in Britain. No revelations were Hackney. Nevertheless, at the very moment that Sherman was complain- needed of the Soviets’ vigorously promulgated cultural policies or the ing of the party’s dilution, Kerstein was picking up the first of its ‘Tom ideological crudities which E. P. Thompson referred to as ‘jungle Mann’ recruiting medals for having initiated a matchless Red Star Marxism’.32 Possibly Thompson put it too strongly in referring to ‘frus- Builders’ team, and himself recruited 196 new members in under three trated proto-revisionists’ within the party, but the recollections of several years. No doubt this was only Kerstein’s way of also proving himself a New Left defectors confirm that already prior to 1956 misgivings were commando of the working-class movement.30 beginning to accumulate.33 Occasionally one can trace a distinct and decisive personal moment of disillusionment, temporarily offset by the habits and personal loyalties of continuing membership. For the biolo- 20 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 21 gists J.B.S. Haldane and John Maynard Smith, this was the witless bully- Andrews is probably right to describe the CPGB as ‘the main beneficiary ing of Soviet scientists during the Lysenko affair of 1948–9. For the of the 1968 student generation’.41 Nevertheless, the party’s ageing profile former International Brigader George Leeson, a delegation to the USSR suggests that the longevity of its existing membership was more impres- in 1952 sowed the seeds of doubt. However, both Smith and Leeson sive than its attraction to new layers of activists. Even in relation to its remained in the party until 1956, Smith in a purely passive way, ‘for old size, the CPGB did not again experience youth recruitment on the sort times’ sake’. Haldane too is said to have finally burnt his boats in 1956, of scale that elsewhere produced a temporary rejuvenation of the party’s after a ‘phased withdrawal’ lasting seven years.34 ranks. By the late 1970s, at Italian or Dutch party congresses as many as In several cases, resignations are recorded for which the events of 1956 two-thirds of delegates were under thirty-five and over half of the grow- were said to provide merely the ‘excuse’, members having already ing memberships of these parties were of the ‘post-1968’ generation.42 dropped away or indicated longstanding differences with the party. ‘Been In Britain, too, the average age of the party executive fell from a peak of drifting for 3 or 4 years and as he says himself…his resignation is no loss just over fifty in 1960 to forty-four in 1979, when a quarter of the exec- in terms of work done for Party’, runs one of these assessments.35 A utive were aged under forty. Nevertheless, even congress delegates, whom Manchester communist involved with re-registering members recalled one may judge to have been among the party’s most active members, that for every overtly political resignation several took the opportunity to were predominantly over forty. terminate a relationship comprised of habit mixed with a sort of steady Not only levels of recruitment but the backgrounds and motivations political immiseration, born of exhaustion with sustaining the party’s of recruits gave the impression of a party reproducing itself more effec- presence in the face of popular indifference.36 One can imagine, for tively than it connected with new constituencies. Though inter-genera- example, how this might have entered into the calculations of Donald tional influences had always played a major role in the making of British Renton, who had seen his Edinburgh local election vote dwindle from communists, from as early as the 1950s their significance began imper- over 2,000 to less than 150 in barely a decade, and who on rejoining the ceptibly to change. While significant numbers of recruits had always Labour Party became a councillor and eventual Baillie of the city.37 Even come from radical or labour movement backgrounds, translating inher- long-term disagreement sometimes required a specific occasion to ited values into the current political vocabulary of the communists, produce a break. Thus the Oxford extra-mural lecturer Henry Collins increasingly in the post-war years these broad continuities gave way to ascribed his resignation to ‘deep and continuing differences in policy’, the institutional lineages of the ‘party family’. By the late 1970s, the while the pianist James Gibb, who had joined the party with Collins as a editors of the CPGB weekly Comment and its monthly Marxism Today, the 1930s’ public-school rebel, fumed at Zhdanov’s cultural policy and had deputy editor of the Morning Star, the secretary and national organiser of effectively become disengaged since the end of the war. The writer the YCL, and the national communist student organiser, all had parents Randall Swingler, like Collins a close friend of Gibb’s, began drinking who were current or lapsed party members. Even twenty or thirty years heavily amid the disillusionments of the late 1940s and never again earlier, student and YCL branches can be found substantially compris- recaptured the comradeship and sense of mission of the anti-fascist ing such recruits, with the YCL itself in some localities providing an insti- years. Despite enduring several years of frustration with King Street’s tutional expression of the party family in which ‘Party parents’ were cultural directives, for Swingler, too, it nevertheless took the ‘trigger’ of enjoined to enrol their youngsters.43 Evidently the phenomenon of the 1956 to provoke his resignation.38 ‘party parent’ goes some way to explain the recovery of recruitment in There was never again to be quite such a trigger for joining the party. the years after 1956, with the coming of age of a CPGB baby boom A last flurry of recruitment occurred in the early 1960s, assisted by generation, reflecting the bulge of young recruits in the 1930s and early Labour’s abandonment of unilateralism and buoyant public notices of 1940s. Even from a very early period, ‘party families’ had provided some Sputnik-era Russia.39 Even into the 1970s, membership held up at levels 10–15 per cent of party recruits, but by the mid-1950s the figure was otherwise unparalleled in the history of the extra-Labour left, and in around a third, and this was maintained even during the expansion of Scotland had barely fallen back even as against the 1940s.40 Students in 1958–64, when one might have expected the relative proportion of such this period provided the fastest growing section of the party membership, recruits to have fallen. peaking at nearly a thousand in 1973, and in absolute terms Geoff One general survey of young political activists in this period identified 22 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 23 ‘the principle of family succession’ as their clearest defining characteristic, For student activists like Aaronovitch, this was reinforced by the with most respondents having an activist parent, two-thirds of whom involvement in student communist clubs of activists from countries still supported the same party.44 While it would therefore be mistaken to exag- grappling with the legacies and realities of colonialism and political gerate the CPGB’s distinctiveness in this respect, the motivations of the authoritarianism. Conversely, student communists might themselves take party’s later recruits do seem to confirm its declining appeal as an inde- leading positions in organisations like Iraqi student societies because of pendent pole of attraction to British socialists. Though our own research their greater security from reprisals.49 Even so, the identification of an on the later period is highly preliminary in nature, it is striking how rela- internationalist outlook with a more ‘ideological’ or ‘altruistic’ middle- tively infrequently we have found the party’s current policies or perceived class membership can no more be presumed upon than in the case of role in British politics referred to as a primary reason for joining. As in all 1930s’ anti-fascism and the recruitment of the International Brigades.50 periods, personal influences are often invoked, while particularly in the John Woodhams, a Maidstone railway goods porter, and Mike Jones, an 1970s numbers of young Marxists were drawn to the party as a space for electrical worker from Chester, were both recruits from 1965 drawn by new ideas that was less ‘line-ist’ than the ultra-left and more political than the anti-imperialist struggle above all symbolised by the war in Vietnam. the Labour Party.45 Beyond these issues, two positive attractions stand out: ‘It seemed to me that being in the YCL I was in the same great move- the party’s strong identification with communist aspirations and achieve- ment as the…fighters in Vietnam’, Woodhams recalled, while Jones also ments internationally, and its historic capital in the form of struggles in identified personally with a cause at once more compelling and—at least harder and perhaps more alluring times, embodied in the life histories of in terms of communism—more immediate than anything happening at older activists as well as the institutional persona of the party itself. home. In both cases, a sense of deflation was experienced on being intro- According to one second-generation recruit, if the CPGB provided a ‘fruit- duced to more routine party activities, whether collecting members’ dues ful arena for politically homeless socialists to “squat” in’, it was because of or being switched to trade union work.51 According to Doug Bain, at that its ‘relative strength, organisation and labour movement implantation’ and time the Scottish YCL secretary, the YCL was always happiest with the the fact that it remained the ‘only important left element internationally ‘big international issues of the day’: ‘We actually weren’t all that inter- located’.46 Both were attributes shared by no other organisation. Both were ested in, or in touch with, youth.’52 contingent upon achievements in other times and places. Offsetting qualities of ‘youth’, or contemporaneity, was the location of To suggest the continuing significance of international factors may seem the sources of communist allegiance and identity in the past. Inevitably, surprising given the gradual weakening of the CPGB’s identification with wartime radicalisation continued to produce recruits after the conflict had international communism after 1956.47 It is true that the categories of finished, with the formalisation of membership after demobilisation or the national and international were once more stirred together in the compo- forcing of the issue between communism and Labour by the Cold War.53 sition of the British population itself, as the post-war years witnessed an What suggests that these appeals were becoming somewhat fixed is the inward migration from colonies and former colonies comparable with the persistence of the same motifs into the 1950s and beyond. Three of the influx of East European Jews which contributed so markedly to the Manchester interviewees whose membership happened to date from 1954 CPGB’s formative generations. Significant numbers joined the CPGB— mentioned the impact of earlier experiences.54 The oldest of them, John by the mid-1960s it had some 1,500 Greek Cypriot members alone—and Kay, recalled the strong socialist atmosphere of his native Glasgow, where although their integration into general party activities was limited, their he had taken part in the YCL’s wartime activities without actually join- presence did helped reinforce a form of two-camps internationalism in ing. Even St Albans, where Sid Fogarty grew up, at this time seemed to be which the CPGB figured as part of a global movement of struggle. ‘The ‘alive with socialism’ with which the communists were largely identified. world was still fairly easily divided into us and them, and it seemed to me ‘I suppose’, he commented of his decision to join a decade later in that “us” were still preferable to “them”’, recalls David Aaronovitch, who Coventry, ‘meeting up with communists again just rekindled that stuff that joined in 1973. ‘Because on their side were the Pentagon, Franco, the I’d picked up in the ‘45 period’. For Brian Blain, who was brought up in Greek colonels, the people in the Deep South and the paratroopers from Manchester but joined the party as a teacher in Chester, not only the war Bloody Sunday…. On our side were Martin Luther King, or his succes- years but the ‘fear of going back’ to the hard times between the wars exer- sors, the forces in Vietnam, the democratic forces in Portugal and Spain.’48 cised a formative influence that ‘resonated for many years after the war’. 24 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 25 These resonances were critical for Labour too; but in a period in which it cised by reading about the Spanish Civil War, while Mike Jones devoured began to appear counter-productive to urge younger voters to ‘Ask your everything he could find on the Russian Revolution. dad’ about the depression, the communists’ association with an era which A broad brush treatment inevitably oversimplifies matters. It is clear, seemed to have passed was inevitably a wasting asset. The picture should for example, that in the 1970s the newly translated works of Gramsci not be overdrawn. Fogarty, for example, was strongly impelled by imme- exercised a profoundly contemporary influence, particularly on commu- diate issues, particularly that of peace, and this remained a significant nists in the universities. Nevertheless, whatever the permeative intellec- factor contributing largely to the upsurge of recruitment which coincided tual influence of Eurocommunism, its significance for party membership with the first wave of CND from 1958.55 There is an obvious parallel in is more elusive. Despite the réclame of the Communist University of the delayed politicising effect which the First World War had had for the London and Marxism Today, these did not hugely assist in actual recruit- generation reaching adulthood in the early 1930s, often mediated in the ment, as earlier analogues like the Left Book Club had, and a link form of writings like Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) or the between hegemonic strategy and the marginality of the party organisa- activities of the League of Nations Union (LNU).56 Even so, images of tion was never satisfactorily established. All the Tom Mann badges were war in a period of build-up to war had a different resonance from images now stored away, as recruitment drives gave way to re-registration of slump in an age of seeming affluence.57 As John Callaghan points out, campaigns and even active communists might never think of trying to the irony for the CPGB was that, with the return in the 1970s of economic make a new member.59 If the communists’ most influential intervention depression and massive industrial unrest, the party itself was no longer in of the 1970s was Eric Hobsbawm’s Forward March of Labour Halted?, this a position to reap the organisational benefits. hardly seemed the contribution of a party purporting to hold the key to Communists’ formative readings tell the same story. In all periods, the future—though in a pessimistic, non-recruiting way it is the books survived their moment of origin on parents’ bookshelves or in prescience of Hobsbawm’s analysis which remains impressive.60 libraries, and not only reprinted socialist classics but the humbler liter- Hobsbawm himself has suggested that from his published work by this ary relics of the Fabians or SDF continued to influence young minds into time it would have been difficult to discover that he was a party member. the 1930s and beyond. What was more distinctive in the 1960s and 1970s He has also argued that in Britain, unlike Italy, there was no real point was that even contemporary influences were often historical in charac- in joining the party after 1956.61 In 1989, the second-generation commu- ter. That again was true of writings like Remarque’s, but there are no nist Sarah Benton wrote that the age of the party was over, and for this works cited from the later period that compare with John Strachey’s party at least this was literally true.62 socialist primers, Bernard Shaw’s Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Almost to the end, certain areas succeeded in bucking the trend, Capitalism or the other works of contemporary analysis recalled by primarily reflecting the commitment of relatively small groups of activists. recruits of the 1930s. Instead, communism represented an accretion of One of two such areas in the 1980s was Teesside, where the recovery of traditions and historical reference points as much as it did a claim to the an effective communist presence owed much to two members in their thir- future. Those inspired by the Russian Revolution approached it as histor- ties who had come to the party by the circuitous routes so characteristic ical landmark as much as contemporary reality, citing influences like of the party’s later years. The younger of them was Andy Croft, who had Isaac Deutscher in the absence of any contemporary formative reading joined after falling ‘in love’ with the generation of the 1930s as an English like the Webbs’ Soviet Communism.The Coventry YCLer Graham literature student. ‘This is fantastic! Why isn’t this around any more? I Stevenson was one of several who cited the influence not just of teach- wished I’d been around then’, he recalls of his decision to join. ‘It was ers but specifically of history teachers, and was himself drawn to commu- through writing a PhD about novels written by Communist Party nism ‘largely through an interest in history’ and inspirational figures like members fifty, sixty years ago.’ Stuart Hill, who worked closely with him, the local hero Tom Mann.58 Increasingly the lists of the ‘party’ publish- joined by what he called the ‘very strange process’ of being inspired by ers Lawrence & Wishart featured not just memoirs and histories but the Vietcong to speculate that ‘if there was a communist party, and it was 1930s’ reprints; by the 1980s almost its only works of reportage or fiction a providing a good lead in Vietnam, there may well be an equivalent in dated from before the war. It was telling that, in addition to the galvanis- this country’. Initially, Hill had some difficulty in locating this British ing influence of Vietnam, John Woodhams should have become politi- equivalent, and when he got to attend his first YCL meeting—a talk on 26 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 27 surplus value by a sexagenarian district secretary who had attended the seemed to be the communists who were doing anything.’68 Geoff Lenin School—the Tet offensive must have seemed a long, way away. ‘I Hodgson, who joined a year or two earlier in Leeds, frankly regarded the thought how boring—it was terribly boring—and anyway…what’s he local ILP as more congenial: gentler, less abrasive, not so intolerant. ‘But trying to tell me about, I’m studying at O level!’ Croft too had not come I decided on the Communist Party because it did seem more effective.’69 across communists of his own generation, and was taken aback to find a Nevertheless, identifying this peak of recruitment is not sufficient to communist standing in the 1979 election: ‘I sort of imagined that it was explain the changing patterns of party membership, not just chronologi- one of those things that was from the past.’63 cally but socially and geographically. Although in a sense it is true, as Both Croft and Hill were politicised by the issues of contemporary Andrew Thorpe has shown, that the party was gradually broadening its Britain. Both signed up for a ‘new times’ agenda, and their party branch appeal across different social groupings, this was not a random perme- in Middlesbrough practised an open, campaigning style of politics whose ation of British society and resists satisfactory explanation at the level of proudest moment was opening up a debate around the politically taboo generalities. At a descriptive level, observations may be made of shifts in Cleveland child abuse scandal of 1987–8. This was an episode in which recruitment from coal to engineering, from the old industrial Britain to childcare professionals were subjected to attacks from all parts of the the south and midlands, and from male industrial workers to women and political spectrum, and the Middlesbrough communists were themselves middle-class adherents. In a spatial variant of the good years/lean years the subject of a two-page exposé in the Daily Mail by the local Labour approach, this may also be presented in terms of the fluctuating fortunes MP.In areas in which a stifling and paternalistic Labour Party functioned of the districts themselves, and this again serves basic descriptive as an instrument of ‘social control’, there was therefore a role and a space purposes. On the other hand, there is a good deal more to be said regard- for the left, and the CPGB in theory was one of its potential vehicles.64 ing the underlying processes involved. Nevertheless, what drew Croft and Hill to the ever more distinctive step Already it is universally understood that the CPGB did not recruit of becoming communists were what both of them described as ‘heroic’ youngsters in the 1930s and older people in the 1960s, but that the young factors that in time or place were exogenous to the current British party. recruits of the 1930s had themselves aged in and with the party. On the Croft in a poem likened it to washing up after a party funeral, once again other hand, the no less obvious point that they might also and simulta- ‘as if for old times’ sake’.65 neously have changed jobs, homes, and even, in the crudest sense, social class, has received far less consideration.70 Extending beyond the party The heyday of British communism to its possible fields of recruitment, the sometimes missing context is that of the tremendous social and demographic upheaval that occurred in If the 1930s can be described as the ‘heyday of American communism’, Britain during and between the two world wars, lingering on into the then a similar epithet, extended into the 1940s, could just as well be upwardly mobile 1950s. Not only obviously volatile and temporary cate- applied to the CPGB.66 In Britain, it needed more than just a well- gories like the ‘youth’ or ‘unemployed’, but ‘mining’, ‘engineering’, adjusted response to local conditions to produce communists, and in the ‘Lancashire’, ‘Oxbridge’, even ‘Britain’, to say nothing of ‘the party’ 1930s and 1940s communism seemed to provide this ‘more’ in the shape itself, all comprised constantly changing populations that not only repro- of a compelling explanation of the ills of capitalism, a militant response duced themselves but were constantly being reconstituted by active social to fascism as the worst of these ills, and the example of an alternative in and political agency. If for simplicity’s sake they are often referred to as the shape of the USSR. In Annette Rubinstein’s phrase, belief in Soviet locations or positions in particular fixed relations with each other, the Russia ‘legitimised optimism’, and even for those not seduced by the advantages of a prosopographical approach are to remind us of the image, the dynamism and self-confidence of those who were was some- continual flux of movements through and between these positions. More times difficult to resist.67 Among the Manchester interviewees, three than that, the argument here combines a broad conception of mobility Oxbridge recruits of the early 1940s recalled how political reservations with the idea of political space to suggest a definite correlation between or the attractions of other leftist currents were set aside in the sheer such movements and membership of the communist party. momentum of wartime communist politics. ‘If you were going to be In part it is a story of radical discontinuity. Stimulated by the work of politically active, who did you belong to?’, one of them asked. ‘It only Stuart Macintyre, the idea of ‘little Moscows’ has loomed large in 28 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 29 perceptions of inter-war British communism, exactly as the inter-war the NUWM organiser Wal Hannington put it in 1928. ‘We are fighting years have loomed large in our general historical impressions of the to wrest control from them in the trade unions, but in unemployment we CPGB.71 No doubt it is also true, as John Foster has argued, that the little can go in and find the masses ready to follow the lead of the Communist Moscows were only ‘extreme examples’ of forms of activism to be found Party.’75 Finally, the perennially renewed spaces of the youth and student as a minority phenomenon in many other parts of industrial Britain.72 movement were always susceptible to the most fashionable and dynamic Nevertheless, whether defined spatially or socially, the CPGB’s inheri- creed of the moment, and if communism had barely registered in tance in the shape of these enclaves of communist strength was, all things Gaitskell’s time, its influence in its ‘heyday’ was such as briefly to overcome considered, entirely negligible. Though it largely incorporated the mili- the Labour Party proscriptions which were otherwise so far-reaching. tant shop stewards’ networks of the First World War period, it did so at Though the correlations are persuasive, the concept of political space the moment of their disintegration. It drew on a student left radicalised contains the danger of exaggerating environmental factors at the expense by war and revolution, and consolidated part of it around the Labour of agency. Spaces of themselves did not generate communists and, Research Department and Dutt’s Labour Monthly. Nevertheless, commu- whether in the ascription of volitional attributes to party districts or the nism was emphatically not the coming thing for the student rebels of the cruder mappings of membership figures onto social or occupational cate- 1920s, whom the future Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell recalled as essen- gories, simple lines of determination can be positively misleading. Even tially self-absorbed and suspicious of ‘causes’.73 More generally, if one Newton’s ‘high and positive correlation between the number of unem- can even think in terms of a ‘split’ between communism and social ployed and the total number of Communists’, though seemingly so well- democracy in Britain, then the CPGB ended up with the wrong end of grounded in images and preconceptions of ‘the slump’, is at variance with the cracker. It did attract a significant section of the old activist left, heav- the long-term trends Newton depicts, and cannot be squared with the ily represented at its early congresses, though defecting in numbers achievement of a peak CPGB membership in a decade of full employ- during the Bolshevising 1920s. But with fewer than three thousand ment.76 Even had the correlation worked better, the intrinsic untypicality paying members by 1922, it inherited little in the way of political space of the act of joining the communist party means that any such sweeping from its predecessors, while being confronted for the first time by a inferences are hazardous in the extreme. If it is untenable to claim that Labour Party established on a nation-wide, mass-membership basis. unemployed communists ‘joined the Party because they had lost their Accounts which present the CPGB as a wrenching off course of a vibrant jobs’, or ‘forgot about the Party’ as they ‘found work again’, this is because pre-existing left are sociologically fantastical.74 in almost any conceivable social grouping, including the unemployed, the If the party nevertheless attained a presence greater than its predeces- numbers joining the CPGB are so small that one is always looking for sors, it was by penetrating and occasionally dominating some of those exceptional factors, or combinations of factors, to make sense of them. ‘new’ political spaces of the inter-war years in which the mainstream Sometimes, no doubt, communists and other political activists provide a Labour movement had not yet entrenched itself. These spaces can be ‘strong’ version of more generalised patterns of behaviour. Nevertheless, imagined in a number of different ways. Geographically, they existed in the possibility must also be allowed of shared experiences producing a the new manufacturing areas of the English south and midlands, and range of reactions varying not just in degree but in basic character. industrially in the struggles to build up almost from scratch trade union In isolating the exceptional cases of those who became communists, a organisation in these areas. Occupationally, communist influence was felt prosopographical analysis reveals as a stronger correlate than any social in emerging white-collar or non-industrial unions such as the civil or occupational category the relocation and redefinition of broader radi- servants, scientific workers, building technicians, musicians and bank cal or socialist values acquired in work, family or community environ- employees. The inter-war phenomenon of mass unemployment provided ments where these had already exercised a formative influence. Rather another sort of space, in which the communist-led National Unemployed than the spontaneous generation of radicalism within penetrable politi- Workers’ Movement (NUWM) not only secured widespread support in cal spaces, one typically finds evidence of a prior socialisation into the default of any credible alternative but provided one of the CPGB’s main older cultures of the left, combined with a process of disassociation that recruiting forces in the ‘old’ industrial Britain. ‘We can enter the field of was as likely to be social or geographical in character as political. Even unemployment…because the Social Democrats are not in control there’, the bare figures are suggestive of this phenomenon, though they under- 30 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 31 state its significance by excluding the ‘multiplier’ effect whereby the tuals could never have turned into ten thousand communist votes.82 establishment of an effective party presence would itself then attract new Such an analysis suggests an important comparative context for our recruits from environments hitherto untouched by communism or active own research. In countries where genuine mass communist parties were socialist commitments. Although the evidence is not sufficient for system- established, areas of communist support have convincingly been corre- atic analysis, there are many examples which suggest that among the lated with older radical and socialist voting traditions: in the French case founding members of CPGB branches, the proportion of migrants from dating back into the nineteenth century; in Italy through the succession the old industrial Britain was considerably higher than among the of the communist ‘world’ to the socialist world of the pre-fascist era; and membership as a whole. Exactly as in the Teesside area of the 1980s, in Germany through the appropriation of a number of former SPD highly motivated individuals played a key role in the establishment and strongholds as the communists’ share of a bitterly divided legacy.83 In maintenance of viable party cultures, and this was particularly true as these countries too, significant proportions of post-war communist these spread across the country in the 1930s and 1940s. recruits have been shown to have come from communist or other left- Conversely, examples are recorded in which a general attraction to wing families.84 To this extent, the British case bears out the general communism did not immediately mean joining the party because it picture. Indeed, in Britain such lineages were if anything even more lacked a credible local presence, so that one might join a branch ‘as soon significant, given the more ambiguous and negotiated character of the as I was at a place where there was one’.77 Already familiar from studies communists’ break with social democracy and the relative attenuation of earlier socialist activists, and in the context of the militant and moder- of the concept of ‘reformism’—so very much the defining other of ate wings of the women’s suffrage movement, the significance of local French or German communism—due to a strong sense of attachment factors in shaping political affiliations survived the seemingly more to a broader labour tradition. formalised divide between the Labour and communist parties.78 In On the other hand, the relative weakness of the CPGB’s distinctive certain periods it was even sanctioned and exploited by the CPGB itself. identity was precisely one of the reasons it met with so little success in Hence a migrant like William Ross, a Lanarkshire mining recruit of areas where it could only have developed effectively as an alternative to 1926, was urged to work within the Labour Party he found established Labour. In one of the few cases where it did so, in Stepney, this has been in Kettering, becoming a councillor and anti-war parliamentary candi- ascribed to Labour’s increasing domination by an Irish Catholic caucus date before resuming open communist party membership.79 Both in the in a borough with a large and radicalised Jewish population: again a vari- gathering of momentum and its melting away, the gregarious nature of ation of the political space argument.85 Perhaps in the coalfields, the political commitment hence gave rise to a snowball effect which further bitterness of disillusionment in traditional leaders also created the possi- complicates straightforward quantitative presentations. It might also help bility of distinctive configurations. Nevertheless, generationally, explain the extremely localised pattern of communist implantation: even geographically and even politically, the CPGB’s general implantation in the stronghold of the Rhondda Fach, Mardy’s ‘little Moscow’ could reveals elements of complementarity with the Labour tradition more be contrasted with the weakness of the party’s presence just a mile or two marked than was necessarily the case in some other parts of Europe. away.80 Similarly, the emergence of vigorous party branches in particu- lar post-war new towns seems to have been due as much as anything to Footprints pointing one way the early arrival of relatively small numbers of experienced activists.81 Most remarkably perhaps, when in 1945 the CPGB gained its highest One of the less conventional aspects of such an analysis is the association ever vote in an English constituency in suburban Hornsey—previously of communist party recruitment with a concept of mobility. In an exten- enjoying the second largest Conservative majority in the country—this was sive sociological literature, mobility has typically been identified as upward grudgingly identified by King Street with a form of local ‘exceptional- mobility, described without reference to the historical events which may ism’ associated with the dominating personality of the candidate, G.J. have promoted or necessitated upheaval, and divorced from any rigorous Jones. An ILP member from the early 1920s, Jones’s defection with a consideration of patterns of migration and social disturbance accompa- group of ILPers in the mid-1930s marked the beginning of an effective nying changes in status and remuneration.86 Within the prevailing class communist presence which even the concentration of Highgate intellec- perspectives of the British sociological literature, mobility has also been 32 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 33 seen as hindering the development of class consciousness through the Cambridge, very clever people, and…the parents thought it was ‘mongrelisation’ of class values.87 Implicitly, class in these analyses func- marvellous if they got a clerking job in Dorman Long’s.94 tions as a set of fixed positions, if not actual populations, with a rather abstract notion of movement as if from one container to another. More Several interviewees made similar observations, and from this aspect the allusively, the idea of mobility has also figured prominently in discus- vibrant social and cultural life of the 1930s’ YCL appears as an over- sions of American exceptionalism, through discourses of opportunity flowing of interests and aptitudes uncatered for either within or beyond and the ‘missing frontier’, and a virtual ‘iron law of mobility’ has been the workplace. Adding a further dimension to the sense of frustration, depicted as inimical to the development of socialist politics.88 inequalities of gender within the family gave rise to their own distinct On the other side of the coin, the emergence of socialism has often been sense of injustice and confinement, and the clear and explicit preference associated with notions of community, or of counter-community. Hence given to the education of male siblings—who, if they got to grammar David Howell has shown that the securest bases of the early ILP tended to school, were three times as likely to attend a university as their sisters— be in relatively stable settings in which working-class activists might already was occasionally reflected in a later orientation towards women’s have secured considerable levels of participation in voluntary organisa- demands or activities within the communist party.95 tions.89 Similarly, communist strongholds like the Rhondda tended to be If our broader findings nevertheless cut across these paradigms in a characterised by a well-developed sense of community, as measured by number of ways, this is partly a matter of definition, for the concept of involvement in the union, chapel and other forms of social organisation.90 mobility is used here in a less restricted sense than has been convention- Where changes of occupation and place of residence went together, as so ally been the case. Where traditionally sociologists focused on inter- often between the wars, these were seen by contrast as contributing to the generational mobility, typically judged by fixed reference points in male ‘absence of local solidarity’ bedevilling labour organisation in Britain’s new careers, a prosopographical approach allows us to trace the experience industrial areas.91 In Newton’s Sociology of British Communism, it was the of mobility through individual life histories, relating it to the larger events occupational and geographical immobility of the engineering and particu- and processes which were its concomitant and to some extent its beget- larly the mining industries which was seen as conducive to communist ter. Against one-dimensional indices of social class, this historicisation of activism. Newton even described the radicalism of the South Wales coal- the concept allows account to be made of migration, unsettlement, field as being ‘contained’ by the closing of the ‘escape routes’ of geograph- family break-up and the changing work processes or social relations ical mobility and vertical and horizontal social mobility.92 which together comprised the subjective experience of mobility.96 Like The qualitative evidence we collected offers a rather different analyses of party membership conceived as an institutional attribute, the perspective on these questions. In so far as immobility is equated with standard literature often describes and measures mobility as a property the absence of opportunity, undoubtedly there is much to be said for of a particular society, conceptualised as ‘exchange’ mobility over and the conventional view. In the standard post-war ‘meritocratic’ study, above that occurring through changes in the nature of that society and David Glass’s Social Mobility in Britain, mobility was described as dimin- offering little effective purchase on issues of political behaviour—partic- ishing the ‘personal frustration’ of the individual and engendering feel- ularly that of a radicalised minority. Against this ‘Nuffield’ paradigm, a ings of ‘social harmony’.93 It was this feeling of frustration that Newton prosopographical analysis permits a more dynamic view both of class apparently had in mind, and to the extent that working-class activism and other social relationships, not, as Mike Savage has put it, as ‘macro- not only derived from a sense of blockage but provided a vehicle for social constraints’, but ‘working biographically through the individual’.97 talents which would otherwise have been frustrated, our own research Viewed from this perspective, the key reference point in explaining provides some support for such a correlation. David Goldstein, a frustration at the restriction of life chances was not usually, at least for Middlesbrough YCLer of the 1930s, put it in copybook terms of an ‘an men, employment at the same or a similar occupation to one’s father. economic brick wall’. Particularly among engineers, there are surprisingly few references to such resentments: not just because these occupations provided a sociali- I don’t think I can describe the sense of frustration. In the YCL sation into rich collective occupational cultures, but because these in turn there were people who would have gone up to Oxford or provided a variety of formal and informal leadership roles producing a 34 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 35 strong sense of personal worth and status, if not always remuneration. As personal horizons were extended by rising standards of literacy and Miners were somewhat different: here the arduousness, risk, low wages basic education, what the communist writer Randall Swingler called ‘the and incidence of industrial disease can certainly be linked with expres- Pelican mind’ was outstripping the provision of careers requiring such a sions of hatred or entrapment.98 On the other hand, even in the coalfields faculty, even despite the transition from shopfloor to office routines.105 there are just as many reference to young pit workers ‘hankering’ to begin Indeed, precisely because of these transitions, such employments not only work at the coalface, or of communist miners spurning pithead jobs to provided their own potential for alienation and petty managerial oppres- remain closer to their workmates.99 In engineering, which itself could be sion but a possible sense of dislocation from the individual and collective regarded as an escape route from the pit,100 the link between skill and self- self-esteem of older work cultures. In an early post-war survey, the occu- worth was more consistently made. John Mason, a Mexborough shop pations most highly regarded were those of ‘professionals’ and ‘skilled, steward imprisoned under wartime defence regulations, gave rise to a male, manual work’; those least regarded, clerks and managers.106 If that classic representation in the shape of a biographical pamphlet written by emerged from a general survey, how much truer must it have been of a a fellow activist. Here Mason was also described in copybook terms as ‘a movement according both the worker and intellectual a status denied the boy of uncommon intelligence’ prevented by family circumstances from misprised bearer of that worst of communist epithets, the petty bourgeois. becoming a solicitor. On the other hand, in contrast to his previous If, as Stuart Macintyre comments, the wellsprings of working-class auto- menial employments, his working-activism was itself presented as a form didacticism were being diverted into the scholarship stream, talents denied of self-development, ‘from the drudgery of his early years into a skilled either recognition or fulfilment continued to find a form of expression in craftsman and an energetic trade unionist’. At one with the workers and political radicalism.107 Suggesting a rather different view of the nouvelle yet standing out amongst them, he was ‘a man who rose, by sheer abil- couche sociale, the Fabian Nursery’s speaker at the 1936 YCL congress ity, out of poverty, to become a leader of men, an organiser of the work- described the ‘middle-class’ affliction of ‘blind alley’ jobs that were mech- ing class, incorruptible and steadfast, the antithesis of that other kind of anised, standardised, threatened by ‘badly paid young women’ and trade union official who climbs on the backs of the workers to position deprived of leadership, initiative or authority of any kind.108 Caught in and salary and then deserts them’.101 the trap of limited social mobility, it is here that one finds as a character- Savage’s rejection of the dichotomisation of solidaristic and individu- istic type of the CPGB’s heyday the young white-collar worker of gener- alistic values is again suggestive here, and the ‘rugged individualism’ he ally working-class parentage and upbringing. identifies with the skilled male worker was pre-eminently a quality of the Dave Marshall was a perfect example. One of the frustrated communist industrial militant.102 Sometimes, with the transition to party Middlesbrough YCLers mentioned by Goldstein, he was the son of a rail- or union officialdom, this was identified with the escape from the produc- wayman whose ambition was that his children should get an ‘indoor job tion line, but it was not necessarily dependent upon it. Indeed, such was with a pension’, though Marshall himself was set on going to university. the standing of the shopfloor militant that one could well believe those The nearest he got was a part-time economics course in his thirties. party functionaries who claimed that it was not just the inadequacy of the Instead he obtained, not exactly a clerkship at Dorman Long’s, but some- party wage that drew them back to industry in the post-war years.103 ‘And thing worse: a position at the local labour exchange. Hating the civil also, it was exciting’, recalled a younger lay activist in the post-war service, hating the Means Test, hating older colleagues as ‘absolute construction industry. ‘The fact is, you never just woke up in the morn- bastards’ towards the claimants, Marshall was wretched in his job, and ing and thought, “I’m going to go in and be a French polisher.” You woke at the age of twenty went as the one of the earliest volunteers to Spain. up and thought: what’s happening today? As a young man it was wonder- Wounded in the defence of Madrid, he returned to the civil service—‘I fully exciting stuff, and when you read things now about it, what often couldn’t get out’—reading poetry and economics and having two of his doesn’t come across is that absolute excitement.’104 plays performed by the Middlesbrough Unity Theatre. At the age of Beyond the ranks of the technically ‘immobile’, a subjective sense of forty-four, he finally made the break, moving to London to work as a entrapment is just as likely to be encountered in the burgeoning white- joiner for Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.109 collar sector frequently taken as the yardstick and epitome of mobility. In Such a career history is doubly suggestive: both of the subjective part, this was because expectations as well as employments were mobile. sense of blockage compatible with inter-generational ‘mobility’, and of 36 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 37 the over-representation among communists of those reacting against it. political commitment. Such experiences were often formative, not only in At a 1980s’ reunion of the Middlesbrough YCLers—which significantly leaps from one class category to another, but in cases of the sort of hori- enough took place in London—stories were exchanged of larger zontal or inter-occupational mobility which in some accounts is virtually conceptions of self-improvement variously realised, as steelworks’ invisible. Moving within a wide range of regional and occupational owners, academics, a museum director, anything in fact but a clerk.110 If cultures, to say nothing of their internal demarcations or the unsettlement the combination of commercially successful careers and communist of the process of movement itself, lived experiences were profoundly attachments was mainly confined to a section of Jewish party members, marked by forms of mobility that hardly register according to the smoth- discontentment with office workplace cultures was more widely felt.111 ering common denominator to which ‘class’ has sometimes been reduced. Though the rhetoric of socialism itself confirmed the standing of work- Without sharing his normative concerns with ‘extremism’, such an ers by both hand and brain, it was never entirely comfortable with inter- emphasis is in some ways closer to Seymour Martin Lipset’s emphasis on mediary employments in which neither was properly exercised. ‘We can the radicalising experience of mob ility itself, detaching individuals from be proud, above all, of the skill of our craftsmen, second to none particular collectivities and hierarchies and producing uncertainties or throughout the world. We can use this skill without the bosses’, ran a inconsistencies of status potentially radicalising in themselves and calling characteristic YCL proclamation of the 1950s, before ending limply with for a form of resolution through the politicising experiences of conflict or a call to those who till the land, hew the coal and ‘push the pens’.112 The negotiation.115 It also calls to mind E. P. Thompson’s reminder of the author Gerry Cohen was himself the son of a tailor and might have gone ‘great qualitative disturbance’ in people’s lives and expectations which, to university but for the outbreak of war. Instead he worked as a lower- though obscured by superficial indices of material improvement, provided tier civil servant before taking emergency teacher training and eventu- the context for the emergence of working-class politics in the early nine- ally spending some three decades as a full-time party organiser. Indeed, teenth century.116 Similarly, in his essay on generations, Karl Mannheim it was among these groups, rather than on the shopfloor, that the party emphasised the formative significance of ‘fresh contacts’, whatever their tended to find its long-term post-war functionaries. Though sometimes diverse causes, in producing a ‘visible and striking transformation described as a sort of ‘promotion’, in Britain by this time such positions of…consciousness…not merely in the content of experience, but in the were rarely thought of as an advancement from the world of industrial individual’s mental and spiritual adjustment to it’.117 Mannheim did not activism or trade union office. They did, however, provide a release from suggest that these need be adjustments of a radical character, except in a the modest, petty-bourgeois forms of self-improvement which were the purely personal sense. Nevertheless, this, according to the circumstances, communist’s definition of a dead end. ‘Only God knows what I might was obviously one of their possible forms. have become had I not found the party’, recalled Stanley Forman, who Two further remarks may be made in the present context. The first is ran the front organisation, Plato Films. ‘I would have been a predictable, that the process of dislocation from traditional working-class milieux lower middle-class Jewish bloke, perhaps running a little department in could give rise simultaneously to apparently contradictory phenomena Marks & Spencer…’113 Hymie Frankel, another East End Jewish recruit such as the aspirational or déclassé worker and the communist party who was active in the trade unions and wrote a book on A. N. Whitehead activist. Political ‘space’, in other words, could be filled—or left unfilled— published in the USSR, pondered the same question. ‘What would I have in diverse but not always mutually exclusive ways, according to complex been without the Communist Party? A tupenny-ha’penny teacher some- contingencies and social variables. The second point is that, while expe- where.’114 One may note in passing that it was the rapid expansion of riences of mobility and migration were significant, so too were the white-collar unionism—in Frankel’s case of bank employees and profes- notions of community and organisation. Culturally embedded in the sional scientists—that both provided these more satisfactory roles and values of the labour movement, the CPGB was notably half-hearted must in part have been a beneficiary of the search for them. about recruiting casualised or migratory sections of the workforce. If inter-generational ‘mobility’ was compatible with individual experi- Instead, the process of radicalisation may be identified either with the ences of frustration, the ‘escape routes’ of social and geographical mobil- incorporation into settled work or associational cultures or, more distinc- ity did not just syphon off the potential for radicalism but also decanted tively, the attempt to recreate them. Hence the communists belong it while providing new occasions for its crystallisation in the form of active squarely with the ‘earnest’ or ‘critical’ minority which sociologists have 38 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 39 identified with the establishment of associational networks in the new certainly cannot be linked with any significant crossover between commu- estates and industries of mid-twentieth-century Britain, and in the older nism and fascism such as Conan Fischer has claimed to have identified in industrial communities from which many of their inhabitants were Germany.125 On the other hand, Stuart Rawnsley has shown that the BUF drawn.118 Through the dislocation of home and work environments, it did make recruits among the less well-organised workers of the cotton was the reaffirmation of values of collective organisation, and hence to districts, and the social composition of the two parties at this time does some extent of ‘community’ itself, which in these cases took the radical appear not to have been all that dissimilar.126 Moreover, of the four indi- form of communist party membership. viduals we have located as having defected from the CPGB to the fascists, To begin with the ‘old’ industrial Britain, it is apparent that even three were from South Wales, including two unemployed activists who where communism enjoyed sympathy and a degree of support, the went over to Mosley after serving prison sentences for incitement to tenacity of pre-existing associational cultures meant that actual party mutiny.127 It may be noted that even in South Wales, the party member- membership did not necessarily seem a compelling option. ‘Communist ship in 1932 was characterised as bitterly divided on personal matters and Party is all right, but don’t ask me to join up’, was how David Proudfoot containing a large percentage of ‘demoralized hangers on who have described the prevalent attitude in Fife in 1926; and although such senti- utilize[d] their membership in the party to embezzle money, etc’.128 ments were seemingly belied by that year’s massive membership expan- It is therefore plausible that the CPGB in these areas did not at this time sion in the coalfields, we have seen that in many cases this was an attract what McCarthy called ‘good types’, and that even those who were essentially demonstrative gesture, akin to the substantial communist attracted did not necessarily join the party. In the cotton-weaving town of electoral support achieved in some of the same communities.119 Nelson, Selina Cooper was a veteran socialist and suffragist who associ- Moreover, although the coal industry provided the outstanding instance ated with the communists, but did not join their ranks even after being of a substantial communist presence being founded upon the rejection expelled from the Labour Party for supporting the communist-sponsored and partial supplantation of existing leaders, even in communist strong- People’s Convention in 1940–1. More strikingly, nor did her daughter holds, particularly in South Wales, the union and not the party was often Mary Cooper, though by age, family background and even political regarded as the main vehicle of political activism. In the well-known outlook she was not easily to be distinguished from many communist party words of the Rhondda militant and sometime NUM general secretary recruits—except perhaps by remaining in Nelson. ‘I will join the Will Paynter, the South Wales coalfield activist was a miner and trade Communist Party, but I will not leave loose of this strength’, she would unionist first, a communist only second.120 say, meaning by this the strength of the established labour movement.129 More generally, there were complaints of the ‘poor social composition’ The argument must have had considerable cogency for those whose of communist party members in the established labour movement areas left-wing or pro-Soviet attitudes were accommodated within the Labour on which it had concentrated in the 1920s. In the Cumberland coal Party. When in 1927 Britain provided the second largest delegation to districts, for example, the mining membership fell away rapidly after 1926 the Bolsheviks’ tenth-anniversary celebrations in Moscow, Labour and leaving branches ‘isolated from the mass of the workers’ and afflicted by trade union figures far outnumbered the communists and the great ‘a certain disreputable personnel’.121 On Tyneside by 1930, the party was majority came from the older industrial districts.130 Similarly, among described by its organiser as comprising ‘a decidedly disproportionate those like Cooper, expelled or threatened with expulsion from the number of 100 per cent bums and stiffs’.122 In North Staffordshire, the Labour Party as supporters of the People’s Convention, the older indus- party also failed to attract the ‘good Trade Unionist Pit Worker’, effectively trial districts again figure prominently.131 At least one of these expellees establishing an ‘unemployed Branch’ again associated with ‘unreliabil- had even been on the Russian delegation fourteen years earlier. This was ity’.123 The West Riding too was described in 1925 as ‘a very poor district Harry Bolton of Chopwell, County Durham: a coal miner, Labour indeed’, while in the textile districts of North East Lancashire Margaret councillor and chairman of Blaydon UDC, who during the General McCarthy recalled that the party’s personnel was of the ‘poorest possible Strike served a two-month prison sentence along with the head of the calibre, mainly unemployed and sometimes unemployable, lacking…char- 1927 Russian delegation, future Mineworkers’ president, Will Lawther. An acter, ability and even intelligence’.124 She also claimed that many of these ‘ardent Methodist local preacher’, Bolton, like Cooper, appears never to members defected to Mosley, a possibly apocryphal statement which have joined the CPGB.132 It may be noted that Chopwell, though briefly 40 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 41 famous as the ‘reddest village in England’ bearing Lenin’s image on its up work at the expanding ICI plant at Billingham, becoming the found- miners’ banner, had no more than three CPGB members in 1930.133 ing father of Teesside communism and the party’s district organiser until The labour movement’s strength was less impressive in other parts of as late as the 1960s.139 In West Wales, if the Welsh-speaking mining the country only just beginning to experience intensive economic devel- village of Onllwyn was itself something of a red village, said to have opment. Until the strategic dispersals of the war years provided a tempo- contributed more on behalf of Spain (including two International rary countervailing movement, the whole period of the CPGB’s existence Brigaders) than any other community of its size in Britain, this was due was one of a relentless pull of some hundreds of thousands of migrants according to the local Spanish Aid organiser to the arrival of unem- from north and west Britain—from coal, steel and cotton—to the south ployed miners from other parts of the coalfield in the 1920s.140 and east. In the words of one migrant, the communist and pioneering oral Even within the coalfields, despite what for many was a bitter disillu- historian George Ewart Evans, the road out of Wales was like the path to sionment in ‘reformist’ leadership, migrants seem to have been least likely the lion’s cave—‘the footprints all pointing one way’.134 If membership to have adopted communist allegiances where mainstream labour organ- stagnated in many of the party’s earliest strongholds, notably Evans’s own isations were well established. In the year of the General Strike, the South Wales, this did not so much represent the political shortcomings Yorkshire coalfield organiser of the Minority Movement commented that alleged by the party leadership as the exodus of literally tens of thousands even ‘class-conscious’ migrants to the area from Durham and South of those of their inhabitants most likely to join the party. Wales were ‘suffering from the little better conditions they obtain The aggregate figures are stark enough: the loss of a sixth of the here…and are therefore not very anxious that any change should take Welsh population by migration between the wars; of a million or so place’.141 Over the border in Nottinghamshire, on the other hand, when Scots over the course of the century, and 129,000 from Durham in just in 1936–7 the battle took place for independent trade unionism against five years, 1926–31. Broken down by age group the figures are more the ersatz ‘Spencer’ union, this focused on the Harworth colliery with its eloquent still, because inevitably it was the young—the age group workforce drawn predominantly from the northern counties. There, providing the majority of communist party recruits—who made up most during the communist-led strike, the miners ‘would talk of the struggles of the migrants. In the Rhondda in the 1920s, while the ‘industrial old of their native Durham and Northumberland, and the part their forbears age group’ (45–59 years old) lost 12 per cent by migration, and the played in the building of the miners’ organisation’.142 In Yorkshire too, ‘middle age group’ (30–44) 18 per cent, the ‘young age group’ (15–29) Scottish migrants did later help inject a note of militancy into the coal- was depleted by a third in this one decade alone.135 If deep-seated indus- field, but it seems that they did not generally feel impelled to join the local trial traditions offer one explanation of why the callow excesses of the communist party: unless, like Scotsman Mick Kane, the leader of the Third Period had such a lukewarm reception here, another was the Harworth dispute, they had done so before moving south.143 Conversely, removal by migration of the ‘Leninist generation’ that was most strongly migrants to the newest British coalfield in Kent did form active party enthused by them. Even Garfield Williams, Bedwas miner, central branches, and in this extraterritorial enclave of industrial Britain even committee member and fervent advocate of Arthur Horner’s expulsion secured the election of a communist councillor. from the party, is last to be traced as a farmer in Stanmore.136 Dai Lloyd In its combination of occupational continuity with dramatically new Davies, one of the ‘middle age group’ and a strong Horner supporter, location, Kent was somewhat distinctive. Even among the migrants from spent the 1930s running a London dairy.137 In Scotland, where migra- the older engineering centres, skilled engineers tended to gravitate tion was less widespread than in Wales and more often of an intra- towards existing centres of the industry such as the West Midlands.144 In regional character, a tenth of the members recorded in 1928 were said these cases, and notably in Coventry, we shall see that this gave rise to a to have ‘emigrated from the coalfields in which they have been decidedly ‘syndicalist’ variant of communism rooted in the factory. On victimised and…not yet resumed Party activity’.138 the other hand, areas where migration led to viable communist parties But stagnation in areas like the Rhondda was compensated for by the competing in the political sphere tended to be the ‘new’ industrial areas buoyancy of the migrants’ reception areas. Even over short distances the of light engineering and manufacturing, which Pollitt described as migrant acted as a catalyst. George Short, one of the CPGB’s short-lived ‘uprooted from the tradition of the Labour and Trade Union 1926 enrolment in Chopwell, was one of the Durham miners who took Movement’.145 Already in the Class Against Class period, membership 42 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 43 was holding up better in the London district—then comprising most of in the social character of the new party branches, which were usually southern England—than almost anywhere else.146 By 1937 the district anything but disreputable. Don Brown, for example, was an electrician, was being commended as an exemplar of the ‘new popular party of the originally from Barrow, who was introduced to socialism through his workers’, compared with the ‘sectarian rut’ into which the communists father’s passion for the ‘artist-craftsmen-socialists of the ‘90’s’. Meeting in the old industrial districts had fallen.147 A sevenfold increase of YCLers Sheffield in 1930, he found them sectarian and bitter, and their members meant that by this time the district provided over 40 per cent premises ‘unkempt and discouraging’. It was only on moving to Oxford, of the party’s total membership, compared with 15 per cent in 1927, and initially on a TUC scholarship to Ruskin College, that he actually joined new party districts were created in Kent, Sussex and the South and South the CPGB in 1933.155 East Midlands. Similarly, while the London YCL membership was over As a possible corollary to their youth, the migrants did not necessarily two thousand the combined total in the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile arrive in Oxford already carrying party cards. What they did bring was districts and the South Wales coalfield was thirty-four.148 In towns like a socialisation into labour movement principles of collective action which Luton and Slough, the party’s development can be linked directly with provided the potential for such radicalisation. Of the committee which incoming activists like the Scotsman Jimmy Kincaid and South Walian organised the pivotal Pressed Steel strike in Oxford in 1934, none was Gwilym Evans. Bill Hall was a former ILPer and CPGB branch secre- then a communist, though all but one were migrants from the north and tary in the pit village of Birtley, near Newcastle, which disintegrated after west of Britain, and the party’s involvement arose through the wife of a 1926 when all but one of its dozen members left the area. In Dagenham, former South Wales miner on the committee recalling its assistance with on the other hand, where Hall became the party secretary in 1929, the disputes in the coalfields. It was only at this point that a significant CPGB local communists were recalled as mainly comprising ‘foreigners’ to the branch was established: as Chandler comments, it was thus ‘the reten- South East.149 Similar remarks were made regarding many localities, like tion of the trade union complex by the immigrant workers from the the working-class estates around St Albans locally referred to as a sort of depressed areas’, combined with the development of community strug- ‘red belt’ and containing almost nobody whose family went back there gles in Oxford itself—the combination, that is, of a radical lineage and more than a generation.150 political space—which gave rise to such a presence.156 Probably the best researched of these communities is Oxford, which Sometimes it drew upon personal experiences. This, for example, was between the wars was a site of expanding car production in which incom- the case with Jimmy Kincaid, a leading steward successively at the ing South Walians provided a catalyst for the development of industrial Morris and Vauxhall works, who had cut his teeth on a seamen’s strike militancy and a thriving communist party. Drawing upon the researches committee in South Shields in 1925, but only joined the CPGB in of Richard Whiting and A.J. Chandler, a number of observations may Oxford nine years later.157 Gwyn Williams had been a checkweighman be made regarding this phenomenon.151 The first is that, despite the and South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF) district committee images of what Gwyn Thomas called ‘a Black Death on wheels’, the member in the Rhondda, where he was a lodge delegate to the Labour migrants were not by and large desperate or destitute, driven out by Party and involved in marxist study circles. Following ‘pit closure and personal experience of long-term unemployment. Rather, they were the personal black-listing’, he came to London around 1931, became active young and independent-minded, rejecting the stigma of ‘public assis- in Busmen’s Rank-and-File Movement, briefly edited the Busman’s Punch tance’ and drawn by the prospects of a better life and working environ- and joined the CPGB in 1933. As subsequent London organiser of the ment.152 Conversely, one may note the prominence of an older ‘trapped Association of Scientific Workers and national organiser of the generation’ in militant actions in South Wales itself, like the twenty-nine Association of Building Technicians, Williams also illustrates perfectly Mardy residents found guilty of unlawful assembly in 1932, whose aver- how old industrial skills were applied to the emerging structures of age age was thirty-seven.153 At an inter-regional level the migrants could white-collar unionism.158 In other cases, lineages were inter-generational, thus be likened to those moving to the new municipal housing estates of drawing on childhood or inherited impressions rather than direct the inter-war years, whom communists also regarded as ‘fertile soil’, personal involvement. Norman Brown was a Pressed Steel shop steward comprising the ‘best and most socially conscious type of workers’ whose father read the communist press and who recalled the 1921 and prepared to make a sacrifice to get out of the slums.154 This was reflected 1926 miners’ strikes as he grew up in Wigan, while as late as 1950, Kevin 44 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 45 Halpin, one of the CPGB’s leading industrial activists of the 1970s, cited them, Mitchell also became the secretary of Letchworth Labour Party family experiences in inter-war Preston as one of the causes of his join- despite his unconcealed communist affiliations. If his break with home ing the party in Dagenham.159 and Sunday School must have facilitated these commitments, perhaps the Through overlapping memberships of the communist party, union party provided a surrogate for such forms of association as well as an branches, trades council and city Labour Party, communists in Oxford alternative. It is suggestive of the significance of mobility and political established a presence within the labour movement which was far more space that Mitchell’s brother, remaining in Sunderland, does not appear difficult to achieve within the settled alignments of the older industrial to have joined the communists, but was a longstanding secretary of the areas. ‘[L]et him remember that the Pressed Steel branch of the TGWU local trades council. was built up by the united forces of the workers’, local activists reminded Growing up in Tredegar, Fred Westacott was not so much put off by one incoming union officer, and the plausibility of this claim meant that the local communists as held fast by the Labour Party and its charismatic a tolerance was extended to the communists which was by no means MP Aneurin Bevan.162 Though his father, a bricklayer, was a local union universal.160 In Oxford, it appears that officers of all the main labour officer, Westacott’s memoirs stress the politicising effects of the wider organisations were at some time communists, and that covert member- community in which he grew up, epitomised by the experience of the ship of the Labour Party was so general and ill-concealed as scarcely to 1926 miners’ lockout. In due course, he helped form a junior section of be undercover at all. In some at least of the virgin territories of the 1930s the Socialist League, later a branch of the Labour League of Youth and 1940s, the challenge of new working environments, housing condi- (LLY), which met in a room bedecked with Soviet posters and Lenin tions and community issues gave rise to collective responses in which himself exhorting them to ‘electrify’. The absence of any organised communists were actively involved from the start. communist presence in Tredegar was attributed by Westacott to the local Occasionally one finds several of these features combined in a life- Labour Party’s ‘left-wing character’, and when a group of the youngsters history as if to provide a real-life ideal type. Fred Westacott and Tom decided on forming a CPGB branch they were talked out of it by Bevan Mitchell, afterwards the CPGB’s district secretaries in the East and South on practical grounds. Though the following year a branch was estab- East Midlands respectively, are two such cases. Mitchell, slightly the older lished, its teenage secretary, a prize-winner at the county grammar by a year, was born in Sunderland in 1915 into a respectable if impov- school, shortly afterwards found work in London and in 1943 became the erished household and introduced to the labour movement when he full-time communist party organiser for Hampshire and Dorset.163 began work in a local foundry at the age of fourteen.161 Having served Ironically, one of his key industrial cadres was Westacott. Having left his time as a moulder, he was sacked at the age of twenty-one and found Tredegar in 1936 after rejecting a place at Coleg Harlech involving another job in Letchworth through union connections. It was here that further dependency on his parents, Westacott found work as a trainee he became a communist. Already in Sunderland he had begun attend- fitter at Hawker Siddeley, Hamble, near Winchester. There he joined ing Labour Party meetings on his father’s membership card and, both the Labour and communist parties on grounds of expediency and although a teacher in a local Sunday school, had helped stage the anti- effectiveness in a predominantly Conservative area. Here the Labour war play Gas for a rally with former Communist MP Saklatvala. ‘If Party itself was a sort of political space, and yet the notion of an empty Saklatvala had asked me to go out on the streets in a demonstration or a space needs strongly qualifying, for it is clear that national political align- fight, I’d have followed him that night’, he recalled, but was less ments were seen as foreclosing the possibility of alternatives to Labour impressed by the local party stalwarts. Glimpsing them in the NUWM even where no local organisational presence had been established. rooms, ‘unshaven…[and] lying about’, Mitchell was held back from Ironically, communists themselves played no small part in building up the entering by his own sense of respectability. Nevertheless, it was with these organisations that might in conventional terms be regarded as their rivals. images and ideas ‘piling up’ within him that in Letchworth he was intro- Once the significance of mobility is allowed, it helps explain not only duced by another foundry worker to the newly formed communist party the geographical and occupational distribution of the CPGB’s member- branch. Like ‘a totally new world’, this consisted of a ‘very respectable ship but its evolution over time. Correlations do not imply causation, and type of people…all wearing grey suits, nice and smart and happy with mobility of itself could do no more than create favourable conditions for their children, the men wheeling the prams, not like up North’. Joining party recruitment. Even so, in contrast with the palpable inadequacy of 46 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 47 the link with unemployment figures, at least a correlation can be estab- industrial activists, this ‘delay’ can no doubt be explained by increased lished between the party’s peak recruitment and the social convulsions of wartime enthusiasm for communism and the opportunity to recruit a total war, to say nothing of the space provided by the electoral truce. openly in the factories. In other cases, there seems to have been a defi- This analysis is consistent with the weighting of wartime recruitment nite link with the move to new environments. Bill Carr was impressed by towards groups mobilised into the war effort, often on active service or the communists he encountered growing up in a Northumberland pit in new industrial locations. ‘Only by working in a factory—and perhaps village, but did not join them because of unspecified ‘domestic circum- not to the same extent even then—could I have received the practical stances’. Subsequently joining the Labour Party, it was only during the class lessons which I received by working, eating and sleeping—as well war that he encountered a group of longstanding communists in the RAF as the constant discussions with—my comrades in the boiler room and and determined to join the CPGB on his demobilisation, at the age of of the dockyard’, wrote one middle-class sympathiser who joined under thirty-eight.171 Bill Adams, a sheet-metal worker from Dumfries, recalled the impact of such experiences.164 ‘I always thought I was a Communist the ‘terrific impression’ a marxist lecturer had made upon him as early although not in the Party’, wrote another, influenced in this instance by as 1920, and yet it was only in 1942, at the age of forty, that he joined family experiences of unemployment, but again only joining the CPGB the party in one of the Gloucester aircraft factories172 Betty Harrison, on meeting party members in the army.165 from the labour movement stronghold of Bradford, was another ‘good In relation to the ‘factory’, this would help explain how party branches type’, coming from a socialist family and having been arrested during the sprouted up almost overnight in towns like Gloucester and Cheltenham, 1930 woollen strikes. Nevertheless, she too appears not to have joined the and how in the first quarter of 1942 Bedford shot past Newcastle, Sheffield CPGB until the comparatively late age of thirty-seven in 1941, having and Bradford as centre of the party’s sixth largest district.166 Subsequently moved to London to work for the left-wing Fire Brigades’ Union.173 Much the CPGB’s Midlands district secretary was to emphasise the role in this younger than any of these, Jim Mortimer was also from Bradford, where expansion played by ‘transfer of labour and evacuation [which] sent many he was introduced to socialism through his father’s pamphlets and the capable cadres into new factories and new towns where they were able to labour college courses to which an uncle introduced him. Initially moving recruit and rapidly build new branches’.167 Even in a city like Manchester, with his family to Portsmouth, he joined the Socialist League and LLY, the most spectacular expansion took place at the Fairey Aviation works at and it was only as a London engineering apprentice that he at last threw Heaton Chapel, where most of the workers were new and effective in his lot with the communists in 1941.174 Though the number are communist party leadership was provided by two veteran activists going unquantifiable, in the teeming industrial settlements of Coventry or into the industry, David Ainley and Mick Jenkins.168 Three Fairey’s recruits North West London there must have been hundreds of such cases, as are noted on the Manchester database, all women shop stewards, two of single factories attracted memberships which a decade earlier whole whom had previously joined the Labour Party or ILP, through the influ- districts like Tyneside could barely match. In Hendon at its wartime peak ence of a father and elder brother respectively.169 Such an analysis jars a there was a full-time branch party secretary; and in one London aircraft little with recent emphases on the apathy resulting from wartime disloca- factory, there were said to be 229 communist party members out of a tion, and it is noticeable that such accounts do not address such obvious workforce of only four thousand.175 The irony was that a good few of the signs of radicalisation as the growing appeal of communism represented.170 new recruits actually came from places like Tyneside. It is also true that tendencies to radicalism and fatalism not only coexisted Mobility in Britain did not come to a halt in the 1940s, and even into but sometimes arose from the same causes. It is only the sequel of Labour the 1950s localised variants of earlier recruitment patterns may still be victories in 1945, precisely in places such as St Albans, that suggests that traced. In Crawley new town, an active communist party branch was in this period there was a definite shift towards more radical outcomes. founded by a Sunderland bricklayer, Ted Rogers, and although by defi- Perhaps the war years show how the concept of political space needs nition it was composed of migrants, it is interesting that most of the to be located in time as well as geographically. As well as the more usual members appear to have commenced or recommenced their party activ- pattern of party recruitment in youth or early adulthood, one finds in this ities in Crawley itself. Moreover, at least a half of the ten cases of which period the more distinctive phenomenon of what may, in a strictly we have details did so in their forties compared with less than one fifth metaphorical sense, be called ‘delayed’ recruitment. For some older of party recruits as a whole. Those included a member who had joined 48 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 49 and left already in the 1930s, a married couple who had led an almost Continuity narratives covert existence as party members in Leeds, and a longstanding activist in the communist-dominated Electrical Trades Union.176 Nevertheless, Another way of approaching these questions is to examine the ways in the establishment of effective new branches was by this time the excep- which British communists constructed their own life-histories. In respect of tion, not the rule. Partly this may be linked with the extension of a viable other European communist parties, and to a lesser degree in discussions of Labour presence across the country. Another factor was the partial British labour autobiography, the centrality to such narratives of themes displacement of work and neighbourhood solidarities, in which so much of rebirth or conversion has been strongly emphasised.180 Combining the of the party’s campaigning identity was invested, with what sociologists notions of a newly acquired system of values and of a distinct, transfor- designated ‘interest’ or ‘interaction’ communities, dislocated from any mative moment of personal awakening, these conversion narratives are close-knit spatial environment.177 At the same time, the political ‘pull’ well-known to historians of radical movements and it would be surprising factor exercised by communism in its heyday was much diminished: if if the CPGB did not provide its quota. Nevertheless, this was not the only there were spaces to be filled, there was no reason to assume that commu- way of becoming a communist, nor necessarily the commonest one. nists would necessarily fill them. Mobility of itself had never produced Registering the specificities of such narratives, their variegated patterns of party members, and as far as the CPGB was concerned, post-war mobil- ‘before and after’ show that, even in respect of the myths it lived by, British ity, whether residential, educational or occupational, came to acquire communism defies reduction to any single dominant motif. more conventional associations with the dislocation of existing alle- We can start with the idea of conversion in the broader literature of giances and membership decline. Propelled by some of the same forces, the British left. If conversion was a type of journey or transition, then the impression once again is of a machine going into reverse. the likelihood of such a journey being undertaken is likely to have varied Though casual comparison is potentially treacherous, one or two point- depending on the individual’s point of origin and the changing charac- ers may help to clarify the specificities of the British case. In Britain, unlike ter of the destination. In terms of when it occurred, the earlier the tran- pre-revolutionary Russia, post-war Italy or even the formative years of the sition, and the more marginal the destination of socialism itself, the more South Wales coalfield, economic migrants were often already socialised its espousal seems to have involved some marked discontinuity: hence the into working-class life and exhibited a strong continuity with the estab- famous conversion narratives of the 1880s and 1890s, such as those of lished cultural and institutional practices of the labour movement. In this Beatrice Webb and Katharine Bruce Glasier.181 These were often middle- respect, a closer parallel might be with the Paris Red Belt, in which strong class converts, whose cathartic transition to socialism was likened by symbolic continuities with the socialist tradition were accompanied by a another of them, William Morris, to the crossing of a ‘river of fire’.182 relatively pragmatic and effective form of communist politics even during Even into the 1940s and beyond, a well-adjusted social democrat like the Class Against Class period.178 Divergences from the patterns described Anthony Crosland could still describe the attraction of socialism as ‘the here can be just as illuminating. In contrast with the British case, Studer’s emotional need for a God, a religion…for something to believe in tran- study of Swiss communism reveals a party cadre characterised not by scending the individual’.183 mobility but geographical ‘sedentariness’. Nevertheless, to the extent that On the other hand, even plebeian activists who were conversant with this was attributable to the relative localism and geographical immobility this vocabulary did not necessarily emphasise the connotations of other- of Swiss society, the apparent contradiction only confirms the general ness and deliverance with which we tend to associate it. Philip Snowden, picture, for in contrast to the CPGB the Swiss party failed to renew itself proverbially the epitome of Labour’s nonconformist appeal, specifically between the wars, and its membership declined from a figure double the discountenanced the language of conversion in describing his own CPGB’s in the early 1920s to a twentieth of the corresponding figure in attachment to socialism. Others, while using the language, might do so 1939. That Studer also points out the significance of geographical mobil- colloquially, not to express their being lifted out of their society, but as ity in the formation of Swiss communists only seems to confirm such an developing and articulating its higher instincts—as Snowden put it, interpretation.179 Though rigorous comparative work is needed to estab- expounding as socialists ideals and aims which they already held ‘in a lish the impact of other variables on party membership, superficial corre- vague and indefinite form’.184 In any case, whatever their significance at lations are already suggestive. the time of the so-called ‘religion of socialism’, a century of constantly 50 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 51 readjusted expectations of Labour and diminishing familiarity with reli- as a matter of conjecture and debate. As Dutt put it, ‘history’ required gious vernaculars cannot have assisted the production of conversion that Mann’s biography reach completion on the CPGB’s central narratives. In Hugh Jenkins’s interviews with Putney Labour activists in committee, and in the summary versions of his life disseminated by the the 1970s, only two of the stories could possibly be described in such party this was depicted not as a rebirth but as a fulfilment: an acknowl- terms. Again, these were conspicuously middle-class examples.185 edgement, in Mann’s words, that ‘what [the communists] were out for— On the other hand, as the self-conscious bearers of Labour’s crusad- I had been out for all my life’.190 On the other hand, Dutt also ing spirit, communists might be expected to have found serviceable a complained of the marked and, in communist terms, unorthodox bias concept so obviously suited to the claims to election they had inherited of these biographies towards Mann’s pre-communist years, as if view- from the ‘pioneers’. In a broader comparative context, the notion of the ing his life ‘through the wrong end of the telescope’.191 Perhaps we can born-again communist has been seen both as accentuating the radical think of such accounts as continuity narratives. discontinuities which underpinned the movement’s teleologies, and as At every level, it was in the shape of these continuity narratives that girdling the party, not exactly with a river of fire, but with a ‘symbolic communist life histories were most commonly constructed. The classic barrier’ of language, belief and ritual. Formalised through the ‘sacrali- case was Pollitt’s Serving My Time, published in 1940. His counterpart sation’ of the act of joining, the adoption of a distinctive communist Maurice Thorez’s Fils du peuple (1937) has been described as an autobio- calendar and the induction into a new world-view and collective memory, graphical ‘master narrative’ for the French communist party (PCF), and the maintenance of this barrier between ‘comrades and others’ also reading Serving My Time in the same way reveals significant differences in required a corresponding mental barrier between one’s present and political culture even between these two neighbouring communist former self. The notion of conversion—of ‘a radical rupture between the parties.192 As if oblivious to Dutt’s concerns, or consciously defying them, past and future of the activist, ritually marking the passage from the exte- Pollitt not only devoted a substantial section of his book to his pre- rior to the interior’—was thus integral to communism’s separate institu- communist youth and early manhood but depicted it as formative, inspi- tional identity and its character as a closed society.186 rational and even superior to what followed in socialist idealism. It is therefore of some significance that in both the individual and Certainly there was no suggestion that it was incomplete or ‘defective’.193 collective identities of British communists the idea of such a rupture Similarly, the transition to party membership barely punctuated his plays a less than central role. To be more precise, where the CPGB narrative, and far from having a sacral character was unfavourably promulgated the rhetoric of conversion, it was attached not so much to contrasted by him with his earlier enrolments into the ILP and the the party itself as to the larger goal of socialism with which it sought Boilermakers’ Society.194 Even the one unmistakeable allusion to the to be identified. Two major biographical enterprises coming to fruition progression from lower to higher forms of consciousness was an inter- in the mid-1950s depicted precisely such moments. In one, Dona Torr polation, most likely by Dutt, into Pollitt’s original text.195 The founda- depicted Tom Mann’s attachment to socialism as a ‘religious phenom- tion myth which Pollitt expounded was therefore not so much that of the enon’ opening onto ‘the truth and wonder of the dawn’. In the other party itself, but one attaching to an older, broader and more contested E. P. Thompson described Morris’s nearly contemporaneous adhesion tradition to which he thereby made his own claim. At a personal level, as one of the ‘great conversions of the world’.187 Published a year or this above all took the form of the direct, explicit and unarguable conti- two previously, the memoirs of the communist T.A. Jackson also incor- nuity narrative with which he began his account: the prefatory chapter porated a late nineteenth-century conversion experience, literally taking and frontispiece dedicated to his mother, Mary Louisa Pollitt, a founda- place overnight and casting him out among ‘the pariahs and outcasts— tion member of both the ILP and the CPGB, a lifelong co-operator and the despised, the rejected, the hated, and condemned’.188 In an unpub- trade unionist and Pollitt’s inductor into the socialist movement.196 lished later chapter, it is true that Jackson also emphasised the revelatory Though the collective self-image of the CPGB was bound up with power of Leninism, like ‘a world made new’.189 Nevertheless, it was Pollitt, one could no more generalise from his experiences than regard Mann who had the greatest symbolic resonance for the CPGB, for his Keir Hardie as a typical member of the ILP. Like Hardie, Pollitt’s author- adhesion to the party after a lifetime of commitment provided it with a ity lay in the possession of a personal history that stood out even in its proof of legitimacy which even Morris’s contested legacy left very much claims to demotic authenticity. Nevertheless, Pollitt was also more than 52 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 53 just a talisman, or a proletarian figurehead for the shadowy Dutt. Though For the working-class recruit, particularly the male working-class no rigid classification is possible, in our own research we identified no recruit, these emphases are nevertheless overshadowed by continuity more than three dozen cases of party recruitment comments strongly narratives, prefiguring communist allegiances either in the ‘vague and emphasising themes of conversion or personal transformation. Moreover, indefinite’ way indicated by Snowden or in the form of the consciously the majority of these fell outside the male working-class ‘apprenticeship’ articulated values of the labour movement. Generalisation is hazardous, model which Pollitt outlined in his memoirs. Many, again, were middle- not least because the moment of adhesion varied according to the sharp class examples, describing how the party rescued them from a sense of fluctuations in the communists’ stance towards other social and political isolation, lack of personal purpose or simple desperation. One, for exam- groupings. In a group of YCL questionnaires from 1929 held in Moscow, ple, joined the CPGB in 1948 out of fear of a third world war. those including elements of a continuity narrative thus tend to be respon- dents recruited in an earlier phase of ‘united front’ activities, while those When I joined the Party…for the first time all of a sudden every- joining during the Third Period itself placed greater emphasis on the thing became clear and I stepped into a new world, confident rupture with older traditions.202 Similarly among our own interviewees, and eager. I had found something worth living and working for, those who became communists during the Cold War frequently something that revealed history, the present class society and the expressed a more deep-seated antagonism towards the Labour Party than way to the future and a party which was straightforward and was common in other periods.203 On the other hand, in periods when the incorruptible.197 CPGB sought to accommodate itself to the values of the wider move- ment, the transitions made were typically less dramatic. Over the longer Familiarised by the novels of Edward Upward, who himself came to term, these were also the periods in which the party made the great communism not through politics but ‘despair’, the significance of such majority of its recruits. experiences should not be underestimated in the case of many of the No analysis has been attempted of these variations, but a selection of party’s middle-class recruits.198 recruits from Pollitt’s own home territory of South East Lancashire in the There was also the issue of gender. For women recruits, however, the years of 1936–42 can provide an illustrative sample. The oldest of them, transformative effect of membership was associated, not so much with the Herbert Gates, was a Manchester schoolteacher born in 1890 who had discovery of discipline and direction, as the lifting of personal horizons joined the ILP just after the First World War, when he claimed to have beyond prescribed and limiting roles. In a party brochure published in looked for the communist party but failed to find it. As an active 1953, this was conveyed by a Leeds clothing worker whose political Methodist until well into his forties, it is doubtful whether he would have commitment was shown to have reshaped her own personal destiny. ‘Now found a place there, but as an activist in the Labour Party, the labour I could look back and see what a narrow family life I had led’, she wrote. colleges’ movement, the Minority Movement and the Teachers’ Labour League he was in contact with communists from the 1920s. He never- I had been oppressed and imprisoned, and suddenly I was set free. theless joined the CPGB only in 1938 through the Left Book Club. Can you imagine how a bird in a cage feels, after it has been Commenting on his ‘long experience of the socialist and TU movement’, battering about inside a cage and wearing itself out, when it is his party assessor observed five years later: ‘He still has a few of their suddenly set free? It is so wonderful that you want to tell everyone characteristics but is trying very hard and succeeding in adapting himself else in order that they can become free.199 to present day conditions.’204 It is interesting that the reasons Gates gave for finally joining the No doubt a little too eloquently expressed, the bird-and-cage image is CPGB were personal and associational rather than suggesting any familar in women’s writing from the eighteenth century.200 Nevertheless, dramatic change of outlook. Another recruit from the same period, a even in less mediated sources one can find membership described as a Manchester distributive worker, attributed his first glimpse of ‘the social- doorway from ‘a narrow, useless existence to one with a purpose’, again ist Utopia’ to a Labour parliamentary candidate in 1923, and as an ILP with a strong sense of personal emancipation: ‘I learned to stand up to and Labour Party member the following year had already been my authoritarian mother and became a person for the first time…’201 impressed by a Manchester communist candidate, William Paul, and his 54 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY A PARTY NOT LIKE THE OTHERS? 55 supporting speakers. Nevertheless, he likewise did not join the CPGB for and the forms of activity undertaken have more in common with other another twelve years, and posing the question of why he did so, forms of left-wing activism than has often been recognised. Little mentioned no specific motivation or occasion but referred back his comparatrive research has been carried out on this important subject. ‘boyhood days, living in a working-class and slum area’. Like a scene from However, where testimonies of Labour activists have been collected, as Pollitt’s Serving My Time, he began his party autobiography with the image in the highly politicised case like Hugh Jenkins’s Putney, there are innu- of women toiling at the wash-tub in the cellar: ‘knowing that there was merable references to the hyper-activism, guilt, personal sacrifice and modern machinery to do this work, coupled with the fact that there were sense of loyalty, commitment and discipline that have been taken to char- a public wash house near by, why did they not use these?’205 acterise the standard communist life-history. Similarly, there is the same Percy Higgins, born in 1910, joined the Labour Party in Mossley in commitment to a continuous process of party-building as the measure of 1928, and for the next twelve years endeavoured, as he put it, to ‘give all political advance.213 Whatever the differences in policy and ideology, the time I could to working for Socialism’. However, it was not until 1940 compared with the larger body of people who never became active in that he made the transition to the communist party, as a result of the politics, the CPGB in its social aspects was far closer to established People’s Convention movement.206 His wife Mary Higgins, who joined at models of labour movement activism than either the party or its detrac- the same time, did so in the continuing belief that she could do ‘better tors ever quite understood. work inside the Labour Party’, which she had joined in Failsworth a Perhaps it took an outsider to recognise these features. Although born decade earlier. Exactly like Pollitt, she described a family pedigree going near Hull in 1884, George Hardy left Britain in his late teens and it was back to the Chartists, and the involvement of her parents in the ILP and in North America that he was drawn into the socialist movement, even- secularist movement; and it was only on hearing Pollitt himself speak that tually as an organiser for the Wobblies. For some twenty years thereafter she decided to come out as ‘a “live” member of the Party’. Appropriately he was to be involved in a series of agitations—among migrant and enough, the couple were later to move temporarily to the Rhondda to unskilled workers in North America, European and colonial seamen and tend Pollitt’s constituency for him.207 among the proletarians and ‘semi-proletarians’ of the Far East—which Mary Kelly, one of the Fairey Aviation recruits already mentioned, was had little in common with the settled, upstanding, ‘craft’ basis of the another former ILP and Labour Party activist, who described her recruit- British labour movement. In his autobiography Those Stormy Years. Hardy ment to the party in 1941 by a workmate who ‘came to me with the nine even provided the very obverse of a continuity narrative, describing his points of the party policy and a membership form which I filled in. I was adherence to communism in the USA as the beginning of a ‘second life’. especially interested in the production campaign...’208 Equally prosaic It is therefore not surprising that during the Class Against Class period was the Manchester bus driver who joined the CPGB from the Labour he should have come into the sharpest conflict with Pollitt, whom he Party the following year, having merely ‘reached a point where I believe denounced for insisting to an appreciative Minority Movement audience that the Labour Party is not quite on the right lines’; or the Stockport bus that the CPGB was not an organisation of ‘street-corner loungers’ but ‘a driver, influenced by a non-communist workmate who had read Marx Party of the working class’. To Hardy this was no accidental statement and Lenin, joining the party through trade union contacts.209 but ‘undisguised MacDonaldism’, ‘anti-Marxist’, ‘anti-Leninist’ and Nothing in these autobiographies conjures up either the outcast or the attesting the CPGB’s deep ‘reformist roots’. ‘The British comrades must river of fire, nor, be it said, the ‘desire to be ordinary’ or ‘craving for have done forever with their insularity. Their disrespect for “foreign recognition’ which Raphael Samuel identified with party recruitment.210 comrades” must cease.’ They must be told that these foreign comrades Even internationally, it is an interesting consideration how far the idea of often understood British issues better than they did themselves.214 Despite communism as a total rupture has depended disproportionately on the his standing with the international, however, Hardy was never to gain the sort of middle-class experiences described in the Cold War bestseller The acceptance with his British comrades that his experience might appear God that Failed.211 In any case, in Britain, as Kenneth Newton long ago to have warranted. ‘You see’, said one of them a few years later, ‘George observed, no satisfactory explanation of communist allegiances will be has not grown up with the British movement...’215 found in the neuroses and deviant character traits which dominated the interpretations of an earlier era.212 Instead, both the process of joining COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 57 and finally, in his disillusionment, to the Roman Catholic church. His CHAPTER 2 memoirs, a bestseller of the early 1950s, were entitled I Believed.4 But if Hyde’s most enduring commitment was ultimately to commu- COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL nism, it was less through the superiority of party doctrine than because of the intense sense of identity and belonging he had found within its ranks, and the corresponding sense of loss which he, like so many others, experienced on leaving it.5 It is in this sense, as a body of the initiated, that the communist party may be referred to as a community of the faith- ful. Extending beyond those moved by devotional impulses, secular ties of comradeship bound the party together, if not as a community, then as an order or fraternity. The CPGB can hardly be compared with The communist party itself was nothing if not a community, in some Togliatti’s partito nuovo in Italy, with its two million members, proliferation respects almost a religious community. ‘One has to appreciate that the of social organisations and battle with the church for ritual supremacy.6 party was really a church’, recalls Peter Cadogan, a wartime recruit Dissenting rather than hegemonic, its sections could never have been whose conversion came through reading Lenin in the RAF. ‘You described as an ‘anti-parish’. Even compared with the Netherlands, the belonged to it. You met your wife in it. You brought your children up in relative absence in Britain of discrete ‘moral communities’ was to some it. It was a great fraternity, a bit like the Catholic church, only secular extent reflected in the character of the communist party, whose more and up-to-date.’ The sense of bonding was not unique to communism— limited horizons derived not only from size but from the qualified author- Cadogan encountered it even more strongly in the anti-war Committee ity of its rivals, including the parish itself.7 of 100—but it is notable how often communist life histories draw upon Whether thinly scattered or multitudinous, one of the great strengths of religious analogies to convey the personal significance of their party communism was nevertheless its ubiquity. In an age of countless small membership. Alan Ecclestone was uniquely placed to make the connec- migrations born of war and depression, it provided an instant port of call tion as one of a handful of Anglican clergymen to join the CPGB with- for the socially or geographically uprooted, with its own lingua franca, out relinquishing his position in the church. Wrily, he noted how much shared values, an esoteric roll-call of celebrities, and habits of meetings, his church and party had in common, including communist versions of greetings, paper sales and socials to make the new arrival feel instantly at confirmation classes and a quasi-episcopal hierarchy of party officials. home. Cadogan was one of those who mentioned how moving from one The one real difference was that ‘in the Church people prayed’.1 town to another communists would immediately find themselves in ‘instant Even if they did not pray, for many communists the party had a circulation’.8 In the reception areas of Britain’s inter-war migrations, party churchlike character grounded in the systemic nature of communist groups sprung up like mission huts, while in the general mobilisation of the thought and the acts of faith its practice required. Not prayers, admit- war years its political freemasonry produced ad hoc contacts and discus- tedly, but catechisms and incantations did exist in communist variants, sion circles occasionally blossoming into surrogate party branches and and to the ‘convert’ or ‘hundred per center’ marxism provided what mock parliaments.9 In India, South Africa or liberated Europe, interna- Cadogan described as a substitute God along with a distinct hieratic tionalism was made real by the discovery of a Lenin corner, the familiar authority within the party.2 A key motif in totalitarian interpretations of rituals of a party meeting, even—for there really was no escaping them— western communism, this sublimation of religious instincts may partic- a shelf of works by R. Palme Dutt.10 A subsequent migrant into Britain, ularly be identified with those coming to communism from strongly reli- like the Trinidadian Trevor Carter, could meet up with friends and find gious backgrounds, in the CPGB’s case usually Jewish or himself attending the party’s West Indian committee within a week.11 ‘I nonconformist.3 The process was perhaps most vividly described by could have gone to any country in Europe, any country practically, or any Douglas Hyde, who from the late 1920s was drawn successively to town in Britain and I would have been welcomed, found a place, looked Methodism, where he was feted as a ‘boy preacher’; to readings in the after’, recalled the Daily Worker’s popular cartoonist ‘Gabriel’. ‘You had eastern religions; to a twenty-year membership of the communist party; comrades everywhere, and it was comrades.’12 58 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 59 ‘Comrade’ was the keyword. Of calamitous effect in legitimising This was what Raphael Samuel had in mind when he described regimes of oppression, an attachment to the language and symbols of British communists as a ‘peculiar’ people, knowing intuitively who belonging held the party together, even as it jeopardised its claims to a belonged and ‘within the narrow confines of an organisation under wider acceptance. Communists were not unaware of the tension. Alastair siege…maintain[ing] the simulacrum of a complete society, insulated Wilson was a councillor and general practitioner in Aberdare, who had from alien influences, belligerent towards outsiders, protective to those followed the footprints of inter-war migration the other way after join- within’.18 On the other hand, these features were in constant tension with ing the CPGB at Cambridge in 1932. During the war, in the party weekly the party’s cult of political effectiveness. If in some ways it was like a World News and Views, he proposed doing away with the Internationale, the nonconformist sect, it was one with a compromising ambition to be hammer and sickle and even the simple word comrade as an ‘unneces- accepted by the unconverted. If it was a garrison, it was forced into daily sary barrier’ to a wider public. Readers who had taken in their stride contact with the besieging hordes and committed to proselytising among support for Churchill, opposition to strikes and the dissolution of the them and being entrusted by them with functions of leadership or repre- Comintern, now in almost every case dissented from this greater heresy, sentation. Despite the aspiration to integrality, and its powerful attraction describing the language and symbols of communism not as a barrier but to communists themselves, Samuel’s ‘lost world’ of British communism as a bond, both within Britain and internationally. ‘Maybe I am a senti- comprised or intersected with a host of other worlds—of industry, local- mentalist’, wrote one correspondent, ‘but one of the happiest moments ity, professional, ethnic or generational sub-grouping—which defined of my life was when I purchased a Daily Worker for the first time…[and] ‘the party’ in various, complex and sometimes conflicting ways. was called “Comrade”—not Mr, but “Comrade”.’13 He was not the only Moreover, these other worlds were typically cohabited or dominated by one to be ‘captivated’ by such a mode of address.14 non-communists, whose rulebooks and calendars they followed, while With the bureaucratisation of inner-party relationships, such idealism their customs and their boundaries alike were anything but static. was easily dented. As Cadogan recalled: ‘Peter Cadogan is good, you see; To the extent that it sanctioned these interactions, the implications for Mr Cadogan is not good; Comrade Cadogan is an insult!’ Even the pro- the communist party were incalculable. Not only were individual Soviet Daily Worker news editor used to refer to the Russians ‘in a rather communists allocated or simply lost to their specialised spheres of work, contemptuous way’ as the Tovs.15 Even so, beyond the growing formal- but through competing networks, whether within or overstepping party ity of the term itself, the sense of comradeship remained, like a surro- boundaries, these also developed as vehicles for particular categories of gate family. ‘It was a family, that’s what it was; it was like a blanket round party member and their interests. While communism in theory achieved you’, recalled one interviewee. ‘You never had to worry. You never had unity through the denial of differentiation, its actual political practice to think, oh, I haven’t got a new car, I haven’t got a new fridge, I haven’t could cut across a shared communist identity, or construct it in disparate got a new this or new that…all you thought about was how many papers ways which the party as an institution was often too weak to regularise you could sell, how this campaign was going, and this campaign’.16 by effective discipline. Moreover, while communist party membership Perhaps it contributed to such feelings that the same interviewee’s was both expressive in function and highly ideological, it was offset not communist parents had separated because of her father’s violent behav- only by pragmatic considerations of these wider associations but by the iour towards his family. Another interviewee, Avis Hutt, who had been countervailing loyalties and forms of socialisation to which inevitably abandoned as a child outside Paddington workhouse, recalled the stigma they gave rise. of illegitimacy as she grew up in a semi-feudal Surrey village. With the The analogy with a church is therefore an apt one. While first of all it death decades later of her husband Ruscoe Clarke, a well-known party conveys the importance of ritual, belief and belonging in the identity of member in the Midlands, she too used words like comradeship and British communism, it also hints at empty pews or sabbatarian pieties not family to describe what party membership had meant to her: ‘When always reconcilable with daily routines. Ecclestone believed that his Ruscoe died, the Birmingham party was my family.’17 Nothing better church and party were alike, not so much in their closed and monolithic conveys these family-like characteristics than the party funerals which, as character, but in the diversity of human types and foibles they accom- the years went on, increasingly supplanted ‘aggregate’ meetings and modated. His own idiosyncrasies—stuffing parish magazine racks with ‘monster’ rallies as the main family get-togethers. copies of New Poland, and running the local party branch from the 60 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 61 vicarage—illustrate the point perfectly. A total institution, even an open membership’, perhaps because they were used to established ways of one, must preclude the possibility of belonging to any other community, doing things, but also because the commitments of older married men let alone one making comparable claims upon the individual, and to engendered particular apprehensions as to the threat of dismissal which varying degrees in different countries this was sometimes achieved. In such activities posed. Everywhere this so-called ‘victimisation mentality’ Ecclestone’s case, however, either party, church or—most likely—both, was mentioned as a deterrent to the formation of factory groups, exac- evidently failed the test. erbated by the thin spread of party members and the prevalence in many industries of shift or casual work patterns.23 If anything summed up the Workplace politics and the party branch unreality of Bolshevisation, it was this ambition of a mass party of the workshops conceived in a period of mass unemployment and industrial Underpinning everything was organisation, and underpinning organisa- retreat.24 In 1926, the CPGB claimed around 150 factory groups cover- tion was the party branch or cell. Every communist in theory belonged ing some 1,200 members, although many had an exiguous existence. By to one, and the branch purportedly provided the democratic foundation 1930 the number had fallen to just thirty-nine, with a membership of to the pyramidal edifice of democratic centralism. In ‘total’ interpreta- barely two hundred.25 tions of communist politics, it has a crucial function as the means of With the recovery of the labour market and the attainment of a crit- atomisation, forbidding horizontal links as a form of factionalism and ical mass of communists in many key industrial enterprises, the party’s having no other lines of communication than the commands it received factory organisation recovered to reach a peak of nearly 1,200 party from above. Pluralism, federalism and the representation of special inter- groups or branches during the Second World War.26 Ironically coincid- ests were all excluded in a gesture of subordination to the party, while ing with sustained efforts to establish the party’s legitimacy as a main- the branch itself functioned as an agent of ideological homogenisation, stream political actor, the attainment of such a presence simultaneously immunising its members against outside influences.19 At the same time, revealed the potential threat to the party’s cohesiveness which the main- the denial of elective affinities meant that each basic ‘unit’ was in theory tenance of distinct forms of organisation posed. It was partly to confront a microcosm of the whole, naturally varying in social composition but this issue, partly as a preparation for the coming election and partly as within its own limited catchment area transcending these social differ- a gesture to trade-union loyalism, that in 1944 the CPGB’s factory ences in the shared disciplines and comradeship of the party. ‘A member branches were replaced with factory committees and their existing should not think of himself as a member of XYZ Branch or Local (with members transferred wholesale to residential units. Simultaneously, in the suggestion of local separatism) thus given’, stated the seminal Dutt- place of the old industrial ‘bureaux’, advisory committees were estab- Pollitt Report on Organisation; ‘he is a member of the Communist Party, lished embracing not only trade-union interests but professional work- working in such and such a group or nucleus’.20 ers, consumers and local authority representatives. To a limited extent Almost from the start, however, a form of ‘separatism’ was institu- the reform achieved its objects, and in the careers of some industrial tionalised in the form of parallel basic structures of a residential and activists the attempt at a unitary form of organisation provided the one industrial character. The latter were the key to the party’s so-called occasion on which they exercised significant responsibilities on the Bolshevisation of the 1920s, when workplace cells were established as the party’s area committees, including the oversight of industrial work.27 basic form of party organisation, and their residential equivalents even Nevertheless, the experiment was quickly abandoned. Combined with referred to as a ‘necessary evil’, of provisional or definitely subordinate the effect of widespread redundancies, it was seen as having severely status.21 Twenty years on, a wartime syllabus betrayed the same disregard damaged the party’s factory organisation, with the loss of hundreds of for ties of home and neighbourhood, dismissively referred to as ‘the place party members whose conception of membership was rooted in the where [members] sleep’, and reaffirmed the factory group as the party’s culture and rhythms of the workplace. With the new Cold War perspec- ‘basic unit’.22 Though in some respects prefigured by syndicalism, the tive of ‘great class battles’, and of industry as the decisive site of those relocation to the workplace of a party-political commitment was a battles, the factory group or branch was thus again formally recognised conception largely unfamiliar to the British left. When first promoted in as the ‘main basic unit’ of the party, and precisely what distinguished it the mid-1920s, it encountered resistance on the part of the party’s ‘older as a communist party.28 62 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 63 In numerical terms, the recovery was limited, never reaching even half The Welsh and Scottish coalfields the wartime figure and falling steadily from the 1950s. On the other hand, the objective of factory-based organisation did serve to reaffirm the At one extreme there was the coalfield phenomenon of the ‘isolated pre-eminence of industrial work. This, insisted Pollitt, should come mass’. Long before sociologists coined the term, communist organisers ‘before anything else’, and possibly it came even before the party itself.29 in the 1920s identified the coalfields as providing conditions ‘from every Despite the best intentions, even factory branches became largely focused point of view…the most favourable’ for the party’s development. ‘They on sectional industrial issues, while in the absence of such branches the are massed together in the towns and villages’, ran a factory groups’ same preoccupation was expressed in an orientation to union activities report from 1925. to the neglect or disparagement of local and sometimes district party organisations. As early as 1924, the party’s political secretary complained Their conditions are bad, and obviously bad. They are largely how communists in such positions tended not to be ‘good Party men’.30 free from the distracting influences of the cities. Their time is not In Manchester just before the war, the problem of ‘divorcement’ from the so broken up, as it is with workers who live in the big cities, by the local party was again ascribed not to factory groups but to a broader long journeys and the many varieties of amusement the big cities orientation towards the labour movement so that members ‘had no time provide…Their minds are more fallow. The fact of exploitation is for the party’.31 In South Wales, where there had never been many indus- very obvious to them.…[T]he pits, themselves, provide opportuni- trial units, the party organiser commented three decades later on ‘the ties for instant contact and the development of the sense of soli- non-interest and non-attendance’ at party meetings of ‘so-called indus- darity amongst them.34 trial or trade union comrades’.32 A parallel may be drawn here with the industrial ‘cells’ and geographical ‘sections’ of a party like the PCI, where Culturally and to some extent demographically, South Wales is often the decline of the former coincided with the increasing autonomy of the taken as the epitome of these single-industry communities. In the often CGIL union confederation, and its slippage from overt political direction cited words of miners’ leader Will Paynter, the ‘Fed’, or South Wales to more traditional union functions.33 In Britain, by an analogous process, Miners’ Federation (SWMF), ‘was the single decisive union operating in activists displaced from factory branches were not absorbed into the the pits, the communities existed around the pit, the union branches were party’s residential structures, but into straightforward trade-union based upon it, hence the integration of pit, people and union into a activism, often to the virtual exclusion of other party commitments. unified social organism’.35 Variously described as ‘syndicalism’ or ‘economism’, this ‘divorce- If this was a potentially favourable environment for communism, the ment’ contributed materially to the bitter internal divisions of the generation of powerful collective identities independent of the party’s CPGB’s final years, whose origins or preconditions can thus be traced own institutional structures gave rise to attitudes which within the CPGB much further back into the party’s history. On the other hand, as the were regarded as higly problematic. In a loose usage essentially signify- complex alignments of the 1980s also demonstrated, the character of ing detachment from politics, the issue was often defined as one of ‘syndi- these relationships cannot be expounded merely at the level of general- calism’. Visiting South Wales in 1935, Harry Pollitt noted that the power ities. Rather, the stock figure of the ‘trade union comrade’ was shaped of the miners’ lodge was ‘really enormous, everything revolves round according to a number of variables including the diversity or otherwise this’.36 Five years later he complained that tendencies to regard the of employment patterns, the involvement of women in the paid work- SWMF as a ‘substitute’ for the party were worsening.37 Personifying these force and the spatial relationship between place of work and residence. tendencies was Arthur Horner, one of a group of communists on the Interacting with a wide variety of regional and occupational cultures, this SWMF executive and since 1936 the federation’s president. Already by meant that the character and significance of the local party organisation 1940 Horner had become somewhat casual in his observance of party were anything but standardised. Without necessarily doing justice to the commitments and as early as 1933 sought release from the party’s district specificities of party life, on the basis of existing secondary literatures and committee to concentrate on other work.38 Although he remained a our own broader overview, it is at least possible to point to some of the member of its central committee, and in 1937 was made South Wales more obvious patterns. district chairman, his absence from the crucial debates over the war in 64 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 65 September-October 1939 exemplified Horner’s competing obligations this type of question to the miners’ lodges’, he warned. ‘We must drive and the strategic use he made of them to distance himself from the to bring behind our campaign and demands every section of the commu- party’s authority. The symptom of a wider problem, Horner represented nity...’48 How little can have changed, however, is suggested by complaints a mining cadre which at every level seemed to get sucked into the affairs as late as 1967, with pits everywhere closing, that party branches of the federation. remained excluded from the ‘“everyday politics” of the trade union and The consequences for the party’s local organisational culture were industrial field’.49 more complex than might be imagined. To outsiders, including Pollitt, South Wales was notorious as a ‘man’s world’ based on a rigid sexual divi- Women cadres and mining communities sion of labour.39 Often this is seen to have been reproduced politically in the ‘separate spheres’ by which the Labour Party, and in this case also the Paradoxically, the increasing absorption of leading communists within communist party, are said to have functioned as ‘male-dominated the Fed seems to have left space for the emergence of a small number preserves’, with women’s activities confined to their own subordinate polit- of leading women party cadres. Indeed, between the ‘workerist’ phase ical sections.40 There is some evidence of women’s involvement in the of Class Against Class and the impact of second-wave feminism, South CPGB’s Rhondda branches in the mid-1920s, apparently due to the Wales provided two of the very few women from working-class back- formation of women’s sections and bolstered by the disaffiliation of a grounds to sit on the party executive. One was Mavis Llewellyn, a number of Labour Party women’s sections.41 King Street at this time central committee member from 1938 to 1943 and an Ogmore and tended to frown upon such forms of organisation, arguing for women Garw local councillor.50 The other was Annie Powell, an executive members to be ‘definitely organised in the basic units of the member for seventeen years and a Rhondda borough councillor for over Party…and…encouraged to enter into every possible phase of Party thirty. In 1979 she became Britain’s first communist mayor since Joe activity’.42 This does not appear to have happened, however, and Sue Vaughan in Bethnal Green almost at the party’s foundation. Though her Bruley’s extensive researches suggest that the woman party cadre was experiences had included a spell as South Wales women’s organiser, she ‘practically non-existent’ in South Wales.43 According to William had also taken on the key responsibilities of full-time area organiser and Gallacher, there was at first even a branch there refusing to admit women, parliamentary candidate for this most prized and prejudiced of party as ‘their place was in the home’.44 On the other hand, in 1929 the party’s strongholds. women’s sections in the Rhondda were specifically cited as a model of Though suggestive of hidden complexities, such isolated cases did not effective women’s work by the London schoolteacher Kath Duncan.45 necessarily threaten to subvert the ‘man’s world’ of the valleys. According Conversely, it was not always the case that the party branches them- to Paynter, himself described as ‘the pitman’s patriarch’, it was the lodge selves formed part of the ‘male network’ centred upon the pit.46 Despite officers who were regarded—and regarded themselves—as the ‘village the centrality of coal, there was little tradition in South Wales of commu- elders to whom the people went with their worries and woes’, the real nist pit branches, largely because the Fed itself was based upon the work- ‘guides, philosophers and friends to a community’.51 To the extent that place lodge and in that respect at least conformed to the canons of this was so, with the union providing a ‘kind of working-class party or Bolshevisation. Paradoxically, it was therefore the party branches which even a government’, then the advancement of women to conventional provided the social-democratic alternative of residential organisation, party or local government responsibilities did not necessarily cut across and as such were largely peripheral to the masculine world of the pit. the ‘welfarist’ roles which Chris Williams has described as characteristic Even the unemployed, while excluded from the pit, remained focused on of the local political women’s sections. It was typical, for example, that the lodge, with continuing if restricted membership rights even where Llewellyn should have chaired the local council’s welfare committee and pits were idle.47 During Class Against Class, the area’s ‘trade union legal- exercised particular responsibilities for the care of evacuated children. ism’ took the strong form of ‘Hornerism’, though most of the party’s At the same time, the regard in which such individuals were held did members were unemployed. Ten years later Pollitt referred to the ‘really not necessarily extend to other women in the same communities. Both striking inactivity’ of party branches regarding such ‘day-to-day ques- Powell and Llewellyn were schoolteachers enjoying an exceptional stand- tions’ as workmen’s compensation and silicosis. ‘It is not enough to leave ing within their communities through the relaxation of what remained 66 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 67 the prevailing resistances to women’s personal advancement.52 Even in local party branch. It is suggestive in this connection that whereas their own estimation, these women did not necessarily disrupt the normal Gallacher’s West Fife electorate increased by very nearly a third between pattern of gender relations in their communities. Llewellyn was the lover 1929 and 1945, that of the South Wales stronghold of Rhondda East of the Rhondda writer and unemployed activist Lewis Jones, assisting actually declined. him during the writing of his second novel We Live and completing the Whatever the explanation, the communist party in Fife, while to some final section after his premature death in 1939. Perhaps this is reflected degree compensating for the weakness of industrial organisation, also in one of the novel’s most striking and unusual features: that it is not the provided a more direct reflection of the miners’ dominant position in the male hero but his wife who is elected to the council and in this sphere local community. More than in South Wales, movements can be traced personifies the leadership qualities of the communist activist. between pit, union, party and local government responsibilities, includ- Nevertheless, the novel leaves a general impression of the women’s polit- ing county councillors like Bruce Wallace, John McArthur, Alec Moffat ical passivity, particularly in descriptions of the miners’ lockout, and it is and Bob Selkirk. There was, it is true, a development of women’s sections noticeable that in a later published story of Llewellyn the centrality of during the war years, through the influence of the ‘delayed’ recruit and the male breadwinner seems taken for granted. Oblivious to the atten- women’s organiser Jenny Dand, who had been supporting communist tions of his wife and daughter, he sits engrossed in the paper on return positions in the Co-operative Women’s Guild since the mid-1930s.58 In from work: ‘Never mind, he’ll pass the Worker over to me later in the the immediate post-war years, Maria Stewart’s name could also be added evening.’53 It must have helped provide the space for her own political to the list of councillors.59 In general, however, women were regarded as commitments that Llewellyn herself never married. ‘token members’ of the party in Fife even in its final decades.60 In Only perhaps in South Wales was so close an identification of commu- Lanarkshire their supporting role and virtual invisibility is a striking nity with workplace combined with a significant communist presence. feature of Frank Watters’s recollection of family communism in Shotts.61 According to David Gilbert, even after the 1920s’ pit closures ‘the idea Perhaps the nearest that Fife had to an Annie Powell was lifetime of the pit village remained valid’ here, whereas in Fife, superficially the activist Mary Docherty. The contrast between the two is telling. Although nearest point of comparison, Alan Campbell has emphasised the grow- she had actually attended the Lenin School in 1929–30, Doherty’s party ing disjuncture between pit and community.54 The continuance in Fife of work by her own account was largely confined to mobilising its women’s a residential basis for union organisation, and the rivalry of as many as sections for what seems to have been a continuous round of raffles, three competing unions in the inter-war years, can only have reinforced bazaars, knitting and jam-making. ‘Bob Selkirk was most insistent that that disjuncture. Though the communists established their only remotely the women’s section would not develop into a gossiping section; that was credible attempt at a ‘red’ union among the Scottish miners, Pollitt why I was put in charge’, she recalled of the local party patriarch, and explained the weakness of its strike activities by ‘the fact that the miners in the same matter-of-fact of way described her entrustment with the in the majority of cases live considerable distances from the pits where children’s sections: ‘We lacked girls in the YCL and the chaps thought they work…because of the nature of the shift system it was impossible children’s groups was work for girls so I had to take all the groups myself.’ to get them all to one meeting’.55 Given these circumstances, the miners’ Though Docherty too never married, the influence of this profoundly union, perhaps even a revolutionary one, was less obviously self-sufficient male-centred culture is suggested by the very title of her published as a vehicle for male political activism. In Berlin, Eve Rosenhaft has memoirs, A Miner’s Lass.62 suggested that with the separation of work and home, the neighbourhood In the absence of detailed local studies, generalisations about whole emerged as ‘the one stable frame of reference for the recognition of inter- regions or industries are hazardous in the extreme. Impressionistically, ests and the construction of remedies’.56 Also in a German context, Eric the party in Fife would appear to have been not untypical of Scotland’s Weitz has stressed the role of mass unemployment in producing a shift central industrial belt, where at least to outsiders the dominance of heavy from workplace politics.57 Of course, that could have applied equally to industry seemed reflected in the macho style and political preoccupations South Wales, but for the centrality of the lodge along with higher levels of the party’s leading committees.63 In other mining areas, different of outward migration suggesting that actually or notionally displaced patterns of residence and employment were linked with further varia- industrial activists are more likely to have turned up in England than the tions in the forms of political participation. In the mining village of 68 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 69 Wolstanton, North Staffordshire, ‘Red’ Fanny Deakin was a councillor of Sheffield was known within the communist party as the place where still greater longevity and popular regard than Powell. A sometime SDFer local party members meant the AEU and not the party itself when they and ILPer who retained her positions as councillor and poor law guardian referred to ‘the district committee’.67 In this respect, the obvious paral- after joining the CPGB in 1923, her standing was essentially a personal lel is with South Wales. Not only was the union a major presence in the one and she evidently enjoyed considerable independence with regard to city, with a post-war peak of fifty-two branches and more members the party.64 Reinforcing this, the solidarities of the isolated Potteries seem locally than the CPGB had nationally; it was also the institution through to have offered their own form of security against the Labour Party’s which the CPGB acquired its own not insignificant influence. From its national rules. In 1934 Deakin was elected to the Staffordshire county earliest years the party was dominated by engineers, among whom Ted council, and almost until her retirement in 1951 seems to have been Lismer and J.T. Murphy played leading roles in connection with the Red accepted, openly and unconstitutionally, as a member of the Labour International of Labour Unions. In the post-war period, it provided a group. Hers was very much a ‘welfarist’ agenda: having lost five of her stream of national and district AEU officers, and from the party strong- own six children in infancy, she campaigned on maternity issues and as a hold of Firth Brown Tools there emerged a succession of communist member of the Staffordshire Health Executive Council her efforts were district presidents, replaced from within the same CPGB factory branch crowned in 1947 with the opening of a Fanny Deakin Maternity Home. as each went on to higher union office.68 One of them, Ken Randell, On the other hand, given that in the early 1930s she had been the lead- mentioned two aspects of this situation particularly recalling South ing local figure in the NUWM and the sole female area representative on Wales. One was the way in which this influence was exercised not by a the movement’s NAC, it seems plausible to link her public role with mass campaigning party, but by a relative handful of communists—at patterns of women’s employment which in the Potteries were closer to Firth Brown’s perhaps not even twenty in a workforce of two thou- Lancashire or the woollen districts than the Welsh or Scottish coalfields.65 sand—who were respected less for what they ‘stood for’ as communists than how they ‘conducted themselves’ as communists. The other was Engineering: Sheffield, Coventry and Oxford that this rooting in a common occupational culture made for dense interconnections between communism and the broader Labour move- The CPGB’s other great area of industrial strength was engineering. ment. Randell illustrated this by the example of Ronnie Iremonger, later Metalworkers were more closely integrated than miners into the broader leader of Sheffield city council, who as a shopfloor engineer enjoyed work of the party, and from the early prominence of Murphy, Gallacher good relations with the communists and particularly the future AUEW and MacManus to the briefer district secondments of the 1950s and officer Les Dixon. ‘Ronnie’, as Randell put it, ‘looked after the political 1960s they provided the largest industrial grouping among party officials. side’. Epitomised by the AEU Left Unity Committee established in the Spread widely across the country, in many areas, including major metal- 1960s, this distinctive culture was to produce such relative oddities as a working centres like Birmingham and the North West London factory Labour MP, Martin Flannery, whose wife was a member of the commu- belt, engineers were dispersed across relatively heterogeneous communi- nist party’s city secretariat; and the son of a Firth Brown convenor ties and did not necessarily dominate the local communist party.66 Even George Caborn, lately sitting in the Blair government. Even a decade where they did, the precise imprint again depended on a range of vari- after the CPGB’s demise, another Firth Brown convenor, the former ables including patterns of migration and residential settlement and the communist Derek Simpson, was elected general secretary of the union’s period and circumstances in which a communist presence was first estab- successor body. lished. In Sheffield and Coventry, where the party emerged in the early According to Florence Keyworth, who joined there during the war, the 1920s out of the wreckage of the shop stewards’ movement, communism party in Sheffield was also ‘very male dominated’ and members were left had a masculine, industrial character, albeit manifested in subtly differ- in no doubt that the the ‘important people’ were the ones at the ‘indus- ent ways. More obviously distinct was the new industrial settlement of trial base’.69 However, parallels with the coalfields do not entirely hold, Cowley, Oxford, where the closer integration of community and work- and in Sheffield a more or less continuous thread of women’s organisa- place and saliency of community-related issues made for a less compart- tion can also be traced. As early as 1924, the city was one of the first to mentalised approach. set up a successful party women’s committee, naturally meeting in the 70 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 71 AEU Institute and blossoming into discussion once the ‘male leader’ a local men’s hostel, and more perhaps than anywhere else in England initially assigned them was transferred to other work.70 The same year, a Coventry communism at first had the character of an almost semi- women’s section of the NUWM was formed with a claimed membership insurrectionary movement of unemployed men.75 One of its leaders was of 350, and still in 1935 the city had the largest recorded women’s section Jack Leckie, a Scottish miner fresh from drilling men in Fife, where he with three hundred members. In 1929, it was not only the sole such boasted Sinn Fein connections and is depicted concluding one platform section represented at the movement’s national conference, but it was on debate with his fist under his reformist opponent’s nose. In the Midlands, Sheffield’s initiative that an NUWM women’s section was set up.71 Also he was advertised as ‘a physical force Anarchist and ardent anti- in 1929, Sheffield’s Annie Cree was the first ‘housewife’ to be elected to Parliamentarian who breathes dynamite and talks red armies’, while the party’s central committee.72 However, it is the NUWM section which Gallacher in his memoirs recalled him goading a Birmingham audience is revealing in its recognition of a presence in the local labour market to ‘a wild frenzy’.76 Jack Preece, the secretary of the Coventry ‘Soviet’ or which, though uneven and contested, had no parallel in many mining unemployed committee, was known as Dagger Jack thanks to his ‘habit areas. With the ending of mass unemployment, and with the admission of flourishing a knife at public meetings’, while Emery himself had links of women to the AEU in 1943, this meant that women too could be with the IRA and fled the country to avoid arrest after a raid on the classed among the ‘important people’. Indeed, even before the big Birmingham Small Arms factory.77 Predictably, the branch was again increase in the number of women shop stewards in the late 1960s, the male-dominated, and in Frank Carr’s account not a single woman is possibility existed of an ‘industrial comrade’ like Vi Gill, Firth Brown mentioned. Politically, the Coventry communists were strongly opposed deputy convenor and another AEU district committee member, follow- to the emerging Labour Party, and when Leckie’s parliamentary candi- ing her mentor George Caborn onto the party executive and even, in her dature was withdrawn in the interests of the united front in 1922, it case, onto the political committee. passed a resolution threatening secession.78 Coventry was another engineering city in which the communist These political differences may help explain the decline of the party party’s origins lay in the First World War shop stewards’ movement. In in Coventry already by 1923. At the same time, international commit- both cities, the industrially orientated SLP provided the main basis for ments took their toll: Leckie was now working with the KPD and MOPR, the first communist organisation, and in Coventry there was also a or International Red Aid, in Berlin, while Emery was overseeing branch of the Wobblies and a rare provincial showing of the Workers’ MOPR’s British affairs from Moscow, where he was now regarded as Socialist Federation. Nevertheless, according to Frank Carr, the something of a liability by the CPGB and is last heard of in 1926 protest- Coventry Workers’ Committee was more significant than any of ing against objections to his returning to Britain. More fundamentally, these.73 Avowedly a variant of revolutionary syndicalism, it was a move- the communist presence in the city was affected by the return of relative ment offering little space to the conventional party activist, and it is prosperity from 1923, and when an effective communist movement later telling that one of its few middle-class adherents, H.W. Emery, resigned re-emerged it was in the more conventional guise of the second shop a commercial position and took up work in the factory on hearing the stewards’ movement, peaking in the latter years of the Second World call of revolutionary socialism.74 ‘I resigned my situation and entered War.79 Socially, however, underlying continuities remained in the party’s a factory. That was my answer’ he recalled, and the sense of dramatic domination by skilled male workers. In some respects this was a model transition was reinforced when his wife then left him to join the party, boasting one of the highest ratios of party members organised in Catholic church. factory branches: in 1953 some 43 per cent of members and over half of With the post-war collapse of the shop stewards’ movement, syndi- the city’s branches, figures more than twice those for the predominantly calism was forced onto the streets. As a basically prosperous town industrial Midlands district as a whole.80 Even as this presence faded momentarily fallen on hard times, the city briefly witnessed the unusual away, with communists increasingly working as individuals or through conjuncture of mass unemployment with a substantial internal migra- looser left-wing networks, semi-formal meetings of ‘industrial comrades’ tion, and thus the simultaneous deprivation of uprooted young men of took place at least into the 1970s.81 As late as 1985, Samuel cited the city’s both homes and jobs. Among the addresses given in an early CPGB last surviving factory branch issuing a statement baldly reaffirming the branch directory, Coventry’s organiser alone is to be tracked down at centrality of the unions to all prospects of social advance.82 72 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 73 Politically, this was linked to the preoccupation with industrial issues established, militant working-class culture of a markedly syndicalist which within the CPGB was usually referred to as economism or syndi- character. Another was the proximity in Oxford of home and workplace, calism. As Carr suggests, early campaigns over unemployment were little through the siting near the factory of newly built workers’ housing more than a substitute for industrial struggle, involving the same groups estates replicating something of the social environment of the pit of skilled workers. Even the housing shortages they experienced aroused village, but without the pre-existing domination of the union.91 little in the way of a political response.83 Twenty years later, at the Though such an outcome was unplanned, it suggests intriguing paral- moment of its wartime expansion, the party’s Coventry city organiser lels with post-war new towns intended to recreate the ‘neighbourhood’ similarly noted the tendency there ‘to regard the Party as a militant force effect of the working-class communities from which their populations in the Trade Unions and nothing more’.84 A decade further on, once were drawn, and hence to generate a similar range of community-based more the criticism was made of the factory branches that ‘social issues’ activities.92 According to David Grove, secretary in the 1950s of the rela- were not seen as relevant to factory workers, nor factory issues as matters tively vigorous Crawley party branch, this owed its distinctive character for party policy.85 On the other hand, even more pronouncedly than in to the close association between community and workplace and the Sheffield, the shop stewards themselves functioned as what the Coventry restriction of housing to those actually working in the town. ‘It’s the sort MP Richard Crossman called the praetorian guard of the local Labour of thing you get in a mining village, so you could have a whole street with movement, instinctively sympathetic to communism and regarding the people living there, working in two or three factories’, he recalled. This Labour Party itself simply as ‘the political instrument of trade union- in turn encouraged the involvement of union branches in community ism’.86 According to Frank Allaun, another Labour MP and a former issues which, unusually, were of concern to their entire membership. communist, the car workers by this time had supplanted the miners as Hence actions were possible such as a morning stoppage of work in the vanguard section of the working class. No doubt such a perception support of tenants’ demands, at the urging of ‘their’ joint shop stewards’ seemed to legitimise a preoccupation with their own industrial struggles, committee. ‘Again, the physical arrangements of a new town were and concerns began to be expressed that the party’s factory branches conducive to this sort of thing’, Grove went on: were functioning as glorified works councils.87 Nevertheless, car workers were no more a homogeneous grouping than because all the factories were each side of one long road…So they miners. In Oxford, the CPGB outside of the university was also domi- got a band, and the band marched down the road and as it passed nated by male engineering workers, and these were even likelier than in each factory the workers came out and formed up behind with Coventry to have come from the depressed areas. In this case, however, banners and slogans.93 union activism was combined with an orientation to community and even electoral politics, and vigorous campaigns over housing issues themselves Though such an event was obviously exceptional—Dick Miles in proved a conduit into the party of industrial workers like Arthur Exell.88 Tribune called it ‘the greatest rents demonstration since the war’—it was Conversely, communists recruited in the factory showed less disinclina- not entirely without parallel.94 According to Grove, Crawley also had tion to become active in the wards and branches. Norman Brown, a shop more trade unionists on peace marches than he had found in other steward, local election candidate and chairman of both his local party towns, and the one recorded industrial stoppage against nuclear branch and its Midlands metal bureau, claimed that no political tension weapons occurred in another new town, Stevenage, where the CND was felt between these commitments, though practically they brought activist Pat Arrowsmith succeeded in gaining the co-operation of local him to the verge of a nervous breakdown.89 Unusually, Brown and Exell communist industrial activists.95 Whereas Grove, a town planner, even took at face value the party’s exhortations to set up factory shock brought out the environmental prerequisites for such activity, Bert brigades, an idea which received short shrift in more established indus- Lowe drew on a long-established discourse of the building workers in trial cultures.90 describing the Stevenage building union branch as its ‘building work- In his study of migration to the two cities, A.J. Chandler has suggested ers’ Parliament’ in which ‘everything of importance that was taking a number of possible explanations for these differences. One is that in place in the town was discussed’.96 Coventry, as already described, the migrants were absorbed into a well- Coventry, by contrast, was nothing like a pit village. Instead, workers 74 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 75 were dispersed across and beyond the city in a way itself encouraging the cultures. One is the physical character of the branch: the place where it separation of social and industrial issues. Such circumstances no doubt actually met. Generally speaking, the ideal was for local party organisa- help to explain why the transfer from factory to residential branches in tions to maintain their own premises, in which the ambience of the total 1945 had the ‘disastrous’ consequences here that James Hinton has party might at least theoretically have been maintained. In practice, the described.97 A Manchester AEU steward, Eddie Frow, described what habit of meeting in members’ homes, union premises or pubs not only happened with the similarly dispersed working-class membership in loca- showed how elusive such a conception really was, but reinforced the tions like Trafford Park: distinctive characteristics of regional and local party cultures. In Scotland where the pub was anything but a respectable institution, and thousands of members that had joined in the factory had joined communists like Gallacher and Stewart were deeply moulded by the without discussing it with their wives and families or even neces- temperance movement, it was more or less unthinkable for party meet- sarily shouting a lot about communism in the house or even going ings to take place in pubs, and the somewhat severe character of Scottish out in any communist party activity. They’d been factory activists, communism may have been connected with this.100 Even in Leicester, a they’d talked to the lads they worked with, they’d gone to commu- city rarely identified with hedonism, Harry McShane was shocked to find nist party meetings in their dinnertime and had read the Daily local communists ‘more often in the pub than on the platform’, and even Worker and communist party pamphlets…But they weren’t on the platform dispensing entertainment rather than political nourish- communists in the traditional thirties’ mould...98 ment.101 Elsewhere, to be cut off from the pub was to be cut off from the dominant culture of the labour movement. In the Rhondda, women’s Though only a sketch is possible here, a possible hypothesis for compar- low political involvement was attributed to the union meeting in the pub ative research begins to suggest itself. In conditions of mass unemploy- on Sunday mornings while they were ‘cooking the dinner’.102 In ment and oppressive managerial authority, the separation of work and Sheffield, as we have seen, communist party meetings were at first held residence seems to be identified with the concentration of communist in the AEU institute, though the AEU did not at that time admit women activity on the place of residence. This is what Rosenhaft describes in members. Some years later, Florence Keyworth recalled nerving herself Weimar Berlin and can perhaps be detected in a milder variant in inter- to enter her first pub to attend a meeting of the city’s YCL, only to sit war Fife. However, the further complicating factor would have to be there disregarded while a group of young men discussed the AEU.103 In incorporated into such research that in some settlements a form of indus- Eccles, Lancashire, in a dispute in which both drink and union connec- trial paternalism was reflected in the controlled housing of the company tions apparently played a part, the party branch at one point became town or village. Along with many pit villages, this was true of ICI, deeply divided over whether or not to meet in the local AEU club.104 Billingham, where it is notable that the influence of communists like It was in Coventry that the symbiosis of pub and party seems to have George Short was felt more among the Jewish youth of Middlesbrough been most complete. Leading figures there like Bill Gee and Tom Dingley than the largely pacified ex-miners of the chemical industry. Indeed, on are said to have succumbed to drink, and in 1923, the Sheffield teetotaller Teesside ‘quite a number of people who worked in the ICI but weren’t J.T. Murphy hissed in a King Street report: ‘Beer is the curse of the natives of the area helped in the education of party people…and organ- Coventry branch and the club is nothing but a boosing show’.105 ised campaigns’—seemingly a case of a degree of radicalisation finding According to the local party women’s organiser, ‘you had to be a drinker expression not only outside the workplace but beyond the wider envi- to succeed in the party in Coventry’, and during wartime beer shortages ronment dominated by the company.99 On the other hand, where as a the availability of alcohol was usually the key consideration in deter- result of more favourable industrial conditions the factory was available mining party meeting places.106 as a political nexus, the same process of separation, reinforced by the A final variable shedding light on these different admixtures of the political priority accorded work in industry, can be seen to have produced industrial and the political is the CPGB’s contrasting performance in the opposite effect. This, it would seem, was precisely what happened in parliamentary and local elections. Again Coventry stands at one extreme, Coventry. and even at the apogee of the CPGB’s very limited electoral achieve- Two further considerations allow an insight into these disparate party ment, the alleged ‘failure to understand the political role of the Party’ was 76 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 77 borne out by its communist candidates’ receiving fewer votes per party threatened with disqualification under revised Labour Party rules. member in 1945 than anywhere else in the country. Both here and in Others, like the Lansbury protégés Francis Meynell and Raymond Sheffield, the call of a wider Labour movement loyalty was such that Postgate, were journalists for whom communism had now outlived its many communists were reluctant to contest the election at all: in promise of opportunity and romance. Sometimes the suspicion felt for Coventry it was ‘difficult to get factory workers to work in their locali- such figures was encouraged by their undisguised social presumption. ties’, while ‘some leading industrial comrades thought election did not William Mellor, another Herald journalist and former guild socialist, was concern them’.107 This may again be contrasted with Oxford, where recalled as ‘offensively patrician in appearance, manner and speech’ as communists cycled out to help the party’s agricultural specialist in his he put the case for higher party salaries in 1921.113 Leaving the CPGB in hopeless contest in Abingdon.108 More emphatically, it could be 1924, after a failed attempt to secure Comintern funding for the Herald, contrasted not only with dynamic community politics of a seat like Mellor accepted the paper’s editorship under official auspices just two Stepney Mile End, which Phil Piratin won in 1945, but with the North years later. J. T. Walton Newbold, who also left in 1924, was a hugely self- London dormitory constituency of Hornsey. Here, in what in some ways regarding marxist theorist and the first MP to be elected as a communist. was the most remarkable result of the campaign, a communist party with Thinking nothing of asking working-class hosts to keep their ‘brats’ quiet, little factory presence but a strong orientation towards campaigning he was also punctilious in exacting speaking fees, explaining to one issues amassed over 10,000 votes: the largest ever communist vote in an disgusted organiser that by his outlay on books he had even run into English constituency.109 Again, there is no simple typology, and despite debt—‘something I have never hitherto allowed myself…except to my its ‘syndicalist’ characteristics, the CPGB polled impressively in the own parents’. Discounting motivations of principle and effectiveness, Rhondda—perhaps because there had not since 1929 been a such defections entered party legend as a cautionary tale, not so much of Conservative candidate to exploit the split working-class vote. In the 1945 intellectuals as of the ‘big-wigs’ and careerists immortalised in Pollitt’s municipal elections, where this constraint was obviously less compelling, Serving My Time.114 candidates in London are said to have averaged over a quarter of the What the answer ‘none’ therefore signified was not that the CPGB had poll, and again did well in Oxford.110 In Coventry, however, even in failed to attract any intellectual recruits, but that these were refused any absolute terms the communist candidates provided the worst votes by far special standing, mainly confined to subordinate functions and valued for in the Midlands. In the nearby Birmingham Sparkbrook ward, a popu- their technical capacities, not their ideas or associations. Both indeed lar doctor and community activist, Mollie Barrow, almost equalled the were positively distrusted. Encouraging the assertion of this unambigu- general election vote for the entire constituency. In Coventry, the two ous working-class identity were not only the ‘Bolshevisation’ measures candidates’ share of the poll was barely a fifth of hers.111 progressively introduced during the 1920s, but what communists regarded as the middle-class takeover of the Parliamentary Labour Party Intellectuals hastened by their own simultaneous exclusion from membership rights. Against this tide of ‘middle-class political careerists’ they therefore Asked to describe the CPGB’s activities among intellectual and profes- promoted their own leadership of worker-intellectuals, many of them sional workers, the British delegation to the Comintern’s Fifth World shaped by the fiercely proletarian SLP or the active refusal of Oxbridge Congress in 1924 replied: ‘None.’112 The information was not offered patronage represented by the labour colleges’ movement.115 Secured by apologetically, and whatever its failings in the Comintern’s eyes the Comintern funding against traditional dependencies, they scorned the CPGB at least had this virtue, that its basically proletarian character was presumption of the privileged and disdained the benefits of their vaunted second to none. Even at its foundation, intellectuals were less prepon- education. The Webbs had sometimes thought of themselves as ‘clerks’ derant in its leadership than in parties like the PCF and PCI; and while to the labour movement, and it was as clerks alone that their successors the guild socialists and Herald group each provided founding contingents, were tolerated within the communist party. prejudices were only hardened by a series of well-publicised defections It was therefore appropriate that the one distinctive grouping of that came to a head in that same year of 1924. communist intellectuals in the 1920s was that centred upon the Webbs’ Some of those involved, like Ellen Wilkinson, were Labour candidates own foundation and brainchild, the Labour (formerly Fabian) Research 78 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 79

Department.116 Maintaining Webbian traditions of largely underpaid or of his first job as a teacher and then reportedly ‘refused an offer of a voluntary service, the LRD’s succession of London offices not only Professorship of Ethnology on the grounds that it would divorce [him] provided close proximity to the union headquarters whose affiliations it from the Party’.117 Communism, to quote the title of one of his novels, sought, but allowed access to the pool of educated, public-spirited and meant ‘storming heaven’ itself, and for this Fox seemed prepared to sacri- often independently provided young people who for decades had proved fice all the conventional advantages of his class. the mainstay of innumerable voluntary organisations. Of the twenty-six As the answer ‘none’ suggests, the party did not exactly take full advan- paid or voluntary LRD workers recorded on the Manchester database, tage of such commitments. Though professedly lacking ‘professionally all but five had attended a university, most of them Cambridge, London trained intellectual elements’, it made little apparent effort to retain those or Oxford in descending order. Of the others, three were South Wales it had in Britain, and if anything released them for international respon- miners who had attended the Central Labour College, one was a some- sibilities more readily than it did its working-class activists.118 Fox himself time theological student, and the last was the ill-fated Rose Cohen, from spent over four years in three separate stints in Moscow, the longest of an East London Jewish background but coming into contact with middle- them from 1929 to 1932 at David Riazanov’s Marx-Engels Institute. class rebels through Sylvia Pankhurst and G.D.H. Cole. Though work in Moscow could still provide a more congenial environ- Again a transitional period can be detected in which the Labour ment for the intellectual—it was Fox himself, ‘desirous of going to Research Department harboured far from clerk-like hopes of wresting Russia’,119 who raised the question of his working for the Comintern— the party’s direction from its working-class leadership, and former Guild even under Riazanov he was said to be employed at ‘technical librarian Socialists like Raji and Clemens Dutt, Hugo Rathbone, Rose Cohen and work easily to be performed by non-Party members’.120 In Britain the Mary Moorhouse used their personal contacts and greater freedom of highest responsibility he attained was that of assistant editor at the osten- travel to maintain ill-regulated and somewhat resented links with the sibly non-party Sunday Worker,where the heterodox enthusiasms he Comintern and its Anglo-American secretariat, especially under the brought to its literary page drew the derision of some correspondents. Hungarian Jozsef Pogány or ‘Pepper’. However, after a challenge for the One, apparently Aitken Ferguson, a former SLPer and the ‘best-read’ party leadership came to a head in 1923, most of these figures became communist in Scotland, styled himself ‘Clydebank Riveter’ while exco- progessively integrated into the main structures of the party, while the riating the ‘driftwood and scum’ borne along by the working-class strug- LRD for its part was provided with its first and only working-class secre- gle.121 Not only was Fox not considered for the party executive, but as the tary in the shape of the miner and returning Lenin School student Bill one prominent British communist in Moscow in the winter of 1925–6 Williams. Appointed in 1928, Williams remained at the LRD until 1945, was not entrusted with the formal party mandate relinquished on his when he went to work for the newly formed National Union of return to Britain of Ernest Brown.122 Mineworkers; and despite its continuing attraction to intellectuals, the In a period when a Labour parliamentary nomination could be department was never again to show signs of ‘separatism’. obtained on the strength of a father’s cheque, such an experience can be Almost a precondition of the intellectual’s continuing adhesion to the compared most instructively with that of Fox’s Magdalen contemporary, Bolshevising communist party was an unassuming disposition contrast- John Strachey. Coming from a background steeped in conservatism and ing markedly with the easy arrogations possible within the Labour Party embracing the Labour movement three years after Fox, Strachey had and ILP. Arguably the most gifted and committed representative of the edited the Miner and Socialist Review,sat as MP for a Birmingham type was Ralph Fox, best remembered as the novelist, critic and ‘writer constituency, abetted Oswald Mosley in his leadership ambitions and in arms’ who was killed at Cordova in January 1937. Born in Halifax in generally cut a far from self-effacing figure, all by the age of thirty.123 Fox, 1900 and educated at Magdalen College and the Sorbonne, Fox joined by contrast, was remarkable only for being inconspicuous, and almost the CPGB within months of its formation and after graduating in 1922 every portrait we have of him refers to his extreme ‘modesty’, even as a went with its approval on a Quaker relief mission to the USSR. His tutor at the Lenin School.124 commitment fortified by the experience, uniquely for a communist of the Was this the result of bashings by Clydebank riveters, or was it only 1920s he expressed it in the form of novels which secured the interest of the unassertive who were likely to tolerate their attentions? A.L. Morton, mainstream commercial publishers. At the same time, Fox was forced out Cambridge-educated and a sometime contributor to T.S. Eliot’s Criterion, 80 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 81 later recalled without resentment the ‘hard time’ he had on joining the his self-abnegation was strongly emphasised, his singling out for tribute CPGB in 1929, when ‘as an intellectual you kept a pretty low in the first of the Spanish war’s memorial volumes underlined the new profile…[W]hen I came in…I had to spend a long time chalking in the public standing of the communist intellectual. Indeed, though it took streets and carrying the platform and doing all the menial tasks—not that Sidney Webb to point out the lack of any mention of his Lenin in Fox’s I minded, I expected to do this’.125 Others were less complaisant. Of the obituaries, the omission was rectified in the memorial volume, where two relatively tiny group we can identify as joining the CPGB from the long extracts were accompanied by a fulsome vindication of the work by universities in the mid to late-1920s, two, Jane Tabrisky and Freda Utley, T.A. Jackson.130 Even in 1932, Strachey’s delayed conversion to commu- became identified with the leftism allegedly rife in the Marx-Engels nism had involved not the hauling about of platforms, or even of a party Institute. At gatherings in Moscow apartments, this was sometimes card, but immediate recognition of his command of ‘theory’ and pre- expressed as support for the anathematised Trotsky, more perhaps as a eminence in articulating it. In this he was a harbinger of things to come. model of intellectual independence than because of the detailed Though Strachey represented a small but prominent grouping of older programmes with which he was identified.126 Already in Britain, Utley converts, for the most part this was a movement of overlapping student had incurred the CPGB’s censure for invoking Lenin’s concept of cohorts, born roughly between the years 1910–25 and radicalised by ‘economism’ to demonstrate the primacy of theory and absolve the intel- world depression, the advance of fascism, the intellectual appeals of lectual from ‘play[ing] at being a proletarian’. Tabrisky, on the other Marxism and the fascination of socialist construction in Russia. In some hand, had been commended by the CPGB for her ‘intelligence and ways their motivations recalled the ‘consciousness of sin’ which stirred in rapidity of mind’, already manifested as a voluntary worker at the LRD, late Victorian social reformers. Mass unemployment was in both cases a and she was defended along with Fox during the so-called ‘cleanup’ of catalyst, and the eye-opening effect of the Hunger Marchers’ arrival in Riazanov’s institute.127 Cambridge in 1934 may be compared with the sensational impact of the Both of them quickly broke with communism, Utley to write one of unemployed riots of 1886.131 If in the earlier period guilt was mixed with the finest ‘Cold War’ memoirs about her Russian experiences, and fear, in its 1930s’ variant it was combined with the doom of a condemned Tabrisky—as Jane Degras—to edit authoritative collections of Com- class and a belief in the redemptory agency of the workers—something intern documents for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. If which had no Victorian equivalent and could never have acquired its essentially their rebellion was about the standing of intellectuals within potency without the example of the USSR. It was for these middle-class the party, differences of generation and political formation cut across the converts of the 1930s that joining the party was most likely to be identi- simple opposition of worker and intellectual. Hence, it was Pollitt whom fied with the uprooting of the individual from traditional relationships Utley recalled supporting her against the ‘little bureaucrats’ in the party, and patterns of authority. Peter Cadogan, whose conversion took place while Eric Godfrey, a contemporary of hers at King’s College, London, in 1942, described it in his party autobiography as ‘get[ting] out of one took pride in his role in exposing both Utley and Tabrisky as class skin and into another’.132 ‘Trotskyists—or worse’ while working in Moscow.128 Even the loyalist Fox Shedding one’s skin could take a number of forms. Among prominent was tested by such allegations. With Pollitt’s approval, in 1933 he intellectual recruits of the early 1930s, several moved to working-class published a biography of Lenin which immediately received a stinging districts, including Christopher Caudwell, David Guest and Clive and rebuke from a Comintern rapporteur accusing Fox of Trotskyism. Noreen Branson. No doubt they were unaware of following the example Though he he vehemently protested his innocence, Dutt also chipped in of Palme Dutt, who ten years earlier, like Caudwell and the Bransons, to condemn Fox’s ‘romantic literary’ tone and individualism, adding had also lived in Battersea, where he put in an ineffectual attendance at rather ominously that the allegation of Trotskyism was merely his local branch of the General and Municipal Workers’ Union.133 When ‘not…proved’.129 the literary critic Alick West moved to Brixton, it was precisely because Characteristic of the Bolshevising 1920s, and legitimised by over- Dutt advised him to make a break with his middle-class surroundings.134 literal interpretations of ‘Class against Class’, this suspicion of the intel- At one level, the aim of such relocations was to make commitment lectual, though not the Trotskyist, was only really abated during the more effective. Felicia Browne was a sometime contemporary of Clive course of the 1930s. By the time of Fox’s death in January 1937, though Branson’s at the Slade School, becoming in 1936 the first Briton, and 82 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 83 only British woman, to die as a combatant in Spain. Despite having an refused the party’s permission to do so, like the ICI economist thought independent income and a studio in the country, she had previously likely to arouse the suspicions of both workers and management on the taken a job as a tea shop scullion, where she described her task as that shopfloor.139 Another volunteer, a Summerhill and Cambridge-educated of ‘getting the girls to fight...to change unspeakable conditions’.135 technical clerk in a radio factory, admitted to boredom at work and Though such commitments were deeply felt, not infrequently a sense ‘undue humility due to consciousness of privileged background’, though of discomfort or delinquency regarding one’s social pigmentation can he took satisfaction from his work in the electricians’ union.140 Betty also be detected in such migrations. Gabriel Carritt, son of the Oxford Dowsett had broken ties with her father, a fascist-leaning businessman, philosopher E. F. Carritt, adopted the name ‘Bill’, dropped his aitches to pay her own way through university. Qualifying as a doctor in 1943, and on conducting his first party activities in Clay Cross remembered she subsequently worked at the Medical Research Council before being trying to ‘talk like the Derbyshire miners’. ‘I used to imitate, I used to sacked on suspected political grounds in 1949. Whereas for many middle- want to be working class. I couldn’t bear the fact that anybody should class communists, careers such as medicine provided a vehicle for the know what my background was…’136 Though Alick West did not disguise ideals that drew them to communism, Dowsett’s now took a more distinc- his background in this overt way, his party autobiography is exceptional tive turn and in 1950 she became a bus conductor.141 in its suffusion with self-criticism in which ‘bourgeois influences’ and his More singular still was the fact that she married her driver and ‘defects in…personal character’ are indistinguishable. ‘I am reserved, recruited him to the party. Generally speaking, invisible fissures within contemplative rather than active, acquiescent rather than combative, and the communist counter-community were marked by the relative infre- prone to compromise’, he wrote: quency of inter-marriage across the social divide. More specifically, it was rare for professional men to marry working-class women, although not This has made me inclined to separate an ‘innermost self ’ from uncommonly male activists and functionaries did marry women from myself as a Party member, and this has made me susceptible to middle-class backgrounds—a phenonemon not peculiar to the commu- idealism and mysticism. I have tried to overcome this…but I am nist party.142 Sent to work among middle-class contacts of the popular still liable to the temptation to withdraw into ‘myself ’—that is to front period, Carritt’s two marriages were socially compatible ones; and dodge the class struggle. while West had agonised over whether falling in love with a non-party …I have not carried out my theoretical work with sufficiently member represented ‘deserting to the enemy’, he was not finally deterred clear consciousness that it must be part of the struggle to establish and ended up dividing his time between Hampstead and the Vicarage the dictatorship of the proletariat and must be guided by the Flat, Cookham, with the positive result—he added enigmatically—of needs of the struggle, not by ‘my’ own wishes. I have thought too becoming ‘less susceptible to idealism and mysticism’.143 Dowsett’s much and too idealistically about the culture of the past, and not commitment, by comparison, was unconditional. Where communism enough and with too little enthusiasm about the new culture of was once her ‘hobby’, she now described it as the central purpose of her Communism.137 life, specifically discountenancing association with the middle class of which she had once formed part.144 This sense of a self requiring inverted commas is most famously depicted Almost to the end, there remained an element of ‘donkey-jacketism’ in the novels of Edward Upward, like Carritt an intimate of the Auden- about student communists, to say nothing of competitors to their left.145 Spender-Isherwood circle, where party membership is again depicted as On the other hand, there were from the start those who sought to a way of casting off the inherent ‘social inferiority’ of the bourgeois and reconcile communist commitments with their existing sense of self and bringing the promise of release or self-denial. ‘Membership of the Party’, social function, and this was to become more characteristic of the pondered Upward’s fictional alter ego hopefully, ‘transcended class differ- larger wave of intellectual recruits during the party’s heyday. From as ences between the members’.138 early as 1922, the Cambridge economist Maurice Dobb quietly main- Though this was primarily a phenomenon of the 1930s, with the tained his own academic position while fighting the CPGB’s corner CPGB’s turn to the factories in the late 1940s there remained members within the Plebs League. His Cambridge contemporary, the crystallog- prepared to take on new class roles if called on to do so. Some were rapher J.D. Bernal, also joined the party after graduating in 1923. 84 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 85 However, Bernal encountered such suspicion of intellectuals that he liked the idea and by the late 1930s there existed a distinct and well- appears to have lapsed in 1927, when he returned to the Cavendish defined communist student milieu which was to provide a significant Laboratory, and no other communist academic is known to us from the proportion of the next generation of communist leaders.152 Already 1920s.146 during the war, student recruits like Betty Matthews and Malcolm The adhesion to the party of Hyman Levy in the early 1930s was thus MacEwen were given responsibilities as district organisers which at one a significant straw in the wind. Born in 1889, Levy was a professor in time would virtually have needed certification from the Lenin School. mathematics at Imperial College and a Fabian socialist from as early as By the 1960s fully a sixth of the party executive were products of this 1910. Active in the National Union of Scientific Workers, he had brought 1930s’ student generation, including key figures like James Klugmann, an expert outlook to the Labour Party as chair successively of its educa- head of education and first editor of Marxism Today; George Matthews, tion and science advisory committees and it was not to be expected that former assistant secretary to Pollitt and editor of the Daily Worker; and he would be content with performing Morton’s menial tasks.147 Joining the Spanish veteran Bill Alexander, who had succeeded Matthews as the CPGB in about 1931 or 1932,148 it must have been partly on Levy’s assistant secretary. Though Pollitt ruled out Matthews as his own succes- initiative that proposals were then advanced within the party for a sor because he was ‘middle class’, by 1965 even the post of national ‘Section of Intellectual Workers’, modelled on professional workers’ industrial organiser had been entrusted to a former lawyer of the same organisations in the USSR but also claiming a parallel with the CPGB’s generation, the Canadian-born Bert Ramelson.153 factory cells. Apparently proposing only ‘to do what every Party member Thanks to images of the Cambridge spy ring, these student commu- should do—to apply the theses of the CC and the CI in the place or nists have been identified in several accounts as a sort of gilded youth. sphere of his own particular work’, the spirit of the proposals was more Richard Crossman (Winchester and New College) called them ‘the akin to a Fabian conception of vocational organisation and they were golden boys’, while in Osbert Lancaster’s Draynefleete it is Guillaume de immediately quashed by Dutt as the keeper of party orthodoxy. Dutt’s Vere Tipple who re-emerges in the 1930s as Bill Tipple, secretary of the insistence that there was ‘no special work and role of Communists from World Congress of International Poets in Defence of Peace.154 the bourgeois intellectual strata’ perfectly expressed the conceptions Specifically with regard to Oxford, Brian Harrison has depicted the which had hitherto guided the party, and were to guide Dutt all his life. student left as pitting grammar-school social democrats against ‘the Nevertheless, it was on the basis of what Dutt described as the ‘segrega- public-school undergraduate in revolt’. Neal Wood has also described the tion’ of the intellectuals from the working-class struggle that the future CPGB’s 1930s intellectual recruits as having been to the best public development of this work was to take place.149 schools, ‘Eton figuring prominently among them’.155 There is unques- While Bernal and a few contemporaries now made their way into the tionably an element of mythologising at work here. It is true that fold, the first real sign of such ‘segregation’ was the emergence in the Oxbridge recruits to communism included names familiar on the liberal 1930s of a distinct communist students’ movement, to which the later left like Carritt, Simon, Toynbee, Cornford and Haden Guest. A name innovations of professional groups and graduate branches provided a like Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, Cambridge communist and sort of collective career development. Hitherto there had been no future high court judge, also stands out a little conspicuously among the attempt to sustain the sort of students’ organisation from which the lists of party comrades. Nevertheless, using a research method based CPGB had drawn much of its first cohort of intellectual recruits. In upon the recognition of such well-known names, Wood’s account 1932, however, the party established a national student secretariat and inevitably exaggerated their significance. With student recruits running the first communist student magazine for a decade. Within six months to many hundreds, his haul of just seven Old Etonians, of whom only student membership had more than doubled, to around 150; and three can be identified as actually joining the CPGB, was certainly a although this sector was obviously uniquely susceptible to the party’s slender basis on which to call them ‘the most stalwart of communists’.156 fluctuating fortunes, there were still over 600 student communists even In any case, the constant turnover of the student branches means that as general recruitment began to falter after the war.150 Where practica- generalisations are more than usually hazardous. Both Eric Hobsbawm ble, as in London, student communists were at first attached to party and Denis Healey, Oxbridge entrants of 1936, comment that in their locals, often as ‘instructors’.151 However, Pollitt claimed never to have period the public-school component was giving way to the grammar 86 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 87 schools; and at Cambridge, perhaps more so than at Oxford, a signifi- were coming towards Communism’, not in revolt against ‘social conven- cant minority seem to have come from relatively plebeian homes, partic- tion or cultural emptiness’, still less, as Philip Toynbee put it, to avoid ularly with the changing composition of the student population itself changing their shirts with greater regularity.166 Increasingly, the model during in the 1940s.157 The best known of these figures, Raymond communist student was like the model non-communist student only Williams, was the son of a Welsh railwayman who joined the Cambridge better. ‘Every communist a good student’, was a tolerable slogan from the student branch in 1939 and later claimed to have been its only member 1930s. ‘Join Soc. Soc. and get a 2: 1, join Comm. Soc. and get a First’, boasting such a pedigree.158 In fact, his branch secretary, Cyril Claydon, from the 1940s, was just insufferable—though the communist-controlled was the son of a Herald-reading Essex railway clerk who had joined the University Labour Federation did also propound a ‘sense of communal Labour League of Youth at the age of fourteen. Inadvertently opting for responsibility’ for study in preference to the mere ‘selfish, competitive one of the more plutocratic colleges, he gravitated to the student branch struggle for coveted “Firsts”’.167 Either way, variously ‘Harry’ or Lenin as a refuge from it.159 June Bean, whose father was a Norwich pattern- were said to have enjoined on communists diligence in their studies, and maker, had a similar experience with predominantly male, ‘extremely where these were neglected it was out of political zeal, not a disregard upper-class’ medic students, and described the normality of relations in for academic values. Student interviewees used words like ‘normal’, the communist student branch as her ‘salvation’.160 Both Bean and ‘staid’, ‘puritanical’ or ‘respectable’ to describe their university days, and Claydon referred to feelings of ‘hate’ for Cambridge life, while Dorothy even into the 1960s experimentation in dress or sexual mores was Wedderburn, who like Bean joined in 1943, recalled the frightening frowned upon. A Liverpool student on an all-party delegation to the US impact of the ‘hordes of…huge Cheltenham Ladies’ College and consul was even mistaken for the Young Conservative.168 Roedean girls’ she encountered on arriving at Girton. Also from a work- One result of the shift to work among students themselves was the ing-class background, she too appreciated how ‘relaxed’ the student weakening of ties between the student branches and other communists. branch was, despite the culture of party discipline and like Bean, Early enthusiasms for agitating ‘in the town’ gave way to a more self- Claydon and most of the other students whose testimonies we collected, contained existence with moments of real friction with the ‘town’ she had been politicised before going to Cambridge.161 For many of branches.169 In Oxford in the early 1950s students did try to support them, college provided a catalyst for joining the party, but not the industrial activities with the town branch, ‘who as you can imagine primary cause. Del Carr, the daughter of a former Labour candidate thought we were a bunch of wankers’.170 Organisationally, the separation recruited at Oxford by Iris Murdoch in 1940, stated simply: ‘I was ready of branches meant that there was little to offset the lack of continuity for it.’162 between student cohorts, and after the membership haemorrhage of All of those mentioned were the products of provincial grammar 1956 the Oxford student branch had to be rebuilt from scratch.171 It also schools, and the ethos of student communism, which seemed to them so meant that habits and expectations were established of political associa- normal and relaxed, was largely one of grammar-school endeavour. tion mainly with one’s professional and middle-class contacts. Cyril Earlier in the 1930s, its adherents had enjoyed a reputation for oddity, Claydon described it as an ‘artificial’ existence and recalled the ‘terrible and still the pre-war Oxford Labour Club could seem ‘needlessly culture shock’ he experienced on going to work with the proletarian bohemian to outside observers’.163 Almost from the start, however, the ‘tough nuts’ of the YCL.172 Twelve years after he graduated, Hobsbawm’s rejection of convention tended to be associated with a Lenin-like asceti- party autobiography described his feeling ‘rather cut off from the masses, cism and seriousness of purpose. David Guest’s rooms at Trinity were and even from ordinary party work’ through his concentration on profes- described as absolutely bare except for a bookcase, piano, portrait of sional spheres of work and he mentioned a desire ‘to have more to do Lenin and mouldering piece of cheese.164 Arriving at John Cornford’s, with factory workers’.173 Conversely, communists like Dorothy and illuminated by a single naked light bulb, one’s previous arrangements Edward Thompson did become intensely involved in local campaigning were liable to be overridden with a scrawled communication: ‘A crisis has activities, and it is no doubt relevant that Dorothy Thompson at arisen in the town.’165 Cambridge had been very much involved with the town branch, on hous- By the time that Cornford gave his life in the crisis that really did arise ing and other local issues.174 Again, the difference of six or seven years in Spain, tributes to him recorded that ‘far more “normal” young men could make for quite contrasting experiences. 88 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFULP 89 At least the blatant device of a so-called ‘middle-class branch’, report- nalists mixed freely in Fleet Street pubs, from which Claud Cockburn edly attempted in Edinburgh in the 1930s, does not appear to have been would emerge barely standing and yet miraculously capable of produc- replicated elsewhere, and graduating students normally found their way ing copy to order, while the novelist Patrick Hamilton would drop in into ordinary residential branches.175 Indeed, in some areas middle-class during the long, dry afternoons, pursuing his liaison with the paper’s tele- members not only actively participated but set the dominant tone for phonist.183 ‘Gone to seed and large supporter of brewers’ dividends’, was such branches and provided their meeting venues.176 At a national level how an old schoolfriend described Reg Bishop, another of the telephon- too, with the proliferation of national party committees after the war, ist’s admirers and a passionate devotee of the music hall as well as Stalin’s these too were serviced largely on a voluntary basis from within the Russia.184 Close to the centre of things, journalists on the Worker took little London region. On a 1957 listing of members of the party’s interna- part in local activities and were even somewhat contemptuous of them.185 tional sub-committees, only two of the sixty-three names listed had A typist employed there after the war expressed dismay at the prevalent addresses outside what is now Greater London. Functionaries and profes- cynicism, which was described even by the paper’s editor as a ‘deadly sional workers predominated.177 tendency’: ‘“Clever” derogatory remarks about the Party, about the type However, while many middle-class members were absorbed into ordi- of paper which the Daily Worker is, about the workers in their struggles, nary party activities, those with professional commitments managed to have no place in our paper.’186 carve out the separate spheres of work and social contact that Dutt had After the lifting of the ban on the Worker in 1942, with male working- so reprobated. To some extent, this represented a continuation of the class activists committed to industry and the forces, the paper’s increas- functional enclaves of research and publicity already identifiable with the ing professionalism was associated with a younger, more middle-class and LRD and Herald groups of the party’s formative years. Even in the 1920s, often female cohort of journalists. Joining the paper from the Sheffield Cambridge graduate Philip Spratt contrasted the ‘pleasant intimacy with Star,Florence Keyworth was shocked to discover that nearly all of its a like-minded group’ he experienced at the LRD with his ‘futile’ and women journalists were from distinctly privileged backgrounds, whether ‘uncongenial’ party branch.178 Though superficially counteracted by business, literary or professional. ‘Cradled in books’, as the Worker adver- Williams’s appointment as LRD secretary, the department’s Fabian social tised her, Sheila Lynd still lived next door to her parents, who were well- ethos was restored with the recruitment of an outstanding 1930s’ cohort known Hampstead littérateurs. Angela Tuckett was not only a solicitor including Margot Heinemann and Noreen Branson. ‘The LRD was who had worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties but an actually the best thing that could have happened to me…because I didn’t England hockey international recalled by Keyworth as a ‘very sporty have to pretend to be a worker’, Heinemann recalled. ‘I could put my type’. ‘They didn’t mean to be intimidating but they were to me, just by talents at the service of the working-class movement without either being being upper class’, she went on. ‘I can remember that on Monday morn- idealistically workerist about it or feeling that it was up to me to tell the ings she would ring up her friends and they would discuss the Saturday workers what they ought to do.’179 game, you know: “That was a splen-did goal you got on Saturday in the As for the Daily Worker, to the extent that it relied on the ad hoc enthu- second half. Well done!”I would sit there listening to this and think, siasms that had sustained the Herald, it was a target of suspicion both to “Where am I? Is this the Daily Worker?”’187 the Comintern and to those like Dutt who were distrustful of professional Corresponding more directly with the growing specialisation of trade journalists.180 Even in the Class Against Class period, its irreverent union work was the network of party professional groups which in the columnist ‘Bejay’ (Bernard Boothroyd) was a devotee of Douglas’s Social late 1940s came under the aegis of the new National Cultural Credit theories who described himself as a communist but appears not Committee. By this time, there were eleven of these groups, including to have joined the party.181 Nor at first did the popular cartoonist architects, psychiatrists, biologists and the legendary historians’ group, ‘Gabriel’, who joined the paper in 1936, when a somewhat detached rela- which, in addition to developing an outstanding canon of marxist schol- tionship with party structures was becoming rather characteristic of the arship, included local branches and a teachers’ section.188 If the histori- ‘literary café-crawlers’ denounced by the Comintern.182 Knowing and ans were left largely unmolested by party officials, the teachers’ group irreverent—‘the lower organs of the party must penetrate the backward itself has been characterised as a veritable ‘party within a party’, with its sections of the masses’, they lampooned Inprecorr—these communist jour- own conferences, journal and almost open disregard for the party central 90 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 91 authority. Comprising those regarding themselves as ‘Teacher Cambridge context may have had a different significance from the egal- Communists’, its sectarian and somewhat traditionalist policies forced itarian etiquette for which Fox was remembered even by the Sunday dissenting members to ‘leave’ the group, rather as one might have left the Worker office boy.195 Privately, he can be found complaining in the party itself. Even G. T.C. Giles, the party’s most venerable educational accents of a Waugh or Sitwell of the ‘hordes’ arriving for post-war vaca- reformer, a genuine old Etonian and a sometime NUT president, trans- tion courses: ‘school teachers & fat old women from the midlands in ferred to other party activities.189 round black hats & immense waddling bottoms, presumably to do with Formally speaking the professional groups were not an alternative to the WEA’.196 Publicly, he was also one of the first British communists to ordinary party activities. As already noted, E. P. Thompson, then more celebrate Bolshevism not so much as a workers’ state as a managerial identified with the writers’ group than the historians, was an energetic revolution, ‘a leaven working upon [the] inert mass’, and supplying the peace campaigner and very active member of the party’s Yorkshire drive and efficiency previously identified in Russia with the ‘foreign busi- district committee. More exclusive by their very nature were the staff or ness man’. The somewhat conservative historian of inter-war Cambridge graduate branches established in the larger universities, usually compris- takes obvious pleasure in noting how at the Cambridge Union in 1925 ing both staff and postgraduates and showing tendencies to ‘indepen- Dobb struck ‘just the right note’ in heralding the ascendancy in Russia dent-mindedness’ not unmixed with collective self-esteem. ‘I don’t know of an aristocracy of intellect, and he described its increased initiative in if we thought we knew better than other people’, Dorothy Wedderburn terms recalling his Charterhouse schooldays: ‘as if in a public school the reflected, and traces clearly remained even within the party of a spirit of the playing field were transported into the classroom—a rare ‘Cambridge’ worldview of being surrounded by ‘barbarians’.190 eventuality which is only found where the great master makes himself felt Immediately after the war, the club-like ‘Cambridge Graduate as “one of themselves”...’197 With its several virtues of industry, determi- Communist Party’ was established, not on a functional basis but admit- nation and athleticism—Dobb particularly enjoyed the spectacle of ting any Cambridge graduate, wherever located, and any individual ‘for Soviet sports events—the vision had something of the vicarious muscu- some reason considered suitable by the Committee’.191 larity of the Victorian social reformer. Chairman of the branch was the archetypal Cambridge communist, For many communist intellectuals, though not Dobb, 1956 was a Maurice Dobb, whose long tenures in both party and academy convey watershed. To some extent the high intellectual component in the ensu- the resilience of both forms of socialisation. After a brief attraction to ing exodus from the party was a matter of generation, for those who left guild socialism, Dobb had joined the CPGB shortly before graduating in were overwhelmingly recruits from the post-1934 period among whom 1922, and after an interlude at the LSE spent his entire life in Cambridge, intellectuals were most heavily represented. Accepting that caveat, being made a Fellow of Trinity in 1948. Initially a member of the party’s however, there was also a specific dimension to the disillusionment of London West Central branch—a very early variant of the ‘middle-class’ professional workers. Already in their specialised fields of knowledge branch—Dobb was for some years involved with the working-class move- these had already had to confront the disappointment of expectations in ment through the Plebs League, where he upheld communist positions their own particular fields, exactly as trade unionists sometimes did in against now discarded notions like workers’ control. Never a charismatic respect of conditions and working practices.198 As the journalist Alison figure, he did not play the role of a G. D. H. Cole or Harold Laski towards Macleod later put it, ‘everybody knew that in their own particular field his students.192 On the other hand, within the CPGB he defended the what Russia was doing was no good.’199 validity of academic study even in the unsympathetic context of the Some, like many teachers, or the composer Alan Bush, were prepared 1920s, and in the early 1930s was one of the movers behind the idea for to moderate or abandon progressive postures increasingly at odds with a professional workers’ section.193 Stalinist precepts.200 Others, like visiting architects, excused the obvious Like Fox, Dobb is invariably remembered as modest, self-effacing and Soviet shortcomings on grounds of backwardness or cultural differ- ‘in a very old fashioned sense of the word, a gentleman’. For one acad- ence.201 A third response was to leave the party, either generalising from emic colleague, he personified a ‘generation of English Marxists who felt particular insights to a broader disillusionment, or simply extricating that independence of mind and radical thought was not incompatible oneself from the tensions between the two. Already posed for scientists with cultivation and good manners’.194 However, manners in a and musicians by the Lysenko affair and Soviet composers’ controversy, 92 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 93 this produced the most significant withdrawal from the party prior to 1956 after some four decades of membership. For him the sense of belonging in the shape of the geneticist and party executive member J.B.S. Haldane. we associate with the party as counter-community was matched only by ‘I believe that wholly unjustifiable attacks have been made on my profes- his incredulity to find himself put outside of it. ‘People would say who sion’, Haldane commented, ‘and one of the most important lessons which knew me: “Well, for Christ’s sake, Arthur, how can the party expel you? I have learned as a Marxist is the duty of supporting my fellow-work- You are the party!”’ It was a hurt that could never fully be repaired. ‘I ers’.202 Professional concerns were also strongly evident among the jour- would never have left the party, no, no, no. Never at any time would I nalists, writers and historians who left in such numbers in 1956, and who have ever left the party in my life. Never.’207 were all professionally concerned with the representation of the social and Even so, it is clear that these divisions represented not just the break- political truths. ‘The fact is that historians were inevitably forced to down of a common party culture and discipline but the establishment by confront the situation not only as private persons and communist militants the 1970s of distinct and semi-formalised sub-cultures within the CPGB. but…in their professional capacity’, Hobsbawm comments.203 Similarly, Brian Behan, another building union activist, described the party of the if the Daily Worker lost a third of its editorial staff—in contrast to the lack 1950s as ‘about ten communist parties’.208 Behan had in mind the of defections by party officials of similar standing—that again reflected lawyers, the ‘fucking gays’, the cultural committee. Even within his own professional concerns symbolised by the suppression of Peter Fryer’s industry, disputes between craft, general and industrial unions, to say dispatches from Budapest during the Soviet intervention there.204 Fryer nothing of architects, building technicians or housing campaigners, were himself described the issue as whether communist journalists were to be as likely to be replicated within the CPGB as overcome by the higher allowed to provide ‘honest reporting’ or else misrepresent what they saw collective consciousness it represented. Faced with differences over the in the party’s interest.205 The irony was that the CPGB itself had urged proposed amalgamation of the building unions, Utting was told by on its members professional standards of conduct, and that Fryer, like Ramelson, the party’s industrial organiser, that the party would not inter- many others, owed to it the development of skills and aptitudes which in fere: ‘No, the party line is determined by the lads in each union. They the end were incompatible with its disciplines. We shall see that the devel- determine their own line.’209 opment of effective leadership skills provided the party with precisely the In other industries, like the clothing trades, tensions might run hori- same dilemma. zontally, between the party’s union officials and rank-and-file activists, and the nominal oversight of the relevant advisory committee effectively Parties within the party be ignored.210 In any case, the ‘advisories’ themselves were of an increas- ingly sectionalised character, symbolised by the degeneration of the local In his study of French communist intellectuals, H.D. Hazareesingh government and social services advisories into what were effectively vehi- comments that the exposure of deep divisions within the PCF in the late cles of the party’s NALGO and NUPE factions.211 Hardly disciplined in 1970s is inexplicable within the framework of a monolithic understand- the Leninist sense, the CPGB was less the coordinating centre of an ing of the party. Specifically in relation to Annie Kriegel, he points out alliance strategy than an alliance in itself; and, whereas in its heyday the that the ‘functional traditions, affective symbols, and foundational values’ specialisation of activities had been subject to the common acceptance holding together her model of the homogenous political community of the party’s overriding political authority, increasingly after 1956 the ‘could not suddenly have imploded’ in the way she was forced to argue.206 framework ceased to hold. As defining issues provoked sustained inter- In Britain, the exposure of rending differences within the CPGB during nal contestation, the old mantra was disregarded that a decision once the 1980s holds a similar lesson. Equally, however, it would be wrong to arrived at was universally binding. With defections always outnumbering supplant such a framework with a teleology of division, reading back the new adhesions, the hand of party discipline, when at last it was raised cleavages of the CPGB’s final years and depicting the party as if never against stalwarts like Utting, produced not a cleansing but a bloodletting. more than a collection of tendencies. When the party descended into It is intrinsic to the analysis presented here that the loss of party cohe- internecine warfare, the unexpectedness of such a development was sion cannot be explained by any single set of alignments or cleavages. accompanied in many cases by a sense of utter bewilderment and Gender, generation and changing constructions of political authority all betrayal. Arthur Utting, a building union official, was expelled in 1984 played a part in differentiating reform-minded ‘Euros’ from traditionalist 94 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 95 ‘Tankies’. Moreover, and for this very reason, Euros on some issues were London-based Committee to Defend Czechoslovak Socialists, he also sometime Tankies on others, or else occupied a variety of positions joined the CPGB and as an LSE student associated closely with leading between the two. Still, there is no escaping how often Eurocommunism Eurocommunists. However, in 1977 he began work on the production side was identified with ‘academic’ or middle-class communists, and the alter- at the Financial Times and as father of chapel his previous connections native perspective of ‘class politics’ with ‘trade union comrades’. Though rapidly came unstuck: ‘my Eurocommunist friends stopped considering grossly over-simplified for political effect, the same distinctions can to me to be Eurocommunist, and I said: “Why?” “Because you’re now an some degree be traced noiselessly subverting the structures of the party industrial comrade”.’217 Though this was an extreme experience of over the preceding decades. moving from one world to another, it was notorious that, as one of the On the one hand, as far back as 1956 a wavering on fundamentals was few party forums providing a meeting place for these different tendencies, associated with ‘intellectuals’, and sometimes the university branches.212 the party’s economics committee by the 1970s was a virtual battleground On the other hand, the phenomenon had become increasingly familiar between younger academic economists and trade-union figures of the trade union communist reluctant to prioritise party responsibili- marshalled by Ramelson.218 As one participant recalled, even the most ties. In 1959, the Scottish NUM activist Andrew Clark admitted not recondite discussion of conflict theory was liable to be diverted by trade taking seriously enough his role on the party’s Scottish committee and unionists laying into academics ‘on the grounds that they were middle- sometimes not attending ‘when with very little effort I could have class’.219 arranged to do so’. This did not prevent him being elevated to the party Overlaying these vertical cleavages, there were what ought technically executive the following decade.213 Back in the 1940s, Horner and Moffat to be regarded as horizontal cleavages between ‘rank-and-file’ communist were repeatedly returned to the party’s executive committee as its lead- activists—that is, rank-and-file in the party sense, though many were ing mining comrades, though their attendance was sporadic and in 1939 themselves union officers—and the party apparatus. As increasingly union their ‘many other commitments’ had not even permitted them to sit on activists specialised in their own sphere of work, their rights at party the national mining committee.214 Though a parliamentary candidate congresses were to some extent secured by devices like ‘district delegates’, and member of the CPGB’s London district committee, railwayman implicitly accorded a sort of ex officio status at odds with the pyramidal Tom Ahern was another who described how industrial activists like structure of democratic centralism.220 In the day-to-day work of the party himself became ‘buried’ in the unions, as ‘specialists’ in their own partic- no such contrivance was possible. As we have seen, even Ramelson as ular field of work.215 If distinctions were made between trade unionists industrial organiser had little trade union experience, and at lower levels holding a party card and genuine communists at work in the unions, this as early as the 1940s industrial responsibilities were sometimes allocated was because effective activism or career progression in some unions or party members having no other connection with the unions or occupa- localities was largely dependent on this formal party affiliation. Even tions concerned.221 Moreover, if for many years the party’s full-time offi- where members did get involved in their local branch, as the London cials were less likely to have trade-union backgrounds, by the 1970s they woodworker Stan Martin did, it could be regarded ‘almost as…a social began to include a number of former student activists of a decidedly post- group that you did out of work’.216 1960s social and political profile. ‘Many of them came from a working- At one level, this was a source of possible fragmentation. Jan Schling class background, but forces hostile to the class had been at work while could hardly have been other than a Eurocommunist, for his father Otto they were studying’, the sometime Manchester area organiser Jim Arnison Sling´ was one of the victims of the Slansky show trial of 1952. Until his noted darkly. Arnison himself had abandoned a full-time party position rehabilitation in the 1960s his children were therefore brought up in to return to his trade, and described how the subordination of party Czechoslovakia as ‘sons of an enemy of the people’, in an atmosphere of commitments to the winning of union positions had inadvertently opened surveillance, social ostracism and the denial of educational opportunities. the door to these alien forces.222 In his own city of Manchester, the divi- While his brother remained in Czechoslovakia and was a signatory to sions were such that ‘tankyist’ academics joined their local party branch Charter 77, Schling followed his English communist mother out of the rather than the university one, almost as if these different forms of organ- country after the clampdown on oppositional elements in 1972. isation now provided a surrogate form of factionalism.223 Continuing to associate with East European dissidents and with the The part these cleavages played in the divisions of the 1980s is difficult 96 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY COMMUNITIES OF THE FAITHFUL 97 to underestimate. In September 1982, the CPGB’s monthly journal The crossing of customary boundaries produced a number of more Marxism Today, then emerging as the standard-bearer of the ‘Euros’, or less agreeable images. One is of the Birmingham University historian, presented as its cover feature a critical assessment of the USSR by the Sam Lilley, reporting back to the motor industry shop stewards who had dissident Marxist Roy Medvedev. Naturally, it provoked controversy, sent him to report on Soviet automation.228 Another is of the booking of including an official Soviet rejoinder. Nevertheless, a much larger postbag local reggae bands for the Star Social Club by Frank Watters, former was generated by another article in the same issue alleging a ‘crisis of legit- Scots miner and epitome of the CPGB’s traditional proletarianism. Also imacy’ within the unions partly brought about by the ‘perks and fiddles’ dating in the 1970s was a well-publicised campaign bringing together of a working-class elite.224 Either spontaneously, or else revealing informal building workers and conservationists to defend the city’s Victorian post networks overstepping the vertical lines of party democracy, objections office from developers. Its moving spirit was the UCATT secretary, part- flooded in and a rebuttal in the Morning Star by the party’s industrial organ- time rock-and-roll singer and future ‘trendy’ CPGB industrial organiser, iser marked the first really public breach in the heart of the party appa- Pete Carter. It was this milieu that Avis Hutt described as her family, in ratus. Symbolically, the article’s author was a Liverpool University contrast to the experiences she had of the party in London.229 sociologist on secondment to the other world of the TGWU.225 One of his Like Orwell’s England, this family too was nevertheless a site of critics from within that union wondered whether he would now be given tensions, inequalities and battles for control. Arriving in Birmingham as the opportunity ‘to write a similar piece on the way in which the sociol- the CPGB’s city organiser in 1968, Watters became involved in a gentle ogy departments of Universities, particularly those in the North West, tug-of-war with the party district over the nurturing of young activists like have created and fostered undue pessimism among their students’.226 the Coventry YCLer Graham Stevenson. Regardless of the party’s Probably he had in mind the economists at Manchester University who claims, Watters wanted activists like Stevenson in a ‘TGWU factory’ to within the CPGB had actively been contesting the rationality of simple secure, as a number of them did, their future union careers. At the same wage militancy and free collective bargaining. time, he was increasingly hostile to the middle-class functionaries for Though the intensity of the divisions varied, almost everywhere the whom the success of his union ‘stable’ meant coming to the fore in the communist party community was shown, like every other community, to party district. On one occasion he literally struck a blow against the be riven with unseen fault lines. Birmingham, more than most of the Eurocommunist district secretary who told him he was ‘finished’. Perhaps examples we have considered, had seemed the model of a more inclu- more revealingly, when Watters’s daughter joined the YCL, once the very sive party culture, with no dominant occupational grouping or symbol of the party family, she thought it best not to inform her father, pronounced sense of social distance. Members of its distinguished who disapproved not only of its politics but of its social mores. Though university branch contributed actively to wider party activities, encour- by this time it was possibly just the memory to which he clung, Watters, aged by the fact that their foremost representative, the classicist George like Utting, insisted that he could never have brought himself to leave the Thomson, had held tenures in both the party and university dating from CPGB. In 1991, when the party dissolved itself, he joined the Communist before a separate university branch existed. Resistant to revisionist Party of Scotland.230 tendencies—he eventually became a Maoist—Thomson led the way in taking local and factory group classes, and at home provided a setting for socially inclusive party gatherings at which his wife Katharine Thomson entertained on the spinet. ‘The life of many of our branches and districts is pitifully narrow and unimaginative’, he wrote in a mission statement for party intellectuals, ‘it is for us to broaden it and make it more attrac- tive’. Despite the echo of Toynbee Hall, and the ‘bollocking’ Thomson used to give his factory class members if they turned up unprepared, Stan Martin recalled never being made to feel uncomfortable in such situa- tions: ‘[they] really did treat you as an equal, and in some cases you were more than an equal’.227 CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 99 Of course, metaphors of military derivation implied a steely CHAPTER 3 centralised control, the object of the party’s early Bolshevisation. Nevertheless, in an organisation whose members were neither grouped CULTS OF LEADERSHIP in barracks nor subject to courts martial, the wider cultivation of lead- ership attributes inevitably gave rise to tensions as well as a spirit of emulation. Militating against its oligarchical forms, the communists, in Haldane’s words, sought not a Michelsian ideal of ‘members…content to vote and subscribe’ but ‘active politicians’, drawn to communism to ‘influence history’ according to their own aspirations.8 Asked in which situations he had taken on leadership roles, one communist replied: ‘In every situation…I was never anything but a leader.’9 Another, a school- ‘We are the Party of Lenin, Stalin and Dimitrov, and thousands of other boy recruit of 1934, was cited as saying that there was no rank and file: revolutionary heroes. No other Party can produce such revolutionary ‘[it] meant that every communist must be a leader, and you don’t wait giants, leaders and heroes as these.’ Thus ran Harry Pollitt’s report to the for what the leaders say, you work out what you’ve got to do and you do thirteenth CPGB congress in 1935, under a title—Harry Pollitt Speaks— it’.10 Thinly scattered, to the detriment of party discipline, it was on the suggesting that in Britain this was the Party of Pollitt too.1 Taken to independent initiative of Pollitt’s thousands of other revolutionary heroes extremes in countries like France as well as Russia, this cult of the leader that the CPGB’s effectiveness in large part depended. is usually regarded as the one of defining characteristics of Stalinism. In The diffusion of leadership roles under a centralised command struc- older accounts, figures like Pollitt were even said to exercise a ‘sort of ture was one central paradox of communist organisation. Another was absolute power’ within their own parties, advertised in a manner ‘closely the perception of the leader as the creature rather than the animator of akin to the worship of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini’.2 More recently, the party. As Pennetier and Pudal have shown, the ideal-type communist Stalin’s authorisation of local cults in the mid-1930s has been seen as a leader lacked any personal history or individual traits suggesting an iden- stimulus to collective emulation and self-esteem as well as a mechanism tity or political trajectory distinct from that of the party, of whose collec- for internal discipline.3 Communist cults of leadership thus appear as tive cult any individual was merely a representation.11 It is for this reason both representation and reinforcement of a culture of centralised that the personalised ‘isms’ littering the pages of communist polemic— control. As Harry McShane observed on leaving the CPGB in 1953: ‘If Trotskyism, Titoism, Browderism, ‘Hornerism’—were nearly always one opposes policy, he is often met with the remark: “That is an attack intended as anathemas. In a positive sense, only the founding fathers on Comrade Pollitt”.’4 Marx and Lenin were lifted above the party by the same device, and in But leadership for a communist party was a double-edged sword. While Britain at least even ‘Stalinist’ was primarily used as a term of oppro- formally the most hierarchical of organisations, its effectiveness depended brium and dissociation by the party’s opponents. As one party branch put on members not only rallying behind their leaders but demonstrating it in the aftermath of the Khrushchev revelations: ‘The cult of the indi- active leadership qualities towards the ‘unthinking masses’ beyond. As the vidual is subordinate to the cult of the infallible party; is indeed, a func- ‘leading Party of the working class’, according to the CPGB’s seminal 1922 tion of the cult of the infallible party.’12 organisation report, there was no room within it for a passive ‘rank and Communist leadership cults were therefore distinctive. Ritually they file’.5 Two years later a call for new recruits stated: ‘The Communist Party celebrated modesty, even in the case of Stalin, and at his own dictation. is to the class war what the corps of officers is to ordinary military war. A For leaders of national parties, the tension was nevertheless a real one. Communist Party member is, or should be, an officer in the class war—a Partly, this was because of their client-like relationship to Stalin himself, leader of the workers in all their struggles.’6 Maurice Dobb chose the anal- confirmed in the CPGB’s case by Pollitt’s removal as party leader for ogy not of a sheepdog marshalling sheep but of a wolf or coyote leading resisting his instructions at the start of the war. What is equally instruc- his pack, while the scientist J. B. S. Haldane preferred the Webbian notion tive, however, is that Pollitt’s moral authority for British communists of ‘experts in the art of leadership’.7 depended at least as much on this legendary act of self-abnegation, when 100 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 101 he is supposed to have stoically recommenced work in the shipyards, as possibility of disillusionment or dissension. In 1926, the CPGB even on any supposed display of arbitrary power.13 ‘You must follow; you attempted a ‘Lenin enrolment’, in imitation of that already carried out must’, said one of Pollitt’s subordination of self to party, while a former by the Russian party, and commemorations of its ‘great leader’, some- Labour activist joined the CPGB at this point, because ‘a party which times linked with the Spartacist martyrs Rosa Luxemburg and Karl would force this upon its leadership was strong and wise’.14 In defiance Liebknecht, were always observed with due revolutionary solemnity. At of Michels’s classic formulation, it was never ‘Le Parti c’est Moi’, but the the tenth party congress in 1929, Henry Sara defied those who taunted other way round.15 communists for ‘hero worship’ and the following day led the conference Even this does not resolve the paradox, however, for with the seem- in standing in Lenin’s memory to the playing of the funeral march.21 ing vindication of Pollitt’s original stance on the war, it was his initial Lenin was to remain the fount of wisdom and strategy, surviving in a act of insubordination which for many communists ‘saved the soul of state of ideological embalmment, and appearing as a ‘god on earth’ even the Party’ and endowed Pollitt himself with an independent stature to communists claiming to abjure the movement’s religiosity.22 unattainable simply as the bearer of the party line. It also contributed Memoirists like Gallacher and Pollitt had chapters entitled ‘I meet Lenin’ to his credibility with a wider constituency: as early as the 1940 Labour or ‘Lenin’s death’, and even Sylvia Pankhurst stoked up the myth, though Party conference, a union delegate and parliamentary candidate took with the disconcerting image of a man prone to ‘suddenly shutting up pains to distinguish Pollitt—‘one of the best fellows I have ever met in one eye, and fixing the other sharply, almost fiercely’ upon his interlocu- my life’—from the hostility he otherwise felt for the communists: ‘he is tors.23 Among litératteurs, the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid wrote in the wrong party’.16 This then was the insoluble conundrum, for it was three ‘hymns’ to Lenin, and his Welsh counterpart T.E. Nicholas one, precisely these individual accretions of political capital that gave the while the journalist Tom Wintringham sung his praises in his best forgot- CPGB an influence belying its formal status, while undermining the ten poem, ‘The immortal Tractor’: total authority of the institution usually identified as the hallmark of Stalinism. From Pollitt himself, down to the most localised of his revo- Lenin is living—every word a spark lutionary heroes, this as much as anything explains the discrepancy Driving the great Tractor... between the formal and the effective in the party’s internal relationships and power structures. We are moulding, forging, shaping the steel of our wills Into pinions, into pistons, crankshaft-web and crankshaft-throw Lenin, Stalin, Dimitrov We are building Lenin’s Tractor. It will grow.24

Even before Stalin, Lenin’s was the founding cult, arising as if sponta- In 1933, it was again Lenin, ‘a man…in the mould of Lincoln and neously on his death in 1924. To Trotsky, so often portrayed as resisting Cromwell’, who enjoyed the somewhat romantic biographical treatment it, Lenin was the Master and the Guide, immortal, incomparable and of novelist Ralph Fox. As we have seen, it took Dutt to remind Fox that irreplaceable. ‘The Party…remains an orphan…but we give thanks to a communist treatment required not the ‘psychological isolating and History, which made us contemporaries of Lenin…let us be worthy of subjectivising of Lenin’ but a sense ‘of the movement, of the party, of him who has taught us.’17 Pollitt, who thought these ‘wonderful’ senti- Marxism as a collective outlook and movement’.25 ments, voiced them at rallies to the airs of the Russian funeral march.18 There was never to be this problem with Stalin. Nevertheless, in the Tom Bell echoed them directly, saluting Lenin as ‘guide, teacher and CPGB’s heyday it was he who laid claim to Lenin’s mantle, usurping master’ and singling out Trotsky as his ‘inseparable’ co-worker.19 Trotsky as his vaunted acolyte. From the Little Stalin Library to the Privately, Palme Dutt described how immediately Lenin’s death made Stalinist History of the CPSU (B), there was no escaping Stalin’s presence, ‘the whole fight feel very much lonelier’, while at the first CPGB national and at the height of the terror one could mark the passing weeks under children’s conference delegates were told how ‘Lenin, even in his conva- his inscrutable gaze: ‘No revolutionary home is complete without a Stalin lescent state refused nourishing food in order that it should go to the chil- calendar.’26 Brian Pearce, a communist who recalls his commitments as dren’.20 Already a sacrosanct figure, Lenin’s early death foreclosed all religious and even authoritarian in character, had hanging over his bed 102 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 103 a portrait of Stalin, to which he appended the Russian inscription: ‘Stalin attributed the appearance of adulation to a simple difference of linguis- is not here, but Stalin is always with us’—‘just as it might have been the tic idiom.35 Such defensiveness was not sanctioned by the Comintern and Virgin Mary’.27 On Stalin’s death, like Lenin’s, tears were shed in was tacitly corrected in an alternative view of Soviet life published communist households, anxious children stole into their parents’ directly afterwards by the ILS alumnus and Comintern worker Hymie bedrooms—‘What’s going to happen?’—and secular instincts were Lee. If Stalin was described as ‘Our Dear Teacher and Father’ and ‘our forgotten in a gushing forth of communist sentiment. ‘Never…have I met beloved leader and our genius’, that was therefore what he was.36 anyone so kindly and considerate, so easy to talk to and exchange views, This was not, however, the language generally adopted in Britain. and one so obviously actuated by the desire to help’, Harry Pollitt wrote Particularly at the wartime peak of his popularity, what Stalin symbol- in the Daily Worker. ‘Never the dictator: never to lay the law down, always ised was not so much genius or paternal authority as the ascendancy of eager to listen, to understand another’s point of view...’28 the worker, and with a familiarity unthinkable in some other communist In Britain, these years marked the apogee of the Stalin cult: years in parties he was saluted as plain ‘Joe’ Stalin, whose quiet effectiveness and which Ewan MacColl’s Ballad of Joe Stalin was ‘sung to a kind of coun- ‘unassuming manner’ embodied the virtues of the ‘common man’. try-and-western banjo accompaniment’, and genuflections to his genius ‘“Joe” in his cap and “Denims”…becomes the soldiers’ brother and as scientist and historian were offered by the CPGB’s leading practition- comrade rather than some far off creature only to be spoken of with ers in these fields.29 When Pollitt described him as ‘the greatest genius the awe’, ran a profile in the communist literary monthly Our Time. ‘“Just international working class has ever produced’, the CPGB’s 1952 like us” is the commonest phrase.’37 Criticism was unheard of. When congress responded with ‘thunderous’ applause, while massed choirs at Edith Bone called Stalin a bastard and smashed up a portrait of him, the Albert Hall raised their voices in celebration of his birthday.30 In these Stanley Forman thought her deranged.38 More than that, his achieve- exaggerated forms the Stalin cult nevertheless appears to have developed ments were almost universally regarded even by those who found the relatively late in Britain. Harry McShane, who claimed to have been adulation exotic.39 Nevertheless, it is revealing of the impersonality and uncomfortable with Stalin worship from the time he first encountered it fictionality of this conception that no British communist attempted in Canada in 1928, remained a CPGB member until after Stalin’s death Stalin’s biography beyond a wartime pamphlet ‘sketch’ by Ivor a quarter of a century later.31 Nevertheless, his recollection should not Montagu. Tireless in exploiting avenues for pro-Soviet publicity, entirely be discounted. Even among the choirs saluting Stalin, some communists nevertheless gave a free run in this lucrative and politically found the experience ‘sickening’, and while the subsequent Khrushchev sensitive matter to the defector J. T. Murphy.40 disclosures generally met with either shock or a form of denial, again Dimitrov, the third of Pollitt’s revolutionary trinity, was closer to what there were communists who described having already been ‘privately the communists understood by a revolutionary hero. Little known until sickened’ by his adulation.32 the Reichstag fire trial, his dramatic defence and acquittal, assisted by In the intervening period, Stalin’s British votaries tended to apos- an international campaign and counter-trial organised from London, trophise state, party or people more than Stalin himself. Whereas in made him a hero overnight. Nobody living afterwards, Claud Cockburn France, Thorez concluded his perorations with him, Barbusse embroi- recalled, could ‘possibly have any notion of what Dimitrov was to us in dered the legend in book form, and his ten-times life-size image over- the way of a symbol, a flame in darkness’.41 Stalin can prove surprisingly shadowed the platform at communist rallies, in Britain the Stalin cult was elusive in contemporary sources: in Valentine Cunningham’s exhaustive generally on a more modest scale. Even Pollitt, in drafting his Seventh survey of 1930s writers, the American journalist John Gunther is the World Congress speech, initially omitted the ‘ritual homage’ then due to only citation provided for the Stalin cult, and the only creative works we Stalin, and though on this point is said to have succumbed to the have come across inspired by Stalin are two monumental heads by the Comintern’s pressures, such references were again excluded from the text Hungarian émigré, Peter Peri.42 Dimitrov, by comparison, haunted the published in Britain—again in contrast to Thorez.33 Orthodox Stalinists radical imagination. In 1935, the fellow-travelling novelist Harold like John Strachey sought to explain away the regime’s cultic aspects Heslop introduced him into his novel Last Cage Down. ‘Is it possible that rather than celebrate them.34 Pat Sloan, possibly the most assiduous and you fellows can doubt in the presence of him?’, asks its communist hero uncritical of them, actually likened his powers to Stanley Baldwin’s and of a group of workmates. 104 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 105 symbol of resistance to fascism. ‘Him! Who? Jesus Christ, do you mean?’ rasped Bert… Joe spoke slowly. ‘Dimitroff ’, he said quietly. Always in the vanguard, leading, And they all became silent…In far-away Leipsig, amongst the Hands held out to uphold howling wolves of the world’s worst form of fascism…stood one, a Children and women above this sea worker, fearless of the headman’s blade poised above his upturned Of hatred and blood.... face... Dimitroff lit up their world and sent that great, hopeful shudder thrilling through their spines, and stimulated anew their Great carved woman at the prow love of their own class, their pride in their own class. Dimitroff!43 Who knows sorrow: suffers hate: feels love...45

The following year, Ralph Fox proposed Dimitrov himself as the perfect In later decades, Paul Robeson, the Rosenbergs, Victor Jara, Nelson subject for the revolutionary novel, while from Spain John Cornford Mandela, and the continuing example of the exiled Pasionaria, all stood invoked ‘the Leipzig dragon’s teeth’ in one of his last poems. out as inspirational figures in a way that was true of none of their Russian or East European contemporaries. Three years ago Dimitrov fought alone But Dimitrov—like Pasionaria—was also an exemplary figure in the And we stood taller when he won.44 sense of the leader as revolutionary tribune, indicting reaction from the rostrum or the prisoner’s dock. Though known to British communists only What then seemed Dimitrov’s unexampled moral authority helped through the printed word, the image conveyed was of a magnificent reconcile communists to such far from creditable episodes as the Moscow command of rhetoric and repartee, reducing his interrogators to impotent show trials and the Comintern volte-face over the war. On the other fury. Miraculously, it seemed as if the eloquence and invective of the hand, it also played its part in urging both Fox and Cornford to the sacri- communist public speaker really were instruments of the justice and retri- fices they made in Spain, and in the process provided the British party bution they so often promised. Stalin, again, was a more remote and with its own authentic home-grown heroes. inscrutable figure: as Montagu observed, he was no ‘orator-hero’, and unlike Lenin was rarely depicted in oratorical postures.46 In Britain at least, it was Orator-heroes as orator-heroes that Stalin’s followers sought to distinguish themselves. The most obvious exception also proves the rule. The vaunted theo- Dimitrov was a paradigmatic figure in more ways than one. Though from retician R. Palme Dutt was an auracle of marxist erudition, with an 1934 he functioned as secretary of the Comintern, he commanded output of party line stretching to Moscow and back again. Every month respect among the faithful as one of the oppositional and even persecuted for fifty years, communists pored over the ‘Notes of the Month’ he wrote figures who occupied the highest places in the communist pantheon. for his journal the Labour Monthly, and for some twelve years while he Throughout the party’s history, the heroes who caught the communists’ lived in Brussels Dutt also participated in the party’s central committee imaginations were not those representing the ascendancy of their cause solely through the medium of closely typed memoranda. It is a measure but those displaying on an epic scale their own perceived qualities of of his serpentine influence that he did so as one of only four individuals dignity, fortitude and resistance. In the literary monthly Left Review, to retain his position throughout. Nevertheless, skills of analysis, exege- published during the first real propagation of the Stalin cult (1934–8), no sis and thesis formulation were not what was understood by communist items at all were specifically devoted to the Great Helmsman. Instead, it leadership, and the delineation of roles which Dutt established with was the class war prisoners Thaelmann and Rákosi—‘a sick man kicked Pollitt in the early 1920s represented his own recognition of that fact. with question-threats’—who were celebrated in poems by Wintringham Though another gifted orator, Isabel Brown, used Dutt’s ‘Notes’ for her and the Summerhill schoolmaster Richard Goodman. In more feminine speeches ‘almost as they stand’, Dutt could never have used his own writ- accents, Charlotte Haldane evoked the voice of the Spanish communist, ings to similar good effect.47 Even to his critics within the party, his ambi- La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri), who had become an international tions seemed those of a ‘Cabinet maker’ or ‘God from Olympia’, and 106 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 107 when he helped force Pollitt’s removal as party secretary in 1939, it was wave aside a ‘storm’ of applause, exactly such as peppered Soviet without any illusion that he might come to the fore as his replacement.48 congress proceedings. ‘You get the impression of vitality, strength and As a Manchester communist recalled of him, ‘he’d have made as much purpose: especially determined purpose’, wrote the reviewer, probably impact if you’d stuck him in a back room at the Free Trade Hall and let Joan Beauchamp. him talk to himself ’.49 The issue was one partly of charisma, but more fundamentally of He is not a tall man but not only does he dominate the meeting... class. Not only did the testing ground of oratory neutralise the advan- [t]he hall and the platform are too small for him. Were the plat- tages of the party intellectual, but the communist platform was pre- form a mile long he would still dominate it. eminently the domain of the worker. Still cast in a more traditional He is the Worker as Leader. mould were the party’s two MPs of the 1920s, Newbold and Saklatvala, middle-class politicians formerly of the ILP who were heavily in demand The picture ends with Toller, the intellectual as votary, rushing forward for local engagements. On the other hand, of the CPGB’s later intakes to wring Gallacher’s hand ‘in gratitude’.52 of lawyers, academics and other professionals, none figures among the Particularly for its middle-class adherents, the mystique of proletarian party’s more popular speakers or candidates, as they might have done in authority was a defining motif of 1930s’ communism. The future poet an earlier age of the platform or in the Labour Party. Instead, it was the laureate C. Day Lewis was one such case, drawn to communism as a unbowed proletarian who provided a focus of deference or identification, movement of ‘order’ and fascinated alike by ‘the submission of a man to as figures like Gallacher, Hannington and above all Pollitt dominated the his natural leader’ and the ‘thirst…to be carried away in the movement public perception of the party. ‘First of th’fearless, foremost of th’free’, of masses’.53 The literary critic Alick West also evoked an image of Pollitt an exuberant admirer saluted Pollitt: rising to a ‘storm’ of applause: ‘Never before had I seen such a man, nor heard such oratory. Drawn towards him, the whole hall, tier upon tier of Whose searching eloquence proclaims him fit people, became a great wave curving over to break, as his impetuous To voice the will of highest state, and sit unconquerable voice soared and struck and rang…’54 Wilf Jobling was a High amongst the mighty in sovereignty… Chopwell miner, later to die at Jarama, who in 1934 spoke on behalf of Martial you stand, with Promethean front, the Hunger Marchers passing through Cambridge, and with his ‘new Able to daunt powerfullest dictators; rough kind of speech-making’ came across to at least one student as the And summer air charms not so still the night sort of man who could ‘lead them’.55 As Day Lewis’s Oxford friend Nor lorn nightingale the woods, as your blunt Gabriel Carritt recalled, ‘I think a lot of the intellectuals, and perhaps Words rapt thousands, listening with applause many of the workers too, wanted the party to be the authority, to lay Shining in their looks strong as noon-tide light.50 down how it should be.’56 Encouraging such responses, ‘determined purpose’, not recreation or In 1939 the pageant Heirs to the Charter climaxed with the Promethean- amusement, was the hallmark of the party speaker. ‘Serious-minded fronted Pollitt himself appearing on stage as the latest incarnation in a audiences do not come to be entertained, but to listen and learn’, Pollitt proletarian epic.51 insisted, and communist speakers did little to lure their audiences by the Gallacher too featured in such spectacles, and as a communist MP in theatrical methods or personal mannerisms beloved of their predeces- a very different mould from his predecessors he alone rivalled Pollitt’s sors.57 Pollitt himself was fond of recalling speakers like Bill Gee, the public standing. In a characteristic vignette from 1937, a meeting is ‘Socialist Dreadnought’ of his youth, and when Gee fell on hard times described in which the desultory efforts of the ILP’s Jimmy Maxton, launched a fund to help him out. Nevertheless, the party itself produced ‘reduced—by the march of events and his inability to march with no People’s Sputnik, and Gee found himself outside of the CPGB’s ranks them—to stammering’, are followed by the anti-fascist playwright Ernst as early as 1923.58 In this he was not alone. Though a protégé of the Toller, struggling to express himself in an unfamiliar tongue. Vainly austere John Maclean, John Bird of Fife was known for flamboyant attempting to slip unnoticed onto the platform, Gallacher then rises to oratory, foppishness and even exhibitionism, standing out from Scottish 108 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 109 mining audiences in his coloured shirts and bow ties. A former member ‘incomprehensible’, though when he spoke in the Vale of Leven, he of the party executive, when he broke with the party in the late 1920s concluded his speech ‘to clapping and stomping of feet that lasted for a this only seemed to confirm the perils of ‘careerist individualism’.59 minute’.67 Even the one-time ‘boy preacher’ Arthur Horner was Possibly only Tom Mann with his great mimetic skills remained an described by the exacting Mancunian Joe O’Reilly as ‘cursed by a South attraction in the old tradition. Even trademarks like Maxton’s shock of Wales accent’. In the coalfield itself it was another matter. ‘Oh I thought hair or A. J. Cook’s rolled-up shirtsleeves had no real parallel among their that Horner was—well you know—a good preacher would always appeal communist contemporaries. At party schools, speakers were commended to me…being brought up in a Welsh atmosphere, in a Welsh environ- not for rapier-like thrusts or flourishes of rhetoric, but for conveying their ment, and going to Chapel…’68 message in ‘simple, popular, working-class language’.60 Many became Owing more to the soap-box, the theatre and the popular debating effective communicators, but it is notable that the party’s biggest speak- society, Harry Pollitt had an appeal in his native Lancashire that was ing attractions had all learnt their skills outside of the party, in church, undimmed by his spending most of his life in London. There was more chapel or on the soapbox. Evidently there was even a certain ambiva- to this than accent, and southerners noted the immediate rapport that lence towards this least controllable form of communication, Pollitt Pollitt struck up with northern audiences, bantering with them even at the himself insisting that every word had to be ‘devoted to seriously explain- expense of wave-like experiences and his own injunctions to serious-mind- ing, point by point…the positive policy of the Communist Party’.61 At edness.69 Even in the south, his northern persona was part of his appeal,70 various times, there were circulated in duplicated or printed form ‘Points but among those most strongly affected by his rhetoric fellow Lancastrians for Propagandists’, weekly ‘Speaker’s Notes’ or even complete draft figured disproportionately. Naturally Joe O’Reilly thought him the ‘most speeches. Even internally, branch discussions in the mid-1920s were wonderful’ orator he had ever heard, and the Manchester engineer Eddie meant to be guided by a weekly political letter, entrusted to a ‘leading and Frow recalled that he had a ‘fantastic following’ in the city.71 ‘Ah Harry experienced member’ who should ‘deliver it as if it was his own prepared Pollitt, he has the voice of a bell’, another Mancunian recalled her father speech, amplifying it to suit the occasion’.62 The use of stenographers at saying. ‘His eloquence was such, that his Lancashire accent sounded the higher party meetings showed the same preoccupation with bringing the most beautiful dialect in the world.’72 Mick Jenkins, later a prominent spoken word under control, ‘down in black and white, there to be ever communist official, recalled attending one of Pollitt’s Lenin memorial remembered’.63 meetings at Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1924. On the platform were Proclaiming geographical as well as social origins with every syllable, the three Scots, Gallacher, Bell and MacManus, but it was Pollitt who it is not surprising that even national speakers retained something of the caught his imagination as he lent his voice to the awe-inspiring legends of local appeal of their predecessors. Perhaps only the Indian Saklatvala Bolshevism. ‘What a story! What a speaker! Hearts were bleeding in that combined ‘perfect English’ with the authentic experience of an audience, that unforgettable night’, Jenkins recalled. By the end of the oppressed grouping, and although not always suited to parliament— evening, it was not Lenin but Pollitt, now somehow fused with Lenin, Ellen Wilkinson described opponents goading him to ‘speak up’ as his whom Jenkins unabashedly regarded as his ‘hero’.73 voice rose to a yell—his platform skills attracted invitations to speak from If national speakers and ‘monster’ meetings provided the high points beyond communist circles even in the Class Against Class period.64 in the communist calendar, local orator-heroes were needed to maintain Other outstanding speakers made their greatest impression on their a continuous communist presence in their own communities and organ- home turf. Scottish accents in principle had an immense proletarian isations. For many, the acclaim of a partisan audience was less familiar credibility. Brian Blain recalled that in the 1950s they were ‘worth ten than scepticism, indifference or outright hostility. Others, however, points on the conviction scale before they said anything’ while at Oxford established themselves as effective local tribunes, whose status in a few Raphael Samuel’s North London Jewish origins were overlain with a communist strongholds was formalised by their election as local coun- Henry Higgins-defying Scots brogue.65 Nevertheless, when the Paisley- cillors. Epitomising the type, and immortalising it in the larger-than-life born Johnny Campbell contested three parliamentary elections in South forms of his novels Cwmardy and We Live, was the former South Wales Wales, he was remembered as ‘broad Scotch’ and ‘very difficult to miner, Lewis Jones. A Rhondda checkweigher victimised in 1929, Jones understand’.66 In Manchester, Joe O’Reilly actually thought Gallacher was one of those whom not Moscow gold but inter-war unemployment 110 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 111 released for full-time party work, and in 1936 he was elected one of articulation and representation of grievances was considerable. In his Britain’s earliest communist county councillors. No supporter of leader- book Democratic Rhondda, Chris Williams cites a health ministry official ship cults, he is said to have defied pressure to join in ovations to Stalin grudgingly describing Jones’s efforts to ensure the taking up of benefits at the Comintern’s Seventh World Congress. Even so, in the entitlements. ‘He has for example a motor van with a loud speaker by Bunyanesque characterisations of his novels, conflicting claims to work- means of which he broadcasts to all in doubt as to their rights and invites ing-class allegiance were largely personified in terms of the clash between all with a grievance to report their cases to local communist alternative leadership figures. Moreover, their hero’s battle to exercise agents…[who] pass on the particulars to Mr Jones who then gives that leadership for the party is persistently identified with his command advice’, he wrote. ‘He also holds crowded meetings every Sunday night’, of the spoken word: taunting the boss’s son at the coalface; voicing men’s he went on, adding that ‘a very large number of people…now applying grievances at the labour exchange; indicting class justice from the dock; for our relief ’ would have refrained from asking for help were it not for and, providing one of the novels’ climacterics, putting the miners’ case Jones’s propaganda.78 Williams in his conclusion describes Jones and his during the stay-down strikes of 1936: fellow communists very much in terms of tribune functions, ‘aligned…in a unity across the parties of the left…standing together against unsym- The dense crowd of men and women began to sway spasmodi- pathetic non-resident Welsh cultural elites, against the colliery compa- cally, and suddenly, without a word or warning sign, Len felt nies, and against a predominantly Conservative national state’.79 Such himself lifted in the air and carried to the tram, where he was activities were not confined to the little Moscows, and from rent strikes gently placed down feet first. in Birmingham and East London, to a bridge for commuting workers ‘Speech. Speech’, came the insistent demand.74 over the Ouse in Bedford, to blocking the redevelopment of Covent Garden, leading post-war squatters or forcing access to the tubes as air- Though a former Labour College student, immersed in the literary raid shelters, it was in the performance of such roles that communists culture of the miners’ libraries, Jones was described by his lover and made their most distinctive contributions to their manifold local histories. collaborator Mavis Llewellyn as most at home on the platform—‘a born The contribution of these individuals to the CPGB’s effectiveness can propagandist, an orator’, capable of ‘sway[ing] great crowds’ with inten- hardly be understated. In France, Annie Kriegel has argued that no sity of class feeling.75 party’s support was so little reliant on the qualities of its local represen- Addressing meetings almost daily, Jones’s activity reached a new pitch tatives as the PCF’s.80 In Britain, at least, the reverse was true: as Williams of fervour on his being refused the party’s permission to go to Spain— argues, it was to their ‘human relevance’ and not their party credentials the setting of the culminating drama of We Live. Sadly, we now know that that figures like Jones owed their reputations, and a recurrent complaint towards the end of 1938 Jones had been dismissed as the party’s of party leaders concerned the failure to translate their individual stand- Rhondda area organiser on grounds of political confusion and the ing into organisational results for the party itself. Even in the vibrant continuing stagnation of party membership in the area. There is also a oppositional culture of South Wales, stress has been laid on the crucial suggestion that Jones’s personal behaviour had likewise come under role in many communities of ‘one or two dynamic individuals’.81 It is scrutiny.76 One may only guess at his desperation to prove himself, but he notable that communist councillors were often elected in geographically died weeks afterwards of a heart seizure: as party legend had it, after self-contained communities where there was established a strong personal addressing thirty meetings in a day the week that Barcelona fell to basis of support, such as the Yorkshire pit village of Moorends or the Franco. An authentic orator-hero, his funeral procession was reportedly Suffolk enclave of Leiston. In the former mining ward of Bulwell East/St the biggest that the Rhondda had witnessed in decades. Albans, Nottingham, the tireless local campaigner John Peck was Figures like Lewis Jones performed at local level the sort of ‘tribune’ returned as a communist councillor at the twenty-third attempt in 1987. functions which Georges Lavau identified the French communist party The entirely personal character of his achievement was demonstrated as a whole fulfilling at a national institutional level.77 Particularly for when he held onto the seat for the Greens after the CPGB’s dissolution.82 groups like the inter-war unemployed, for whom no proper mechanisms This does not mean that leadership had the alchemistic properties that of representation were established, the role of the NUWM activist in the the CPGB sometimes attributed to it. In the years of Class Against Class, 112 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 113 the dismal results that came of sending ‘brigades’ of would-be leaders recommended as a corrective exercise. Not even the functionaries of the into political trouble spots only underlined how inextricably leadership international were exempt, and there was no more stinging epithet than represented accumulations of experience and legitimacy within particu- that of ‘office boy’ or ‘party clerk’.87 lar social or industrial milieux. Even in crude electoral terms, Pollitt On the other hand, no other British political party consistently main- noted in 1931 how the party’s most successful candidates were those with tained such high proportions of officials to members, underwritten in the strong local records of struggle, not those ‘dumped in places without local first place by Comintern subsidies and subsequently by the heavy finan- connections’.83 Only perhaps in the ‘new’ political spaces of the period cial commitments of members and sympathisers. Following wild varia- could effective leadership figures sometimes be imported from outside, as tions in funding in the party’s formative years, by 1926 there were said happened with Abe Lazarus, an inspirational figure in the Firestone and to be twenty-three full-time party workers, excluding press and ancillary Pressed Steel strikes of the early 1930s. organisations, two King Street technical workers and a dozen students at While acknowledging its limitations, it is nevertheless this quality of the party’s central training school.88 Five years later, despite a 70 per cent ‘leadership’, in the sense of personal example, capability and articulacy, fall in party membership, the corresponding figure was nineteen, rising that best explains the more localised variables of communist implanta- to forty-one with ancillary bodies and sixty-five with technical and tion in Britain. We have already noted the multiplier effect in the estab- production workers.89 Despite a shift from Comintern funding, by the lishment of a communist presence in particular localities. In personal mid-1940s the party had a central and district apparatus bearing recollections of recruitment to the party, it is striking how often this is comparison with the Labour Party’s. Moreover, its central committee was identified not so much with ideology or even the force of events, but with dominated by functionaries and on at least three occasions—1926, 1929 the example of existing communists, individually or collectively. Even and 1945—specific measures of exclusion or co-option were introduced amid their disillusionment in communism as a creed, this was a notable to counterbalance this tendency.90 During the mass unemployment feature of ‘Cold War’ memoirs like those of Margaret McCarthy and between the wars, even displaced officials were often pensioned off with Douglas Hyde. ‘[I]t was the actual, practical activities of the young a job in a front organisation or one of the Soviet ‘institutions’. Communists…rather than the abstract theories of revolution and prole- There was more to this than the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. tarian dictatorship which claimed me for Communism’, McCarthy In lifestyle, demeanour and self-perception, the communist full-timer recalled; they seemed ‘more purposeful, more confident, more self-sacri- between the wars was not cast in the mould of the traditional working- ficing’.84 Though he left the CPGB for the Trotskyist Socialist Labour class official but that of the ‘professional revolutionary’. Even the party League, Behan too described the communists as the ‘salt of the earth’.85 secretary Inkpin, a colourless administrative figure who in 1929 had spent Stuart Purkis, a leader of the first Trotskyist breakaway a quarter of a half of his forty-five years as a political functionary, described himself century earlier, recorded that, with a ‘few and trifling exceptions’, he had matter-of-factly as a ‘professional revolutionist’.91 Ernie Benson used the experienced ‘nothing but goodwill and comradeship’ in the party and same phrase regarding his appointment as a local organiser in Leeds, regarded its members and even leaders as ‘splendid comrades and fellow suggesting how even mundane tasks were invested with some of the workers’.86 Sadly, Purkis’s sense of revolutionary etiquette was not in this glamour and portentousness of Bolshevism.92 In 1934 an edition of instance reciprocated. Dimitrov’s prison letters concluded with a precept inspired by the impris- oned German communist leader Thaelmann, that ‘one must be capable Professional revolutionaries of subordinating one’s whole personal life to the interests of the prole- tariat’.93 For the ‘professional revolutionary’ between the wars, this meant The test of leadership was the field of ‘struggle’. A critique of bureau- a readiness to uproot oneself, neglect one’s home, risk imprisonment and cracy was central to early communist discourse, differentiating commu- eschew all personal sentiment where the interests of the party demanded nism from reformism by the concept of the ‘financial bureaucracy’ it. Mobile, abrasive and careless of self-interest, they comported them- allegedly dominating both the Labour and TUC conferences. Within selves as officers, not office-boys, of the class war. the party itself, accusations of remoteness from the day-to-day struggles ‘Such officers, such leaders, naturally have to undergo considerable of the workers were routinely exchanged, and spells ‘in the factory’ training to fit them for their position’, the Workers’ Weekly noted in 1924, 114 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 115 and the emphasis not on education but ‘training’ was one of the salient going to prevent any more functionaries driving motors or motor features of the inter-war communist movement.94 Where figures like cycles’.98 Pollitt and Hannington had honed their political skills through experi- There were of course practical arguments for speed of communications, ence and informal mentorship—what Pollitt rather pointedly described and when Horner was provided with a motor-bike in the tentacle-like as ‘an apprenticeship to politics’—the CPGB showed a fixation on formal settlements of South Wales, it was easily justifiable as an organisational training owing less to native precedent than the example, instruction and tool.99 In Fife in 1926, the Council of Action even drew upon the East Fife material resources of Bolshevism. Initially, all members were expected to Motor Cycle Club for assistance during the General Strike: not so differ- undergo a basic training, and the category of probationary member ent perhaps from suggestions of a possible communist cycling corps, or the helped give credence to the notion of the party itself as a revolutionary compiling of a list of those able to drive at the time of the 1922 organisa- officers’ corps. With Bolshevisation, however, the emphasis shifted to the tion commission.100 Nevertheless, it is not hard to imagine the figure sort of elite party school prefigured by the pre-war SPD but hitherto lack- Horner must have cut in a district in which, as late as 1939, ‘no CPGB ing any real equivalent in Britain. members had cars…and none had money to spare for bus fares’.101 In the Regarded by Michels as a key element in the formation of a party Fife ‘little Moscow’ of Lumphinnans, the young Abe Moffat recalled many oligarchy,95 the process of moulding and differentiation was accentuated years afterwards how impressed he was by visiting communists arriving by in this case by the provision of such training, not in Britain itself but in car.102 The use of a vehicle was therefore a matter of kudos as well as effi- Moscow, at the Lenin School. Its ideal cadre, as constructed from student ciency, and the communist virtue of modesty did not always temper the reports and the school’s entry criteria, was young, working-class, usually satisfaction to be derived from giving orders. Except that he did not attend but not exclusively male, purposive, disciplined, and yet able to exercise the Lenin School, Rust was in many ways the prototypical Third Period leadership and even initiative. Buttressed by the conspiratorial nature of professional revolutionary. During the 1929 election campaign, then aged the exercise, attendance at the school provided both a mark of distinc- twenty-six, he ‘took it upon himself ’ as YCL secretary to secure a car to tion and a mechanism for identifying future leaders. Already by 1931, mobilise a counter-action against an Empire Day rally of Lord half of the CPGB’s organisers were said to have attended the school, and Beaverbrook’s in Hyde Park. Evidently even those inured to Moscow’s with the authority they derived from their ‘Moscow training’ they helped orders did not take to receiving them from youths turning up in cars, for define the wider generational experience. he mustered only eight protestors, against Beaverbrook’s 150,000—a fact Like the ‘leather jackets’ of Bolshevik mythology, for some of them at which understandably ‘quite demoralised the majority of the eight’. The least the mark of leadership was not the comfort of a party office but the precocious assumption of authority was not unique to Rust. Referring to cult of speed and action symbolised by the internal combustion engine. a march at Tower Hill, where there was the possible additional factor of ‘The automobile is a far more genuine sign of present-day sovereignty Irish-Jewish ethnic tensions, Pollitt described how the assembled dockers than the orb and sceptre’, Trotsky wrote in his History of the Russian were made to feel ridiculous by ‘YCL comrades…endeavouring to control Revolution, and early British delegates to Russia noted the abandon with them and order them about as though they were generals’.103 which they were driven round Moscow, as if taking literally Stalin’s adage Unsupported by any real sanctions, the giving out of orders was a that there were no obstacles a Bolshevik could not overcome.96 Even in matter of toughness as well as discipline. Biggest and toughest of the lot Britain, at the time of the CPGB’s launching it was reported that was Peter Kerrigan, a sometime boxer and footballer of formidable ‘Moscow gold’ was being used to supply MacManus and other leading build. Hardened by the Clydeside workshops, two years of military figures with cars, and certainly Jack Leckie diffused his physical-force service and involvement in the unemployed struggles of the 1920s, communism round the Midlands by motor-bike.97 As Lancashire party Kerrigan attended the Lenin School and spent most of the 1930s as the organiser in the early 1930s, the former YCL leader William Rust was CPGB’s Scottish organiser, leading successive hunger marches and going also involved in a second serious motor-cycle accident and faced possible to Spain as a political commissar. In Spain, when he shot and wounded charges for dangerous driving. Weeks later, while Rust was undergoing the departing battalion commander Wilf Macartney, many refused to medical treatment, the ILS alumnus who replaced him ran over and believe that this was an accident, although there is little to suggest that killed a man. Almost in despair Pollitt announced his resolution: ‘We are the incident was premeditated.104 116 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 117 Bob Cooney was of a similar mould, a former commissar in Spain who The majority of these figures also attended the Lenin School or had come back from the Lenin School feeling like a ‘giant’. Nevertheless, carried out other responsibilities in Moscow. Whatever the allure of the as party organiser in Aberdeen, even Cooney described himself as ‘terri- workers’ state, these responsibilities too could represent a subordination fied’ of Kerrigan’s visits when he would look for somewhere to hide. of personal interests to political needs, and cadres are not infrequently ‘Peter was this kind of man, no matter what you’d done, no matter what described as reluctant to go to Moscow or eager to return. That this was you achieved, there was always something he could find out that you particularly an issue for those with personal ties only reinforced the iden- hadn’t done or you hadn’t done well enough.’105 With a chest like the tification of the professional revolutionary with the young and unat- Dnieprostroi dam and a pronounced Glaswegian accent, Kerrigan tached. J. T. Murphy, who was in Moscow from 1926 to 1928, later communicated in a ‘roar’ which detracted nothing from the effect. On provided a vivid picture of the Comintern’s Hotel Lux, with its fun, entering the Glasgow party office, a visiting Londoner assumed he was fights, storms and celebrations, carrying on into the night.110 It was not, intruding upon a terrible row, but it was ‘just Peter Kerrigan speaking in however, so enjoyable for his five-year old son. ‘There is nothing I regret his normal voice…He was a terrifying sight.’106 In Bob Darke’s Cold War more than having brought my boy here’, Murphy wrote at the time, and exposé The Communist Technique in Britain,Kerrigan is described reducing described Moscow as a place for ‘strong young men without responsibil- erring comrades to tears and chafing at the lack of labour camps to send ities’.111 Persistent difficulties over dependants’ allowances only exacer- them to.107 Though Darke’s account is often risible, there is no reason to bated the problem, and even in the midst of mass unemployment the doubt the testimony of one of Kerrigan’s successors in Glasgow that this party found it increasingly difficult to meet its Lenin School quotas. ‘You was the approach prevailing between the wars, when ‘it was always see a lot of them’, Pollitt explained of Moscow assignments, ‘interpret it perceived as an aspect of communist leadership that you could come as a move to send them into exile’.112 down like a ton of bricks on people’.108 The ultimate test of toughness was to have served time inside, and Toughness meant subordinating oneself as well as others to the party. some party members had the view that ‘the only 100 per cent commu- Between the wars it required a constant readiness to take up new nists were those who had served one or more terms in prison’.113 By responsibilities, shunted from district to district or in and out of the exposing the realities of the class war while demonstrating the commu- party centre. ‘For the fourth time since the Party was formed I am faced nists’ dedication in prosecuting it, such experiences caused not demoral- with the break-up of my home’, complained the sometime Glasgow, isation but increased self-regard and the esteem of one’s peers. Lazar London, Moscow and Nottingham-based functionary Ernie Cant in Zaidman, who at the age of eighteen was given a three-year sentence in 1930, and this was not untypical.109 Maurice Ferguson, an extreme case, Romania, described in his party biography how his morale was high and had positions in Neath, Manchester, Wigan, Maryport, Newcastle, he saw himself as a ‘hero of the working class’.114 Alec Geddes, observ- Birmingham and the West Riding, all in the space of eight years—to ing that it was ‘good that now and then…our devotion to the cause is say nothing of a stint at the Lenin School. In part, the practice served tested’, wrote from Cardiff gaol in 1926 that ‘whilst lying here under the to safeguard against the development of strong local identities or lock and key of capitalism I am buoyed up by knowing that our Congress personal followings, as the centralising tendencies of the 1920s were will assist in hastening the day when those who built the prisons will effected by the replacement or removal to other districts of established inhabit them’.115 The experience was also potentially educative, so that local figures like the Londoner Cant. By 1929, even Scotland, usually Geddes and Rust studied German, Zaidman French, Gollan Keynes, spared intruders, was briefly overseen by the Yorkshireman Ernie Pollitt the Webbs’ History of Trade Unionism, and Horner Clausewitz On Brown, while the Scotsman Bill Joss took up the same responsibilities War, with reportedly profound consequences for his industrial philosophy. in Sheffield. Tyneside from the mid-1920s was almost continuously the Though not quite Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, this at least was a respite preserve of outsiders, including three Lancastrians (Ernie Woolley, Ted from round-the-clock activism. Ainley and Hymie Lee), two Scots (Alec Geddes and John Gollan), a Beyond the party, the willingness to undergo imprisonment marked South Walian (Sid Elias), Londoner (Dave Springhall) and out the communists, like the suffragettes before them, engendering Yorkshireman (Maurice Ferguson), along with the sole local presence of feelings of solidarity, curiosity and sometimes awe. As early as 1921, Blaydon miner Charlie Woods. police raids on King Street and the arrest of the party secretary Inkpin 118 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 119 were exploited by the formation of a Free Speech Defence Committee, or ‘Red Front’, briefly attempted on the German model, and took on a and nearly 20,000 copies of a pamphlet What Is This Communist Party? series of party and Comintern responsibilities. Functioning as a roving sold.116 Again in 1925, the arrest of twelve of the party’s most promi- agitator in the Class Against Class period, and having as he put it ‘to face nent leaders provided a major plank in its first mass recruiting the most open police terror’, his reputation for getting arrested was campaign, on the basis that ‘more support…will be gathered on this described by Pollitt as a ‘police complex’.123 By the late 1930s, as the issue than anything which has yet transpired’.117 Harnessing such CPGB sought acceptance within the mainstream labour and progressive sympathies was the International Class War Prisoners’ Aid (ICWPA) or movements, such forms of behaviour were definitely discouraged and Icky-woppa, which in 1926 secured George Lansbury’s emphatic Woolley seems very largely to have faded out of party activities, or at least endorsement from a Moscow platform.118 A similarly energetic to have adopted less conspicuous ones. campaign was later waged on behalf of the thirty-one Meerut prison- The ‘professional revolutionary’ of this type was thus essentially an ers arrested in 1929, mainly comprising Indian militants but also includ- inter-war phenomenon. Should any historian be exercised by the post- ing the CPGB members Ben Bradley, Philip Spratt and Lester war concentration of communist functionaries in Sydenham, theories of Hutchinson. For some three years, the communists used the Meerut suburban radicalisation may be set aside in the knowledge that this was campaign to expose the realities of colonial rule and, according to the one part of London with a communist estate agent.124 Not every party Stephen Howe, the campaign generated more left-wing pamphlet liter- official had a mortgage in Upper Norwood. Nonetheless, the image does ature than any other colonial issue between the wars.119 convey the relatively settled character of the post-war party organiser’s Prison was thus a form of propaganda by deed as well as a mark of life, often in comparison with the same individual’s own past history. The revolutionary distinction, and some communists had the reputation of appointment of Ted Bramley as CPGB London organiser in 1937 was a actually courting prosecution. ‘Our intention was to bring about the straw in the wind, for in contrast to his predecessors Cant and arrest of several prominent comrades, especially of candidates’, Rust Springhall, and to the steady supply of Lenin School students to whom explained of his anti-Beaverbrook escapade, and several cases are he was preferred, Bramley had only once visited Moscow, had never lived recorded of communists inviting imprisonment by refusing to pay fines— or worked outside the capital and as recently as 1935 had had his reluc- in Tom Mann’s case, at the age of seventy-six! There was also a relish for tance to be ‘moved about’ described by Pollitt as a definite liability.125 confrontation for its own sake. ‘There is no use talking about “class Already by this time, there was concern that in Britain communists spent against class” if you are going to walk away when the policeman comes too long in particular positions, and André Marty at the Comintern up’, said the pugnacious Willie Gallacher, while Bob Lovell of the Icky- complained of them becoming ‘fossilised’.126 By this time, however, the woppa was contemptuous of functionaries who were never there to get Comintern’s involvement in the disposition of party cadres was extremely ‘bashed or knocked out’, or else to ‘smash’ the odd banner pole on the limited, and Bramley himself remained London organiser for over a heads of police.120 In Wal Hannington’s memoir Unemployed Struggles decade until retiring on health grounds. His successor, John Mahon, (1936), illustrations show him grappling with policemen, emerging from spent nearly thirty years in the same position, eventually commuting into prison, or on a Downing Street deputation with his head bandaged, all London from Leatherhead. among images of street battles which Hannington described with scant There are limits to any generalisation. As district secretary in his native concession to current popular frontism. Conviction politicians in more Hampshire, Dave Priscott commented in his party autobiography on his senses than one, all of these figures were charged on several occasions— great attachment to the area and requested that he not be asked to leave Lovell as many as eight.121 it permanently. ‘Still, when you boil it down, I’ll go anywhere the Party Ernie Woolley was notorious. As one of the first cohort of YCLers, he wants me’, he added, and from 1956 spent the remainder of his long carried into his party activities an aggressive ‘Bolshevik’ style and already party career in the Rhondda and then in Yorkshire.127 Even Priscott spent in 1921 initiated a cycle corps in Manchester, not, as older comrades several years in each position, however, and district officials of the 1950s imagined, to revive the Clarion spirit, but to secure communications in and 1960s might spend upwards of fifteen years in a particular office. the event of illegality; its first meeting was devoted to learning to write Before moving (to Sydenham) as national industrial organiser, Bert in code.122 Later Woolley was involved in the shadowy Workers’ Legion Ramelson did so as the party’s Yorkshire district secretary. In Kent and 120 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 121 Teesside, Lenin School students Gil Bradbury and George Short did ished credibility as itself a vehicle of struggle and transformation, as well stints of over twenty years, while after twenty-seven years in Surrey Sid as its inability to match the wages now available in industry. When indus- French gave retrospective credence to the argument for shifting organis- trial workers returned to industry after personally and financially taxing ers about by taking much of the district with him on founding the spells as party full-timers, such decisions were justified as re-establishing Stalinist New Communist Party in 1977. Even when officials were personal contact with the shopfloor, although the factor of material hard- moved, it was to make the most of the shrinking pool of veterans rather ship was also freely admitted.131 The Coventry sheet-metal worker than bring on younger talents. Only with the retirement of this pre-war George Guy, who insisted ‘that on the party wage I would find it hard to generation during the 1960s did recruits from the post-June 1941 period adjust my standard of living’, must have been one of many such figures at last begin to comprise a majority of new district appointments. who never even tried working for the party.132 With the classic bureaucratic attributes of longevity and routine came What subsidies there were now came not from Moscow but from ‘party other adjustments to more conventional conceptions of politics. wives’. Arthur Utting, a building worker who for a time was the party’s Although the CPGB retained a system of party education unparalleled South East Midlands district secretary, discovered on taking up the posi- by any other British political party, it was henceforth less intensive, selec- tion that his fellow functionaries frequently depended on the wages of tive and instrumental than between the wars, aimed at raising the general partners in paid employment. ‘I was the wage-earner really, because the political understanding of the party rather than advancing a narrow party wage was very small and not always forthcoming’, recalled one such leading stratum. By the same token, the CPGB either was not offered or spouse.133 Of several other such cases, Solly Kaye gave up full-time party did not avail itself of the opportunities to attend the Moscow party work when his wife left her job on health grounds and immediately schools taken up by other European communist parties. Not only were tripled his earnings by returning to his trade as a furrier. In due course, officials unlikely to be shunted around the districts, but routines were he tripled them again as a copywriter employed on the strength of the rarely disrupted by imprisonment or assignments abroad. With the communist leaflets he had drafted in Stepney.134 exception of the militants prosecuted under Heath’s 1971 Industrial Kaye was not the only one with transferable skills. Whether one thinks Relations Act, the few imprisonments of British communists after the war of Utting and Guy, who became respectively the president and general nearly all took place abroad, including in so-called socialist countries. A secretary of their unions, or of the distinguished careers in the media or significant subgroup of British communists did settle for varying periods professions of many communist intellectuals, it is difficult to think of the in these countries, and by the 1960s there were estimated to be twenty- cases where refusing or relinquishing party employment proved detri- five of them, either sent by the party or making their own bilateral mental to an individual’s personal interests. Harvey Klehr claims that in arrangements.128 However, communists were now much more likely to go the CPUSA, ‘while there is no direct evidence…that the best leaders left there on one of the ‘party holidays’ offered functionaries as a somewhat the party, it is instructive that so many of the ex-communists succeeded compromising form of international solidarity. in their post-party careers’.135 Such a circular line of reasoning lacks logic Trips to Bulgaria aside, party employment did not lose its connotations as well as substantiation, and it is wonderfully perverse to infer the likely of commitment and self-denial. Even between the wars, cases are failure of one population of communists from the success of another recorded of industrial workers turning down party employment because which in other respects is indistinguishable from it. On graduating from of the inadequate wages, or returning to industry to have enough to ‘get Oxford in 1952, Monty Johnstone recalls succumbing to pressure to edit married’ on.129 With post-war full employment and rising living stan- the YCL weekly Challenge. More or less simultaneously, his near-contem- dards, the sense of relative financial sacrifice became more generalised porary R.W.Davies resisted similar entreaties to take on the CPGB weekly and pronounced, and short-term movements in and out of party employ- World News and Views,which older heads advised him was a ‘complete ment are often attributable to this fact. Already in 1950, the party’s blind ally’.136 The same year, Eric Hobsbawm diplomatically noted in his London cadres organiser remarked on ‘the diversionary multitude of party autobiography that he had ‘considered full-time work, but don’t activities and possibilities for personal advancement, which is sapping think I’m good enough at organising to take the idea seriously’.137 away many of our promising comrades’.130 That this diversion was typi- Perhaps Hobsbawm thought already of the example of James cally that of industrial or trade-union work underlines the party’s dimin- Klugmann, ‘guru’ to the Cambridge communists of the 1930s and 122 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 123 thought by Victor Kiernan potentially ‘the equal of any Marxist scholar described as characteristic of the Stalinist party, the CPGB as an appa- Britain has produced’, and yet the author only of the wretched From ratus could never compete with the rewards of disengagement and even Trotsky to Tito.138 Both Hobsbawm and Davies went on to enjoy outstand- insubordination.146 Annie Kriegel, who likened advancement within the ing academic careers, while Johnstone, though making many distin- party to ‘the upward movement of the elite in a mobile society’, identi- guished intellectual interventions, functioned primarily within a party fied this advancement with a set of rewards that are almost without paral- and broader left context, within which he became identified with the lel in Britain.147 Even at the apex, Pollitt’s worker’s semi in Colindale could pressure inside the CPGB to confront the legacy and continuing realities hardly be compared with Thorez’s ‘Aga Khan’ residence, in which he was of Stalinism. All that one can safely say is that their respective talents had served at table by his bodyguards.148 The CPGB was not described as ‘the no bearing on their initial choice of career, and that had Davies or party of Harry Pollitt’, as the PCF was of Thorez; and if, pace Kriegel, it Hobsbawm chosen the party they would no doubt have borne out Klehr’s cannot be described as a ‘hierarchical microsociety foreshadowing an hypothesis by failing conventional criteria of success. The problem for equally hierarchical future society’, then it is not surprising that some the communist party was that Johnstone’s was increasingly the sort of British communists did not believe that they stood for such a future soci- commitment that few communists were prepared to make. ety at all, and left in droves when in 1956 they were finally undeceived.149 The CPGB apparatus was by this time an unusual bureaucracy: one in which emoluments and sometimes status accrued to those who Earnest and exemplary lives escaped the party’s employment, rather than those who joined it. In 1954, Priscott could still describe as his next ‘proudest moment’ to join- As befitted their claims to exercise moral and political leadership, ing the party that of being asked to work for it.139 However, beyond its communists were expected always to conduct themselves in ways reflect- immediate incumbents, party employment was ever less likely to be held ing positively upon the party. In part these attributes were to be demon- in the same esteem. According to the sometime NUS president Digby strated collectively. For May Day 1928, communists in London were Jacks—who himself became not a party but a trade-union functionary— urged to ‘step out in good style not straggling along as is usually the case’: ‘it was always the trade union leaders who had the highest status among us when we were students’.140 Far from running down workers in his Similarly with the singing. The Party should lead with the singing haste to revolutionise them, Utting’s successor in Bedfordshire may be of real revolutionary and labour songs…bawling out ‘Who the pictured in the heartland of Goldthorpe’s affluent worker, fulfilling his hell’ etc etc should be discouraged.150 engagements by bus until retiring in 1979. ‘Obviously his commitment was far greater than that of any of the rest of us’, recalled one indus- ‘Follow the instructions of your leaders’, ran a similar instruction from trial contact, but not necessarily in such a way as translated into politi- St Pancras in 1926. ‘Remember you are organised workers, not a mob.’151 cal authority.141 Even more demoralising was the pressure to make the This concern with maintaining appearances was manifested in all aspects sums add up in circumstances of relentless party decline.142 As of party life, from the state of party premises—to be ‘kept in such a Manchester organiser, Jim Arnison recalled that spending his time rais- condition that they are themselves a fine piece of propaganda’—to the ing money to keep the apparatus going was the more invidious in that dress and appearance of its members.152 Again in St Pancras, a middle- his own wages depended on his efforts.143 Frank Watters not only class member was forbidden to take part in poster-parades until he received half the wages he had as a miner but to secure them was forced shaved off his beard (‘which he did’), while Barbara Dobb, wife of the into an abortive attempt to sell terylene trousers provided by a party economist Maurice Dobb, was debarred for wearing ‘a plaid cloak and business contact.144 No wonder that both the health and morale of party sandals’.153 Sometimes this seeming respectability was identified with the organisers often suffered.145 political compromises of the popular front, and the attempt to court Reversing the Michelsian law of oligarchies, these developments ‘[not] the most indigent, most oppressed strata of the workers, but…the coincided with the attenuation of the controls exercised over party bowler-hatted, Sunday-best allies of Liberals and petty-bourgeois members by their nominal leaders. Far from the establishing that Labourites’.154 In fact, these earlier examples suggest that Labourite ‘system of privileges proportionate to the degree of subordination’ values had from the start been respected if not adopted by many British 124 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 125 communists. Only during the Class Against Class period was there any CPGB, and the tendency was rather for teetotallers to embrace the sustained collective effort to embrace the interests and activities of the culture of social drinking than the reverse.161 Even John Mahon, a teeto- indigent or unconventional, and Dutt even then reaffirmed the party’s taller and vegetarian of somewhat gaunt appearance, took to appearing ambition of attracting ‘the best, steadiest workers’ rather than ‘debris of in pubs with his own sandwiches and ordering glasses of lemonade when existing society’.155 In the words of Hymie Fagan, himself a former instructed to mix more closely with the workers. Though he also sported ‘Labourite’ who joined in 1925 over the issue of the communist prison- a rather conspicuous cloth cap, the point was not looking ‘queer’.162 ers, ‘we did not want our members to appear queer…in the eyes of the Similarly, with regard to marital irregularities, the party’s attitude was working class’.156 pragmatic rather than censorious, though no less intrusive for that. The same injunction extended to members’ personal lives. In Italy the During the 1920s three experienced functionaries, Ted Lismer, Sid Elias obligation to ‘have an earnest and exemplary private life’ was even and George Hardy, were respectively suspended from party membership, recorded on party membership cards, and the CPGB in a more secular deprived of their party responsibilities and relocated to Moscow as a way was also committed to sobriety, self-respect and the maintenance of result of extra-marital relationships. Hardy, an organiser with the North decent communist homes.157 Even at the outset, communist bohemian- American Wobblies, with itinerant mores and working patterns now ism tended to be identified with a sort of jeunesse dorée, either directly, as attributed his victimisation to ‘the narrowest petty bourgeois conception in the case of the dashing young Etonian Arthur Reade, or indirectly, as of relationships’.163 Lismer, a Sheffield engineering worker, described the in the deteriorating effect of metropolitan life upon the party chairman leadership as ‘a bunch of hypocritical bureaucrats’.164 In both cases, MacManus.158 More the sort of figure that the party came to cut in public Gallacher was a leading antagonist, adopting an attitude which was more was that of the Clydeside rebel Willie Gallacher: ‘genial man, exemplary exemplary than genial. Gallacher also strongly disapproved of citizen, and loving husband’, as Hugh MacDiarmid called him in one of MacManus’s behaviour, and was foremost in opposing the return to his poems: Britain of the Moscow-domiciled communist H.W. Emery, who was alleged to have abandoned his wife and children on embracing commu- Lovely in his integrity, exemplifying nism.165 Nevertheless, just as Gallacher’s attitude to drink was regarded All that is best in public service—distinct, as a personal foible, so his colleagues were primarily concerned with the Clear-headed and clean-hearted…159 prospect of public scandal rather than the purity of its members’ private lives. Nor were such apprehensions without foundation. After discover- Almost as much as by his pugnacity and incorruptibility, Gallacher stood ing that the party’s confidential stenographer was pregnant with her for communism in the shape of his settled, loyal relationship with his wife husband’s child, Hardy’s wife threatened disturbances at the party offices Jean, and the dignified way in which in the Second World War they bore and exposure in the bourgeois press. When Bob Lovell’s marriage broke the deaths in action of their adopted sons. up a few years later, he received exactly this sort of coverage. Within the Nevertheless, it is difficult to identify such conventional moralities with party itself Elias’s replacement as Tyneside organiser in 1928 found the the arrival of a ‘totalitarian model’ on the British left.160 If anything, it district preoccupied with the question ‘“if it was right for a Communist suggests conformity to prevailing labour movement values, not so much organiser to have more than one wife etc.”’.166 leading exemplary lives as ‘normal’ ones, conspicuous only by political Such concerns were not confined to the 1920s, and the party’s right to example. Whether with regard to drink or sexual relationships, this again set the parameters for its members’ personal relationships was surpris- meant variation over time and in relation to different party cultures, ingly widely accepted. Despite the many unpublicised separations or together with discrepancies between the public and private faces of cohabitations within the party, Charlotte Haldane heeded requests not communism. In Scotland, where Gallacher and many other party lead- to divorce her husband J.B.S. Haldane on grounds of ‘political expedi- ers originated, a strong socialist temperance tradition was carried ency’.167 Following the break-up of their respective marriages in the forward into the CPGB by figures like Bob Stewart, who represented the 1950s, Ruth and Edmund Frow agreed at first not to live with each other, Socialist Prohibition Fellowship at its foundation congress. Nevertheless so as not to jeopardise the latter’s influence within the Manchester such beliefs were neither officially nor informally promulgated by the AEU.168 In the more intrusive atmosphere of the Cold War, irrespective 126 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 127 of considerations of publicity, an organiser could be hauled over the coals began to temper the lifestyle heterodoxy of the Bloomsbury left. By 1953, for an affair leading to the break-up of his party marriage and the conse- the Communist Review could feature an onslaught from the people’s democ- quent undermining of ‘mutual confidence and collective work’ by racies identifying ‘sexual looseness’ as the work of ‘Trotskyite-Titoite ‘subjective tendencies in the Area leadership’. That the organiser agents’, sowing confusion among the young by the promotion of concerned accepted ‘without qualification’ both the censure itself and ‘debauchery and licentiousness’. ‘The Communist Marxist-Leninist the demand for self-criticism throws a light on the quasi-sacerdotal standpoint is that of monogamy’, it thundered. Though not too many authority which the party exercised over some of its members.169 At the communists in Britain mistook sexual licence for Titoism, the strain of same time, this was a closely knitted political world in which ‘party native revolutionary priggishness did now have the highest sanction.174 affairs’ were an issue of considerable sensitivity potentially involving Charles Ashleigh experienced the new Soviet morality more directly.175 one’s ‘comrades’ and the party itself in a sort of complicity. Two inter- Born in 1888, he had joined the socialist movement as early as 1905, viewees recalled the personal distress that affairs or allegations of affairs working with the Pankhurst sisters’ ill-fated brother Harry on a socialist gave rise to, precisely for this reason, and one left the party with deep feel- dictionary and gaining notoriety as one of the ‘Cardiff land grabbers’, a ings of betrayal over the break-up of his party marriage.170 Here the group of out-of-work labourers who squatted on former common land. issues were very much those of a closed society, reinforced by the ideal In 1909 he found work in Argentina as a railway clerk, and three years of the family party. later made his way to the USA where, like Hardy, he became a Wobbly Nevertheless, the idea of totalitarian influences needs handling with and travelled the country as an ‘organiser-at-large’. Moving in left-wing precision as to both scope and chronology. Far from being an imposition literary circles, he contributed to The Masses and International Socialist from abroad, respectability in the 1920s, as represented by the ostraci- Review and rubbed shoulders with figures like Jack London and John sation of Hardy, was justified to the Comintern by reference to ‘the Reed. Following his imprisonment and deportation after the great general outlook and psychology of the workers (and even the Party Wobbly trial of 1918, he arrived in Britain via Russia in September 1923 members)…that it may be difficult for comrades in other countries to and found a niche within the party as a journalist and translator. understand’.171 The Comintern for its part found in Hardy’s favour, and Whether despite or because of the fact that his current party work was with his partner Paddy Ayriss he was entrusted with important responsi- regarded as ‘entirely unsatisfactory’, in 1931 it was agreed that Ashleigh bilities with the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat in China. Moreover, should return to the USSR to work for the Moscow Daily News.176 Already when they returned to Britain, each found a third partner without incur- living openly as a homosexual, Ashleigh now became identified with the ring censure, Ayriss with Douglas Garman, who had already had a liai- attempt to recreate in Moscow’s international colony ‘the London and son with Peggy Guggenheim and was appointed to the key position of New York radical Bohemian atmosphere of hard drinking and easy head of party education. loving’ depicted in somewhat homophobic language in Freda Utley’s Commonsense tells us that squeamishness about sexual relationships memoirs.177 In 1934, with Stalin’s stranglehold on Soviet life tightening, will not have needed importing into the English provinces from Weimar he was denounced by a housemate as a ‘centre of demoralising vice’ Berlin or NEP Russia. Though in 1923 Wal Hannington regarded around whom a group of British and German communists were ‘openly Hamburg as ‘a new Sodom and Gomorrah for the upper class’, by the practising homosexuality’. Reported to the Moscow Control Commission, time that Lancashire YCLer Margaret McCarthy visited Germany six he was expelled from the country, and according to the NKVD agent years later she discovered ‘sexual irregularities’ such as she had ‘never Julius Hecker, the episode prompted the draconian decree against homo- even conceived possible’ being practised by communists themselves.172 sexuality which Stalin pushed through the same year.178 Not surprisingly, Even into the mid-1930s, Nan Green recalled that bohemianism and the the story sent a ‘frisson’ round left-wing literary circles on Ashleigh’s vogue for acting Russian were closely linked, so that Pollitt was recalled return to Britain.179 doing away with cells and sandals at one and the same time.173 If from The sequel is also illuminating. Though Ashleigh’s relations with the this period accommodations to native prejudice began to be reinforced in CPGB now become rather unclear, he evidently did not become entirely the petty-bourgeois paradise which was Stalin’s Russia, it was only really persona non grata. Immediately he can be found contributing to the after the war that the socialist family at the heart of Soviet social policy communist-edited Left Review and during the war years conducted speak- 128 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 129 ing tours under the auspices of the Russia Today Society.180 He also wrote he was killing his wife who was 20 years younger than him. an autobiographical and perhaps too revealing novel about his Russian What was he to do. experiences, for only a fragment appears ever to have been published.181 3. The husband of the lady Clemens [Dutt] is living with came to On Pollitt’s death in 1960, Ashleigh recalled the assistance he had given consult me as to the next steps. him on his return to Britain, and while it is unclear which period he was 4. Comrades who have been discharged came to consult me as to referring to, the expression of such sentiments is suggestive.182 Though how they were to live. an isolated and forgotten figure, Ashleigh remained a CPGB member 5. A woman comrade whose husband had been described in a until his death in 1974. fraction meeting as a f—— bastard came to consult me.185 Asked by Stephen Spender about homosexuality, Pollitt is said to have replied, ‘Ee! We’ll have noon o’ that filth and roobish, when we coom to The CPGB did not go out of its way to associate itself with bigamy and power’.183 There are other forms of prejudice than homophobia and this sexual mania, but within its ranks there is relatively little evidence of is evidently a clue to one of Spender’s. Indeed, one may go further. While sexual intolerance after the 1920s and Dutt’s ‘old distinctions’ of private the CPGB’s concerns with political effectiveness did undoubtedly temper and political life did not entirely lose their meaning even in the party impulses to social radicalism, by the same token they also enjoined toler- autobiographies. ance where no threat was posed to the party’s broader interests. Pollitt The CPGB will not be remembered as a refuge of sexual outlaws. himself made this point in his review of Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier, point- Nevertheless, it is presented in this guise by the biographer of the lesbian edly defending the ‘crank’ against Orwell’s stronger but standard-English writer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, who describes communism as confer- prejudices. ‘I am not concerned whether a man wants to drink a lemon- ring a blessing on her marriage with Valentine Ackland, so that ‘rather ade with a straw and in shorts or whether coming out of the docks he than being slightly outcast, they could move themselves beyond the calls for a pint of Mann and Crossman’s’, wrote Pollitt; ‘the thing I am conventional altogether’.186 Decades later, Elizabeth Wilson, who came concerned about is: are they concerned to try and build up a new soci- to the party via the women’s and gay liberation movements, claimed to ety?’184 If it is true, as Orwell pointed out, that communists consorted find communists more open than her younger radical friends, accepting with duchesses and cocoa manufacturers, they were hardly likely to turn without self-consciousness her ‘marriage-like relationship with another their noses up at nancy poets. woman’.187 These too are only partial pictures. Wilson’s 1970s’ Islington Again, there are important distinctions of period, particularly regard- was not typical of the party’s history, while for Ackland and Townsend ing the intense Stalinist atmosphere of the Cold War years. On the Warner, shuttling between Dorset and literary London, sexual latitudi- whole, however, the party was almost as accommodating of lapses from narianism was no doubt to be relied upon than in its industrial strong- respectability as it was of respectability itself, and high rates of marital holds. Even in Cambridge, Hobsbawm notes, ‘one did not advertise break-up and informal cohabitation, together with the habits of drink- membership of the Homintern’.188 But then where in British society did ing and sexual liaison which so easily resulted from disruptive party one advertise such matters? assignments, were, depending on locale, accepted as part of the texture of party life. Rather doubtfully justifying the expense and intrusion on Double lives civil liberties, the MI5 personal files so far released do document the liaisons of leading communists and the wholly illegitimate interest of the If exemplary lives were the public face of communism, double lives by state in recording them. Better than that, we can take the word of Pollitt their very nature were its hidden and even inadmissible underside. In himself, reporting in 1931 on a ‘great political field day’. popular images of western communism, particularly during the Cold War, few ideas carried more weight than the conspiracy and duplicity of 1. A comrade came to consult me about having committed the reds proverbially under the bed. According to Willi Münzenberg’s Bigamy. recent biographer, the Comintern itself was the ‘greatest terrorist 2. A comrade came to consult me about having had a bad conspiracy’ of the twentieth century and precursor of the Islamic threat nervous breakdown which had left him with sexual mania, and of our own times.189 A communist party like Italy’s, enjoying unusual 130 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 131 electoral legitimacy, was often described in terms of doppiezza or double- it.193 Going beyond the CPGB itself, this was as true of Labour’s dealing, in which seeming constitutionalism was merely the cover for Trotskyist ‘entryists’ of the 1960s as it was of their communist counter- continuing hopes of revolution. In countries like Britain, Münzenberg’s parts of the 1930s, and could hardly have had much significance had this special device of the front organisation provided the main mechanism of not been the case.194 subterfuge and insinuation, appropriating the language and aspirations Douglas Hyde’s I Believed provides a classic image from the earlier of surrounding ‘innocents’ to advance the unavowed ambitions of the period. Moving to Surrey in the late 1930s and finding that there was no communists who secured the key administrative positions. Here dissim- local communist party branch, Hyde began recruiting one surreptitiously ulation was the test of leadership, and ‘comrade’ a sort of secret pass- from within the local Labour Party. Unknown to each other, a majority word,while the language of the innocents was never more than an of its more active members took the bait until at last Hyde was able to instrument. Orwell, of course, described it as doublethink, while a prac- convene a special meeting at which their covert identities were collec- titioner recalled it as a ‘deliberate and total deception’ in which the tively revealed. Hyde described this as a typical case of infiltration, albeit communists’ public pronouncements ‘never at any time [bore] any rela- a model of its kind, and like so much else in his account its basic accu- tion whatsoever to their real aims as expounded in their text-books and racy has since been amply confirmed.195 Although individual cases of as taught in the privacy of their members’ study classes’.190 Though undercover membership of the Labour Party can be traced as far back generalised throughout the party, the extreme expression of this duality as 1929, the sustained campaign to which Hyde referred dated only from or doppiezza was the double life of the mole, the spy or the ‘crypto- 1937. Even so, by the following year dual membership amounted to communist’, whose ubiquity remains the fixation of the ‘secret world’ almost a fifth of the CPGB’s entire membership, including fractions in school of communist historiography.191 virtually every divisional Labour Party in the London area.196 Especially Nevertheless, the very concept of infiltration, though so different in in the youth and student movement, susceptible to the latest currents of associations from the Fabians’ ‘permeation’, is freighted with ambiguities. opinion, broad platforms could be constructed entirely of open or In contemporary polemics, and sometimes in academic accounts, it concealed communists. The Labour League of Youth was not only diffi- involves the construction of communism as an ‘outside’ presence, bring- cult to distinguish from the YCL but in 1939 largely disappeared into it. ing in alien values and loyalties like a Stalinist version of the Midwich Until 1940, the open acceptance of communists within the University Cuckoos. If communists were not ‘born’ outside, at least they could be Labour Federation, and its adhesion to a broadly communist policy, was ‘made’ there; hence the emblematic significance of the Lenin School, in tolerated by the Labour Party even at an official level. Within industry, which indigenous shortcomings were expunged and a training provided Richard Croucher has made the point that communist shopfloor in ‘vigilance’, ‘conspiracy’ and the concealment of personal identity.192 activists, so far from having ‘infiltrated’ the engineering unions, had In several cases, though not in Britain, communists with this Moscow ‘rebuilt them from the shells they had been in the Depression’ and gained training went on to lead their parties. Even in Britain, the ILS provided considerable credibility on precisely these grounds.197 Far from requiring a significant leadership cohort until the Second World War. Even so, the rebuilding by the communists, the Labour Party enjoyed significant adoption of such extreme measures for what could never have been other membership growth over the course of the 1930s. Nevertheless, the than a rather restricted generational cohort only underlined the dilemma wartime collapse of the LLY, which in 1939 had had 276 branches, does posed for the Comintern by its general reliance on external sources of suggest that communist sympathies were quite strongly entrenched, and recruitment. It is in this respect that the notion of infiltration, always the same was true of certain divisional parties. implicitly from outside, can be positively misleading. Going beyond the Hyde’s account was therefore typical in this second sense too, that the CPGB itself, even the clearest cases of factionalism or dissimulation infiltration he described was a process largely comprising the defection tended to rest on a significant process of internal conversion which the to communism of existing Labour Party members. In contrast to Hyde suggestion of externality only obscures. Even R. Palme Dutt was not himself, the great majority of the CPGB’s undercover members appear quite the ‘cuckoo’ in the socialist nest which critics alleged, for nobody to have joined the Labour Party either before or more or less simultane- planted him in the guild-socialist milieu of the Labour Research ously with their adhesion to communism. Except in cases of inter- Department and he took on his exotic plumage while growing up within regional migration or on returning from university, they could hardly 132 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 133 have infiltrated very effectively had this not been the case, and the active conspiracy and deception. Few communists ever repudiated them and concealment of an existing political affiliation and circle of contacts was and there were no reported waves of revulsion and resignation, either on the exception rather than the rule. At the same time, extensive common the exposure in the 1950s of Burgess and Maclean, or on the earlier ground between the communists and many Labour activists meant that conviction for spying of the CPGB’s national organiser, Douglas in practice there was little constraint on the expression of current Springhall. Pollitt, in his memoirs in 1940, even made a point of profess- communist policy, including support for the USSR. In the case of Ted ing his friendship for Percy Glading, who was then in prison for espi- Willis, who as the LLY’s general secretary was to head the exodus of onage.203 Kiernan, almost a half century later, saluted the idealism of his communists in 1939, the complaint of Labour loyalists had been that comrade Guy Burgess in an article exposing what he saw as the reac- already he comported himself exactly like a communist and made no tionary discourse of national ‘treason’.204 George Barnard, another secret of his support for communist-sponsored campaigns.198 In cases like Cambridge contemporary, recalled being initially repelled by Burgess’s this, the expressive functions of political allegiance were hardly even languid attitude and cut-glass accent. ‘When he graduated from the attenuated and a sense of group loyalty, often of a distinctly generational university, I heard that he was working for the Conservative Central character, was as powerfully felt as if expressed through open party Office and I remember saying, “that’s just what I thought the bastard membership. Nevertheless, the higher the level of penetration, the would do”.’ This, then, and not spying for the Russians, was what greater the sense of subterfuge, and it is noteworthy that Willis himself Barnard would have regarded as treason. ‘Not knowing, of course, the decades later was among those continuing to conceal the fact of his real reason, I’ve always felt that I owed him an apology.’205 covert party membership in the 1930s.199 In terms of communist canons of morality, what mattered was less the Even where affiliations were sedulously concealed, a sense of identifi- degree of deception than who was being deceived. Setting aside the class cation with the cause to be espoused was frequently the condition or at enemy or the British state, infiltration even of an organisation like the least the legitimation of undercover work. Percy Timberlake was a self- ILP, with which the CPGB formally professed a sort of common confessed ‘mole’ in the League of Nations Union, who on graduating purpose, could serve the express function of undermining a political from Oxford in 1938 found a full-time position there as what he rival from within. Similarly, when rivalry with leftist organisations described as a ‘peace bureaucrat’. Already a student communist, he was degenerated into open hostility, communist plants or contacts were initially drawn by the anti-war and internationalist aspects of commu- evidently used as a source of information and internal documents.206 As nism and claimed that it was only on the basis of such a commitment that in everything else, distinctions mattered and there can be no adequate he would have adopted such a role.200 No doubt it was due to the ease of conflation of these varied forms of activity. On the other hand, the links such transitions and multiple roles that the popular front period was the between them mattered too, and in the elevation of the party’s higher heyday of such activities. At the same time, perhaps there remained interests one thing easily led to another. Springhall was a case in point.207 something of the almost romantic attraction which Leninist ideas of Active as a naval rating in the revolutionary agitations on the lower deck conspiracy had had for student communists of the early 1930s. As the after the First World War, his progression within the CPGB was sealed Cambridge communist Victor Kiernan recalled: ‘In the practice of infil- as a Lenin School student from 1928–31, an organiser in the party’s tration into other bodies, setting up “fractions” inside them, manipulat- Tyneside and London districts, a political commissar in Spain and an ing unsuspecting liberals—in a style sometimes counter-productive— editor of the Daily Worker. Already in the midst of these public activities, there was a certain pride in behaving in an un-British fashion, discard- Springhall is said to have played an active role in hunting out political ing conventions and good manners as bourgeois nonsense.’201 Here deviationists and on returning from another spell in Moscow in 1939 conspiracy itself had an expressive function: like saluting the workers’ was among those instrumental in Pollitt’s removal as general secretary. dictatorship, or punctuating one’s sentences with ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’, It was at this point that he became the CPGB’s national organiser, and it reflected an intense group identity based on the rejection of established as well as providing military secrets to the Russians, one may be sure that values and codes of conduct.202 It was from these circles that Burgess, he was also a source of information on the internal politics and leader- Maclean and the Cambridge spies were recruited, and the double lives ship of the party itself. Though expelled from the party on being they embarked upon suggest an obvious extension of such habits of sentenced to seven years for espionage, there was little to suggest any 134 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 135 fundamental discrepancy between these different forms of activity. of a ‘slave mentality’ by teachers who ‘suppresse[d] any tendency to indi- Serving four and a half years of his sentence, Springhall then worked viduality or rebelliousness by force’.213 in Eastern Europe and China before dying in Moscow just a few months Pennetier and Pudal point out that the smooth functioning of a after Stalin, in September 1953. communist party depended on such qualities being displayed solely in relation to the outside world.214 Even so, the delineation of roles was no Pride, stubbornness, subjectivism easy matter and qualities of discipline and defiance all too often gave rise to tensions and dissatisfactions within the party. Marian Jessop was Student reports from the Lenin School show that attributes of ‘initiative’, another Lenin School student who had had an early induction into the ‘independent thinking’ and ‘political sharpness’ frequently shaded into labour movement. Where, however, Cowe at the start of the war described the ‘petty bourgeois’ vices of individualism and subjectivism. Conversely, his unconditional acceptance to whatever policy the Comintern decided, the higher virtues of ‘discipline’ and ‘vigilance’ could coexist with Jessop reacted rather differently: ‘When the bosses have spoken to me like tendencies to be ‘rigid’ or ‘inflexible’, and the ‘good proletarian…collec- that, either accept these conditions or…I have always challenged the “or” tive worker’ might be found found displaying ‘insufficient self-reliance’ and I feel very much like that in this situation.’215 Pollitt, who felt much or a problem with ‘grasping concrete facts’.208 Frequently the complaint the same way, recounted in his memoirs immediately afterwards how as was made that the school’s characterisations were hopeless as a guide to a young boilermaker he had refused to pay for spoiled work even at the the students’ suitability for political work in Britain, and that some of expense of losing his job, earning his father’s grudging accolade: ‘“Tha’s those rated most poorly turned out to be among the party’s ‘best a stubborn b—, but tha did reet.”’ Pointedly, the purpose of the anecdote comrades’.209 William Cowe, a railwayman and ex-ILPer from was said to be to demonstrate ‘a streak in my character which people Rutherglen, received a damning report highlighting his ‘serious lack of sometimes find difficult to understand’.216 understanding of Bolshevik discipline, vigilance and self-criticism’, attrib- Instincts to challenge the ‘or’ were most effective when reinforced by uted to ‘strong remnants of petty-bourgeois individualism and traditions personal or organisational resources acquired beyond the party itself. of the labour aristocracy’ and manifested in an attitude towards the Pennetier and Pudal refer to this relative recalcitrance as ‘critical school of a ‘shop steward in a capitalist factory’.210 Nevertheless, on the distance’, and describe how in France it gave rise to successive purges of larger issues of communist policy Cowe was a thorough party loyalist and leaders who had acquired their own ‘cultural and political capital’ went on to have a long career including stints as Scottish organiser and through participation in the Resistance or other forms of mass political on the party’s central committee. activity.217 Through communist domination of union confederations and Probably a tension was inevitable between ‘communist modesty’ and other social movements, access to these independent resources was possi- a commitment which typically began as an act of defiance or assertive- bly more restricted in France than in Britain, and party discipline as a ness and whose continued affirmation routinely demanded a willingness consequence more effectively underpinned. In 1929 Sam Elsbury was to stand apart from one’s fellows. As preserved in countless memoirs and expelled from the party and manoeuvred from the leadership of the oral testimonies, the communist persona was that of the rebel, not the breakaway United Clothing Workers’ Union (UCWU), for arguing that conformist. Cowe himself described his leadership of a strike of milk it should ‘map out its own course without direction from the Party’.218 carriers at the age of thirteen, while in the first official communist However, as one of only two breakaway unions ever launched by the memoir Gallacher recounted a solo strike effort as a grocer’s boy, along CPGB, this was exceptional. In 1924 Pollitt looked to the day when the with teenage altercations with a ship’s purser with crewmates fading into party would be strong enough not only to get people elected to union the background.211 In Pollitt’s memoirs, a similar image is provided by his positions but to ‘smash’ them if they did not ‘conform’.219 In reality, the wartime defiance of jingo mobs, refusing to sing the national anthem CPGB was never really strong enough to ‘smash’ anybody, and between while soldiers pinion him down, and being rescued by that other stock the early 1930s and the party’s disintegration in the 1980s there were very figure of dissent, an umbrella-wielding suffragette.212 When the YCL few expulsions of key industrial activists. attempted to set up children’s sections in the 1920s, the aim was to bring Even those that did take place were not widely publicised as an exam- out ‘self-government and self-confidence’ and challenge the inculcation ple to others. In Bob Lovell’s case, an expulsion effected at district level 136 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 137 is said to have been largely ignored by the party leadership.220 The Disputes Act; his failure to consult with local communists when invited Salford foundry worker Albert Arnison, who was ‘never noted for his to address the Durham Miners’ Gala; advocating the withholding of the discipline on some matters and [who] when any problem involved his Labour Party political levy in defiance of party policy; and addressing a industrial position…would not budge for anyone or any Party’, actually Berlin convention of the Inter-Parliamentary Union against the express had his expulsion overturned after a bitter row with the Lancashire wishes of the KPD.226 In 1928 he even offered such fulsome congratula- district.221 Though ETU leaders were expelled after the 1961 ballot- tions to the retiring Liberal Speaker as to bring cheers from both sides of rigging scandal, for years beforehand King Street had not so much been the house. ‘I consider your speech as an insult…to the Party to which you directing the operations as seemingly impotent to intervene.222 One case belong’, Arnot wrote to him from Moscow, and that same year the British that was pushed further was that of the Coventry AEU activist Ernie delegation at the Comintern’s Sixth World Congress formally moved Roberts, expelled on grounds of ‘individualistic’ methods of work in Saklatvala’s expulsion from the party.227 1941.223 However, the sequel is equally instructive, for in carrying on to In contrast to France, where even the charismatic Doriot could be become a national AEU official and a Labour MP,Roberts by all conven- brutally expunged without the loss of his local fiefdom, Saklatvala did not tional criteria was the beneficiary of his expulsion. Discipline in such owe his seat to the communist party—his agent was not even a party circumstances could hardly be comprehensive, and by the post-war sympathiser—but rather the reverse was true. As Pollitt pointed out, his period King Street was almost always ready to trade a diminution of ‘vacillations and opportunism’ had to be set against his influence not only control for an extension of influence. in Battersea but nationally, and even those complaining of his behaviour For the CPGB’s later decades, such an assessment is now all but uncon- acknowledged his ability to draw audiences which no district speaker tested among British labour historians. Even for the Comintern period, could.228 Gamely invoking the necessity of thinking on his feet, Saklatvala the limits to party discipline may be illustrated by the expulsions which headed off his critics and in 1929 was dismissed not by them but by his never took place of three of the CPGB’s best known leaders of the inter- Battersea constituents. Within months, CPGB membership in the war years, Shapurji Saklatvala, Wal Hannington and Arthur Horner. As constituency had fallen from seventy to less than a dozen.229 By the time a communist MP, unemployed activist and trade unionist respectively, all of Saklatvala’s death, he had been succeeded as sole communist MP by took critical distance to the point that their party membership was William Gallacher, a more orthodox figure whom Andrew Thorpe has thrown into question, but in each case remained within its ranks. Though nevertheless demonstrated was also forced to respond independently to each put up with a good deal in the course of this, party discipline was the split-second imperatives of the debating chamber.230 On one such not continuously effective in any of the cases. occasion, the Daily Worker’s Paris correspondent even had to deliver a Certainly the CPGB did not have the luxury of a whips’ office. Over conciliatory bunch of flowers to the L’Humanité journalist Gabriel Péri its entire existence, Saklatvala was one of only five communist MPs, when Gallacher spontaneously repudiated him in the Commons.231 including the maverick L’Estrange Malone, who in 1918 was elected as Wal Hannington’s personal capital derived from his symbiotic rela- a Coalition Liberal before adopting a wildly inflammatory communist tionship with the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Hearing stance which landed him in gaol for sedition. Even Saklatvala, the MP Hannington speak in Wigan in 1936, Orwell described him as ‘a poor for Battersea North, was initially elected on a Labour ticket before being speaker…with the wrong kind of cockney accent (once again, though a re-elected as communist with the support of his local Labour Party in Communist, entirely a bourgeois)’.232 Denis Healey also records that in 1924.224 Whether or not being the sole communist MP increased his 1942, when Hannington was elected national organiser of the AEU, he leverage within the party, it cannot have made him less susceptible to the had been a member of the union for ‘only a few months’ previously.233 pressure of parliamentary conventions. In 1924, the party control Whether that tells us most about their preconceptions regarding commu- commission claimed that he was ‘a Party man, last, not first’, and though nists, cockneys or engineers, Hannington was the son of a North London this was belied by his remaining with the communists despite their exclu- bricklayer, a toolmaker by trade, and already by his early twenties the sion from the Labour Party, Saklatvala’s second stint in parliament was president of his union branch, a member of its district committee and marked by a succession of alleged transgressions.225 Among them were an active member of the Kentish Town BSP. Like many militants a his bizarre policy of a boycott of taxable goods to defeat the 1927 Trades former boxer, he was unflinching in battle whether with police or party 138 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 139 bureaucrats, and bore the record of his own several imprisonments like Communist Party, and proud of my associations, but I hold my office as medals from the class war. To his mastery of the demonstrative effect of organiser as elected by the branches of the movement’, he claims, in one such confrontations he added a genius for adapting workshop forms of of the several court cases which he describes. Though the immediate struggle and organisation to the new condition of unemployment faced point was one of his wider legitimacy, in the context of the bitter inter- by so many militants between the wars. Quite properly, Aneurin Bevan nal disputes in which he had been involved, it also offers the clue to described it as a challenge of ‘quite peculiar complexity’ to attempt to Hannington’s relative independence from the party.239 give ‘organisational expression to circumstances from which men are If Pollitt cautioned against alienating Hannington in 1931, it was not trying desperately to escape’.234 In a longer historical perspective, because he agreed with his perspective for the NUWM, but because it Hannington’s success in meeting this challenge, establishing an organi- seemed impossible to jeopardise relations with the party’s ‘one mass sation whose paying membership was at one point five times higher than organisation with a real paying membership’ when it was already at the CPGB’s, is without any obvious parallel.235 loggerheads with its most influential trade unionist, Arthur Horner.240 Within the party, his successes earned him not plaudits but a barrage Like Hannington, Horner in the early 1930s was exceptional in the of criticism because of the supposedly ‘legalistic’, trade-union type extent of his influence beyond the party—according to J.R. Campbell methods on which they were based. In April 1930, a central committee he could ‘bring 10 times as many miners to a meeting than any other resolution complained that ‘all hostile elements to the Party have rallied speaker’241—but at the same time he epitomised the more general to the NUWM’, and a year later Hannington himself was described by dilemma of how the party should control activists primarily responsive the CPGB’s Comintern representative as ‘a real danger’who needed to the constraints and opportunities of their trade union positions. removing.236 Already in 1929 he had defied the platform at the eleventh This was reinforced in Horner’s case by a political formation predat- CPGB congress to secure re-election to the party executive, and ing that of the party, and by the especially strong pull of union and although removed in 1932 because of his ‘most stubborn and solid resis- community loyalism in the relative industrial monoculture of the South tance’ to Comintern policy on organising the unemployed, his position Wales coalfield. A protégé of the Rhondda syndicalist Noah Ablett and at the head of the NUWM was apparently unassailable.237 Indeed, it briefly chair of the Unofficial Reform Committee, Horner retained secured his return to the party executive in 1935, and then once again from syndicalism not only a commitment to the unity and cohesion of his removal. the miners’ organisation but a critique of political bureaucracy owing What is more remarkable is that Hannington’s pronounced individu- much to his early reading of The Miners’ Next Step. In his memoirs, alism as a leader was not only tolerated but presently sanctioned, publi- Horner described it as one of his ‘greatest advantages’ that he ‘never cised and even exploited by the party. In France, Pennetier and Pudal became a professional revolutionary’, and repeatedly during his career have shown how in standard party lives the individual was entirely showed either reluctance to sit on the party’s leading bodies or a disin- subsumed within the party. Moreover, according to the inventory which clination to participate in those of which he was formally a member.242 they present, Thorez’s Fils du peuple,while exemplifying these traits, was Partly, this was the problem of multiple commitments, with Horner the only authorised communist memoir published during Thorez’s life- always ready with ‘good excuses…of why trade union engagements time, hence confirming the reciprocal identification of party and leader prevent [him] from attending Party meetings’.243 However, Horner also even in the guise of ‘anti-individualism’.238 On either count, there was displayed a definite aversion to the party bureaucracy, alleging in 1928 evidently no volume comparable with Hannington’s Unemployed Struggles, that it exploited privileged contacts with Moscow precisely because of published in 1936 as almost the first biographical representation of its utter dispensability as regards the struggle in Britain.244 Three years communist leadership in Britain. Though Hannington’s individuality is later he characterised his colleagues in the South Wales leadership as not entirely obliterated—‘with a straight left to the face, and a right cross ‘machines that only exist to say “yes” to everything that the centre to the jaw, I put the beachcomber down for the count’, he boasts of a does’.245 Hamburg fistfight—what is more significant is how his primary identi- In 1931, when Horner’s defiance of party instructions brought him to fication in the text is not with the party, which is barely mentioned, but the brink of expulsion, formally speaking it was he who recanted and with the broader unemployed movement. ‘I am a member of the party discipline which prevailed. However, the longer term significance 140 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY CULTS OF LEADERSHIP 141 of the episode was to mark out the space within which, in all decisive Perhaps there was one last throwback to the past. Jimmy Reid was industrial affairs, Horner henceforth followed his own counsel, or his born in Glasgow in 1932, first coming to notice as one of the leaders of union’s, but not the party’s against the union’s. This was clearly displayed the engineering apprentices’ strikes of 1951. By 1958 he was drawn by in the early part of the war, when he declined to use his influence for anti- Gollan into full-time party work and had some success in revitalising the war ends, and did so with seeming impunity. Indeed, the boot was on the YCL before making an effective Scottish party secretary from 1964 to other foot: when in this period the party refused to support Horner’s 1969. It is nevertheless revealing that it was only when at this point Reid stance on the union’s wage negotiations, the possibility that arose was of returned to the shipyards that he began to make his mark with a wider his resignation, not expulsion, and for a period he virtually broke off public. More than anything, he became inseparably identified with the contact with ‘the Comrades’ in the district office.246 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in, which by both word and deed When he later became general secretary of the NUM, his Cardiff proposed an alternative political economy to that of the ‘faceless men’ leaving reception was treated to a new version of My Bonny Lies Over the running Britain from Whitehall and the City.251 In their study of the Ocean: work-in, Foster and Woolfson stress how brilliantly Reid employed his mastery of the spoken word, drawing upon ‘CP practice as it evolved For Arthur the war proved no muddle during the 1930s and 1940s’ to use ‘“theme”, the construction of Whatever old King Street did say contexts and the deployment of emotions, to transform received mean- He kept clear of their huddle ing’.252 Like a communist pageant or one of Lewis Jones’s novels, their And that’s where he stands to this day.247 account is constantly punctuated by demonstrative showpieces, whether altercations with union officials, carnival-like demonstrations in As significant as Horner’s independent-mindedness was the open, even Glasgow’s George Square or Reid’s refusal to shake the hand of the exemplary quality with which it was being presented as early as 1947. Conservative industry minister which, in Foster and Woolfson’s words, Equally with party mythology, an informal counter-mythology buttressed ‘ratified the nature of the battle’.253 conceptions of effective communist leadership, but precisely on the basis Defying the passing of the orator-hero, Reid is the one leading figure of that critical distance which Horner would have told you was its first of his generation whose platform presence was singled out by one of the precondition. Manchester interviewees as the cause of their joining the party.254 Even beyond the party’s ranks, he was a popular Clydebank councillor and Only one Harry Pollitt? easily the most effective communist candidate in the 1974 general elec- tions, where he underplayed the claims of party and stood as the ‘Man That these outstanding personalities were politically formed before the For the Job’ unanswerable to any party whip. ‘People Need Jimmy’, his communist party existed was not fortuitous. Walking into King Street literature blazoned. ‘I am not a communist but I would be proud to have during the 1964 general election, the journalist Anthony Howard noted Jimmy as my MP’, said an admirer. All his local endorsements referred how the prominent bust of Pollitt highlighted the most obvious deficiency to him as Jimmy, unconsciously echoing the references to ‘Harry’ in of the party he left behind—‘its complete lack of any figure with a Pollitt’s equally individualised election literature of forty years earlier.255 personal identity of his own’.248 Cynics even muttered that his successor In any other party, Reid would have made an obvious leadership John Gollan took the cult of impersonality too far.249 A recruit from the candidate. Approaching Pollitt’s age when he became general secretary, party’s heyday, linking the dissipation of the party’s ‘spirit and enthusi- he had been marked out in the 1960s as Gollan’s possible successor, as asm’ with the absence of any subsequent figure of Pollitt’s stature, Gollan had by Pollitt before him.256 What finally stood in the way of such wondered already in 1960 whether the ‘“historic role” of the British a prospect is not absolutely clear. Already when he resigned as Scottish Party was fulfilled within the span of his leadership’.250 Though every- secretary, Reid complained of the constant struggle simply to keep the where communists continued to play out their smaller historical roles, the party going, of ‘a tired, faded cadre force’, branches with all the life lack of any commanding public figure seemed to symbolise the passing kicked out of them and the serious health problems of many party offi- of an era. cials.257 Subsequently, even despite the party’s support, Reid was unsuc- 142 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY cessful in running for election as an AEU national officer. Remaining on the national executive out of loyalty to Gollan, Reid at last resigned in CHAPTER 4 1976 citing no reason that would not have been applicable at any time in the previous twenty years.258 TRUE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE Perhaps Gollan’s resignation as general secretary only months earlier BRITISH WORKING CLASS removed the last call on his personal loyalty. Possibly too, the line of succession acted as a catalyst, as Gollan made way for Reid’s fellow Glaswegian Gordon McLennan, a party worker since the age of twenty- five but one with little personal standing independent of the apparatus. ‘I don’t think my secretaryship will differ at all from Mr Gollan’s, in the sense that I will be…carrying out the policies laid down by the national Congress’, McLennan stated on taking up the position, like one of the Jack Owen was a syndicalist of the old school. A Ruskin College rebel, faceless men from King Street.259 Resigning three months later, Reid Plebs League organiser and ASE delegate to Tom Mann’s 1910 confer- pointedly remarked that ‘the political parties of the labour movement ence on industrial syndicalism, as late as 1920 he wrote a pamphlet, To cannot go on as in the past…plagued by little men consumed by career Engineers (and other wage slaves), betraying little interest either in parties ambitions and leaders without vision’.260 In a volume of autobiography in general or ‘the party’ then in process of formation. Although a published the same year, he described with implicit force of contrast how wartime shop steward and veteran of the Manchester and London the communist leaders of his youth had been ‘leaders in their own right’, district committees of his union, it was not until 1929 that he took on authentic products of ‘the struggle of the British people’.261 If the his first overtly political responsibility, as election agent to the former double-edged sword of leadership had at last been laid to rest, it was at syndicalist A.A. Purcell in Moss Side. Indeed, it was as late as 1936, the the expense of the CPGB’s wider pretensions to a leadership role. year of Mann’s eightieth birthday extravaganza, that Owen now followed him a second time in joining the communist party. In line with current party strategies he did not even then make public his adhesion, but secured election as a Labour councillor in his native Manchester. Advertised as such, in 1940 he began writing a weekly column for the Daily Worker and was made a member of its new, largely ceremonial editorial board. Though Owen’s delayed adhesion to communism was relatively unusual, the continuities between syndicalist and communist conceptions of political agency were of wider significance. Offsetting the usurpation of effective workers’ control by the Soviet state, communists retained the image of the worker as the demiurge of the social revolution, personi- fied in a leader like Pollitt, or Stalin, and in the virile representations of the Daily Worker cartoonist Gabriel. In one of his own ‘workshop talks’ for the paper, Owen captured the image in the shape of a communist foundry worker, vividly delineated against the white heat of the furnace.

Beads of sweat, catching glancing flame, created highlights that gave added emphasis to the taut shoulders. Huge muscles balled as he thrust steel into the seething centre. Statuesque, he was the embodiment of proletarian power. 144 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 145 Some day, Owen went on, the ‘gleaming shoulders’ and ‘heavily veined uct of his upbringing and environment as well as political affiliations. arms’ would tear capitalism asunder. This was socialism as the creed of More than that, however, communism itself as a political formation both the ‘producer’, exactly as Owen had expounded it as a syndicalist. Its replicated the sexual division of labour and authority that characterised forms of struggle and participation were shaped accordingly.1 its core constituencies, and depended upon these for the separate sphere Another image may be set alongside it. In the late 1920s, Frieda that party activism itself constituted. If, as Dominique Loiseau has Brewster was a Pittsburgh YCLer helping out on the picket lines of suggested, the very functioning and survival of the activist depended on breadline America. Steeped in the rhetoric and imagery of the struggle, the moral and material support of an uncomplaining partner, then the she could not help being overawed by the fearless local party organiser, communist as quintessential activist naturally demanded this support to a former miner and steelworker called Pat Devine. A leading member in an unusual degree.4 Combined with an equalitarian rhetoric differing turn of the British, American and Irish communist parties, Devine had widely in immediacy of application, these dependencies made for varied the toughness, bravery and commitment synonymous with the commu- patterns of relationships that were shaped by the impact of distinct nist leadership ideal. ‘He took on the police, the city officials, even the regional and occupational cultures as well as changing constructions of mayor when the occasion arose’, Brewster recalled. ‘I invested him with gender over time and the diverse ambitions and expectations of commu- all the glamour many girls of my age saw in filmstars and there grew in nist women themselves. me a kind of hero worship for him.’ Exactly as in a screenplay, her revo- Many of these communist women did not challenge the unsung lutionary heartthrob even offered his hand in marriage, only to reveal an supporting role of what Loiseau calls militantes de l’ombre. Among those aspect of the male psyche that neither Hollywood nor the New York Daily determined on a more active contribution, a further differentiation is Worker had prepared her for. Deeply moulded by his Catholic upbring- necessary between those securing a space as ‘honorary’ male comrades ing, Devine as a husband was not only incapable of physical or emotional and those exploiting openings to a more feminised style of politics. intimacy but oblivious to the idea of comradeship or equality between Though largely accepting the party’s organisational and programmatic the sexes. ‘He made it clear, without so many words, that I was to make hierarchies, these women challenged gendered stereotypes by their own his meals, provide clean shirts and be “available” in bed if he so desired’, example while never entirely lacking a critical vocabulary of their own. Brewster recalled. Without so many words, he also made the larger deci- Due perhaps to its relative embeddedness within the structures and sions—such as going to live in Moscow—that shaped the life they shared. cultures of the established labour movement, there was little evidence Devine was also unmindful of his own personal interests, and when a within the CPGB of the explicit challenge to ‘male chauvinism’ posed in fifteen-year jail sentence for his part in the Lawrence textile strike was the US party already by the late 1940s.5 Nevertheless, even where tradi- commuted to deportation to his native Scotland, he never dreamt of tional priorities seemingly ruled supreme, one finds support for recent opting for a more comfortable life: ‘He may have been a rotten husband’, emphases on the wider persistence of a feminist consciousness between said his wife, ‘but he was a damn good communist.’ Perhaps this too, in the first and second waves of feminism.6 Isabel Brown was a prominent a way which was not solely directed against the sources of oppression, women’s activist, though not a feminist, and yet on her fiftieth birthday was an embodiment of proletarian power.2 the party saluted her as ‘a living reply to those…who would deny to Between the icon and the reality there was a common denominator. women the full and equal place they should occupy in progressive soci- Communism as a creed of emancipation was meant to transcend the ety’.7 There were many others of whom this might have been said, while division of the sexes while providing an answer to women’s oppression conversely even critics of the party from a feminist perspective sometimes in the vision of a classless society. In reality, these images confirm what acknowledged the relative scope for personal development which it many communist women themselves came to appreciate: that ‘the centre provided. Dorothy Kuya was a black party activist from Liverpool who of its stage [was] occupied by Man’.3 Alike in its models of activism, its came to regard the CPGB’s record on both race and gender as greatly proletarian machismo, its focus on the workplace and its preoccupation inferior to that of communist parties and regimes elsewhere. Nevertheless with particular heavy industrial sectors, this was a movement reserving she spoke highly of the party’s education, cadre development and infor- its vanguard roles for the male sex. In that, of course, it was a product of mal mentorship in the post-war years, ‘as good as any university’ and yet its own potential sources of recruitment, exactly as Devine was a prod- accessible in a way that a university was not.8 146 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 147 Even so, for women of Kuya’s generation it took the challenge of Bell intended, the CPGB’s record also left a good deal to be desired and second-wave feminism to de-centre the Man at the centre of commu- in 1922 it was ‘severely reprimanded’ on this score at the Comintern’s nism. For the hero of the Lawrence strike to be depicted in other than Fourth World Congress.16 heroic terms required not just the attenuation of internal codes of disci- To some extent, this arose from its preoccupation with heavy indus- pline but an awakened feminist consciousness which to some older trial sectors almost as fully closed to women as the pre-1918 electoral communist women felt like the scales dropping from their eyes. ‘Even register. However, it also reflected the distinctive conception of the cadre those among us who had vague feminist leanings, we didn’t articulate party. In larger British parties, including the CPGB’s nearest rival the ILP, them, we hadn’t the vocabulary’, one of them recalled.9 Whether signi- a significant women’s presence diminished to near invisibility in leader- fying the insight, the authenticity or the plasticity of memory, one finds ship roles.17 Though Labour’s burgeoning women’s sections were numer- described in such testimonies forms of relationship for which at the time ically impressive, and in Pollitt’s estimation ‘the best organised section’ the words could literally not be found. of the Labour Party, to their critics they seemed to function as ‘perma- nent Social Committee, or Official cake-maker’ rather than as a genuine Cadres and supporters vehicle for women’s political participation.18 Communists, as we shall see, did not dispense with traditional conceptions of the woman as cake- In his work on German communism, Eric Weitz has emphasised the maker. On the other hand, because they conceived of party membership movement’s ‘masculinist’ chararacteristics, whether expressed in its social itself as a form of leadership, the CPGB offered relatively little scope for composition, its leadership, its campaigning priorities or a sinewy iconog- more passive or ancillary forms of affiliation such as provided by other raphy very much akin to Owen’s. Weitz also notes that the KPD’s elec- parties with a mass female membership. torate contained proportionately fewer women than the other major This distinction is therefore a crucial one. In her pioneering work on Weimar parties, a phenomenon the more significant in being replicated the CPGB’s women members, Sue Bruley broadly characterised them as by the largest non-ruling communist parties of the post-war period, the either ‘cadres’ or ‘supporters’, and it is evident that the more the party PCF and the PCI. In respect of the party membership, the imbalance leaned towards a cadre conception of membership, the less likely mere was greater still.10 ‘supporters’ were to meet its conditions of membership.19 Even for men, The CPGB fits comfortably into such a picture. In 1927 a census domestic commitments were cited as one of the major obstacles to party covering two-thirds of party locals established that around 14 per cent of recruitment, though there was more explicit discrimination too: on enter- party members were women, with the highest proportions in the London ing the party with the rest of the Mansfield SLP in 1922, Rose Smith and Manchester districts (22 and 19 per cent) and the lowest on Tyneside recalled being singled out for a form of probationary membership, and (8 per cent).11 Superficially, the British figure compares quite favourably as a housewife with small children had to ‘fight for 12 months’ to obtain with contemporary figures for other communist parties: 20 per cent for a party card.20 Nevertheless, what was ultimately more significant was the Czechoslovakia; 15–17 per cent for Germany, slightly less for Switzerland depreciation of the role of ‘supporters’, and the setting of strenuous and Australia, and falling to 2 per cent or lower in France and Italy.12 membership conditions which excluded them, without the party in any Moreover, it is almost certainly not lower than that for antecedents of the way becoming less dependent on the women who fulfilled this role. CPGB like the SDF.13 Even so, given the crude correlation between these Bolstered by but outliving the influx of women into paid employment figures and national variations in women’s legal and political status, the during the war, it was therefore only in the course 1930s that the propor- CPGB’s record appears somewhat less than impressive, and Britain’s tion of women party members began to rise: to around a quarter of the mainstream political parties had female memberships in the order of 40 membership by 1945, and a third by the late 1950s. Unquestionably this to 50 per cent.14 Attending a PCF conference in 1923, Tom Bell noted was assisted by the relaxation of membership requirements to accommo- that ‘the women of France are backward, they have no political rights date different forms and levels of political participation, while providing and the men do not seem even in the Party very much disposed to the space for a feminised politics addressed directly to ‘women’s’ issues and encourage the women’s movement’.15 Though neither women nor the experiences. On the other hand, precisely this delineation of women’s general political culture in Britain were as ‘backward’ in the sense that issues has been criticised as a legitimation of those life experiences, located 148 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 149 within and reinforcing the separate but unequal spheres of a sexually issues sometimes constructed in wholly ideological terms may be recog- divided society.21 In France, where this development was more nised as involving changing personal pressures potentially affecting whole pronounced than in Britain, Annie Kriegel ascribed it to the displace- cohorts of party members. ment of the class struggle by a ‘closed society’ dominated by ‘adminis- Most obviously, the issue of familialism may be linked with having trative tasks’, whose image, style, and pace had become ‘increasingly families. Though life-cycle analogies are hazardous, the exceptional levels assimilated to the functions women have exercised in a traditional soci- of activism of the CPGB’s heyday were dependent on the youthfulness ety’. It was in this sense that she recorded that by the 1950s the PCF’s of the party’s recruits as well as their sense of political urgency. At the largest occupational category comprised those housewives, who, as she 1937 party congress, nearly half of the five hundred delegates were aged correctly observed, had been ‘practically nonexistent in working-class or under thirty and a third of those in turn were under twenty-five—to say revolutionary parties during the first half of the twentieth century’.22 nothing of a YCL membership which had trebled in the previous two More recently, Christine Bard and Jean-Louis Robert have referred to years and by 1938 was 30 per cent that of the party itself.29 Like textbook this as the displacement of the PCF’s original ‘feminism’ by the so-called cadres, these young communists were relatively disencumbered by ‘familialism’ it upheld from the period of the popular front.23 personal commitments, or else found in communism not only a sense of In Britain, at least in broad outlines, a similar development can be mission but their girlfriends and boyfriends too. One YCLer recalled the detected. In absolute terms, there were at least ten times as many women scorn they felt for the relative inactivity of older party members with communists in the 1950s as in the CPGB’s formative years. A large their family responsibilities.30 This was the moment of Auden’s Spain, majority of these were also housewives, and here too these constituted with its promise of future satisfactions, but for the present only the the party’s largest occupational grouping. Though attendance at a party fumbled, unsatisfactory embrace and ‘the struggle’.31 ‘Let’s liquidate school is a very crude indicator of ‘cadre’ status, not least because of the love’, they sang at Cambridge student dances: special childcare arrangements it demanded, it is notable that for the first time women were now definitely less likely than men to attend such Let’s say from now on schools. Moreover, those who did so in many cases referred in their auto- That all our affection’s biographies to the difficulties or impracticality of sustaining political For the workers alone. commitments while bringing up young children.24 The CPGB was not as Let’s liquidate love ‘backward’ as the PCF; for example, it had no real equivalent of the Till the revolution Union des Jeunes Filles de France upholding conservative stereotypes of the Until then love is ‘motherhood of tomorrow’.25 On the other hand, Tricia Davies has An un-bolshevik thing.32 argued that in early post-war Britain a prevalent if less constrictive ideol- ogy of domesticity was to some extent reflected within the CPGB.26 In Pamela Graves has noted how ‘small and intensely propagandist’ move- the recollection of a former Lancashire women’s organiser: ‘many ments like the communist party had little choice but to draw on all their [women] were registered as party members but only considered them- members’ time and skills ‘regardless of gender’, and particularly in the selves as silent parties. Only housewives they would say...’27 late 1930s, the immediacy of ‘struggle’ and ‘revolution’ for these young These distinctions, between cadres and supporters, feminism and people meant relatively egalitarian forms of comradeship.33 ‘familialism’, thus provide a helpful framework in which to locate the In contrast to Auden, few communists remembered these as the flat- gendered construction of the communist activist. However, neither is test years of their lives. Nevertheless, with fascism defeated, unemploy- without its complications, and June Hannam and Karen Hunt have ment overcome and the comparative anti-climax of ‘affluence’ and the rightly warned that distinctions between ‘propagandists’ and ‘tea makers’ parliamentary road, it is not surprising that many communists shared risk obscuring the extent to which individual women socialists might the post-war mood of wanting something of their own private tomor- combine or move between different forms of participation according to row. One lapsed member described it as ‘living full-time rather than changing issues and personal circumstances.28 One advantage of a proso- politics full-time’.34 Another referred laconically to a ‘return to normal- pographical approach is that it takes account of such transitions, so that ity’.35 As the earlier bulge of recruits now provided the CPGB with its 150 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 151 own post-war baby boom—the two dozen wartime employees of the Nevertheless, no general inference can be made that women recruits Soviet Monitor generated ‘several bonny Soviet Monitor babies over the were militantes de l’ombre,recruited by, through and possibly for their male years’—men as well as women referred to the demands of marriage and kinfolk. For example, while it is true that a greater proportion of women children: ‘For one thing I was a family man’, explained the once ‘lean- members had parents or elder siblings who were already party members, and-hungry-looking…commissar’ of the Cambridge communists, and this is wholly attributable to the relatively small number of women the pressures were greater still on the ‘family’ woman.36 One, who had recruited through the workplace or other public activities: among those herself been a party member for some fifteen years, ascribed her relative brought up with communist relatives, there was no significant gender inactivity to the children she had had in the 1940s—‘and the fact that difference in the likelihood of their following relatives into the commu- my husband is an active, leading party member with numerous, party nist party. The one exception to this is that parents following children into and TU commitments’.37 This was characteristic. As a movement of the party appear to have been far more likely to have been the mother young people whose egalitarianism had been based upon the absence of than the father.42 On the other hand, the far commoner phenomenon of family ties rather than their successful accommodation, little of the the ‘party marriage’ was not usually that of a cadre and supporter. In 1930s’ generation’s radicalism had been directed towards the renegotia- two-thirds of the cases where we have the relevant data, both male and tion of inter-personal relationships, nor had it particularly depended female partners were already communists before their marriage, and in upon it. It was thus almost insensibly that post-war normality in one of a third of them the woman was the first to have joined the party. Given its aspects came to mean the adoption of more conventional gender roles. that two-thirds of party members had joined by the age of twenty-five, Too stark an opposition of feminism and familialism may thus obscure and found in its ranks a social environment as well as political identity, it the extent to which what changed was not so much the prevailing attitude is hardly remarkable that inter-marriage should have been so common. to family relationships as the way in which women were affected by these For most of those who entered into one, a party marriage was seen as a relationships and the greater likelihood of women who were so affected form of companionate marriage and a corollary of the notion of being found within the communist party. Some confirmation of this may comradeship. be found in the motivations of women in joining the party. It is a common- Again, if women were more likely to be found in such relationships, it place in the literature on European socialist parties that the small numbers was because it was far more difficult for a woman to envisage an active of women recruits were, at least at rank-and-file level, predominantly political commitment in the face of a partner’s opposition or mere lack ‘supporters’ of this type; that is, the ‘wives or daughters of male militants’.38 of support. Compared with the many examples of men’s party autobi- Moreover, there is ample evidence of such recruitment to the CPGB. ‘I find ographies stating that their wives were not party members, only a hand- women who are in the Party just because their menfolk are, & content just ful of women were in the same position, in circumstances which to attend aggregate meetings etc & do nothing’, complained one unattached implicitly confirm the hindrances to such independence which otherwise women’s activist as early as the 1920s.39 Especially after 1956, the recruit- prevailed. Thus, there are only five such women on the Manchester data- ment of family members must have been a tempting contrivance as base, compared with thirty-four men and several more cases where a branches, areas and districts resorted to ‘mechanical’ methods to shore up wife’s non-membership can be inferred. Of the five women, one joined flagging membership figures.40 Moreover, in many cases, these were not just at the relatively late age of forty-one; another in 1943, when it is possi- passive supporters, but actively assisted their husbands in their work. ‘My ble that her husband may have been in the forces; and the other three wife…is a Party member & has done a very good job in many respects, as were divorced or separated. Whether marital break-up was the conse- well as being a source of strength to myself by her assistance in the many quence or precondition of such commitments is not always stated, and varied jobs I have had to do’, wrote a Scottish miner and party func- though one, Nell Vyse, was perfectly explicit: ‘Left husband over politi- tionary in his party autobiography. Parenthetically he added: ‘Having cal disagreement re Finland, which was culmination of years of personal joined the party immediately we were married, she always says it was so and political differences.’43 Examples of deferred or interrupted member- obviously a condition of marriage.’41 Though few put it so directly, a ship can tell the same story. Grace Ebbett, the daughter of the veteran number of project interviewees mentioned memberships of convenience, communist dockers’ leader Fred Thompson, put off joining the party seen sometimes as supporting the party and sometimes a marriage. until her husband also agreed to join.44 Another recruit described a first 152 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 153 and ‘over enthusiastic’ stint of membership in the mid-1930s, ‘when that in such organisations there might be as many as fifty male comrades I…neglected my home which resulted in my having to give up altogether to every female, suggesting the exceptionality of the female cadre and for a time’. Apparently there were no overtly political difficulties for she general prevalence of more traditional sexual relationships which simply temporarily reverted to her original membership of the Labour Party were not captured within the institution.51 Equally, if housewives were before returning to the CPGB when in her mid-forties in 1943. It is not virtually non-existent in the early communist parties, this was largely indicated whether this was due to changed personal circumstances—for because women themselves were under-represented, and the three-quar- example, her children having grown up—the relaxation of the party’s ters of the CPGB’s women’s membership who were housewives in the demands, or the relaxation of her husband’s.45 It is nevertheless clear that 1920s was still a figure broadly comparable with the two-thirds of women cases like that of ‘Red’ Fanny Deakin, whose non-political husband held in the population as a whole.52 Perhaps the only certain way of not that ‘one fighter in the family was enough’, were exceptional.46 ‘assimilating’ to the functions of traditional society was by having noth- Men did not always escape the same dilemmas. In campaigns for a ing to do with it. mass party in the 1920s, domestic pressures, often identified with ‘the The issue is therefore more complex than is sometimes suggested. wife’, loomed large as an impediment to recruitment. Only the threat of Though there were fewer of them, communist women joined the party victimisation was mentioned more often, and that was especially a for reasons as varied as their male counterparts, and in the majority of consideration for ‘family’ men. In 1925, after an abortive St Pancras cases equally of their own independent volition. In this sense, they were ‘recruiting week’, it was explained that potential members objected ‘that more like cadres than supporters. On the other hand, negotiating the sort the Party will take up too much of their time, that their wives do not want of relationship with the party that most men took for granted was an them to, etc’.47 Among those who did join, such considerations offer a issue which for most of them, for longer or shorter periods of their lives, different, ‘familial’ slant on the retreat into economism of the trade union had to be resolved with male partners, as the personal and political communist. A 1930s’ recruit, conscious of being regarded as ‘the worst converged in the distinctive and literal way that is peculiar to political father imaginable’, withdrew into activity at his place of work when his activists. Moreover, the context for these negotations was far from static. children were born after the war.48 An engineering worker joining in Over a period of continuous change both in the political culture of the 1960, without the sense of ‘struggle’ and impending resolution that had communist party and in constructions of gender in British society, the been so palpable between the wars, invoked Gorki’s dictum that the revo- character of these relationships inevitably changed considerably. By the lutionary should never marry, but only to underline that his own life had time of its dissolution, the party was strongly influenced by the women’s been led according to entirely different precepts. Again, this was put in movement, and stirrings of feminism can be detected at almost every terms of a concentration on union work as well as family commitments, point in its history. On the other hand, if we consider first the party’s for in the ‘normal’ post-war division of labour, work itself was a sort of earliest years, we find both resistance to the idea of women as cadres, and family commitment: the union and the factory were there ‘every day, all opposition to acceptance into the party of mere supporters. The overall day, it was part of your working life…because that was what provided you impression was ‘masculinist’ in the extreme. with your livelihood and that was your main interest’.49 Sometimes the negotiation of a modus vivendi involved intense ‘Wife deserters’ personal conflict and ‘domestic crisis’, and sometimes, especially for women, tensions with the party itself. Often, party branches did little to From the start there were dissenting voices. Born on the ebb tide of mili- accommodate the burdens of women with children, and party husbands tant suffragism as well as the great industrial unrest, the CPGB was one not much more to share them. One workplace recruit of the 1930s even of its incidental legatees both through Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers’ recalled the district organiser reproaching her on becoming pregnant Socialist Federation (WSF), which merged into the party in 1921, and the with her fourth child in disregard of party obligations.50 Nevertheless, adhesion of individual socialist suffragists. Most prominent of the latter women in this period were at least encouraged to join the party. Accounts were the BSP’s Dora Montefiore and the ILP’s Helen Crawfurd, while which stress the equal, non-gendered and endogamous relationships the attempted ‘synthesis’ of socialism and feminism of George Lansbury prevailing in a party like the early PCF do not adequately address the fact was another possible influence.53 In her First World War memoir The 154 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 155 Home Front,Pankhurst described an entertainment put on for East End eugenics, workers’ education and the revolutionary elitism which the children, with Lansbury himself presenting a marionette show, along couple found expounded in H.G. Wells’s Modern Utopia.61 with his daughter Violet; Pankhurst’s secretary, Nellie Cohen; her sister Rose, ‘as slender as the lily she represented’; and the ex-suffragette Joan [W]ith the means of birth control placed at their disposal, Beauchamp, ‘a stern stiff, young “Spirit of Peace”’ and later editor of the modern intelligent women are not likely to accept the drawbacks No Conscription Fellowship’s Tribunal.54 All except Lansbury went on to of child-bearing unless they will not be compelled for innumer- join the CPGB, and initially the continuities of approach were unmis- able years to spend most of their time in housework and in badly takable. Thus in 1920, it was Lansbury’s son-in-law Albert Hawkins who performed educational duties which ought to be communally proposed a universal rent strike as ‘the Armageddon of capitalism’, to be performed by experts, fought and won ‘largely [as] a housewives’ battle’.55 Three years later, a similar conception can be detected in the commu- Paul wrote with Fabian hauteur in 1922. nist housewives’ committees promoted by Helen Crawfurd, who as a militant suffragette joined the ILP at one of Lansbury’s meetings, and Consequently, unless men and women are wise enough to estab- subsequently played a leading role in the Glasgow rent strike of 1915.56 lish a communist society, the intelligent modern woman will ‘birth Though never formally associated with the WSF, Crawfurd seemed to control’ the race out of existence, or will ‘birth-control’ it back to revive its language of ‘social soviets’ and housewives’ as well as workers’ a pre-human level of mentality (because only half-idiotic women and soldiers’ councils.57 Claiming that ‘a housewife had not the fear of will consent to become mothers). Full communism will be forced getting the sack, as the men had’, and that ‘far better rebels would be upon the race—unless we prefer the alternative of race suicide.62 made out of the women than out of some of the men’, she directly invoked the precedent of wartime Glasgow and was generally to the fore Favouring it with expert direction, for a period in the 1920s the Pauls ran in contesting women’s ancillary status within the CPGB.58 Another vari- a communist children’s section in St Pancras.63 Prolific translators of ant of the same approach, perhaps deriving from accounts of women’s European literature and continuing supporters of the USSR, they appear role in the fall of Tsarism, was the suggestion of housewives’ factory by the end of the 1920s to have faded away from the political scene. groups by Andrew Rothstein, the Russians’ London press officer. ‘The More damaging than the loss of such politically peripheral figures home is the working housewife’s “workshop”, and the street is her were the expulsion of Pankhurst, the sidelining of Crawfurd and the “factory”’, Rothstein wrote in 1924. ‘Those who know the collective spirit temporary departure of Dora Montefiore for Australia, all by 1924. that runs through the housewives in any working-class street…will see Pankhurst, the youngest of the three, was by this time over forty, and few this.’59 among the ablest younger women communists had the same disposition Another strand within the early CPGB was that of a small group of to challenge the CPGB’s prevailing constructions of gender, as opposed socialist birth-controllers influenced by the eugenicist preoccupations of to negotiating their own positions within them. The result was the the Edwardian period. Betraying traces of an aseptic elitism as well as CPGB’s domination by what is now a familiar roll-call of largely skilled feminism, on both scores they met with little response among the male male workers, many of them veterans of the wartime shop stewards’ industrial activists leading the CPGB. Stella Browne, who advocated movement. Automatically, they thought in terms of a sort of ‘Triple selective birth control to ‘produce and build up a race fitted to carry out Alliance’ conception of politics, in which the male industrial battalions Communist and Feminist ideals’, was quickly disaffected when the party enjoyed an innate precedence and women seemed ‘the weakest link in the showed no interest in such a project.60 Cedar Paul had possibly a broader chain’.64 In 1920 the printworker Tom Quelch and engineer William commitment to socialist politics. A former ILP and WSF member, whom McLaine thus felt able to dismiss the WSF as ‘a small group composed Beatrice Webb described as ‘a clever linguist friend of Rosa Luxemburg mainly of women’, while Salme Dutt on her arrival in Britain confirmed and Clara Zetkin’, she had served for two years as British secretary to that ‘the WSF being a woman’s party does not command much respect the Women’s International Council of Socialist and Labour from men’.65 Organisations and with her husband Eden Paul was a proselytiser for Though in relation to Pankhurst personal and political rivalries were 156 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 157 as important as her sex, an indifference or hostility to feminist agendas Despite such distinctions, Pollitt also subscribed to the Triple Alliance was barely dissimulated in this early period. In London in 1927, aggre- approach and was not so much drawn towards feminism as impatient gate meetings of women were discontinued as tending to create ‘an atti- with the sectarianism of the cadre party. In the resolution drafted for the tude among comrades contrary to that which the Party aimed at’.66 At 1924 women’s conference, the case put for the organisation of women the CPGB’s tenth congress two years later, national women’s organiser was that ‘the attitude of the worker’s wife, mother, or sister will be the Beth Turner commented on the resistance of members to allowing any determining factor which will stiffen or undermine his resistance during activities ‘that might be deemed to be feminism or encouragement to a strike—or civil war’.75 Similarly, speaking at the 1935 party congress women to think on feminist lines’. In the same session, the London after returning from South Wales, Pollitt’s concern about ‘wife deserters’ schoolteacher Kath Duncan attributed the failure to retain women was that the men themselves needed to be ‘loyally backed up by their members to anxieties about ‘sectarianism’, evidently signifying sepa- women folk’. Though insisting that they be encouraged to join the party, ratism: ‘They are afraid to discuss women’s problems as women’s prob- the prospect he held out to women members thus remained a more lems in case we should find ourselves in the Social Democratic position limited and ‘familialist’ one, of ‘speaking about this work to the women where women are concerned.’67 Appropriately, Duncan cited as exam- they met in the shops and in the streets’, and supporting their husbands’ ples of a more positive attitude those districts where the CPGB’s activi- campaigns in the co-operative guilds.76 ties were built upon disaffiliated Labour Party’s women sections. His succession by the Yorkshire textile worker Beth Turner as the Only Pollitt and possibly MacManus of the party’s emerging cohort party’s first real women’s organiser signalled no fundamental change of of leaders had much record of having taken a different attitude— approach. ‘To the woman at home comes the opportunity of proving perhaps in reflection of their regional backgrounds. MacManus’s herself the real helpmate of the man she has married’, she wrote, just as Glasgow, as we have seen, had witnessed the most dramatic of the Pollitt might have. period’s rent strikes, largely organised and conducted by the womenfolk, and it is possible that these perceptions were reinforced by MacManus’s In strikes and lockouts she will be put to the test. A weeping contact with the Wheeldon circle in Derby.68 More certainly, women in complaining woman will drive her husband back in despair to Pollitt’s native Lancashire played an active role in the workplace and the accept any terms that the Capitalist cares to offer. But the woman articulation of a politics of gender almost without parallel in industrial who realises…that the enemy is looking on, counting on her Britain.69 For Pollitt himself, these roles were personified in the shape of weakness, waiting for the moment when she will betray the his mother, whom he described in his memoirs as his confidante and cause…that woman will rather die than let a whimper pass her initiator into the world of ideas.70 That may help explain why Pollitt was lips, and she will be to her husband a constant source of strength drawn to the WSF on moving to London and spoke on occasion from and courage.77 otherwise all-women platforms.71 Among the succession of political women to whom he acknowledged his further debt—others were Salme Such a conception was fleshed out during the 1926 miners’ lockout, when Dutt and Dona Torr—Pankhurst and her collaborator Melvina Walker thriving women’s sections were set up in the hitherto male-dominated were remembered in the warmest terms.72 Presumably it was on this basis coal districts. According to the (male) communist in charge of the Fife that in 1924 Pollitt was charged with organising the CPGB’s first national women’s section, they even proved the party’s best recruits, and a few women’s conference, and at this time commended both the Labour Party went on to be prominent party activists.78 Nevertheless, we have already women’s sections and the prominence and enthusiasm of women in the seen how little long-term impact free-for-all recruitment had in districts KPD.73 On a speaking tour of South Wales a decade later, he made a like South Wales, and for most male communists the supporting role special point of addressing himself to the miners’ wives, in defiance of expected of their womenfolk remained at odds with their conception of the ‘back to the middle ages attitude’ of the local menfolk. ‘They won’t a militant party elite. Apologising for her lack of ‘the market place voice’, lift a teapot off the hob to pour themselves out a cup of tea’, he wrote a Derby congress delegate in 1929 complained that women entering the privately. ‘The women are almost chattel slaves to the men, yet they are party were regarded merely as ‘very good tea-party fairies’.79 In reality, fine types who can be of great assistance to the Party.’74 however, the performance of such functions was not regarded by most 158 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 159 communists as an adequate basis for party membership. Initially inactive even within the party, she became more involved only The idea of the comrade was again a defining one, though in ways when her branch ‘acquired a woman secretary who took the first steps to suggesting exclusions that were not merely political. In the WSF minutes make me become more active’.85 Similarly, Ellen Gadsby in Vauxhall one can trace the exact date—14 May 1920—when the appellations Mrs shared in her husband’s political activities and no doubt played the and Miss were crossed out and ‘comrade’, without discrimination of sex, greater part in bringing up their children as communists. Nevertheless overwritten instead. By contrast, even Turner and Crawfurd sometimes she was the last of the family to join the party herself.86 respected the convention by which ‘comrade’ meant a man, so that even Sibling variations can again help to isolate factors making for differ- the redoubtable Isabel Brown can be found in reports as Mrs Brown or ent patterns of political commitment. A carpenter by trade, an active even Mrs E. (for Ernest) Brown.80 More importantly, though few men member of the SDF and a founding member of the Walthamstow and questioned Brown’s credentials—indeed ‘the Motherwell comrades’ Coventry trades councils, Thomas Pendred Jackson involved his children insisted upon her parliamentary candidate—they were far less likely to in his political activities, but with slightly different consequences accord- regard as possible comrades their own wives and sisters.81 ‘Curiously ing to the case. One of his sons, Frank Jackson, not only followed his enough they are anxious for all women (except their wives) to join the father into his trade, but was inducted by him into membership of the Movement’, commented a foundation member who spent four years as SDF for his fifteenth birthday present. Another, Leonard, followed a simi- the only woman communist in Newcastle before getting ‘Mrs E. Brown lar path, and like Frank joined the CPGB on its foundation in 1920. of Shipley’ to address a women’s meeting: ‘[to] show that better Their younger sister Annie, born in 1897, also recalled growing up ‘with comradeship between man and wife would prevail if both saw the grand Socialist ideas and in a Socialist atmosphere’ and she too was ‘involved possibilities of our Movement.’82 in the movement’ at an early age. She did not, however, follow her broth- But not all men were interested in comradeship between the sexes. ers into the CPGB until the 1940s, and was there described as devoting Some actively opposed their wives joining the party, although at least in her main energy and talents to the Daily Worker bazaar. Quite apart from the post-war period they faced possible censure for adopting such an atti- her delayed adhesion to the party, we shall see that women’s responsibil- tude.83 In the earlier period, one finds several cases of male members’ ity for such activities was one of the ways in which a highly gendered style wives who were sympathetic to the party, and perhaps undertook tasks of politics was maintained within the communist party itself.87 like selling the Daily Worker,but at least until the late 1930s did not neces- The party questionnaires of Ivor and Hell Montagu provide another sarily join the party itself. In 1938, for example, Irene Paynter described illuminating comparison. At once the most plutocratic and least self- the case of an all-male South Wales party branch where women ‘assisted conscious of British communists, Ivor Montagu confessed in his memoirs in practically all branch activities, but…refused to join up, the main to not having attended to any domestic matter until attending a YCL reason being they would feel out of place in the branch meeting’.84 summer school at the age of nearly thirty. Joining the CPGB in 1931, he In cases like this, ‘familialism’ was less a retreat than a recognition of made a politically compatible match with Hell Montagu, a stenographer contributions hitherto denied any formal status. Doris Coleman, the wife in the film industry who helped organise delegations to the USSR and of an executive member of the Vehicle Builders’ union, explained how was especially interested in its attitudes to child welfare and maternity she came to join the party some ten years after her husband: care. How far the fact of her not yet joining the communist party reflected her husband’s total domestic dependence upon her—‘bringing mainly that I had become conversant with the policy and ideals of her tea in bed every morning is possibly the chore that pays for all’, he the party through my husband and his comrades, and particularly commented cheerfully—must remain conjectural. Nevertheless, Hell did because of the terrific impression one comrade made upon eventually join the party in 1939 and three years later they both filled out me…through her wonderful personality,…I never thought of join- a party questionnaire. Ivor, asked about his recreations, wrote ‘principally ing the party, however—and probably wouldn’t have done so until lawn tennis and table tennis’; Hell, ‘no time but know about them’. Ivor, this day if I hadn’t been asked by the wife of the then Derby on whether he carried out private study, responded: ‘yes’; his wife: ‘very branch secretary. My husband…never asked me to join… little—no time and tired after work’. Ivor, asked about his own ‘best contributions’ to the party’s work, answered: ‘Reichstag Fire Trial work, 160 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 161 SCR & RTD work, Spanish work, film “Peace & Plenty”, book “Traitor find women holding a particular position, the lower we must assume the Class”, some articles in party publications & writings in DW’. Hell’s reply priority attached to it. Aiming as it did to represent the different elements was briefer: ‘working for & with Ivor Montagu’.88 within the party, the party executive did invariably include a small pres- Ebullient and impervious to self-parody, Ivor Montagu tells us as much ence of women—rising from about a tenth to a seventh of its members about the British upper class as about communism. Nevertheless, echoes during the 1940s—and a similar proportion of the party’s parliamentary of such a relationship can be detected in the most disparate social candidates were also women.91 Maggie Jordan, a substitute member of contexts. Sam Russell’s wife was a health visitor, formerly a nurse in Spain, the YCL executive in the mid-1920s, suggested in her autobiography that and when he was offered a job as the Daily Worker’s Moscow correspon- ‘the fact that I was a girl and a textile worker was taken into considera- dent it meant the end of her career. ‘I just ignored it’, he recalled with tion more than my political activities’.92 Reflecting Comintern pressure, great honesty. ‘You can be a communist and maybe you think you take an Crawfurd and Turner even enjoyed year-long stints on the party’s polit- enlightened attitude…In fact we were as benighted as the rest, in fact ical bureau, Turner in a consultative capacity. There was to be no further more so.’89 Alec and Jean Ferguson were veteran activists, originally from female representation on this, the party’s highest body, until 1952. the Scottish coalfields, and when Alec went to Spain, it was Jean, who then In the key post of district organiser, a similar position obtained. The had a young daughter, who took over from him the responsibility for his earliest woman full-timer appears to have been Maggie Clarke, a mili- weekly Daily Worker sale of some twenty-six quire. Nevertheless, she too tant teacher and future NUT executive member who briefly in the mid- remained outside of the party, then and subsequently. ‘He joined it, I 1920s was area organiser in Birmingham. There were also at least two didn’t bother about parties’, she recalled in a joint interview. cases, in which male organisers were assisted by no less able or commit- ted partners in the shape of Isabel Brown, and Lily Ferguson, formerly You see, if you can’t give up everything, it’s no good being in the Webb. Indeed, Ferguson, a cotton worker and unemployed activist from Communist Party, is it? He puts the Communist Party in front of Ashton-under-Lyne, recalled that it was ‘generally recognised’ that she the family and in front of me. (Alec: Not completely.) Completely, would share her husband’s reponsibilities: ‘the Party secured not one but because when you went to Spain you says to me, ‘It’s the only two full-time workers’.93 It was not however until 1937 that on her return thing I’d put in front of you and our Sonia’. The party was first from the Lenin School the party appointed Marian Jessop as its first and you came second. If there was money in his pocket, and if woman district organiser, in the West Riding. Again this may indirectly he’s none he makes me go and get five or ten pound, and hand it be attributed to the Comintern, through its insistence that women be when they come. It’s been like that at our house. (It’s been like that represented in each ILS intake. Thus, Maggie Jordan attended the school at our house because you’ve got the money.)90 in 1927, ‘although again…of the opinion that my sex and age was taken more into consideration than it should have been’. On her return in Arguing like comrades on equal terms, Jean Ferguson had her own 1930, she was nominated women’s organiser in the Bradford district, as sphere of activity in the co-operative movement and was anything but Ferguson and Bessie Dickenson were for Manchester and North East self-effacing within it. Even so, women coming second was in this period Lancashire respectively.94 the foundation on which the party operated, and one of the keys to the Though encouraged by the Comintern, this was also a recognition of proverbial influence it exercised ‘out of all proportion to its numbers’. women’s relative political prominence in the textile districts. In earlier years, ILP branches in the West Riding were reputedly more welcom- Women as ‘cadres’ ing to women than elsewhere, and although the CPGB did not imme- diately carry on this tradition—in 1927 the Bradford district had the The same characteristics were reflected at leadership level. It was true of lowest proportion of women members next to Tyneside—its persistence every European communist party that women did not hold even such is discernible in the periods spent as national women’s organiser of positions within the party hierarchy commensurate with their minority Turner (1924–9) and of Brown (1939–42).95 By 1942 the CPGB’s West status. Crudely speaking, the greater the authority of a post or commit- Yorkshire district—which excluded the coal and engineering belt round tee, the less likely one was to find a woman filling it; and the more we Sheffield—boasted a woman district organiser and district membership 162 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 163 organiser, a woman as its largest city organiser, in Leeds, and a woman bilities felt accepted on more or less equal terms by their male colleagues, secretary of its most important engineering branch.96 Generally, the war they were also aware of their exceptional status. The Daily Worker jour- years witnessed women’s increasing prominence in the party apparatus, nalist Florence Keyworth called them ‘honorary men’ and as an outsider, and in 1942 Betty Matthews was appointed the second of the party’s professional person, or simply invested with the party’s own authority, woman district organisers in the new South East Midlands district. recalled her embarrassment at entering members’ homes and having the Rhodesian-born and a product of the 1930s’ student movement, man talk with her while the woman kept in the background, ‘maybe Matthews went on to fill a number of secondary positions at national dispensing tea, and then sitting quietly and respectfully in the corner’.103 level. It is telling that as late as 1983 a successor of hers in the South As Coventry women’s organiser, Margaret Cohen had similar experiences. East Midlands could still be described as the party’s only full-time woman district secretary.97 You bet it was male-dominated, with a pretty backward attitude to The obstacles were greatest for women from working-class back- their womenfolk too…not directed against me, but in what I grounds. Except during the class-based affirmative action of the Third thought was a deplorable attitude to their own wives.104 Period, leading women party members were far more likely than their male counterparts to have middle-class or professional backgrounds. For some women, industrial activism provided the same acceptance into Helen Crawfurd noted that in the early years the party’s few women a predominantly male world of comradeship. In the Sheffield engineer- members were mostly ‘intellectuals’, and these enjoyed not just the time, ing industry, Vi Gill recalled the considerable encouragement she resources and mobility to give to party work but possibly a greater self- received as ‘a lass in a sea of men’, while for Agnes Mclean in wartime assurance as to the skills they brought to it.98 Several were associated with Glasgow it was the communists’ support for women’s organisation that the Labour Research Department, whose Fabian origins provided a drew her into the party.105 Both, however, were single, and though gener- direct link with traditions of middle-class voluntary work.99 On the ally male communists became more willing to countenance their wives’ CPGB national women’s committee established in 1922, four of the six membership of the party, within the home they continued to regard as members—Olive Budden, Mary Moorhouse, Lydia Packman and Salme their own prerogative the more active and disruptive responsibilities with Dutt—were part of the middle-class Bolshevik ‘nucleus’ centred on the which party membership itself had once been synonymous. In 1953 a LRD.100 In St Pancras, where Budden, Packman and many other party Lancashire full-time official recorded that her husband seemed to be intellectuals lived, over a third of the party’s membership (forty out of ‘waiting for me to make a mess either of the jobs with the Party or a fail- 110) were women: a figure significantly in excess of that obtaining else- ure of my job as a mother’. As her position was that of women’s organ- where.101 Traditions of voluntary work were not exclusive to women, but iser, it is unlikely that he thought the position itself unsuitable for a long-term commitments remained more characteristic of women like woman; but nor, as in many other cases, was a general acceptance of Noreen Branson and Margot Heinemann, who in the 1930s abandoned women’s political role necessarily extended to one’s own home.106 the world of musical soirées and coming-out balls to identify their lives For women who did succeed in taking on political responsibilities, with the working-class movement. In the NUWM, where attitudes to the these were often of a circumscribed character. Helen Crawfurd repeat- organisation of women were sometimes extremely negative, it required edly complained in the 1920s of the restriction of the party’s ablest the unremunerated efforts of Maud Brown to provide a voice and direc- women to ‘technical work’, so that King Street’s press, propaganda and tion to the movement’s women’s sections, without even acquiring the finance departments were all headed by women, but overtly political credentials of a party membership card.102 Whereas for men the notion responsibilities were denied them.107 In 1924, Rose Cohen, one of of the ‘professional revolutionary’ recalled—and sometimes alternated several exceptional women connected with the LRD, was proposed as with—that of the paid trade-union organiser, women like this continued Tom Bell’s replacement political secretary to the CPGB’s colonial the voluntary traditions that were first channeled towards the labour department. Conceivably this confirmed the party’s depreciation of movement by women like Annie Besant, Enid Stacey, Margaret Llewellyn both spheres of activity, for the colonial committee in this period was Davies and Gertrude Tuckwell. unique in its high representation of women communists, while Although by the 1940s women exercising significant party responsi- conversely its male ‘industrial’ members like Percy Glading were 164 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 165 instructed to prioritise other spheres of work.108 Even so, the suggestion through almost the whole of the party’s history there is no record of a that a woman should actually direct colonial work was rapidly withdrawn woman being entrusted with a responsibility of this type.116 Ironically, after Gallacher reported there being some feeling that the position be Heinemann was actually better versed than Simon in the ‘masculine’ world given to ‘a man’.109 The same year Minnie Birch, who had joined the of trade union contacts, having sat on the CPGB’s rails advisory commit- WSF as early as 1916, reported that she would not be able to function as tee and established contacts with both communist and non-communist a stenographer for the Young Communist International in view of her mining union leaders. As well as acting as a sometime amanuensis for other responsibilities as a YCL executive member. Already Birch had NUM president Will Lawther, she had books to her credit on Britain’s Coal been identified by Crawfurd as somebody who ought to be freed from and the Wages Front and was referred to by Pollitt as the ‘coal queen’.117 technical work. Nevertheless, the party’s politbureau immediately Ironically, Simon’s predecessor as LRD secretary, Henry Parsons, had been resolved that ‘the Youth Executive was amply represented by comrades able to perform such a role because of his wife’s inherited income, while Rust, Springhall and Young, and that Minnie Birch’s services should be she performed various ancillary activities including the chauffeuring about utilised for the technical work required’.110 Comrades Rust, Springhall of Pollitt. Incidentally, she was another who described herself as joining and Young, needless to say, were men, and the last of them had previ- the CPGB ‘a bit late’ in 1937, aged forty-five. ‘I did not join earlier because ously complained of having to do the YCL’s administrative work himself, there were a lot of meetings and I had children to look after...’118 as ‘most of the girls are not young Communists but in the League for If technical work was the bane of cadres, ‘supporters’ were leant on other reasons’.111 for social and fund-raising activities. Evidently justifying the ‘tea fairy’ Such circumscribed roles may partly explain the attraction which remark, in 1928 a Central Women’s Committee was set up to ‘concen- working in the Comintern apparatus exercised for women like Cohen. trate on the social side’ of the forthcoming election campaign, including Paddy Ayriss, the King Street stenographer sent to Moscow to avert a ‘Socials, Whist Drives, Dances, and the running of a large bazaar and sexual scandal, reflected positively on her experiences in Russia and Sale of Work’.119 This division of labour was later institutionalised in the China, and has been linked by John Lucas with other young women of form of the Daily Worker bazaar, a fund-raising jamboree which became the 1920s travelling abroad in search of emancipation.112 ‘We are both one of the focal points of the local party calendar. For months before- anxious to come as soon as possible. Madge even more than myself I hand, groups of women gathered to make goods for the bazaars, and think’, wrote Fox of the impending visit of himself and Madge Palmer similar activities underwrote the party’s own organisation and the subsis- in 1929.113 Even Olive Budden, who experienced only ‘irritation and tence wages it paid its functionaries. Where once this might have been mental conflict’ as one of the first British intake at the Lenin school, regarded as a purely ancillary role, now it provided a form of incorpo- acceded to the party’s request that she return to Britain only ‘on condi- ration into the family party. Stan Martin described his wife as one of tion…that she will not be used primarily for translation work and that those who ‘wasn’t political at all’ but joined the party with him in 1956, she will be given a chance to organise matters’.114 An exact contempo- and while never attending meetings or reading communist literature, ‘like rary of Cohen’s and one of the university-educated women who came a lot of wives at that time, she would make things for the Daily Worker to communism via the LRD, Budden was also directed towards colonial bazaar’.120 At all levels women were five or six times as likely as men to work and worked on the organising committee of the League Against be bazaar organisers, and for the committed communists among them Imperialism, before returning to Moscow to work in the Marx-Engels the disparagement of such activities as ‘women’s work’ often rankled.121 Institute. Five years later, during the Reichstag fire campaign, we owe to It is telling that when in 1945 Pat Devine was shifted from the CPGB’s Ivor Montagu the recollection of ‘volunteers undertaking donkey-work Lancashire district office to become the Worker’s national bazaar organ- at telephone and typewriter such as Olive Budden and my wife’.115 iser, he had no doubt that this was intended as a slight and demotion.122 Attitudes changed slowly. Even outstanding LRD workers like Branson At branch level, women for a time were actually over-represented and Heinemann were not drawn upon for the key post of secretary, among the party’s officers, but again tended to be saddled with ‘techni- reflecting concerns about the sensibilities of trade union affiliates. cal’ responsibilities. Branch directories from the 1920s show that fewer According to Roger Simon, who did take on the position, ‘they insisted I than one in ten of the party’s local organisers were women.123 By 1939, did [it] because they said it would be more difficult for a woman’, and a partial list of London branch committees shows that women now 166 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 167 provided about a third of committee members and a majority of atically under-represented in factory groups or branches. Moreover, of secondary branch officers, even if women’s organisers are excluded. the tiny number of women holding such positions, the majority date from However, the figure falls to just six of the twenty-one secretaries whose the war years. An exception to the rule was Joyce Browne, an engineer- sex is known and only one of the eleven branch chairs.124 With the ing shop steward and member of the party’s London district committee, absorption of male activists into the war effort, women like Margaret but even she recalled how initially her factory comrades ‘could not stom- Cohen stepped directly into their shoes, although afterwards there was ach the idea that a women should be their Group Secretary’.129 Only again a reflux. Of the 1939 branch committee members, over half were from the late 1960s did the resurgence of women’s industrial activities at that time under thirty, and there must have been many like Cohen who have some reflection in trade union structures, and in the national and after the war saw to the bringing up of young children.125 Similarly, at district committees of the party itself.130 For its factory branches, by this the Daily Worker,where for a time there were as many as ten women jour- time in irreversible decline, it was already too late. nalists, gradually the figure fell back to just one.126 On the other hand, the CPGB did from this time adopt a branch structure and campaigning ‘Women’s work?’ style reminiscent in many ways of the ILP or BSP, not least in the disavowal of any effective control of the workplace activities preoccupy- One area in which women secured more prominent roles was that elas- ing the party’s male industrial core. If women were now more likely to tically defined as ‘women’s work’. Florence Keyworth recalled that be advanced to leading branch positions, to some extent this therefore communist women were expected to regard themselves as ‘relative crea- represented a redefinition and diminution of the authority attached to tures’—‘wives and mothers, concerned about peace, nurseries, rents and these positions, which was itself partly tied up with the issue of gender. prices for the sake of their families’—and from the mid-1930s this Already on the pre-war London list, the only branch committee approach was institutionalised in bodies like the Women’s Campaign members with national or regional-level experience were women, includ- against War and Fascism and the post-war National Assembly of ing Budden, Eva Reckitt, Hilda Vernon and two Left Book Club organ- Women.131 Providing a voice for them was the Daily Worker’s weekly isers, Jane Conway and Betty Reid. The roster at this time still included women’s page and the monthly Woman Today, initially conceived as a some industrial activists, like the Siemens convenor and Greenwich party forum ‘for all progressive women’ and continuing into the 1950s as a left- secretary Charlie Wellard, but such combinations were to become ever less ish women’s magazine in a ‘popular’ format. Subliminally, recipes and likely with the proliferation of ‘trade union communists’ after the war. ‘Mother-craft’ features underlined the gendered character of its political Sometimes this directly represented the demarcations of the party family: demands, and even stereotype-defying activities like involvement in the Jean Styles, a mother of four and later the CPGB’s national women’s hunger marches could be remembered in ‘relative’ terms, as a ‘demon- organiser, wrote of how it seemed ‘obvious’ that her husband ‘should stration of solidarity with the men’ rather than women’s rights as work- make his main contribution through the trade union and labour move- ers.132 Such attitudes were most characteristic of areas of heavy male ment, and that I should make mine through the local Party branch’.127 industrial employment, and on Tyneside almost the first action of a This was also accompanied by a subtle downgrading of the status of the party-dominated housewives’ group in 1940 was to write to the trades branch. The ETU national secretary Frank Haxell, who was to be council pledging ‘the determination of the women to assist the trade disgraced in the 1961 ballot-rigging trial, had himself been a London unionists in the fight for higher wages’.133 branch secretary in the 1930s or early 1940s. By the 1950s,however, the In addition to avowedly women’s activities, women were also more very last place one would have found him was fixing the raffle at the Daily likely to be involved in peace or welfare-orientated organisations. In the Worker bazaar, and his branch membership secretary Laurie Green early 1920s, this was true of the Workers’ International Relief (WIR), recalled ‘the contempt that some of these comrades engaged in power whose origins lay in the campaign for Russian famine relief and which struggles in industry had for the local communist party branch, putting among other things raised funds for Russian orphans’ homes. In addi- up petty little candidates in local elections, like my wife Jean’.128 tion to Crawfurd as its secretary, the WIR uniquely had an executive It is symptomatic that whereas women were very marginally more comprising more women than men, reflecting the philanthropic and likely to hold residential branch positions after the war, they were system- welfare roles through which women had been entering public affairs over 168 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 169 the previous century. It is notable that in 1925 the WIR was urged by the Sometimes the attitude was unconscious: a prominent activist in the CPGB to forgo trade union affiliations, as the Minority Movement’s 1920s could condemn the ‘supercilious attitude’ to women of many male preogative, and focus instead on the co-operative organisations which communists, while in the same breath dismissing the then flourishing co- themselves tended to be regarded as a sort of women’s sphere.134 operative guilds as ‘usually mothers’ meetings’.143 Others described their Conversely, when the WIR was later revived on a more combative basis, own involvement in women’s work in resigned terms. One, who joined not of children’s homes and clothing campaigns but strike relief functions the party through leading nurses’ campaigns, wrote stoically of her later in the coalfields, its was under the full-time secretaryship of a man, Jack aspirations: ‘Not in domestic position to consider these. Force of circum- Leckie, who was sent back to Britain from Berlin for the purpose.135 stances made me Women’s Organiser.’144 Women were also more likely to have been activists or officers in Particularly in the party’s earlier years, some recruits adopted a forth- peace-related campaigns than most other organisations, perhaps suggest- right masculine posture following Bolshevik precedents. Salme Dutt, ing a gendered context for Pollitt’s complaint that these issues were never formerly Pekkala, was a formidable example. Although a distinctly non- made the responsibility of ‘the best comrades we have in the Party’.136 In combatant veteran of the Finnish civil war, Salme comported herself like Nottingham, the British Peace Committee was described as ‘almost a Bolshevichka and on arrival in Britain in 1920 gave a somewhat exag- completely isolated from the industrial workers and the trade union gerated impression of her role in the struggle against Tsarism. Launching organisation’.137 In Manchester, Ruth Frow attributed the favourable herself into the training of ‘Red Officers’ and the unsentimental rigours response she received from trade unionists to her being married to the of Bolshevik organisation, for the ‘nucleus’ of Bolshevisers discontented prominent local AEU activist Edmund Frow, almost as if she were an with the party’s older leaders, Salme was a veritable fount of authority. ‘adjunct’ to him. ‘“Poor old Eddie can’t cope with the peace work as well The Balliol graduate Tom Wintringham once addressed her as their as all the union work, so Ruth does it for him”.’138 In Luton, a similar divi- ‘governess’. Even Pollitt, no wilting violet, compared a meeting with her sion of labour applied across a wide range of activities, from bus passes to being ‘placed against the wall and shot’. Much later, when he broke and to nursery schools and council-house rents. ‘There weren’t many of ranks over the war, Salme taunted him for his ‘womanly’ aversion to the women working in factories, and the men working in the factories had party discipline and the admirers he would find among ‘all the young a completely different fight on their hands’, recalled one of those ladies in the Party’.145 Rumoured to be an NKVD agent, Salme wrote involved. ‘I can’t say the party did much; the party was much more sub-Brechtian poems like Stronger than Steel which Pollitt assured her he involved with what the men were doing.’139 preferred to Gallacher’s sub-Burnsian ‘doggerel’. Evidently a bashing by Some women rejected such typecasting. In her broader survey of left- the Clydesider held fewer terrors than a shooting by Salme. wing activists, Pamela Graves notes that communists provided an excep- For reasons involving health problems and conspiracy in a combina- tion to the rule that women were generally more likely than men to see tion yet to be elucidated, Salme never acquired any real public standing themselves as social reformers rather than political activists.140 Though in the CPGB after returning to Britain with Dutt in 1936. In any case, this was not universally the case, for some women one of the attractions her insinuations concerning Pollitt’s ‘young ladies’ and ‘Popular Pals’ of the CPGB was precisely that it was not organised along the gendered were by this time a little anachronistic. Instead, the Popular Front saw lines of the co-op guilds or Labour women’s sections, running as these the emergence of what Bruley has aptly called ‘feminist cadres’ who often did to the rhythms of older married women.141 One who did find ‘wanted their political work to reflect their identity as women rather than acceptance within the guilds even recalled that she was regarded as a to detract from it as previous women cadres had sought to do’.146 Viewed ‘different sort of communist’, more respectable, less ‘belligerent’ and from the party outwards, this represented a shift towards work with turned up at meetings with her little girl.142 Keyworth, on the other hand, broader women’s organisations, signalled by the reintroduction of admitted that women having achieved the status of ‘honorary men’ were women’s groups at the 1937 party congress. Prosopographically, it also ‘apt to despise, almost, the outlook of women and the role that was represented the attraction to the party of women, often from liberal, assigned to women’, symbolised as it was by the bazaar. ‘Even within the professional or reformist socialist backgrounds and drawn by the general party, a lot of women, wives of party members, did a lot of bazaars and progressive ambience of the popular front and the opportunities it things and, you know, bazaars were not for us; we were political women.’ offered for a more feminised conception of politics. Clearly, at the 170 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 171 personal level these did not so much adopt the new approach on advanced enough’. Moving back to Chelsea, where with her husband Moscow’s orders as bring it into the party with them. she founded the Pottery Workers’ Guild, she broke with the Labour That can be traced over time. As the archetypal feminist cadre, Bruley Party over Mondism and in the early 1930s began taking the Daily cites Nan Macmillan, a London schoolteacher who had joined the party Worker.However, she too did not actually join the CPGB until the mid- in 1929 and preferred the National Union of Women Teachers to the 1930s after she became involved with the Peace Ballot. Initially active NUT because of its stance on equal pay and local authority bans on the on tenants’ issues and Spanish Aid, during the war she became a ‘full- employment of married women. Neverthless, her party autobiography time unpaid’ borough organiser in Watford and then, upon the call-up strongly emphasises the importance she attached to union and party of her male predecessor, borough secretary in Southwark. In between, responsibilities, as if her involvement in more feminist-orientated she assisted the London Women’s Parliament with a dependants’ campaigns was a secondary or tactical consideration. Indeed, her role as pensions conference—exactly as during the First World War she had chair of the wartime London Women’s Parliament, perhaps the most worked with the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families’ Association. When after impressive of these campaigns, is not mentioned at all.147 In this respect, the war she made way as borough secretary for a returning serviceman, Macmillan’s basically ‘party’ trajectory may be differentiated from that of she admitted finding ‘great difficulty in adjusting to being Branch another of Bruley’s feminist cadres, Hilda Vernon, who effectively took Secretary’. Subsequently spending a year as the Daily Worker’s Central responsibility for this aspect of the party’s work in the late 1930s. The Bazaar organiser, hers was in many ways the archetypal life history of daughter of a German socialist translator, Vernon had initially been active one of the CPGB’s feminist cadres.151 in the ILP, joining the CPGB in 1935 having been greatly impressed by Briefly during the war she also appears to have worked as a factory the all-women sessions of the World Congress of Women Against War nurse: another typical experience, for many ‘feminist cadres’ were also and Fascism the previous year.148 In an understated way, she came to the relative creatures by profession or vocation.152 Regardless of which came party committed to changing it as well working through it, insisting that first, political allegiances and professional commitments were often women’s groups were required merely not for the convenience of wives complementary expressions of the same ameliorative impulses: thus, and mothers, but to bring the whole party to a better understanding of while many communists were attracted into the expanding teaching women’s position in society: ‘it is probable that in no sphere are we so profession in the hope of doing something ‘useful’ within the emerging backward as in this, and have so many non-Marxist illusions to over- social settlement of the 1940s, medical workers found in the communism come’.149 While her brother Tom Vernon remained a fellow-travelling of the popular front period a politicisation of the impulses which first Labour activist, successively leader of the Labour groups on Marylebone took them into the health services. This was true of three of the four and Deal district councils, Hilda remained a communist until her death. female health workers interviewed for the Manchester project, for whom Ver non was four years older than Macmillan; crucially she joined the possible political catalysts included Spanish Medical Aid and the attempt CPGB six years after her. Among her fellow converts from the ILP were to set up a democratic nurses’ union.153 Even as a child June Bean was other ‘delayed’ adherents whose membership was facilitated by or condi- set on becoming a doctor and overcame barriers of gender and social tional upon the transformations of party policy and culture then being class to do so—another example of possible convergences between occu- undertaken. Possibly this was particularly the case with women. Hettie pational mobility and political radicalism. Anni Radford, who joined the Bower was another 1920s’ ILP recruit, friendly with communists, but as party as an Architectural Association student, provides a different sort of ‘a very conventional “socialist”’ dropping her involvement with the lineage, for her grandfather had been a founder of the Fabian Arts Hackney People’s Players when it turned towards ‘agit-prop’ and ‘street Group and collaborator with Bernard Shaw in fundraising entertain- corner goings-on’. She too joined the CPGB in 1935.150 Nell Vyse joined ments on behalf of the matchgirls’ strike, while her grandmother was an perhaps a year or so earlier, already in her forties and with half a life- associate of Eleanor Marx. Her husband described her adhesion to the time’s experience of politics behind her. Active with her mother in the CPGB ‘not so much [as] a matter of joining “the Party” as an attitude WSPU, she had joined the ILP during the First World War and was a towards society that she had absorbed and for which, like her parents, she founder of the Labour Party in Rye. Through two male contacts she found expression in public service’.154 even tried to join the CPGB at this time, but ‘they did not think I was In relation to the typology of ‘cadres’ and ‘supporters’, ‘relative’ 172 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 173 activists sit a little uncomfortably. Though they engaged with issues of may be seen as an alternative focus for the same basic social impulses.162 social reform very much of their own volition, in several cases the further In referring to cadres and supporters, care therefore needs to be taken step of joining the communist party is attributed to personal influences. lest party-centred categories obscure the extent to which an ‘activist’ In some cases, like Bean or Avis Hutt, this was a boyfriend or future stance towards public concerns did not necessarily correlate with a high husband.155 For Margot Kettle, a student activist who first encountered degree of party initiative. Making a successful career in public health, communists through the League of Nations Union, the influence was June Bean was no more a ‘supporter’ than the male shop steward or more diffuse but equally one of personal example: ‘just that these people professional worker. Nevertheless, as she acknowledged, possibly more were good people and that I wanted to be part of that’.156 Margaret frankly than they would have: ‘I really wasn’t very much of a political Cohen, an Oxford contemporary moved to join by Spain and the expe- person except knowing which side I was on.…I suppose what counted rience of helping at holiday camps for the unemployed, was attracted to most for me was the idea of social inequality.’163 Joining the Labour Party communists in the same basically ‘emotional’ way as ‘the most active after the CPGB’s dissolution, she left again over the threat to charge NHS fighters for socialism’. ‘I don’t recollect that when I joined the commu- patients to see a doctor. nist party I was desperate to find out more about its ideas’, she too recol- lected. ‘I was influenced more by people than by ideas.’157 Politics, marriage and the family There is an obvious analogy with the trade union recruits who similarly were often influenced by personal factors, whether individual or collective, In Gorki’s novel Mother we saw that the view was expressed that the revo- rather than what Croucher calls the ‘overtly political’ aspects of party lutionary should never marry. For some at least of the party’s founding work.158 Moreover, if many ‘trade union communists’ retained their basic generation, readers perhaps of Martin Eden and Mr Polly rather than preoccupation with industrial questions once the urgency of the anti-fascist Gorki, this disparagement of domesticity was deeply embedded. Tom years had abated, feminist cadres gave sign of a similar withdrawal from Bell, for example, was a thorough revolutionary: a Scottish ironmoulder party politics into what might, by analogy with ‘economism’, be described of saturnine countenance, who in 1941 published a book of ‘party’ as ‘welfarism’. Cohen was a teacher by profession who regarded herself memoirs of surprising frankness and individuality. Along with drink and primarily as an ‘activist’ on issues like peace and housing. By the 1960s, she ‘Possibilism’, among the snares he recalled as threatening the movement’s had all but abandoned contact with party-sponsored bodies like the bright young men was matrimony. ‘To me, marriage and the family was National Assembly of Women, preferring to work in broader networks like a bourgeois trap’, he remembered candidly. the National Campaign for Nursery Education, with its Fabian-perme- ationist mixture of Liberal, Church-based and even Conservative It was of a piece with the entire policy of the ruling class to keep support.159 Avis Hutt, a nationally prominent activist in the communist- the workers under its rule. From infancy the child of the worker is sponsored peace campaigns of the 1950s, also dropped out of party work soaked with rules of behaviour ostensibly to make him a good citi- when these faded away after 1960 and described herself primarily as ‘a zen, an upright parent and a pillar of society.…this was the acme campaigner’.160 Yvonne Kapp, a successful littérateur who joined the of deception. Once married, with children, the ups and downs of CPGB in 1935 and worked successively as secretary for a refugee trust and unemployment, low wages, sickness and debts, there was no trade union research officer, became a translator of Soviet literature to her escape. subsequent regret: ‘Having, as was proper, responded to the demands made by the refugee era and the war years…I ought now have gone back to writ- ‘The worker’, he concluded gloomily, ‘was entirely at the mercy of the ing.’161 Meanwhile, Monica Luxemburg, again in the post-1956 period, bourgeois class for the remainder of his life, doomed to provide children found a more personally rewarding experience in returning to her work as for exploitation and war’.164 a physiotherapist with children with cerebral palsy. The whimsicality of the youngster’s ideal, of ‘a bachelor life devoted Here, the notion of the party family has a distinctive twist, for it was to the workers’ movement’, may be inferred from the fact that so very few precisely in the period in which she interrupted her professional life to male communists adopted it. Only the Connolly Association’s Desmond look after her children that communism provided what, from this aspect, Greaves is recorded as taking a ‘conscious decision’ to put political duty 174 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 175 before marriage prospects, and this would have been more impressive meetings.171 Cases like that of Marie Betteridge, a prominent commu- had he not been nearly forty at the time.165 Eric Hobsbawm does remark nity activist who was supported in her work by her husband, a sometime on how the seemingly ‘monastic existence’ of James Klugmann increased full-time party functionary, must have been much rarer.172 the respect in which he was held by other communists—but it also under- For longer or shorter periods, many women communists adopted a less lines its exceptionality.166 Bell, in any case, married not once but twice. active political role on grounds of prioritising commitments to their chil- He met his second wife in Moscow when she was working at the dren.173 Sometimes this was expressed in terms of the functioning ‘party Comintern in the late 1920s, and she later returned there with Bell when family’, in which the husband’s continuing activism was complemented he took over as head of the English sector of the Lenin School. In by the ‘creation of a happy and secure home life’ for the party children.174 between, she provided anything but a trap. ‘Com. Bell is fully occupied Rose Kerrigan, who otherwise had all the attributes of a natural rebel, with political work—writing, speaking, etc’, she wrote to a Moscow was unusual in the frankness with which she described this as a form of contact in 1932. ‘I am very glad to be able to support our home, so that obligation to her husband, and through him to the party itself. Born in he may be free to devote all his time to it.’167 Dublin to Russian-born Jewish parents in 1903, she moved with her Far from the revolutionary never getting married, marriage was the family to Glasgow as a child and was introduced to socialism by her division of labour on which most male activism depended. father, reading to him as he worked at home on tailoring jobs.175 Consequently, it was not men but married women who, whatever the Accompanying him to meetings, she also attended the local Socialist level or type of activity, faced the greater challenge in negotiating space Sunday School before working for a time at the Socialist Labour Press, to pursue it. For many of them, responsibilities assumed within the helping in the bookshop and attending classes of John Maclean at the home were what defined them as relative creatures, and the attraction Scottish Labour College. Still in her mid-teens, she even figures in of ‘women’s work’ or the co-op guilds was not just the greater variety of Gallacher’s Revolt on the Clyde, enduring the stewards’ attentions at a pro- roles they provided, but the arrangement of commitments to accom- war public meeting.176 Nor was she hidebound in sexual matters. Defying modate women otherwise unprovided for. Similarly, involvement in her mother by marrying outside her religion, she disregarded convention youth and children’s organisations could reflect the practical consider- as a ‘pioneer birth controller’ who put off having children until her thir- ation that these were activities in which one’s own family could be ties: ‘I went to the birth control clinic, and they looked at me aghast— involved without a clash of responsibilities.168 Though ‘ordinary’, nobody was served there except for they’d already had four or six mixed-sex party activities were not normally adapted to such forms of children…’ As the only girl in the family, she had been ‘much put upon’ participation, a number of post-war suburban branches did arrange to do the chores during her mother’s frequent illnesses, and socialism in meetings to take place in the homes of women with children.169 At every part may have provided a sense of release. ‘I felt women were discrimi- level, from the executive to the local branch, one also finds husband- nated against and grew up feeling men were the lucky sex’, she recalled, and-wife teams co-ordinating political activities, and occasionally the though she was notably more indulgent towards her father’s memory ideal case of a ‘party husband’ balancing political work with childcare than her mother’s. commitments. Golda Barr, whose husband was of this type, admitted Despite such an upbringing, Rose played almost no public political role reproaching other members ‘that once they got married, and once they after the birth of her first child in 1932. We have seen that her husband got a child, you didn’t see the women at a branch meeting any more’, Peter was one of the CPGB’s foremost cadres of the inter-war years and which does again suggest exceptionality: ‘I think that I was the only one Rose supported him in all his activities, whether accompanying him to with children…’ Moreover, even in these circumstances, roles within the Moscow as CPGB respresentative or staying at home to receive his branch were circumscribed, and Barr was mainly responsible for parcels of dirty washing from the hunger marches. ‘I took upon myself fundraising and the bazaar.170 In the pre-war Wythenshawe branch, the feeling that as a backroom girl, making sure that my Peter didn’t have comprising mainly young couples, the women’s section met on a sepa- the worries of the home…I was doing my party work’ she recalled in a rate evening, not the afternoon, while the men took their turn with the later interview. children. Nevertheless, the women’s meetings still featured the making of bazaar items, and were said to be less ‘political’ than general branch I felt that he was doing his job, and in order to make sure that he 176 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 177 could do the job and not be lumbered with a lot of personal generalise impossible levels of activity on the basis of their own unpub- things at home, and not neglect our children…then it was my licised domestic circumstances. When after the war the secretary of one place to see to that... of the party’s industrial advisories sought to resign his position, partly because his wife was expecting a baby, it was Kerrigan who objected Here it seems that either memory or discretion suppressed an earlier feel- through lack of any alternative.182 More explicitly, an overloaded veteran ing of frustration in such a role and the dream of having ‘more time for wishing to drop his activities for the International Brigade Association the Party’ once her family’s demands upon were relaxed. ‘All the years I was again opposed by Kerrigan: ‘If it is possible for me, as the National have been in the Party I have given all the time I could’, she wrote in her Organiser, with a Parliamentary campaign on my hands as well, to be party autobiography in 1951, and it is true that before having children active in the IB, we have every right to expect it from any other comrade she had set up a branch of the breakaway United Clothing Workers’ who is an ex-IBer...’183 Union and played a part in the Glasgow unemployed movement.177 She It is hardly surprising that the handful of communists said to have had also worked for the Prudential during the war and got involved with avoided marriage for reasons of career or independence were mostly what her husband called its ‘bloody staff union’. ‘I regret’, she added in women. The most famous example is Ellen Wilkinson, who as an ex- the autobiography, ‘that because of family reasons (3 children, and a communist Labour MP touched on these dilemmas in her 1920s novel husband whose whole time is taken up by the Party) I cannot give as Clash. Hilda Vernon is also said to have taken the decision not to marry much time as I have done when I was younger & more free’.178 for undisclosed ‘political’ reasons, while one of our project interviewees There must have been many relationships similar to this, though described how the memory of her parents’ unemployment in the 1930s generally they have to be reconstructed from more fragmentary instilled in her a similar desire for personal independence.184 Agnes evidence. For Wal Hannington, a fellow engineer and near contempo- Maclean and Vi Gill, as we have seen, were active in industry. Mclean rary of Kerrigan’s, we have only an allusion to his travails as ‘head cook was a Glasgow engineering worker who sat on both the CPGB and AEU and bottle-washer’ when his wife broke her arm. ‘To crown it, I get no national executives and later became a Labour councillor. ‘Your role as loving sympathy from her, all she says is “well, all your life you’ve had a female was to find a man and security, and then you were expected to me to wait on you and you wondered what the hell I did with my time, give up work to start a family and keep the home’, she recalled bluntly. so now you know!”’179 Don Renton, like Kerrigan, was a Scotsman ‘I didn’t want any of that.’185 Gill was another engineering cadre who in whose experiences took in Spain, the NUWM and post-war responsi- 1974 became only the second since the 1930s to sit on the party’s polit- bilities as a party functionary. Dependent on a wider division of labour, ical committee. She too never married, though five years later she retired his DLB entry records that ‘his wife was the main breadwinner of the from these responsibilities on having a child.186 family, with his mother and sisters…looking after the daughter’. Only Marital break-up could also help create the space for political when he left the party in 1956, did Renton himself return to conven- commitments. Sometimes this was its attraction, and having separated tional paid employment.180 from her husband in 1930 Rose Smith was another of the select band Part of the problem was the cult of leadership. Annie Cree was a elevated to what was then the political bureau.187 For women in more former Sheffield SDFer and CPGB central committee member, who in comfortable circumstances, a partner’s death could also provide such the 1930s moved to the London area and commented on how the party’s opportunities, as was the case of two of the CPGB’s earliest women ‘newer and enthusiastic men comrades’ pursued political activities almost executive members, the former suffragists Dora Montefiore and Helen nightly, so that ‘the wife, although mildly interested, feels she can be no Crawfurd. Born in 1851, Montefiore was drawn into politics after her use, she cannot talk politics and anyway there’s the children to look after husband’s death in 1889 and the discovery that she had no rights of and put to bed and father is never home, so why worry?’ Turning conven- custody over her own children. Whatever the initial motivation, it is tional thinking on its head, Cree proposed as ‘a Party task and true equal- difficult to imagine her subsequent life of activism, spanning four conti- ity’ that the man spend one night at home, seeing to the children and nents, being undertaken so readily had her husband lived.188 Charlotte domestic chores while the women did their bit for the party.181 This might Despard, a contemporary of Montefiore’s whose husband died in 1890 have been more practicable had not leaders like Kerrigan attempted to and who supported communist causes without ever actually joining the 178 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 179 CPGB, was a very similar case. Her first biographer describes it as ‘an constantly required to justify themselves in relation to their traditional unhusbanded life’.189 functions, while the man in such a situation ‘has nothing to prove, he is For women from less affluent backgrounds, networks of support some- where he belongs’. Frequently, this was true in relation to other women times allowed the pursuance of more modest forms of activism. Maggie as well as men. Nelson was another former suffragist who joined the CPGB some four Two throwaway remarks suggest how different these expectations years after the break-up her marriage in 1923 and maintained an active really were. Before Arthur Horner proposed to his future wife Ethel in political commitment, including participation in a delegation to Russia, 1916, he was warned against such an action by his syndicalist mentor, while bringing her up children single-handed. Like her Labour counter- Noah Ablett, who believed it would stop him enrolling at the Central part Hannah Mitchell, she particularly mentioned the support she Labour College. Alert to bourgeois traps, Horner therefore interrupted received from neighbours, and it is significant that both were from his marriage proposal to spell out what was usually left unsaid on such Lancashire, where traditions of support for married women’s activities occasions: ‘that the Movement would always come first’.197 As good as his outside the home may have been as important as their role in the work- word, he joined the Irish Citizens’ Army two months into married life place in explaining their greater participation in left-wing politics.190 and learnt of the arrival of his first daughter while still in Dublin. One Often in these areas there were also family networks of support, not could contrast this with the pungent reflection of another young revolu- necessarily implying endorsement of the specific activities undertaken, tionary, this time in the 1950s, that ‘many times wished I was single so I such as were more commonly available to men.191 Indeed, activists with could have really gone to town on building the YCL but of course “love” children functioning as honorary men could be as reliant upon other comes first’.198 Seemingly so divergent, the quotations no doubt bear family members as any male cadre. A pre-war activist who had separated witness to the passage of time and the arrival of the party family. On the from her husband thus sought to prevent her daughter’s marriage: ‘I can’t other hand, it goes without saying that the second writer was a woman. be the secretary of Bethnal Green party if you walk out of the family.’192 ‘Love’ and ‘the movement’ coming first were the division of labour on Younger children, implicitly, could be regarded almost as a hindrance to which so many party households were based. activism, or their demands correspondingly neglected. More often than celibacy, not having children was thus a possible Women and liberation: red rags and party bulls corollary or precondition of women taking on major responsibilities within the party. Like other communist parties, and like the ILP in The CPGB approached its fiftieth anniversary without a full-time Britain, the CPGB was notable for the number of married couples in its women’s organiser, relying instead on the voluntary efforts of the 65-year leadership, providing three of its five women executive members by the old Bessie Leigh. A party member since 1930, and for twenty years a late 1940s.193 However, there was no British communist to compare with mainstay of its national women’s committee, Leigh doubtless had many Jeanette Vermeesch, wife of Maurice Thorez and the leading woman virtues. However, she was neither politically nor temperamentally member of the pro-natalist PCF, who in 1946 simultaneously celebrated prepared for the the explosive entrance at this point of the women’s liber- the birth of her third child and her re-election as a communist deputy.194 ation movement (WLM), and in this she was at one with much of her Prominent women cadres in Britain either did not have children, like party. Quite apart from its generally unsettling impact, women’s liberation Tamara Rust, Salme Dutt and Betty Matthews, or had only one child, posed three specific challenges to the cohesion and established identity of like Isabel Brown.195 Where such women did have children, they some- British communism. One was that it implied horizontal lines of associa- times found that efforts to maintain their political activities were some- tion incompatible with democratic centralism both within and beyond the times frowned upon. Marjorie Pollitt’s efforts to retain political party. Another was that for many of its proponents feminism implied a independence from her husband did not always meet with the approval critique of Soviet-style socialism, and the productivist key to emancipa- of the family’s women friends, while in sending her son to a ‘progressive’ tion in the soaring Russian output of vacuum cleaners.199 A third was that school, Frieda Brewster found that even in Lancashire local women it risked upsetting the party’s core industrial constituencies, not only comrades muttered that she couldn’t ‘be bothered to look after him like through the possible threat to shibboleths like free collective bargaining, we do’.196 Dominique Loiseau observes that women in activist roles were but as a direct challenge to sexist symbols like the ‘cheesecake’ photos 180 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 181 which—until the issue was vigorously raised by some of the paper’s Dora Cox had read Bebel and Kollontai’s Communism and Women, thanks women journalists—were a regular feature of the Morning Star.200 For all largely to her father having lived in Russia and been in close touch with these reasons, there seemed to be a broad fit between feminism and the Russia revolutionary circles.202 Betty Harrison and Marian Jessop possi- more liberal attitudes identified with Eurocommunism; or at least it is true bly owed more to their upbringing in Labour movement families in West that committed Eurocommunists nearly always paid at least lip-service to Yorkshire in the first decades of the century. Both were involved by their feminist principles. On the other hand, that some women resisted that fathers in their political activities, and Jessop described how hers had equation on the basis of their own beliefs and personal histories only encouraged her to take on what were conventionally regarded as men’s further underlines how complex the interconnections between feminism, responsibilities. Harrison, like Cox, was a strong a supporter of the socialism and even Stalinism really were. younger feminists, while Jessop, now married to Bert Ramelson, wrote a Most of the feminists who began to disturb the equilibrium of the history of the women’s movement predating the emergence of second- family party were in their twenties or early thirties: as Florence wave feminism.203 Keyworth recalled, it was a ‘generation thing’. For many of them, the Harrison had also worked as a trade union official since 1939, while formative influences of feminism and socialism were thus encountered other older pro-feminists like Gladys Brooks, Betty Matthews and more or less simultaneously and inseparably. Val Charlton, a school- Florence Keyworth had begun work for the party or Daily Worker in the teacher and sculptor active in nursery campaigns in Islington, joined the 1940s, when women’s roles were less circumscribed than they later party in 1968, attended the first WLM conference at Ruskin College in became. This was also the age of the ‘Pelican mind’: Florence Keyworth, 1969 and two years later was nominated for the CPGB executive. Also one of its characteristic products, was denied the university education in Islington, Elizabeth Wilson was then a social worker who had been enjoyed by her brothers, but visited the Sheffield public library and read active in both the women’s and gay liberation movements and joined the classic feminist texts like Wollstonecraft’s Essay on the Rights of Women and CPGB in the early 1970s. If Wilson saw the CPGB as offering a space Virginia Woolf’s Room of One’s Own. She was also one of the many for feminist politics denied by more zealous and alienating rivals, she was communists of her generation influenced by Shaw, whose Intelligent also drawn by the communists’ aura of ‘reality’, at least in comparison Woman’s Guide included provocative arguments for the recognition of with the North London libertarian left and the machinations of the local women’s economic independence. More distinctively, Keyworth was Labour Party. She particularly identified this feeling with a local subsequently a devotee of the feminist psychoanalyst Karen Horney, community activist, Marie Betteridge, a party member since 1942 who discreetly taking copies of her writings with her on Daily Worker report- confounded gender stereotypes by her political practice and was ing assignments. However, should she venture a ‘mildly feminist remark’ regarded by younger feminists as in some respects a forerunner. ‘I to her colleagues at the paper, she would find herself addressed for days suppose that was an additional kind of incentive really, that one would afterwards as Mrs Pankhurst.204 be working with her’, Wilson recalled, and the importance of inter- Of course, many male communists were virulently opposed to femi- generational influences in the increasingly distinctive step of joining the nist arguments, and King Street regarded with undisguised concern such communist party again seems confirmed.201 unauthorised initiatives as the socialist-feminist magazine Red Rag, The existence of established party members willing to support the appearing in 1971 in defiance of party rules.205 Equally significant, younger feminists was consequently of considerable significance. A few however, was the opposition of older communist women, many of were of the same age group, but through party families or other contacts whom could not be generally classified as ‘hardliners’. Some even of had been inducted into communist politics from an early age. The most those sympathetic to the younger women found their aggressiveness outspoken and polemical of these was Beatrix Campbell, born six years ‘puzzling and almost frightening’, as if undermining the culture of after Charlton in 1947, but a party member from 1965, a journalist at comradeship on which the party, and the party marriage, had been the Morning Star and initially even a vocal opponent of the feminists. based. Separatism, and the perceived ‘anti-man aspect’ of the WLM, Among older supporters, a variety of subterranean lineages can be were rejected for the same reason.206 Without necessarily regarding detected. Of the party’s staple readings, probably only Engels’s Origins themselves as honorary male comrades, in many cases this also reflected of the Family set readers thinking on feminist lines, though exceptionally a sense of having overcome gender distinctions at a personal level, 182 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRUE SONS OF THE BRITISH WORKING CLASS 183 whether within or beyond the party. Although by this time no longer a issues of both race and gender. Particular influences included the party member, Dorothy Wedderburn was one of those who looked some- deported black American communist Claudia Jones, whom Kuya got to what askance at the women’s movement on the basis of her experiences know in London in the early 1960s, and the Angela Davis campaign of of the sexually egalitarian structures of the party’s Cambridge branches. the 1970s. Frustrated in her efforts to develop the National Assembly of ‘I think this is particularly important for a woman, the training of a sort Women into a multi-ethnic women’s organisation on an American proto- of feeling of responsibility, enabling you to make your contribution to type, Kuya left the CPGB in 1984.214 discussion and to take on these, quote, leadership roles’, she recalled, and Mikki Doyle, the Morning Star women’s editor, was herself an as a successful academic had confronted at a personal level many of the American: a Jewish recruit to the New York party of the 1930s, who for issues with which feminists were later grappling.207 a time functioned as a full-time worker campaigning for ‘Negro Rights’. At the same time, some women refused the feminists’ critique of tradi- Coming to Britain when her British-born husband was deported in tional class politics, though not necessarily the commitment to an 1953, she initially worked in industry, where she was one of the few expanded conception of women’s rights. In Sheffield, Vi Gill was women secretaries of a party factory branch, and later ‘bluffed’ her way committed to the development of women’s activism within the unions, into advertising on the basis of her party leaflets. She was also a friend reaching out to issues like abortion rights and nursery provision, yet felt of Claudia Jones, whom she had put up on her arrival in Britain in no affinity with the WLM or Eurocommunism.208 Also in Sheffield, the 1956.215 This was a distinctive history, and in the disputes that divided party’s women’s organiser described the feelings not of empowerment the party in the 1980s it gave her a distinctive position, unambiguously but inferiority and exclusion aroused by the marxist-feminist theories of a ‘Tankie’ on general issues but demonstrating feminist commitments on ‘highly intellectual university people, women’s lib etc’: ‘I sometimes the Morning Star’s women’s page that were recognised even by the paper’s wonder if even they know what a nuclear family, etc, is.’209 Elizabeth critics.216 Wilson, who did know, co-authored a pamphlet, Class Politics, not Again the interaction of social, political and generational influences entirely free of such alienating language, but nevertheless articulating confounds straightforward typologies. Writing in more general terms, traditional communist values against the ‘newer left’ associated with June Hannam and Karen Hunt have argued that a life-history approach Marxism Today.210 tends to throw into question the rigidities of demarcation which histori- Examples like this suggest the continuing centrality of traditional ans often bring to their materials. ‘If attention is paid to the lives of indi- Labour movement perspectives to the British left. In relation to the New vidual women, then what emerges is a complex narrative in which it is Left, Nigel Young ascribed the differences between its British and difficult, if not impossible, to categorise women neatly in terms of American variants to the persistence in Britain of a ‘massive and insti- whether or not they had a “feminist” approach or were women-centred tutionalised working class with a still distinctive culture’.211 In complex in their politics.’217 Though this is borne out by the many ambiguities and ways this also affected the ‘old’ left itself, providing in the shape of the transitions traced here, the sense that these distinctions and transitions CPUSA both a comparator with the CPGB and a further complicating could matter profoundly was no less important. Frieda Brewster had long factor in party alignments. Excluded from any significant labour move- since separated from her first husband Pat Devine when she was intro- ment presence, American communists had from as early as the late 1940s duced to the women’s movement in her sixties by her communist daugh- combined an orientation towards marginalised social constituencies with ter. ‘She was very much a feminist and through her I discovered the an embattled pro-Sovietism and the use for diverse ends of traditional feminist movement, and you know, I thought: this is what I’ve been look- ‘Stalinist’ methods of denunciation, self-criticism and the erosion of any ing for. This is what I’ve wanted all my life, and now here are these young sense of a private and politically unaccountable sphere.212 In contrast women and they’re doing it.’218 with Britain, ‘cheesecake’ was already abolished, ‘male chauvinism’ within the party systematically targeted and publications like de Beauvoir’s Second Sex given an enthusiastic reception.213 One communist influenced by this example was Dorothy Kuya, who had joined the YCL in 1946 and became increasingly critical of the CPGB’s complacency on THE ALIEN EYE 185 experience that Dutt identified the adoption of a radical perspective on CHAPTER 5 British society with the opportunity to view it ‘from the outside’, through residence or family origins abroad. This phenomenon he described as THE ALIEN EYE: NATIONAL AND that of the ‘alien eye’.6 INTERNATIONAL IDENTITIES Exemplified by Dutt, the ‘alien’ character of British communism was twofold. First, at every level, from its general secretaries to the casual communist voter, the CPGB depended disproportionately on groups falling outside what has implicitly been constructed as a core ‘English’, or loyalist British, majority of the population. Though not exactly refer- ring to them as aliens and Sinn Feiners, the party’s first academic histo- rian, Henry Pelling, did describe the delegates at the party’s foundation If being a communist in Britain meant adopting a sort of outsider status, congresses as ‘consist[ing], to a remarkable degree, of persons of non- it is not surprising that outsiders to British society should have figured English origin’, whether Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe or indus- prominently among the CPGB’s supporters. ‘Aliens, Jews and Sinn trial militants in Britain’s ‘Celtic fringe’, themselves often of Irish origin. Feiners’, was how the Special Branch characterised one early pro- Even among the intellectuals, Pelling contrasted the transience of the Bolshevik audience, and its weekly reports on the revolutionary left party’s early English adherents with Dutt’s persistence ‘amid a working- constantly alluded to its extrinsic character.1 If any one person symbol- class group of predominantly Celtic origin’.7 Writing in a more positive ised this at the heart of the party leadership, it was Rajani Palme Dutt: sense, Gary Werskey invoked the alien eye with reference to the non- Cambridge born and an Oxford graduate, but of Indo-Swedish parent- English origins of left-wing intellectuals like J.D. Bernal and Hyman age, married to an Estonian, resident for twelve years in Brussels and Levy.8 Though no facile links with ethnicity are proposed, it is also signif- with a heart that beat to the measure of the Kremlin chimes. Comrades icant that Stuart Macintyre’s ‘little Moscows’ were all located outside of and colleagues—there were few friends—repeatedly alluded to Dutt’s England, for that—with the exception of London’s Jewish East End—is remoteness or exoticism, likening him to the Pope or a Buddhist monk, where these little Moscows were mostly to be found.9 or bristling at the ‘letters from afar’ that he contributed to the deliber- Subliminally or explicitly, ethnic definitions of the outsider were linked ations of the British party.2 Far from playing down his ambiguous with the idea of communism itself as something alien, ‘artificial’ or national identity, Dutt ascribed to the ‘mixed national traditions’ of his exogenous to British society. While acknowledging the CPGB’s links to home the ‘strong current of hostility’ he felt towards the British state and British socialist traditions, Pelling suggested that even before the party’s empire.3 In May 1940, as Pollitt reaffirmed the CPGB’s indigenous roots formation, marxism in Britain had depended on constant transfusions of by the dedication to his mother of Serving My Time, Dutt inscribed his strength ‘from abroad’, notably European social democracy and syndi- more cerebral testament India Today to his father Upendra Krishna Dutt, calist currents of transatlantic origin.10 Walter Kendall, in similarly ‘who taught me the beginnings of political understanding—to love the depicting the CPGB as ‘a stranger in its own country’, stressed not only Indian people and all peoples struggling for freedom’.4 Dutt will have the obvious ‘Russian influence’, including Russians long settled in Britain, seen Pollitt’s text before publication, and this may perhaps be inter- but the ‘Calvinistic’ attitudes of the mainly Scottish SLPers who came to preted as a coded signal of the conflicts between the ‘national’ and the dominate the new party, and the ‘slavish’ fixation on the American SLP ‘international’—both as concept and institution—which the two had which they then transferred to the Bolsheviks.11 This idea, that the lately fought out over the issue of the war. Five years later, Dutt stood communist party represented what Léon Blum called ‘un parti national- for parliament to challenge the unabashedly imperialist Indian secretary, iste étranger’, has been central to communist historiography.12 With the Leopold Amery. Though his prospective Birmingham constituents were communists’ seeming dependence on a continuous, systematic and largely unmoved, the resulting publicity proved an ‘Open Sesame’ when unequal relationship with the USSR, older insinuations as to the unpa- the following year Dutt was at last allowed by the authorities to visit what triotic nature of socialism now acquired a new force and credibility, he called ‘the land of my fathers’.5 It was thus on the basis of his own culminating in the image of the spy or traitor lacking the most basic 186 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 187 instincts of national loyalty. Dutt himself was described by both Orwell diverse patterns of attachment and attenuation which ethnic identities and Maurice Reckitt, not exactly as an alien; but as ‘deracinated’. themselves generated. Through the mixing of national traditions, a crit- According to Reckitt, an associate of Dutt’s guild socialist days, his ical ‘alien eye’ could be turned on the customs and power relationships antipathies were concentrated ‘not against the bourgeoisie in general, but of minority communities as well as British society as a whole; and while specifically against the British governing class’, so that even his denunci- aliens, Jews and Sinn Feiners provided a basis of communist support, ations of Hitler seemed ‘detached and almost bored by comparison’.13 ‘parsons, priests and rabbis’, and the employment of ‘nauseating appeals Drawing on the same stock of images, the labour historian Royden to religious and national sentiment’, were seen as the communists’ Harrison described him as ‘the Rootless One’.14 natural enemies, not least by those who had grown up under their influ- Famously, Orwell linked the left’s disavowal of conventional patrio- ence.19 tism with the notion of a transferred sense of allegiance, in this case to Further complicating matters, the role of communism in the equation Soviet Russia.15 This has also been linked with the alien eye, with ‘mixed was far from static. Though at various times the CPGB sought to accom- national traditions’ being associated with a sense of indeterminacy to modate or provide a vehicle for different forms of ethnic identity, this was which the stable anchorage of the workers’ party and fatherland always held in check by the cultivation of unity as the party’s highest provided a form of resolution. Neither fully Jewish nor fully an virtue. Moreover, whether to complement, mitigate or dissimulate its ‘Englishman’, it was thus that Alfred Sherman described the embrace relations with the world communist movement, the CPGB from the of communism as giving ‘the de-judaised Jew, or partially de-judaised 1930s developed its own native version of the national-particular. Jew, an identity’.16 Harrison even depicted Dutt as a ‘man without a Philosophically and pragmatically, this meant that claims of ethnicity country…at one with the new Leviathan as few of his comrades could were offset, not only by the unifying ideals of class and internationalism, be’, and in an eery echo of the cold-war discourse of ‘cosmopolitanism’ but by a form of radical patriotism, English more often than British, that linked him in this respect with the three Jews, Rothstein, Klugmann and was itself constructed in opposition to the dominant narratives and Ramelson.17 Any suggestion that the only alternative to conventional power structures of the British state.20 It was thus that in the eighth year patriotism was what Orwell described as a substitute ‘patriotism of the of a Conservative-dominated ‘National’ government, the writer Jack deracinated’ needs treating cautiously. The idea that communism itself Lindsay could even advance the audacious claim that ‘Communism is can be regarded as a form of ethnicity is perhaps debatable.18 English’.21 Elaborated in a series of historical novels and the radical- Nevertheless, communism not only provided its adherents with a world- patriotic lineage of Lindsay’s anthology A Handbook of Freedom—‘a record view of comparable scope, but one in which a strong current of inter- of English democracy’ from Aelfric to Gallacher—the irony was not so nationalism offset particular allegiances, whether adopted or seemingly much that Gallacher was Scottish, but that Lindsay himself was a prod- innate, while at the same time shaping the ways in which ethnic identi- uct of the Australian literary avant-garde of the 1920s. Born and bred ties were themselves constructed, negotiated and contested. Though in Brisbane, he arrived in the ‘mother’ England that dominated his liter- providing a sense of belonging that became confused with insignia ary imagination when he was twenty-five.22 created or appropriated by the Soviet state, the notion of an ‘interna- Even so, for Lindsay and hundreds like him, communism in Britain tional brotherhood’ was defined in terms of values as well as loyalties, was, in some paradoxical way, ‘English’: that is, it was not through the with the constant potential for conflict between the two. transportation into Britain of agitators and littérateurs of foreign origin, Though the alien eye sits comfortably with emphases on migration and but through the interplay of ethnic identities and labour movement poli- unsettlement in the making of communist allegiances, it is therefore as a tics within Britain itself, that commitments to a communist politics typi- relative concept, irreducible to any single focus either of alienation or of cally emerged. Generally speaking, first-generation migrants either were belonging. Neither an abstract ‘ethnicity’, used as a catch-all for minor- not attracted to communism or else resisted absorption into the CPGB’s ity groupings, nor what Pelling described as ‘sectionalism’ can capture prevailing structures and priorities, which all too often seemed only too this fluidity. Where there was a strong sense of otherness from British English. Conversely, where the party acted as a vehicle of politicisation institutions, this itself engendered the most varied responses, from within Britain, second-generation minority groupings were more readily outright repudiation to a desire to integrate, these in turn reflecting the integrated, and in periods and locations in which a communist presence 188 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 189 was still being established they sometimes provided its dominant tone. In in that year’s municipal elections. Accounting for these achievements, Raphael Samuel’s memorable phrase, joining the CPGB in such circum- Piratin dwelt on the party’s ‘record of service to the people’, but the stances provided ‘a way of becoming English’—though Englishness in emergence of this active communist cadre can itself be understood only this sense was as much a disclaimer of ethnicity as the particular form it in the much wider context which Barnett Litvinoff described as the took.23 An interviewee of mixed Jewish and Irish Catholic extraction put Jewish ‘infatuation’ with communism.28 Indeed the context was wider it perfectly; she never regarded herself as ‘anything but a normal English still, for a disproportionate Jewish membership had been characteristic woman of no particular national affiliation’. But then, as one of of mass marxist parties even before the Russian revolution and the partic- Lindsay’s poems put it: ‘who are the English?’24 ular love-affair with communism needs to be located within the wider relationship between Jews and socialism. Aliens, Jews… Its relationship to existing Jewish identities has always been a contentious one. Although there long existed a distinctive Jewish social- Who the English or any other such grouping were eludes simple defini- ist tradition in the shape of the Bund, socialism was embraced by figures tion. Though ethnic identities were always characterised by difference like Luxemburg, Trotsky, Martov and the Austro-Marxists, not as an from some perceived other, these constructions were malleable, internally expression of Jewishness but as its transcendence or denial. For Isaac contested, to some extent contingent and not always mutually exclusive. Deutscher, this was the phenomenon of the non-Jewish Jew, whose Often, it was precisely these tensions and uncertainties that proved a distinctive ethnic condition encouraged the challenge to nationally or possible source of radicalisation, challenging the sense of a ‘common and religiously limited ideas and the striving instead for ‘a universal distinctive history and destiny’ which ethnicity is held to represent, and Weltanschaung’.29 Superficially this seems very different from joining the fragmenting its claims of a ‘collective uniqueness and solidarity’ through CPGB to become English. Samuel too, however, seems to have had in the impact of other solidarities.25 That communism served as a way of mind the escape from a ‘hereditary upbringing’ and the ‘narrowness of negotiating or casting off conflicting identities means that the classifying a religious environment’ into a more expansive identity that was not of communists by discrete ethnic categories is highly problematic primarily defined in national terms at all.30 As Gwyn Williams pointed methodologically, to say nothing of ethical or political considerations. out in the analogous case of South Wales, speaking if not actually becom- Among rough-and-ready identifiers, native language, country of birth, ing English was the key to a wider culture in which Americans like Jack religious affiliations and surnames all provide valuable but partial or falli- London and Upton Sinclair were among the foremost literary influences, ble indicators. More fundamentally, even to the extent that distinct ethnic and the internationalist creed of marxism had itself to be read in groupings can be satisfactorily plotted, the establishment of correlations English—at least until the CPGB itself had the Communist Manifesto trans- between these and patterns of political behaviour may need explaining, lated into Welsh in 1948.31 not by some essentialist conception of ethnicity, but by those particular Rejecting such emphases, historians like Henry Srebrnik and Sharman experiences of work and society with which constructions of ethnicity, Kadish describe the CPGB’s Jewish enclaves as a form of ethnic mobil- like those of gender and class, may nevertheless themselves in part be isation.32 There is a good deal on the surface appearing to support this identified. argument. If on the one hand the CPGB’s very marginality suggests its Of the several distinct minority groupings traceable within the limitations as a vehicle for integration into the national mainstream, the CPGB, probably the most numerous, and certainly the one most exten- concentration of Jews in a relatively small number of well-defined urban sively discussed in terms of ethnicity, was the party’s Jewish member- communities profoundly shaped the character of local party organisa- ship.26 Though fluctuating over time, and subject to the problems of tions in those districts. In some respects they almost resembled the definition already indicated, plausible estimates suggest that in the ‘Hebrew’ or Jewish unions and union branches previously established in CPGB’s heyday Jewish members formed as much as 10 per cent of the the same areas: in Cheetham, Manchester, the YCL included a large party’s membership, a figure ten times that for the population as a number of woodworkers and upholsterers, whose union, the Furnishing whole.27 Symbolising the phenomenon were the victories in Stepney in Trades’, had previously organised separate Hebrew branches, while 1945 of the Mile End MP,Phil Piratin, and all ten communist candidates conversely Jewish-dominated branches of the same union might be 190 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 191 remembered as ‘very party’ in character.33 Communists in these areas H.G. Wells’s Men Like Gods.38 The only woman whose name stands out commented on the party’s ‘closeness’ in comparison with other areas— among the group, McCarthy, was also one of the few who was not Jewish. ‘they were your neighbours and friends’—and something resembling a That in itself is illuminating. According to Jack Cohen, disapproval of multiplex communist counter-community may to some extent be Jewish women involving themselves in politics led to a marked gender discerned there.34 In the classic case of Stepney, the hypothesis of an imbalance within the YCL, and none of the young men mentioned are ethnic mobilisation is given further credence by the Irish Catholic domi- known to have married within the Jewish community.39 nation of the local Labour Party. One of our Jewish interviewees from Throughout the 1930s, Jewish recruitment gathered momentum. Stepney abandoned Labour for communism for precisely this reason.35 Though not necessarily younger than their gentile counterparts, Jewish While there were therefore different experiences and motivations in recruits were perhaps more conscious of generational distinctions and the Jewish embrace of communism, the majority experience in Britain more inclined to value the YCL as a space of their own, whether in rela- was nevertheless closer to Deutscher’s non-Jewish Jew than Srebrnik’s tion to party or community elders. When Pollitt contested a Whitechapel ethnic politician. Crucially, it was a second-generation phenomenon. by-election in 1930, his predominantly Jewish support produced a There was little Jewish immigration into Britain after 1914 and few Jews hundred claimed YCL recruits, compared with just sixty-seven for the figured among those who entered the CPGB at its foundation. Anarchist party itself.40 Of 166 communists identified in 1939 as having died in and Bundist groupings were conspicuous by their absence, while promi- Spain, the proportion of Jewish surnames among those identified as nent Jewish revolutionaries in the BSP, notably Theodore Rothstein, Joe YCLers is several times that for the group as a whole.41 Some Jewish fami- Fineberg and Maxim Litvinov, had returned to Russia by the end of lies reportedly had half a dozen siblings in the YCL, and in 1920. A trickle of Jewish party members followed them during the 1920s, Middlesbrough there were ‘two or three’ of these families where the ‘lads’ but apprehension at the prospect of deportation was said to deter first- all joined.42 In Cheetham, Stoke Newington and Middlesbrough itself, generation migrants from identifying themselves with communist causes, this predominantly Jewish youth movement overshadowed the local party and the CPGB itself delayed or refused admission to would-be recruits branches both in size and level of activity. In Middlesbrough, one YCLer lacking British national status.36 For whatever reasons, even a future realised only belatedly that ‘the very small group of “elderly” men who stronghold like Stepney had just thirty-six party members in 1927: a sometimes sat in the corner, were the Middlesbrough CP’. Another was density only twice that for the country as a whole.37 discouraged from joining the party to avoid any sense of deflation.43 For On the other hand, the CPGB was already beginning to attract its first these youngsters the YCL provided an all-embracing social, cultural and second-generation Jewish migrants. These included Rothstein’s son political environment, and in rambles, dances and theatre excursions, as Andrew, a leading party figure, and Fineberg’s British-born younger sister well as leafletings and pavement chalkings, many found their eventual Annie, who at one point ran the CPGB’s children’s section. The greatest marriage partners. These pronounced countercultural aspects, both of concentration of such members appears to have been in Manchester, Jewish communism and of young people’s forms of political engagement, where an outstandingly gifted YCL cohort included Max Halff, Jack and can be found very much reflected in Raphael Samuel’s later depictions Gabriel Cohen, Hymie Lee, Mick Jenkins and the three Ainley brothers. of party life. All of them went on to exercise district or national party responsibilities, Probably second-generation Jewish communism is best regarded either while Jenkins, Halff, Lee and Gabriel Cohen also attended the Lenin as a form of acculturation or as one of its by-products. Neil Barrett School. Prefiguring the larger Jewish recruitment of the 1930s, the comments that Jewish communists tended to wear their Jewishness lightly, Manchester YCLers were hungry for culture and ideas as well as politics. and from within the CPGB Jack Cohen alleged a form of ‘Jewish anti- ‘Their language, which on occasion could be lurid and debased, was Semitism’ leading some ‘to deny contemptuously that they are Jews, to normally above the intellectual level of everyone I knew, and was sprin- strive to hide this fact as something to be ashamed of, to look down on kled with amazing, pregnant new words’, wrote Margaret McCarthy, a the “unemancipated” Jews, etc’.44 Dating from the popular front period, converted ILPer overawed by their qualities. She singled out Hymie Lee, such concerns reflected the party’s increasing emphasis on the carrying in due course the most adaptable of Stalinists, as at that time an eloquent, out of work among one’s ‘own’ community, whether defined by occupa- charismatic figure, conjuring up a future that sounds as if derived from tion, gender or ethnicity. In the CPUSA, where throughout the 1930s 192 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 193 Jews accounted for over a third of party cadres, a similar approach gave the party’s ranks. Rejoining the party in 1933, when some years later rise to a distinctive Jewish communist experience with its own summer Zaidman persuaded a protégé to act as secretary to the NJC, he neither camps, Yiddish-language press and social institutions.45 In Britain, by required nor even encouraged him to take out membership of the party contrast, Jason Heppell has shown that it was among Jewish members or the YCL.53 themselves that the strongest resistance to ‘Jewish work’ was encountered, Zaidman’s fellow ‘theoretician’, Chimen Abramsky, was born and and this can be traced both in areas where they dominated mainstream brought up in the USSR where his father, a prominent rabbi, was party organisations and in the dispersed ‘Jewish street’ of the suburbs.46 arrested and expelled for anti-Soviet activities in 1931. Though he was Like Heppell, we have found little evidence of Jewishness itself being meant to be inoculated against the Soviet education system by his private regarded as a cause of embarrassment, though in many cases it undoubt- tutors, Abramsky was already drawn to the Jewish communist club in edly ceased to have a primary significance for the individual.47 One Moscow, and living in Palestine in the late 1930s took up the cudgels member recruited after the fascist violence at Olympia in 1934, against ‘Trotskyists’ within the Jewish Labour Party. He joined the CPGB described how, through ‘breaking away from the Jewish way of thinking after settling permanently in Britain in 1939 and became a protégé of and association with non-Jews’, he had ceased to look upon himself as a Dutt’s at the international department.54 Jew, and regarded even the Holocaust as a larger human tragedy, not a Though Abramsky appears to have maintained relations with his Jewish one.48 A.L. Bacharach even described himself as ‘a Jew in every- father even after his initial embrace of communism, family relations in thing except belief, customs, habits and mentality’, which does seem like such circumstances were inevitably subject to acute strain. Predictably, a form of self-denial.However, as a sometime public schoolboy, those patterns were highly gendered. Given the attenuation of men’s Cambridge Fabian, guild socialist and respected food scientist, more public religious roles, the continuing commitment to domestic reli- Bacharach was a highly atypical figure, representative if at all only of the gious observances of Jewish women was central to the maintenance of assimilated Anglo-Jewish establishment which was not at all the primary Jewish identities, and a number of communists particularly mentioned source of the CPGB’s Jewish enrolment.49 the distress their commitments caused their mothers.55 Across the gener- The rejection of inherited practices and beliefs nevertheless produced, ations, this suggests parallels with fathers and other older male relatives or expressed, particularly marked inter-generational tensions. As Pollitt who themselves were sometimes remembered as secularising and even observed of the Whitechapel campaign, while the ‘older section of the iconoclastic influences.56 On the other hand, because the performance of Jewish community’ proved unmovable, there were ‘acute divisions and formal religious functions still fell exclusively to male offspring, they discussions…in hundreds of Jewish families between the younger section provided an obvious occasion for rebellion that was spared their sisters. of the Jewish population and their elders’.50 Heppell has suggested that Barney Barnett’s response to being bar-mitzvahed was to take out a these tensions were reflected even within the CPGB, where a ‘Rabbinical subscription to the Freethinker,while at least three prominent future faction’ centred on the party’s National Jewish Committee was rejected communists, the journalists Sam Russell and Geoffrey Goodman and the by a younger and relatively assimilated cohort of ‘Communist Jews’.51 It teacher David Capper, received an intensive religious instruction mark- is indicative of the complexities of the concept of generation that the ing them out as possible rabbis. Capper even taught Hebrew at his NJC’s ‘chief theoreticians’—the characterisation is Srebrnik’s—were London synagogue for some months after joining the CPGB at or near both younger figures who nevertheless shared migratory experiences its foundation.57 more characteristic of their elders. One of them, Lazar Zaidman, had As well as possible conflicts over ideas and observances, involvement been born in London in 1903, returning with his parents to Romania in communism meant challenging the roles and relationships of a rela- before being deported back to Britain as a communist in 1925. His rela- tively closed and patriarchal society. In Middlesbrough, its alienating tions with the CPGB were initially strained and in 1928 he lapsed from character was symbolised by the quasi-parental relationship which an its Stepney branch because of what he later described as ‘language diffi- older non-Jewish couple, Ron and Molly Body, adopted towards the YCL culties and clannishness’.52 Gravitating to the Workers’ Circle, a left-wing branch which they had established.58 More generally, the YCL’s skewed Jewish friendly society, Zaidman set up the Hackney Study Group, subse- composition meant that male Jewish members were drawn to what Rickie quently the ‘nucleus’ of the CPGB’s Jewish work, while still an exile from Berman calls ‘the ultimate step towards assimilation’, namely marrying 194 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 195 outside the Jewish community.59 Benny Rothman, a Cheetham YCL the generational divide. Communism in this perspective stood for recruit of the late 1920s, was virtually disowned by his family and left the combativity, including physically taking on the fascists, while the commu- area to live near his new communist in-laws.60 A world apart in terms of nal elites and the ‘far too bloody respectable’ Labour Party counselled social class, Jack Gaster, whose father was Sephardic Chief Rabbi in only caution. In the run-up to the largest and most spectacular Britain, found that his marriage to a communist from a distinguished confrontation with the Blackshirts, at Cable Street, Stepney, in 1936, Irish literary family caused more distress than had his original commit- synagogue elders are recalled fatalistically likening them to the Tsarist ment to revolutionary politics.61 For daughters, it was possibly even worse: Black Hundreds and warning Jews to keep away.68 As Willy Goldman Hettie Bower and Olive Parsons, both from middle-class London back- observed, the youngsters viewed the violence less philosophically. ‘We felt grounds, were ‘blacklisted’ and the cause of ‘consternation’ on account ourselves English and outraged. We wanted to go and fling bottles at their of marriages entered into the 1920s—though it may be noted that windows.’69 Sometimes these confrontations drew on the loyalties and neither was yet herself in the party or YCL.62 Jewish families, however, street credentials of childhood gangs already used to defending their were not the only ones who objected to ‘marrying out’. Monica patch and it was precisely such associations which troubled communist Luxemburg married secretly in case her Anglican family rejected her leaders now bent on more of a popular-front approach.70 ‘Avo i d husband of partly Jewish extraction, and when Rafa Kenton found most clashes…no excuse for Government to say we, like BUF, are hooligans’, of her boyfriends in the Middlesbrough YCL her mother also disap- ran the party’s original advice regarding Mosley’s proposed march proved—‘my first experience of anti-semitism’. She too, nevertheless, through Cable Street. Though the instruction was withdrawn, the view married ‘out’.63 that the CPGB itself had become ‘far too bloody respectable’ is strongly Though imposing a construction of Jewishness even upon the non- expressed in at least one Jewish party memoir of the period.71 Jewish Jew, anti-Semitism was not a unifying factor across the genera- As to whether Jewish communism should be regarded as a form of tions, but if anything the reverse. Though sometimes an ancestral ethnic mobilisation, one test is the extent to which any distinct process of memory of the pogroms survived in the stories of older relatives, these disillusionment can be traced to the growing tension between commu- might be linked with a celebration of the tolerance since experienced in nism and Jewish national identity, as identified after 1948 with the state Britain.64 For those brought up in Britain itself, on the other hand, the of Israel. Some such impact was acknowledged by the Stepney parlia- expectations this generated meant that the persistence of anti-Semitism mentary candidate Solly Kaye, who ascribed a large role in the party’s was more of an issue than its relative restraint. Though occasionally overt decline in the East End to the ‘emotional’ attachment to Israel. This prejudice was experienced even in heavily Jewish areas, it was most often indeed drew at least one Hackney party member to take up arms as he encountered by those whose homes or schools lay outside those areas, or might once have done for Spain.72 However, even among the party’s who sought work beyond what were earmarked as ‘Jewish’ occupations.65 wider Jewish constituency, the decline in support was not obviously more Paradoxically, though Hymie Fagan described the Bethnal Green in precipitate than in other areas—Kaye himself remained a Stepney coun- which he grew up as almost ‘East European’, he felt himself to be ‘not a cillor until as late as 1971—and the movement from the East End to the stranger in a strange land but an English boy’. It was only on moving to suburbs must again be attributed in part to demographic factors. Romford in Essex that he became aware of his family being ‘different to Moreover, many Jewish communists had rejected Zionism in the course the rest’ and experienced open anti-Semitism.66 Not infrequently such of embracing communism, adopting a critical stance towards Israeli antagonism is identified with areas with large Irish Catholic populations. actions out of solidarity with the Arabs and not just the Russians. Connie Geoffrey Goodman, for example, recalled making trips to Hebrew classes Seifert was unusual in having been disillusioned with anti-Arab racism ‘through a very strong, particularly Catholic area, of Stockport [where] in Palestine even before she joined the CPGB in 1935, but her combin- we used to be attacked almost nightly’. Like others in the old industrial ing an attachment to Jewish culture with the repudiation of Israel was Britain, it was, however, only after moving south in his teens that otherwise not unusual.73 Stanley Forman, whose given name was Israel, Goodman was sucked into the anti-Mosley movement and thence into felt it such a stigma that he had it changed by deed poll.74 the YCL. ‘I suppose you would say I was receptive…’67 On the other hand, just as fascism was a reminder of Jewishness even In politicising the issue of anti-Semitism, fascism further accentuated for the non-Jewish Jew, so the mounting evidence of Soviet anti-Semitism 196 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 197 had a profound impact on those who would not for themselves have of the population was of Irish extraction, they provided Labour with claimed any distinctive Jewish position within communism. Some simply some of its most steadfast supporters.81 However, coloured by allegiance could or would not believe such disclosures. One reacted to the anti- to the Catholic church, they were also identified with ultra-conservative Semitic Slansky of 1952 by abandoning Zionism for communism and attitudes to many social and political issues, so that ethnic diversity served leaving her adoptive homeland of Israel.75 Among those who even at this in this case to reinforce Labour’s economism and a form of electoral stage could not swallow this was the composer Benjamin Frankel, whose calculation that forswore alienating core constituencies on issues like concerto In Memory of the Six Million had been written for the Festival of birth control and secular education. Britain only the previous year. Many others followed Frankel out of the Catholics also provided the strongest anti-communist bloc within the party after the now unanswerable disclosures of 1956, including the play- Labour movement. Reinforced by the ‘godless’ image of Bolshevism, wright Arnold Wesker, the historian Henry Collins and the scientist they were by common consent ‘the staunchest of working-class anti- Hyman Levy. When Levy was expelled in 1958 for criticising the USSR Communists’, and in Ireland itself the social conservatism of the Free in his book Jews and the National Question, Chimen Abramsky, his State was matched only by the feebleness of its succession of overt or publisher, resigned the same day. Like the Holocaust itself, the issue for surrogate communist parties.82 Conversely, within the early Communist many Jews was not Jewishness in the abstract but personal connections Party of Ireland (CPI), groups marginal to the Catholic nationalist major- extending beyond across national boundaries. Hettie Bower, whose ity were over-represented and the party’s first secretary, Walter Dutch brother-in-law George Fles perished in the purges, cited this, along Carpenter, was also secretary of the so-called ‘Jewish Union’ of clothing with the post-war show trials, to explain her support for pro-dissident workers. That a pronounced Irish strain was nevertheless discernible groups in the 1970s.76 Even the Ukrainian-born Bert Ramelson, the within the early CPGB may therefore suggest once again the importance CPGB’s industrial organiser, is said to have taken a more critical view of of migratory factors in the unsettling of established political allegiances, the USSR after discovering that his sister had spent twenty years in a assisted in the short term by the temporary convergence of revolution- labour camp.77 ary nationalism and working-class militancy. Some, however, never changed. Back in 1953, Abramsky clarified his In the recent history of the British Isles, Ireland provided the one own views by declining to write an article on the fabricated ‘doctors’ plot’ authentic insurrectionary experience, both as premonition and domestic against Stalin. Even so, it was a fellow Jew, Andrew Rothstein, who filled variant of the European revolutions of 1919–23. As veteran internation- the breach with a historical survey of Zionism, culminating with ‘degen- alists with no special Irish connections, Eden and Cedar Paul recorded how erate’ elements promoting ‘terrorist activities’ on behalf of Wall Street.78 at the time of the 1916 Easter Rising ‘many of us who regard all nation- Though himself personally confronted with Soviet anti-semitism, alism as medieval were almost ready…to exchange the red flag for the Rothstein never raised a word against the Soviets to his dying day and in green’.83 As we have seen, the republican green was also taken up by Arthur 1957 denounced the party rebels as ‘backboneless and spineless intellec- Horner, who enlisted in its colours in Dublin, and by the radicalised tuals…turned in upon their own emotions and frustrations’.79 Perhaps he Birmingham business manager, H.W. Emery, who was involved in illegally represents the classic case of transferred patriotism; perhaps, as Eric procuring arms for the IRA. Similar connections were also made in Hobsbawm suggests, a credo of total party commitment.80 One doubts reverse, and support for the aims and methods of the Irish struggle some- whether Rothstein himself would have been able to differentiate the two. times translated into communist attachments. In Hurst, near Ashton- under-Lyne, a Moira Mackay, about whom we otherwise know little, had ... Sinn Feiners her children baptised Lenin, De Valera and Rosa Luxemburg by the ‘communist’ vicar, R.W. Cummings. Four years later, she was described as The Irish in Britain also combined the memory and experience of a ‘fearless fighter of and for Ireland and the world proletariat’, a victim of subjection with religious and cultural traditions which in many respects several imprisonments who could hold a Stockport audience ‘with fire’. were antipathetic to communism. By the time of the CPGB’s foundation, links between Britain’s Irish diaspora and working-class organisation They followed the sufferings of the Irish proletariat. She carried were well-established. In cities like Manchester, where as much as a sixth them through the Egyptian crisis, and made that working-class 198 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 199 crowd understand how near the Sudanese cotton workers are to ments of 1933–4, including its leaders in Hull, Blackburn, Bolton and Lancashire and Cheshire workfolk. Manchester. In Leeds, though for rather different reasons from Dutt, Oswald Mosley was nicknamed ‘the Pope’.91 There was no reference now to De Valera, and the arrival of a little In these circumstances, the significance of links with the British left for Trotsky as well as a Clara Zetkin Mackay suggests already the possibility the maintenance of an Irish marxist tradition has perhaps been too little of a disillusioned name change.84 One can only conjecture whether recognised. Initially, these owed much to the vesting of Comintern Trotsky later went the same way. authority in the CPGB, with key decisions like the winding up of the first Temporarily, the linking of Bolshevism and Fenianism also provided Irish communist party and the cultivation of Larkin’s Irish Workers’ pockets of communist electoral support. In Motherwell, Walton Newbold’s League owing a good deal to the suggestion or instigation of the British election as communist MP in 1922 also depended on a republican vote party.92 Several British communists went on missions to Ireland, includ- drawn by Newbold’s longstanding association with Irish self-determina- ing Pollitt, who visited in 1924, and Bob Stewart, who in 1925 spent five tion.85 In Dundee in 1923, the volatile Irish labour leader Jim Larkin was months trying to launch an Irish workers’ party. Neither had any known invited to assist Gallacher specifically on grounds of these associations.86 connection with the country, and it is not surprising that Arthur Nevertheless, like the so-called soviets of war-torn Ireland, the phenome- MacManus should have noted the antagonism of Irish communists non was essentially contingent. Already by 1923, Newbold was exercised towards the CPGB on the grounds that ‘they were neither a colony nor by the possible mobilisation of Catholic loyalties against his candidature, a dependency’.93 and warned of the ‘absolutely calamitous effect’ of the Bolsheviks’ attacks MacManus himself, however, represented an older tradition by which on religion.87 Although in that year’s election it was again reported that his the circulation of movements and ideas, across the Atlantic as well as the supporters were mainly Catholic steel workers, Newbold, unlike Gallacher, Irish Sea, had played a seminal role in the development of Irish social- declined to have Larkin speak in a constituency divided on sectarian lines. ism. Born into a Sinn Fein family background in Glasgow, as an activist ‘We are avoiding, as much as possible…the whole Irish feud’, he wrote. ‘We in the Clyde Workers’ Committee MacManus had already in 1916 gone fight purely on the class issue.’88 to Ireland to help build up the SLP.94 Even Connolly, founding father of While marginally increasing his poll, Newbold lost the seat and any Irish socialism, was a Scot ‘by birth, residence and speech’, initiated into future repetition of his success was unimaginable. In Cumberland, where politics through the Edinburgh Socialist League and the SDF.95 in 1926 the CPGB recruited substantially among Catholic miners, a Connolly’s only peer as a socialist and nationalist, James Larkin, was like- ‘mass attack by the Catholic Church’ was said to have damaged it.89 In wise born in Liverpool, where he joined the ILP at the age of seventeen.96 Motherwell itself, where in 1929 Isabel Brown was now confronted with These were not untypical, and the continuing freedom of movement a Labour opponent, she obtained barely 3 per cent of the vote. As late between the two countries remained a possible factor in the making of as 1930, Pollitt in Whitechapel issued leaflets directed at Irish as well as Irish communists. The most important of them was Sean Murray, secre- Jewish workers, but as a defensive response to the mobilisation of ‘the tary in turn of both the Irish and Northern Ireland communist parties whole forces of the Catholic Church’ against him. Probably it is to this and an Antrim-born former IRA commandant who embraced socialism source that the graffiti ‘Pollisky the Russian Jew’ should be attributed, and after reading Connolly in Glasgow in 1922.97 Remaining in Britain, Piratin later claimed that the anti-Semitism of the Catholic-Labour Murray joined Larkin’s Irish Workers’ League and was secretary of its establishment played a significant role in limiting the party’s advances in London branch, the only one outside of Dublin which actually func- Stepney in the 1940s.90 Within the Free State a qualitatively different tioned.98 After joining the CPGB in 1925, he was selected for the Lenin order of antagonism to communism was exemplified by the Catholic School as a member of the party’s London district committee, and it was attack on the CPI’s Connolly House in 1934, and by this time commu- only on completing the school’s ‘long’ course in 1930 that he was directed nist public meetings in Dublin were almost impossible. If the raising of back to work in Ireland, initially under the direction of Bell and Stewart. a 700-strong Irish contingent to fight with Franco was apparently the only It was on Bell’s departure in 1931 that he joined the secretariat of the such body of volunteers from a non-fascist country, in northern England Revolutionary Workers’ Groups, forerunner of the relaunched Irish too Catholics provided a significant proportion of the large BUF enrol- communist party.99 200 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 201 At least until he went to the Lenin School, there was little that was drawn to communism on coming to Britain in 1932, Behan was already remarkable about Murray’s trajectory. Into the 1950s and beyond, Irish- active in the communist-sponsored ‘democratic’ youth movement while born recruits of religious and often strongly nationalist upbringing can still in Dublin.107 be traced making the transition to socialism after coming to Britain, Within the CPGB the achievement of a degree of integration coupled where communism proposed the solidarity of the British and Irish with the recognition of a distinct Irish identity owed much to the estab- labour movements as the key to achieving real Irish emancipation.100 lishment of the Connolly Association in 1938. Providing a vehicle for Those who returned to Ireland are usually lost to our own research, like socialist republicanism under communist direction, but without any the two other former CPGB members whom Barry McLoughlin suggestion of rivalry with established communist party structures, the mentions among the twenty-one Irish students at the Lenin School.101 association’s secretary and moving spirit was C. Desmond Greaves, later Others, however, built reputations in Britain. Born during the First Connolly’s biographer. Though casually described in party histories as World War into Dublin’s small Jewish community, Maurice and Max ‘from Ireland’, Greaves was actually born and brought up in Birkenhead Levitas joined the YCL in Whitechapel, Max serving for some twenty- in a middle-class family of Ulster protestant extraction. He joined the five years as a Stepney councillor, while Maurice fought in the CPGB as a student at Liverpool University in 1934, having become International Brigade, ‘as proud of his Irish background as he was of involved in selling republican papers among the city’s Irish population.108 his Jewish one’.102 Within Britain itself, where in cities like Manchester T.A. Jackson, whom Emmet O’Connor links with Greaves as one of the and Liverpool youngsters like the future IBer Sam Wild grew up feeling ‘three great pillars of the Connolly school’, was also a CPGB member, ‘more Irish than English’, similar transitions were effected, not by migra- whose father and grandfather are said to have supported Ireland’s cause tion, but by exposure to secular influences within the Labour move- in the radical stronghold of Clerkenwell.109 Author of the seminal Ireland ment.103 One such case was Roger O’Hara, later CPGB secretary on Her Own,Jackson too was a product of the mingling of radical cultures Merseyside, brought up with a strong distrust of the British state, but in the metropolitan socialist movement of his youth, and already in the drawn to communism through workplace contacts and his growing disil- 1900s discussed writing a book on Ireland with his fellow impossibilist, lusionment with Catholic Labour organisations.104 Con O’Lyhane.110 More significant than his lack of direct Irish Despite its continuing peripherality, the consolidation of communist antecedents was his claimed friendship with Connolly and the under- organisation in Ireland, along with the expansion of Irish immigration standing he owed to him of the interdependence of nationalism and after the war, meant that the CPGB increasingly gained recruits who had internationalism.111 broken with mainstream republicanism in Ireland itself. Bob Doyle, for More even than Jewish communists, those from Catholic backgrounds, example, had taken part in the attack on Connolly House as a youth, but whether Irish or British, tended to experience a sharp break with forma- joined the CPGB as one of 150 Irish fighting against Franco—naturally, tive family and community influences and references to anger and resent- in the James Connolly Battalion.105 Also joining via the International ment are commoner than with any other subgroup.112 If Jewish elders are Brigade, the small ex-CPI cohort also provides our one known case of a occasionally recalled as hypocrites, Catholic teachers are described as former member of a fascistic organisation—General O’Duffy’s Army ‘sadistic swine’, a ‘spiritual Gestapo’, at best as ‘purveyors of ignorant Comrades’ Association, or ‘Blueshirts’—joining the CPGB.106 Although superstition’, and secular influences like Wells and Shaw remembered as born only in 1927, Brian Behan also had memories of campaigns over staging posts en route to socialism.113 Probably the most influential apos- Spain, being set to selling papers by his ardently anti-Franco mother. One tate was the physicist J.D. Bernal, whose hyper-rationalist cult of science of a trio of famous brothers, Behan gravitated to the CPGB immediately concealed intriguing intersections between nation, faith and marxist on his arrival in Britain in 1950. Two years later, following his imprison- ideology. Born in 1901 to a landed Catholic family in Tipperary, Bernal ment after a proscribed London May Day demonstration, he was cater- was an intensely religious child who at his Jesuit prep school led the other pulted onto the party’s executive along with another Irishman, the NUR boys on night-long prayer vigils. During his teens he then adopted a form activist Tom Ahern. Between them they reflect something of the devel- of romantic Irish nationalism that was fortified by the developing strug- opment of the Irish left, for whereas Ahern, born in 1907, was politicised gle against British rule. Nevertheless, due either to ‘mixed national tradi- through the republican youth movement in his native Cork, and only tions’—his mother was an American of protestant origin—or a 202 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 203 hankering for the universalism of the church, he discarded his ‘narrow’ movement and to some extent this confirms the markedly federalist char- Irish patriotism for the vision of a ‘Scientific World State’, apparently in acter which the party assumed in the post-war period.120 Presumably it the course of a single night in 1919.114 Although the abruptness of the was for this reason that these forms of organisation were abruptly discon- conversion has been questioned, three significant points may be made tinued in 1966, with mounting concern at the importation into the party about it. The first is the persistence of a mystical strain in Bernal’s scien- of the widening divisions of international communism. Exactly as tistic emphasis on the single ‘orderly process’ governing the universe, as occurred when similar measures were adopted in the USA in the 1920s, if the ‘freedom of necessity’ were substituting for the will of God.115 The immediate membership losses ensued. These included a third of Cypriot second is that Bernal’s fervent identification with Bolshevism-Stalinism members, then comprising around a fifth of the declining London does appear like an example of Orwell’s transferred patriotism, albeit district membership.121 Among Indian communists, defections were notionally in the context of the emerging ‘world state’.116 The third is that more obviously political in character, and high-profile ‘anti-revisionists’ even this never quite obliterated Bernal’s original sense of self, so that in went on to play significant roles in bodies like the Indian Workers’ a modest and secular way he remained a supporter of the Connolly Association (IWA) and the Association of Indian Communists in Britain. Association until his death.117 In both cases, the most prominent party loyalists had been communists even before their arrival in Britain, with an internalised sense of disci- Post-war arrivals pline dating back to the Comintern period. George Pefkos, the editor of the CPGB’s Greek language newspaper Vema, was thus a member of the Because of the continuous arrival and relatively easy assimilation of the Cypriot communist party from as early as 1936, while Vishnu Sharma, Irish in Britain, the distinction between first and second generations so who arrived in Britain in 1957, had been a full-time party worker in important in the Jewish case is muddied. In general, however, there does India since 1939. Both achieved positions of some prominence within appear to be a pattern of first-generation migrants being less likely than the CPGB, Pefkos within the London district, and Sharma as an exec- their children to become integrated into the CPGB, and less likely still to utive and political committee member in the 1970s and 1980s. That the extent that they were involved in other types of political movement they represented a wider integration into party activities is more doubt- before coming to Britain. An example from the party’s early years is the ful. Lithuanian Communist Federation (LCF). While the early CPGB had no In the Caribbean region, there were no communist parties as such, but language sections or publications like those existing in Australia, Canada thriving organisations with anti-imperialist programmes which were and the USA, the LCF successor to the Lithuanian Social Democratic closely aligned with the international communist movement. When Party, was said to be ‘practically under CP influence’ and even to have activists in these movements came to Britain, they consequently gravi- affiliated to the CPGB. Its paper Rankpelnis (the Labourer) reportedly sold tated to the CPGB as their natural political home, while bringing with some 3–4,000, copies mainly in the Lanarkshire coalfield, but folded as them distinct perspectives and traditions of organisation making for early as 1923. With the exception of few second-generation figures like tempestuous relations with the local party hierarchy. Particularly outspo- miners’ leader Willie Allan, there is little further evidence of this strain ken was a Guyanan cohort, several of whom came to Britain in 1953–4 within the CPGB.118 after the overthrow of Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Somewhat on the same pattern, later migrant groups were at first administration and the suspension of the colony’s constitution.122 Critical encouraged to set up separate branch and leadership structures, though faculties had in many cases been sharpened by involvement with the with varying degrees of success. As Hakim Adi has shown, an initiative CPUSA, whose engagement with issues of race and gender contrasted like the West African branch of the 1950s was always fraught with with the more labourist perspectives of its British counterpart. Frank tension and by 1960 comprised little more than a ‘closed small circle’.119 Bailey, for example, was a former PPP and CPUSA member who at a Organisations of Indian and Cypriot communists, on the other hand, party school in 1957 made ‘a very bitter anti-all white people speech, were initially more successful. Set apart as they were by language and saying British Labour movement, neither Right not Left had ever done culture as well as a separate branch structure, these ‘national’ branches anything for the colonial liberation movement’.123 The Trinidadian Ranji tended to regard the CPGB as the local franchisee of the international Chandrisingh, though not previously a PPP member, was educated in 204 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 205

Guyana and at Harvard, joining the CPUSA before coming to Britain in Burnham—who was himself a former CPGB student member.131 Some, 1950. He too, though in a milder way, experienced difficulties over the like Frank Bailey, who initially left the party over Jones’s running of the CPGB’s position on the Empire.124 Migrants from other parts of the West West Indian Workers’ Association, might be drawn to Trotskyism. Indies, such as the Jamaican Cleston Taylor, had also made contacts with Others, like the gifted and abrasive Guyanan Johnny James, who at first black activists in the USA, and in Cleston Taylor’s case brought this had continued to work for the PPP in Britain, were drawn towards perspective into the CPGB within days of arriving in Britain.125 Another Maoist platforms and the criticism of figures like Jagan. Even Strachan, former CPUSA member was Johnny Williamson, a Glasgow-born organ- a party loyalist, dropped out of both party and CLC activities when a iser deported to Britain in the late 1950s, who is said to have made strong King Street enquiry found in favour of his critics within the West Indian criticisms of the CPGB in the early days of the American Civil Rights committee.The end result, according to Carter, was that through one movement.126 Also deported to Britain was Claudia Jones, a Trinidadian cause or another the ‘vast majority’ of the party’s black members left in by birth, who had held high positions in the American party including the decade after 1956.132 editing its Negro Affairs Quarterly. In the words of her fellow Trinidadian Trevor Carter, one of many younger activists for whom Jones was an Celtic identities inspirational figure, she brought with her the political outlook of ‘the only Western communist party that was steeped in the black experience’.127 Latterday migrations notwithstanding, foremost among the marginal Even within Britain, Dorothy Kuya recalled how reading American ethnicities Pelling referred to were those of what he called the ‘Celtic communist publications stimulated her to take a more critical position fringe’. Apart from the Jewish East End, Scotland and Wales provided towards what she saw as the survival of colonialist attitudes within the the CPGB with almost all of its local concentrations of support, and in CPGB.128 Scotland’s case with a roll call of national officials ending only with Carter himself was a party loyalist, though a far from uncritical one, Gordon MacLennan’s retirement as general secretary in 1989. There was and after spending three years running the PPP’s party college in the even a ‘Scottish Connolly’ in the shape of John Maclean: the Clydeside early-1960s he injected a note of black radicalism into the CPGB until agitator who after 1917 espoused a form of revolutionary Scottish repub- its dissolution. Whether reflecting earlier influences, like a reading of the licanism which certainly bore out Pelling’s identification of celtic marx- Webbs’ Soviet Communism, or divergent experiences within Britain itself, ism with a distinctive ‘sectional’ hostility to ‘English’ institutions.133 others found the party’s labour movement perspectives more attractive Nevertheless, the linkage cannot be sustained as a general argument. than what one described as ‘Nationalist Racialism’.129 The Jamaican Until his death in 1923, Maclean himself repudiated the CPGB as itself Billy Strachan, the most influential figure on the party’s West Indian one of these ‘English’ institutions; and his significance for the party is committee, was among those preferring integration into general party precisely that it did not lay claim to this aspect of his inheritance, even structures to the formation of national branches, perhaps reflecting while embroidering the legend of Scotland’s ‘greatest revolutionary earlier experiences of serving in Britain in the RAF and being converted fighter’. If it was acknowledged at all, his embrace of Scottish national- to socialism by the Jamaican health minister David Smith. At the same ism, like his rejection of the party itself, was ascribed by communists to time, Strachan also played a leading role in the London branch of the the warping of his judgement by poor health and the psychological Caribbean Labour Congress (CLC), perhaps envisaged as performing impact of his several imprisonments.134 complementary functions to the party in the manner of the Connolly Partly influenced by Soviet nationalities’ policy, and partly by the legit- Association.130 Nevertheless, Strachan’s running of the West Indian imation of national agendas by the Comintern’s Seventh World committee only deepened the divisions to be found on the committee Congress, the CPGB in the 1930s did slowly begin to promote the sepa- itself as well as with the party apparatus. At the same time, a number of rate claims and aspirations of the Welsh and Scottish peoples. As early members returned to their countries of origin, particularly on achieve- as 1934 a preliminary draft of the CPGB programme For Soviet Britain ment of independence. Chandrisingh, for example, eventually defected included the formula ‘a federal republic of Soviet Britain’.135 Although from the PPP to become general secretary of the ruling People’s this was removed on Moscow’s objections, almost in the same breath the National Congress under Guyana’s first independent premier Forbes CPGB was instructed to discard the slogan Workers of the World, Unite!— 206 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 207 a residue of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘Luxemburgianism’—and replace it assisted in disseminating Douglas’s writings. Still following his own with the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ wording Proletarians of all Countries.136 If ‘all course, MacDiarmid rejoined the party only in November 1956, as a countries’ included ‘England’, it must also have meant Scotland and gesture of support for the Russian tanks in Hungary. Publicly he bore Wales too—a consideration specifically acknowledged by Lindsay and the party’s banner against Sir Alec Douglas Home in the 1964 general Rickword in their Handbook of Freedom.137 By 1939, a bilingual party election; privately his chauvinistic outbursts remained a potential source pamphlet celebrating the language, culture and national consciousness of of embarrassment. His Who’s Who entry described his one recreation as Wales was being published for the Denbigh National Eisteddfod.138 In ‘Anglophobia’. Scotland, a similar effusion by Aitken Ferguson came with the endorse- Although not always overtly nationalistic, and sometimes explicitly the ment of the secretary of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP).139 If reverse, the expression of a Scottish literary identity was also identified Ferguson was indeed the culture-bashing ‘Clydebank Riveter’ of a with less idiosycratic writers like Lewis Grassic Gibbon, said on decade earlier, the exogenous derivation of the new policy could hardly MacDiarmid’s authority to have been a party member in the 1920s, and have been better demonstrated. James Barke, who, if he was not a communist, associated with the party On the other hand, in both Wales and Scotland there existed sub- in the most intimate way.143 In similar fashion, communists like George currents of left-wing cultural nationalism for whom these issues went Ewart Evans and the CPGB’s North Wales secretary J. Roose Williams deeper than the current party line. In both countries its most distin- contributed actively to the Anglo-Welsh literary revival of the 1930s and guished representative were poets. In Wales, this was T.E. Nicholas, 1940s. Williams, like Nicholas, was a Christian, a poet and a communist, editor in the 1930s of the shortlived Llais y Werin (People’s Voice) and a spreading his gospel round north-east Wales by bike.144 Evans, just as CPGB member from the party’s foundation until his death in 1971. characteristically, was a Cambridgeshire schoolteacher born in Born in 1879, as a Congregationalist minister Nicholas had already co- Abercynon, maintaining a sense of Welshness through his writing and founded an ILP branch in the Neath valley and acted as Welsh-language winning Eisteddfod honours for a dramatisation of his own childhood editor of Keir Hardie’s Merthyr Pioneer. He also preached Hardie’s memories of the Senghennydd mining disaster.145 funeral sermon in 1915, and in the 1918 election carried his mantle How these identities registered politically with working-class militants against the tub-thumping miners’ agent, C.B. Stanton. Though is more doubtful. In Wales, religious dissent provided a relatively conge- Nicholas then gave up orders to become a dentist, he formally remained nial legacy which even communists cited as a positive influence, in a way a Christian, continued to write his Welsh-language poetry and, accord- that almost none did with regard to Catholicism; nor did it give rise to ing to Robert Pope, adhered to communism not as a marxist but as a similar family antagonisms.146 Raphael Samuel’s suggestion that noncon- ‘prophetic visionary’.140 In 1940 he was imprisoned with his son under formity provided a source of ‘moral capital’ for British socialists is not Defence Regulation 18B, a tool otherwise deployed mainly against difficult to illustrate with communist examples, such as the life and work fascists. Combining ‘revolutionary internationalism, Welsh nationalism of the historian of the English revolution, Christopher Hill.147 In Wales and pro-Sovietism’, according to his Scottish counterpart Hugh itself, Idris Cox, district organiser with interruptions for nearly a quarter MacDiarmid, Nicholas was ‘a man of like quality’ to Maclean himself.141 of century, has been located within a ‘Welsh Marxist tradition’ informed MacDiarmid for his part was almost unique between the wars in by the same nonconformist values.148 A native Welsh speaker brought up deriving a similar synthesis from Maclean and expressing it both in verse in a strongly religious environment, Cox recalled his intense mental strug- and in the long rambling expositions of his ‘Red Scotland line’.142 Born gles over the competing claims of marxism and Christianity, like an echo Christopher Murray Grieve in 1892, his life was one of many singular- of his father’s dramatic conversion to Christianity during the Welsh reli- ities. Having already been expelled from the SNP as a communist, in gious revival of 1904. Whether or not the residues really amounted to a 1937 he was expelled from the CPGB as a Scottish nationalist, a deci- distinctive marxist tradition, Cox has been singled out for the enthusiasm sion confirmed when he continued his attacks on the party’s ‘moral and with which he embraced the cause of the Welsh language, Welsh culture intellectual bankruptcy’ through his quarterly The Voice of Scotland.He and a Welsh parliament.149 also supported the Social Credit schemes of Major Douglas, a fellow He was not, in this respect, a fully representative figure. On the Scot regarded by communists as fascistic in tendency, and actively contrary, while socialism in Wales tended to be associated with ‘progress 208 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 209 and the English language’, the Welsh language, especially in the south, Bideford, Devon, in 1891 and moving to the Rhondda in 1911, Bright ‘became identified with the Nonconformist and Liberal past’.150 Though was a foundation CPGB member who attended the Lenin School in in one aspect the sequel to a long dissenting lineage, militant socialism 1930–2 and held a number of party positions in Lancashire. However, was thus the product of a massive demographic upheaval and concomi- he too ended up where he began—as district party organiser for Devon tant process of secularisation, undermining, while simultaneously radi- and Cornwall.156 calising, the particularist cultures of the coalfield. Again, ‘fresh contacts’ Even so, what might appear as anglicisation was not primarily about helped the process on. Even Cox did not wrestle with marxism in his being English at all. In the Maesteg party branch of the 1920s, Cox native Maesteg, though he first encountered it there, but at the Central found that half of its six members were Irish, including ‘one [who] had Labour College in London. Having been sent there as ‘one of Vernon fought in the IRA!’157 In Merthyr and Aberdare, volunteers for Spain also Hartshorn’s blue-eyed boys’—a reference to the ultra-moderate miners’ included a number of lapsed Catholics of Irish origin.158 Onllwyn’s unri- agent and local MP—he returned to Wales a committed communist.151 valled efforts in the same cause were attributed in part to the presence of Similarly, in Dai Francis’s village of Onllywn, where the chapel provided a small Spanish community in nearby Abercrave.159 In Neath, Miriam the focal point of a community-based collectivism as late as the 1920s, it Llewellyn’s father was a Polish émigré and active marxist who experi- was inward migration which produced a political ‘sea-change’. This to enced the other side of community solidarity on being cold-shouldered some extent ‘was also a language shift as the language of progress and as a ‘Russian Jew’ during the First World War.160 Cases like this can be change was perceived universally to be English’.152 linked with ‘anglicisation’ only in the sense of a common language and To a degree, this can be identified with the arrival of the English them- culture based on class; just as class itself, while expressing the intensify- selves. In the ‘little Moscow’ of Mardy, Macintyre notes how the lateness ing conflict between labour and capital in the coalfield, also represented of economic development ‘accentuated the mix of English immigrants a more viable basis for community whose unequalled cogency was and those from the Welsh-speaking hinterland’, and in the Rhondda precisely that it was not ‘sectional’. English was merely its lingua franca. generally the emergence of militant socialism was strongly identified with In Scotland, sectarian animosities posed a challenge to the counter- newcomers to the area. In 1911, only one in twelve of the Rhondda’s argument of class that had few British parallels. In Motherwell, we have inhabitants was English-born, and yet the three leading figures in its tran- seen how Newbold finally took his stance ‘on the class issue’, and the logic sition from syndicalism to communism—Noah Ablett, A.J. Cook and of this position was widely accepted. In any case, Scottish nationalism, Arthur Horner—were all born in England or of English parentage. Will far more than the Irish republicanism on which Newbold had drawn, was Paynter, the next in a putative line of succession, had a Welsh father and seen as irrelevant to such a perspective. According to Harry McShane, it an English mother.153 Even Cox’s father was originally from Bristol, arriv- was King Street, overruling the party’s Scottish committee, which in the ing in Maesteg via the Rhondda, and only learnt Welsh when he began late 1930s insisted on overtures being made to the nationalists. On the attending chapel after his religious conversion. Cox’s was therefore a question of expelling MacDiarmid, the Scottish party again took the distinctive upbringing conveying the real complexity of these issues, as most resolute stance.161 In a ‘Scottish’ issue of Left Review,James Barke the parents addressed each other in English but their children in Welsh. remarked on how obvious it was to the Clydeside engineer that there was Crucially, however, while speaking Welsh at home, Cox found that ‘no real Scottish national question’ and ascribed the attempt to concoct English was the language of his schooling and the miners’ lodge.154 one to middle-class intellectuals and English press barons.162 The coalfield’s transition from boom to decay was so abrupt that foot- There were exceptions. A Clydeside engineer who did admire prints could lead both ways in the course of a single generation. Born in MacDiarmid was Jimmy Reid, who also studied Tom Johnston’s History Gloucestershire in 1911, Arthur Exell moved with his family to the of the Working Class in Scotland and, as the CPGB’s Scottish secretary in the Rhondda as an infant, only to make the return journey on the 1928 1960s, strongly supported Scottish self-government.163 Ironically, South Wales Hunger March, settling permanently in Oxford the follow- however, Reid’s main supporters on the Scottish committee were two ing year. He joined the CPGB five years later and became a prominent English women, the journalist Honor Arundel and an Inverness commu- figure in the local AEU.155 Frank Bright’s rather similar movements also nist councillor, Mabel Skinner. Formerly of the party’s Surrey district, reflected the mobility required of the professional revolutionary. Born in and on her first arrival in Scotland encountering a threefold hostility on 210 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 211 grounds of sex, politics and nationality, Skinner assimilated well enough purpose, others by considerations of political effectiveness or the to join the local Gaelic Committee and act as MacDiarmid’s election CPGB’s claim to what it insisted was a single revolutionary franchise.170 agent in 1964.164 Only seemingly paradoxical, communists sensitive to For many, though, what most distinguished communism was its quality national demands often worked from general postulates, like ‘Marxist- of internationalism, not just in the abstract, but in the form of a revolu- Leninist internationalism’, as much as from any passionate sense of tionary international and workers’ state ostensibly embodying its values. national selfhood. Appropriately, it was Dutt who of national party offi- For Clive Branson, scion of an Anglo-Indian military family, these were cials is said to have been most sympathetic to Cox’s advocacy of a Welsh the two factors that drew him to the CPGB in Chelsea.171 Robert Barnes, parliament, and when Cox was removed from Wales it was to work with the son of an East London docker who joined the ILP even before going Dutt in the international department.165 Similarly, though little concern to Cambridge in 1929, was influenced both by Lenin’s Reply to the ILP and was expressed concerning the party’s general indifference to these ques- the Comintern’s notorious ‘twenty-one conditions’, which were at the tions of self-government, one of the exceptions was a former colonial centre of debates within the ILP as to its proper international relations.172 official of strong anti-imperialist convictions resulting from his own George Barnard was another ILPer reaching Cambridge from a work- personal experiences in Nigeria. Joining the CPGB as the ‘only organi- ing-class background, having been drawn to communism even as a sation which had correct line in African affairs’, it must have seemed logi- Walthamstow grammar-school boy by the still unrevised slogan, Workers cal to expect the same correct line on Scotland and Wales too.166 of the World, Unite! ‘In a way the appeal of the Communist Party was that On the other hand, it was not Britishness, let alone Englishness, that you were a member of the Communist International’, he recalled. You Labour movement figures like Arthur Horner opposed to Welsh or weren’t just a member of the Communist Party.…you paid your dues to Scottish particularism. Rather it was the idea of class, realised within the the International...’173 All three joined the CPGB in 1932. framework of the British state. For miners in particular, this was an idea Communist internationalism was expressed organisationally as well as of formative significance. Though Horner explained his identification ideologically, involving not only the imagined community of the world’s with Ireland’s goals as coming readily to a ‘small nationality’ like the workers but the power structures of democratic centralism and a definite Welsh, his guiding ambition was one of miners’ unity on a national, that hierarchy of solidarities.174 This in its turn came to mean the privileging is a British, scale: not a miners’ federation, but a national union of of the particular state interests of the USSR, so that the highest form of mineworkers, and not workers’ control of the industry, but the vesting of this ‘proletarian’ internationalism also represented the clearest negation its ownership in the British state.167 Even within South Wales, Cox of genuine working-class mutuality. This was never better demonstrated described as one of Horner’s greatest achievements his being elected full- than at the start of the Second World War. In avoiding the trap of rally- time agent for the Welsh-speaking anthracite district, ‘bearing in mind ing to the flag, communists in Britain subordinated both nationalism and that…Arthur was well known for his ignorance of the Welsh language’.168 political calculation to the claims of internationalism, but did so at In relation to Ireland, Pollitt in the 1920s protested strongly against Stalin’s behest and using arguments predicated on the absolute priority proposals from Moscow for the withdrawal of British unions, arguing for of Soviet security.175 For Hobsbawm, this was heroic though mistaken: it trade-union unity and a recognition of the continuous movement of was how socialists should have behaved in 1914, but did not.176 For polit- labour between the two countries.169 Though it was actually addressed to ical opponents, however, it was the final proof of the communists’ ‘slav- the question of Labour-communist unity, the title of one of Pollitt’s ish’ subservience to Moscow. The Labour Party in a wartime pamphlet wartime pamphlets perfectly summed it up: Workers of Britain, Unite! described it as unsurpassed treachery to both class and nation.177 For some historians, it has provided the single guiding motif in the Workers of the world… CPGB’s history, defining and ultimately explaining everything else. In 1958 Henry Pelling concluded his account by asking ‘how it came to pass, During the course of the early 1930s, a stream of recruits made its way that a band of British citizens could sacrifice themselves so completely into the CPGB from the Independent Labour Party and its over a period of almost forty years to the service of a dictatorship in ‘Revolutionary Policy Committee’ (RPC). Their precise motives varied. another country, and could find it so difficult to adjust themselves to the Some were impressed by the communists’ greater sense of mission and revelation of the dictator’s all too human imperfections’.178 Though this 212 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 213 is certainly a central issue of communist historiography, actually answer- benefit…he does not come to us, he goes to the hated Social Fascist ing Pelling’s question depends on the question itself being put rather bureaucracy...’179 Sometimes expressed in terms of British insularity, this differently. It is not just that most British communists did not ‘completely both reflected and helped secure the CPGB’s anchorage in a traditional sacrifice’ themselves to Russia in any meaningful sense of the term, or Labour movement constituency. From a Comintern perspective, it also that there were other things going on in their lives that must also help to meant replicating many of its shortcomings. explain their political commitments. More than that, the issues of inter- Everything was relative. As John Callaghan has pointed out, by the nationalism and pro-Sovietism themselves need to be historicised, for standards of other British political parties, the CPGB in its earliest years over forty years and beyond, as the composition of Pelling’s ‘band’ was suffused with internationalism.180 In the course of a single year, continually changed, the interplay of national and international influ- 1924–5, the St Pancras party local was visited by speakers from the ences shaped the recruitment and party experiences of British commu- Soviet, French, German, Australian and American communist parties.181 nists in ways that generalised notions of ‘service’ do little to illuminate. Though proximity to King Street meant that this was untypical, no If British communists did not primarily define themselves as ‘British citi- edition of the Workers’ Weekly appeared without exposures of colonialism zens’, least of all in the Comintern period, by refusing the supremacy of and reports of workers’ struggles in other parts of Europe. Augmenting the nation or the state they nevertheless exposed themselves to conflicts May Day, the communist calendar was filled out with international of loyalties differing widely in their form, intensity and often in their reso- commemorations of women’s day, anti-war day, the deaths of Lenin, lution. In 1956, three-quarters of them found it so difficult to adjust to Luxemburg and Liebknecht and the October revolution. Even on May Khrushchev’s revelations that they stayed in the communist party; the Day, at least in theory, communists marched in concert with their other quarter found it so difficult that they left. MacDiarmid, as we have comrades overseas, while social-democrats pursued their masters’ normal seen, actually joined. Even without entering the polycentric world of business. Speakers and political workers were exchanged by communist post-1956, it is only by such a process of differentiation that the speci- parties for electoral and other campaigns, even if, like Pollitt in Germany ficities of ‘service’ can be identified and their bearing upon wider party in 1924, they did not speak the language. From the singing of the activities evaluated. The value of a prosopographical approach, once Internationale to the imported nomenclature of cells and agit-prop, there again, is that it entangles simple dichotomies with both the diversity and was never any question but that this was the British section of the interconnectedness of communist lives. Communist International. By the same token, differentiation at a national comparative level And yet, in the context not of British politics but of international suggests that Britain’s situation as a major imperialist power, at once communism, the CPGB often came across as parochial and introverted. politically central and geographically peripheral to the Comintern’s As part of the first British delegation to the Comintern in 1920, the world-view, must have shaped the CPGB’s international relationships in London printworker Tom Quelch drew rebukes from Lenin himself for distinctive ways. So too, for different reasons, did the CPGB’s relatively warning against arousing antagonisms over the empire. Once before secure legal position and diminutive size. Legality mattered because lives Quelch had warned against strikebreaking by ‘jolly coons’ and his father spent mainly in Britain were largely spared the grim toll of Stalinism. had been H. M. Hyndman’s chief abettor in the SDF’s leanings to impe- Size was important both because the lack of cadres encouraged the rialism.182 If something of this legacy nevertheless persisted even within specialised performance of international functions and because the the CPGB, it was typically justified by reference to the party’s wider accommodation of wider labour movement priorities, by which alone British constituency. Already in 1921, the party chairman MacManus the CPGB achieved a modest measure of success, encouraged a focus on bluntly informed the Comintern that there were was not the ‘remotest immediate domestic issues at the expense of those linking communists possibility’ of it supporting a boycott of Yugoslavia: ‘due primarily to our worldwide. It was symptomatic that when Pollitt looked for an image to insular position and our traditional aloofness from International affairs, conjure up the idea of revolutionary unreality or sectarianism, they were the British proletariat cannot be enthused in favour of such projects’.183 those of ‘Chinese Generals’ or ‘What is happening in Czecho-slovakia’. Two years later, Gallacher explained to the Profintern that British work- ‘We…know most aspects of the international situation; but when the ers had little interest in ‘what happens on the Continent of Europe, or average worker wants to know anything about getting unemployed even in the British Colonies, or even in Ireland’.184 With membership 214 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 215 resources overstretched, the CPGB was apparently alone in the 1920s in This remained true almost until the Second World War. Not only was resisting setting up an individual members’ section of the International London not a major centre of Comintern operations, but the CPGB itself Red Aid or MOPR, arguing in part that mass unemployment made it was not a priority for direct personal assistance. In Paris between the ‘very hard to raise money for helping persecuted comrades abroad’. Not wars, quite apart from the presence of international functionaries like surprisingly, the point was made in response that it was precisely in Willi Münzenberg and Julius Alpari, several Comintern workers took on ‘draw[ing] the workers into the international working-class movement significant party responsibilities. Among them were the Italian Giulio [and] break[ing] down the insular and imperialist psychology of the Ceretti, a member of the PCF’s central committee; the German Alfred British working class’ that such an organisation had its rationale.185 Kurella, who ran its party schools; the Romanian Anna Pauker, who in As argument or fact, ‘insularity’ was reinforced by Britain’s physical 1931–2 took charge of its organisation; and the Czech Eugen Fried, and cultural peripherality to the Comintern. British trade unionists, like whom many would regard as the leading figure in the PCF leadership. Chinese generals, might briefly dominate Comintern agendas, but in the In Britain, by contrast, Comintern workers stayed for shorter periods, years of the international’s effective functioning, the CPGB was margin- and came and went essentially as outsiders. With the KPD’s ascendancy alised by geography and language as well as size. Through its oversight during the Third Period, arrangements were made to provide its smaller from 1922 by the Comintern’s ‘Anglo-American-Colonial’ bureau, later sibling with systematic assistance, and Comintern representatives also the Anglo-American secretariat (AAS), the CPGB was implicitly defined played a key role in party congresses, as Walter Ulbricht did in November as at best a semi-European party. Moreover, the Comintern’s use of 1929.191 Nevertheless, in a comparative context one is reminded of English as effectively its fourth language produced no corresponding Manuilsky’s complaint of international commitments having to be appetite in communists like Pollitt to learn any of the others. J.T.Murphy, ‘forcibly injected’ into the British party. In 1927, the CPGB’s North West one of the exceptions, did urge the wider study of German, but pending London local, covering some one-and-half million people, was addressed the improvement of the Comintern’s translation facilities during the by a visiting Comintern worker. What makes his report unconsciously course of the 1920s, pettish complaints were frequently made at the revealing is not only what it tells us about party discipline and the suppos- exclusion of British representatives from participation in discussions.186 edly ‘atomising’ effects of its local organisation, but the decidedly low- Similarly, while the supply of the English editions of Inprecorr and The key reception which the visitor was given. The ‘local’, he recorded Communist International comfortably exceeded demand, other publications, stoically, had forty-five members, ‘very scattered’, and the meeting was including ‘the Great Comintern Year-book’, L’Annuaire du Travail,were timed for 7.30. ‘At 8.15 came the first, at 8.30 we could begin with 6 obtainable only in French or German.187 present. At 9 came another 4’—and that was it. If the stories are true of In his attack on the CPGB as a ‘society of great friends’, the CPGB members being fined for unpunctuality, then this local at least will Comintern functionary Manuilsky partly had in mind this lack of any not have needed any Moscow gold.192 ‘organic connection’ with the problems of the international movement.188 Probably the only figure at all comparable with Fried was the Among British communists alert to this shortcoming, the former SLPer Ukrainian Petrovsky. Functioning from 1924 to 1926 as the Comintern’s Tom Bell repeatedly criticised the persistence within the party of the representative in Britain, Petrovsky remained responsible for the CPGB’s ‘democratic mind’ and its failure to take seriously ‘international’ issues affairs until removed from the AAS in 1928. That protests from his like the anti-Trotsky campaign.189 Partly Bell linked this with the CPGB’s British colleagues followed was testimony to the political understanding ‘artisan’ composition, but he was equally conscious of its peripherality. that had been established between them, and to the close personal rela- Visiting Paris in the winter of 1923–4, he drew comparisons, not only tions which were cemented by Petrovsky’s marriage to Rose Cohen.193 with the PCF’s large Polish and Italian sections, but with the ‘continuous Though the nature of her mandates is less clear, the Finnish-Estonian passing to and fro’ of comrades from all over Europe. ‘The Party’, he Salme Pekkala similarly had an important influence over the Bolshevisers noted enviously, ‘pulses with Internationalism. The impression I have got of the early 1920s, while for twelve years her husband Palme Dutt was is that we are most unfortunate in being cut off, in the manner we are, effectively a corresponding member of the CPGB’s central committee from this intermingling with us in our locals and presence at headquar- while attending to unspecified duties in Brussels. On the other hand, as ters of foreign comrades.’190 Dutt became notorious for his attentiveness to the ‘international line’, his 216 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 217 physical remoteness only seemed to underline its externality, in formula- happen among the coloured seamen in the East End of London’, tion if not application. Bell himself had the standing of an international Saklatvala wrote, ‘and members of the Party and of the unemployed functionary, as the first ‘leader’ of the CI’s Anglo-American bureau, workers’ movement, living right in the locality know nothing about it’.199 twice the CPGB’s representative in Moscow, a MOPR functionary and In 1931, even the head of the party’s colonial department, Percy Glading, a section director at the Lenin School. He could not, however, have exer- was advised by Pollitt to concentrate on his industrial activities, with the cised such responsibilities by remaining in London, and was out of the unsurprising consequence that the department’s work was subsequently country for almost the whole of the 1930s. ‘International’ in this sense described as weak, of a ‘showy character’ and isolated from the rest of usually meant somewhere else. the party.200 Two years later, the responsibility was taken over by Ben To some extent this was true even of the colonial responsibilities which Bradley, like Glading a metalworker, but a committed anti-colonial fell to the CPGB. In this respect London was hardly peripheral, and as activist whose conversion to communism had come as a result of work- early as 1921 King Street was earmarked as the co-ordinating centre for ing for the British government in Rawalpindi in 1921–2. As a Meerut anti-colonial activities, exploiting ‘Imperial means of exchange and prisoner and successively the secretary of the LAI and CPGB’s colonial communication…for the more speedy disruption of the Empire’.194 Still bureau, Bradley’s work over the next few years could not have been in 1923, however, when the CPGB was approached by the Comintern to described as of a ‘showy character’. It did, however,remain the province convene a ‘negro’ conference, it suggested it be held in Paris ‘on of what Bradley himself called ‘a small group of people’ in and on the geographical grounds’.195 When anti-colonial work did pick up during the fringes of the party.201 1920s, the credit belonged not so much to those formally charged with Where the combination of great-power location and political margin- the responsibility, but to younger anti-imperialists, working very largely ality most served to internationalise the experience of British communists outside of the party’s formal structures and linking up directly with the was in respect of Soviet Russia. Given the sweeping use in this connec- AAS and Indian revolutionaries. The main practical responsibility for tion of concepts like service and slavishness, it is especially important to this work was shouldered by Clemens Dutt, Raji’s older brother, who, as bring a degree of precision to discussions of the Russian dimension in well as maintaining contact with India, organised a network of ‘comrades British communist lives. Not only did the nature of this relationship and sympathisers’ within Britain, including a small seamen’s union and change over time, but the process was a contradictory one irreducible to a monthly paper The Masses. He did not work directly through the CPGB, a linear Stalinisation thesis deriving from a German trajectory termi- and in 1926 proposed the transfer of the handful of Indian student nating in 1933. In the CPGB’s case, up to this period and what E.H. Carr communists in Britain to the Indian party.196 When the Dutts’ co-worker called the ‘twilight of Comintern’, a dense pattern of association with the and political intimate Hugo Rathbone took up work in the ECCI infor- USSR can be traced in the core biographical areas of residence, travel, mation department, dealing extensively with colonial issues, he too was education and employment, as well as ideological commitment. Though reported to have ‘lost contact’ with the party. In 1928, complaints were these factors always have to be set against indigenous pressures, in an made concerning Clemens’s unsolicited attendance at the Comintern’s international context there was nothing to bear comparison with these Sixth World Congress, and both his ‘general attitude to the Party appa- interactions, either qualitatively or quantitatively. At the same time, ratus’ and the lack of accountability for his activities held as grievances these commitments were framed within a discourse of indivisible work- against him.197 ing-class internationalism within which the possibility of a conflict of During the ‘Third Period’, the profile of colonial issues rose, stimulated interest between Soviet Russia and other legitimate working-class objec- by the launching of a British section of the League Against Imperialism tives could scarcely even be conceptualised. Rooted in Stalin’s ‘socialism (LAI) and campaigning around the Meerut trial. Nevertheless, the over- in one country’, it was therefore only during the 1930s, with the embrace specialisation of this work remained a complaint and in 1930 prompted of national interests and the semantic differentiation of the workers of allegations of ‘white chauvinism’, though on grounds of neglect rather different countries, that there arose the possibility of abstracting from than outright hostility.198 Four years later, Saklatvala complained of this internationalist equation a particular Soviet state interest. The shift ‘adverse comments about Negroes and Asians’, again alleging the depre- was one of quite basic significance; for while on the one hand it allowed ciation of colonial issues as ‘nobody’s business in particular’. ‘Many things the explicit elevation of Soviet objectives which so-called proletarian 218 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 219 internationalism represented, it also allowed the theoretical possibility of variety of party pseudonyms while deeply involved with the Soviet state, a non-correspondence between these and other working-class interests. while employees of the Soviet embassy in some periods pursued their From ‘workers of the world’ to ‘workers of all countries’, the seeds of party activities quite openly.207 Some were even drawn into such activi- later divisions were already being sown. It is striking that, in Britain at ties precisely through their work for the Russians, like Violet Lansbury, least, communists of a pre-1933 vintage were to figure in the battles of the youngest daughter of the Labour politician, who came under 1956 almost entirely as party loyalists. Rothstein’s influence as a secretary at the Soviet delegation.208 Although British communists made their way to Moscow from the Hundreds of British communists therefore had some direct or contin- early 1920s, it was only in the latter half of the decade that a signifi- uous experience of Comintern or Soviet institutions. Fatefully,however, cant presence there was established. One reason was the expansion of two forms of contact were less common. One was that of the political the Comintern apparatus and its absorption of technical as well as refugee. Although in the 1920s some activists from the former Russian political workers. Another was the requirement for English-language empire were deported back there—Barry Mcloughlin has identified over workers in institutions like the Marx-Engels Institute and the Moscow twenty cases—neither their numbers nor their prominence within the Daily News.From 1926 there were also the annual British intakes into party bore comparison with the sizeable émigré groups of Finns, Poles, the Lenin School, reaching a peak in the early 1930s. By 1928, Bell was Germans, Austrians and other European nationalities.209 Nor was any reporting ‘quite a colony’ of Britons in Moscow, and the CPGB’s part of the CPGB leadership ever forced to operate from abroad, with numerical weakness meant that a significantly greater proportion of its consequences that were incalculable. Not only did the shadow of the activists were called upon for such activities—for example, providing a purges for the most part fall only indirectly on the CPGB, but the party’s similar number of ILS students to the very much larger PCF.202 From leading cadre was far less thoroughly internationalised than its conti- the late 1920s, temporary residents were supplemented by innumerable nental counterparts. Moving between Moscow, France and Spain, the visiting parties of comrades and fellow-travellers, whether on workers’ PCI leader Togliatti has been described as ‘more a European or an inter- delegations or the new phenomenon of the Intourist package. national Communist than an Italian’, while his counterpart Maurice Sometimes these initial contacts led to longer-term engagements with Thorez spent more than half of the period from 1940 to 1953 actually Soviet or Comintern institutions and in a few cases, like that of the ILS living in Moscow. Indeed, at the time of the Comintern’s dissolution in student Johnny Gibbons, to a life which Gibbons himself described as 1943, at least ten European communist parties had their foreign bureaux one of ‘self-imposed exile’.203 in Moscow.210 Pollitt also claimed to have visited the USSR more often Within Britain, relative neglect by the Comintern was offset by the than any other Briton, so little embarrassed by the fact that he possibly significant presence established by the Soviet state. Drawn by Britain’s even exaggerated the number of visits.211 Nevertheless, from as early as commercial and political standing, Soviet economic and diplomatic 1924, when he and MacManus failed to take up their places on the institutions provided employment for dozens if not hundreds of British Comintern presidium, he was frequently under pressure for not attend- communists between the wars. Regarded even as a ‘haven of the Party’, ing to his international commitments.212 Except for the single position of already in 1924 the institutions provided the CPGB’s largest ‘factory’ CPGB representative to the Comintern, held at various times by figures group, some forty-strong.204 The subsequent development of Russian like Bell, Murphy and Campbell, the question of residence in Moscow Oil Products (ROP) provided many more positions and according to did not really arise for the first tier of the British party’s leaders. one former employee its appointments were subject to King Street’s The other missing group was that of settlers or economic migrants. approval.205 The extent to which Soviet employees were able to func- Again, a number of Jewish migrants did return to Russia in the early tion in ordinary party activities seems to have fluctuated considerably years of the revolution, but there was never any real British equivalent with the vagaries of Anglo-Soviet relations. Complaints can be found to the flow of American technicians who assisted in the first Five Year of the wholesale dismissal of British communists from Arcos, the Plan. Those who went included communists of proven loyalty, like Russians’ most important trading organisation, and of the constraints Gladys Cattermole, a worker in the Anglo-Soviet Shipping Company, to which the employees of other institutions were intermittently and W.R. Stoker, a market gardener and former SLP activist who subjected.206 Andrew Rothstein, on the other hand, operated under a proposed assisting with the collectivisation of agriculture.213 However, 220 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 221 where no specific arrangements had been made, economic migrants Soviet Russia was thus to vanquish pessimism and test the limits of will- were refused the party’s credentials and the numbers involved were ing credulity. Children liberated from shyness ran up in the streets, while relatively small.214 Red Army detachments marched by singing revolutionary anthems, and Somewhat providentially, this tourist’s view of the USSR may help factory canteens even in 1932 gave you ‘three courses to choose from’. explain why so few British visitors rejected communism as a result of For the ‘sincere believer in the People’s Cause’, it was ‘marvellous’, it gave experiences in Russia. No doubt among the Lenin School students, some you ‘fresh energy’, it was ‘absolutely it’ and the inspiration made your who leave no further trace will have been disillusioned by their Russian spirits rise.219 ‘I have been permanently optimistic since I came to the experiences, though these were largely protected from the worst aspects Soviet Union’, wrote the young mathematician David Guest, who in of Soviet life. More generally, it is striking that the author of perhaps the 1933 had been teaching in an Anglo-American school. ‘Whatever most powerful British memoir of disillusionment in communism, Freda happens I shall never be the same as I was because now I know and Utley, experienced Soviet life much as an ordinary Russian might have, understand what the future must be like.’220 Guest contrasted this ‘deep through her marriage to a non-party specialist she had met working for underlying feeling of confidence’ with the ‘hysteria and despair’ of capi- Arcos. Long before her husband disappeared in the purges, Utley had talism. Randall Swingler thought of the ‘white and cheated faces’ pour- come to regard the CPGB’s Moscow colony as inhabiting a ‘closed-off ing forth from British cinemas and he too described it as an antidote to world’ far removed from Russian realities. In a letter to Allen Hutt she ‘despair’ and his own sense of smallness and irresolution: described the experience as ‘simply dreadful’: ... be humbled and quickened, ... we are terribly hard up & in debt as we have to pay very high That already the lands live, where men rents for the wretched rooms we let in other people’s flats. Also it Spread forth their life like an ordered and opening flower.… is exceedingly hard to work as I have to spend hours a day shop- ping & cooking…Shopping in Moscow is terrible—standing in There all we fight for, is already growing.… queues, searching from shop to shop for butter, milk, eggs etc of which there is a great shortage.215 So what your inner energy dreams is possible, too, The power creating both dream and act.221 Michael Prooth, the deported secretary of a Jewish bakers’ union, expressed similar discontents in letters which were widely publicised back For the working-class revolutionary, dream and act were combined in the in Stepney and drawn upon by the communists’ political opponents. ubiquitous iconography of workers’ power, the flags, the Internationale and After leaving the USSR, he is said to have written a bitter account of his the hammer and sickle, all producing the sensation of ‘proud triumph’ experiences for the SPD paper Vorwärts.216 These cases, however, were which Hutt perhaps had in mind. Tom Bell called it feeling ‘red’, and for exceptional, and there is little indication that other communists were him, as he described the ‘wrench’ of leaving Russian soil, the sense of a receptive to the insights into Soviet life which they provided. Frieda transferred patriotism was again explicit: ‘just such emotions as I imag- Brewster, as an American by birth, had communist parents who did go ined the one-time forced emigrants experienced as they left their native to assist in socialist construction, and recalled how when she visited them land to go into the world of the unknown’.222 in Russia she ignored her mother’s attempts to enlighten her.217 Hutt Unconsciously, Bell’s memoirs also reveal how the sense of ‘feeling red’ himself, just a year after receiving Utley’s letter, went to Moscow to attend was progressively transferred from a broader conception of internation- the Lenin School. ‘It is a marvellous institution, run on the most modern alism to the Soviet state itself. Describing his earliest visits in the 1920s, lines in a splendid building…on every hand in the city one realises there the impression Bell conveyed was one of pulsating internationalism. ‘I here one is in the living centre of the World Revolution’, ran one of his had not realised how insular we were’, he wrote of his British comrades. very different letters home. ‘The mere sensation of being a member of ‘The babel of tongues; the characteristic types of peoples; the variety of the ruling class is enormously invigorating...’218 manners and dress were overwhelming...’ By the mid-1930s, on the other For those who went to see the future at work, the general impact of hand, there were few indeed of these ‘cosmopolitan’ gatherings, and Bell 222 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 223 himself witnessed the closing down of the international academy of the ‘violent domination’ and even ‘annihilation’ of class enemies—were Lenin School. It was therefore appropriate that the emphasis in his apparently fascinated by it.228 Others, who were not, accepted its neces- memoirs should now have shifted to the proletarian might which Bell sity. Following the Kirov murder in 1934, Pollitt complained at receiv- contrasted with his earlier memories of the revolution under siege. ‘See ing only ‘a whole lot of things we know about the love and trust around them now! Well clothed, in handsome uniforms...a match for the finest Comrade Stalin’, when even workers sympathetic to Russia were troops of the older capitalist armies’, he wrote of the new military demanding facts: panoply of May Day, whose aircraft manoeuvres doubtless drowned out revolutionary songs with ‘the powerful defensive forces of the proletar- The workers don’t worry about counter-revolutionaries being ian government’.223 Eighty-one years’ old, Tom Mann described stand- shot, they want to know the actual concrete crimes they have ing for six hours on end as they passed, his enthusiasm apparently committed, and why they did not get a public trial.…there is deep undimmed.224 feeling amongst the workers on this. And it as as well for the The images sit together in Bell’s memoirs, and from beginning to end comrades to know it.229 these different motifs were always to some extent intermingled, qualify- ing, reinforcing or extenuating each other. Nevertheless, the changing On the surface at least, the printed reports of the show trials provided character and status of the revolution was already clearly manifested in no lack of detail as to the defendants’ alleged crimes, and Pollitt himself the tenth anniversary celebrations of 1927, with the shifting focus of the cast off what the CPGB’s returning Moscow representative called the large British delegation from workers’ solidarity to the trumpeting of ‘incredulity kink’. ‘The fundamental facts’, he wrote in the aftermath of Soviet achievements. With the onset of economic crisis in the West, the the trials, ‘give rise to the simple historical truth that whatever the policy boosting of the Russian plans became a major theme in communist of the Soviet Union it is always in the interests of its people and the work- propaganda with a new front organisation, the Friends of the Soviet ing people of every other in the country in the world’.230 Union (FSU), symbolising its more distinct significance. By 1929, the Whereas in a paradoxical way even the aim of a Soviet Britain had CPGB regarded materials about the Russian economic situation as suggested the universality of the Soviet model, the indivisibility of inter- ‘absolutely necessary’ for the party’s election campaign, and by the time nationalism was now expressed in terms of a Soviet way and purpose that of the revolution’s twentieth anniversary, Pollitt was gushingly describ- was distinct, pre-eminent and beyond criticism. Jack Gaster was another ing Russia as ‘a lighthouse, whose warm rays sweep round the whole ILP convert and the leader of a wholesale RPC defection in 1935, but in world’, achieving miracles ‘unparalleled in the long history of human- contrast to earlier recruits he saw the issue as one of unequivocal identi- ity’.225 Though embodied in Stalin and the History of the CPSU (B),as fication with ‘the Soviet Union and the CPSU’, to which his own reser- well as Red Army uniforms and the Moscow Metro, this identification vations over Abyssinia and the League of Nations were consciously with the distinct interests of Stalin’s regime was above all encapsulated, subordinated.231 Though Gaster allowed himself a last gesture of dissent both for communists and their opponents, by the Moscow show trials of over the change of line on the war in 1939, this identification with 1936–8. Stalinism was to be immensely reinforced by the ‘great patriotic’ war As Martin Durham has shown, the repression of the Bolsheviks’ against fascism. In the period of the Anglo-Soviet alliance, perhaps not opponents had been justified by British communists since the earliest surprisingly, the party recruits we looked at were nearly three times like- years of the revolution.226 In 1924, providing a sweeping alibi good for lier to single out this Soviet influence than the broader international strug- another thirty years, the CPGB urged ‘the simple elementary fact that gle against fascism. One of them described it as being drawn to the party in a Revolutionary State there can be nothing legal, but that which is in ‘as the Party of the Soviet Union, so to speak’, and amidst a mass of such the interests of the revolution, and further that it is the body which is literature the ‘basic socialist library’ recommended new members was charged with the direction of the revolution that must be responsible for dominated by Soviet items.232 When Douglas Springhall was convicted of deciding what is and what is not legal’.227 Though some communists spying in 1943, though he was expelled from the party, nobody, including came to question the second proposition, few ever questioned the first. Pollitt, suggested that spying for Russia was intrinsically to be deplored, Some—like the John Cornford who savoured Aragon’s paean to the and we have traced no evidence that this even registered as an issue with 224 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 225 any British communist.233 As Hobsbawm has put it, ‘the lines of Soviet affairs developed.239 It was thus that the CPGB enjoyed its first real loyalty…ran not between but across countries’, and there can have been experience of sustained membership growth despite the weakening pull few commited communists who would have seen any objection in princi- of the USSR itself. It is suggestive of Pelling’s fixation on Moscow that ple to the passing of useful information to the Russians.234 he discussed this year-on-year growth as if it were a period of stagnation A focus on Russia alone, however, is misleading. Rather than simply attributable to these Russian connections. In a somewhat remarkable being supplanted by Fatherland and Fuehrer, as Orwell suggested, inter- statement, he also described the CPGB’s transformation into a ‘military nationalism remained an outstanding feature of communist politics, to apparatus of the USSR’ as by this time ‘all but complete’.240 some degree coexisting with the identification with the Soviet state where Though identified politically with the increasing use of a language of it had previously been centred upon it. In terms of their actual life expe- the nation, for many party members the war years were also ones of a riences, contacts between British communists and the USSR were now more direct experience of international issues. Excepting a handful of of a far more abstract character. Whereas once Moscow had provided agitators and disillusioned colonial officials, this, for example, was the the hub of international communications, by the late 1930s even the first time that significant numbers of British communists had first-hand Intourist route was increasingly closed off due to visa problems which exposure to the realities of colonial rule. India in particular served as a naturally caused King Street acute embarrassment.235 Despite the great catalyst for joining the party or reinforcement of existing convictions, not boost which the war gave to Soviet publicity efforts, Anglo-Russian just because of the appalling racism and social conditions but because of contacts remained of a mainly official character, giving rise only to the the example of Indian party workers bearing the same flags and symbols further embarrassment of the ‘Soviet war brides’ denied permission to as were carried back home.241 Some, like Tony Gilbert, later secretary of come to Britain. With the establishment of the post-war people’s democ- the Movement for Colonial Freedom, carried forward the experience into racies, superficially the cosmopolitanism of the early Comintern revived political campaigns. Others, like Peter Worsley and Ralph Russell, did so in a succession of well-attended youth and peace festivals. On the other as academics: Worsley as an anthropologist who had been in East Africa hand, when Dennis Ogden was sent to Moscow as a translator in 1955, and post-1956 played a key role in challenging the ‘“euro-centrism” of he discovered that he was almost the first to have made the journey from the old left’; and Russell, as a lecturer in Urdu, who had chaired the Britain since the war.236 CPGB’s India committee and come to the view that the party was ‘not a In the meantime, the reading, associations, travel movements and truly internationalist party’.242 emotional world of British communists were shaped by a wider and At the same time, closer links were being established with other almost polycentric form of popular-front internationalism. During the European communists, as London emerged as a major centre of commu- 1930s, in contrast with the war years, the number of recruits mention- nist politics in exile. A few British communists with language skills made ing issues of international solidarity or international anti-fascism direct contact with London-based organisations like the Free German outnumber by nearly five times the nineteen cases mentioning the USSR. League of Culture or the Free Austrian Movement, in whose journal For the years of the Spanish war, as communist politics became suffused Hobsbawm published his first historical writings.243 Others, typically on with a new sense of internationalism, the ratio is fifteen to one. ‘I was the basis of experience in the youth or student movements, became waking up in the morning thinking in Spanish’, recalled one party recruit involved in refugees’ relief organisations. Dorothy Diamond, who had then in his teens, and with hundreds fighting in Spain there can have formerly been involved in Christian student activities, actually joined the been few of the still small band of British communists for whom the CPGB through her European communist contacts.244 Marian Wilbraham, conflict did not become personalised in this way.237 Though coinciding also familiar with student refugees through the British Youth Peace with the Moscow trials, it is indicative of this wider internationalist Assembly, spent the war years as British secretary of the Czech-British commitment, along with the party’s more effective campaigning on Friendship Clubs. Marrying Otto Sling,´ a leading Czech communist domestic issues, that from this period one can date the first cases of indi- possessing ‘all the romantic attraction’ of an International Brigader whose viduals joining the party despite reservations about the USSR, or as a country was now enduring the persecutions of the Gestapo, she joined the result of conscious attempts to overcome them.238 Others, though never Czech communist party while still in London.245 Communists in the hostile, found that it was only once in the party that their interest in armed forces were sometmes also able to make contact with communists 226 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 227 in liberated Europe, and in a few cases liaised with armed resistance move- In East Germany, where these elements were ‘contemptuously referred ments. James Klugmann, who as a major in Special Operations Executive to as the Londoners and regarded with great suspicion’, there were at will certainly have sought to influence British policy in favour of Tito, was least no show trials.250 In Hungary, Edith Bone, who had had a long- one example. Frank Thompson, elder brother of Edward, was another, standing if interrupted membership of the CPGB, was imprisoned killed assisting Bulgarian partisans in June 1944. when she returned with the Daily Worker’s credentials and not released Even where encountered through the party press or bookshops, there until 1956.251 In Czechoslovakia too, London-based communists like is no mistaking the distinctive quality of communist internationalism in Paul Eisler came under a cloud, and the infamous Slansky trial of 1952 this period. In the printed report of the 1937 party congress, no frater- featured defendants who had spent the war years in Britain and had their nal delegates are mentioned and all but one of the fraternal greetings are association with figures like the Daily Worker’s Claud Cockburn brought from English-speaking countries. At the first post-war party congress, by up against them. Otto Sling,´ whom Pollitt among others had known well, contrast, there were fifteen fraternal delegates, including ones from India, was one of the victims. His British wife, Marian Slingová·,´ who had Ceylon, China and nine European countries. Interestingly, neither a returned with him to Czechoslovakia, suffered two-and-a-half years of message nor a delegate from the USSR was indicated. By 1947, a peak brutal imprisonment. of forty-one fraternal delegates, assisted by the simultaneous convening This was not the first time such issues had arisen. As early as 1923, a of a conference of empire communist parties, again included no Russian. London YCLer working for the Young Communist International had Like a fleeting moment between Comintern and Cominform, the sense been shot as a spy by those ‘charged with the direction of the revolu- of optimism is captured in two publications identified with Edward tion’.252 Barry McLoughlin has so far documented a handful of other Thompson. The first was a collection of his brother’s letters, conveying British Gulag victims, and more must remain to be to be discovered.253 not only the idealised image of the USSR but the dream of a European A relatively well-known case is that of the seaman and former fatherland based on a pan-European patriotism ‘far transcending my love Invergordon Mutineer, Len Wincott, whom Pollitt had approved for work for England’.246 The second was Thompson’s report of the building in in Russia in 1934 and who was sent to the Gulag in 1948. Undoubtedly, 1947 of the Yugoslavian youth railway, which for a younger generation most disturbing from the CPGB’s perspective was the disappearance of captured something of the idealism which for their elders was synony- Petrovsky and Rose Cohen, who were separately charged with spying in mous with Spain. Not Luxemburgians, but still genuine internationalists, 1937. Cohen was particularly well known in London left-wing circles and the different national contingents assembled each morning for work on intimate terms with Pollitt, who in the early 1920s had several times under their national flags. Only the Soviet flag, it seems, was missing.247 proposed marriage to her. Arrested on the very day that Pollitt arrived in Nearly forty years later, Thompson evoked this ‘new internationalism Moscow with a British delegation in August 1937, she was shot three of common resistance’ against the post-war logic of the blocs, bitterly months later. She was rehabilitated in 1958.254 recounting its subsequent betrayal by both East and West.248 Like the Pollitt appears to have made strong representations to the Comintern lines of loyalty, the lines of betrayal ran not between but across differ- over Cohen. He had certainly made clear his disbelief in the charges ent countries, and can be traced cutting into the CPGB itself. By 1949, against Petrovsky, possibly pondering later that this may have done little Stalin’s Russia had regained a sort of absolute ascendancy in commu- to assist Cohen herself. We now know that Pollitt was sketched in for a nist conceptions of internationalism, and at that year’s CPGB congress possible Comintern show trial, and throughout the late 1930s there is the CPSU’s fraternal message was given pride of place, second only to detectable a critical edge in some of his exchanges with or concerning the fulsome birthday tribute paid to Stalin himself. Yugoslavia, now the Russians, exemplified by his complaint of the ‘disappearance of inter- excommunicated from the Cominform, was present only in the form of nationalism’ from Soviet pronouncements at the beginning of the war.255 a vicious denunciation of the ‘Tito clique’, shortly to be elaborated in As early as 1934 he had protested at Soviet participation in the Hendon Klugmann’s mendacious commentary From Trotsky to Tito.249 If that was air show, having himself helped organise the campaign against the event Klugmann’s personal test of faith, other British communists were from his nearby home. ‘We have been fighting like hell against this Air confronted with the targetting of communists with British connections War display, and two days later, it is announced with a flourish of trum- in the new wave of persecutions enveloping the people’s democracies. pets in the entire capitalist press, that Airmen from the Soviet Union are 228 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY THE ALIEN EYE 229 to be present’, he complained to the Comintern chief Piatnitsky. ‘Well indeed most, opposed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. there it is, it might be my dialectics are not up to all this...’256 A few, like Marian Slingová,´ became actively involved with other social- Whether it was the Soviet war effort, or the psychological impact of ists in campaigning against oppression in Eastern Europe. Younger finally putting the need for party discipline above issues like the war and recruits might now join the party feeling from the start a positive Cohen’s arrest, Pollitt never again questioned Soviet policy in this way. ‘loathing’ for the USSR.263 On the other hand, there not only remained Although retaining some sense of the CPGB’s legitimate expectations in an older cohort of pro-Soviet fundamentalists, but as late as the 1970s its own sphere, a note of definite cynicism entered into his views of East they were joined by younger converts to the same vision, returning from European communism and he made it clear in private that he had no Honecker’s GDR to join the party almost as they might have from belief in the charges made in the Slansky trial, but that nothing was to Stalin’s Russia.264 be done about them.257 Dorothy Diamond, on the other hand, reported Even after 1989, some older communists never really came to terms complacently that she had known two of the ‘traitors’ by sight and ‘never with the realities of communist rule. One recalled the ‘beautiful maga- even liked them as persons (e.g. Schling)’.258 Whatever the reaction, for zines’ about Russia her father brought home in the 1930s, and nothing communists with any sort of contact with such affairs, such as journal- in the end was capable of supplanting the image. Another interviewee, ists at the Daily Worker, it was by this time almost an open secret that from a party household, was more critical: she took in what was known something amiss was happening in Eastern Europe.259 of Stalin’s Russia, and grasped it intellectually, but one part of her It was no accident that the popular-front generation was so prominent never stopped wondering whether Stalin could really have committed in the disputes of 1956. Eric Hobsbawm has attributed his remaining in the crimes alleged against him. ‘That I suppose is sad in a way. But what the party, while so many associates left, to his having come to commu- can I do about it? I find it very difficult to read books by the Gulag nism as one of ‘the tail-end of the first generation of communists…for people, about what they suffered. I find it very difficult.’ A number of whom the October Revolution was the central point of reference in the interviewees described their identification with the USSR as religious political universe’.260 Communism for these was indivisible, or at least in character, and this was sometimes true in an almost essentialist way. could not finally be imagined without its Soviet lodestar. Among those For some of them, the image they carried of Stalin’s Russia was impos- who left the party, on the other hand, many retained the hope or expec- sible to disentangle from their own identities as communists and human tation that it might be possible to extricate the workers of other lands beings, and from what even the most terrible revelation could stop them from what now seemed the nightmare of Stalinism. Though some resig- regarding as the fullest and most worthwhile part of their lives.265 nations occurred immediately that Khrushchev’s disclosures were published, far more were driven out by King Street’s failure to take this more independent stance over the suppression of the Hungarian revolt in November 1956. Even then, many left reluctantly, and the distinctive imprint of communism, and communist internationalism, remained evident in their political activities for years to come.261 In a paradoxical fashion which Thompson himself did not fail to recognise, as a peace campaigner and critic of East European Stalinism, Thompson was never more at one with the ‘Stalinist’ he had been in the 1940s than in campaigning for European disarmament and the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. For those who remained within the party, the old lines of loyalty now ran through communism itself. Always there remained a powerful sense of belonging to a world movement, but increasingly it gave out conflict- ing signals, generating factionalism rather than party unity. Some were drawn to Italian communism as a new international exemplar.262 Many, TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 231 contemporaneously within the party, are more than usually clearly delin- CHAPTER 6 eated. In Britain, superficially, there were no such dramatic transitions. Even so, in the CPGB’s early decades, violent shifts in Comintern strat- TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS egy artificially simulated transitions from consensus-building to sectari- anism, sometimes in the space of barely months. Moreover, the Comintern itself made concerted efforts to mould a new generation of cadres in its own image, and for a significant minority of them this meant their uprooting for periods of work or study in Moscow. More broadly speaking, the whole inter-war period was marked off by the high incidence of imprisonment, victimisation, personal upheaval and a series of dramatic confrontations with the forces of authority. With Born out of the Russian Revolution, the communist party in Britain was communists marching under ‘policemen’s batons’, ‘opening up the to perish with it. In November 1991, three months after the failed August Pennine Way’ or ‘scaling the heights of the Cutteslowe walls’, for coup and nemesis of Soviet communism, the CPGB ‘in transformation’ Raphael Samuel and many others this was the party’s heroic age.5 For held its forty-first and final congress. Amid a last flurry of media cover- several hundred of its members it had its culmination on the battlefields age, venerable figures like Rose Kerrigan were sought out who had lived of Spain, where over 160 of them died. However, even at this early stage, through and seemingly personified the party’s vicissitudes. some members felt that the mobilising ideal of revolution was losing its Approximating to the biblical span of three score and ten, it is not significance for those drawn to communism by anti-fascism and the surprising that the history of this movement should have been imagined popular front.6 Later recruits, arriving in the easier political circum- in anthropomorphic terms, as a course of youth, maturity and decay. In stances of the Anglo-Soviet alliance, were sometimes referred to dismis- his ‘social anthropological’ survey of Italian communism, published in sively as ‘wartime’ or ‘Red Army’ communists.7 Though they often led 1990, Cris Shore invoked the seven ages of man to capture the several anywhere but the communist party, the cultural and educational experi- stages of the PCI’s evolution, and colloquially such devices had always ences of the 1960s and 1970s also gave rise to a distinct cohort which had a wide currency.1 ‘Our fault is undoubtedly our youth!’, Tom Bell Mike Waite has described as ‘the second of the two “political genera- wrote to Lenin at the CPGB’s formation, and as the party entered its tions” which shaped the history of British Communism’.8 Whether linked third decade in 1940, William Gallacher described it as having ‘battled with feminism, the ‘trainee organic intellectuals’ of the universities, or its way to lusty manhood’.2 Whatever qualities were ascribed the CPGB the challenge to the party’s prevailing conceptions of leadership, the divi- as it ‘transformed’ itself into the Democratic Left, youth and lusty sions of the party’s final decades, like those of its earliest ones, were in manhood were not among them. As the most recent party history points every respect overlain with those of generation.9 out, one of the last redoubts of communist activism, surviving the demise Arguably no concept is therefore more important in making sense of of the CPGB itself, was the pensioners’ movement.3 the attitudes and alignments of Britain’s communists.10 Coexisting On the other hand, the life-cycle metaphor is no more than a within the same organisational framework, the two, seven or indeter- metaphor. Shore’s method was to identify distinct generational cohorts minate number of non-contemporaneous ages of British communism within the PCI, entering it in clearly demarcated periods and thereafter lived the experience of the total institution in different ways, sometimes coexisting in what was often a state of tension. Karl Mannheim, in his clashing, usually accommodating each other and periodically driving classic essay on generations, cited the art historian Pinder to describe this each other out. Probably no significant fissure in the party’s history was as ‘the non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous’, so that the same not in part a question of generational differences, whether explicitly events are experienced as different stages in the lives of different gener- articulated or revealed in shifting languages and priorities acquired at ational cohorts.4 In a convulsive history like the PCI’s, marked by peri- different moments of political engagement. At the same time, the mean- ods of illegality, armed struggle, government office and constitutional ing of generation, more even perhaps than class, gender or ethnicity, was opposition, the boundaries between Shore’s seven ages, though living on malleable, ambiguous and contingent. Though apparently measurable 232 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 233 with precision, like the age limits set for the Lenin School or YCL, youth to its political identity. To the young Dutts of the time, it was the commu- and experience were also normative concepts, providing politicised nist party itself which seemed a presence from beyond the grave. vocabularies often at the expense of descriptive accuracy. Viewing gener- ation as a relationship rather than one of Mannheim’s ‘generation-units’, Youth cultures the existence of multiple sites of inter-generational contact meant that copybook patterns of reversal and transmission often coexisted, albeit in Whatever may have been the case elsewhere, the CPGB on its formation a wide variety of combinations. was not conspicuously a party of young people. ‘It will be of no use…to Constructions of generation thus depended not only on encompass- call this…a collection of hot-headed, irresponsible youths’, an executive ing social movements or events encountered simultaneously, but on influ- member wrote of its founding congress; ‘there was a very considerable ences of work, education, home and immediate social environment. number of middle-aged men and women delegates’.13 The writer, A.A. These differed widely both in their receptiveness to communism and Watts, was not so much middle-aged as a self-designated ‘old crock’: now their prevailing inter-generational relationships. One distinction emerg- aged fifty-nine, a sometime executive member of the London Society of ing from our research is that between practices of seniority and mentor- Compositors and the SDF, representative of the latter on the first Labour ship characteristic of the craft-based occupational cultures that shaped Representation Committee, and one of those accredited with introduc- the British Labour movement, and challenges to these ties on grounds of ing George Lansbury to Marxism.14 Like Dora Montefiore, Eden Paul, rank-and-file accountability, the greater revolutionary potential of A.A. Purcell, George Ebury, E.B. Reeves and, most famously, Tom Mann, excluded groups or the superior moulding processes of an ‘education’, Watts represented a small but significant layer of late Victorian socialists be it traditional or revolutionary. Moreover, because these varying for whom adhesion to Bolshevism represented only the latest in a succes- constructions of generation were closely bound up with the relations of sion of radical attachments. As well as more conventional labour-move- communism to other political movements, particularly social democracy, ment trajectories, these might include temperance, vegetarianism, they also have to be traced through a series of shifting political contexts. eugenics, socialist feminism or, in Reeves’s case, an active role in the Here we can only summarise them. Very crudely speaking, in its Burston school strike. Joining them was the larger middle-aged group to heyday British communism provided an effective vehicle of a genera- which Watts referred: the would-be gravediggers of George Dangerfield’s tionally defined politics expressed through and by identification with the Liberal England, politicised by industrial conflict and in some cases the party’s established structures and leadership. Here, generation as a line women’s suffrage movement. Old or middle-aged, many joined without of cleavage was one essentially separating the communist from the non- fully comprehending the epochal character of the new alignment. Some communist, while unity of the party itself was underpinned by a high continued to adopt the outlook of the militant trade unionist, including degree of inter-generational cohesion. In the 1920s, on the other hand, several who dropped out or were expelled. As well as Purcell, a and still more in the 1960s and 1970s, acute generational conflict existed Furnishing Trades’ organiser, these included Robert Williams of the within the party. In the earlier period, the cleavage this expressed was that Transport Workers and A.J. Cook, future general secretary of the MFGB. of the Bolshevik revolution and ‘Leninism’, giving rise to what the Watts himself, though remaining a party member until his death in 1928, German communist Alfred Kurella called a ‘Leninist generation’ uncon- struggled to assimilate the idea of Soviets to his twenty years’ experience taminated by past legacies.11 If generational tensions flared up again of local government, describing them as ‘entirely new organs of public from the 1960s, this was partly a sign of the exhaustion and discrediting service’ to cover libraries, sewers, tramways and the whole litany of of that same Leninist generation, which had dominated much of Fabian-style municipal socialism.15 Like other European communist European communism in the meantime. At his last party congress in parties, the early CPGB was like a junction or interchange between older 1969, Dutt is recalled defending the Soviet-led invasion of socialist traditions and the new, impatient credo of communism. Czechoslovakia as if in ‘sepulchral tones from beyond the grave’.12 By this In the course of the Bolshevising 1920s, this led to acute inter-gener- time Dutt was becoming marginalised even within the communist party, ational conflicts in which ‘youth’, like class, functioned as a legitimising but the divisions which such issues opened up only underlined the diffi- device. Among Watts’s middle-aged men and women, a general falling culties the party would face in extricating itself from a legacy so central away can be observed. Early lists of congress delegates and branch 234 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 235 secretaries include many names leaving little trace in the party’s later with the old Socialist traditions of ineffectiveness in this country’, the history. Where we have further information, significant patterns emerge. identification of these traditions with their founding leadership set the At local level, while nine of the twenty-three foundation or near-foun- ‘old’ against the ‘new’ at every level of the party.17 Sam Elsbury, a former dation branch secretaries for whom we have the relevant details were ILP councillor and a socialist activist since the 1890s, expressed his aged over thirty-five, almost none of those undertaking this responsibil- dismay at the ‘lack of comradeship’ within the party, assisted by younger ity in the decade after 1922 were. At the same time, at the more visible members who were ‘too fond of quoting the statutes and theses’.18 level of the national party apparatus, a distinct leading group was now Though he briefly rejoined before making a final exit in 1929, Elsbury established comprising relative veterans whose experiences and respon- was another of the veterans who left the CPGB around this time. In St sibilities predated the party’s formation. Even including the YCL secre- Pancras, where there were a number of such sceptics, Dutt referred to tary William Rust, the average age of the communist leaders gaoled for them as ‘specially cantankerous old ‘uns’.19 sedition in 1925 was thirty-five—a little short of the average of the exec- Amid debilitating rivalries, the Bolshevisers’ campaign to overturn the utive as a whole. Five of the twelve were born within a two-and-a-half older leadership came to a head at a special British commission of the year period around 1890, with a smaller sub-group of Bell, Gallacher Comintern held in June-July 1923. The line of division was unambigu- and Inkpin in their early forties. Politically this was of some significance, ously between ‘old-stagers’ and ‘new forces’. ‘Throughout the country for at the leadership level the CPGB until 1929 retained much of its you have…old-timers who have been 10, 15, or 20 years in the move- character as a coming together of the older marxist sects, and its ment’, Dutt observed with a Bolshevik sense of tact. ‘They are often very predominantly working-class composition meant that proletarianisation good comrades, but useless for our purpose.’20 Whether or not his Oxford did not of itself lead, as elsewhere, to a removal of the party old guard. first also encouraged such attitudes, references to the rebels as ‘freshers’ This had to wait until Class Against Class, when a major overhaul of the perfectly symbolised the intermingling of class and generation in a party’s central committee was carried out ‘under the direct assistance contest synchronising with the promotion within the Labour Party of and leadership of the representatives of the ECCI’ at the Eleventh brilliant young graduates at the expense of elderly union officials. CPGB Congress in November 1929.16 If the Comintern’s intervention Probably this as much as the rebels’ inexperience persuaded the was at this point decisive, it nevertheless represented the exploitation of Comintern to stand by the old-stagers, who at least measured up to the generational tensions which had already precipitated the CPGB’s first class requirements of Bolshevisation. By 1925, Dutt was living in leadership crisis as early as 1923. Brussels, Pollitt was reconciled to heading the Minority Movement and At the heart of this first conflict was a group predominantly compris- Arnot had been exempted from party responsibilities to write the official ing intellectuals who had arrived at communism through guild socialism history of the Miners’ Federation. It was not until the emergence of Class and remained entrenched in its main political nesting ground, the Against Class that they again saw their opportunity. Labour Research Department. Their most senior figure was the LRD’s By this time Pollitt and even Dutt were themselves beginning to be secretary Robin Page Arnot, a contemporary and close associate of outflanked by a younger cohort still less compromised by the past. In G.D.H. Cole who had joined the Fabians as a Glasgow student back in 1923, the oldest of the old guard, forty-six year-old Bob Stewart, accused 1908. Born within a year of Arnot in 1890 were A.L. Bacharach, who them of writing off their elders ‘merely because you were not born in the like Cole had attended St Paul’s School, Westminster, and Mary Communist Party’. Pollitt himself, however, was not only ‘born’ into this Moorhouse, who later worked closely with Dutt. However, most of the older movement but was to base his whole political persona on the fact. rebels were still in their twenties, and within the CPGB their influence Even Dutt was mischievously reminded by Stewart of his membership of was above all associated with Dutt himself, born in 1896 and coming to the National Guilds League.21 It was therefore only with the ‘Leninist marxism under the immediate influence of imperialist war and the generation’ of the 1920s that a cohort emerged which, politically speak- October Revolution. In 1922–3, Dutt forged a close partnership with ing, really was born in the CPGB, and which in many cases died in it as Pollitt, with whom he drafted the seminal ‘Bolshevik’ organisational well. Unlike the LRD ‘nucleus’, this was an aggressively proletarian report, whose implementation was then overseen by a committee which cadre, in whom experiences of post-war unemployment and industrial included Arnot. Making the case for ‘a complete revolutionary break strife combined with Bolshevik self-assurance to produce a combative, 236 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 237 overbearing and even thuggish spirit. ‘Hell with the lid off ’, the older Fife BSP version of the family party. Run by ex-BSPer Willie Greenhalgh and communist David Proudfoot wrote approvingly of YCL meetings in his daughter Sarah, a former art student, the Sunday school thus contin- 1926. ‘Youngsters of 16 or 17 shaking fists in opponents’ faces and stat- ued to feature secular hymns and moral parables, gathering under a ing their case very well.’ 22 Even Gallacher in a generous moment banner of Sarah’s depicting the International in the style of an illumi- described them as ‘splendid young proletarians…free from all the bad nated manuscript. traditions of the early Socialist movement’.23 Where the Greenhalghs continued these BSP traditions, Woolley Founded in 1921, the YCL at first had a strong taint of bohemianism rejected their ‘paternalist’ attitudes in favour of revolutionary ‘self-activ- but in 1923 there emerged at its head a brash and notably undeferential ity’ in the schools. He further aroused antagonism by his attitude to the leadership exemplified by the three Londoners, then barely in their twen- district party organiser, a forty-year old coach painter and ‘very gentle ties, William Rust, Dave Springhall and Wally Tapsell.24 Typically politi- person’ called Jim Crossley, who used to play the violin on party rambles. cised only since the Russian Revolution, they espoused a tough, Another possible source of tension was the predominantly Jewish compo- uncompromising and demonstrative form of politics, with special sition of the YCLers, for old Willie Greenhalgh was recalled by one of responsibilities for anti-militarist work and an enthusiasm for Bolshevik them, David Ainley, as having become ‘obsessed against the Jews’. organisational forms not usually shared by older communists. Charged Whatever the explanation, older BSPers like the Greenhalghs left the with surveying the party’s factory groups in 1925, another London party, while Crossley was ousted as organiser and went on party work to YCLer, Douglas Wilson, discounted objections to such work as Egypt. In Manchester, possibly an extreme case, the party’s foundation ‘deriv[ing] from the atmosphere of old associates and hangers on of the cohort was thus largely driven out or marginalised in the course of Party particularly people who have been connected with the movement Bolshevisation. Pollitt, who likened Crossley to an older brother, later verbally for years’.25 In Glasgow, resistance to Ernie Woolley’s efforts in reflected bitterly on the loss through ‘neglect and stupidity’ of the social- the same connection were similarly attributed to ‘lack of support from ist hall in which so much of his own youth had been spent. Certainly, no the old members of the Party’.26 Woolley had been another prominent such premises were built by the street and factory cells of the early YCLer and later described himself as ‘persistently fighting against communist party. The irony was that organisational measures largely remnants of Social Democracy in our Party’, including the ‘violent oppo- promoted by Pollitt had helped drive out the older comrades whose ideal- sition’ he alleged there had been to the formation of the YCL itself.27 ism he evoked so feelingly. Though anti-Labour sentiments had been strongly expressed at the Another figure who was edged aside was T.A. Jackson, a contempo- party’s foundation, it is among these younger cohorts that one is likeliest rary of Elsbury’s born in 1879, and altogether the most impish, erudite to find premonitions of the leftist line of ‘independent leadership’ which and ill-washed of the socialist autodidacts to make their way into the the Comintern imposed at the end of the decade. Already in 1924, Arnot CPGB. As the editor of the Communist, it was Jackson who made way for asked rhetorically how long the party could go on denouncing the Dutt when it was replaced by the Workers’ Weekly in 1923. Re-entering the Labour leadership while remaining inside the Labour Party.28 Two years party’s employment the following year, like that other bookish misfit later, the twenty four-year-old Gabriel Cohen advanced the slogan of a Charlie Ashleigh, he found a congenial role for a time at the Sunday ‘Workers’ Government’ as against the red herring of a ‘Real Labour Worker.However, after 1929, the year that the paper ceased publication, Government’. With the added epithet ‘revolutionary’, this was to be one Jackson played no significant role in the party leadership. His feelings of the CPGB’s core slogans of the Class Against Class period.29 regarding his successors were hardly disguised. Already in 1924 he not In the few areas in which it then had a presence, the YCL itself only poured scorn on the party’s reorganisation, but when Rust for the provided a focus for inter-generational conflict. In Manchester, Woolley YCL criticised the party’s lack of factory groups, accused him of ‘gross as its organiser became involved in a rancorous dispute over the running impudence…to come forward in this cheapjack fashion…a piece of of the Communist Sunday School based at the Margaret Street Socialist impertinence on the part of the Young Communist League’.31 Then in Hall in Openshaw.30 Vividly recalled in Pollitt’s memoirs, the hall was like 1929 he denounced the process of ‘Inprecorisation’ by which ‘an unin- a symbol of older socialist traditions, built and maintained as a ‘labour of telligible “Babylonish dialect” [was] used sacramentally as evidence of love’ by a membership of skilled craft workers and harbouring a vigorous righteousness’. Naturally it was Rust who leapt in to remonstrate with 238 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 239 him, and Jackson subsequently likened Rust himself to a copy of the expense of older functionaries. At the end of 1931 Rust was joined in impenetrable Inprecorr ‘coming to life and reciting its own contents’.32 Britain by his second wife, the Russian Tamara Kravetz, while Recalling the period many years later, Jackson assumed a ghoulish coun- O’Shaughnessy in Moscow upheld the new line so vigorously that she tenance as he pronounced deliberately and with feeling: ‘The YCL needs was temporarily expelled from the Konsomol on a charge of ‘leftism’.37 to be clamped down, battened down and beaten down.’33 His deeper feelings She too remarried, and presumably her husband’s arrest was the cause for Dutt found expression in his pissing every morning on the garden of her return to Britain, volubly defending the purges, in 1937.38 She left shrub that he had given that name.34 behind a daughter by Rust, now aged twelve, who was caught up in the The issue was not merely one of political style. As Samuel pointed out, deportation of the Volga Germans before being reunited with her the special codes of Marxism-Leninism marked communism out from mother during the war.39 Remaining a party member, despite what she older and social and political formations, while at the same time distin- frankly described as the ‘murder’ and subsequent rehabilitation of her guishing the orthodox and the initiated within the party.35 Sometimes husband, Kathleen Rust, now Kath Taylor, was forthright in condemn- deliberately, sometimes not, the use of the vernacular and a different set ing the ‘cowards’ who fell away in 1956.40 of cultural reference points thus served to limit or contest the hieratic This was the generation meant to take over the direction of the order of ‘Leninism’, while at the same time the inculcation of a regard communist movement, and in some instances, like that of the so-called for ‘theory’ helped to underpin it. Collectively this was exemplified by the ‘Thorez cadre’ in the PCF, to some extent it did so. In Britain, however, Lenin School, teaching just such a curriculum as the mark of leadership, its long-term impact is more debatable. Rust himself remained one of and with such effect that some of its products were described as coming the party’s foremost leaders until his premature death in 1949, as did back speaking a different language. Though not attending the school Springhall until his arrest for spying in 1943. Until that date, returning himself, the inprecorising Rust epitomised the challenge of this younger ILS students frequently found their way onto the party’s central leadership cohort. Aged just fourteen at the time of the Russian committee, providing a peak figure of ten of its thirty members in Revolution, he joined the CPGB almost at its foundation after a brief 1932–5 and, for a time, the majority of its district organisers. Never- involvement in the Herald League and WSF.36 In this respect resembling theless, what was ultimately more striking was the longevity of an older Jackson, but unlike the CPGB’s leading cohort of time-served engineers, leadership cohort, personified by Pollitt, and the patronage by which Rust had no trade to fall back on, and on entering the party’s employ- already in the late 1930s Pollitt’s preferment increasingly fell to those ment at the age of twenty he remained in it all his life. If the new forms who had not attended the Lenin School and in many cases were too of organisation became the focus of inter-generational differences, it was young to have done so.41 not just because they represented the identification of the young with the Noting the contrast in this regard between the British and Irish new creed of Bolshevism, but because the conception of the revolution- communist parties, Barry McLoughlin speculates that the returning ary cadre was sustainable only through the absence of domestic commit- students must have appeared to older leaders like a trojan horse being ments, or their systematic subordination to the demands of the party. In sent into the party citadel.42 The speculation is plausible, and with Pollitt’s Rust’s case, these commitments were shared by his wife, a YCL worker increasing control over party appointments, the only ILS alumni to retain called Kathleen O’Shaughnessy. By the age of twenty-three Rust had significant positions at a national level were the proven Pollitt loyalists, attended his first Comintern congress, spent time in the USA as repre- Peter Kerrigan and Marian Jessop.43 Moreover, with the replacement in sentative of the Young Communist International (YCI) and given proof the late 1940s of a ‘pre-ILS’ generation, born before 1900 and politically of his durability as one of the communist leaders imprisoned in 1925. formed before Bolshevisation, its successors were drawn predominantly Working at the YCI secretariat in Moscow from 1928, Rust figured from a ‘post-ILS’ cohort born after 1910, exactly as if the party were prominently in the undermining of the party old guard and in January skipping a generation.44 Adjustments made on Rust’s death illustrate the 1930 he became the first editor of the Daily Worker. Simultaneously, a point perfectly. Replacing Rust at the Daily Worker was the Clydeside foun- ‘clean sweep’ of the central committee brought its average age to a low- dation member J.R. Campbell, born 1894. The new assistant editor was point equalled only by the arrival of the ‘freshers’ in 1923, while through- John Gollan: born in 1911, YCL leader before the war, not an ILS out the party apparatus ILS cadres were systematically advanced at the student and Pollitt’s ‘crown prince’.45 Replacing Gollan as assistant party 240 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 241 secretary was George Matthews, born in 1917, the son of a Bedfordshire Unlike their immediate predecessors, the ‘1930s’ generation provided farmer and a student party recruit from 1938. Meanwhile, Allen Hutt, no real challenge to the existing party leadership. Despite the continuing born 1901, had not only attended the ILS but was the CPGB’s most accession of younger recruits, the average age of the party’s central experienced journalist, having done more than anybody to create the committee increased, from around thirty-four in 1932 to a pre-war high ‘new’ professional Daily Worker of the 1940s. Passed over even for the of forty-one in 1937, and while the most important newcomer was the assistant editorship, Hutt was consumed by ‘bitter disappointment and forty-six-year-old Emile Burns, who had first joined the CPGB from the humiliation’ and wrote but did not send a letter of resignation to the ILP in 1921. Even as younger leaders like Gollan and Matthews began paper.46 If the Lenin students represented what McLoughlin calls a ‘long- to emerge, they never imagined themselves as Pollitt’s rivals, while the term investment’ by the Comintern, their restriction to secondary posi- YCL took up no political position distinguishable from the adult party tions within the party apparatus suggests a definite depreciation of that until well into the 1950s. Coinciding with the maturation of its older investment.47 leadership cohorts, the Stalinist cult of authority produced a respect The attenuation of inter-generational conflict within the communist sometimes bordering on deference. In 1958, the newly appointed party does not mean that generation lost its saliency as a factor in the Scottish party secretary, Gordon McLennan, was ‘astounded’ to be asked making of British communists. On the contrary, in no period more than to comment on a draft speech of the miners’ official, Abe Moffat. Moffat, the 1930s was recruitment so much shaped by the simultaneous impact he said, had ‘a fund of experience and leadership and struggle’ dating upon the young of national and international influences like fascism, from between the wars. ‘I grew up appreciating and thinking of these slump and the threat of war. Campaigning with the communist-leaning people, and then for me as the Scottish secretary, and I was only thirty- Labour League of Youth (LLY) and a range of non-socialist youth and one I think…and Abe, who had been through all this, sending me his student organisations, the sense of a common generational experience speech for my comments!’ Here generation reinforced the standing of the was above all identified with the war in Spain. Personifying it was John communist industrial militant, cutting through the power relationships Cornford: communist and poet, with Byronic good looks and fierce polit- conventionally identified with democratic centralism. To McLennan, ical commitment, who died defending Madrid at the age of twenty-one later the CPGB’s general secretary, Moffat too was like a ‘kind of second and left behind one of the most beautiful of love poems, to his girlfriend father’.51 Margot Heinemann. Memorialised in a volume detailing every aspect of By the late 1930s, relations were generally harmonious at every level of his short life, Cornford was not only the ‘martyr of mythic power’ the party. When Mike Waite asked former YCLers to describe the tensions recalled by Denis Healey, but a symbol of and for his generation, explic- and difficulties they experienced with older party members, all but one of itly projected as such.48 the twenty responses we examined relating to the 1930s described these Profound as was this sense of forming ‘a younger generation’—the title relations as cordial and supportive.52 Beyond the party, the acceptance of which Margot Kettle gave her collection of oral reminiscences of the established labour movement institutions also militated against the open- period—the terms of its relations with its elders were different from a ing up of cleavages on generational lines. During the apprentices’ strikes decade previously. Partly this was to do with the cult of class and of 1937, the decade’s biggest industrial youth action, demands were masculinity attaching to the party’s foremost leaders. Nobody in the couched not as a rejection of labour institutions, as they might have been 1930s referred to Pollitt or Gallacher as crocks, but Pollitt in particular half a decade earlier, but as the right to be represented by them and have exuded a gruff paternal authority which middle-class recruits in partic- their status as skilled workers in the making recognised. If they thus ular could find irresistible and which could also include a sexual element. received the support of the ‘adult’ movement, strikers on the Clyde also Meeting him for the first time following Cornford’s death, Heinemann refused to link up with young women workers on the grounds that these later cited Gorki’s comments on Tolstoi: ‘While this man lives I am not were ‘not apprentices but only learners’.53 ‘It is this spirit of unity born in an orphan on the earth.’49 Sam Russell, who fought in the defence of struggle’, the YCL affirmed with unconscious irony, ‘which has been Madrid, also regarded Pollitt as ‘father figure’, while even Stephen handed down to them by their fathers, famous for their working-class Spender found ‘something paternal in his friendly twinkling manner’ as traditions.’54 A more adversarial conception of generation did continue to Pollitt soft-soaped him into joining the CPGB in February 1937.50 be asserted against labour movement elders, and at both national and 242 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 243 local level the very noticeable contrast between the relations of the YCL democracy, Bolshevism also combined a quality of youthful insurgency and Labour League of Youth with their adult counterparts was assisted with its revolutionary seniority. When, also in 1926, the Shop Assistants’ by the communist sympathies or allegiances of much of the LLY’s official J.R. Leslie referred to the Russians as ‘mere children as far as the membership.55 Within the communist movement itself, however, it was to Trade Union movement is concerned’, Pollitt replied pugnaciously: ‘In be the proud boast of the post-1956 party secretary John Gollan that he 1917 these “children” lacking the compromising defeatist spirit of our had never had to discipline the YCL.56 “older bureaucrats and trade union leaders” did capture political power…while we, who take refuge in our age-long experience are simply Infantile disorders witnessing the steady worsening of our conditions.’61 For the CPGB itself, which could not yet boast the achievements of an accomplished Given that communism was defined not in generational terms but polit- revolution, it only made sense to look to the future as ‘a young ical ones, it is not surprising that its constructions of youth and age fluc- party…only now definitely breaking out of the old, old traditions tuated according to political context. For the individual communist, surrounding its formation’.62 generalised revolt was often combined with a close sense of identity with Whether as strength or limitation, the CPGB’s identity as a young party one’s own parents, or else conflict with domestic or community elders was therefore reaffirmed. Nevertheless, even in this first age of British offset by an identification with alternative role models. While assisting in communism figures like Pollitt and Gallacher also gave sign of having the formation of partisan allegiances, these generational identities were internalised the codes of seniority which governed the trade-union then themselves moulded in the shape of party loyalties, so that genera- cultures in which they had been formed. The equation was a complex one, tion was capable of underpinning as well as undermining party cohesion, for communists also stood for the democratisation of the unions, the over- and helped define the lines of party cleavage. Not songs but slogans of haul of their existing leaderships and the removal of lengthy membership innocence and experience, these conflicting usages convey something of qualifications or excessive longevity of service.63 Nevertheless, just as the the shifting self-perception of the collectivity of British communists. commitment to industrial unionism did not wholly displace the ethos of In its earliest years, the CPGB presented itself as a ‘young’ party in the skilled worker, so the call to ‘change your leaders’, and to do so more relation both to the Russians and to its Labour rivals, but with different often, could coexist with a recognition of the claims of service to the connotations in each case. Though the Tom Bell who confessed the movement. Again, what was crucial was the political context: that of the CPGB’s youth was only twelve years Lenin’s junior, an epoch of revolu- emergence within the labour movement of a new breed of younger, tionary experience seemed to separate them and he noted with appro- professional parliamentarian, advanced on ostensible grounds of ability, priate humility: ‘But we are learning…from the International movement’.57 but in almost every case as the by-product of social and educational In a similar vein, a group of British leading communists, aged on aver- advantage. The Welsh miners’ leader Frank Hodges was one of the few age a little over forty, addressed the Russian leader as ‘one, whose expe- such cases from a working-class background, and yet Pollitt, himself aged riences and responsibilities have fitted him to converse freely upon thirty-one, took strong issue with what he called Hodges’ ‘extremely dirty International Politics and whose knowledge of Social Science enables attack upon the miners’ veteran leader Bob Smillie’. him to so thoroughly understand the dynamics of social progress’.58 Lenin himself hardly discouraged such attitudes. In his famous polemic The miners will have some strong words to say to this young Left-Wing Communism, subtitled ‘an infantile disorder’, he took Gallacher upstart from Ruskin College who at 34 is a snobbish prig, and has as his example of the ‘frame of mind and the viewpoint of young forgotten that the miners paid for his education to enable him to Communists, or of the rank and file of workers who have just begun to fight their battles against capitalism. If Hodges is half the man arrive at Communism’. Gallacher was then aged thirty-eight.59 that Bob Smillie is when he arrives at the latter’s age he will have Naturally, this authoritative formulation was routinely invoked against done well.64 the young and impetuous, as the twenty-six year-old Rothstein did in 1926 against Cohen’s case for a Workers’ Government.60 On the other More commonly, such presumption was identified with the middle-class hand, in representing not continuity but the sharpest cleavage with social interloper, and in a moment of goodwill, Gallacher even included the 244 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 245 ultra-moderate Clynes among the ‘veteran fighters’ whom he defended tary of the Minority Movement, adding ‘please understand that you from the sneers of ‘smart young barristers and other professionals from cannot talk to me as if I were a child, or someone dependent upon you the camps of Liberalism and Toryism’.65 for a living’.72 When J.T. Murphy arrived as the CPGB’s representative It is true that these old stalwarts were also depicted as ‘stout, elderly in Moscow in the summer of 1926, he allowed himself a similar note of gentlemen who knew how to dine and wine well and who would never defiance. ‘I still feel that the praise given to our Party is that of the father have deceived even a child into believing that they had any interest in the to the good boy. Perhaps when Father has made a few more blunders he class struggle’.66 In the bitterly divided Scottish coalfields, the ‘new will see that the boy has grown up.’73 Murphy however succeeded in communist cadre self-consciously claimed to represent the aspirations of maintaining this attitude for barely a month, and still five years later “the young miners”’, while even the ‘legalist’ Horner expounded a sharp Pollitt was referring to the CPGB as a ‘child [which] gets spanked and critique of officialdom, whose exclusion from a rank-and-file executive smacked and comes up smiling’ to the puzzlement even of its ‘foster- proved the key to communist advances within the union after 1934.67 In parents’.74 Pollitt’s own union, the Boilermakers, a similar analysis was linked with As for the collective, so for the individual: while psychologically the issue of changing work conditions, so that Pollitt scorned its longest- conducive to a greater sense of independence, the deployment of a serving members as ‘hopelessly out of touch with modern workshop record of service or struggle in inner-party disputes was almost always practices’ as well as the new political currents of the age.68 Even so, the unavailing given the absence of customs or procedures for the recogni- discourse of the ‘veteran’, to be honoured on grounds of longevity, would tion of such claims. In 1931 the veteran miners’ activist Nat Watkins naturally only become more pronounced with the ageing of Pollitt and protested against his removal as Miners’ Minority Movement secretary, Gallacher themselves. detailing a record of industrial responsibilities going back to 1896 and To some extent this must have been true of each successive genera- castigating his replacements as an ‘office-boy leadership’.75 The same tional cohort. As a post-war fixture as Teesside district organiser, ILS year, his fellow miner, Arthur Horner, defended himself against charges alumnus George Short used to put down younger comrades by recalling of ‘Hornerism’ by contrasting his record of more than twenty years of his activities ‘before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye’.69 For Short, revolutionary activity with that of party bureaucrats lacking any compa- born in 1900, this was combined with unwavering pro-Sovietism, for the rable experience.76 In both cases, Pollitt upheld the party’s authority, even Russian Revolution occurred for him at precisely that formative age at while assuring Horner that he too had ‘been through the same school’ which Mannheim suggested that the independent reflection of the indi- and had the same trade union experience: ‘on many things I can well vidual begins.70 For members of the CPGB’s foundation cohort, by the understand how you have felt’.77 Eight years later, when he himself same token, the sense of having been politically formed before the clashed with the Comintern over the war, Pollitt drew on these resources communist party not only shaped their original world-view without a on his own account. ‘I was in this movement practically before you were Bolshevik reference point but provided a form of personal capital offset- born’, he pointed out to Dutt, his principal antagonist on the central ting dependence on the ‘party’ or the Russians. Even Gallacher, while committee, and implicitly counterposed his formative experience of the famously bending to Lenin’s will on his first visit to Moscow, retained First World War with the later disciplines of the Comintern: sufficient sense of revolutionary manhood to claim to have answered him back in his own terms. ‘... I informed Comrade Lenin that he could treat I was 24, had never heard of Bolshevism. Had never heard of the me me as an infant while I was in Britain and he was in Moscow, but, I Basle resolution, but had a class instinct which was sound and I added, “Now that I am here, you’ll find that I’m an old hand at this suppose I got as many physical beatings up for going round game”’.71 Lancashire endeavouring to get that war transferred into a civil Though Pollitt, like Gallacher, consistently deferred to Lenin and later war as any person in this country. Has got the same class to Stalin—who in party correspondence was sometimes referred to, not instinct…now…78 as the boss or chief (the Russian vozhd) but as the ‘old man’—he bristled at the condescension of lesser Russians. ‘You write to us as if we were a Here generation was inextricably mixed with ideas of class, masculinity lot of children’, he wrote to one of them in 1924 on taking over as secre- and the unbiddable time-served worker. In the memoirs which he wrote 246 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 247 immediately after being removed as general secretary, Pollitt made sure Burma Army and twice achieved significant minority polls in parlia- to include the letter he received from his mother reminding him that his mentary elections. It says something of how these credentials were valued marking-off tools were still in vaseline, ready for use at any time.79 It was by the party that in 1948—at the age of forty—he was appointed London no accident that Pollitt called the book Serving My Time, nor that what it secretary of the Young Communist League. When at the age of forty- contributed to his personal standing was what it revealed of his labour two he was at last released for full-time party work, it was as part of a movement credentials before the CPGB was formed. YCL leading cadre generally infringing the league’s age limit, which itself The toolmaker Wal Hannington drew on the same stock of ideas. In had been raised to thirty, and which in two other cases was scarcely a dispute over the disregarding of his own seniority in relation to party younger than Carritt himself.83 nominations within the AEU, he pointedly remarked that he at least ‘did Though the worst anomalies were thus put right, the ageing of the not require the Russian revolution to inspire me to Socialism’ and, like YCL’s leading cadre was symptomatic of the party’s overall profile as well Watkins, provided a sort of labour movement curriculum vitae to corrob- as the possible battening and clamping of the YCL itself. Already by the orate the statement.80 Such an example suggests the possible significance late 1940s, the average age of the CPGB executive was over forty, reach- of just a year or two in constructions of generation, for while Hannington ing the fifty mark in 1958–9. By this time, nearly half of congress dele- was only four years older than Short, this permitted him something of gates were aged over forty, and the proportion aged under thirty-five had the bearing of an old Bolshevik, who had even rubbed shoulders with halved from the high point of 70 per cent in the late 1930s.84 At the lead- Chicherin and Litvinov in the Kentish Town branch of the BSP. ership level, it was only in 1965 that Gollan began to take a more system- However, there was also a second crucial distinction of class, for atic approach to bringing on younger elements, with Dutt among the Hannington was an exact contemporary of Dutt’s; and yet where Dutt most reluctant to make way for them.85 Easily doctored though such was for many years identified with the milieu of the student and former images were, even the construction of the archetypal activist in the student, already by 1916 Hannington regarded himself as initiated into party’s literature appeared to have aged. In 1936, when J.R. Campbell the adult world of working-class politics. Memoirs of the middle-class scripted an all-male ‘workshop talk’ about politics, the communist was rebellion of the LRD, like Margaret Cole’s Growing up into Revolution depicted as a pullovered young man, winning over older interlocutors (1949), strongly emphasise its youth. Conversely, Hannington’s account including a bookish-looking ILPer.86 In Hymie Fagan’s England for All,a of the inter-war years contains little suggestion of his youth, but on the similar conceit cast the narrator as a union stalwart and the hero as a contrary introduces him on the very first page as an ‘elected shop stew- young communist, not yet married and bearing the solid English name ard on behalf of the men’.81 of Bill Taylor. Newly arrived in the district, Taylor becomes convenor at Though to some extent they acted as a surrogate for that experience, the local motor works and manages to organise it within three months of the working-class selection criteria used for advancement within the party arriving: ‘Talk about fireworks!’87 Ten years on, when Pollitt addressed apparatus and ILS also perpetuated the identification of class and a sort his own ‘open letter’ to trade unionists, Bill had obviously settled down of toughness or virility. Gabriel Carritt, whom we saw in Chapter 2 was (‘Every Friday night when you hand your wages over to your wife…’) and acutely conscious of his class origin, recalled the ‘old brigade’ running needed reminding that younger workers too needed consideration. ‘Do King Street as comprising ‘very tough characters who emerged out of the not hammer them down because they do not know the union rules as well working class, almost of the last [nineteenth] century’. It was a revealing as we do.…We want them to shake us old ‘uns up a bit.’ Another ten observation, for though Pollitt was their epitome, all but one of the other years, and like the 1930s’ firebrand and Austin’s convenor, Dick five names Carritt mentioned were born within a decade of Carritt Etheridge, he would no doubt have been warning about the disruption himself, in 1908. Three, as it happened, had attended the Lenin School. that younger leftists were liable to cause.88 One was actually six years younger than Carritt.82 The comment is the Generational differences thus reflected changing experiences and more noteworthy in that Carritt himself had led anything but a cloistered work cultures as much as politics in the narrower sense. Already in the existence. An associate of Auden, Spender and Isherwood in his earlier 1930s, where formal or informal apprenticeship systems were seen as years, he had campaigned in the USA for the Scottsboro boys, under- providing a form of induction into the values and cultures of the work- taken a clandestine mission to Nazi Germany, served in the Fourteenth place, the absence of such relationships in the new industries of the 248 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 249 south was identified not with more militant forms of activism but with dated.93 ‘To me Harry is linked with Spain, anti-appeasement and the an individualised sense of ‘independence’, militating against ‘organisa- Hunger Marches’, John Saville wrote to E. P. Thompson in 1956. ‘He’s tion by their elders’.89 Hannington by the late 1950s was like a gloomy washed up now, but the affection for Harry is tremendous among my harbinger of the affluent worker thesis. ‘I suppose they look back upon generation.’94 Saville had joined the party in 1934, Thompson in 1942, us as complacent old fogies’, he commented of ‘Rock ’n Rollers’ who which evidently felt to them like two different generations. Nevertheless, knew nothing of earlier struggles: they left the party together, and together opened up a new chapter in the history of the British left. But we did know how to get excited about things that mattered From that point on, the CPGB was doubly the victim of generational and how to stand up and fight for real trade union principles. I’m divisions, both within the party itself and between the party and its afraid I get frequently disappointed these days at the indifference younger rivals. When in 1967 the twenty-two year old Martin Jacques was which so many young people show towards such matters. The found a seat on the party executive, he remembers encountering ‘almost plain fact is that industrial life for them is dead easy compared a wall between the generations’, exacerbated by a post-1956 exodus leav- with the conditions that we had to face.90 ing nothing much between the popular front enrolments and contempo- raries of Jacques himself.95 Occasionally attending the political committee Though directed against the ideologists of ‘affluence’ within the Labour as the student representative, David Aaronovitch was amazed to see the Party, Pollitt’s repeated invocation of the ‘pioneers’ and their street- assembled luminaries communicate with each other by launching screwed corner meetings opened up a wider generational cleavage from which a up balls of paper containing messages. ‘You’d be asked a question…[and] ‘new’ left would also emerge from within the CPGB itself. As the Daily a ball would go whizzing past your head, chucked from the industrial Worker’s youngest journalist put it in 1956, ‘what was good enough for our person to the deputy general secretary…Talk about establishing…an grandfathers is not necessarily good enough for us’.91 order of who’s important...’96 That Jacques and Aaronovitch were both Though often remembered as a revolt of the intellectuals, we have second-generation communists is itself significant, for we have seen that, seen that the crisis that hit the CPGB that year may also be regarded in for some recruits, the fact that the CPGB was not a youth or student-domi- generational terms, as the breaking away of part of the party’s popular nated organisation was one of its distinctive attractions. On the other front enrolment. If, like Eric Hobsbawm, we take the turn to anti-fascism hand, to the extent that there was a generational revolt within the party, as the dividing line, only a handful of party recruits from before that its main protagonists were second or third-generation communists— period are recorded as leaving the party in 1956–7, and one of these— Beatrix Campbell was another—acting out the conflicts of the time within Alec Moffat—rejoined three years later. Anecdotal evidence from the environment in which they had been brought up. Few indeed can have Scotland suggests that those leaving tended to be younger recruits from been drawn to the party as itself a vehicle of that revolt. during or just after the war,92 and this is borne out by the attendance at For better or worse, joining the party in its later years therefore meant party congresses. At the one held in April 1956, just as the Khrushchev getting involved with a lot of older relatives. Mike Jones was a young disclosures were being made public, 42 per cent of delegates were aged industrial activist, enthused by the Vietminh, who joined its ranks in under thirty, and 67 per cent under thirty-five. A year later, the propor- Chester in 1965. Like Bill Taylor in the pamphlet, he expected to see tions had fallen to 17 per cent and 36 per cent respectively. Though some fireworks. Instead, he was set to work collecting retired members’ special care had no doubt been taken to filter out dissenting voices, this dues in the hinterlands of Cheshire and North Wales, and like a 1920s’ would only confirm the identification of the opposition with the party’s Bolsheviser suggested writing them off. ‘Years later I could see, if you’d younger members. been in the party all your life and you were now retired and…couldn’t Despite the tellingly familiar form of address, calls to ‘Sack Harry’ get about so much, if they suddenly said you weren’t a member, you’d be revealed how Pollitt more than anybody now personified what was wrong most upset. I suppose it was youthful enthusiasm or militancy, thinking with the party. Already in 1945, even the Lancashire ‘old faithful’ were we’d got better things to do: we’re fighting the class war, we can’t be social said to be making way for younger audiences for whom he had no special workers with old age pensioners up in the hills!’97 Like young people in significance, and for whom his style of oratory was beginning to seem the 1940s joining the CPGB despite reservations about Stalinism, Jones 250 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 251 in 1969 joined the International Socialists despite reservations about striking. In the Isére region in France, for example, two-thirds of party Trotskyism. Whatever its political attractions, the CPGB by this time members came from a left-wing family, and nearly half had at least one could not compete when it came to offering pyrotechnics. family member in the PCF. Similar phenomena can be identified in Italy, Finland, early post-war Germany and no doubt more generally.101 Lines of succession Given the relatively modest proportions and weak subcultural charac- teristics of the CPGB and Britain’s wider activist left, continuities on What the communists did offer was a radical genealogy and sense of quite that scale are difficult to imagine. Even so, the statistical over-repre- history whose character shifted over time from the teleological to the sentation of such cases provides a better guide to communist recruitment commemorative. Though to some extent this reflected an ageing process, than probably any other single correlate. This includes those of initially the CPGB had long evinced a fascination with political precursors and greater visibility such as the coalminers whose numerical predominance alternative leadership figures. Particularly since the rediscovered radical after 1926 was secured by the adherence of perhaps one in two hundred lineages of the popular front, no party representing the future could have of their number. If the most minimal and consensual form of left-wing been readier to celebrate its antecedents, whether through the several ‘activism’ in the period of the CPGB’s foundation was to take the ‘rebel’ media of literature, pageant, folk song and opera, or through the semi- Daily Herald, barely 200,000 households met this requirement. The indi- nal work of the communist party historians. With a very few exceptions, vidual membership of all socialist organisations, however nominal in the best known of the latter were not just historians but British histori- character, was of a similar order. The disproportionate recruitment of ans, providing in their most rigorous and developed form genealogies CPGB members from such households thus bears out the ‘principle of which located and legitimised the CPGB while at the same time honour- family succession’ as a factor explaining the incidence and character of ing its forbears. political activism.102 As for the party, so for individual members, an engagement with Just as the family itself was shaped by a range of social, cultural and communist politics was linked with the influence of non-contemporane- demographic pressures, so the lines of family succession assumed a vari- ous contemporaries encountered in the home, the school or the work- ety of forms, some more obvious than others. Not only the impact of place. ‘I was a rebel along with my dad’, recalled an inter-war recruit, events and the changing profiles of different political parties, but dislo- and whether through the direct transmission of ideas or institutional affil- cation into new working and residential environments meant that inher- iations, or simply the example of an activist stance towards the world, ited traditions could take on different institutional expressions. Moreover, elements of what we have called a continuity narrative were surprisingly exactly as communists themselves had experiences of being socially or common.98 Rebels along with their mums, dads, teachers or older work- geographically uprooted, similar pressures in earlier generations made mates, the only seeming ‘paradox’ of differentiated generational rela- for dispersed family connections concealing disparate social or political tionships was a marked feature of this least iconoclastic of revolutionary influences unsuspected within the immediate home environment. movements.99 Metroland-type recruits like Alison Macleod and Brian Pearce The most immediate and probably the commonest line of succession mentioned the influence of distant socialist uncles or great uncles, offset- was that within the family. Our figures suggest that around a quarter of ting more respectable or politically Conservative upbringings.103 Such all communists had parents who themselves were party members or what influences cannot be counterposed to the impact of contemporary Pamela Graves describes as ‘cadre activists’ in other labour movement events, but on the contrary were effective to the extent that they were organisations.100 Although in earlier decades they were more likely to corroborated by, or helped explain, national and world affairs. In the have come from non-party socialist backgrounds, already by the 1940s same way, where such seeds bore fruit, the actual party affiliations the so-called ‘party family’ was established as a prolific channel of adopted were likely to be those most immediately accessible or recruitment, giving way in its turn to a further shift by which the offspring compelling, which is why where they resulted in communism they so of these families increasingly found their way into a variety of other often date from the CPGB’s heyday. forms of left-wing politics. The phenomenon was not peculiar to the Personal influences could be reinforced by the broadening of social CPGB, and figures from studies made elsewhere are at first sight more horizons, like Macleod being escorted by her great uncle round the 252 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 253

Edinburgh slums.104 The future London CPGB organiser Ted Bramley miner and foundation party member, left during Class Against Class and provides a striking example of the same sort of influence. Brought up in strongly disapproved of his son making what he regarded as the same a slum district of Westminster, Bramley’s parents were founding members mistake of joining in 1939.111 Communists themselves could react in simi- of the local Labour Party, avid readers of the socialist press and former lar fashion, and Peter Kerrigan broke all contact with one of his daugh- activists respectively in the SDF and the women’s suffrage movement. ters when she became a Trotskyist.112 More commonly,however, there Ignoring their remonstrations, Bramley nevertheless became an enthusi- was a sort of mutual recognition. One interviewee recalled of his daugh- astic Boy Scout, ‘well trained in the merits of the Empire’ and accus- ter, who was active with the Islington Gutter Press, ‘if there hadn’t been so tomed to parading at one of London’s ‘poshest’ churches, just behind many other alternatives, she would have been a heavy-duty commu- Buckingham Palace. It was only in 1926, at the age of twenty-one, that nist’.113 Another respondent, who had himself since become a Labour he stayed with an uncle in the South Wales coalfield and was convinced councillor and environmentalist, described his children and grandchil- at last that the system that gave rise to such conditions should not be dren as having ‘independently found ways of assuming social responsi- tolerated. Indirectly, that again suggests the influence of migrations bility in the Communist Tradition’.114 Even Rose Kerrigan, unlike her within the family, though Bramley even as a communist continued to husband, respected her daughter’s right to her own opinion—as long as attribute his belief in the immorality of capitalism to the religious convic- she did not become a Conservative. She also made an observation which tions he had picked up during his ‘Boy Scout training’.105 Speaking just nobody familiar with Kerrigan or Trotskyism will find surprising: ‘What up the road in Trafalgar Square in 1942, it was fitting that he should have she did was a different form, she thought she was doing it her way, but provided a particularly fulsome example of the party’s wartime patrio- she’s the one that’s most like him in every way.’115 tism, calling on the shades of Nelson himself to answer ‘Stalin’s call’.106 Even within the home, it is not always possible to isolate individual Bramley’s involvement in the scouts, doubtless in the absence of any influences in what was often a form of socialist milieu. Sometimes, local socialist youth or children’s organisation, underlines how the rela- extended family networks reinforced one another, as aunts, uncles and tively exiguous subcultural characteristics of the British left also lent an grandparents gathered in what really did feel like a closed society.116 obliqueness to these lines of succession. The YCL did function unevenly Patterns of sibling recruitment can betray the independent influence of as the youth section of the ‘family party’, particularly in the early post- a brother or sister, but just as commonly functioned as a mediating mech- war decades. Including what was no doubt a good proportion of dual anism for shared formative influences. On the Manchester database, members, it even doubled in size between the mid-1940s and early where family influences are cited as a factor in party recruitment, the 1950s.107 Nevertheless, this still represented a peak post-war membership fifty-nine cases mentioning older-generational influences (parents or of barely 3,000—smaller, in proportion to the party, than in the 1930s— other older relatives) are exactly balanced by the number mentioning and many ‘party parents’ simply ignored pressures to enrol their chil- same or younger-generational influences (siblings, spouses or children). dren in the YCL.108 In later years, when children from communist However, of the twenty-six cases citing sibling influences, eleven also families not infrequently went to university, it was often at this point that mention the active support of parents for the Labour movement, the they would reaffirm a communist inheritance among associates of their political left or working-class education. Moreover, of the remaining own generation. Some were actually discouraged from joining the YCL, fifteen cases, at least nine were Jewish, further underlining the particular perhaps while they got on with their studies.109 In other cases, parents significance which generational cleavages had in Jewish party recruit- might have switched, abandoned or renegotiated political affiliations as ment. There were also three cases where the sibling’s influence followed their children were growing up, sometimes for political reasons, some- the death of one or both parents. In one or two cases, there was no direct times as a direct result of their family responsibilites. If in this sense connection between sibling recruitment at all, and brothers or sisters membership was not ‘a social identity taken for life’ but a ‘temporary brought up in socialist or progressive environments became communists segment’ of that life, influences nevertheless lingered on in childhood in entirely different circumstances, sometimes years, and in one case memories, books around the house or just a running daily news continents, apart.117 commentary.110 Further confirmation of these milieu characteristics can be found in This again could lead to convoluted patterns. Jim Cannon, a Wigan those cases where the recruitment of one family member led to the 254 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 255 enrolment, not only of brothers and sisters, but of parents or other older mation, though this, like other religions, was only seemingly natural and relatives. Here the lines of succession can become tangled up was frequently thrown off in the course of reaching adulthood.125 completely, with intergenerational influences running in both directions. Nevertheless, for those most deeply affected by such an upbringing it Eric Godfrey for example, was brought up in an atmosphere of pacifism, made for a particular quality of attachment, sometimes surviving formal religious nonconformity, ‘fighting trade unionism’ and ‘vigorous anti- political differences. Harold Rosen was the archetypal crade communist, imperialist Socialism’, joining the CPGB in 1926. His father, a railway- accompanying his mother to committee meetings, imbued by her with man and former secretary of Guildford Trades Council, who had been a anti-imperialist principles and called on to stand up for them as the one friend of Edward Carpenter, followed his son into the party after visiting child at school not recognising Empire Day. A party member since 1935, Russia in 1931.118 Gladys Cattermole, like the younger Godfrey, was a in 1956 Rosen was one of the thousands of his generation who left the worker in a Soviet enterprise who had declined to follow her mother into party, though in a deeper sense he could never quite leave it behind. ‘I’ve Labour’s ranks, as ‘a party of fine phrases and no action’, but again was never been anything other than what I would call a communist, but I followed by her mother into the communist party.119 Gil Bradbury, later didn’t have a party to belong to any more’, he reflected decades later. “I the CPGB’s longstanding Kent district secretary, boasted in his party auto- tried joining the Labour Party but it was a mistake, and I thought, ‘God, biography of being followed into the party by his entire family. my mother would turn in her grave at this.”’126 Interestingly, his father and brother were already members of the ILP, Rosen’s experiences, like Pollitt’s, suggest that the parent’s role as though it appears that his sister and mother were not.120 If that again political mentor was a deeply gendered one. In some accounts of suggests that potential women recruits were less likely to encounter oppor- women’s political activism, like Pamela Graves’s, what Passerini calls ‘the tunities to become politically involved outside of the domestic sphere, then concurrence of political idealism and the father-daughter relationship’ it is not surprising that mothers were more likely than fathers to be receives some support.127 However, in the CPGB’s case what is striking recruited by their sons. Thus, although Jimmy Oates in Aberdeen was about father-daughter and even father-son relationships is their speci- taken by his mother to meetings over Spain, she only joined the commu- ficity and to some extent their exceptionality. As indicated in Chapter nist party herself after he had made the initial link through his workplace 4, the view that daughters were more likely than sons to inherit their associations. As Oates himself put it, it was a ‘question of contact’.121 parents’ political commitments largely reflects their lower levels of Amid these variegated lines of succession, the nurturing of child by politicisation through other channels, and there was no marked gender parent into the world of socialist activism had a special symbolic reso- differential among the children of such activist families.128 On the other nance, not least because of its rendering in Pollitt’s Serving My Time. hand, regarding parental roles there appear to have been important Attending the local Socialist Sunday School, reading his parents’ copies differences between communist parents and the wider activist popula- of the Clarion and Freethinker and taken by his mother to be enrolled in tion considered by Graves. Indeed, if one bears in mind the far smaller the local ILP branch, Pollitt was the archetype of what we can call the numbers of female ‘cadres’, and particularly female cadres with chil- ‘cradle socialist’, or the ‘cradle communist’ that followed with the dren, it is the role of the mother in communist party families which is CPGB’s formation.122 Luisa Passerini describes the narrative of the ‘born more immediately impressive. Though some fathers were absent in the Socialist’ as a form ‘of boasting that where one comes from is better than pub, like Pollitt’s, and some absent altogether, like Rosen’s, for most anywhere else in the world’, and it is significant that Pollitt should have cradle communists the phenomenon of the absent father was identified produced such a narrative at the moment of his disillusionment with the with heavy political commitments of the male party activist and the international in 1939–40.123 If that again suggests a form of personal explicit priority which the party gave to the male world of industrial capital in relation to the party, claims of pride and authenticity also work. It was not his father but his mother, for example, whom the young answered allegations of extraneousness to British society, so that Pollitt’s Pat Devine recalls singing revolutionary songs to him in the bath and memoirs were celebrated in just these terms even by Dutt.124 reading him stories from the life of Lenin. In the typical party family, it In interviews and party autobiographies cradle communists often was the relationship between the children and their mother that was refer to joining the party as a ‘natural’ process, with no particular event most significant.129 marking or precipitating the transition. One even compared it to confir- Conversely, where communists mention the political role of their 256 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 257 fathers, it is striking that in the great majority of cases these were not a result of victimisation or unemployment. This, no doubt, is why so themselves communists at the time that their sons or daughters became many of these relationships date from the inter-war years, and might politically active.130 Two examples from Yorkshire between the wars are offer a further clue as to why they figure strongly in Graves’s research on Betty Kane, whose father was an ‘armchair socialist’ who took her to this period. Hall, for example, was a sheet-metal worker by trade, but was both Labour and communist and meetings in Sheffield, and Betty victimised in 1921 and like others in the same position obtained work as Harrison, who accompanied her father round the West Riding a co-operative insurance agent.136 Though the fathers of both Kane and campaigning for the ILP.131 Marian Jessop, whose father became a Jessop were engineers, Jessop too describes hers as enduring long periods prominent Labour councillor in Leeds, began her book The Petticoat of unemployment on account of his union activities between the wars. Rebellion with a dedication to him, like Pollitt’s in Serving My Time,but In the South Wales coalfield, two communist fathers standing out as inverting it in gender terms. ‘I was lucky to be born of a father who is introducing their daughters to politics were not miners at this point, but a socialist’, she began. “I told everyone I was a socialist, but what I was respectively a storeman and fish-shop proprietor.137 Also from the coal- really saying was ‘My dad is a socialist, so I am a socialist too”.’ fields, Mary Doherty of Cowdenbeath provided a depiction of a father- Prefacing a history of the women’s movement, the dedication barely daughter relationship in her memoir A Miner’s Lass. ‘He discussed all the mentioned her mother.132 working class issues with me…and what should be done to create a social- Fathers who were themselves communists did not often earn such trib- ist society’, she wrote. ‘It was inevitable that I would join the Communist utes. Graves found that ‘the daughters of ILP men in particular empha- Party and in 1926 I did.’ However, despite the title Doherty gave her sised socialism as a life lived according to an ethical code which book, her father was victimised in 1921, and as a casual labourer was governed relationships at home, in the community and internation- reduced to collecting old railway sleepers to sell as firewood. Hence ally’.133 In contrast, though communist fathers were not necessarily any perhaps the seemingly unusual quality of their relationship: at the first less committed to their own code of ethics, this was focused on public party training class Doherty attended, only two of the fifty present were activism, the point of production and the relentless pressure of activi- either miners’ lasses or anybody else’s lasses.138 ties away from the home. Even exceptions seem to confirm the general If higher rates of male recruitment were attributable to influences rule. In Birtley, County Durham, Bill Hall was a model father: chang- beyond the family, forms of mentorship within the workplace were ing nappies, doing the housework during his wife’s confinements, organ- perhaps the most heavily gendered of all. These workplace cultures and ising Sunday picnics in defiance of the local chapel culture—and environments were at least as disparate as the varieties of the family, and bringing all seven of his children with him into the communist move- can only be conveyed in summary form at the risk of severe over-simpli- ment. ‘Politics was never for me a grim thing like some party members’ fication. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that these forms of mentorship sons and daughters’, recalled one of them. ‘Politics for us was enjoying were most significant where there were strong traditions of inter-gener- life.’134 What was also distinctive about Hall, however, was the continu- ational induction into the skills and customs of the male worker, and ing influence of his ILP background, reflected in the encouragement he where either working practices, working environments or strong inde- gave his children to read writers like Morris and Edward Carpenter, and pendent union cultures provided a space in which values and ideas could his attempts to foster egalitarian gender relations within the home. In be transmitted without regard to managerial oversight. In some of these Brighton, James Austin Smith was the leading figure in a successful party cases, there was no sharp distinction between these and familial lines of branch, based on a closely knit membership of ‘whole families’ and succession, as father-son relationships found expression in the masculine marked by an especially pronounced sense of comradeship. Again, it world of the workplace. Miners’ lads were a possible case in point. In seems significant that Smith had been a member of the ILP and then South Wales, we have noted three mining communists, Idris Cox, Dai the Labour Party from as early as the first decade of the century, join- Lloyd Davies and Henry Hurn, who all described their fathers playing ing the CPGB only in 1939.135 this role of introducing them to the wider world of union and work- A further insight into workplace cultures is that fathers identified as key place, which in turn provided their introduction to socialism. Cox, for formative influences tended not to have a part in strong collective work example, referred to learning to ‘join in the talk of the older miners’, and union-based identities, or else to have been dislocated from them as and becoming interested in socialism through the influence of an older 258 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 259 miner working alongside him. Davies in the Rhondda, born in 1889, a lar individual who with clear political intent introduced him to writers decade prior to the other two, established himself before the First World like Shaw and London.145 War as the ‘faithful, youthful and enthusiastic’ deputy to the syndicalist Things did not always run smoothly. In most of the cases indicated, Noah Ablett.139 the mentoring figure was not himself a communist and, just as in the Despite the lack of any formal apprenticeship, the progression in family, the adoption of novel and often conflicting political affiliations mining from pit boy to hewer was analogous to apprenticeship cultures sometimes stretched the movement’s latitudinarianism to its limits. At and occasionally referred to in precisely these terms.140 In other occupa- one extreme was Arthur Utting, who recalled the wise toleration of older tions, a more direct relationship can sometimes be established between mentors, declining to operate the anti-communist ‘black circulars’ and apprenticeship and political education. Gary Macartney was an appren- warning him sagely that the communists too on growing older would find tice blacksmith in Glasgow who singled out the influence of a former new parties emerging to their left.146 At the other extreme was Julius communist, John Hill, whose political lessons were later reflected in Jacobs, future secretary of the London Trades Council, who joined his Macartney himself becoming a communist through involvement in the father’s branch of the Furnishing Trades’ union and ‘without pulling any NUWM. ‘So I learned my apprenticeship in more ways than one; not only punches’ ousted him as its leading personality.147 As with so much else in to be a coach blacksmith but to realise what life was going to be about and communist politics, the difference may in part be one of period—from that we would be following on in the footsteps of such people as John the spurning of ‘social fascists’ to the cultivation of ‘working-class Hill.’141 Where Macartney stressed the influence of an individual, others unity’—but there was an inherent ambiguity about such relationships remembered the impression made by collectivities of skilled craftsmen irrespective of period. William Cowe in Rutherglen was from a radical and the examples they provided of ‘real democracy in action’.142 In the family background, attended Socialist Sunday School, received Marx’s post-war period, a layer of older communists now themselves provided Capital for his eighteenth birthday and followed his father onto the rail- both individual and collective exemplars, either encountered in working ways, where his family were ‘all strong Union men and active in the trade relationships or through the responsible positions that many communists union branch’. Possibly the railways, like mining, offered a surrogate occupied in the workplace, allowing their culture of leadership a scope for culture of apprenticeship through its rules of precedence and seniority.148 expression that had few parallels in the world beyond. Winning respect as Certainly, it had well-developed union branch life, and as the only ‘young ‘trade union’ comrades, in some cases the lineage reproduced itself almost lad’ attending his father’s NUR branch Cowe found himself made a good without setting foot outside the factory gate.143 deal of by the older members. What again illustrates the complexity of In the older craft milieux, inter-generational relations were sometimes these inter-generational relationships is Cowe’s account of how he then assisted by the informality of communications classically represented in got the better of an older syndicalist in the branch, to the delight of his the dinner-break dialogues of Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. father, who henceforth became a consistent supporter of his politics. No ‘And then…the older men you worked with always had stories to tell’, doubt there was nothing much lacking in the telling of such stories. recalled one, whose mentor as a French polisher was a veteran of the Nevertheless, they do illustrate both the reciprocity of inter-generational anti-Soviet wars of intervention who seemed to see the political moral in relationships, and their highly gendered character—for as in the memoirs whatever subject they talked about. Within the Woodworkers’ society of of mining communists like Frank Watters, Cowe’s mother and other the late 1930s, both the future Labour politician Eric Heffer and the female relatives are barely mentioned.149 future UCATT president Arthur Utting were set on course for commu- A final possible inter-generational influence was that of schoolteach- nism by ‘elderly’ workmates who lent them the Webbs’ Soviet Communism, ers. Sometimes, like sibling recruitment in activist families, the influence to which the ASW had taken out a bulk order. Both of them also stressed of a left-wing teacher or group of teachers led to multiple adhesions to the significance of the ASW branches as a political ‘training ground’.144 left-wing organisations. At the Coopers’ Company School in East For Jewish communists, the small workshop sometimes provided the same London, where one of the teachers was the future Labour minister opporunity for political contact, and Hymie Fagan, creator of the Michael Stewart, there was a vigorous world affairs society, an informal fictional Bill Taylor, recalled the tailoring workshops of the 1920s as his Left Book Club group and—though this was certainly not Stewart’s ‘university’. He too, however, also picked out the influence of a particu- intention—a stream of recruits to communism via the Labour League 260 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 261 of Youth.150 Though such teachers often reinforced home influences, to meetings of the CPGB historians’ group. Subsequently herself a sometimes their role was more obviously formative. Betty Reid, for distinguished historian, her experiences again illustrate how both the example, who was brought up in a middle-class home of stifling conser- embrace and rejection of the past were accommodated by a commu- vatism and philistinism, singled out the influence of her history teacher nist commitment.159 in the ‘liberating’ step she took of joining the LLY.151 Reid also mentioned the influence of her county librarian, and the debt expressed Trajectories of the left to the public library by a number of interviewees—‘the best institution’, said one, ‘this country’s ever had’—was that it was free of the class and In evoking the ‘lost world’ of British communism, Raphael Samuel gender barriers so often encountered in the schoolroom.152 commented on how communism ‘seemed to run in families, though later- These, indeed, can hardly be overstated. Though there were excep- ally, within a single age band, rather than, as in Labour homes, as a tions, Scottish more often than English, the entrenchment of the class hereditary affair’. Even among Jewish communists, this cannot have been system in education is reflected in the fact that almost all of the posi- a hard-and-fast rule, for Samuel himself was the archetypal cradle tive recollections of schoolteachers we identified relate to grammar communist, brought up as a ‘true believer’ with communist aunts and schools or private schools. Eric Heffer was one exception: he had a uncles as well as cousins.160 Nevertheless, the relatively brief appearance socialist teacher in Hertford—naturally from South Wales—who intro- of communism in British political life does suggest, either that not too duced him to writers like Remarque and Upton Sinclair.153 Another was much should be made of its hereditary aspects, or that what was inher- the future engineering activist and labour historian Eddie Frow, whose ited was not necessarily a party affiliation, but a looser package of values, history teacher was again a socialist, whose lectures Frow later attended cultural reference points and political practices which in a longer at Leeds Labour College.154 By and large, however, for working-class perspective were not coterminous with any single institution. Indeed, it children positive memories of school have to be balanced against stories is only on this understanding that the ‘principle of family succession’ can of cruelty, racism, the humiliation of ‘school money’ and the general be reconciled with the ebb and flow of particular political movements. lack of either individual opportunity or any culture of expectation. ‘I Exactly as we can trace the Labour movement backgrounds of many couldn’t get out quick enough’, said one, a voracious reader who communists, attention has been drawn to Labour activists’ Liberal or obtained his education via the public library.155 With parents either radical home backgrounds, particularly in the early twentieth century.161 weeping or beaming satisfaction according to the case, numerous To the customary interplay of the indigenous and external in the history accounts describe the child as being prematurely withdrawn from of British communism, there might therefore be added the further entan- school to earn a living.156 glement of successive generational cohorts, sometimes distinguished by Beyond the state system, boarding schools offered the possibility of dramatic political punctuations, but also linked by the transmission of a more intensive and socially restricted influence. Even a single commu- ideas and construction of traditions seeping over the boundaries of nist teacher in a conventional school might offer an antidote to ‘back- period and institutional affiliation. To borrow Mannheim’s distinction, bone of England’ upbringings of ‘material comfort and mental these sometimes took the form of consciously recognised models, claimed stupour’.157 Sometimes the whole school offered such an environment. by the communists though not by them alone; but they can also be One was the Liberal-favoured Gresham’s School, Holt, whose several detected in the merely ‘implicit’ or ‘virtual’ patterns by which older forms communist alumni included the spy Donald Maclean and the intellec- of action and belief were reworked or transformed in the making of a tual functionary James Klugmann. Another was A.S. Neill’s new political generation.162 Summerhill, where the poet Richard Goodman was perhaps the most As well as revolutionary and democratic antecedents directly claimed influential of the communist teachers.158 Ros Faith was another prod- by the party, other echoes are therefore also discernible, formally tran- uct of a backbone of England home: an Arnold-Forster whose grand- scended in the higher consciousness of communism but finally proving father had been a minister under Balfour. She too, however, attended more enduring than the party itself. Margot Heinemann recalled of her a ‘progressive’ public school, where she was taken under the wing of the own 1930s’ generation that their parents had already done much of communist historian and translator, Louis Marks, who took her along their thinking for them.163 More than that, from the WEA and the LRD, 262 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 263 to the myriad local bodies of the Labour movement, they had also estab- only ex-Fabians within the party were former guild socialists who had lished many of the institutions in which communists were to do much revolted against the society’s founders, and even the pro-Bolshevik of their doing as well. This was particularly the case once the counter- Bernard Shaw discredited himself by his endorsement of fascism and cultural ambitions of Class Against Class gave way in the 1930s to a general political erraticism. In Christopher Caudwell’s Studies in a Dying Labour movement orientation and the more insidious logic of front poli- Culture, published after Caudwell’s death in Spain, Shaw has pride of tics. Despite the proliferation of new organisations, this represented not place as court jester to the decaying bourgeoisie, again corrupted by the just a broadening out of communist activities but the acknowledgement vision of the expert ‘wielding the powers of the State for the “good” of of disparate legacies from their forbears, like a popular front with the the proletariat’. At worst—and the phrase is more applicable to Shaw past. than most—he was a ‘social fascist’.169 How the communists related to these traditions, which remained Nevertheless, for communists of Caudwell’s generation Shaw was one embodied in both contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous of the most potent of intellectual influences. On the Manchester data- contemporaries, was at all times a matter of considerable tension and base he is mentioned as formative reading by over thirty individuals, a ambiguity. In his study of the Oxford extra-mural tradition, Lawrence figure in excess of that for any other single author. Even the founders of Goldman emphasises the bitterness which arose over the alleged marxism tend to be lost in references to the general impact of marxist communist infiltration of the adult education movement in the 1940s. ideas or reading programmes undertaken after joining the party. Shaw, On the other hand, with its overtones of ‘misplaced idealism’ on the one however, was the very reverse of a canonical influence. Ted Ainley used side, and of a general lack of ‘ruthlessness’ towards the communists on his name as his Lenin School pseudonym. Arthur Horner, who had the other, the episode also finds its place in what Goldman calls the named his first two daughters after Rosa Luxemburg and the anarchist ‘tradition’ of adult education at Oxford: not in the sense of simply Voltairine de Cleyre, named the third after Joan of Arc—following the bracketing its diverse components together, but rather as a ‘lineage and West End triumph of Saint Joan.‘We are all of us Shaw’s pupils’, wrote historical succession’ of which each cohort in turn was conscious of the Catholic apostate Bernal, and Shaw’s profoundly secular influence forming a part.164 An increasing sensitivity to such lineages, overstepping appealed particularly to those breaking free of ‘cant’ and religious indoc- the boundaries of denominational histories, can be detected in a vari- trination.170 To Bernal it was a ‘rational’ and ‘comprehensive’ view of the ety of fields from the women’s suffrage movement to the ‘rise of world as something to ‘control and improve’; and while even he did not Labour’.165 Of more immediate relevance, David Blaazer has depicted endorse Shaw’s fascination with the ‘superman’, the hubris of the the wider popular front agitations of the 1930s as part of an older Bernalian scientist does now look like a variation on the Fabian cult of ‘progressive tradition’ rather than simply a tactic of the Comintern, the expert.171 while Stephen Woodhams has traced a Victorian tradition of ‘moral Often linked with his fellow iconoclast H.G. Wells, Shaw’s appeal was socialism’ through the communist milieux of the popular front period as much to the autodidact as to the ‘expert’ intelligence.172 Moreover, to the emergence of the first New Left.166 Where Blaazer’s concern is to unlike Wells, he was also identified with the constructive exposition of the rescue ‘progressivism’ from its entanglement with an undifferentiated socialist case and what on our evidence was the most influential work of body of communists, Woodhams represents an increasing body of schol- socialist advocacy since the days of Blatchford. This was his Intelligent arship sensitive to how similar considerations might also be brought to Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Fascism, published in 1928 and expanded as bear upon the communists themselves. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the first Pelican selection in 1937. Nourishing as it did the ‘Pelican mind’, on what other basis something like the emergence of the ‘first’ New Left its appeal respected no boundaries except, in a paradoxical fashion, those could possibly be described.167 of generation: for of the twenty-eight individuals with birth dates for Only a few illustrations of these lineages can be picked out here. One, whom we have noted Shaw as a formative influence, eighteen were born largely unheralded by the communists themselves, was that of in the period 1903–14, and another four in 1918–21—over half a Fabianism. Scorned in the marxist ‘classics’ they studied, Fabianism was century after Shaw himself (born 1856), but growing up just in time to represented there as the creed of the ‘haughty bourgeois, graciously catch the first and updated editions of the book respectively. Without descending to the proletariat to liberate it from above’.168 Almost the comparative research, it is impossible to establish whether Shaw’s ideas 264 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 265 were particularly conducive to communism or at least—for Mosley was appear to have been Anglicans. Alan Ecclestone, the best known of them, another admirer—to the political extremes.173 It is suggestive, however, had been strongly influenced by Conrad Noel’s militant Anglo- that of the handful of Hugh Jenkins’s Putney Labour activists who Catholicism and joined the Labour Party in the 1920s even before he belonged to the same generation, one of these too was converted to began training for the ministry. Practising a democratic but exacting form socialism ‘overnight’ when the Pelican Intelligent Woman’s Guide of church organisation influenced by G.D.H. Cole, he survived the appeared.174 departures of a succession of curates and joined the CPGB in 1948.179 Cutting across Shaw’s image as the quintessential Edwardian who Rare as was this particular form of dual membership, given Arthur lived to see his ideas becoming out-of-date, this might again suggest the Koestler’s perception of the CPGB as like a vicarage tea party, it was no contemporaneity of what are habitually constructed as different genera- doubt appropriate that the sons and daughters of assorted rectories tions.175 On the other hand, Shaw’s longevity and pro-Sovietism made should have figured quite prominently in its ranks. One of our intervie- him a special case. Although near-contemporaries of his like Morris and wees, whose father was a curate in Hoxton and Nottinghamshire, even Blatchford are also described as formative influences, the context is described herself in the terms of a cradle communist: almost invariably that of ideas picked up within the home, or else relates to an older generation, epitomised by Pollitt, whose politicisation You see we were brought up as, I think you’d call it, Christian predated the CPGB. Shaw’s significance is that he is described as a direct Socialists…It was something which you were not aware of learn- contemporary influence by more 1930s’ communists than mention Laski, ing, it was the atmosphere of your home and your life…the terri- Strachey, Cole and Dutt put together. His nearest rivals, at least among ble conditions in London, the children in the wards and that sort political writers, were those other superannuated gradualists the Webbs, of thing. You began to feel, oh well, it needs more than this to whose Soviet Communism (1935) conveyed the current appeals of Stalinism improve all this.…. It was just a sort of natural next step for in distinctly Fabian terms. me.180 If Shaw’s appeal was to the critical intelligence, Soviet Communism also represented another strand feeding into British communism, namely the Others who took this step, or something like it, included a number of notion of ‘service’ or disinterested public activism with which both intellectuals from the party’s early years. That Anthony Blunt was the son Fabianism and an idealised image of the USSR came to be associated. of an Anglican clergyman only seemed to compound his infamy, but so Raphael Samuel was foremost in showing how communism in this too were Randall Swingler, the poet, Daily Worker literary editor and perspective represented a transmutation of religious ideas and practices godson of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the doyenne of the CPGB either within the individual or across the generations.176 Victor Kiernan, historians’ group, Dona Torr, whose father was a canon of Chester himself a Cambridge communist of nonconformist upbringing, Cathedral. If Swingler, according to Andy Croft, carried into his literary wondered whether the social and political activism of his generation communism elements of Christian Platonism, evangelical witness and depended on this pervasive religious inheritance as one of its vital and ‘Wykehamist principles of service’, it seems more challenging to pick out irreplacable ‘taproots’, though representing not so much the teleology of even virtual continuities in Torr’s exegeses of historical materialism.181 secularisation as the reworking of a sense of mission.177 Certainly some- Nevertheless, a subterranean passage can certainly be traced through to thing like this appears to have been the inspiration for the collection the histories and moralities of her protégés of the historians’ group, Christianity and the Social Revolution, published by Gollancz in 1935. ‘It may notably the most heavily indebted of all, E. P. Thompson, who in 1955 well be that the time has come for religion to dissolve like an insubstan- acknowledged Torr as his greatest support and intellectual mentor.182 tial dream…dying to be born again as the Holy Spirit of a righteous For Kiernan, Hill and Thompson among the historians, to say noth- social order’, wrote one of the co-editors, John Lewis.178 Four years later ing of working-class leaders like Horner, Cox and Murphy, early religious Lewis joined the communist party. influences were of a nonconformist character. Indeed, it was this dissent- As a former unitarian minister, Lewis was one of those who person- ing tradition which Raphael Samuel particularly associated with the ally experienced this rebirth. Among the others there were a number of earnestness of communist party culture and its notions of the elect.183 practising ministers of religion, six in the 1960s, the majority of whom Here again, a number of preachers were attracted to communism, 266 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 267 although they appear to have lacked the relative independence that Victorian municipality and Sidney Webb’s programme for the Labour allowed Anglicans like Noel, Ecclestone, Hewlett Johnson and R.W. Party to defend the ‘fullest possible extension of democratically elected Cummings to sow the seeds of communist commitments even from the local bodies’ against the bureaucratic centralisation of the Attlee pulpit.184 Born a year before Ecclestone in 1903, Bill Allen was in many years.190 Brian, no doubt inspired by his mother’s work on the ways his dissenting counterpart. He too had joined both the Labour Party Manchester education committee, pursued the same broad conception and the ministry in the late 1920s, influenced by his father-in-law, a of the public good as a crusader for comprehensive education. Bradford building union activist. Already disillusioned by MacDonald, Seemingly, these career options confirm the view that the welfare profes- and a student of Marx, MacMurray and the Webbs’ Soviet Communism, sions did not so much generate radical attitudes as attract those seeking Allen also resembles Ecclestone in having joined the CPGB in reaction ways in which to pursue them and thus, in the words of one communist to the ‘second great betrayal’ of the Attlee years. Unlike Ecclestone, teacher secure ‘a more organic mode of existence’.191 however, Allen was forced from his pulpit by his Dulwich congregation, Amidst these lineages, two features stand out. One is the significance and though defiantly announcing his intention of preaching on ‘scien- of an idealised construction of the USSR for recruits from these back- tific’ rather than ‘supernatural’ lines, is soon to be found working for the grounds. Several joined the CPGB immediately after visiting the country. party’s literature distributors. Ecclestone too was denied preferment, but Dr Robert Dunstan, who defected from the Labour Party in 1924, was an not otherwise impeded in recruiting party members or modelling his early example. Others include Roger Simon, Robin Jardine, a former parish magazine New Community on factory papers.185 Locality as well as theological student turned towards socialism by work in the Gorbals, and demonination mattered: in areas with strong Labour movement tradi- Archibald Robertson, the secularist son of a bishop who joined at the age tions like South Wales and Lancashire, allegiances to chapel and party of fifty-two and proved unstinting in Stalinist apologetics. Even beyond were not always incompatible, and references can be found to commu- the party, Christian publicists like the ‘red’ Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett nist lay preachers like the methodist Jack Abel, who recruited to the party Johnson, had an enormous influence over public perceptions of Stalin’s its longstanding Lancashire district secretary Syd Abbott.186 In general, Russia. Pat Sloan, the most assiduous of such propagandists within the though, it seems that nonconformist preachers who thought religion an party’s ranks, shared many of the same influences. The son of a wealthy insubstantial dream did not remain preachers for long.187 businessman, he first became interested in the USSR at Cambridge in the With socialism and collectivism exercising a pull for some forty years 1920s through his supervisor Maurice Dobb. As secretary of the univer- before the CPGB was thought of, inevitably there were parents or grand- sity’s newly founded Marshall Society, then promoting ideas of commu- parents who had already thought their way out of religion and embraced nity and good works for distressed proletarians, Sloan was also drawn a secular notion of progress and good works. Examples of these more towards the Promethean Society, an eclectic expression of unfocused considerable continuities were the brothers Roger and Brian Simon, youth revolt, and did not actually join the communist party until return- whose parents Ernest and Shena Simon were leading civic benefactors ing from a first spell of teaching in Russia in 1932.192 Once having taken and Liberal politicians in Manchester. They were also confirmed collec- the step, Sloan was one of those whose commitment for the time being tivists, eventually joining the Labour Party, and Ernest Simon attributed was total. Far from taking a form of Platonism into the party, he used the the commencement of his public career to the Webbs’ Poor Law pages of the New Statesman to defend the banning of contemporary expo- Minority Report of 1908.188 Bringing up their children in an ‘atmosphere sitions of idealism and the ‘antiquated pre-scientific philosophy’ of Plato of public service’, and incidentally sending them to Gresham’s School, himself.193 Subsequently, when John Lewis presented Soviet morality in they instilled in them the idea of careers dedicated to these ends rather terms of ‘honourable service rather than gain’, it was Sloan who rebuked than the family’s engineering business.189 For Roger Simon, ‘the service him with the new Stalinist orthodoxy legitimising personal wealth and of humanity’ led into work as a local government solicitor and the further success as the basis of human effort.194 Webbian step of producing the Local Government News Service of the LRD, Sloan also illustrates a second feature of many of these recruits, which his father had supported financially in its Fabian inception. In namely that of delayed recruitment. In Sloan’s case, like Robertson’s, this 1950 he even defended the Webbs’ approach to local government in the was clearly linked with exposure to the stronger attraction of Soviet pages of the Modern Quarterly, citing the ‘proud independence’ of the communism. For Cold War recruits like Allen and Ecclestone, the context 268 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 269 was the open breach between British Labour and Soviet communism, so or industrial terms. Politically, it attempted rather self-consciously to take that Ecclestone joined directly as a result of Labour’s condemnation of on the campaigning functions of earlier activist parties. Industrially, the ‘Prague coup’ in February 1948.195 Both Allen and Ecclestone had Richard Croucher and Nina Fishman have shown how the CPGB’s influ- been strongly pro-Soviet since at least the 1930s, Ecclestone even form- ence among the lay officers providing the sinews of British trade union- ing a branch of the FSU, and the perceived incompatibility of such views ism always reflected a degree of adaptation to the movement’s diverse with the post-war Labour Party provided the CPGB with a number of conventions.200 One result of this is that significant populations can be recruits and reinforced the sharper divide now existing between social identified moving into the CPGB, sometimes without any marked sense democracy and communism. In this sense, ‘delayed’ recruitment may be of personal discontinuity and with ‘delays’, whether individual or contrasted with ‘natural’ processes of recruitment commonly favouring collective, representing a complex process in which radicalisation and the the Labour Party. In other cases, however, delayed recruitment reflected blockage to its expression elsewhere combined with the increasing viabil- the more accommodating attitudes or policies adopted by the CPGB ity of the CPGB itself as a vehicle for such commitments. itself. Roger Simon, for example, had been put off by the communists’ rough handling of Labour speakers when he went to Cambridge in 1932, The ragged-trousered revolutionaries and did not join until he too visited Russia three years later.196 Ivor Montagu, another example, was a lifelong Fabian and a less Different lineages linked with different party cultures, and we have seen untypical one than he possibly realised. Unselfconsciously in his memoirs, how a sensitivity to such issues provides a necessary corrective to presen- he recounted his early missionary activities on behalf of table tennis—a tations of British communism in purely monolithic terms. On the other sport ‘particularly suited to the lower paid…in crowded towns’—as well hand, the key to the communists’ effectiveness, and to the very notion as his own more expansive enthusiasm for cricket. Well known for his that they shared a common political ‘heyday’, is that communism for a patrician accent and demeanour, he once turned up at the Daily Worker period brought these different strands together within a distinctive polit- threatening an exposé of Harrods’ food prices.197 Whatever Clydebank ical culture marked by a strong sense of purposiveness, cohesion and Riveter would have made of that, as a former BSP member who had mutual affinity. The CPGB functioned not just as a party ‘comme les autres’, undertaken not to spend his parental allowance on politics until he came but as ‘the’ party to its members, and with whatever degree of condi- of age, Montagu nevertheless waited another six years before joining the tionality and elasticity, the diverse recruitments to the party in the 1930s CPGB at the end of 1931.198 and 1940s all found at least a temporary political resting place there. In An appreciation of impediments and delays offers insights into the 1952, when the party organised a conference on Britain’s cultural overall trajectory of party membership as well as the movements of indi- heritage, it was revealing of the separate worlds of British communism viduals. Although Annie Kriegel also identified generation as a primary that only one ‘industrial comrade’ should have spoken, and should have form of stratification within the communist movement, the sole deter- described his Yorkshire ‘mining comrades’ as ‘staggered’ that he should mining factor she identified in the crystallisation of different generations, want to do so. On the other hand, it was just as revealing that he should and implicitly in the making of different cohorts of communists, was the have turned up at all, challenging Hollywood gangsterism with the fluctuating strategy and policy of the Comintern.199 Once it is accepted, achievements of the miners’ bands—‘while their selections…may not be however, that party membership was not ‘determined’ at all, then it is progressive, they are certainly open to transformation’—and amateur evident that without a degree of convergence between these strategies and productions of The Gondoliers. Condescendingly or deferentially, the intel- the desires and expectations of potential recruits, the communists of these lectuals gathered before him will certainly have indicated their different generations would not have been communists in the first place. approval.201 The CPGB’s changing positions with regard to women, intellectuals, Raphael Samuel identified an affinity between a communist cadre perhaps also to Christians, brings this out clearly in the lives of particular ‘bringing understanding from outside to the people’ and a Fabian public- individuals as well as in wider patterns of recruitment. In a more general service ethic, planning and administering to the ‘common good’.202 We sense too, the party managed for a time to stake a claim to some of the have seen that working-class communists did not necessarily have this territory and lineages of the old activist left, whether defined in political sense of coming to ‘the people’ from outside, indeed, were unusually 270 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY TRAJECTORIES AND COLLISIONS 271 sensitive to the pretensions of those who did. On the other hand, their behind such frustration. ‘The way the bosses, parasites, rentiers, land- own ideas of ‘the people’, and the ways in which they sought to repre- lords and royalty now rub our noses in it! It is an insult, and I, for one, sent them, emphasised themes of dignity, service, leadership, culture and wonder time and time again how we can allow it to go on.’ 204 collective aspirationalism immediately recognisable to the Fabian-style A world away from the uplift of socialist realism, The Ragged Trousered reformer and allowing for the discovery of a shared political vocabulary. Philanthropists was described by Samuel as a ‘deeply pessimistic work’, Pollitt, who had less sense of coming ‘from outside’ than almost anybody, identifying socialists as a dissenting minority, isolated, embattled and with set the tone in which ‘street-corner loungers’ were disavowed, rooms and a distinct sense of mission setting them apart from their fellows.205 members’ collars kept in pristine condition and communists enjoined to Despite its proletarian allure, it conveyed the image of the socialist as at set the highest standards in their own work and conduct. ‘This is no new one with, and yet distinct from, the larger body of the British working thought on my part’, he told an audience of professional workers in 1946. class. This was an aspect of the work about which Samuel wrote bril- ‘The old organisation of the most skilled craftsmen in the land knew what liantly, linking it with the ‘protestant’ culture setting the communists it was doing when its initiation ceremony exhorted new members “so to apart as a ‘peculiar people’. Nevertheless, Tressell’s wider popularity with conduct themselves in the workshop that the employer would be Labour movement activists suggests that this was also a shared peculiar- prompted to ask where others like them could be obtained”.’203 ity, reaching back, as Samuel showed, to the Owenites, and embracing If Shaw spoke better than anybody to the ‘Pelican mind’, a defining every radical social movement showing the same ‘will to lead’ and text for craftsmen-communists was Robert Tressell’s Ragged Trousered presumption to the right of leadership. More than that, where Samuel Philanthropists. Published in 1914, Tressell’s novel is mentioned in saw affinities, there were bound to be hidden connections and trajecto- connection with over twenty individuals on the Manchester database— ries too. It is this recognition that finally serves to qualify and historicise more than mention any other work of fiction, including seminal transat- those suggestions of communism as a complete, distinct and self- lantic influences like Jack London. Set in the Edwardian building trades, contained social identity with which we began our account, and locate it it provides another glimpse into the vanishing world of craft-based radi- as we would locate any political movement, within the sources of its own calism which loomed so large in the communists’ collective imagination, recruitment. and had a particular significance in the inter-generational transmission of ideas. In nearly every case where we know the circumstances of its reading, it is through being introduced to it by an older family member (six examples), a work-based mentor (also six) or a teacher (one). Its standing in the cultural world of the CPGB was sealed in 1955 when the first unabridged edition of the novel was published by the commu- nist publishers Lawrence & Wishart. Heralding its appearance as a ‘political and literary event of outstanding importance’, Pollitt himself linked its idealisation of craft worker with the predominance of skilled workers in the working-class movement and its vision of a future soci- ety in which the values of ‘labour and craftmanship’ would be reflected in the lives of all working people. In the meantime, however, Pollitt not only acknowledged the sense of distance between Tressell’s hero and his workmakes, but admitted the parallels that existed with his own party. ‘They explained what they called “the position” and what we now call “the situation”’, he noted wrily; ‘but they could not rally their fellow workers to their support’. Pollitt could never have described the work- ers as the ‘enemy’ or the ‘real oppressors’, submitting like so many cattle to the existing state of things. He did however share some of the sentiments AFTERWORD 273 communist parties in which the British case represents a relatively high level of interaction with a variety of radical and labour movement milieux.2 Communism was nothing if not a political formation of inter- AFTERWORD national scope, and we have seen how its forms of leadership, organisa- tion and political identity were shaped accordingly. Nevertheless, the influence of its diverse sources of recruitment and fields of activity was not simply negated by the act of joining the party, but helped determine both its patterns of adhesion and defection and the character of the rela- tionship which party membership represented. The ‘complex transac- tion’ we have traced between member and party was an ongoing one in which the balance between different issues of social and political iden- When Walt Whitman contradicted himself, it was because he was vast, tity was subject to incalculable variations, in each case shifting over time. he contained multitudes. The communist party in Britain never If any single motif is closest to capturing this sense of continuous flux comprised a multitude, but tens of thousands of individuals passed and remaking, it is that of generation. Overlapping, indeterminate and through it ranks in its seventy-one year history, and one can hardly give continuously interactive, generation not only provides a clue to difference a sense of how and why they did so without their experiences sometimes within the communist party, but helps locate the party as a whole within contradicting each other. Approaching this phenomenon from a range of a number of competing historical narratives. At one level it conveys the perspectives, we have tried to acknowledge these complexities and give sense of a distinct generational experience, or set of experiences, defined some idea of the different rites and passages that were possible through by the ideological and organisational imperatives of Bolshevism and the this highly distinctive political formation. In recent accounts, reduction- positing of a fundamental cleavage in the politics of the left arising from ist presentations of communism as a sort of emanation of Moscow’s will the Russian Revolution. At an institutional level, it reinforces the ‘before’ have sometimes been referred to as ‘essentialist’.1 Without entering into and ‘after’ of the individual conversion narrative with a larger genera- that debate, we have found this, along with every other form of essen- tional barrier separating communism as a movement from its predeces- tialism, to be unsustainable as a basis for any convincing account of sors and successors, as well as the alternative traditions, ongoing or communist activism in Britain. ‘suppressed’, sometimes held to have seamlessly linked them. In Britain, Our own account makes no claim to be definitive. Though evidently Walter Kendall’s account of the CPGB’s origins remains the strongest the result of competing pressures upon an especially fertile mind, it is version of this interpretation, stressing not just the obvious fact of a fitting that none of Raphael Samuel’s writings on British communism rupture but its total character: the turning of a movement ‘inside out’, reached the stage of completion, as if their status as a sort of continu- switching it round by ‘one hundred and eighty degrees’, marching its ous work in progress was a matter of basic methodological principle. members off ‘in the opposite direction’ and leaving no political legacy Within the limitations of a single monograph, we have tried to do justice for those who came after. The communist party, wrote Kendall, to the protean character even of this most formative of political identi- ‘supplanted one tradition without in any sense implanting another’. Its ties. However, there is no doubt that a different selection of examples, or members, already in 1921, were not human beings but ‘puppets’.3 a later chronological focus, might have made for a rather different At the general level of Kendall’s revolutionary ‘line of march’, the emphasis. Still less, as indicated at the outset, is any claim advanced here character and dating of this rupture may be argued out indefinitely. If, regarding the typicality or atypicality of the British case, and it is intrin- on the other hand, we apply the concept of generation prosopographi- sic to the argument of complexity that it admits the possibility of alter- cally, then we also need a sense of the cohort after cohort which had still native readings as well as methodological pluralism and a diverse source in 1921 to negotiate their terms of entry into this narrative. As we have base. Nevertheless, beyond the negative point of the self-evident inade- seen, they did so in the most varied circumstances, and at different stages quacy of totalitarian conceptions as applied to an organisation like the in their own diverse life histories. Rather than a line of march, the routes CPGB, we have also made a positive case for a comparative typology of into, through, and often out of, the communist party resemble one of 274 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY AFTERWORD 275 those dilatory British May Day processions, with contingents arriving at counterparts. But between Boughton, repeatedly adjusting and readjust- different times, bands playing different tunes, and marchers singing Pie ing his commitments, and Alan Bush, who could never have left the in the Sky or Casey Jones in their ignorance of the words of the Internationale. CPGB and before his death in 1995 could not even leave behind the ‘When we are assembled in Hyde Park, the ridiculous smallness of our image of the USSR he could scarcely comprehend having collapsed, one demonstration becomes evident; and no wonder it is small; such organ- has an impression of the range of possible experiences even within the isation as there has been breaks down entirely, the resolution is put at narrowest subcategories. Neither is more representative than the other; different times from the different platforms, and the bands, with the but it is the recognition of complexity, not monolithicity, which alone can remains of their various contingents, take the first opportunity to slip encompass both. shamefacedly away.’4 Dating from 1924, this was the account of a young Reade’s dream of a better May Day was that of a disciplined march- ‘old’ Etonian, Arthur Reade, whose own peregrinations led through ing order, the synchronised rendition of revolutionary anthems, and the enthusiasms for Trotsky and Ramsay MacDonald’s National Labour declamation of common texts in the several languages of the workers, breakaway, before settling into a more conventional existence as a colo- including Esperanto.6 Like Esperanto itself, in Britain at least things never nial magistrate. Whatever one wants to make of such a career, it was quite happened this way. Nevertheless, if one stood back a little, or took hardly that of a puppet. the sort of aerial perspective that was just then becoming possible, the In closing with the reminder of mutability, there is a final, biographi- marchers in Reade’s picture seem a very definite entity: huddled together cal essentialism to be avoided which would string these affiliations in the vastness of the park, trailing away at the edges, occasionally together as the disparate emanations of a single fixed personality. In attracting the curious, but easily distinguished from the footballers and Britain, as we have seen, communists themselves often preferred such picnickers surrounding them. Over the years, the composition of the ‘continuity’ narratives as a way of embedding themselves in a wider crowd gradually changes, and numbers contract and distend, though progressive tradition; at the level both of the individual and the institu- some it seems are unable to keep away. The slogans on the placards vary, tion, far less was made of communism as an ‘existential watershed’ than not only across the decades, but sometimes from year to year; though was true of some other European parties. A Labour Monthly obituary of there is also something distinctive about the language used, as well as the the composer Rutland Boughton put it succinctly: Boughton had carrying it about above one’s head. Between their coming together in a remained the ‘same man’ as a Cold War peace campaigner in Warsaw common purpose, and their straggling away to pursue that purpose in as on first being stirred to political consciousness by reading Ruskin and their diverse walks of life, we get a glimpse, not perhaps of the commu- Morris half a century earlier. Belied and yet complemented by the notion nist party alone, but of some of the wider characteristics of left-wing of the ‘backslider’ or ‘traitor’, the continuity narrative here served as a political activism in twentieth-century Britain. way of claiming Ruskin and Morris themselves for communism, glossing over the reshaping of the individual and the profound effect of the times in which Boughton lived. And yet again, if not entirely the same man, Boughton was certainly not a different one. Joining the CPGB in 1926, he proclaimed as communism’s ‘real leaders’ not just Ruskin and Morris, but Plato, Jesus, Hardie and Bernard Shaw; and with his long-haired, ‘aristacratickle’ variant of ethical communism had left, rejoined and left again by the time of his death in 1960.5 For another communist composer, Alan Bush, who in 1924 succeeded Boughton as conductor of the London Labour Choral Union, communism was a more transfor- mative experience involving the remaking of his creative identity and blockages to a promising career offset only by the compensatory patron- age of the GDR. Both were communists and anti-modernists, devotees of Soviet cultural policy unmoved by the hounding of their Russian METHODS AND SOURCES 277 other academics who pronounce on such issues. Symptomatic at once of a sense of election and a highly literate political culture, communists’ ability to articulate a sense of self, or at least of their public selves, was A NOTE ON METHODS AND SOURCES if anything rather pronounced. Albeit to a much lesser degree, similar considerations even apply to the short ‘institutional’ or ‘cadre’ autobiographies of British communists which provided us with a second major biographical source. As a record of a substantial body of non-elite British political activists, these appear to be unique. Based on practices already established in the USSR, the compilation of such biographies was generalised throughout the Comintern during the 1930s, and by 1938 the CPGB had collected some Research for this book was based on contemporary party archives and five hundred of them.3 After briefly falling into abeyance, their collec- political texts and the reading and recording of communist life histories. tion then recommenced in earnest in 1941–2 and about three thousand All sources drawn upon directly are indicated in the footnotes. Very occa- personal files dating from this period until the mid-1960s are held with sionally an identity has been suppressed for reasons of privacy or confi- the CPGB archives in Manchester. Though some of the earlier files were dentiality. A few of the ‘additional’ (non-project) interviews, along with consulted by us in the Comintern archives, most of these were not imme- notes and correspondence received by the Manchester project, are not diately accessible to researchers. While benefitting from summary infor- currently accessible in any archive. With these exceptions, all our sources mation derived from them by Peter Huber, our own research was mainly are open to researchers and can be checked in the usual way. based on the biographies in Manchester. Two features of the research were of particular importance for an Internationally, access to such sources has given rise to a flourishing enquiry of the scope and character of that attempted here. The first, literature in which reference has again been made to the standardised which gave rise to the idea of the project in the first place, was the avail- forms of the biographies, ‘designed to comply not to subjective experi- ability of a range of biographical sources probably without parallel in ence, but with what was felt to be the linearly correct political develop- respect of other British political parties. In addition to our own project ment of a militant party member’.4 This was encouraged by the interviews, numbering nearly a hundred, and summaries of other inter- questionnaire format used, including sections on social background, views recorded for the Manchester project, life-history materials education, occupation, political responsibilities and affiliations and past consulted included nearly seventy further oral interviews and a similar or present differences with the party. Quite apart from the homogenis- number of published or unpublished autobiographies.1 Space precludes ing effect of such a format, the inception of the biographies as a tool of detailed discussion of the character of these testimonies and the diverse political control also served as possible constraint. In Britain, it was forms and contexts in which they were constructed. Nevertheless, if an hardly coincidental that the first bulge of them should have coincided immediate generalisation is allowable, it is that stock references to the with the aftermath of the Moscow trials and the Comintern’s preoccu- diffidence of communist narrators, or to the depersonalised, sometimes pation with ‘Trotskyist’ penetration. Similarly, the post-war peak of the third-person narrative forms into which they fell, need very considerable early 1950s occurred against the backdrop of a new wave of show trials modification in respect of our own research.2 In part, this may be due to and heightened ‘revolutionary vigilance’ in the matter of appointments, timing: compared with interviews of our own from the 1980s, even the transfers, recruitment and the readmission of lapsed members.5 In same interviewees were often less constrained by a shared party loyalty France, the biographies from this latter period, i.e. corresponding to the and sense of discipline and more reflective about what the commitment ones which we consulted, are said to have become more intrusive and to communism had meant in their lives. Although we have not carried policier even by comparison with the 1930s.6 In 1953, a British respondent out the necessary comparative research, we should be very surprised to whose membership had been broken by a spell in the Labour Party discover that these communist lives were more standardised and anony- described it as ‘strange, even menacing’ to be asked for a biography mous than those of most other social groups, not excluding ourselves and amidst a ‘mysterious silence’ as to its purpose and potential uses.7 No 278 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY METHODS AND SOURCES 279 doubt it tells us something of the relationship between member and party enough was included to provide an illuminating body of testimonies, that the right of the latter to collect such information was so widely particularly regarding formative influences and experiences and the accepted. Though clearly this offers insights into the political culture of tensions between personal and political commitments that the life of an Stalinism, the usefulness of the biographies for any wider historical activist involved. For the present project, we consulted around a third of purpose might seem to be correspondingly weakened. the files held in Manchester. These comprised the opening alphabetical At least in Britain, however, it is difficult to regard the biographies as sequence (A-G), those for members holding executive-level positions or instruments of ‘an almost perfect system of surveillance’.8 In the post- having attended the Lenin School, and a random selection of the war period, despite the correlation between ‘vigilance’ and the numbers remaining files. collected, the biographies were usually generated through attendance at Information from these and a wide range of other sources was stored party schools or in applying for full-time positions rather than for on the biographical database which provided the other distinctive feature expressly disciplinary purposes. Whereas in France and Italy they were of the research. Occasionally referred to in the text as the Manchester collected even on transfer from one party district to another, procedures database, the immediate rationale for constructing such a tool was a in Britain were less systematic and no biography appears to have been modest and pragmatic one. We were under no illusion as to how the use held at King Street for many established functionaries and industrial of computers for similar projects had become associated with the fetishi- cadres for whom no specific occasion for one had arisen. Again in sation of ‘aggregates’, flattening out the category of experience and contrast to France, where it gave rise to public scandals and the neolo- reducing complex actors to the common denominator of the measurable gism bioter, the practice was little remarked upon by party members, and unit.14 We not only shared these reservations, but were mindful of Luisa none of our interviewees spontaneously mentioned it. Though respon- Passerini’s observation that what appears unique in personal accounts is dents were asked to detail differences with the party, there was no ques- often what throws most light on shared values and cultural stereotypes, tion concerning family or personal connections with suspect elements, and which risks being obliterated by the method and mindset of the ques- including police and ‘members of enemy parties’, such as can be found tionnaire.15 Specifically in the field of communist historiography, we also in the pre-war French questionnaires.9 Consequently, even for a member took note of how a previous survey like Harvey Klehr’s had focused on of the CPGB’s inner circle like Emile Burns, who certainly had such asso- ‘party-career data’ and the detailing of Soviet connections in a manner ciations, no document recording this information appears to have been seemingly predetermining the construction of a ‘total’ party member.16 held by the party in Britain; for real intrusiveness, including tapped tele- Our own research goals were both more ambitious and more exploratory, phone conversations and intercepted correspondence of an entirely and no quantitative method of which we are aware can capture the private character, one has to go to the files now being released which MI5 complexity of the multiple, interacting roles and relationships whose maintained on behalf of a liberal democracy. In a famous intervention significance in the formation of political identities we found attested in in 1929, the Comintern functionary Manuilsky complained of practices the individual life histories.17 Wary of these obvious methodological like deviation-hunting having to be ‘forcibly injected’ into the CPGB, pitfalls, at the most basic level we therefore envisaged a structured qual- which adhered to them only for form’s sake.10 On the basis of his itative database which would involve no restriction on the range and German experiences, Arthur Koestler noted with bewilderment the fail- depth of qualitative information recorded but simply help us get at it ure of the CPGB’s ‘lotus-eaters’ to root out heresy.11 It is certainly more easily. remarkable that in the aftermath of the 1930s’ purges the CPGB should Continuously enhanced in the course of writing these chapters, there report to Moscow that its vetting of district committees had unearthed was no sense in which the database, like the research itself, could ever not ‘one single case’ of ‘politically unreliable elements’.12 be ‘complete’. No attempt was made to identify a representative sample The result for historians is a less controlled and formulaic body of of communists. Even had we had access to the sort of prefiltered census testimonies than might have been anticipated. Detailing his early family data allowing Paul Thompson to identify a quota sample for his pioneer- responsibilities, one respondent noted that he ‘put that in because I ing The Edwardians,multidimensional lines of differentiation meant that believe it had a great effect on my life’.13 Though an evaluation of what there were no simple criteria by which such a sample could have been went in and what stayed out must again await another opportunity, identified.18 Not so much constrained by the unevenness of our sources 280 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY METHODS AND SOURCES 281 as wishing to take advantage of it, we recorded information without much longer period. Where the database itself was of inestimable value restriction to any sub-population, along with the source of data to allow was in the greatly enhanced ability it gave us to compare testimonies the identification of biases. As well as ‘party-career data’, this included relating to similar issues and areas of activity. We were certainly alert to information as to personal, religious, political, cultural or industrial asso- the significance of subjectivities and individual trajectories, for it was ciations, maintained either before or concurrently with communist party precisely this dimension that we found missing in much existing commu- membership. As far as were were able, we recorded this information for nist historiography.21 On the other hand, it seemed just as clear that the those who went ‘through’ the CPGB as well as ‘into’ it, at different levels very concept of a stereotype or common system of values, including and in different spheres of activity, and with details where available of those implicit in any claim of representativeness for the individual case, their subsequent histories. Although this partly reflected our interest in is one incapable of being demonstrated except at some level of aggre- communist identities, the CPGB’s relatively weak institutional presence gation, even if lacking precision or being rendered in prose. Whenever also meant that members’ status, influence and level of activity did not such general claims are made—‘communists and British society’, or necessarily correspond to their positions in the party hierarchy, and that Passerini’s ‘cultural experience of the Turin working class’—the issue is this correspondence declined over time with significant consequences for therefore posed, not just of the recognition of subjectivities, but of how the party’s internal functioning. If we did not just focus on the commu- particular subjectivities are inscribed with a wider significance, whether nist party elite, it was because this too needed to be identified on the basis explicitly or by selection and accentuation. Specifically in relation to the of research sensitive to the informalities as well as the trappings of power. CPGB, Raphael Samuel’s New Left Review articles, though a source of Consequently, we avoided the limitations of the classic survey method inspiration to us, are very much a case in point. Brilliantly allusive and based on a predetermined population and set of questions, and were free insightful, they include a host of generalisations collapsing authentic to develop new lines or subjects of enquiry as the research progressed.19 subjectivities and snapshots into a vivid group portrait by which always By the time we completed the manuscript, we had recorded information some other subjectivity is potentially denied. Our concern was therefore for around 4,500 communists. The density of coverage ranges from not just with what Samuel and Paul Thompson in The Myths We Live By around a seventh of the CPGB’s members for the membership nadir of called the ‘variety of experience in any social group’, but with the social 1930–1, to around 6 per cent with rising membership by the time of the group itself as the product of a classification or self-classification which Second World War and 2–3 per cent for the peak membership years of is never, in a complex society, an exclusive one. Indeed, what the variety the 1940s.21 Because of the source-based nature of our research, the of experience represents is itself, from another aspect, simply the exis- information in many cases is fragmentary, sometimes relating to a single tence of these multiple forms of identity cutting across the seeming unic- aspect of an individual’s life. Fuller profiles—here taken as including ity—if we can adopt the French expression—of the group in question.22 some basic details of work, residence and political activities—existed for Such issues are easily enough conceptualised, and have been just over half of the total. The corresponding figures for density of cover- admirably summarised by Thompson himself.23 In practice, however, a age are just over a tenth for 1930–1, falling to just under 5 per cent in common difficulty in overcoming the divide between life-history and 1939 to a low point of 1.7 per cent in 1942. At the other end of the scale, survey-based methods has been the reliance of qualitative researchers on information extracted from fuller sources like our own unstructured wider surveys carried out independently according to far more limited project interviews, or from sometimes in excess of twenty different research criteria.24 Specifically in the field of communist historiography, sources, could amount to as much as five thousand words of summary even so outstanding an account as Barbara Evans Clements’s Bolshevik and transcription. Though this was unusual, in something over a thou- Women has more the character of a parallel narrative than a genuine sand cases at least two hundred words of free text was added, in addition cross-referencing between the two approaches.25 We were therefore fortu- to the basis descriptive details of work, residence, organisation affilia- nate in being able to think from the start in terms of a mixed-methods tions, etc. approach for which we alone were collectively responsible. This allowed Even as a secondary source, the database was not our only quarry of us to collect biographical information in such ways and from such sources information, and in text and notes we make no distinction between mate- that exceptionality was not denied, while permitting the grouping and rial collected for the Manchester project and that accumulated over a comparative evaluation of this information to explore shared values and 282 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY behaviour. Conceived as a way of anchoring, validating and sometimes undermining qualitative assessments—in the words of Thompson and his colleagues, ‘checking our hunches’—we also found that exploratory searches could suggest new hypotheses, problems or lines of enquiry, REFERENCES sending us back to the individual histories and forcing us to confront anomalies and counter-subjectivities we might otherwise have over- looked. Findings from across the database are presented in a variety of ways. Simple statements that we have identified groups of cases sharing partic- ular characteristics have no quantitative significance either in absolute terms or as a proportion of CPGB members, but simply give an indica- Introduction tion of significant shared experiences that can sometimes be linked in other ways; for example, where we cite and collectively evaluate the 1 Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘Du parti bolchevik au parti stalinien’ in multiple cases we identified of communists influenced by authors Michel Dreyfus et al., Le siècle des communismes,Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier, 2000, 338–9; Brigitte Studer, Un parti sous influence. Le parti communiste suisse, une section du Bernard Shaw and Erich Maria Remarque. The same caveat is even Komintern 1931 à 1939, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1994, 339–40; Studer and more necessary in the case of issues like motivations for joining the Unfried, ‘At the beginning of history. Visions of the Comintern after the opening of CPGB, which are the product of our own classifications on the basis of the archives’, International Review of Social History, 42, 1997, 439. 2 Studer, ‘Totalitarisme et Stalinisme’ in Dreyfus, Le siècle, 27–46; Raphael Samuel, widely differing sources of information. On the other hand, there are ‘The lost world of British communism’, New Left Review, 154, 1986, 11. other classes of information which we have been able to record with 3 Studer, Un parti, 339, 355–6; Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 11; Samuel, ‘Staying power. The lost world of British communism part 2’, New Left Review, 156, 68–9. greater precision, for example sex, specific political responsibilities or 4 Sandro Bellassai, ‘The party as schools and the schools of party. The partito comu- dates of birth, death and of joining or leaving the CPGB. Even in these nista italiano 1947–1956’, Paedagogica Historica, 35, 1, 1999, 93–4. cases, the data collected remains deeply problematic from a quantitative 5 Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Du parti’, 338–9; Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Les autobiographies des “fils du peuple”. De l’autobiographie édifiante à l’autobiographie auto-analy- point of view, with the likelihood of extreme forms of bias resulting from tique’ in idem, eds, Autobiographies, autocritiques, aveux dans le monde communiste,Paris: the extent of missing and skewed data and the lack of a representative Belin, 2002, 218. sample. However, in many respects these problems were far from unique 6 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 43. 7 Erving Goffmann, Asylums. Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates, and we were able to adapt techniques developed for the quantitative NY: Doubleday & Co, 1961, xiii. examination of such problematic data used in other disciplines, notably 8 Syllabus cited David Proudfoot to Allen Hutt, 27 January 1925 in Ian MacDougall, ed., Militant Miners, Edinburgh: Polygon, 1981, 201–2. medicine. As a result, on issues like the comparative recruitment to the 9 Pennetier and Pudal, ‘La “verification”. L’encradrement biographique commu- CPGB of men and women, the effects in party careers of distinct expe- niste dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, Genéses, 23, 1996; Annie Kriegel, The French riences like attendance at the Lenin School and the age and longevity of Communists. Profile of a people, University of Chicago Press, 1972. 10 Studer, Un parti, 312 ff, 339–40; Harvey Klehr, Communist Cadre. The social background membership of those who left the CPGB in 1956–7, our mixed-methods of the American Communist Party elite, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1976, 4–7, approach combines a rigorous quantitative analysis with qualitative 86, 116. research.26 Even where this was not practicable, the sheer quantity of 11 Julian Mischi, ‘Le contrôle biographique à l’échelon fédéral. Le Bourbonnais (1944–1962)’ in Pennetier and Pudal, Autobiographies, 158; Samuel, ‘Staying power’, information collected meant that the database provided an invaluable 68–9, 74, 79. check on the plausibility of our ‘hunches’. Although the full version we 12 Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Les autobiographies’, 217–18. used is not currently accessible, and is restricted by undertakings as to 13 See Dreyfus et al., Le siècle des communismes, ‘Introduction’ and passim. 14 Dutt papers, British Library, CP 1262 K4, message to communist students’ confer- confidentiality, details of findings presented in the book can be accessed ence, 26 September 1933. at our project website. 15 See Kriegel, French Communists, 196 ff. 16 On this, see Matthew Worley, Class Against Class. The Communist Party in Britain between the wars, I.B. Tauris, 2002. 17 See Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left. 1: Labour legends and Moscow gold, Lawrence & Wishart, forthcoming 2006, ch. 7. 284 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 285

18 For Pollitt and the Minority Movement, see Kevin Morgan, Harry Pollitt, Manchester: 5 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism. A new civilisation, Longmans, 1937 edn, MUP, 1993, ch. 2 and passim. 339–418. 19 Kriegel, French Communists, xxi, 29. 6 For a very clear overview of the broader trends in membership figures, see Andrew 20 Kenneth Newton, The Sociology of British Communism, Allen Lane, 1969. Thorpe, ‘The membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–1945’, 21 For a pioneering example, see Bernard Pudal, Prendre parti. Pour une sociologie historique Historical Journal, 43, 3, 2000, 777–800. du PCF,Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989. For 7 See e.g. RGASPI 495/100/26 CPGB Executive Committee report to ECCI 14 a review of more recent works by Pennetier, Pudal, Studer and other leading author- November 1921. ities, see Communist History Network Newsletter, spring 2004. 8 Betty Reid, Mike Walker and Tom Sibley, project interviews. 22 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963, 9–11. 9 For the BSP see Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain,Weidenfeld and 23 Max Gluckman, ‘Les rites de passage’ in Gluckman, Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations, Nicolson, 1969, 435 n. 5; for the Labour Party, Duncan Tanner, ‘Labour and its Manchester: MUP, 1962, 26–7 and passim. For uses of multiplexity, see e.g. Craig membership’ in Tanner et al., eds, Labour’s First Century, Cambridge, 2000, 249–50; Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle. Social foundations of popular radicalism during the for the ILP Deian Hopkin, ‘The rise of Labour in Wales 1890–1914’, Llafur,6,3, industrial revolution, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982, 150–9. 1994, 133. 24 Calhoun, Question, 159. 10 By contrast, Labour Party membership figures were extrapolated from constituency 25 Kriegel, French Communists,8. party affiliations, which in many cases overstated the actual membership to retain 26 See for example the calculations of Cris Shore, The Italian Communist Party. The escape delegate rights. from Leninism, Pluto, 1990, 139–40; Neill Nugent and David Lowe, The Left in France, 11 Among the round figures excluded as somewhat suspect are those of 9,000 for Macmillan, 1982, 115. January 1932 and 43,000 for April 1948 cited by Henry Pelling, The British Communist 27 Proudfoot to Hutt, 27 January 1925. West Fife was the only constituency in which Party. A historical profile, London: A. & C. Black, 1975 edn, 192–3; and those of 12,000 the CPGB succeeded in electing and re-electing an MP. for October 1926 and 4,100 for October 1929 cited Thorpe, ‘Membership’. 28 Compare for example Gerrit Voerman’s recent comment on the Dutch party that 12 A.E. Cook cited NA Cab 14/125 CP 3034, weekly report on revolutionary organi- ‘once a person had joined the party, it was only with the utmost difficulty that it was sations, 9 June 1921; Pollard papers box 8, Cant for CPGB London DPC to locals possible to leave again’; Gerrit Voerman, ‘The formative years of the communist 20 April 1923. “moral” community in the Netherlands 1917–1930’ in Kevin Morgan, Gidon 13 RGASPI 495/25/312, Baumatten report c. 1927. Cohen, Andrew Flinn, eds, Agents of the Revolution. New biographical approaches to the 14 LHASC microfilms, Bell at Marty commission, 22 February 1936. history of international communism in the age of Lenin and Stalin, Bern: Peter Lang, 2005, 15 World News and Views, 10 November 1945, 354. 238. 16 Alfred Sherman, Sid Kaufman, project interviews; Avis, World News and Views,10 29 Neal Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, Gollancz, 1959, 24. November 1945, 359. 30 RGASPI 495/100/304, ECCI orgburo resolution, 5 July 1926. 17 World News and Views, 10 November 1945, 354; Pollitt, Communist Policy for Britain, 31 Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German communists and political violence report of CPGB eighteenth congress, 1945, 35. 1929–1933, Cambridge: CUP, 1983, 29; Geoff Eley, ‘“From welfare politics to 18 RGASPI 495/100/231, CPGB central executive committee, 3–4 October 1925. welfare states.” Women and the socialist question’ in Pamela Graves and Helmut 19 RGASPI 495/100/364, ‘Suggestions for organising recruiting campaign’, c. March Gruber, eds, Women and Socialism/Socialism and Women, Oxford: Bergahn, 1998, 524. 1926; RGASPI 495/100/238/48, CPGB membership report, June 1925; For the PCI see David I. Kertzer, Comrades and Christians. Religion and political struggle 495/100/304, ECCI orgburo resolution on CPGB, 5 July 1926; ECCI orgburo reso- in communist Italy, Cambridge: CUP, 1980, ch. 10. lution on ‘The immediate organisational tasks’, Inprecorr,6 August 1925, 903. 32 Kriegel, French Communists, 235. 20 RGASPI 495/100/364, organisation reports, 1926. In London a net increase of only 33 Wood, Communism, 24. forty members was reported. 34 K.D. Ewing and C.A. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties. Political freedom and the rule 21 NA 30/69/270 (Ramsay MacDonald papers), report on revolutionary organisations, of law in Britain 1914–1945, Oxford: OUP, 2000, 151–4 and ch. 3 passim. 30 October 1924. 35 RGASPI 495/100/171, Inkpin to ECCI secretariat, 10 April 1924. 22 RGASPI 495/100/494 CPGB central committee, 28 April 1928; 495/100/609, 36 Thompson, Making, 79–80. CPGB Tyneside district report, 31 January 1930. The report shows fifty of the district’s 37 Noreen Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1941–1951, 1997, ch. 208 members as having joined in 1926, compared with a thirty-three from 1920–5. 16. 23 See also Studer’s similar remarks about the Swiss party, Un parti sous influence, 312 ff. 38 Shaw to Gorki, 28 December 1915, Dan H. Laurence, Bernard Shaw. Collected letters 24 RGASPI 495/100/609, ‘District reports end of 1929 of the Communist Party of 1911–1925, Max Reinhardt, 1985, 341. See also e.g. Gilbert, Class, Community, 39. Great Britain’; Alec Ferguson, additional interview. 39 Newton, Sociology, 100–11. 25 LHASC CP/Ind/Misc/2/3, Idris Cox, ‘Personal and political recollections’, nd, 27. 26 Kriegel, French Communists, 41. Chapter 1 27 RGASPI 495/100/702 CPGB Sheffield district committee statement on member- ship 1926–30, CPGB Scottish district organiser to CPGB secretariat, 12 July 1930. 1 Communist, 14 October 1920. 28 Ernie Trory, Between the Wars, Brighton: Crabtree Press, 1974, 25; Ernie Benson, To 2 Communist Unity Convention, Official Report, CPGB, 1920, 24. Struggle is to live. A working class autobiography. Volume two: starve or rebel 1927–1991, 3 See Kevin Morgan, Against Fascism and War. Ruptures and continuities in British commu- Newcastle upon Tyne: People’s Publications, 1980, 111. nist politics 1935–1941, MUP, 1989, 311–18; and for the Third Period, Mike Squires, 29 Neither the Manchester database nor an extrapolation of joining dates from future ‘CPGB membership during the Class Against Class years’, Socialist History,3,1993, congress reports suggests anything more than a relatively minor stimulus to recruit- 4–13. ment in 1931. 4 See Thompson, Making, 9–11. 30 World News and Views, 24 November 1945, 383. In the same way Frank Jackson (ibid., 286 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 287

356) described the party’s dues collectors as ‘the Political commissars in our battalions’. date from the 1930s (six cases) or 1958–61 (three). 31 Peter Worsley, project interview. 56 See e.g. George Barnard, Percy Timberlake, Arthur Mendelsohn, Betty Reid and 32 Thompson cited Bryan D. Palmer, E.P. Thompson. Objections and Oppositions, London, Ralph Russell, project interviews; Margot Kettle and Frank Lesser, additional inter- 1994, 56; see also e.g. David Goldstein and Geoffrey Goodman, project interviews. views; Jack Sutherland, unpublished memoirs (LHASC ), 63 ff. All eight were born 33 See also Malcolm MacEwen, ‘The day the party had to stop’, Ralph Miliband and between 1915 and 1918 and joined the CPGB between 1932 and 1937. Barnard, John Saville, eds, Socialist Register, Merlin, 1976, 25; Peter Worsley, Dorothy Reid, Russell, Lesser and Sutherland specifically mention Remarque, and Wedderburn, project interviews. Timberlake, Reid and Kettle the LNU. Mendelsohn joined the YCL after seeing 34 Gary Werskey, The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists pamphlets showing victims of the First World War. Russell was reprimanded by his of the 1930s,Free Book Association, 1988, 302–3; CPGB Biographical Project files, headmaster for selling the same pamphlets at school. ‘Reminiscences of a Cambridge communist’ by John Maynard Smith; George 57 Ralph Russell, project interview. Leeson, additional interview. 58 Waite questionnaires. 35 LHASC CP/Cent/Disc, Martin Bobker; Margaret Owen, project questionnaire; 59 Tony Lane, project interview. CP/Cent/Org, 1956 resignation files: comrades D. Hanton, Crabb, Goldman, Ted 60 Martin Jacques and Francis Mulhern, eds, The Forward March of Labour Halted?,Verso, Plenty, J. Easton, Frank Doherty, J. Kean. 1981. 36 Bob Leeson, additional interview. 61 Eric Hobsbawm interviewed by David Howell, Socialist History, 24, 2003; Hobsbawm, 37 Entry by John Saville, DLB,vol. 9, 244–6. Interesting Times. A twentieth-century life, Allen Lane, 2002, 353. 38 LHASC CP/Cent/Disc, Henry Collins; James Gibb, project interview; Andy Croft 62 Sarah Benton, ‘The decline of the party’ in Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, New (ed.), ‘Introduction’ to Randall Swingler: selected poems, Nottingham: Trent Editions, Times. The changing face of politics in the 1990s,Lawrence & Wishart, 1989, 333–46. 2000, xiii–xvi. 63 Andy Croft, Stuart Hill, project interviews. 39 Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism. The social bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear 64 On this see Huw Beynon, Ray Hudson and David Sadler, A Place Called Teesside. A Disarmament, Manchester: MUP, 1968, 163–4. locality in a global economy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, 56 ff. For the 40 Compare for example the figures of 7441 for March 1945 and 7431 for July 1973 Cleveland child abuse sandal, see Beatrix Campbell, Unofficial Secrets: Child sexual (LHASC CP/Cent/Org). abuse: the Cleveland case,Virago, 1988; for the Labour New Left, see Leo Panitch and 41 Geoff Andrews, ‘Young Turks and Old Guard: intellectuals and the communist party Colin Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism,Verso, 2000. leadership in the 1970s’ in Andrews et al., eds, Opening the Books. Essays on the social 65 Croft, ‘Wake’ in Nowhere Special, Newcastle upon Tyne: Flambard, 1996, 33–6. and cultural history of British communism, Pluto, 1995, 230–1, 244. 66 Harvey J. Klehr, Heyday of American Communism. The depression decade, New York: Basic 42 Gerrit Voerman, ‘“Away with all your superstitions!” The end of communism in the Books, 1984. Netherlands’, Journal of Communist Studies,7,4,1991, 470–2; Shore, Escape from 67 Annette T. Rubinstein, ‘The cultural world of the Communist Party: an historical Leninism, 44, 59; Finnish membership figures courtesy Tauno Saarela. overview’ in Michael E. Brown et al., eds., New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US 43 Carol Owens and Doug Chalmers, project interviews; Frank Stanley, CPGB twenty- Communism, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993, 241, 246. seventh congress Report, CPGB, 1961, 39. 68 Norman Lindop, project interview; see also Peter Worsley and David Grove, project 44 Abrams and A. Little, ‘The young activist in British politics’, British Journal of interviews. Sociology, 16, 1965, 331. 69 Geoff Hodgson, project interview. 45 See e.g. Steve Munby and John Callaghan, project interviews, and Elizabeth Wilson, 70 A notable exception is Worley, Class Against Class,e.g. 37–44. additional interview. 71 Stuart Macintyre, Little Moscows. Communism and working-class militancy in inter-war 46 George Bridges, ‘The Communist Party and the struggle for hegemony’, Ralph Britain,Croom Helm, 1980. Miliband and John Saville, eds, The Socialist Register, Merlin, 1977, 36; see also 72 John Foster, ‘A proletarian nation? Occupation and class since 1914’ in A. Dickson Andrews, ‘Young Turks and Old Guard’, 227. and J.H. Treble, People and Society in Scotland. Volume 3: 1914–1990, Edinburgh: John 47 See Peter Waterman, ‘Hopeful traveller. The itinerary of an internationalist’, History Donald, 1992, 227. Workshop Journal, 35 1991, 179. 73 Hugh Gaitskell, ‘At Oxford in the twenties’ in Asa Briggs and John Saville, eds, Essays 48 David Aaronovitch, project interview. in Labour History, Macmillan, 1960, 6–8 49 David Aaronovitch, Doug Chalmers, John Callaghan, project interviews. 74 The classic exposition of this view is Kendall, Revolutionary Movement. 50 For a general statement of this position, see Newton, Sociology, 67–9. For the mythol- 75 Wal Hannington, Comintern sixth congress Inprecorr,3 August 1928, 789–91. ogy of the 1930s see e.g. James K. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire. The British in the 76 Newton, Sociology, 31–41, 68. Pelling, British Communist Party, 63–5, provides a more Spanish Civil War, Stanford, Cal., 1998, 4–5. persuasive account stressing the political space argument. 51 Mike Jones, project interview. 77 E.g. LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Honor Arundel, 1942; CP/Cent/Pers/3/1, 52 Doug Bain, Waite questionnaire. Doug Chalmers, project interview, points out this Horace Green, 1950. was more true of the YCL in Scotland than in England. 78 See for example June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women. Britain, 1880s to 53 E.g. for the first of these Peter Cadogan and George Barnsby project interviews; 1920s,Routledge, 2002, 2–7; David Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, Gerry Cohen, 1951; and for the second Dennis Ogden, project Party 1888–1906, Manchester: MUP, 1983, 209–12; Martin Pugh, The March of the interview. Women. A revisionist analysis of the campaign for women’s suffrage, 1866–1914, Oxford: 54 Sid Fogarty, Brian Blain, John Kay, project interviews. The fifth is Helen Kay who OUP, 2000. grows up in Lochgelly in West Fife, aged twelve in 1945. 79 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/6/5, William Ross, c. 1949. 55 Willie Thompson, The Good Old Cause, Pluto, 1990; Jimmy Reid, Reflections of a Clyde- 80 RGASPI 534/7/48, report by Horner on Mardy, early 1930. built Man, Souvenir Press, 1976, 36–9. Among the project interviewees, with the 81 See below chapter 4. exception of Fogarty all cases indicating peace as a motivation for joining the CPGB 82 Mary Barnett, Barney Barnett, Don Wright, Arthur Mendelsohn, project interviews; 288 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 289

Peggy Aprahamian, additional interview. 113 Stanley Forman, project interview. For the promotion argument, see Studer, Un parti 83 See e.g. Bernard Moss, ‘Socialism and the republic in France. A long view’, Socialist sous influence, 304. History, 18, 2000, 32–49; Kertzer, Comrades and Christians, 55; Rosenhaft, Beating the 114 Hymie Frankel, project interview. Fascists?, 13, 28–9. 115 See Goldthorpe, Social Mobility, 18. 84 See e.g. Shore, Italian Communism, 74; Jacques Derville and Maurice Croisat, ‘La 116 Thompson, Making, 211. socialisation des militants communistes français: éléments d’une enquête dans 117 Karl Mannheim, ‘The problem of generations’ in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, l’Isère’, Revue française de science politique,vol. 29, 1979, 765–7; Till Kössler, ‘A party Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952, 289–90. blocked. West German communists between Weimar legacy and East German policy 118 See Mark Clapson, Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns. Social change and urban 1945–1956’, Socialist History, 21, 2002, 25–8. dispersal in post-war England, Manchester: MUP, 1998, 169; David Gilbert, Class, 85 See Henry Srebrnik, London Jews and British Communism 1935–1945,Valentine Community, and Collective Action. Social change in two British coalfields, 1850–1926, Oxford: Mitchell, 1995, 30–7. OUP, 1992, 50. 86 See Geoff Payne, Mobility and Change in Modern Society, Macmillan, 1987, ch. 1. 119 Proudfoot to Allen Hutt, 21 January 1926 in Ian MacDougall, ed., Militant Miners, 87 Payne, Mobility, 12 ff. Edinburgh: Polygon, 259. 88 John Goldthorpe (with Catriona Llewellyn and Clive Payne), Social Mobility and Class 120 Will Paynter, My Generation, Allen & Unwin, 1972, 109. Structure in Great Britain, Oxford: OUP, 1980, 10–11. 121 RGASPI 534/7/50, Hymie Lee, ‘Report of the Cumberland miners’ strike 1931’, 89 Howell, British Workers, 278. For a somewhat inconclusive correlation with Labour September 1931. candidacies see Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People. Party, language and popular politics 122 LHASC microfilms, CPGB central committee, January 1932, contribution of Dave in England, 1867–1914, Cambridge: CUP, 1999, 240–6. Springhall. 90 Robert Pope, Building Jerusalem. Nonconformity, Labour and the social question in Wales 123 Deakin papers, statement by J. Byrne, n.d. but 1930; Tom Roberts to Fanny Deakin 1906–1939, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998, 112. 8 and 15 September 1933. 91 John Parker, ‘Trade union difficulties in new areas’ in G.D.H. Cole, British Trade 124 RGASPI 495/100/238, ‘Report on the position of factory groups in the British party Unionism Today. A survey, Gollancz, 1939, 241–8. at the end of October 1925’; Margaret McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, Heinemann, 92 Newton, Sociology, 46–7. 1953, 156. 93 Cited Payne, Mobility,6 ff. 125 Conan Fischer, ‘Class enemies or class brothers? Communist-Nazi relations in 94 David Goldstein, project interview. Germany 1929–33’, European History Quarterly, 15, 1985 95 Florence Keyworth and Hilda Forman, project interviews; LHASC CP/Cent/ 126 Stuart Rawnsley, ‘Fascism and fascists in the North of England in the 1930s’, Pers/3/1, June Robertson, 1952; CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Betty Dowsett, 1955; see also Bradford: PhD, 1983. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures. England 1918–1951, Oxford: OUP, 2000 edn, 127 Philip Coupland, ‘“Left-wing fascism” in theory and practice. The case of the British 262. Union of Fascists’, Twentieth Century British History, 13, 1, 2002, 42; Noreen Branson, 96 See Mike Savage, Class Analysis and Social Transformation, Buckingham: Open History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927–1941,Lawrence & Wishart, 1985, University Press, 2000, 72. 61–3. 97 Savage, Class Analysis, 73, 102–3. 128 RGASPI 495/100/811, ‘Doris’, report from South Wales, n.d. but 1932. 98 E.g. Alex Clark, project interview; LHASC CP/Ind/Pers/7/4, Arthur True; 129 Jill Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel. Selina Cooper 1864–1946, CP/Cent/Pers/8/1, D.A. Williams, 1942. For a discussion of these issues, see Huw Virago, 1984, 443. Beynon and Terry Austrin, Masters and Servants. Class and patronage in the making of a 130 Lists of occupations, places of origin and political or trade union affiliations are in Labour organisation, Rivers Oram, 1994, ch. 6. GARF 5451/13a/572. 99 See respectively Cox, ‘Personal and political recollections’, 9 and LHASC 131 See Labour Party, NEC minutes, 30 May 1941, ‘Party membership and the national CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Jim David, 1947; CP/Cent/Pers/2/6, Arthur Evans, 1942. convention’. 100 See for example LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, Tom Gainer, 1942. 132 LHASC CP/Ind/Misc/11/2, T.A. Jackson, unpublished memoirs, 122; Beynon and 101 A Brief Outline of the Life of John Mason, Kilnhurst: John Mason Defence Committee, Austrin, Masters and Servants, 338. 1940. 133 RGASPI, CPGB district membership reports, 1930. 102 Mike Savage, ‘Sociology, class and male manual working class cultures’ in John 134 Cited Gareth Williams, George Ewart Evans, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991, McIlroy et al., British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics. Volume 2: 1964–79, Aldershot: 79. Ashgate, 1999, 23–42. 135 Figures from Foster, ‘A proletarian nation?’, 207 ff; Anthony Mason, ‘The Miners’ 103 E.g. LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/7, Frank Foster, 1960. Union of Northumberland and Durham 1918–1931, with special reference to the 104 Stan Martin, project interview. General Strike of 1926’, Hull PhD, 1967, 323 ff; A.J. Chandler, ‘The remaking of a 105 Randall Swingler, World News and Views, 10 January 1942, 31. working class. Migration from the South Wales coalfield to the new industry centres 106 Savage, ‘Sociology’, 35. of the Midlands 1920–1940’, University of Wales PhD, 1988, 3–14. 107 Stuart Macintyre, A Proletarian Science. Marxism in Britain 1917–1933,Lawrence & 136 RGASPI 495/100/756, Williams to CPGB secretariat, 28 June 1931; Cox, ‘Personal Wishart edn, 1986, 98–9. and political recollections’, 17. 108 LHASC CP/YCL/1/5, Asher at YCL 8th congress, 1936. 137 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, David Lloyd Davies, 1941. 109 Dave Marshall, project interview; LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/5/1, Dave Marshall. 138 RGASPI, CPGB district membership reports, 1930. 110 Isadore Nayman, Waite questionnaire; David Goldstein and Harry Baum, project 139 George Short, additional interview interviews. 140 David Francis, additional interview; Hywel Francis and David Smith, The Fed. A 111 See for example Stan Robertson, project interview. history of the South Wales miners in the twentieth century,Lawrence & Wishart, 1980, 356–7. 112 Gerry Cohen, Socialism! The future for youth,YCL, n.d., 4, 8. 141 RGASPI 534/7/32, F. Warburton, report, 11 January 1926. 290 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 291

142 Nina Fishman, The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions 1933–1945, Aldershot: 180 Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory. The cultural experience of the Turin working class, Scolar, 1995, 164–99, citing Bernard Taylor. Cambridge: CUP, 1987; Jon Lawrence, ‘Labour—the myths it has lived by’ in 143 Del Carr, project interview. Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo, eds, Labour’s First Century, Cambridge: 144 Chandler, ‘Remaking’, 207, 217–18. CUP, 2000, 344. 145 Pollitt in For Peace and Plenty, CPGB fifteenth congress report, 1938, 54. 181 See Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb, Cornell University Press, 146 Worley, Class Against Class, 37–8. 1985, ch. 1 and passim; Laurence Thompson, The Enthusiasts. A biography of John and 147 William Rust in It Can Be Done, CPGB, report of fourteenth congress, 1937, 163, Katharine Bruce Glasier, Gollancz, 1971, 65 ff . See also Stephen Yeo, ‘A new life. The reli- 168–9, 171. gion of socialism in Britain, 1883–1896’, History Workshop Journal,4,5–56. 148 Report of the Central Committee to CPGB fifteenth congress, 1938, 37. 182 E.P. Thompson, William Morris. Romantic to revolutionary,Lawrence & Wishart, 1955, 149 Charlie Hall, project interview. 281 ff. 150 Sid and Glenda Fogarty, project interview. 183 Cited Kevin Jeffreys, Anthony Crosland, 11. 151 Chandler, ‘Remaking’; Richard Whiting, The View from Cowley. The impact of industri- 184 Philip Snowden, An Autobiography,Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1934, 60–1. See also e.g. alization upon Oxford, Oxford: OUP, 1983. John Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage,Routledge, 1935, 96 and passim; Joe Toole, Fighting 152 Chandler, ‘Remaking’, 167 ff. Through Life, Rich & Cowan, 1935, ch. 6; or the discussions of this process in 153 Francis and David Smith, The Fed, 181–2. Jonathan Schneer, Ben Tillett, 1982, 65 and ch. 4 passim; John Shepherd, George 154 ‘Building a branch (1) Wythenshawe (Manchester)’, Party Organiser,April 1939, 8–11. Lansbury. The heart of old Labour, Oxford: OUP, 2002, ch. 2. 155 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, Don Brown, 1951. 185 Hugh Jenkins, Rank and File,Croom Helm, 1980, 67–70 and 98–103. 156 Chandler, ‘Remaking’, 321 ff. 186 Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘Du parti bolchevik au parti stalinien’, 338–9. 157 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/4/4, Jimmy Kincaid, c. 1951. 187 Dona Torr, Tom Mann and his Times. Volume 1: 1856–1890,Lawrence & Wishart, 1956, 158 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/8/1, Gwyn Williams, n.d. ch. 10; Thompson, William Morris, 281. 159 Norman Brown, additional interview; LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/3/2, Kevin Halpin, 188 LHASC CP/Ind/Misc/11/2, 56. 1951. 189 Cited by Stuart Macintyre in Vivien Morton and Stuart Macintyre, T.A. Jackson. A 160 Cited Chandler, ‘Remaking’, 349. centenary appreciation, Our History pamphlet, nd, 20. 161 Following paragraphs based on Tom Mitchell, additional interview. 190 Dutt papers (WCML), Dutt to Pollitt, 4 January 1935; Mann cited Dona Torr, Tom 162 Following paragraphs based on Fred Westacott, Shaking the Chains. A personal and polit- Mann, CPGB, 1944 edn, 36; Tom Mann: his life and work. An Outline for speakers, CPGB, ical history, privately published, 2002. 1944. 163 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, Monty Cohen, 1948; Benson, To Struggle is to Live, 191 LHASC CP/Ind/Dutt/6/3, Dutt to Dona Torr, 4 June 1936. 153–4. 192 See Stéphane Sirot, Maurice Thorez,Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des 164 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers, John Gritten, 1950. sciences politiques, 2000; Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Les autobiographies des “fils du 165 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Hugh D’Arcy, 1948. peuple”’, 223–9. 166 See e.g. Phil Nickolay, project interview; World News and Views, 18 April 1942, 206. 193 Harry Pollitt, Serving My Time,Lawrence & Wishart, 1941 edn, 42–3. 167 William Alexander, ‘The formation and growth of basic units of the party’, 194 For the latter, see Pollitt’s contribution in Richard Acland, ed., Why I Am a Democrat, Communist Review,July 1951, 200. Lawrence & Wishart, 1939, 138. 168 Edmund Frow, additional interview; Fishman, British Communist Party, 293–4. 195 See Kevin Morgan, ‘An exemplary communist life? Harry Pollitt’s Serving My Time in 169 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, Frida Gainsborough, 1942; CP/Cent/Pers/4/3, comparative perspective’ in Julie Gottlieb and Richard Toye, eds, Making Reputations: Mary Kelly, 1942; CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Frances Dean, 1950. For the Manchester Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics, I.B. Tauris, forthcoming, database, see the ‘Note on method and sources’ below. 2005. 170 See for example Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, ‘England Arise!’ 196 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 9–15. The Labour Party and popular politics in 1940s Britain, Manchester: MUP,1995, esp. 52–3. 197 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/8/1, Colin Williams, 1958. 171 WCML Bill Carr, ‘My apprenticeship in mining and Marxism’. 198 ‘A conversation with Edward Upward’, The Review, nos 11–12, n.d., 65–7. Upward’s 172 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Bill Adams, 1951. novel Journey to a Border was published in 1938. 173 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/3/2, Betty Harrison 1950 and 1959. Sue Bruley, ‘Socialism 199 Five Women Tell Their Story, CPGB, 1953, 7–8. and feminism in the Communist Party of Great Britain 1920–1939’, London: PhD, 200 See Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 66. 1980, 284, gives a recruitment date of 1936 though even undercover membership is 201 Sybil Olive, Waite questionnaire. usually registered in the party biographies. 202 RGASPI 533/10/220. 174 Jim Mortimer, Waite questionnaire. 203 See e.g. Brian Blain, Maureen Hardisty, Dennis Ogden, Mike Walker and Bert Ward, 175 Reuben Falber, additional interview; Eric Godfrey, ‘The factory brigade at work’, project interviews. Organising for Offensive Action, CPGB, 1943, 16. 204 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, Herbert Gates, 1943. 176 LHASC CP/Ind/Misc/11/5, Ted Rogers; CP/Cent/Pers/2/7, Ken Fuller, 1952; 205 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/6/4, C. Riley, 1942. CP/Cent/Pers/2/5, Harry Egleton, 1964; David Grove, David Parker, project inter- 206 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/3/4, Percy Higgins, 1949. views. Across the CPGB’s history, less than one fifth of its members joined the party 207 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/3/4, Mary Higgins, c. 1942. when over the age of forty. 208 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/4/3, Mary Kelly, c. 1942. 177 Clapson, Invincible Green Suburbs, 168–71. 209 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, W.E. Barrett, 1942; CP/Cent/2/6, J.A. Fantom, 1943. 178 Tyler Stovall, The Rise of the Paris Red Belt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 210 See the comments on this of John Saville, Memoirs from the Left, Merlin, 2003, 8–9. ch. 3. 211 Richard Crossman, ed. The God that Failed, Right Book Club edn, 1951; see for exam- 179 Studer, Un parti, 296, 312 ff, 357–9. ple Studer’s concentration on such cases, Un parti, 356 ff. 292 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 293

212 Newton, Sociology,chs 8–10. 1953. 213 See e.g. Jenkins, Rank and File, 29–30, 32–3, 47–9, 57–60, 61–6, 82–5, 98–103, 28 Pollitt in Communist Policy to Meet the Crisis,report of CPGB twenty-first congress, 135–7, 149–54. November 1949, 39. 214 RGASPI 495/100/68, ‘Statement of the impressions of Comrade Hardy regarding 29 Pollitt in Britain Arise,report of CPGB twenty-second congress, April 1952, 39–41. the situation within the CPGB’, 25 November 1930. 30 RGASPI 495/100/153/114, Bell at CPGB sixth congress, 1924. 215 RGASPI 534/7/52, statement by Hardy 25 September 1932. 31 RGASPI 495/14/265, Mick Jenkins, report on CPGB Lancashire district, 29 September 1939. Chapter 2 32 Bert Pearce, CPGB Welsh district organiser, Comment, 25 February 1967, 127. 33 Shore, Italian Communist Party, 93, 98; Peter Weitz, ‘The CGIL and the PCI. From 1 Peter Cadogan, project interview; Tim Gorringe, Alan Ecclestone. Priest as revolutionary, subordination to independent political force’ in Donald L. Blackmer and Sidney Sheffield: Cairns Publications, 1994, 120, 137. Tarrow, eds, Communism in Italy and France, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2 Cadogan, project interview. 1975, 541–71. 3 See for example Geoffrey Goodman, project interview; Philip Abrahams, additional 34 RGASPI 495/100/238, reports on factory groups, October 1925. interview. 35 Paynter cited Francis and Smith, The Fed, 34. 4 Douglas Hyde, I Believed. The autobiography of a former British communist, Heinemann, 36 Dutt papers (WCML), Pollitt to Dutt, 2 February 1935. 1951. 37 Pollitt, ‘The party in Wales’, Party Organiser,June 1940, 8. 5 Hyde’s later views are summarised in Francis Beckett, Enemy Within. The rise and fall 38 RGASPI 495/100/957 Pollitt to Rust, 27 January 1934. of the British Communist Party,John Murray, 1995, 120. 39 Daisy Priscott, project interview. 6 See e.g. Kertzer, Comrades and Christians. 40 Chris Williams, ‘“The hope of the British proletariat”: the South Wales miners 7 See Gerrit Voerman, ‘The formative years of the communist “moral” community 1910–1947’ in Alan Campbell et al., eds, Miners, Unions and Politics 1910–1947, Scolar, in the Netherlands 1917–1930’ in Kevin Morgan et al., eds, Agents of the Revolution, 1996, 138–9. Berne: Peter Lang, 2005. 41 Macintyre, Little Moscows, 35. 8 See also e.g. Mary Docherty, A Miner’s Lass,Cowdenbeath: privately published, 1992, 42 RGASPI 495/100/364, Tyneside district report, 1926; ‘Report on growth of party 123–4. membership’, c. July 1926. 9 See for example Eric Heffer, Never a Yes Man. The life and politics of an adopted 43 Sue Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’, 158–67. Liverpudlian,Verso, 1991, 27. 44 CP/Biog, Gallacher, ‘Bessie Braddock! A congenital conspirator’, undated type- 10 Clive Branson, British Soldier in India, CPGB, 1944, 22 ff; David Duncan, Laurie script. Green, Monty Johnstone, project interviews; Saville, Memoirs from the Left, 57–72; Jack 45 RGASPI 495/100/588, CPGB tenth congress, 1929. Sutherland, unpublished memoirs, LHASC. 46 See Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’, 163. 11 Trevor Carter, project interview. 47 Francis and Smith, The Fed, 164, 187–9. 12 James Friell, additional interview. 48 Pollitt, ‘Party in Wales’. 13 World News and Views,8 April 1944, 119; 22 April 1944, 135; 6 May 1944, 151. 49 Pearce, Comment, 25 February 1967. 14 Doris Heffer, Waite questionnaire. 50 See World News and Views,2 May 1942, 223. 15 Tovarisch being Russian for comrade; Sam Russell, second additional interview. 51 Citations from Hywel Francis, tribute to Paynter, Llafur,4,2,1985, 7; Gilbert, Class, 16 Betty Baker, project interview. Community, 54. 17 Avis Hutt, project interview. 52 Alan Burge, ‘Swimming against the tide: gender, learning and advancement in South 18 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 11–12. Wales, 1900–1939’, Llafur,8,3,2002, 22. 19 E.g. A. Rossi (Angelo Tasca), Physiologie du parti communiste français,Paris: Self, 1948, 53 Lewis Jones, We Live,Lawrence & Wishart, 1939, chs 3–4 and passim; Woman Today, 297–9; Studer, Un parti sous influence, 342–4; Mischi, ‘Le contrôle biographique’, April 1949, 9–12. 186–7. 54 Gilbert, Class, Community, and Collective Action, 57, 63; Alan Campbell, ‘The social 20 Report on Organisation presented to CPGB fifth congress, 1922, 23. history of political conflict in the Scots coalfields, 1919–1939’ in Campbell et al., 21 RGASPI 495/100/133, CI orgburo commission on CPGB, 22 November 1924, Miners, 154–5, 167. contribution of Piatini. 55 RGASPI 495/100/750, Pollitt, ‘Report on situation in UMS’, 18 January 1931. 22 The Communist Party and the National Front, CPGB, 1941 or 1942, 9. 56 Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists?, 15. 23 RGASPI 495/100/238, ‘Report on the position of factory groups in the British Party 57 Eric Weitz, Creating German Communism 1890–1990. From popular protest to socialist state, at the end of October 1925’; 495/100/263, D. Wilson, CPGB recruiting commit- Princeton University Press, 1997, 6–7. tee, to Inkpin, 17 February and 4 March 1925; 495/100/621, Party Life,no.5, c.1929. 58 CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Jenny Dand, 1947. 24 This is the argument of James Hinton and Richard Hyman, Trade Unions and 59 Iain Johnson, ‘Women in the Communist Party in Fife between the wars’, unpub- Revolution. The industrial politics of the early British communist party, Pluto, 1975. lished dissertation, 1996 (Gallacher Memorial Library). 25 RGASPI 495/100/238, report of CPGB central factory groups department, 20 60 Alex Maxwell, project interview. January 1926; 495/100/406, CPGB census details, January-February 1927; 61 Frank Watters, Being Frank, Doncaster: privately published, 1992; Watters, project 495/100/759, ‘Report on party organisation’, 20 February 1931. interview. 26 John McIlroy, ‘“Every factory our fortress”. Communist Party workplace branches 62 Doherty, A Miner’s Lass, 54, 138–9, 181, 140–1, 197, 207, 208–9, 270. in a time of militancy, 1956–1979. Part 1: History, politics, topography’, Historical 63 Mabel Skinner, cited in Neil Rafeek, ‘Mabel Skinner 1912–96: communist politics Studies in Industrial Relations, 10, 2000, 114. amongst a Highland community’, Scottish Labour History, 33, 1998, 89. 27 E.g. CP/Cent/Pers/2/4, Tom Durkin, 1954; CP/Cent/Pers/2/7, Kenneth Funnell, 64 Except where stated, information regarding Deakin is from her personal papers. 294 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 295

65 Wal Hannington, Never On Our Knees,Lawrence & Wishart, 1967, 248. 108 Arthur Exell, additional interview. 66 See for example Margaret Cohen, project interview, comparing Hounslow and 109 Barney Barnett, Mary Barnett, Don Wright, project interviews. Coventry. 110 Kay Beauchamp, World News and Views, 24 November 1945, 380–1. 67 Florence Keyworth, Steve Munby and Ken Randell, project interviews. 111 CP/Cent/Org 2/5, CPGB Midlands district reports, March 1945-October 1946. 68 Ken Randell, project interview. 112 RGASPI 495/100/147, CI fifth congress, questionnaire to British delegation. 69 Florence Keyworth, project interview. 113 Jack Jones, Unfinished Journey, Hamish Hamilton, 1937, 193. 70 RGASPI 495/100/155, CPGB women’s conference, May 1924. 114 Macintyre, Proletarian Science, 101–2; NA CAB 402, report on revolutionary organi- 71 RGASPI 495/100/189, Women’s Bulletin No. 2, c. July 1924; Richard Croucher, We sations, 6 September 1923, citing Newbold to J.R. Wilson; Pollitt, Serving My Time, Refuse to Starve in Silence. A history of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement 119, 125–6, 150. 1920–1946,Lawrence & Wishart, 1987, 103; Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’, 244. 115 Arising from the Ruskin College strike of 1909, the Labour colleges’ movement stood 72 RGASPI 495/100/609, list of central committee elected CPGB tenth congress. for ‘independent working-class education’ in opposition to institutions like the 73 CP/Hist/3/9, F.W. Carr, ‘The formation of the Communist Party in Coventry’, Workers’ Educational Association. For an introduction to its ideals by two commu- unpublished typescript, 9–10, 18. nity supporters, see Eden and Cedar Paul, Proletcult, Leonard Parsons, 1921, ch. 5 74 RGASPI 495/100/227, Emery to CPGB central committee, 15 April 1925. and passim. 75 See branch directories in Workers’ Weekly,August-September 1924. 116 The following two paragraphs draw on material in Morgan, Bolshevism and the British 76 McArthur, ‘Recollections’, 22–3; Harry McShane (with Joan Smith), No Mean Fighter, Left. 1. Pluto, 1978, 119; Socialist,7 October 1920 cited F.W. Carr, ‘Engineering workers and 117 RGASPI 495/100/235 CPGB orgburo minutes 24 June 1925; 17/98/809, autobi- the rise of Labour in Coventry 1914–1939’, Warwick, PhD 1978, 141–2; William ography, 3 October 1929. Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde,Lawrence & Wishart, 1936, 256 and 264. 118 RGASPI 495/100/340/38, CPGB eighth congress report. 77 Carr, ‘Formation’, 20; Carr, ‘Engineering workers’, 117. 119 CPGB orgburo minutes 24 June 1925. 78 RGASPI 495/100/106, CPGB orgburo minutes, 21 February 1923. 120 RGASPI 495/100/739, Arnot to Pollitt, 26 February 1931. 79 See James Hinton, ‘Coventry communism. A study of factory politics in the Second 121 Andy Croft, Red Letter Days. British fiction in the 1930s,Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, World War’, History Workshop Journal, 10, 1980, 90–118. 59–61; McShane, No Mean Fighter, 142. 80 CP/Cent/Org 2/5, CPGB Midlands district report to party centre, September 1953. 122 RGASPI 495/100/225, Brown to ECCI secretariat, 16 October 1925. 81 Graham Stevenson, project interview. 123 There are eponymous biographies by Hugh Thomas, Eyre Methuen, 1973, and 82 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 17–18. Michael Newman, MUP, 1989. 83 Carr, ‘Formation’, 64–5. 124 Anand, introduction to Ralph Fox, The Novel and the People, Cobbett Publishing, 1944 84 Jack Cohen, World News and Views,7 March 1942, 155. edn, 10; Lewis, The Buried Day, Chatto & Windus, 1960, 215; Gold in John Lehmann, 85 CP/Cent/Org 2/5, CPGB Midlands district reports, September 1953. T.A. Jackson and C. Day Lewis, eds, Ralph Fox. A writer in arms,Lawrence & Wishart, 86 Richard Crossman, ‘Introduction’ in George Hodgkinson, Sent to Coventry,Robert 1937, 12; Bob Cooney cited Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, 102. Maxwell, 1970, xiv. 125 Cited Steve Parsons, ‘Communism in the professions: the organisation of the British 87 All in Favour Say Aye!,6;John McIlroy, ‘Reds at work. Communist factory organisa- Communist Party among professional workers 1933–1956’, Warwick PhD, 1990, 81. tion in the Cold War 1947–1956’, Labour History Review, 65, 2, 2000, 190–1. 126 CP/Ind/Fag/1/5, Hymie Fagan, unpublished memoirs, 81. 88 Arthur Exell, additional interview. 127 RGASPI 495/100/739, Arnot to Pollitt, 26 February 1931. 89 Norman Brown, additional interview. 128 Freda Utley, Lost Illusion, Allen & Unwin, 1949, 34–5; CP/Cent/Pers/3/1, Eric 90 Brown and Exell, additional interviews; Dudley Edwards, World News and Views,31 Godfrey, 1950. October 1942, 429. 129 CP/Ind/Dutt/16/4, ‘On Ralph Fox’s work “Biography of Lenin”’, September 91 A.J. Chandler, ‘The remaking of a working class. Migration from the South Wales 1933; Dutt to Pollitt 4 October 1933. coalfield to the new industry centres of the Midlands 1920–1940’, University of 130 See Lehman et al., A Writer,7,38–60, 154. Wales, PhD, 1988, 207 ff, 292, 297–8. 352 ff. 131 See for example Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London. A study in the relation between 92 See Mark Clapson, Invincible Green Suburbs,ch.2. classes in Victorian society,Penguin edn, 1984, 291 ff. 93 David Grove, project interview; Ted Rogers, additional interview. 132 CP/Cent/Disc, Peter Cadogan, autobiography, 1951. 94 Miles, Tribune,4 November 1955. 133 Dutt papers (British Library) Cup 1262 K4, autobiography, August 1935. 95 Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism, 90. 134 West, One Man In His Time, Allen & Unwin, 1969, 167. 96 Bert Lowe, Anchorman, Stevenage: privately published, 1996, 53 ff. 135 Tom Buchanan, ‘The lost art of Felicia Browne’, History Workshop, 54, 2002, 186. 97 Hinton, ‘Coventry communism’, 107. 136 Gabriel Carritt, additional interview. 98 Edmund Frow, additional interview. 137 CP/Cent/Pers/7/7, Alick West, 1950. 99 Beynon et al., A Place Called Teesside, 40–2; Harry Baum, project interview. 138 Edward Upward, In the Thirties, Quartet edn, 1978, 129. 100 Willie Thompson, project interview. 139 CP/Cent/Pers/2/4, Tom Drinkwater, 1950. 101 McShane, No Mean Fighter, 158. 140 CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, John Bernard Collier, 1954. 102 Daisy Priscott, project interview; Beauchamp, Morning Star, 17 July 1984. 141 CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Betty Dowsett, 1955. 103 Keyworth, ‘Invisible struggles’, 137–8. 142 June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women. Britain, 1880s to 1920s,Routledge, 104 Information from Ruth Frow. 2001, 35–6. 105 RGASPI 495/100/111, report by Murphy, 13 April 1923; Carr, ‘Formation’. 143 CP/Cent/Pers/7/7, Alick West, 1950. 106 Margaret Cohen, project interview. 144 CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Betty Dowsett, 1955. 107 CP/Cent/Org, report on 1945 election. 145 Newton, Sociology of British Communism, 73; Steve Munby, project interview. 296 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 297

146 Brenda Swann, ‘Introduction’ in Brenda Swann and Francis Aprahamian, J. D. 1932, 309. Bernal. A life in science and politics,Verso, 1999, xxiii. 182 James Friell, additional interview. 147 Werskey, Visible College, 124–5. 183 Douglas Hyde, personal communication and first additional interview. 148 Though Werskey suggests a date of 1930, in a letter from Pollitt to Arnot dated 10 184 MOA TC25 box 8/1, report on Holborn Labour Monthly discussion group, c. 1942; June 1931 (RGASPI 495/100/754) Levy is still described as only the ‘nearest to us’ Gallacher Memorial Library, William Cowe, unpublished memoirs; Ian Mackay, of a group sympathetic intellectuals. News Chronicle,6 December 1948. 149 See R. Palme Dutt, ‘Intellectuals and communism’, Communist Review,July 1932, 185 CP/Cent/Pers2/7, Ben Francis, 1950; Alison Macleod, additional interview. 421–30 for the proposals and Dutt’s response. 186 CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, Joyce Bristow, 1953; CP/Ind/Hutt, J.R. Campbell, speech to 150 Parsons, ‘Communism in the professions’, 83; RGASPI 495/100/915, ‘Report on Daily Worker staff, early 1950s. work in the universities’, 20 April 1933. 187 Florence Keyworth, project interview. 151 Brian Pearce and George Matthews, additional interviews. 188 See Eric Hobsbawm, ‘The Historians’ Group of the Communist Party’ in Maurice 152 Harry Pollitt, Professional Workers, CPGB, 1946, 7. Cornforth, ed., Rebels and Their Causes, Essays in honour of A.L. Morton,Lawrence & 153 Brian Pollitt, additional interview. Wishart, 1978, 21–47. 154 Crossman cited Michael Carritt, unpublished memoirs, ch. 2, 20; Osbert Lancaster, 189 Steve Parsons, ‘British Communist Party school teachers in the 1940s and 1950s’, Draynefleete revisited,John Murray, 1949, 63–70. Science & Society, 61, 1, 1997, 62–3. 155 Brian Harrison, ‘Oxford and the Labour movement’, Twentieth Century British History, 190 Dorothy Wedderburn and Peter Worsley, project interviews; Ralph Russell, Findings, 2, 3, 1991, 258; Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, 89–90. Keepings. Life, communism and everything, Shola Books, 2001, 166, 176. 156 Wood, Communism, 83. 191 CP/Ind/Hutt/1/3, George Owen, circular letter for Cambridge Graduate 157 Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 116–17; Denis Healey, The Time of My Life,Penguin Communist Party, 1946. edn, 1990, 35–6; see also V.G. Kiernan, ‘Herbert Norman’s Cambridge’ in his Poets, 192 John Saville, entry on Dobb, DLB vol. 9, 63–72; Dorothy Wedderburn, project inter- Politics and the People,Verso, 1989, 183–4. view. 158 Raymond Williams, Politics and Letters. Interviews with New Left Review, Verso, 1979, 193 CP/Cent/Pers/3/1, Eric Godfrey, 1950. 40. 194 Dobb papers A48 Bruce McFarlane, ‘Maurice Dobb’, late 1970s; AG1/2 G. C. 159 Cyril Claydon, project interview. Harcourt (Adelaide), note on Dobb; AG1/62 G. Sutherland to Barbara Dobb, 19 160 June Bean, project interview. August 1976. 161 See ‘Cambridge communists: 1930s–1940s’ in Socialist History, 25, 2004, 40–78, 195 Charlie Hall, project interview. where this is true of seven of the ten communists concerned. 196 Dobb papers CB8, Dobb to Barbara Dobb, n.d. 162 Del Carr, project interview. 197 Dobb papers DD16, ‘Report on Russian visit 1925’; T.E.B. Howarth, Cambridge 163 Frank Thompson, letter of 19 July 1942 cited Theodosia Jessup Thompson and Between Two Wars, Collins, 1978, 146–7. E.Thompson, There is a Spirit in Europe. A memoir of Frank Thompson, Gollancz, 1947, 198 See e.g. Arthur Utting, project interview. 59–60. 199 Alison Macleod, project interview. 164 M.T.Parker in Carmel Haden Guest, ed., David Guest. A scientist fights for freedom, 200 Parsons, ‘School teachers’, 62 ff; Richard Hanlon and Mike Waite, ‘Notes from the Lawrence & Wishart, 1938, 104. left. Communism and British classical music’ in Andy Croft, ed., A Weapon in the 165 Victor Kiernan, ‘Recollections’ in Pat Sloan, ed., John Cornford. A memoir, Cape, 1938, Struggle, Pluto, 1998, 75–9. 115. 201 Chris Whittaker and Nares Craig, project interviews. 166 ‘Cambridge socialism 1933–1936’ in Sloan, John Cornford, 113; Toynbee cited 202 Cited Werskey, Visible College, 303. Harrison, ‘Oxford’, 253. 203 Hobsbawm, ‘Historians’ Group’, 41. 167 Science and Socialism, ULF, 1944, 37–9. 204 Bob Leeson, additional interview. 168 CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Honor Arundel, 1942; Ros Faith, Dorothy Wedderburn, Bob 205 Peter Fryer, Hungary and the Communist Party. An appeal against expulsion, privately Davies, Cyril Claydon, David Grove, David Parker, project interviews. published, 1957, 46. 169 Brian Pearce, additional interview; Werskey, Visible College, 216–17; Cyril Claydon, 206 Sudhir Hazareesingh, Intellectuals and the French Communist Party. Disillusion and decline, project interview. Oxford: OUP, 1991, 126–32. 170 Ros Faith, project interview. 207 Arthur Utting, project interview. 171 Pat Devine, project interview. 208 Brian Behan, project interview. 172 Cyril Claydon, project interview. 209 Arthur Utting, project interview; see also e.g. Lowe, Anchorman, 93, 100. 173 CP/Cent/Pers, Eric Hobsbawm, 1952; see also e.g. CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Jean 210 CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Mick Ackerman, 1950. Davies, 1950 CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Basil Kaplan, 1952. 211 Stuart Hill, project interview. 174 See ‘Cambridge communists: 1930s–1940s’, 71–4. 212 See CPGB disciplinary files, Thompson file, letter of Len Broadley re Hull. 175 Jack Sutherland, unpublished memoirs, 108. 213 CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Andrew Clark, 1959. 176 For example, Stan Martin and Chris Whittaker, project interviews. 214 RGASPI 495/100/1040, ‘Party policy in the trade unions’, c. 1939. 177 List in CP/Cent/Org/2/2. 215 CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Tom Ahern, 1950. 178 Spratt, Blowing Up India, 22. 216 George Short, additional interview; Stan Martin, project interview. 179 Margot Heinemann, additional interview. 217 Jan Schling, project interview. 180 See Kevin Morgan, ‘The Communist Party and the Daily Worker 1930–56’ in 218 See Geoff Andrews, ‘Young Turks and Old Guard’, 235–7. Andrews et al., Opening the Books, 142–59. 219 Roger Simon and Joe Ball, project interviews. 181 RGASPI 495/100/754 Arnot to Pollitt, 28 June 1931; Boothroyd, Adelphi,February 220 Watters, Being Frank, 99. 298 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 299

221 See e.g. CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Dennis Angel, 1950. Left Review 156, 109; see also J.D. Bernal in Modern Quarterly, summer 1953, 133–42 222 Jim Arnison, Decades, Salford: privately published, 1991, 93. and Christopher Hill in Modern Quarterly, autumn 1953, 198–212. 223 Pat Devine, project interview. 30 Monty Johnstone, letter to authors; Owen Hardisty, Maureen Hardisty, project inter- 224 Tony Lane, Marxism Today,September 1982, 6–13. views. 225 Tony Lane, project interview. 31 Harry McShane (with Joan Smith), No Mean Fighter, Pluto, 1978, 160–1. 226 CP/Cent/EC/18/1, Brian Bolton to Mick Costello, 27 August 1982. 32 Owen Hardisty, Maureen Hardisty, project interviews; S.A. Edmonds, World News, 227 Thomson, Communist Review,July 1946, 13; Stan Martin, project interview; Derek 15 September 1956. Robinson cited McIlroy, ‘Reds’, 191. 33 Noreen Branson, additional interview. Branson typed Pollitt’s speech and was 228 All in Favour Say Aye!, 2nd conference of motor car shop stewards, 1955. informed by him of the pressure for amendments. See also Pollitt, Unity Against the 229 Avis Hutt, project interview. National Government, CPGB, c. 1935; Inprecorr, 30 October 1935, 1407–11. 230 Watters, Being Frank, 84, 112–13; Lesley Stevenson and Frank Watters, project inter- 34 John Strachey, The Theory and Practice of Socialism, Gollancz, 1936, 162–3. views. 35 Sloan, Soviet Democracy, Gollancz, 1937, 206–9. 36 Lee, Twenty Years After,Lawrence and Wishart, 1937, 169–70. Chapter 3 37 ‘Good Old Joe!’, Our Time,February 1942, 23–4; see also Tauno Saarela, ‘International and national in the communist movement’ in Tauno Saarela and 1 Harry Pollitt Speaks. A call to all workers, CPGB, 1935, 45. Kimmo Rentola, eds, Communism: national and international, Helsinki: Suomen 2 Franz Borkenau, World Communism, University of Michigan Press, 1962, 394; Pelling, Historiallinen Seura, 1998, 39–40. British Communist Party, 89. 38 Stanley Forman, project interview. 3 See for example Sirot, Maurice Thorez, 23–4, 242–4. 39 Dennis Ogden, project interview. 4 Daily Herald, 29 July 1953. 40 Ivor Montagu, Stalin. A biographical sketch, CPGB, 1942; Murphy, Stalin: 1879–1944, 5 Report on Organisation presented to CPGB fifth congress, 1922, 10–11. Bodley Head, 1945. 6 Workers’ Weekly, 12 December 1924. 41 Claud Cockburn, Crossing the Line, MacGibbon & Kee, 1958, 54. 7 Dobb, Russian Economic Development Since the Revolution,Routledge, 1929 edn, 12–13; 42 Cunningham, British Writers, 405; Robert Radford, Art for a Purpose. The Artists’ Haldane, Why Professional Workers should be Communists, CPGB, 1945, 2–3. International Association, 1933–1953,Winchester School of Art Press, 1987, 75. Within 8 Robert Michels, Political Parties. A study in the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy the communist and pro-Soviet press it is obviously easier to find examples, like the (1911), New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers edn, 1999, 85ff. ‘Stalin’ number of Russia Today in 1938. 9 Douglas Hyde, first additional interview. 43 Harold Heslop, Last Cage Down (1935), Lawrence & Wishart, 1984 edn, 61–2. 10 Ralph Russell, project interview. 44 Ralph Fox, The Novel and the People (1937), Cobbett Publishing edn, 1944, 121–7; John 11 Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘Stalinisme, culte ouvrier et culte des Cornford, ‘Full moon at Tierz. Before the storming of Huesca’ in Pat Sloan, ed., John dirigeants’ in Dreyfus et al., Le siècle des communismes, 369–76. Cornford. A memoir, Cape, 1938, 242–4. 12 CP/Cent/Org/2/3, CPGB Winchmore Hill group, submission to CPGB 45 Left Review,January 1935, 123–4 and March 1935, 233, April 1938, 926. Commission on Inner-Party Democracy, 22 November 1956. 46 Montagu, Stalin, 31. 13 In fact Pollitt returned to the shipyards only in April 1941. For the legend of his 47 RGASPI 495/200/619 E[rnest Brown?] to Arnot 21 March 1929. immediate return, see e.g. Gabriel Carritt and Ted Bramley, additional interviews; 48 RGASPI 495/100/836, William Gallacher, letter ‘to all party comrades’, 14 Arthur Merron, project interview. September 1932. 14 Carritt, additional interview; CP/Cent/Pers/2/4, Nina Drongin, 1952. 49 Joe O’Reilly, additional interview. 15 Michels, Political Parties, 220–1. 50 CP/Ind/Poll, Michael Marks, ‘To Comrade Harry Pollitt’, January 1942. 16 Frank Rowlands, Labour Party thirty-ninth annual conference Report, 1940, 136. 51 Mick Wallis, ‘Heirs to the pageant. Mass spectacle and the Popular Front’ in Croft, 17 L. Trotsky, ‘Farewell, Ilyitch! Master, farewell!’, Inprecorr, 31 January 1924, 45. Weapon in the Struggle, 51, 63. 18 Workers’ Weekly, 22 February 1924. 52 ‘J.B.’, review of Gallacher’s Revolt on the Clyde, Labour Monthly,September 1936, 19 RGASPI 495/100/153, CPGB sixth congress proceedings, 1924. 579–80. 20 Dutt papers (WCML), Dutt to Salme Dutt, 21 January 1924; Workers’ Weekly,7 March 53 Lewis, cited Samuel Hynes, The Auden generation. Literature and politics in the 1930s,The 1924. Bodley Head, 1976, 103–4 and Cunningham, British Writers, 271. 21 RGASPI 495/100/587, CPGB tenth congress proceedings, 1929. 54 Alick West, One Man in His Time, Allen & Unwin, 1969, 163. 22 Philip Spratt, Blowing Up India, Calcutta: Prachi Prakashan, 1955, 21. 55 ‘Cambridge socialism 1933–1936’ in Sloan, John Cornford, 105. 23 Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde,ch. 11; Pollitt, Serving My Time,ch. 11; IISH, Pankhurst 56 Gabriel Carritt, additional interview. papers, file 119, memoirs of visit to Moscow, 1920. 57 Pollitt, Britain Arise,report to CPGB twenty-second congress, 1952, 43. 24 Wintringham cited Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford: 58 John Mahon, Harry Pollitt,Lawrence & Wishart, 1976, 361–4. OUP, 1989 edn, 398–9. 59 ‘The recollections of John McArthur’ in Ian MacDougall, ed., Militant Miners, 25 Ralph Fox, Lenin. A biography, Gollancz, 1933, 309 and passim; CP/Ind/Dutt/16/4, Edinburgh: Polygon, 1981, 37–8; Macintyre, Little Moscows, 66. Dutt to Pollitt, 4 October 1933. 60 CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Harry Cash, 1955. 26 Discussion,January 1937. 61 Pollitt, Britain Arise, 43. 27 Brian Pearce, project interview. 62 RGASPI 495/100/263, printed draft speeches, 1925; 495/100/366 CPGB agitprop 28 Phil Piratin, additional interview; Pat Devine and Betty Baker, project interviews; department letter to districts, 20 August 1926; 495/100/367, ‘Points for propagan- Daily Worker,7 March 1953. dists’, 1926. 29 Raphael Samuel, ‘Staying power. The lost world of British communism part 2’, New 63 LHASC microfilm, CPGB central committee, 1–2 July 1938, Horner’s contribution. 300 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 301

64 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly,7 March 1925; Mavis Llewellyn and Phyllis Meeks additional 1925. interviews. 100 ‘The recollections of John Mcarthur’, 89; NA CAB 24/138 CP 4171, report on revo- 65 Brian Blain, project interview; Samuel, ‘Staying power’, 71. lutionary organisations, 24 August 1922. 66 Mavis Llewellyn, additional interview. 101 H.G.A. Hughes, Waite questionnaire. 67 Joe O’Reilly, additional interview; MOA TC 46/10, ‘Another big meeting at 102 Abe Moffat, project interview. Alexandria’, 23 February 1941. 103 RGASPI 495/100/756 Pollitt to R.W. Robson 30 July 1931. 68 Joe O’Reilly and David Francis, additional interviews. 104 See Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire, 168–71. 69 Joe O’Reilly, Margot Heinemann, Sam Russell, additional interviews. 105 Bob Cooney, additional interview; see also Hopkins, Into the Heart, 102–3. 70 See e.g. Maurice Levinson, The Trouble with Yesterday,Peter Davies, 1946, 68. 106 Arthur Mendelsohn, project interview. 71 Edmund Frow and Joe O’Reilly, additional interviews. 107 Bob Darke, The Communist Technique in Britain, Harmondsworth; Penguin, 1953, 72 CP/Ind/Poll/12/1, Lily Cole to M. Pollitt 28 June 1960. 87–91. 73 Jenkins, ‘Prelude to better days’ (unpublished memoirs, LHASC), 34–6. For similar 108 Jimmy Reid, additional interview. Lancastrians’ testimonies see CP/Cent/Pers/2/1: Anne Conroy, 1943; 109 Dutt papers (WCML), Cant to CPGB central committee, January 1930. CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Vera Darlington, 1950; CP/Cent/Pers/3/4, Mary Higgins, c. 110 See Ralph Darlington, The Political Trajectory of J.T. Murphy, Liverpool: Liverpool 1942; CP/Ind/Poll/12/1, G.F. Moore to M. Pollitt, June or July 1960; WCML University Press, 1998, 151–2. biographies, Jack Askins; Arthur Merron, project interview. 111 RGASPI 495/100/412 Murphy to CPGB Politburo 18 February 1927. 74 Lewis Jones, We Live (1939), Lawrence & Wishart, 1978 edn, 272 and passim. 112 Gidon Cohen and Kevin Morgan, ‘Stalin’s sausage machine. British students at the 75 Mavis Llewellyn, additional interview; Hyde, I Believed, 38. International Lenin School 1926–1937’, Twentieth Century British History, 13, 4, 2002, 76 RGASPI 495/14/265, ECCI cadres department report 14 January 1939; 336–41. 495/74/37, Stewart and Shields, report on cadres commission, 28 October 1938 113 Benson, To Struggle is to Live, 86. (translations courtesy Monty Johnstone); Hyde, I Believed, 38. 114 CP/Cent/Pers/8/4, Lazar Zaidman, 1952. 77 Georges Lavau, ‘The PCF, the state, and the revolution: an analysis of party poli- 115 CP/Biog, Alec Geddes, letters to his wife, 10, 15 and 19 October 1926. cies, communications and popular culture’ in Donald L.M. Blackmer and Sidney 116 RGASPI 495/100/26, CPGB Executive Committee report to ECCI, 14 November Tarrow, Communism in Italy and France, Princeton University Press, 1975, 87–142. 1921. 78 Cited Chris Williams, Democratic Rhondda. Politics and society 1885–1951, Cardiff: 117 RGASPI 495/100/364, Bob Stewart, ‘Suggestions for organising recruiting University of Wales Press, 1996, 187. campaign’, c. March 1926. 79 Williams, Democratic Rhondda, 208–9. 118 See Lansbury, The ICWPA, ICWPA, 1926. 80 Kriegel, French Communists, 13–14. 119 Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics. The left and the end of empire 1918–1964, 81 Francis and Smith, The Fed, 269. OUP, 1993, 65. 82 Information from Richard Cross. 120 RGASPI 495/100/592/73, CPGB 11th congress, 1929; Edmund and Ruth Frow, 83 LHASC microfilm 32B, Pollitt at Comintern Anglo-American secretariat, 2 Bob and Sarah Lovell. Crusaders for a better society, Manchester: WCML, n.d., 11. December 1931. 121 Hannington, Unemployed Struggles,Lawrence & Wishart, 1936. 84 McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, 77–8, 80. 122 Bob Davies cited Ruth and Edmund Frow, The Communist Party in Manchester 85 Brian Behan, project interview; Behan, Labour History Review, 59, 1, 1994, 11. 1920–1926, Manchester: CPGB North West History Group, nd, 14–15; NA CAB 86 RGASPI 495/100/836, Purkis, open letter to Pollitt, 27 July 1932. 24/123 CP 2938, report on revolutionary organisations 12 May 1921. 87 For examples cited, see RGASPI 495/100/340/83–4, Pollitt at CPGB sixth congress, 123 RGASPI 495/100/754 Pollitt to Arnot, 27 February 1931; 495/100/756 Woolley October 1926; 495/100/587, CPGB tenth congress, January 1929, exchange of to ECCI, 19 August 1931 and to CPGB secretariat, 28 August 1931; David Ainley, Horner, Gallacher and Harry Young; LHASC microfilm, Bell and Khitarov at additional interview. Comintern presidium, 13 February 1929. 124 Bert Ward, project interview. 88 RGASPI 495/100/354 CPGB organising department to ECCI org. dept. c. 125 Dutt papers (WCML), Pollitt to Dutt, 9 January 1935. December 1926. 126 LHASC microfilm, CI Marty secretariat, 29 September 1937. 89 RGASPI 495/100/737 Tapsell, supplementary report, 25 August 1931. 127 CP/Cent/Pers/6/2, Dave Priscott, 1954. 90 RGASPI 495/100/340, Stewart at CPGB seventh congress, 1926; CPGB executive 128 LHASC Johnstone papers, ‘Comrades working abroad’, CPGB organisation depart- Report to nineteenth party congress, 1947, 4. ment, n.d. but 1960s. 91 Dutt papers (WCML), Inkpin to CPGB central committee, 7 January 1930. 129 RGASPI 495/100/351, CPGB orgburo minutes 21 and 28 April 1926 re Ted 92 Benson, To Struggle is to Live, 139. Blackwell, London woodworker; Bas Barker, additional interview, re Jock Kane, 93 Alfred Kurella, ed., Dimitroff’s Letters from Prison, Gollancz, 1934, 156. Yorkshire miner. 94 Workers’ Weekly, 12 December 1924. 130 CP/Cent/Pers/8/4, Lazar Zaidman to John Mahon, 15 January 1951. 95 Michels, Political Parties, 66–71. 131 See e.g. CP/Cent/Pers/2/7, Frank Foster, 1960; Stan Davison and Arthur Utting, 96 Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution. Volume three, Sphere Books edn, project interviews; Jimmy Reid, Reflections of a Clyde-built Man, London: Souvenir 1967, 298. Press, 1976, 35–6, 42. 97 NA CAB 24/120 CP 2030, report on revolutionary organisations, 17 February 1921; 132 CP/Cent/Pers/3/1, George Guy, 1953. CP/Hist/3/9, Carr, ‘The formation of the Communist Party in Coventry’, 51. 133 Arthur Utting, Margaret Cohen, project interviews. See also e.g. Bill Moore, project 98 RGASPI 495/100/833 Pollitt to Shields, 16 August 1932 and 495/100/951 Pollitt interview; CP/Cent/Pers/2/5, Sadie Egelnick, 1951. to McIlhone 26 June and 6 December 1934. 134 Solly Kaye, project interview. 99 Max Goldberg, additional interview; RGASPI 495/100/235 CPGB orgburo, 1 July 135 Harvey Klehr, Communist Cadre, 96. 302 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 303

136 Monty Johnstone, R.W. Davies, project interviews. 180 See e.g. Left News, December 1934, March and April 1936 etc; World News and Views, 137 LHASC/CP/Cent/Pers, Eric Hobsbawm, 1952. 7 March and 27 June 1942. 138 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 122; Kiernan, ‘Herbert Norman’s Cambridge’, 187. 181 Ashleigh, ‘Moscow, 1931’, Our Time,June 1942, pp 17–20. 139 CP/Cent/Pers/6/2, Dave Priscott, 1954. 182 LHASC/CP/Ind/Poll/12/1, Ashleigh to Marjorie Pollitt, July 1960. 140 Beckett, Enemy Within, 172. 183 Macleod, Death, 28. 141 Stan Robertson and Trevor Owens, project interviews. 184 Daily Worker, 17 March 1937. 142 See e.g. Jimmy Oates, project interview. 185 RGASPI 495/100/754, Pollitt to Arnot, 27 February 1931. 143 Arnison, Decades, 72, 87. 186 Claire Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner. A biography, Minerva edn, 1991, 142 144 Watters, Being Frank, 37–9. 187 Elizabeth Wilson, additional interview; Wilson, Mirror Writing,Virago, 1982, 80. 145 See e.g. CP/Biog Jimmy Reid, letter to John Gollan, 1969; William Lauchlan, project 188 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 120. interview. 189 Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire. A political biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s 146 Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Du parti bolchevik au parti stalinien’, 338–9. secret propaganda Tsar in the West,New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003, 147 Kriegel, French Communists, 189. 306–7. 148 Sirot, Maurice Thorez, 79, 111. 190 Hyde, I Believed, 56–7. 149 Pierre Durand, Maurice Thorez. Le fondateur,Paris: Le Temps de Cerises, 2000, 143–6; 191 See for example See Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, Kriegel, French Communists, 189. eds, The Secret World of American Communism, New Haven and London: Yale University 150 Pollard papers, box 2, CPGB London district circular, 19 April 1928. Press, 1995. 151 Pollard papers, box 6, St Pancras Labour Party and Trades Council Bulletin no.1, 4 192 See Marja Kivisaari, ‘Communists are not born, they are made. The political educa- May 1926. tion system of the French communist party’, Socialist History, 21, 2002, 67–82. 152 Pollard papers box 2, CPGB London district ‘Agitation and propaganda bulletin’, 193 Margaret Cole, The Story of Fabian Socialism, Mercury Books edn, 1963, 179. September 1927. 194 For the example of the Labour Party Young Socialists, see Abrams and Little, ‘Young 153 CP/Ind/Fag/1/5, Hymie Fagan, unpublished memoirs. activist’, 321–2. 154 Lewis Day, ‘England expects…’, Discussion,November 1936, 26. 195 Hyde, I Believed, 66. 155 Dutt papers (WCML), Dutt to unnamed correspondent, 10 December 1930. 196 RGASPI 495/74/37, ‘Report on certain fundamental, organisational and cadres’ 156 Fagan, unpublished memoirs; RGASPI 17/98, Fagan biographical file. problems of the CPGB’, 27 December 1937 (translation from Russian courtesy 157 Sandro Bellassai, ‘The party as schools and the schools as party’, 93–4. Monty Johnstone); LHASC microfilm, Pollitt at CPGB central committee, 5 March 158 See Pollitt’s comments, RGASPI 495/100/1006, Pollitt to Kerrigan, 27 September 1938; Morgan, Against Fascism and War, 36. See CP/Cent/Pers/2/6, Dick Etheridge, 1935. 1948, for a case of undercover membership stretching from the Class Against Class 159 Cited Hugh MacDiarmid, The Company I’ve Kept, Hutchinson, 1966, 153–4. period to the late 1930s. 160 See McIlroy, ‘Young manhood’, 73 for the opposite view. 197 Richard Croucher, Engineers at War, Merlin, 1982, 353–4. For a similar assessment in 161 Examples were Arthur Horner, Tom Bell and Peter Kerrigan. a rather different context, see Roger Fieldhouse, Adult Education and the Cold War. 162 Douglas Hyde, second additional interview. Liberal values under siege 1946–1951, University of Leeds, Department of Adult and 163 See entry on Hardy by Andrew Flinn and Kevin Morgan, DLB,vol.11, 98–109. Continuing Education, 1985, 11. 164 RGASPI 495/100/485, Gallacher to Inkpin, 19 January 1928. 198 LHASC, Labour Party NEC minutes, memorandum on ‘League of Youth’ by John 165 RGASPI 495/100/225, Emery to ECCI secretariat 26 March 1925 and Inkpin to Huddlestone, 1939. Emery, 5 May 1925; 495/100/227, Emery to CPGB central committee 15 April 199 Ted Willis, additional interview. For a similar case, see George Matthews, additional 1925; NA CAB 24/121 CP 2740, report on revolutionary organisations, 17 March interview, who has since described how even in the 1980s such concealment 1921. appeared necessary to safeguard the reputation of the party. Willis, on the other 166 CP/Disc, CPGB politburo 26 January 1929. hand, had broken with the CPGB decades earlier. 167 Charlotte Haldane, Truth Will Out, Right Book Club, 1949, 176–7. 200 Percy Timberlake, project interview. 168 Ruth Frow, project interview; Ruth Frow, Edmund Frow 1906–1997. The making of an 201 V.G. Kiernan, ‘Herbert Norman’s Cambridge’ in his Poets, Politics and the People, activist, Salford: WCML, 1999, ch.7. Verso, 1989, 185. 169 CPGB personal files, identity suppressed. 202 Margot Heinemann, additional interview. 170 Identities suppressed. 203 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 106–7. 171 CPGB PB to Losovsky 10 December 1926; RGASPI 495/100/425 ‘A’ to Murphy 4 204 Kiernan, ‘On treason’, in his Poets, Politics and the People, 196. February 1927; 495/100/485 Gallacher to Inkpin 19 January 1928. 205 George Barnard, project interview. 172 Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 109; McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, 145. 206 See Kevin Morgan, ‘The archives of the British Communist Party: a historical 173 Nan Green, additional interview. overview’, Twentieth Century British History,7,3,416–17. 174 Andras Szecsi, Communist Review, March 1953, 90–6. 207 For information on Springhall, see David Turner, ‘“I’d sooner be shot than expelled 175 Biographical information from Steve Kellerman, introduction to Charles Ashleigh, from the party”: Dave Springhall’, Communist History Network Newsletter 5, 1998. Rambling Kid, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr edn, 2003; RGASPI 17/98/675, Ashleigh 208 RGASPI 495/100/993, ILS characterisations, 27 May 1935. biographical file; New Age, 23 May 1908, 79, 11 February 1909, 321. 209 LHASC microfilm, Arnot at CI Marty commission, 22 February 1936. 176 RGASPI 495/100/754, Pollitt to Arnot 17 February and 20 August 1931. 210 ILS characterisation, 27 May 1935; Cowe, unpublished memoirs (Gallacher 177 Utley, Lost Illusion, 119–20. Memorial Library). 178 Beatrice Webb diaries 27 August 1934. 211 Cowe, unpublished memoirs; Gallacher, Revolt,ch.1. 179 Alison Macleod, The Death of Uncle Joe, Merlin, 1995, 28. 212 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 64–7. 304 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 305

213 Pollard papers, box 8, YCL statement, ‘Outline of work in children’s section’, n.d. 248 Anthony Howard, New Statesman and Nation, 24 July 1964, 106. 214 Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Du parti bolchévik’, 339. 249 Andy Croft, Comrade Heart. A life of Randall Swingler, Manchester: MUP, 2003, 227. 215 Francis King and George Matthews, eds, About Turn. The Communist Party and the 250 CP/Ind/Poll/12/1, Humphrey Tomalin to Marjorie Pollitt, 4 [July] 1960. outbreak of the Second World War,Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, 261. 251 Reid cited John Foster and Charles Woolfson, ‘How Workers on the Clyde gained 216 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 60–3. the capacity for class struggle: the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ Work-In 1971–2’ in 217 Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘Deux générations de militants communistes John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell, British Trade Unions and Industrial français (1931–1951) en proie à des procès d’épurations internes’ in José Gotovitch Politics 1964–79, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, 305. and Anne Morelli, eds, Militantisme et militants, Brussels, 2000, 128–33. 252 Foster and Woolfson, ‘How Workers’, 304–19. 218 RGASPI 534/7/49, ‘Report on UCWU’, 18 December 1929. 253 John Foster and Charles Woolfson, The Politics of the UCS Work-In. Class alliances and 219 RGASPI 495/100/153/97–9, CPGB sixth congress, May 1924. the right to work,Lawrence & Wishart, 1986, 209–10, 240–1. 220 Fishman, British Communist Party and Trade Unions, 215. 254 Peter Latham, project interview. 221 Arnison, Decades, 41; CPGB EC, Report to twenty-first national congress, 1949. 255 CP/Biog, Reid election literature, October 1974; NA KV 2/1037, ‘Rhondda East 222 Arthur Utting, project interview. needs a leader!’, election leaflet, 1935. 223 James Hinton, ‘Coventry Communism: a study of factory politics in the Second 256 Jimmy Reid, additional interview. World War’, History Workshop, 10, 1980, 101. 257 CP/Biog, Reid 1976. 224 See Mike Squires, Saklatvala. A political biography,Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 258 Reid, Reflections, 163. 225 NA 30/69/220, report on revolutionary organisations, 22 May 1924, citing CPGB 259 Beckett, Enemy Within, 190. control commission report to sixth party congress. 260 The Times, 16 February 1976. 226 RGASPI 494/100/419 CPGB political bureau 10 May 1927; 495/100/621 CPGB 261 Reid, Reflections, 41. organisation commission 1929; 534/7/32 Hardy to Losovsky 26 March 1926; 227 RGASPI 495/100/485 Arnot to Inkpin 26 June 1928 and Saklatvala 26 June 1928 Chapter 4 with cuttings; 495/100/494 CPGB central executive committee 24–6 September 1928. 1 Daily Worker, 30 August 1940. 228 RGASPI 495/100/155 CPGB electoral commission 1924. 2 Frieda Brewster, ‘A long journey’, unpublished memoirs, LHASC; Frieda Brewster, 229 RGASPI 495/100/587 Saklatvala at CPGB tenth congress January 1929; additional interview. 495/100/593 Saklatvala at CPGB eleventh congress November 1929. 3 Florence Keyworth, ‘Invisible struggles. The politics of ageing’ in Rosalind Brunt 230 Andrew Thorpe, ‘Communist MP: Willie Gallacher and British communism’ in and Caroline Rowan, eds, Feminism, Culture and Politics, 1982, 140. Kevin Morgan, et al., Agents of the Revolution. 4 Loiseau, ‘Les militantes de l’ombre’ in Dreyfus, Pennettier and Viet-Depaule, eds, 231 Sam Russell, additional interview. La part des militants,Paris: Editions de l’Atelier, 1996. 232 George Orwell, diary entry for 11 February 1936 in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 5 See Kate Weigand, Red Feminism. American communism and the making of women’s libera- eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Volume 1: an age like this tion, Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2001. 1920–1940, Harmondsworth: Penguin edn, 1970, 201. 6 E.g. Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power. The women’s movement 1918–1928, I.B. Tauris, 233 Healey, The Time of My Life, 75. 1997, 1–12. 234 Bevan, Labour Monthly, December 1936, 760–2. 7 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, Isabel Brown, CPGB executive tribute on fiftieth birth- 235 See Sam Davies, ‘The membership of the National Unemployed Workers’ day, 1944. Movement, 1923–1938, Labour History Review, 57, 1, 1992, 29–36; biographical infor- 8 Dorothy Kuya, project interview. mation from Kevin Morgan, Hannington entry in DLB vol. 10, 2000, 73–8. 9 Florence Keyworth, additional interview. 236 LHASC microfilm, CPGB central committee minutes, 5 April 1930; RGASPI 10 Weitz, Creating German Communism; Marc Lazar, Maisons Rouges. Les Partis communistes 495/100/739, Arnot to Pollitt, 19 June 1931. français et italien de la Libération à nos jours,Paris: Aubier, 1992, 399–400. 237 LHASC microfilm, CPGB central committee minutes 9 November 1932. 11 RGASPI 495/100/444, CPGB central women’s department to CI women’s secre- 238 Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘Les autobiographies des ‘fils du peuple”’, tariat, 7 April 1927. 217–46. The posthumous publication of a memoir of Gabriel Péri’s obviously has 12 Weitz, Creating, 189; Studer, Un parti sous influence, 324–5; Eley, ‘From welfare politics a different significance. to welfare states’, 524. 239 Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 115–16, 264 and passim. 13 Karen Hunt, Equivocal Feminists. The Social Democratic Federation and the woman question 240 RGASPI 495/100/754, Pollitt to Arnot, 23 January 1931. 1884–1911, Cambridge, CUP, 1996, 204–5. 241 LHASC microfilm, CPGB central committee 11–12 January 1930. 14 Figures from G.D.H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914,Routledge & Kegan 242 Arthur Horner, Incorrigible Rebel, MacGibbon & Kee, 1960, 66. Paul, 1948, 480; Joni Lovenduski, Pippa Norris and Catriona Burness, ‘The party 243 RGASPI 495/100/951, Pollitt to Rust, 27 January 1934. and women’ in Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball, eds, Conservative Century. The 244 RGASPI 495/100/494 CPGB central committee 28 April 1928 and 24–6 Conservative Party since 1900, OUP, 1994, 623–4. September 1928 (pseudonyms replaced with real names). 15 RGASPI 495/100/180, Bell, report on French visit, n.d., early 1924? 245 RGASPI 495/100/754, Pollitt to Arnot 23 January 1931 reporting remarks of 16 RGASPI 495/100/109, Bell at CPGB party council, 10–11 February 1923. Horner’s. 17 For the ILP, see Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 95, 97. 246 NA HO 45/25549, report on CPGB, 25 January 1940; LHASC Pollitt papers, 18 RGASPI 495/100/168, Pollitt, ‘Work amongst women’, c. 1924; Hannah Mitchell, Horner to Pollitt, 7 November 1939. The Hard Way Up. The autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, suffragette and rebel,Virago, 1977, 247 Cited David Smith, ‘Leaders and led’ in K.S. Hopkins, Rhondda Past and Future, 189. Rhondda Borough Council, 1973, n.d., 64. 19 Sue Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’. 306 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 307

20 RGASPI 495/100/263, D. Wilson to Inkpin, 17 February 1925; 495/100/588, 50 Graves, Labour Women, 66. Smith, CPGB tenth congress, 1929; Gisela Chan Man Fong, ‘Shoulder to shoulder: 51 Bard and Robert, ‘French Communist Party and women’, 325–6. Rose Smith, who stood for “different but equal and united”’ in John McIlroy, Kevin 52 RGASPI 495/100/444, ‘Work among women in the CPGB’, 9 May 1927; Martin Morgan and Alan Campbell, eds, Party People, Communist Lives. Explorations in biogra- Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914–1959, Basingstoke: Blackwell, phy,Lawrence & Wishart, 2001, 106. 1992, 91. 21 See Alun Howkins, ‘Class Against Class. The political culture of the Communist 53 See Jonathan Schneer, George Lansbury, Manchester: MUP, 1990, ch. 2. Party of Great Britain 1930–1935’ in Frank Gloversmith, ed., Class, Culture and Social 54 E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front. A mirror to life in England during the world war, Change. A new view of the 1930s, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980, 246–7; and for Hutchinson, 1932, 274–5. France, Christine Bard and Jean-Louis Robert, ‘The French Communist Party and 55 Communist, 19 August 1920. women 1920–39. From feminism to familialism’ in Graves and Gruber, Women and 56 Helen Crawfurd, unpublished memoirs (LHASC), 86–101. Socialism, 322, 341–4. 57 See Barbara Winslow, Sylvia Pankhurst. Sexual politics and political activism, London: UCL 22 Kriegel, French Communists, 62. Press, 1996, 145–54. 23 Bard and Robert, ‘French Communist Party and women’. 58 RGASPI 495/100/104, CPGB politburo minutes, 14 February 1923; 495/100/109, 24 E.g. LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, Gwen Collier, 1952; CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, Eve CPGB party council n.d. but mid-1923. Cohen, 1953. 59 Workers’ Weekly, 28 March 1924. 25 Susan B. Whitney, ‘Embracing the status quo. French communists, young women 60 Sheila Rowbotham, A New World for Women: Stella Browne—socialist feminist, Pluto, and the Popular Front’, Journal of Social History, autumn 1996, 29–53. 1977, 28 and passim; also Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’, 34–6, 76–80. 26 Tricia Davies, ‘“What kind of woman is she?” Women and communist party poli- 61 See Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left. 2: The Webbs and Soviet communism, tics, 1941–1955’ in Brunt and Rowan, Feminism, Culture and Politics, 85–107. Lawrence & Wishart, 2006. 27 WCML biographies, Alice Bates. 62 Communist, 11 March 1922. 28 Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 34–5. 63 Pollard papers, box 4, CPGB St Pancras local party committee minutes 12 29 It Can Be Done,report of CPGB fourteenth congress, 1937, 216–17; John Gollan in November and 28 December 1923. Youth of Britain Advance!,report of YCL eighth congress, 1937, 22; Report of the Central 64 William Mellor, Direct Action, Leonard Parsons, 1920, 91–2. Committee, CPGB fifteenth congress, 1938, 37. 65 Tom Quelch and William McLaine, Communist International,June-July 1920, 2241–6; 30 Arthur Mendelsohn, project interview. RGASPI 516/2/14, Salme Pekkala (Dutt) to ‘Dear Comrades’, n.d. but 1920. 31 W.H. Auden, Spain,Faber, 1937, 11–12. 66 Pollard papers, box 11, ‘Department for work among women report’, n.d. but 1927. 32 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 120. 67 RGASPI 495/100/588, CPGB tenth congress, 1929. 33 Pamela M. Graves, Labour Women. Women in British working-class politics 1918–1939, 68 See Sheila Rowbotham, Friends of Alice Wheeldon, Pluto, 1986. Cambridge: CUP, 1994, 159. 69 See e.g. Jill Liddington and Jill Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us. The rise of the women’s 34 Alan Sims, Waite questionnaire. suffrage movement,Virago, 1978, Rivers Oram Press, 2000; Michael Savage, ‘Women 35 Joe O’Reilly, additional interview. and work in the Lancashire cotton industry, 1890–1939’ in J.A. Jowitt and A.J. 36 Yvonne Kapp, Time Will Tell. Memoirs,Verso, 2003, 261; George Barnard, project McIvor, eds, Employers and Labour in the English Textile Industries 1850–1939,Routledge, interview; Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 116 (word order altered). 1988, 212–15. 37 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, Beryl Barker, 1954. 70 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 9–15. 38 Charles Sowerwine, Sisters or Citizens? Women and socialism in France since 1876, 71 E.g. Workers’ Dreadnought, 14 June 1919. Cambridge, CUP, 1982, 198–201; Sue Bruley, ‘Women and communism. A case 72 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 109–10. study of Lancashire weavers in the depression’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Books, 73 Pollitt, ‘Work amongst women’; RGASPI 495/100/180, Pollitt, ‘Report on German 65; Bard and Robert, ‘French Communist Party and women’, 344; Eley, ‘Welfare election’, 1924. politics’, 524; Karen Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, 205–6. 74 Dutt papers (WCML), Pollitt to Dutt, 2 February 1935. 39 Pollard papers, box 1, Edith M. Brandwood to CPGB London district women’s 75 RGASPI 495/100/155, resolution for CPGB national women’s conference, 18–19 propaganda department, 2 September 1927. May 1924. 40 Betty Reid, project interview. 76 Pollitt, Harry Pollitt Speaks. A call to all workers, CPGB, 1935, 42. 41 LHASC CP/Ind/Pers/1/4, Alex Clark. 77 Workers’ Weekly, 12 September 1924. 42 See for example Michael Carritt, unpublished memoirs, n.d.; Pips Pinkus and Walter 78 Notably Betty Kane, Phyllis Short and Mary Doherty; see also David Proudfoot to Clary, Waite questionnaires; Gordon McLennan, Jimmy Oates and Christopher Allen Hutt, 29 June and 18 August 1926 in MacDougall, Militant Miners, 287, 291. Meredith, project interviews; Philip Bolsover, additional interview. 79 RGASPI 495/100/588, Crispin, CPGB tenth congress, 1929. 43 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, Maida Beasley, n.d.; CP/Cent/Pers/2/4, Joyce 80 IISH, Pankhurst papers, file 209, WSF East London federation minutes, 14 May Dyche, c. 1944; CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, Peggy Gibbons, 1946; CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, 1920; RGASPI 495/100/189, CPGB women’s department, bulletins for 1924. Barbara Dowling, 1955; CP/Cent/7/6, Nell Vyse, 1949. 81 RGASPI 495/200/619, ‘E’ to Arnot, 1 April 1929. 44 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/4, Grace Ebbett, 1950. 82 Workers’ Weekly,4 April 1924. 45 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, M. Birch, n.d. 83 E.g. LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/6, Gwilym Evans, 1950; for a pre-war example see 46 Deakin papers, A1, notes by Noah Deakin. Vida Henning, Woman in a Shabby Brown Coat,Havant: Green Cottage Publishing, 47 Pollard papers, box 4, CPGB St Pancras local party committee to Inkpin, 11 October 2000, 41–9. 1925. 84 Irene Paynter, Party Organiser,August 1938, 23. 48 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/5, Elfred Elias, 1953. 85 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, Doris Coleman 1953. 49 Trevor Owens, project interview. 86 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, Ellen Gadbsy, 1952. 308 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 309

87 Margaret Cohen, Marion Fagan and Hymie Fagan, eds, Childhood Memories, London: 123 See e.g. Workers’ Weekly,8 August 1924, where two out of thirty-one local organisers privately published, 1983, 89–91; Jo Stanley, obituary of Frank Jackson, History listed are women. Workshop Journal,9,1980, 212–13. 124 RGASPI, CPGB London district branch committees, 1939. 88 Ivor Montagu, The Youngest Son,Lawrence & Wishart, 1970, 116, 122; GARF 125 Margaret Cohen, project interview. 5451/13a/518, FSU delegation questionnaires, 1933; LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/5/3, 126 Florence Keyworth, project and additional interviews. Eileen Montagu, 17 November 1942, Ivor Montagu, 11 November 1942. 127 Link, summer 1979, 9. 89 Sam Russell, second additional interview. 128 Laurie Green, project interview. 90 Alec and Jean Ferguson, additional interview. 129 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, Joyce Browne, 1950. 91 For example three out of twenty-five candidates in 1929 and two out of twenty-one 130 Vi Gill, project interview. in 1945. 131 Keyworth, ‘Invisible struggles’, 139–40. 92 RGASPI 17/98/796, Jordan autobiography. 132 Dora Cox cited Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’, 247–8. 93 WCML biographies, Lily Ferguson, 5. 133 Daily Worker,2 December 1940. 94 RGASPI 17/98/796, Jordan autobiography; 495/100/651, Comintern interna- 134 RGASPI 495/100/281, Crawfurd to [ECCI?] secretariat, n.d. but c. 1925. tional women’s secretariat to Anglo-American secretariat, 15 April 1930. 135 RGASPI 495/100/497, ‘Executive conference of the WIR’, Berlin, 17–21 April 95 Though originally from the North East, Brown moved to Shipley in the early 1920s 1928; 495/100/494, CPGB central committee 28 April 1928; 495/100/497, CPGB and was closely identified with the West Riding. See also Hannam and Hunt, Socialist politburo, 9 March 1929. Women, 80–1; CPGB central women’s department to CI women’s secretariat, 7 April 136 Pollitt, It Can Be Done, CPGB fourteenth congress report, 1937, 193–4. 1927 137 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Des Atkinson, 1953. 96 Helen Schofield at CPGB national conference, World News and Views,4 July 1942, 138 Ruth Frow, project interview. 294. 139 Maureen Hardisty, project interview. 97 LHASC/Cent/Cong, 1983. 140 Graves, Labour Women, 72–3. 98 LHASC, Helen Crawfurd, unpublished memoirs, 233. 141 Maureen Hardisty, project interview; LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/8/1, Betty Willetts, 99 See Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left 1,ch.3. 1943; Vera Leff cited Jill Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham. Feminism and anti-mili- 100 NA CAB 24/138 CP 4132, ‘Report on revolutionary organisations’, 27 July 1922. tarism in Britain since 1820,Virago, 1989, 164–6. 101 Pollard papers, box 9, CPGB St Pancras local, organiser’s report 24 June 1927. 142 Dorothy Morgan, additional interview. 102 Croucher, We Refuse to Starve in Silence, 103. 143 RGASPI 495/100/340, Sadie Span at CPGB organising conference, 19 October 103 Florence Keyworth, project interview; see also Betty Matthews, Betty Reid, project 1926. interviews. 144 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/7, Rhoda Fraser, 1950. 104 Margaret Cohen, project interview. 145 Cited Kevin Morgan, Harry Pollitt, Manchester: MUP, 1993, 35, 111; see also Kevin 105 Vi Gill, project interview; Neil Rafeek, ‘Agnes Maclean 1918–1994’, Scottish Labour Morgan and Tauno Saarela, ‘Northern underground revisited: Finnish Reds and the History, 30, 121–30. origins of British communism’, European History Quarterly, 29, 2, 179–215 106 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, identity suppressed. 146 Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism’, 226–8; Bruley, ‘Women against war and fascism. 107 E.g. report cited NA CAB 24/160 CP 202(23), report on revolutionary organisations, Communism, feminism and the people’s front’ in Jim Fyrth, ed., Britain, Fascism and 19 April 1923. the Popular Front,Lawrence & Wishart, 1985, 140–1. 108 RGASPI 495/100/764: CPGB colonial committee 2 February 1931. 147 Bruley, ‘Women’, 141; LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/4/7 Nan McMillan, 1950. 109 RGASPI 495/100/163 CPGB orgburo minutes 25 November 1924; 495/100/243, 148 Vernon cited Bruley, ‘Women’, 134. letter to E.H. Brown 2 May 1925. 149 Vernon, ‘The party’s work among women’, Discussion,July 1937, 5–6. 110 LHASC CP/Cent/PC/1/1 CPGB political bureau minutes 20 June 1924; RGASPI 150 Hettie Bower, project interview; LHASC CP/Ind/Mont, Bower to Montagu 16 495/100/189, Crawfurd, ‘Committee for work among women constituted 28th Jan.’ December 1974 (1924?). 151 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/7/6, Nell Vyse, 1949, 1954. 111 RGASPI 533/10/147, Young to YCI executive, 11 April 1923. 152 See Health and Housing, London Women’s Parliament, 1944, 6, where an Elizabeth 112 John Lucas, The Radical Twenties. Writing, politics, culture, Nottingham: Five Leaves, Vyse is mentioned as a factory nurse, though this is not mentioned in Vyse’s party 1997, 88; for other positive comments see e.g. Phyllis Bell and Katie Loeber (Cant), biography. additional interviews. 153 June Bean, Avis Hutt and Monica Luxemburg, project interviews. Carol Owens, who 113 NA KV2/1377, Fox to Bell, 10 April 1929 (extract). came from a party family, was the exception. 114 RGASPI 495/100/491 Arnot to Inkpin 12 January 1928; 495/100/440: CPGB agit- 154 Malcom MacEwen, The Greening of a Red, Pluto, 1991, 156. prop department to Budden, 8 April 1927. 155 Project interviews. 115 Montagu, ‘Memories of the counter-trial’ in Memories of Georgi Dimitrov, Sofia Press, 156 Margot Kettle, additional interview. 1972, 104. 157 Margaret Cohen, project interview. 116 Roger Simon, project interview. 158 Richard Croucher, Engineers at War, Merlin, 1982, 371–2. 117 Margot Heinemann, additional interview. 159 Margaret Cohen , project interview 118 Olive Parsons, additional interview; Guardian, 27 August 1993. 160 Avis Hutt, project interview. 119 Pollard papers box 11, Nancy Williams to all party locals 23 May 1928. 161 Kapp, Time Will Tell, 269. 120 Stan Martin, project interview. 162 Monica Luxemburg, project interview. 121 Carol Owens, project interview; ‘Women and bazaars’, Link, 30, 1980, 15. 163 June Bean, project interview; also Margot Kettle, additional interview. 122 Pat Devine (junior), project interview. 164 Thomas Bell, Pioneering Days,Lawrence & Wishart, 1941, 85–7. 310 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 311

165 Anthony Couglan, Saothar, 14, 1989. 210 Ben Fine et al., Class Politics. An answer to its critics, Leftover Pamphlets, n.d. but 1984. 166 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 123. 211 Nigel Young, An Infantile Disorder? The crisis and decline of the New Left,Routledge & 167 RGASPI 495/100/836 Phylis Neal to unnamed Moscow contact, 9 September 1932. Kegan Paul, 1977, 144–5. 168 Carol Owens, project interview. 212 See Berthold Unfried, ‘L’autocritique dans les milieux kominterniens des années 169 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, Frieda Gaitt, 1957; Monica Milner and June Bean, 1930’ in Pennetier and Pudal, Autobiographies, 49–50. project interviews; Marjorie Pollitt, A Rebel Life, Harris St Ultimo: Red Pen 213 Weigand, Red Feminism, 87–9 and passim. Publications, 1989, 40. 214 Dorothy Kuya, project interview. 170 Golda Barr, additional interview. 215 Mikki Doyle, Link no 40, 10–11; Marika Sherwood et al., Claudia Jones. A life in exile, 171 See Party Organiser, March 1940, 16–17. Lawrence & Wishart, 1999, 39, 152. 172 Jean Betteridge, project interview. 216 Florence Keyworth, project interview. 173 E.g. Hettie Bower, project interview. 217 Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 49. 174 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/4/3, Rafa Kenton, n.d. 218 Frieda Brewster, additional interview. 175 Unless otherwise stated, biographical information from Rose Kerrigan, additional interview; Neil Rafeek, ‘Rose Kerrigan 1903–1995’, Scottish Labour History Society Chapter 5 Journal, 31, 1996, 72–84. 176 Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde, 189. 1 NA Cab 24/51 GT 6425, report on revolutionary organisations, 2 December 1918. 177 RGASPI 534/7/38, report on UCWU, 18 December 1929. 2 Fenner Brockway, Inside the Left, Allen & Unwin, 1942, 265–6; Strachey papers, 178 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/4/3, Rose Kerrigan, c. 1951. Gollancz to Strachey, 31 October 1939; Pollitt cited Morgan, Harry Pollitt, 80. See 179 LHASC CP/Ind/Hann/2/2, Hannington to Christopher Brunel, 2 January 1963. also John Callaghan, Rajani Palme Dutt. A study in British Stalinism,Lawrence & Wishart, 180 Entry by John Saville, DLB,vol. 9, 244–6. 1993. 181 Discussion, March 1937, 32. 3 Dutt papers, British Library, Cup. 1262 K4, party autobiography, August 1935. 182 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Mick Ackerman, 1950. 4 R. Palme Dutt, India Today, Gollancz, 1940, 5. 183 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, Jack Coward, 1949. 5 Dutt, ‘Travel notes’, Labour Monthly,May 1946, 157; Dutt papers, British Library, 184 Link no. 39, 13; Sybil Newton, project interview. Cup 1262 K4, article for Amrita Bazar Patrika,3 April 1946. 185 Rafeek, ‘Agnes Maclean’. 6 Cited Werskey, Visible College, 72–3. 186 Vi Hill, project interview. 7 Pelling, British Communist Party, 14–15. 187 Chan Man Fong,’ Shoulder to shoulder’, 102–21. 8 Werskey, Visible College, 72–3. 188 Karen Hunt, ‘Dora Montefiore. A different communist’ in McIlroy, Party People, 9 Macintyre, Little Moscows, 21–2 and passim. 29–50. 10 Pelling, British Communist Party,1 ff. 189 Audrey Linklater, An Unhusbanded Life, Hutchinson, 1980. 11 Kendall, Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900–21, 297–302. 190 Maggie Nelson, additional interview; see also Mitchell, Hard Way,e.g. 125–6. 12 A. Rossi, Physiologie du parti communiste français, 343–57, 446–7. 191 See e.g. Jean Lennox (Aberdeen), project interview. 13 Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George 192 Betty Baker, project interview. Orwell. Volume 2: my country right or left 1940–1943, Harmondsworth: Penguin edn, 193 See Kriegel, French Communists, 69; Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 82. 1970, 329; Maurice Reckitt, As It Happened, Dent, 1941, 162–3. 194 See Jean-Pierre A. Bernard, Paris Rouge. 1944–1964. Les communistes français dans la 14 Harrison, ‘Communists’, Labour History Review, 59, 1, 1994, 40–1. capitale,Paris: Champ Villon, 1991, 111. 15 See e.g. ‘Inside the whale’ in Orwell and Angus, eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism 195 See Isabel Brown, additional interview. and Letters of George Orwell. Volume 1: an age like this 1920–1940, Harmondsworth: 196 Olive Parsons and Gladys Easton, additional interviews; Brewster, ‘Long journey’, Penguin edn, 1970, 564–5. 226. 16 Alfred Sherman, project interview. 197 Horner, Incorrigible Rebel, 22. 17 Harrison, ‘Communists’. 198 LHASC CP/Cent/Pers/2/4, Louise Eaton, 1956. 18 Cris Shore, ‘Ethnicity as revolutionary strategy: communist identity in Italy’ in S. 199 Florence Keyworth, project interview. MacDonald, ed., Inside Identities. Ethnography in Western Europe, Oxford: Berg, 1993, 200 George Matthews, project interview. 27–53. 201 Elizabeth Wilson, additional interview. 19 Pollitt, ‘The Communist Party and the Whitechapel by-election’, Labour Monthly, 202 Florence Keyworth and Daisy Priscott, project interviews; Rebecca,July 1982; Bruley, January 1931, 30. ‘Socialism and feminism’, 60–1. 20 See Kevin Morgan, ‘Une toute petite différence entre “la Marseillaise” et “God Save 203 Florence Keyworth, obituary of Harrison, History Workshop,8,1979, 219–22; Marian the King”: la gauche britannique et le problème de la nation dans les années trente’ Ramelson, The Petticoat Rebellion,Lawrence & Wishart, 1967, 9–12 and passim. in Serge Wolikow and Annie Bleton-Ruget, eds, Antifascisme et nation. Les gauches 204 Keyworth, Link, 30, autumn 1980, 13. européennes au temps du Front populaire, Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon, 1998, 205 Florence Keyworth, project interview. 203–12. 206 Margaret Cohen, Betty Reid and Ruth Frow, project interviews. 21 Jack Lindsay, England, My England,Key Books, 1939, 64. 207 Dorothy Wedderburn, project interview; see also e.g. Betty Reid and June Bean, 22 Jack Lindsay and Edgell Rickword, eds, Spokesmen for Liberty (first published as A project interviews; Mary Joannou, obituary of Margot Heinemann, Our History Handbook of Freedom, 1939), Lawrence & Wishart, 1941. Journal, 20, November 1992. 23 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 53. 208 Vi Gill, project interview. 24 Lindsay, ‘Not English?’, Left Review,May 1936, 353–7. 209 Barbara Warsop, Link, summer 1974, 14. 25 A.D. Smith cited Colin Holmes, John Bull’s Island. Immigration and British society 312 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 313

1871–1971, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988, 292–3. 60 Benny Rothman, additional interview. 26 See for example Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews. The Anglo-Jewish commu- 61 Jack Gaster, project interview nity, Britain and the Russian Revolution,Frank Cass, 1992; Henry Srebrnik, London Jews 62 Bower, project interview; Guardian, 27 August 1993. and British Communism 1935–1945,Valentine Mitchell, 1995; Jason Heppell, ‘A ques- 63 Monica Luxemburg, project interview; Rafa Kenton, Waite questionnaire. tion of “Jewish politics”? The Jewish section of the Communist Party of Great 64 CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, Bernard Buckman, 1952; Charles Hobday, ‘Charles Poulsen Britain, 1936–1945’, in Christine Collette and Stephen Bird, eds, Jews, Labour and the (1911–2001). A study in loyalties’, Communist History Network Newsletter, spring 2003; Left, 1918–48, Ashgate, 2000. Dave Goodman, additional interview; John Saville, entry on Ted Ainley, DLB vol. 27 Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry, 1998, 317; Barnett Litvinoff, A Peculiar 10, 1. People,Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969, 158; Heppell, ‘A question’, 95. 65 See Josh Davidson in David Corkill and Stuart Rawnsley, The Road to Spain. Anti- 28 Phil Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red,Thames Publications, 1948, 87 and passim; Litvinoff, fascists at war 1936–1939, Dunfermline: Borderline Press, 1981, 157–62; Charles A Peculiar People, 157–8. Lefton, project interview; Jack Cohen, additional interview; Hobday, ‘Charles 29 Isaac Deutscher, ‘The non-Jewish Jew’ in The non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, Oxford: Poulsen’. OUP 1968, 26–30. 66 CP/Ind/Fag/1/5, Hymie Fagan, unpublished memoirs, 23. 30 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 53. 67 Geoffrey Goodman, project interview; also Solly Kaye, project interview, Ben Ainley, 31 Gwyn A. Williams, When Was Wales?,Penguin edn, 1985, 247–8, 279–80. additional interview. 32 Srebrnik, London Jews, 12–17; Kadish, Bolsheviks, 246. 68 David Goldstein and Harry Baum, project interviews; Phil Piratin and Martin 33 Rothman, additional interview; Stan Martin, project interview. Bobker, additional interviews. 34 Hilda Forman, project interview. 69 Willy Goldman, East End My Cradle,Faber, 1940, 15–21. 35 Srebrnik, London Jews, 8–11, 31–2; Frankel, project interview. 70 Martin Bobker, additional interview. 36 Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, privately published, 1978, 102; CPGB/Biog/1, mater- 71 See Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, 235 ff. ial for tribute to Golda Barr; CP/Cent/Disc, C. Abramsky, 1950. 72 Solly Kaye, project interview; also Srebrnik, ‘Sidestepping the contradictions’, 137. 37 RGASPI 495/25/312, report by Comintern worker ‘Bill’, 27 April 1927. 73 Blanche Flannery, obituary of Seifert, Guardian, 12 March 1998. 38 McCarthy, Generation in Revolt, 73–8. 74 Stanley Forman, project interview; see also e.g. David Goldstein, Sid Kaufman, 39 Jack Cohen, additional interview. project interviews. 40 Pollitt, ‘The Communist Party’, 33. 75 CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, Hannah Bolgar, 1960. 41 Respectively eight out of twenty-five for the YCL and eight out of 133 for the CPGB; 76 CP/Ind/Mont/7/2, Bower to Ivor Montagu, 16 December 1974. see William Rust, Britons in Spain,Lawrence & Wishart, 1939, 189–99. 77 Beckett, Enemy Within, 152–3. 42 David Goldstein and Dave Marshall, project interviews; Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, 78 Chimen Abramsky, personal information; Andrew Rothstein, ‘Zionism’, Labour 119–20; I. Nayman, Waite questionnaire. Monthly, March 1953, 128–9. 43 Rafa Kenton, Waite questionnaire; Dave Goodman, project interview; Benny 79 Pelling, British Communist Party, 180. Rothman, additional interview; Arthur Mendelsohn, project interview. 80 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 140. 44 Neil Barrett, ‘The threat of the British Union of Fascists in Manchester’ in Tony 81 See e.g. Steven Fielding, Class and Ethnicity. Irish Catholics in England, 1880–1939, Kushner and Nadia Valman, eds, Remembering Cable Street. Fascism and anti-fascism in Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993. British society,Vallentine Mitchell, 2000, 58; Jack Cohen, ‘The Jewish question. A 82 Fielding, Class and Ethnicity, 109. reply to BP’, Discussion,May 1936, 9–11. 83 Eden and Cedar Paul, Creative Revolution, Plebs League edn, 1921, 106. 45 Klehr, Communist Cadre,ch. 2; Heppell, ‘A question’, 111. 84 NA CAB 24/160 CP 291, report on revolutionary organisations, 5 July 1923; Workers’ 46 Heppell, ‘A question’, 108; CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Dennis Angel, 1950. Weekly, 12 December 1924. 47 Henry Srebrnik ‘Sidestepping the contradictions. The Communist Party, Jewish 85 Robert Duncan, ‘“Motherwell for Moscow”. Revolutionary politics and the Labour communists and Zionism 1935–48’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Books, 137. movement in a Lanarkshire constituency 1918–1922’, Scottish Labour History Society 48 Max Colin, additional interview. Journal, 28, 1993, 47–70. 49 Labour’s Who’s Who, 1924. 86 NA CAB 24/162 CP 476, report on revolutionary organisations, 6 December 1923. 50 Pollitt, ‘The Communist Party’, 32. 87 RGASPI 495/100/111, Newbold, telegram to Zinoviev and Bukharin, March or 51 Heppell, ‘A question’, 108–9; April 1923; NA CAB 24/160 CP 232 report on revolutionary organisations, 3 May 52 CP/Cent/Pers/8/4, Lazar Zaidman, 1952. 1923, CP 291, report on revolutionary organisations, 5 July 1923 citing Newbold at 53 Sid Kaufman, project interview. Third ECCI plenum. 54 Srebrnik, London Jews, 72; CP/Cent/Disc, Chimen Abramsky, n.d., 1950, 1956–7. 88 Tom Mann papers, Mann to Elsie Mann 27 November 1933; report on revolution- 55 John Saville and Margaret Cohen, entry on Jack Cohen in DLB,vol. 9, 44; Joe Cline ary organisations, 6 December 1923. additional interview; CP/Cent/Pers/8/4, Lazar Zaidman, 1952. 89 RGASPI 495/100/364, ‘District organisation’, late 1926. 56 CP/Cent/Pers/2/6, Reuben Falber, 1950; Sam Apter, project interview; Rose 90 Pollitt, ‘Communist Party’, 33; CP/Ind/Poll, Whitechapel and St George’s election Kerrigan, additional interview. leaflets, 1930; Colin Holmes, ‘East End anti-semitism, 1936’, Society for the Study 57 Barney Barnett and Geoffrey Goodman, project interviews; WCML biographies, of Labour History Bulletin, 32, 1976, 28; Piratin, Our Flag, 86. David Capper; Sam Russell, Frank Lesser, additional interviews. 91 Manus O’Riordan, ‘Irish and Jewish volunteers in the Spanish anti-fascist war’, 58 Dave Goodman and David Goldstein, project interviews. lecture at Irish Jewish Museum, 15 November 1987, at wysiwyg://11//http:// 59 Rickie Burman, ‘Women in Jewish religious life: Manchester 1880–1930’ in Jim members.lycos.co.uk/spanishcivilwar/MoR1.htt ; S. J. Rawnsley, ‘Fascism’, 252 ff. Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper and Raphael Samuel, eds, Disciplines of Faith,Routledge 92 See RGASPI 495/100/99, Stewart to CI secretariat, 31 October 1923; and Kegan Paul, 1987, 49. 495/100/163, CPGB executive minutes, 7 October 1923; 495/100/171, MacManus 314 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 315

to Kuusinen, 2 February 1924. 125 Cleston Taylor, project interview; also Chris le Maitre, project interview. 93 RGASPI 495/100/340/95, CPGB sixth congress, October 1926. 126 Trevor Carter, project interview. 94 RGASPI 495/38/1/37, MacManus at CI British Commission, 20 June 1923. 127 Cited Sherwood et al., Claudia Jones, 71–2. 95 Austen Morgan, James Connolly. A political biography, MUP, 1988, 16. 128 Dorothy Kuya, project interview. 96 Emmet Larkin, James Larkin. Irish Labour leader 1876–1947, New English Library edn, 129 CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, John Cazeau, 1952. 1968, 1–20, 218 and passim. 130 Trevor Carter, project interview; Howe, Anti-Colonialism in British Politics, 211–13, 265. 97 See the entry by Emmet O Connor in DLB vol. 11, 200–5. 131 Howe, Anticolonialism, 212. 98 Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984, 74–5. 132 CP/Cent/Disc, Johnny James, 1963; Trevor Carter, Shattering Illusions. West Indians in 99 RGASPI 495/100/764, CPGB colonial department, ‘Materials on the situation of British politics,Lawrence & Wishart, 1986, 57–8. the Party in Ireland’, 1931. 133 Christopher Harvie, cited William Knox in Knox, ed., Scottish Labour Leaders 100 See e.g. CP/Cent/Pers/2/2, Gerard Curran, 1950. 1918–1939. A biographical dictionary, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1984, 192; Pelling, 101 Barry McLoughlin, ‘Proletarian academics or party functionaries? Irish communists British Communist Party,3. at the International Lenin School, 1927–1937’, Saothar, 22, 1997, 64–5, 76. 134 See e.g. Tom Bell, John Maclean. Fighter for freedom, Glasgow: CPGB Scottish district, 102 O’Riordan, ‘Irish and Jewish volunteers’; Dolly Shaer, Education for Tomorrow, 70, 1944, 124; Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde,ch.9. 2001. 135 RGASPI 495/100/943, McIlhone to Pollitt, August 1934. 103 Corkill and Rawnsley, Road to Spain, 14. 136 RGASPI 495/100/943, McIlhone to Pollitt, n.d., c. June 1934, enclosing letter from 104 Roger O’Hara, project interview. I. Loya. The Daily Worker’s masthead was amended accordingly, using the formula- 105 Robert Doyle, additional interview. tion ‘workers of all lands’. 106 CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Alec Digges, 1950. 137 Rickword, ‘Introduction’ in Lindsay and Rickword, Handbook, xvi. 107 Brian Behan, project interview; CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Tom Ahern, 1950. 138 The Lore of the People, CPGB North and South Wales districts, 1939. 108 Noreen Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1941–1951,Lawrence 139 Aitken Ferguson, Scotland, CPGB Scottish district, n.d. & Wishart, 1997, 67; CP/Biog, Desmond Greaves, CPGB biographical files, 1941, 140 Robert Pope, Building Jerusalem. Nonconformity, Labour and the social question in Wales 1950; obituaries in Guardian,1 September 1988, Saorthar,no. 14, 1989. 1906–1939, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998, 43–8; Williams, When Was 109 Emmet O Connor, ‘Reds and the green. Problems of the history and historiography Wales?, 274. Deian Hopkin, Llafur,3,1974; Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie. Radical of communism in Ireland’, Science & Society, 61, 1, 1997, 113–14; Vivien Morton, ‘A and socialist,Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975, 236–7; Morning Star, 21 April 1971. memoir’ in Vivien Morton and Stuart Macintyre, T.A. Jackson. A centenary appreciation, 141 Our Time,January 1942, 14; MacDiarmid, Company, 129. CPGB History Group, n.d., 3. 142 MacDiarmid, Company,130–4. Other biographical information from CP/Cent/Pers, 110 T.A. Jackson, Ireland Her Own (1947), Lawrence & Wishart, 1991 edn, preface by CP/Biog and CP/Cent/Disc. Greaves. 143 James D. Young, ‘Marxism and the Scottish national question’, Journal of Contemporary 111 Jackson, foreword to Pat Dooley, Under the Banner of Connolly, Connolly Association, History, 18, 1, 1983, 152; H. Gustav Klaus, ‘James Barke. A great-hearted writer, a 1944 1. hater of oppression, a true Scot’ in Croft, Weapon in the Struggle, 7–27. 112 CP/Cent/Pers/2/7, Gladys Foster, 1942; CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Dympna Clarke, 144 See Keith Gildart, entry on Thomas Jones, DLB, vol. 11, 160. 1950; CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Rosalind Delmar, n.d. 145 Williams, George Ewart Evans, 17, 20–31, 38; Alun Howkins, ‘Inventing everyman. 113 Jack Ashton, Sid Fogarty and Peter Worsley, project interviews; CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, George Ewart Evans, oral history and national identity’, Oral History, 22, 2, 1994, Philip Allen, 1948; CP/Cent/Pers/2/6, Bill Feeley, 1942; CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, 28–32. Harry Clarke, 1947. 146 See for example David Francis, additional interview; CP/Cent/Pers/8/1, Eddie 114 Ann Synge, ‘Early years and influences’ in Swann and Aprahamian, J.D. Bernal,5, Williams, 1944. 11, 12; Werskey, Visible College, 72; Maurice Goldsmith, Sage: A Life of J.D. Bernal, 147 Raphael Samuel, ‘A spiritual elect? Robert Tressell and the early socialists’ in D. Hutchinson, 1990, 29. Alfred, ed., The Robert Tressell Lectures 1981–88,Rochester: WEA South Eastern 115 Bernal, The Freedom of Necessity,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949, 26–7. District, 1988, 57; for Hill, see Penelope J. Corfield, appreciation of Hill, Guardian, 116 See e.g. Bernal, ‘Stalin as scientist’, Modern Quarterly, summer 1953, 142. 6 March 2003. 117 Roy Johnston, ‘Irish roots’ in Swann and Aprahamian, J.D. Bernal, 35. 148 Hwyel Davies, Guardian, 30 June 1989. 118 RGASPI 495/72/2, Tom Bell at ECCI Anglo-American Colonial Group, 10 April 149 See Lyndon White, ‘The CPGB and the national question in post-Wales. The case 1922; NA CAB 24/136 CP 3996, report on revolutionary organisations, 25 May of Idris Cox’, Communist History Network Newsletter, spring 2002, 16–24. 1922; see also Kenneth Lunn, ‘Reactions to Lithuanian and Polish immigrants in the 150 Pope, Building Jerusalem, 28. Lanarkshire coalfield, 1880–1914’ in Lunn, ed., Hosts, Immigrants and Minorities. 151 Wayne David, ‘The Labour Party and the “exclusion” of the communists: the case Historical responses to newcomers in British society 1870–1914, 1980. of the Ogmore Divisional Labour Party in the 1920s’, Llafur,3,4,1983, 5–7; Cox, 119 Hakim Adi, ‘West Africans and the communist party in the 1950s’ in Andrews et al., ‘Personal and political recollections’, nd, 12. Opening the Books, 185–8. 152 Hwyel Francis, ‘Language, culture and learning. The experience of a valley commu- 120 Andrew Flinn, ‘Cypriot, Indian and West Indian branches of the CPGB 1945–1970. nity’, Llafur,6,3,1994, 85–96. An experiment in self-organisation’, Socialist History 21, 2002, 47–66. 153 Macintyre, Little Moscows, 26. Population figures extrapolated from E.D. Lewis, The 121 Figures from CP/Lond/Advc/4/2. Rhondda Valleys. A study in industrial development, 1800 to the present day, Phoenix House, 122 CP/Cent/Pers/3/2, Carlton Fitzherbert Harris, n.d., c. 1956; CP/Cent/Disc, 1959, 238–9. Johnny James, 1963 and Frank Bailey, 1958 and 1962. 154 Cox, ‘Personal and political recollections’, 3. 123 CP/Cent/Disc, Frank Bailey, 1958. 155 Arthur Exell, additional interview; Exell, The Politics of the Production Line, History 124 CP/Cent/Disc, R. Chandrisingh, 1951. Workshop publications, 1981. 316 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 317

156 Ruth and Edmund Frow, Frank Bright. Miner, Marxist and communist organiser, Salford: 193 RGASPI 495/100/480, Bell to CI political secretariat, 3 November 1928; WCML, n.d. 495/74/34, Pollitt to ‘Comrade Pitt’ (Dimitrov), 12 April 1937. 157 Cox, ‘Personal and political recollections’, 20. 194 RGASPI 495/100/22, ‘British colonies committee proposal for a British colonial 158 Hwyel Francis, ‘The secret world of the South Wales miner. The relevance of oral bureau of the CPGB’, 9 June 1921. history’ in David Smith, A People and a proletariat. Essays in the history of Wales 195 RGASPI 495/100/103, CPGB central committee minutes, 10 August 1923. 1780–1980, Pluto Press, 1980, 175. 196 RGASPI 495/72/14, CI British secretariat minutes, 24 April 1926. 159 Hywel Francis and David Smith, The Fed. A history of the South Wales miners in the twen- 197 RGASPI 495/100/481, ‘Matters referred to CC members of World Congress dele- tieth century,Lawrence & Wishart, 1980, 356–7. gation’, 1928. 160 CP/Cent/Pers/4/6, Miriam Llewellyn, 1952 and n.d. 198 Dutt papers (WCML), Arnot, ‘Position of the party—October 1930’. 161 McShane, No Mean Fighter, 224–6; RGASPI 495/14/265 CPGB central committee 199 Saklatvala cited James A. Miller, Susan D. Pennybacker and Eve Rosenhaft, ‘Mother minutes 18 February 1939. Ada Wright and the international campaign to free the Scottsboro boys, 1931–1934’, 162 Barke, ‘The Scottish national question’, Left Review,November 1936, 739–44. American Historical Review, 106, 2, 2001, 395 and Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain. 400 163 Reid, Reflections,7,65. years of history, Pluto, 2002, 318. 164 Rafeek, ‘Mabel Skinner’, 78–96. 200 RGASPI 495/100764, CPGB colonial committee minutes, 2 February 1931; 165 Williams, When Was Wales?, 274–5. 495/100/759, ‘Structure and work of the CPGB’, c. December 1931. 166 CP/Cent/Disc, Ken Forge, 1950. 201 Cited Callaghan, ‘Communists’, 16. 167 Horner, Incorrigible Rebel, 25. 202 French figures derived from José Gotovich and Mikaïl Narinski, Komintern. L’histoire 168 Cox ‘Personal and political recollections’, 45. et les hommes,Paris: Les Editions de l’Atelier, 2001, 595–604; see also RGASPI 169 RGASPI 495/100/245, Pollitt to Red International of Labour Unions, 5 February 495/100/485, Bell to Murphy, 28 December 1928. 1925. 203 CP/Cent/Pers/2/8, John Gibbons 1965. 170 Hettie Bower and Arthur Merron, project interviews; Dudley Edwards. 204 RGASPI 495/100/267, E.W. Cant, London district factory groups report, 15 171 Entry on Branson by John Saville, DLB vol. 2, 53–62. December 1924. 172 CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, Robert Barnes, 1952 205 MRC MSS 292/497/7, McLaine to Citrine, 22 June 1931. 173 George Barnard, project interview. 206 See Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left. Vol. 1. 174 On this see Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Working-class internationalism’ in F. van Holthoon 207 Frank Lesser, additional interview. and Marcel van der Linden, eds, Internationalism in the Labour Movement 1830–1940, 208 RGASPI 17/98/734, Lansbury autobiography, 20 November 1925. Leiden: Brill, 1988, 12; John Callaghan, ‘The communists and the colonies: anti- 209 See Barry McLoughlin, ‘Visitors and victims: British communists in Russia between imperialism between the wars’ in Andrews, Opening the Books, 4–5. the wars’ in McIlroy et al., Party People, 211–12. For the contrast between these differ- 175 See e.g. Maurice Cornforth in King and Matthews, About Turn, 130–1. ent types of experience, see Sylvia R. Margulies, The Pilgrimage to Russia: the Soviet 176 E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘Problems of communist history’ in Revolutionaries,Weidenfeld & Union and the treatment of foreigners, 1924–1937, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Nicolson, 1973, 5–6. Press, 1968, ch.4. 177 The Communist Party and the War, Labour Party, 1943, 15. 210 Donald L.M. Blackmer, Unity in Diversity. Italian communism and the communist world, 29; 178 Pelling, British Communist Party, 191. Natalia Lebedeva and Mikhail Narinsky, ‘Dissolution of the Comintern in 1943’ in 179 Communist Review,February 1924, 449; Daily Worker,1 September 1930. Narinsky and Rojahn, Centre and Periphery, 158. 180 Callaghan, ‘Communists’, 12–13. 211 Pollitt, World News,5 November 1955, p. 850; Daily Worker, 28 January 1930, where 181 Pollard papers, box 4, CPGB St Pancras LPC minutes, July 1924-June 1925. he claimed already to have visited twenty-seven times. 182 Second Congress of the Communist International. Minutes of the proceedings: volume one, New 212 See e.g. RGASPI 495/100/171, Pollitt to ECCI presidium, 22 December 1924; Park, 1971, 113, 126–7; Stuart Macintyre, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement 495/100/209. ECCI presidium to CPGB executive, 24 November 1925. in the 1920s, Our History pamphlet, 1975, 12. 213 RGASPI 17/98/732, Gladys Cattermole, CPSU transfer autobiography, c. 1930; 183 RGASPI 495/100/27, MacManus, 12 October 1921. 495/100/688, Stoker to Pollitt, 10 November 1930. 184 NA CAB 24/160 CP (23) 202, report on revolutionary organisations, 16 August 214 RGASPI 495/100/685, Pollitt to Arnot, 7 May 1930; 539/3/288, IRA executive 1923, citing Gallacher to RILU central European bureau. committee to British section, 8 June 1926. 185 See RGASPI 539/3/281, Inkpin to MOPR, 6 October 1923; 539/3/283, MOPR 215 Utley, Lost Illusion, Allen & Unwin, 1949, 48 and passim; CP/Ind/Hutt/1/3, Utley to Hannington, 24 July 1925. to Allen Hutt, 29 August 1928. 186 RGASPI 495/100/412, Murphy to CPGB political bureau, 14 January 1927; see 216 See RGASPI 495/100/412 for correspondence with and about Prooth, also e.g. 495/100/148, Stewart to ECCI secretariat, 21 January 1924. February–March 1927; also 495/100/595, Arnot to CPGB secretariat, 16 February 187 Workers’ Weekly,3 October 1924. 1929; Fanny Deakin papers, Noah Deakin’s notes re Prooth. 188 Inprecorr, 25 August 1929, p. 1140. 217 LHASC, Brewster, ‘A long journey’, nd, 215–16. 189 E.g. CI presidium, 27 February 1929; RGASPI 495/100/256, CPGB, party council 218 NA KV2/1190, Hutt to Kay Beauchamp (extracts), 8 October 1929. meeting, 1925. 219 Ted Bramley and Maggie Nelson, additional interviews; Robert Dunstan, Workers’ 190 Bell, Pioneering Days, 259–60; RGASPI 495/100/180, report on French visit, n.d. but Weekly, 30 May 1924. 1924. 220 Cited Haden Guest, David Guest, 119. 191 For arrangements with the KPD, see RGASPI 495/100/738, Arnot to Pollitt, 22 221 Swingler, Left Review,vol. 2, 1936, 514. April and 14 May 1931. 222 Bell, Pioneering Days, 206, 242. 192 RGASPI 495/25/312, undated report, c. 1927; compare with Studer, Un parti sous 223 Bell, Pioneering Days, 231. influence, 341–4. 224 Labour Monthly,January 1938, 27–8. 318 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 319

225 RGASPI 495/100/585, Bell to ECCI agitprop department, 24 April 1929; Pollitt, 264 Hilary Cave, project interview. ‘The land of socialism and capitalist Britain’, Communist International, 1937, 1245; 265 Sid Kaufman, Cyril Claydon, Monica Milner, Betty Baker and Stanley Forman, 226 Martin Durham, ‘British revolutionaries and the suppression of the left in Lenin’s project interviews; Brewster, ‘A long journey’. Russia, 1918–1924’, Journal of Contemporary History, 20, 1985, 203–19. 227 RGASPI, 495/100/176, CPGB politbureau to Central Board, Party of Left Social Chapter 6 Revolutionaries, 23 July 1924. 228 Sloan, John Cornford, 130. 1 Cris Shore, Italian Communism, 27 ff. 229 RGASPI 495/100/1006, Pollitt to McIlhone, 9 January 1935. 2 RGASPI 495/100/27, Bell to Lenin, 14 August 1921; Gallacher, Labour Monthly, 230 Inprecorr, 19 March 1938, 309–10; see also Arnot, ‘The Soviet trial’, Labour Monthly, August 1940, 440. May 1938, 304. 3 James Eaden and David Renton, The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920, 231 Gidon Cohen, ‘From “insufferable petty bourgeois” to trusted communist: Jack Palgrave, 2002. Gaster, the Revolutionary Policy Committee and the Communist Party’ in McIlroy 4 Mannheim, ‘The problem of generations’, 283. et al., Party People, 197–206. 5 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 33. 232 CP/Cent/Pers, Bill Pinder. 6 Douglas Hyde, second additional interview; Brian Pearce, project interview; 233 See e.g. Pollitt cited Daily Worker, 21 February 1944. Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 217–18. 234 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 101–2. 7 Vic Eddisford and Eric Jessop cited Mike Crowley, ‘Communist engineers and the 235 Betty Reid, project interview; RGASPI 495/14/243, Pollitt to Arnot 20 April 1937 Second World War in Manchester’, North West Labour History, 22, 1997–8, 67; and 5 July 1937. Edmund Frow, additional interviews. 236 Dennis Ogden, project interview. 8 Mike Waite, ‘Sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ rock ’n’ roll (and communism) in the 1960s’ in Andrews 237 James Gibb, project interview. et al., Opening the Books, 210–11. 238 For three Cambridge examples see Dorothy Wedderburn and Peter Worsley, project 9 See Geoff Andrews, ‘Young Turks and Old Guard’, 231. interviews; John Maynard Smith, autobiographical notes, project files. 10 See Mike Waite, ‘Young people and formal political activity: a case study: young 239 George Matthews, project interview. people and communist politics in Britain 1920–1991: aspects of the history of the 240 Pelling, British Communist Party, 104, 107. Young Communist League’, Lancaster: M Phil, 1992 (copy in LHASC). 241 CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Alan John Alexander, 1952, CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Colin 11 See Danielle Tartakowsky, Les premiers communistes français. Formation des cadres et bolchevi- Carmichael, 1950 and John Chimney, c. 1950; CP/Cent/Disc, Peter Cadogan; sation,Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980, 81. Laurie Green, project interviews; John Saville, ‘The Communist experience: a 12 Sam Russell, additional interview. personal appraisal’ in Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch, eds, The Socialist Register, 13 A.A. Watts, Communist,5 August 1920; compare with Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Merlin Press, 1991. Agnew, The Comintern. A history of international communism from Lenin to Stalin, 242 Peter Worsley and Ralph Russell, project interviews; Michael Kenny, The First New Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996, 72. Left. British intellectuals after Stalin,Lawrence & Wishart, 1995, 176–9. 14 Julia Bush, Behind the Lines. East London Labour 1914–1919, Merlin Press, 1984, 76; also 243 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 68–9; also Monty Johnstone, project interview. Raymond Postgate, The Life of George Lansbury, Longmans, 1951, 33. 244 CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Dorothy Diamond, 1952. 15 Communist,2 September 1920. 245 Marian Slingová,´ Truth Will Prevail, Allen Lane, 1968, 18. 16 RGASPI 495/100/593/307, CPGB eleventh congress, William Rust, report of 246 Theodosia Jessup Thompson and E.Thompson, There is a Spirit in Europe. A memoir of panels commission. Frank Thompson, Gollancz, 1947, 86, 166. 17 Report on Organisation,presented to CPGB fifth congress, 1922, 13. 247 E.P. Thompson, The Railway. An adventure in construction, British-Yugoslav Association, 18 Workers’ Weekly,5 September 1924 1948. 19 Dutt papers, WCML, Dutt to Salme Dutt, 6 February 1924. 248 E.P. Thompson, Beyond the Cold War, Merlin with END, 1982. 20 RGASPI 495/38/1, Dutt at Comintern British commission, 19 June 1923. Other 249 CPGB twenty-first congress Resolution and Proceedings, 1949. phrases cited are from the same document. 250 Sam Russell, additional interview. 21 Stewart at Comintern British commission, 19 June 1923. 251 See Edith Bone, Seven Years Solitary, Hamish Hamilton, 1957. 22 Proudfoot to Hutt 29 July 1926, in MacDougall, Militant Miners, 290. 252 RGASPI 533/10/134 23 Gallacher, ‘The British party and the Lenin School’, typescript article, 1927. 253 McLoughlin, ‘Visitors’, 221. 24 RGASPI 533/10/147, YCI 9 and 19 June 1923. The three mentioned were born in 254 See Kevin Morgan and Gidon Cohen, entry on Cohen in DLB vol. 11, 31–9. 1903, 1901 and 1905 respectively. 255 Cited King and Matthews, About Turn, 204. 25 RGASPI 495/100/263, D. Wilson to Inkpin 17 February 1925. 256 RGASPI 495/100/957, Pollitt to Piatnitsky, 27 June 1934. 26 RGASPI 495/100/267, ‘Factory Groups Department report’, c. November 1925. 257 Olga Cannon and J.R.L. Anderson, The Road from Wigan Pier, Gollancz, 1973, 104; 27 RGASPI 495/100/756, Woolley to CPGB secretariat, 28 August 1931. Sam Russell, additional interview; Charlie Hall, project interview. 28 RGASPI 495/100/153/120, CPGB sixth congress, May 1924. 258 CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, Dorothy Diamond, 1952. 29 RGASPI 495/100/340/68, CPGB seventh congress, October 1926. 259 Dennis Ogden, project interview. 30 This and following paragraph based on Pollitt, Serving My Time, 33–4; David Ainley, 260 Hobsbawm, Interesting Times, 217–18. additional interview. 261 See Michael Kenny, ‘Communism and the New Left’ in Andrews et al., Opening the 31 Jackson, Communist Review,April 1924, 537–41; RGASPI 495/100/157, CPGB sixth Books, 198–9. congress, 1924. 262 Roger Simon, David Aaronovitch, Pat Devine and Joe Ball, project interviews. 32 Jackson, ‘Self-criticism’, Communist Review,February 1929, 132–6; Rust, ‘More “self- 263 Steve Munby, project interview. criticism”’, Communist Review,June 1929, 327–9; CP/Ind/Misc/10/3, Jackson, 320 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 321

‘Interim report’, 260; 74 NA KV 2/1035, Pollitt to Marjorie Pollitt, 28 March 1931. 33 Personal communication, Monty Johnstone. 75 RGASPI 495/100/754, Watkins to RILU secretariat, January 1931. 34 Information from Stuart Macintyre. 76 LHASC microfilm, CPGB central committee, 21 May 1931. 35 Samuel, ‘British marxist historians, 1880–1980: part one’, New Left Review, 120, 1980, 77 RGASPI 495/100/756, Pollitt to Horner, 17 March 1931. 50. 78 Pollitt at CPGB central committee, 2 October 1939 in King and Matthews, About Turn, 36 See Andrew Flinn, ‘William Rust. The Comintern’s blue-eyed boy?’ in McIlroy et 199; CP/Ind/Poll, Pollitt’s report, CPGB central committee, 24 September 1939. al., Party People, Communist Lives, 78–101. 79 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 14. 37 RGASPI 495/100/739, [Arnot?] to Pollitt, 1 August 1931. 80 CP/Ind/Hann/7/5, Hannington to John Mahon, 9 July 1956. 38 See Kath Taylor (Rust), cited Brian Pearce, ‘British Stalinists and the Moscow trials’ 81 Hannington, Unemployed Struggles,1. in Michael Woodhouse and Brian Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, 82 Gabriel Carritt, second additional interview. New Park, 1975, 239. 83 CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Gabriel Carritt, 1950. The five names given in the CPGB 39 Francis Beckett, obituary of Rosa Thornton, Guardian, 18 April 2000. Executive Committee Report to the twenty-second CPGB congress, 1952, 21, also 40 LHASC, Taylor to Gollan, 16 November 1956. include Bill Brooks and Ron Leven, both born in 1910–11. 41 See Cohen and Morgan, ‘Stalin’s sausage machine’. 84 Figures extrapolated from CPGB printed congress credential commission reports. 42 McLoughlin, ‘Proletarian academics’, 75. 85 Reuben Falber, additional interview. 43 In May 1939, when Pollitt offered his resignation over the Comintern’s imposition 86 J.R. Campbell, Peace. A workshop talk, CPGB, c. 1936. of a change of line on conscription, Kerrigan and Jessop were two of only four 87 Hymie Fagan, England for All,Fore Publications, 1940. central committee members to support his position. 88 Pollitt, An Open Letter to a Trade Unionist, CPGB, 1951, 4, 13–14. 44 Cohen and Morgan, ‘Stalin’s sausage machine’. 89 Parker, ‘Trade union difficulties in new areas’, 242. 45 Brian Pollitt, additional interview. 90 CP/Ind/Hann/10/3, Hannington to Arthur Pullen, n.d. 46 CP/Ind/Hutt, statement dated 14 February 1949. 91 Llew Gardner, Daily Worker, 23 August 1956. 47 McLoughlin, ‘Proletarian academics’, 63. 92 George Grieg cited Carol Thornton and Willie Thompson, ‘Scottish communists, 48 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin edn, 2000, 35; Sloan, 1956–57’, Science & Society, 61, 1, 1997, 82. John Cornford, 10–11, 97–124; also Norman Lindop, Dorothy Wedderburn, project 93 Frieda Brewster, ‘A long journey’, 230; George Matthews, additional interview. interviews; Margaret Hodson, project questionnaires. 94 Cited Morgan, Harry Pollitt, Manchester: MUP, 1993, 180–1. 49 CP/Ind/Poll/12/1, Heinemann to Marjorie Pollitt June or July 1960. 95 Cited in Beckett, Enemy Within, 163. 50 Sam Russell, additional interview; Spender, World Within World,Readers Union edn, 96 David Aaronovitch, project interview. 1953, 183. 97 Mike Jones, project interview. 51 Gordon McLennan, project interview. 98 Cited Waite, ‘Young people’, 213. 52 The exception was Rafa Kenton, Waite questionnaire. 99 Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism, 157. 53 Croucher, Engineers at War, 45–57. 100 Graves, Labour Women, 41–79. 54 The Clydeside Apprentices Strike,YCL, 1937, 2. 101 Jacques Derville and Maurice Croisat, ‘Socialisation des militants communistes’, 55 See e.g. Cyril Claydon, project interview; Alice Bates, WCML biographies. 765–7; Shore, Italian Communism, 74; Kössler, ‘A party blocked’, 25–8; personal 56 Willie Thompson, The Good Old Cause, Pluto, 1990, 124. communication, Tauno Saarela. 57 RGASPI 495/100/27, Bell to Lenin, 14 August 1921. 102 See above ch. 2. 58 RGASPI 495/100/11, Tom Bell, J.F. Hodgson, William Paul, A.A. Watts, Fred 103 Alison Macleod and Brian Pearce, project interviews; Macleod, ‘John MacDiarmid’s Willis, Arthur MacManus and Albert Inkpin for CPGB Joint Provisional Committee ghost. A tale of socialist Scotland’, Socialist History, 19, 2001, 29–39. to Lenin, 20 June 1920. The average age of forty-one is based on all except Hodgson. 104 Alison Macleod, project interviews. 59 Nikolai Lenin, ‘Left wing’ Communism. An infantile disorder, CPGB, 1928 edn, 61. 105 Bramley, additional interview. 60 RGASPI 495/100/340/68, CPGB seventh congress, October 1926. 106 Daily Worker, 26 October 1942. 61 MRC MSS 292/947/20, Leslie to Pollitt, 12 December 1926, Pollitt to Leslie, 21 107 For the YCL as a vehicle for the party family see e.g. Frances Davies, Carol Owens December 1926. and Doug Chalmers, project interviews. 62 RGASPI 495/100/168, Pollitt, ‘Aspects and tasks of the party’, n.d., 1924? 108 See above ch. 2. 63 See for example Pollitt, ‘The autocracy of the Boilermakers’, Workers’ Dreadnought,27 109 E.g. Doug Chalmers and Dave Cope, project interview; Martin Kettle in Phil Cohen, March 1920. Children of the Revolution: Communist childhood in Cold War Britain,Lawrence and Wishart, 64 Inprecorr, 18 July 1922, 448. 1997, 183. 65 Workers’ Weekly, 11 and 18 April, 1924. 110 See for example Dave Cope, John Callaghan, David Parker, Sybil Newton; Ray 66 Pollitt, Serving My Time, 166. Newton, project interviews and compare with Kertzer, Comrades and Christians, 52–3. 67 Campbell, ‘Social history’, 164; Stuart Broomfield, ‘South Wales during the Second 111 Olga Cannon and J.R.L. Anderson, The Road from Wigan Pier, Gollancz, 1973. World War: the coal industry and its community’, Cardiff: PhD, 1979, 6–9, 90–1. 112 Rose Kerrigan, additional interview. 68 Workers’ Dreadnought, 27 March 1920. 113 Stan Martin, project interview. 69 Personal communication, Bert Ward. 114 Walter Clary, Waite questionnaire. 70 Mannheim, ‘Problem’, 300. 115 Rose Kerrigan, additional interview. 71 William Gallacher, The Rolling of the Thunder,Lawrence & Wishart, 1948, 12. 116 Carol Owens and Frances Davies, project interviews. 72 RGASPI 534/7/24, Pollitt to Kalinin, 6 October 1924. 117 See e.g. CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Bill Arnison, 1942 and Jim Arnison, Decades; LHASC, 73 RGASPI 495/100/339, Murphy to CPGB politburo, 24 July 1926. Bert Gilpin, ‘Sketches from the life of a proletarian’, unpublished memoir, 1979; 322 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 323

CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, John Collier, 1954. 155 Mike Jones, project interview; see also e.g. Gadsby, Memories of a Worker in South Wales 118 CP/Cent/Pers/3/1, Eric Godfrey, 1950; Hymie Fagan, unpublished memoirs, nd, and Coventry,4;Dorothy Kuya, William Lauchlan, project interviews; Maggie Nelson, 67. additional interview. 119 RGASPI 17/98/732, Gladys Cattermole, autobiography c. 1930. 156 CP/Cent/Pers/3/4, Percy Higgins, 1949; RGASPI 17/98/689, Charlie Stead, 120 CP/Cent/Pers/1/3, party autobiography, 1954. CPSU transfer file. 121 Jimmy Oates, project interview. 157 CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, Honor Arundel, 1942. 122 See Kevin Morgan, ‘A family party? Some genealogical reflections on the CPGB’ in 158 CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, John Collier, 1954 Morgan, et al., Agents of the Revolution. 159 Ros Faith, project interview. 123 Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory, 22. 160 Samuel, ‘Lost world’, 50. 124 See Morgan, ‘An exemplary communist life’. 161 For a helpful discussion, see Daniel Weinbren, Generating Socialism. Recollections of life 125 Frances Davies, project interview. For similar references, see e.g. Alan Sims, Waite ques- in the Labour Party, Stroud: Sutton, 1997, ch. 2. tionnaire; Jean Betteridge, Laurie Green, Carol Owens, project interviews; 162 Mannheim, ‘Problem’, 295. CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, Betty Baker; CP/Cent/Pers/8/1, Doris Williams, 1954; Mary 163 Heinemann cited Wendy Mulford, This Narrow Place. Sylvia Townsend Warner and Johnston in Ian MacDougall, ed., Voices from the Hunger Marches, Edinburgh: Polygon, Valentine Ackland: life, letters and politics, 1930–1951,Pandora, 1988, 7. 1991, 242. 164 Lawrence Goldman, Dons and Workers. Oxford and adult education since 1850, Oxford: 126 Harold Rosen, project interview. OUP, 1995, 5, 281–4. 127 Passerini, 23; Graves, Labour Women, 41–79. 165 See e.g. Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days. Stories from the women’s suffrage movement, 128 This of course is consistent with Graves’s overall findings. The possible confusion Routledge, 1996; Eugenio F. Biagini and Alastair J. Reid, eds, Currents of Radicalism. arises from the quantitative use of a survey which, for entirely appropriate qualita- Popular radicalism, organised labour and party politics in Britain 1850–1914, Cambridge: tive reasons, corrects the gender imbalance of the actual activist population; see CUP, 1991. Graves, Labour Women, 48–9, 55. 166 David Blaazer, The Popular Front and the Progressive Tradition. Socialists, Liberals and the quest 129 Pat Devine, project interview. for unity, 1884–1939, Cambridge: CUP, 1992; Stephen Woodhams, History in the 130 See Morgan, ‘Family party’. Making. Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and radical intellectuals 1936–1956, Merlin, 131 Jock Kane, No Wonder We Were Rebels, Doncaster, n.d., 72–3; Florence Keyworth, obit- 2001, 22 and passim. uary of Harrison, History Workshop Journal 8, 1979, 219–22. 167 On this see Michael Kenny, ‘Communism and the New Left’ in Andrews et al., 132 Ramelson, Petticoat Rebellion, 9–12. Opening the Books, 195–209. 133 Graves, Labour Women, 49. 168 Engels cited by Lenin in Lenin on Britain, Martin Lawrence, 1934, 143. 134 Hall, project interview. 169 Christopher Caudwell, Studies in a Dying Culture,John Lane, 1938, 1–19. 135 Trory, Between the Wars, 1974. 170 J.D. Bernal, ‘Shaw the scientist’ (1946) in his The Freedom of Necessity,Routledge & 136 Hall, project interview. Kegan Paul, 1949, 169–84; Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red,4;see also Florence Keyworth 137 CP/Cent/Pers/ 8/2, Doris Williams, 1942; CP/Cent/Pers/4/6, Miriam Llewellyn, and Sid Fogarty, project interviews. 1952. 171 Bernal, ‘Shaw’, 169, 184. 138 Doherty, A Miner’s Lass, 29, 51. 172 For examples see respectively Willy Goldman, project interview and Montagu, 139 Cox, ‘Personal and political recollections’, 9; CP/Cent/Pers/2/3, D.L. Davies, 1941; Youngest Son, 143–58. RGASPI 17/98/698, Henry Hurn autobiography, c. 1930. 173 See Thomas Linehan, British Fascism 1918–1939. Parties, ideology and culture, 140 At least in Durham; see Beynon and Austrin, Masters and Servants, 137–48. Manchester: MUP, 2000, 30–1, 95. 141 Corkhill and Rawnsley, The Road to Spain, 82–3. 174 Elizabeth Mitchell cited Hugh Jenkins, Rank and File,Croom Helm, 1980, 67–70. 142 Lowe, Anchorman!, 28–9. 175 Samuel Hynes, ‘H.G. and J.B.S.’ in his Edwardian Occasions. Essays on English writing in 143 Trevor Owens and Ken Randell, project interviews; Reid, Reflections, 10–11. the early twentieth century,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 18–23. 144 Heffer, Never a Yes Man, 15, 17; Arthur Utting, project interview. 176 See notably Samuel, ‘British marxist historians’, 42–55. 145 Hymie Fagan, unpublished memoirs, 40–1; see also e.g. Benny Rothman, additional 177 Cited Woodhams, History, 41. interview; Hobday ‘Charles Poulsen’. 178 Lewis, ‘Communism the heir to the Christian tradition’ in Lewis, ed., Christianity and 146 Utting, project interview. the Social Revolution, Gollancz, 1937 edn, 504. 147 Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, 51; obituary of Jacobs, Labour Monthly, December 1980, 564. 179 Gorringe, Alan Ecclestone, 70, 78, 116 and passim; Newton, Sociology, 78. 148 Jack Feeney, additional interview. 180 Monica Luxemburg, project interview; see also Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing, 149 Cowe, unpublished memoirs. Collins with Hamish Hamilton, 1954, 382. 150 Joe Ball and Stanley Forman, project interviews. 181 Andy Croft, ‘The young men are moving together. The case of Randall Swingler’ 151 Reid and Grove, project interviews; also Brian Blain, George MacDougall, in McIlroy et al., Party People, 177; Torr, ‘Productive forces: social relations’, Communist Christopher Meredith and Graham Stevenson, project interviews; CP/Cent/Pers/ Review,May 1946, 11–18. 2/1, Gerry Cohen , 1951. 182 E.P. Thompson, William Morris,8. 152 James Friell, additional interview; see also e.g. Sam Apter, Mike Jones, Sid Kaufman, 183 Samuel, ‘British marxist historians’, 49–54. Florence Keyworth and Dave Marshall, project interviews. 184 On this point, see K.S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, 153 Eric Heffer, Never a Yes Man,8;see Jack Allanson, additional interview, for an Irish Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974 edn, 299–304. example in Bury, Lancs. For Scottish exceptions, see Mary Johnston and John 185 CP/Cent/Pers/1/1, William Allen, 1950; Dave Cope, Central Books. A brief history Lochore in MacDougall, Voices, 245 and 308; Tommy Coulter, project interview. 1939 to 1999, Central Books, 1999, 43. 154 Frow, Edmund Frow, 15. 186 WCML biographies, Syd Abbott. See also e.g. CP/Cent/Pers/1/4, Ceiriog James, 324 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY REFERENCES 325

1942. 6 Mischi, ‘Le contrôle biographique’, 163. 187 One example already discussed is T.E. Nicholas. For others, see Douglas Hyde, I 7 CP/Cent/Pers/2/1, J.C. Cromer, 1953. Believed, Heinemann, 1951, 47–8; CP/Cent/Pers/7/4, Frank Tongue, n.d. 8 Studer and Unfried, ‘At the beginning’, 422. 188 Passfield papers 2/4/J/4, Simon to Sidney Webb, 10 December 1935. 9 Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘La “verification”. L’encadrement biographique 189 Information from Brian Simon, A Life in Education,Lawrence & Wishart, 1998; Roger communiste dans l’entre-deux-guerres’ (paper kindly supplied by the authors). Simon, project interview; tributes to Roger Simon, project files. 10 Inprecorr, 25 August 1929, 1140. 190 Simon, ‘The Webbs and local government’, Modern Quarterly, spring 1950, 167–8. 11 Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing, Collins, 1954, 382-4. 191 Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism, 184–5; Sam Fisher to G.C.T. Giles, 28 July 1944 cited 12 RGASPI 495/74/39, report on the work of the CPGB cadres commission, 20 July Steve Parsons, ‘British Communist Party school teachers’, 52; see also e.g. Harold 1938. Rosen, Jimmy Oates, project interviews. 13 CP/Cent/Pers/1/2, George Baker, 192 Biographical details from CP/Cent/Pers/6/7, Pat Sloan, 1951; also Howarth, 14 On this see Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, ‘Introduction’ in Samuel and Cambridge Between Two Wars, 150; Croft, ‘The Young Men’, 177–8, 186. Thompson, eds, The Myths We Live By,Routledge, 1990, 1–5. 193 New Statesman and Nation, 19 June 1937, 999–1000. 15 Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory,8. 194 Sloan, ‘Marxism and ethics’, Modern Quarterly, summer 1951, 284. 16 Klehr, Communist Cadre, 16–17 and passim. 195 Delia Ecclestone in Five Women Tell Their Story, CPGB, 1953, 3–5. 17 For a very helpful discussion of these issues, which suggested a number of parallels 196 Project interview. with our own work, see Gill Gorell Barnes, Paul Thompson, Gwyn Daniel and 197 Douglas Hyde, additional interview. Natasha Burchardt, Growing Up in Stepfamilies, Oxford: OUP, 1998, ch. 2. 198 Montagu, Youngest Son, 55–61, 218–20; James Friell, additional interview. 18 Paul Thompson, The Edwardians. The remaking of British society,Routledge, 1992 edn, 199 Kriegel, French Communists, 104–5 and ch. 5 passim. xix–xx and passim. 200 See Croucher, Engineers, 33–7 and passim; Fishman, ‘No home but the trade union 19 The database itself took several months to design while we revised its structure to movement: communist activists and “reformist” leaders 1926–56’ in Andrews et al., make sure that it could accommodate all the information we wished to record from Opening the Books, 102–23. a project interview or autobiography. This included details where available of dress, 201 Sam Taylor in Britain’s Cultural Heritage,Arena Publications, 1952, 54. accent, home and domestic environment etc., as well as political and cultural atti- 202 Samuel, ‘A spiritual elect?’, 56. tudes. The one significant omission we became aware of having made was of any 203 See Morgan, Harry Pollitt, 124–6. separate record of personal health. 204 Pollitt, World News,1 October 1955, 767; Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists 20 In absolute terms, there is a peak coverage of just over 1,200 members for the years (1914), Panther edn, 1965, 46. 1945 and 1948–50. 205 Samuel, ‘A spiritual elect?’, 55–69 21 On this, see Kevin Morgan, ‘Parts of people and communist lives’ in McIlroy et al., Party People, Communist Lives. Afterword 22 Samuel and Thompson, ‘Introduction’. 23 Paul Thompson, ‘Life histories and the analysis of social change’ in Daniel Bertaux, 1 See for example Dreyfus et al., Le siècle des communismes, 9–15; Jean Vigreux and Serge ed., Biography and Society. The life history approach in the social sciences, Sage, 1984, Wolikow, Cultures communistes au xxe siècle. Entre guerre et modernité,Paris: La Dispute, 289–306. 2003, 7–13. 24 Barnes, et al., Growing Up in Stepfamilies, 43. 2 For this and other references in the afterword, readers are referred to our introduc- 25 Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Women, Cambridge: CUP, 1998; for another tion. example, see Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid, Revolutionary Women in Russia 3 Kendall, Revolutionary Movement, 300–1. 1870–1917: A study in collective biography, Manchester: MUP, 2000. 4 Workers’ Weekly, 11 April 1924. 26 See Gidon Cohen, ‘Missing, biased and unrepresentative: the quantitative analysis 5 Workers’ Weekly, 12 February 1926; Hanlon and Waite, ‘Notes from the left’, 74. of multi-source biographical data’, Historical Methods, 35, 4, 2002, 166–76; Gidon 6 Workers’ Weekly, 18 April 1924. Cohen, ‘Propensity Score, Methods and the Lenin School’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 36: 2, 207–30. Methods and Sources

1 Those directly cited are list in the bibliography. 2 Compare for example Passerini, Fascism, 39–41; on these issues, see also Jo Stanley, ‘Including the feelings. Personal political testimony and self-disclosure’, Oral History, 24, 1, 1996, 60–7. 3 RGASPI 495/74/72 CI Marty commission 22 February 1936; RGASPI 495/74/37, ‘Report on verification of cadres in CPGB’, 19 March 1938. 4 Studer and Unfried, ‘At the beginning’, 432, 445; also Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Les autobiographies’, 219, 226; Pennetier and Pudal, ‘Deux générations de militants communistes français (1931–1951) en proie à des procès d’épurations internes’ in Gotovitch and Morelli, Militantisme, 121–2. 5 CP/Cent/PC/2/4, CPGB political committee resolution, ‘Strengthen political vigi- lance in the party’, 25 May 1950; Betty Reid, ‘The new party rules’, Communist Review,July 1952, 216. BIBLIOGRAPHY 327

(KM); George Barnard (KM); Barney Barnett (KM); Mary Barnett (KM); George Barnsby (RS); Harry Baum (KM); June Bean (KM); Brian Behan (AC/JMc); Bill Benton (KM); Jean Betteridge (AF); Brian Blain (KM); Reg and BIBLIOGRAPHY Hettie Bower (KM); Peter Cadogan (KM); John Callaghan (KM); Trevor Carter (MS); Hilary Cave (RS); Alex Clark (AC/JMc); Cyril Claydon (KM); Margaret Cohen (KM); Dave Cope (KM); Tommy Coulter (AC/JMc); Nares Craig (KM); Andy Croft (KM); Bob Davies (KM); Frances Davies (KM); Tony Delahoy (GC); Pat Devine (KM); David Duncan (KM); Ella Egan (AC/JMc); Marian Fagan (KM); Ros Faith (KM); Sid and Glenda Fogarty (KM); Hilda Forman (KM); Stanley Forman (KM); Hymie Frankel (KM); Ruth Frow (KM); Jack Gaster (GC); James Gibb (KM); Vi Gill (AF); Willy Goldman (KM); David Goldstein (KM); Geoffrey Goodman (KM); Laurie Green (KM); David Grove (KM); Charlie Hall (KM); Maureen Hardisty (KM); Owen Hardisty (KM); Stuart Hill Archival sources (KM); Geoff Hodgson (KM); Avis Hutt (KM); Monty Johnstone (KM); Mike Jones (KM); Sid Kaufman (KM); John Kay (AC/JMc); Solly Kaye (KM); Lou The main archival sources were the Comintern archives held at the Russian and Rafa Kenton (GC); Florence Keyworth (KM); Dorothy Kuya (AF); Tony State Archive of Socio-Political History, Moscow, and the CPGB archives at the Lane (AC/JMc); William Lauchlan (AC/JMc); Charles Lefton (KM); Jean Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester, including a number of Lennox (KM); Norman Lindop (KM); Monica Luxemburg (KM); George important personal deposits. MacDougall (GC); Gordon McLennan (AC/JMc); Alison Macleod (KM); Chris le Maitre (MS); Dave Marshall (KM); Stan Martin (KM); Betty Matthews (KM); Other collections cited George Matthews (KM); Arthur Mendelsohn (KM); Christopher Meredith (KM); Arthur Merron (KM); Monica Milner (KM); Abe Moffat (AC/JMc); Bill Sir Stafford Cripps papers, Nuffield College, Oxford Moore (AF); Steve Munby (KM); Phil Nickolay (RS); Jimmy Oates (KM); Dennis Fanny Deakin papers, Newcastle-under-Lyme Public Library Ogden (KM); Roger O’Hara (AC/JMc); Carol Owens (KM); Trevor Owens Maurice Dobb papers, Trinity College, Cambridge (KM); Ann Papageorgiou (KM); David Parker (KM); Brian Pearce (KM); John R. Palme Dutt papers, British Library Pinkerton (KM); Daisy Priscott (KM); Betty Reid (KM); Stan Robertson (KM); R. Palme Dutt papers, WCML Harold Rosen (KM); Chris Rubinstein (KM); Ralph Russell (FK); Eric Scott Victor Gollancz papers, University of Warwick Modern Records Centre (KM); Alfred Sherman (KM); Tom Sibley (AC/JMc); Roger Simon (KM); Jan Labour Research Department archives, LRD, London Schling (KM); Graham Stevenson (RS); Henry Suss (AF); Cleston Taylor (MS); Ramsay MacDonald papers, National Archives, London Willie Thompson (KM); Percy Timberlake (KM); Arthur Utting (KM); Mike Tom Mann papers, MRC (MSS 334) Walker (AF); Bert Ward (KM); Frank Watters (RS); Dorothy Wedderburn (KM); Tom Harrisson Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex Chris Whittaker (KM); Peter Worsley (KM); Don Wright (KM). Sylvia Pankhurst papers, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam Graham Pollard papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford Additional interviews John Strachey papers, privately held Beatrice Webb diaries, British Library of Political and Economic Science We have also drawn upon a large number of interviews recorded by other projects or for other purposes. The following listing provides the date of inter- Project interviews view and name of interviewer, if known. Where appropriate, the place of deposit is indicated in parenthesis. The following interviews were recorded as part of the University of Manchester CPGB Biographical Project between 1999 and 2001. The interviewers were Philip Abrahams Hywel Francis, 14 January 1974 (SWML) Alan Campbell, Gidon Cohen, Andrew Flinn, Francis King, John McIlroy, Ben Ainley Manchester Studies interview (MJM J5) Kevin Morgan, Neil Rafeek, Mike Squires and Richard Stevens. The great David Ainley Edmund and Ruth Frow, 7 April 1978 (WCML) majority of these recordings are accessible to researchers in the National Sound Jack Allanson Margot Kettle (LHASC CP/Ind/Kett) Archive. The listing provided here comprises only those interviews or interview Peggy Aprahamian Margot Kettle, February 1983 (LHASC summaries directly drawn upon in the drafting of the present account. CP/Ind/Kett/3/4) Bas Barker Richard Stevens, 1991 David Aaronovitch (KM); Sam Apter (KM); Jack Ashton (AC/JMc); Betty Baker Golda Barr Jane Mace, 1978 (LHASC CP/Biog/1) 328 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 329

Phyllis Bell Sue Bruley, 17 August 1976 (LHASC/CP/Hist/6/3) Dorothy Morgan Kevin Morgan, 24 May 1994 Jon Bloomfield Geoff Andrews Maggie Nelson Vera Darlington (LHASC) Ted Bramley Kevin Morgan, 21 April 1986 Olive Parsons Kevin Morgan, 9 October 1991 Noreen Branson Kevin Morgan, 7 February 1991 (not recorded) Brian Pearce Kevin Morgan, 4 September 1994 Frieda Brewster Kevin Morgan, 5 March 1997 Phil Piratin Kevin Morgan, 31 August 1988 Isabel Brown Bill Alexander, 10 November 1982 (IWM 844/8) Brian Pollitt Kevin Morgan, 1991 (not recorded) Norman Brown Kevin Morgan, 1 March 1985 Jimmy Reid Margot Kettle, 22 March 1988 (LHASC Gabriel Carritt Kevin Morgan, 24 April 1985 and 17 September CP/Ind/Kett) 1990 Ted Rogers Mike Squires, 16 December 1996 (NSA) Joe Clyne Bill Williams (MJM J59) Benny Rothman Kevin Morgan, 7 June 1985 Jack Cohen Manchester Studies interview (MJM J63) Sam Russell (Lesser) (1) Kevin Morgan, 2 September 1992 Max Colin (IWM 8639/6) Sam Russell (2) Kevin Morgan, 16 September 1994 Robert Cooney 1976 (IWM 804/7) George Short Bert Ward, 23 December 1988 (telephone interview) Idris Cox Hwyel Francis, 9 June 1973 (SWML) Elizabeth Wilson Geoff Andrews Patrick Curry 1976 (IWM 799/3) Winifred Doherty Kevin Morgan, 16 April and 23 December 1986 Robert Doyle 1976 (IWM 806/04) Other sources directly cited (place of publication London unless otherwise Gladys Easton Kevin Morgan (not recorded) indicated) Bob Edwards Kevin Morgan, 29 March 1984 Published and unpublished autobiographies Arthur Exell Kevin Morgan, 30 March 1984 Reuben Falber Francis Beckett Jim Arnison, Decades, Salford: privately published, 1991 Alec and Jean Ferguson Kevin Morgan, 11 May 1985 Thomas Bell, Pioneering Days,Lawrence & Wishart, 1941 David Francis David Smith, 21 June 1976 (SWML) Ernie Benson, To Struggle is to live: A working class autobiography. Volume two: starve or James Friell Kevin Morgan, 25 August 1988 rebel 1927–1991, Newcastle upon Tyne: People’s Publications, 1980 Edmund Frow Kevin Morgan, 10 September, 11 September and Edith Bone, Seven Years Solitary, Hamish Hamilton, 1957 15 October 1987 Frieda Brewster, ‘A long journey’ (LHASC) Max Goldberg Hwyel Francis, 6 September 1972 (SWML) Fenner Brockway, Inside the Left, Allen & Unwin, 1942 Dave Goodman Kevin Morgan, 19 April 1995 (not recorded) Bill Carr, ‘My apprenticeship in mining and marxism’ (WCML) Nan Green 1976 (IWM 815/4) Michael Carritt, unpublished memoirs (privately held) Margot Heinemann (1) Margot Kettle (LHASC CP/Ind/Kett) Claud Cockburn, Crossing the Line, MacGibbon & Kee, 1958 Margot Heinemann (2) Kevin Morgan, 19 October 1990 (not recorded) Margaret Cohen, Marion Fagan and Hymie Fagan, eds, Childhood Memories, Douglas Hyde (1) Sam Apter privately published, 1983 Douglas Hyde (2) Kevin Morgan, 25 August 1993 William Cowe, unpublished memoirs (Gallacher Memorial Library) Steve Jefferys Geoff Andrews Idris Cox, ‘Personal and political recollections’ (LHASC) Rose Kerrigan Kevin Morgan, 4 August 1992 Helen Crawfurd, unpublished memoirs (LHASC) Margot Kettle Kevin Morgan, 29 July 1985 Richard Crossman, ed. The God that Failed, Right Book Club edn, 1951 Florence Keyworth Kevin Morgan, 26 August 1994 Bob Darke, The Communist Technique in Britain, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953 Bob Leeson Kevin Morgan, 11 June 1994 Mary Docherty, A Miner’s Lass,Cowdenbeath: privately published, 1992 George Leeson 1976 (IWM 803/03) Arthur Exell, The Politics of the Production Line, History Workshop publications, Frank Lesser Kevin Morgan, 6 February 1990 1981 Mavis Llewellyn Hwyel Francis, 20 May 1974 (SWML) Hymie Fagan, unpublished memoirs (LHASC) Katie Loeber (Cant) Sue Bruley (LHASC/CP/Hist/6/3) Jack Gadsby, Memories of a Worker in South Wales and Coventry,Coventry: CRIS Alison Macleod Kevin Morgan, 3 August 1994 Resource Centre, nd Harold Marsh Kevin Morgan, 16 April 1986 William Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde,Lawrence & Wishart, 1936 George Matthews Kevin Morgan, September 1991 —— The Rolling of the Thunder,Lawrence & Wishart, 1948 Phyllis Meeks Kevin Morgan, 13 April 1985 Bert Gilpin, ‘Sketches from the life of a proletarian’, 1979 (LHASC) Tom Mitchell Owen Hardisty, 2 February 1989 Willy Goldman, East End My Cradle,Faber, 1940 Bill Moore Kevin Morgan, 13 June 1988 Charlotte Haldane, Truth Will Out, Right Book Club edn, 1949 330 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 331

George Hardy, Those Stormy Years,Lawrence & Wishart, 1956 Maurice Thorez, Fils du peuple,Paris: Editions Sociales, 1949 Wal Hannington, Never On Our Knees,Lawrence & Wishart, 1967 Joe Toole, Fighting Through Life, Rich & Cowan, 1935 —— Unemployed Struggles,Lawrence & Wishart, 1936 Ernie Trory, Between the Wars, Brighton: Crabtree Press, 1974 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life,Penguin edn, 1990 Freda Utley, Lost Illusion, Allen & Unwin, 1949 Eric Heffer, Never a Yes Man: The life and politics of an adopted Liverpudlian,Verso, Frank Watters, Being Frank, Doncaster: privately published, 1992 1991 Alick West, One Man in His Time, Allen & Unwin, 1969 Vida Henning, Woman in a Shabby Brown Coat,Havant: Green Cottage Publishing, Fred Westacott, Shaking the Chains: A personal and political history, privately 2000 published, 2002 Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A twentieth-century life, Allen Lane, 2002 Raymond Williams, Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review,Verso, 1979 George Hodgkinson, Sent to Coventry,Robert Maxwell, 1970 Elizabeth Wilson, Mirror Writing,Virago, 1982 Arthur Horner, Incorrigible Rebel, MacGibbon & Kee, 1960 Douglas Hyde, I Believed: The autobiography of a former British communist, Other books and book chapters Heinemann, 1951 Joe Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, privately published, 1978 Hakim Adi, ‘West Africans and the communist party in the 1950s’ in Andrews T.A. Jackson, ‘Interim report’ (LHASC) et al., Opening the Books Mick Jenkins, ‘Prelude to better days’ (LHASC), Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 Jack Jones, Unfinished Journey, Hamish Hamilton, 1937 edn Jock Kane, No Wonder We Were Rebels, Doncaster: privately published, n.d Geoff Andrews, Endgames and New Times: The final years of the Communist Party of Yvonne Kapp, Time Will Tell. Memoirs,Verso, 2003 Great Britain,Lawrence & Wishart, 2004 Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing, Collins with Hamish Hamilton, 1954 —— Nina Fishman and Kevin Morgan, eds, Opening the Books: Essays on the social Maurice Levinson, The Trouble with Yesterday,Peter Davies, 1946 and cultural history of the British Communist Party, Pluto, 1995 Cecil Day Lewis, The Buried Day, Chatto & Windus, 1960 —— ‘Young Turks and Old Guard: intellectuals and the communist party lead- Bert Lowe, Anchorman, Stevenage: privately published, 1996 ership in the 1970s’ in Andrews et al., eds, Opening the Books Margaret McCarthy, Generation in revolt, Heinemann, 1953 Christine Bard and Jean-Louis Robert, ‘The French Communist Party and Hugh MacDiarmid, The Company I’ve Kept, Hutchinson, 1966 women 1920–39. From feminism to familialism’ in Graves and Gruber, Women Ian MacDougall, ed., Militant Miners, Edinburgh: Polygon, 1981 and Socialism Malcom MacEwen, The Greening of a Red, Pluto, 1991 Gill Gorell Barnes, Paul Thompson, Gwyn Daniel and Natasha Burchardt, Alison Macleod, The Death of Uncle Joe, Merlin, 1995 Growing Up in Stepfamilies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 Harry McShane (with Joan Smith), No Mean Fighter, Pluto, 1978 Neil Barrett, ‘The threat of the British Union of Fascists in Manchester’ in Tony Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up: The autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, suffragette Kushner and Nadia Valman, eds, Remembering Cable Street. Fascism and anti- and rebel,Virago, 1977 fascism in British society,Vallentine Mitchell, 2000 Ivor Montagu, The Youngest Son,Lawrence & Wishart, 1970 Francis Beckett, Enemy Within: The rise and fall of the British Communist Party,John E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front: A mirror to life in England during the world war, Murray, 1995 Hutchinson, 1932 Sarah Benton, ‘The decline of the party’ in Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, eds, John Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage,Routledge, 1935 New Times. The changing face of politics in the 1990s,Lawrence & Wishart, 1989 Will Paynter, My Generation, Allen & Unwin, 1972 Jean-Pierre A. Bernard, Paris Rouge. 1944–1964. Les communistes français dans la Phil Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red,Thames Publications, 1948 capitale,Paris: Champ Villon, 1991 Harry Pollitt, Serving My Time,Lawrence & Wishart, 1941 edn Huw Beynon and Terry Austrin, Masters and Servants: Class and patronage in the Marjorie Pollitt, A Rebel Life, Harris St Ultimo: Red Pen Publications, 1989 making of a Labour organisation, Rivers Oram, 1994 Jimmy Reid, Reflections of a Clyde-built Man, Souvenir Press, 1976 —— Ray Hudson and David Sadler, A Place Called Teesside: A locality in a global Ralph Russell, Findings, Keepings: Life, communism and everything, Shola Books, 2001 economy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994 John Saville, Memoirs from the Left, Merlin, 2003 Eugenio F. Biagini and Alastair J. Reid, eds, Currents of Radicalism: Popular radi- Brian Simon, A Life in Education,Lawrence & Wishart, 1998 calism, organised labour and party politics in Britain 1850–1914, Cambridge: Marian Slingová, Truth Will Prevail, Allen Lane, 1968 Cambridge University Press, 1991 Philip Snowden, An Autobiography,Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1934 David Blaazer, The Popular Front and the Progressive Tradition: Socialists, Liberals and Stephen Spender, World Within World,Readers Union edn, 1953 the quest for unity, 1884–1939, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 Philip Spratt, Blowing Up India, Calcutta: Prachi Prakashan, 1955 Donald L. M. Blackmer, Unity in Diversity. Italian communism and the communist world, Jack Sutherland, unpublished memoirs (LHASC) Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1968 332 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 333

Franz Borkenau, World Communism, University of Michigan Press, 1962 David Corkill and Stuart Rawnsley, The Road to Spain: Anti-fascists at war Noreen Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927–1941, 1936–1939, Dunfermline: Borderline Press, 1981 Lawrence & Wishart, 1985 Andy Croft, Comrade Heart: A life of Randall Swingler, Manchester: Manchester —— History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1941–1951,Lawrence & University Press, 2003 Wishart, 1997 —— ‘Introduction’ to Randall Swingler: selected poems, Nottingham: Trent Editions, George Bridges, ‘The Communist Party and the struggle for hegemony’, Ralph 2000 Miliband and John Saville, eds, The Socialist Register, Merlin, 1977 —— Red Letter Days. British fiction in the 1930s,Lawrence & Wishart, 1990 Sue Bruley, ‘Women against war and fascism: Communism, feminism and the —— ed., A Weapon in the Struggle. The cultural history of the Communist Party in Britain, people’s front’ in Jim Fyrth, ed., Britain, Fascism and the Popular Front,Lawrence Pluto, 1998 & Wishart, 1985 —— ‘The young men are moving together. The case of Randall Swingler’ in —— ‘Women and communism: A case study of Lancashire weavers in the McIlroy et al., Party People, Communist Lives depression’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Books Richard Cross, ‘The Communist Party of Great Britain and the “collapse of Rosalind Brunt and Caroline Rowan, eds, Feminism, Culture and Politics, 1982 socialism”: the CPGB 1977–1991’, Manchester PhD, 2002 Rickie Burman, ‘Women in Jewish religious life: Manchester 1880–1930’ in Jim Richard Croucher, Engineers at War, Merlin, 1982 Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper and Raphael Samuel, eds, Disciplines of Faith, —— We Refuse to Starve in Silence: A history of the National Unemployed Workers’ Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987 Movement 1920–1946,Lawrence & Wishart, 1987 Julia Bush, Behind the Lines: East London Labour 1914–1919, Merlin, 1984 Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford: Oxford University Craig Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle: Social foundations of popular radicalism Press, 1989 edn during the industrial revolution, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982 Ralph Darlington, The Political Trajectory of J.T. Murphy, Liverpool; Liverpool John Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict: The CPGB 1951–68,Lawrence & University Press, 1998 Wishart, 2003 Tricia Davies, ‘“What kind of woman is she?” Women and communist party John Callaghan, ‘The communists and the colonies: anti-imperialism between politics, 1941–1955’ in Brunt and Rowan, Feminism, Culture and Politics the wars’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Books Isaac Deutscher, ‘The non-Jewish Jew’ in The non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, John Callaghan, Rajani Palme Dutt: A study in British Stalinism,Lawrence & Wishart, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1968 1993 Michel Dreyfus et al., eds, Le siècle des communismes, Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier, Alan Campbell, ‘The social history of political conflict in the Scots coalfields, 2000 1919–1939’ in Campbell et al., Miners, Unions and Politics Pierre Durand, Maurice Thorez. Le fondateur,Paris: Le Temps de Cerises, 2000 ——— Nina Fishman and David Howell, eds, Miners, Unions and Politics James Eaden and David Renton, The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920, 1910–1947, Aldershot: Scolar, 1996 Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002 Beatrix Campbell, Unofficial Secrets: Child sexual abuse: the Cleveland case,Virago, Geoff Eley, ‘From welfare politics to welfare states. Women and the social ques- 1988 tion’ in Pamela Graves and Helmut Gruber, eds, Women and Socialism/Socialism Olga Cannon and J.R.L. Anderson, The Road from Wigan Pier, Gollancz, 1973 and Women, Oxford: Bergahn, 1998 Trevor Carter, Shattering Illusions: West Indians in British politics,Lawrence & K.D. Ewing and C.A. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties: Political freedom and the Wishart, 1986 rule of law in Britain 1914–1945, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 Gisela Chan Man Fong, ‘Shoulder to shoulder: Rose Smith, who stood for Steven Fielding, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880–1939, “different but equal and united”’ in McIlroy et al., Party People, Communist Lives Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993 Mark Clapson, Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns: Social change and urban —— Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, ‘England Arise!’ The Labour Party and dispersal in post-war England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998 popular politics in 1940s Britain, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995 Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Women, Cambridge: Cambridge University Nina Fishman, The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions 1933–1945, Press, 1998 Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995 Gidon Cohen, ‘From “insufferable petty bourgeois” to trusted communist: Jack —— ‘No home but the trade union movement: communist activists and Gaster, the Revolutionary Policy Committee and the Communist Party’ in “reformist” leaders 1926–56’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Books McIlroy et al., Party People, Communist Lives Andrew Flinn, ‘William Rust. The Comintern’s blue-eyed boy?’ in McIlroy et Phil Cohen, Children of the Revolution: Communist childhood in Cold War Britain, al., Party People, Communist Lives Lawrence and Wishart, 1997 John Foster, ‘A proletarian nation? Occupation and class since 1914’ in A. G.D.H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914,Routledge & Kegan Paul, Dickson and J.H. Treble, People and Society in Scotland. Volume 3: 1914–1990, 1948 Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992 Dave Cope, Central Books: A brief history 1939 to 1999, Central Books, 1999 —— and Charles Woolfson, ‘How Workers on the Clyde gained the capacity 334 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 335

for class struggle: the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ Work-In 1971–2’ in John Communist Party of Great Britain, 1936–1945’, in Christine Collette and McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell, British Trade Unions and Industrial Stephen Bird, eds, Jews, Labour and the Left, 1918–48,Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000 Politics 1964–79, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999 Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid, Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870–1917: A —— and Charles Woolfson, The Politics of the UCS Work-In: Class alliances and the study in collective biography, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 right to work,Lawrence & Wishart, 1986 James Hinton and Richard Hyman, Trade Unions and Revolution: The industrial poli- Hwyel Francis, ‘The secret world of the South Wales miner. The relevance of tics of the early British communist party, Pluto, 1975 oral history’ in David Smith, A People and a proletariat: Essays in the history of Eric Hobsbawm, ‘The Historians’ Group of the Communist Party’ in Maurice Wales 1780–1980, Pluto, 1980 Cornforth, ed., Rebels and Their Causes: Essays in honour of A.L. Morton,Lawrence —— and David Smith, The Fed: A history of the South Wales miners in the twentieth & Wishart, 1978 century,Lawrence & Wishart, 1980 —— ‘Problems of communist history’ in his Revolutionaries,Weidenfeld & Edmund and Ruth Frow, Bob and Sarah Lovell: Crusaders for a better society, Nicolson, 1973 Manchester: WCML, n.d. —— ‘Working-class internationalism’ in F. van Holthoon and Marcel van der —— The Communist Party in Manchester 1920–1926, Manchester: CPGB North Linden, eds, Internationalism in the Labour Movement 1830–1940, Leiden: Brill, West History Group, nd 1988 —— Frank Bright: Miner, Marxist and communist organiser, Salford: Manchester, n.d Colin Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British society 1871–1971, Ruth Frow, Edmund Frow 1906–1997: The making of an activist, Salford: WCML, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988 1999 Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days: Stories from the women’s suffrage movement, Hugh Gaitskell, ‘At Oxford in the twenties’ in Asa Briggs and John Saville, eds, Routledge, 1996 Essays in Labour History, Macmillan, 1960 James K. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War, David Gilbert, Class, Community, and Collective Action: Social change in two British coal- Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998 fields, 1850–1926, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 T.E.B. Howarth, Cambridge Between Two Wars, Collins, 1978 Max Gluckman, ‘Les rites de passage’ in Gluckman, Essays on the Ritual of Social Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics. The left and the end of empire Relations, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962 1918–1964, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 Erving Goffmann, Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other David Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party 1888–1906, inmates, New York: Doubleday & Co, 1961 Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983 Lawrence Goldman, Dons and Workers: Oxford and adult education since 1850, Oxford: Alun Howkins, ‘Class Against Class: The political culture of the Communist Oxford University Press, 1995 Party of Great Britain 1930–1935’ in Frank Gloversmith, ed., Class, Culture Maurice Goldsmith, Sage: A Life of J.D. Bernal, Hutchinson, 1990 and Social Change: A new view of the 1930s, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980 John Goldthorpe (with Catriona Llewellyn and Clive Payne), Social Mobility and Karen Hunt, ‘Dora Montefiore. A different communist’ in McIlroy et al., Party Class Structure in Great Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 People, Communist Lives Tim Gorringe, Alan Ecclestone: Priest as revolutionary, Sheffield: Cairns Publications, —— Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Federation and the woman question 1994 1884–1911, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 José Gotovich and Mikaïl Narinski, Komintern. L’histoire et les hommes,Paris: Les Samuel Hynes, The Auden generation: Literature and politics in the 1930s,The Bodley Editions de l’Atelier, 2001 Head, 1976 Pamela M. Graves, Labour Women: Women in British working-class politics 1918–1939, —— Edwardian Occasions: Essays on English writing in the early twentieth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972 Pamela Graves and Helmut Gruber, eds, Women and Socialism/Socialism and K.S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England,Routledge & Kegan Women, Oxford: Bergahn, 1998 Paul, 1974 edn Carmel Haden Guest, ed., David Guest: A scientist fights for freedom,Lawrence & Kevin Jefferys, Anthony Crosland: A new biography,Politico’s, 2000 Wishart, 1938 Hugh Jenkins, Rank and File,Croom Helm, 1980 Richard Hanlon and Mike Waite, ‘Notes from the left. Communism and British Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A study in the relation between classes in classical music’ in Croft, A Weapon in the Struggle Victorian society, Penguin edn, 1984 June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s, Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish community, Britain and Routledge, 2002 the Russian Revolution,Frank Cass, 1992 Claire Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner: A biography, Minerva edn, 1991 Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain,Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Sudhir Hazareesingh, Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: Disillusion and 1969 decline, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 Michael Kenny, ‘Communism and the New Left’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Jason Heppell, ‘A question of “Jewish politics”? The Jewish section of the Books 336 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 337

—— The First New Left: British intellectuals after Stalin,Lawrence & Wishart, 1995 in Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball, eds, Conservative Century. The Conservative David I. Kertzer, Comrades and Christians: Religion and political struggle in communist Party since 1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994 Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 John Lucas, The Radical Twenties. Writing, politics, culture, Nottingham: Five Leaves, Florence Keyworth, ‘Invisible struggles. The politics of ageing’ in Brunt and 1997 Rowan, Feminism, Culture and Politics Kenneth Lunn, ‘Reactions to Lithuanian and Polish immigrants in the V. G. Kiernan, ‘Herbert Norman’s Cambridge’ in his Poets, Politics and the People, Lanarkshire coalfield, 1880–1914’ in Lunn, ed., Hosts, Immigrants and Minorities. Verso, 1989 Historical responses to newcomers in British society 1870–1914, 1980 Francis King and George Matthews, eds, About Turn: The Communist Party and the Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern. A history of international outbreak of the Second World War,Lawrence & Wishart, 1990 communism from Lenin to Stalin, Basingstoke; Macmillan, 1996 H. Gustav Klaus, ‘James Barke. A great-hearted writer, a hater of oppression, a Ian MacDougall, ed., Voices from the Hunger Marches, Edinburgh: Polygon, 1991 true Scot’ in Croft, A Weapon in the Struggle Malcolm MacEwen, ‘The day the party had to stop’, Ralph Miliband and John Harvey Klehr, Communist Cadre. The social background of the American Communist Party Saville, eds, Socialist Register, Merlin Press, 1976 elite, Stanford, Cal.: Hoover Institution Press, 1976 John McIlroy, ‘The young manhood of Arthur Reade’ in McIlroy et al., Party —— Heyday of American Communism. The depression decade, New York: Basic Books, People, Communist Lives 1984 —— Kevin Morgan and Alan Campbell, eds, Party People, Communist Lives. William Knox, ed., Scottish Labour Leaders 1918–1939: A biographical dictionary, Explorations in biography,Lawrence & Wishart, 2001 Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1984 Stuart Macintyre, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement in the 1920s, Our Annie Kriegel, The French Communists. Profile of a people, University of Chicago History pamphlet, 1975 Press, 1972 —— Little Moscows. Communism and working-class militancy in inter-war Britain, Emmet Larkin, James Larkin: Irish Labour leader 1876–1947, New English Library Croom Helm, 1980 edn, 1968 —— A Proletarian Science. Marxism in Britain 1917–1933,Lawrence & Wishart edn, Georges Lavau, ‘The PCF, the state, and the revolution: an analysis of party 1986 policies, communications and popular culture’ in Donald L.M. Blackmer and Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures. England 1918–1951, Oxford: Oxford Sidney Tarrow, Communism in Italy and France, Princeton University Press, 1975 University Press, 2000 edn Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power: The women’s movement 1918–1928, I.B. Tauris, 1997 Barry McLoughlin, ‘Visitors and victims: British communists in Russia between Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, language and popular politics in England, the wars’ in McIlroy et al., Party People, Communist Lives 1867–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 John Mahon, Harry Pollitt,Lawrence & Wishart, 1976 —— ‘Labour—the myths it has lived by’ in Tanner et al., Labour’s First Century Karl Mannheim, ‘The problem of generations’ in his Essays on the Sociology of Marc Lazar, Maisons Rouges: Les Partis communistes français et italien de la Libération à Knowledge,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952 nos jours,Paris: Aubier, 1992 Robert Michels, Political Parties. A study in the oligarchical tendencies of modern democ- Natalia Lebedeva and Mikhail Narinsky, ‘Dissolution of the Comintern in 1943’ racy, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers edn, 1999 in Mikhail Narinsky and Jürgen Rojahn, Centre and Periphery: the history of the Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984 Comintern in the light of new documents, Amsterdam: IISH, 1996 Julian Mischi, ‘Le contrôle biographique à l’échelon fédéral. Le Bourbonnais E.D. Lewis, The Rhondda Valleys. A study in industrial development, 1800 to the present (1944–1962)’ in Pennetier and Pudal, Autobiographies, autocritiques, aveux day, Phoenix House, 1959 Austen Morgan, James Connolly. A political biography, Manchester: Manchester Jill Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel. Selina Cooper 1864–1946, University Press, 1988 Virago, 1984 Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie. Radical and socialist,Weidenfeld & Nicolson, —— The Long Road to Greenham. Feminism and anti-militarism in Britain since 1820, 1975 Virago, 1989 Kevin Morgan, Against Fascism and War. Ruptures and continuities in British communist —— and Jill Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us. The rise of the women’s suffrage move- politics 1935–1941, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989 ment,Virago, 1978 —— Bolshevism and the British Left. 1: Labour legends and Moscow gold,Lawrence & Thomas Linehan, British Fascism 1918–1939: Parties, ideology and culture, Wishart, 2006 Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 —— Bolshevism and the British Left. 2: The Webbs and Soviet communism,Lawrence & Audrey Linklater, An Unhusbanded Life, Hutchinson, 1980. Wishart, 2006 Barnett Litvinoff, A Peculiar People,Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969 —— ‘The Communist Party and the Daily Worker 1930–56’ in Andrews et al., Dominique Loiseau, ‘Les militantes de l’ombre’ in Dreyfus, Pennettier and Viet- Opening the Books Depaule, eds, La part des militants,Paris: Editions de l’Atelier, 1996 —— ‘An exemplary communist life? Harry Pollitt’s Serving My Time in compar- Joni Lovenduski, Pippa Norris and Catriona Burness, ‘The party and women’ ative perspective’ in Julie Gottlieb and Richard Toye, eds, Making Reputations: 338 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 339

Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics, I.B. Tauris, 2005 Dreyfus et al., Le siècle des communismes —— ‘A family party? Some genealogical reflections on the CPGB’ in Morgan, Robert Pope, Building Jerusalem. Nonconformity, Labour and the social question in Wales et al., Agents of the Revolution 1906–1939, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998 —— Harry Pollitt, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993 Raymond Postgate, The Life of George Lansbury, Longmans, 1951 —— ‘Parts of people and communist lives’ in McIlroy et al., Party People, Bernard Pudal, Prendre parti. Pour une sociologie historique du PCF,Paris: Presses de Communist Lives la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989 —— ‘Une toute petite différence entre “la Marseillaise” et “God Save the Martin Pugh, The March of the Women. A revisionist analysis of the campaign for women’s King”: la gauche britannique et le problème de la nation dans les années suffrage, 1866–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 trente’ in Serge Wolikow and Annie Bleton-Ruget, eds, Antifascisme et nation. —— Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914–1959, Basingstoke: Les gauches européennes au temps du Front populaire, Dijon: Editions universitaires Blackwell, 1992 de Dijon, 1998 Robert Radford, Art for a Purpose. The Artists’ International Association, 1933–1953, —— Gidon Cohen and Andrew Flinn, eds, Agents of the Revolution, Berne: Peter Winchester School of Art Press, 1987 Lang, 2005 Marian Ramelson, The Petticoat Rebellion. A century of struggle for women’s rights, Vivien Morton and Stuart Macintyre, T.A. Jackson. A centenary appreciation, Our Lawrence & Wishart, 1967 History pamphlet, nd Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German communists and political violence Wendy Mulford, This Narrow Place. Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland: 1929–1933, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 life, letters and politics, 1930–1951,Pandora, 1988 A. Rossi (Angelo Tasca), Physiologie du parti communiste français, Paris: Self, 1948 Michael Newman, John Strachey, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989 Sheila Rowbotham, Friends of Alice Wheeldon, Pluto, 1986 Kenneth Newton, The Sociology of British Communism, Allen Lane, 1969 —— A New World for Women: Stella Browne—socialist feminist, Pluto, 1977 Deborah Epstein Nord, The Apprenticeship of Beatrice Webb, Cornell University Annette T. Rubinstein, ‘The cultural world of the Communist Party: an histor- Press, 1985 ical overview’ in Michael E. Brown et al., eds, New Studies in the Politics and Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of Culture of US Communism, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993 George Orwell. Volume 1: an age like this 1920–1940, Harmondsworth: Penguin Tauno Saarela, ‘International and national in the communist movement’ in edn, 1970; Volume 2: my country right or left 1940–1943, Harmondsworth: Tauno Saarela and Kimmo Rentola, eds, Communism: national and international, Penguin edn, 1970 Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998 Bryan D. Palmer, E.P. Thompson. Objections and Oppositions,Verso, 1994 Raphael Samuel, ‘A spiritual elect? Robert Tressell and the early socialists’ in D. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism,Verso, 2000 Alfred, ed., The Robert Tressell Lectures 1981–88,Rochester: WEA South John Parker, ‘Trade union difficulties in new areas’ in G.D.H. Cole, British Trade Eastern District, 1988 Unionism Today. A survey, Gollancz, 1939 —— and Paul Thompson, ‘Introduction’ in Samuel and Thompson, eds, The Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism. The social bases of the British Campaign for Myths We Live By,Routledge, 1990 Nuclear Disarmament, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968 Mike Savage, Class Analysis and Social Transformation, Buckingham: Open Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory. The cultural experience of the Turin work- University Press, 2000 ing class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 —— ‘Sociology, class and male manual working class cultures’ in McIlroy, Geoff Payne, Mobility and Change in Modern Society, Macmillan, 1987 Fishman and Campbell, eds, British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics 1964–79, Brian Pearce, ‘British Stalinists and the Moscow trials’ in Michael Woodhouse Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999 and Brian Pearce, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, New Park, 1975 —— ‘Women and work in the Lancashire cotton industry, 1890–1939’ in J.A. Henry Pelling, The British Communist Party. A historical profile,A.&.C.Black, 1975 edn Jowitt and A.J. McIvor, eds, Employers and Labour in the English Textile Industries Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal, ‘Deux générations de militants commu- 1850–1939,Routledge, 1988 nistes français (1931–1951) en proie à des procès d’épurations internes’ in José Jonathan Schneer, Ben Tillett,Croom Helm, 1982 Gotovitch and Anne Morelli, eds, Militantisme et militants, Brussels, 2000 John Shepherd, George Lansbury. The heart of old Labour, Oxford: Oxford —— and Bernard Pudal, eds, Autobiographies, autocritiques, aveux dans le monde University Press, 2002 communiste,Paris: Belin, 2002 Marika Sherwood, with Donald Hinds, Colin Prescod et al., Claudia Jones: A life —— and Bernard Pudal, ‘Du parti bolchevik au parti stalinien’ in Dreyfus et in exile,Lawrence & Wishart, 1999 al., Le siècle des communismes Cris Shore, ‘Ethnicity as revolutionary strategy. Communist identity construc- —— and Bernard Pudal, ‘Les autobiographies des “fils du peuple”. De l’auto- tion in Italy’ in Sharon MacDonald, ed., Inside Identities. Ethnography in Western biographie édifiante à l’autobiographie auto-analytique’ in Pennetier and Europe, Oxford: Berg, 1993 Pudal, Autobiographies, autocritiques, aveux —— The Italian Communist Party. The escape from Leninism, Pluto, 1990 —— and Bernard Pudal. ‘Stalinisme, culte ouvrier et culte des dirigeants’ in Stéphane Sirot, Maurice Thorez,Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des 340 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 341

sciences politiques, 2000 Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain. 400 years of history, Pluto, 2002 Pat Sloan, ed., John Cornford. A memoir, Cape, 1938 Gerrit Voerman, ‘The formative years of the communist “moral” community David Smith, ‘Leaders and led’ in K.S. Hopkins, Rhondda Past and Future, in the Netherlands 1917–1930’ in Morgan, et al., Agents of the Revolution Rhondda Borough Council, 1973, n.d. Mike Waite, ‘Sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ rock ’n’ roll (and communism) in the 1960s’ in Charles Sowerwine, Sisters or Citizens? Women and socialism in France since 1876, Andrews et al., Opening the Books Cambridge University Press, 1982 Mick Wallis, ‘Heirs to the pageant. Mass spectacle and the Popular Front’ in Mike Squires, Saklatvala. A political biography,Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. Croft, A Weapon in the Struggle Henry Srebrnik, London Jews and British Communism 1935–1945,Valentine Kate Weigand, Red Feminism. American communism and the making of women’s libera- Mitchell, 1995 tion, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 —— ‘Sidestepping the contradictions. The Communist Party, Jewish commu- Daniel Weinbren, Generating Socialism. Recollections of life in the Labour Party, Stroud: nists and Zionism 1935–48’ in Andrews et al., Opening the Books Sutton, 1997 Tyler Stovall, The Rise of the Paris Red Belt, Berkeley: University of California Eric Weitz, Creating German Communism 1890–1990. From popular protest to socialist Press state, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997 Brigitte Studer, ‘La femme nouvelle’ in Dreyfus, Le siècle des communismes Peter Weitz, ‘The CGIL and the PCI. From subordination to independent polit- —— Un parti sous influence. Le parti communiste suisse, une section du Komintern 1931 à ical force’ in Donald L. Blackmer and Sidney Tarrow, eds, Communism in Italy 1939, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1994 and France, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975 —— ‘Totalitarisme et stalinisme’ in Dreyfus, Le siècle des communismes Gary Werskey, The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Brenda Swann and Francis Aprahamian, eds, J.D. Bernal. A life in science and poli- Socialists of the 1930s,Free Book Association, 1988 tics,Verso, 1999 Richard Whiting, The View from Cowley. The impact of industrialization upon Oxford, Duncan Tanner, ‘Labour and its membership’ in Tanner et al., Labour’s First Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983 Century Chris Williams, Democratic Rhondda. Politics and society 1885–1951, Cardiff: —— Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo, eds, Labour’s First Century, Cambridge: University of Wales Press, 1996 Cambridge University Press, 2000 —— ‘“The hope of the British proletariat”: the South Wales miners 1910–1947’ Danielle Tartakowsky, Les premiers communistes français. Formation des cadres et bolchevi- in Campbell et al., eds, Miners, Unions and Politics sation,Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980 Gareth Williams, George Ewart Evans, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991 Hugh Thomas, John Strachey, Eyre Methuen, 1973 Gwyn A. Williams, When Was Wales?,Penguin edn, 1985 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963 Barbara Winslow, Sylvia Pankhurst. Sexual politics and political activism, London: UCL —— William Morris. From Romantic to Revolutionary,Lawrence & Wishart, 1955 Press, 1996 Laurence Thompson, The Enthusiasts. A biography of John and Katharine Bruce Glasier, Neal Wood, Communism and British Intellectuals, Gollancz, 1959 Gollancz, 1971 Stephen Woodhams, History in the Making. Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and Paul Thompson, The Edwardians. The remaking of British society,Routledge, 1992 radical intellectuals 1936–1956, Merlin, 2001 edn Matthew Worley, Class Against Class. The Communist Party in Britain between the wars, —— ‘Life histories and the analysis of social change’ in Daniel Bertaux, ed., I.B. Tauris, 2002 Biography and Society: The life history approach in the social sciences, Sage, 1984 Nigel Young, An Infantile Disorder? The crisis and decline of the New Left,Routledge Theodosia Jessup Thompson and E. Thompson, There is a Spirit in Europe: A & Kegan Paul, 1977 memoir of Frank Thompson, Gollancz, 1947 Willie Thompson, The Good Old Cause, Pluto, 1990 Articles and theses Andrew Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–1943, Manchester, MUP, 2000 Philip Abrams and Alan Little, ‘The young activist in British Politics’, British —— ‘Communist MP: Willie Gallacher and British communism’ in Morgan et Journal of Sociology, 16, 4, 315–33 al., Agents of the Revolution Sandro Bellassai, ‘The party as schools and the schools of party. The partito Dona Torr, Tom Mann and his Times. Volume 1: 1856–1890,Lawrence & Wishart, comunista italiano 1947–1956’, Paedagogica Historica, 35, 1, 1999, 87–107 1956 Stuart Broomfield, ‘South Wales during the Second World War: the coal indus- Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Sphere Books edn, 3 vols, 1967 try and its community’, Cardiff: PhD, 1979 Berthold Unfried, ‘L’autocritique dans les milieux kominterniens des années Sue Bruley, ‘Socialism and feminism in the Communist Party of Great Britain 1930’ in Pennetier and Pudal, Autobiographies, autocritiques, aveux 1920–1939’, London: PhD, 1980 Jean Vigreux and Serge Wolikow, eds, Cultures communistes au xxe siècle. Entre guerre Tom Buchanan, ‘The lost art of Felicia Browne’, History Workshop, 54, 2002, et modernité,Paris: La Dispute, 2003 180–92 342 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY BIBLIOGRAPHY 343

Alan Burge, ‘Swimming against the tide: gender, learning and advancement in Colin Holmes, ‘East End anti-semitism, 1936’, Society for the Study of Labour South Wales, 1900–1939’, Llafur,8,3,2002, 13–32 History Bulletin, 32, 1976 F. W. Carr, ‘The formation of the Communist Party in Coventry’, unpublished Deian Hopkin, ‘The rise of Labour in Wales 1890–1914’, Llafur,6,3,1994, typescript (LHASC) 120–41 —— ‘Engineering workers and the rise of Labour in Coventry 1914–1939’, Alun Howkins, ‘Inventing everyman. George Ewart Evans, oral history and Warwick, PhD 1978 national identity’, Oral History, 22, 2, 1994, 28–32 A.J. Chandler, ‘The remaking of a working class. Migration from the South Iain Johnson, ‘Women in the Communist Party in Fife between the wars’, Wales coalfield to the new industry centres of the Midlands 1920–1940’, unpublished dissertation, 1996 (Gallacher Memorial Library) University of Wales PhD, 1988 Till Kössler, ‘A party blocked. West German communists between Weimar Gidon Cohen, ‘Missing, biased and unrepresentative: the quantitative analysis legacy and East German policy 1945–1956’. Socialist History, 21, 2002, 24–46 of multi-source biographical data’, Historical Methods, 35, 4, 2002, 166–76 John McIlroy, ‘“Every factory our fortress”. Communist Party workplace —— and Kevin Morgan, ‘Stalin’s sausage machine. British students at the branches in a time of militancy, 1956–1979. Part 1: History, politics, topog- International Lenin School 1926–1937’, Twentieth Century British History, 13, raphy’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 10, 2000 4, 2002, 327–55 —— ‘Reds at work. Communist factory organisation in the Cold War Philip Coupland, ‘“Left-wing fascism” in theory and practice. The case of the 1947–1956’, Labour History Review, 65, 2, 2000, 181–201 British Union of Fascists’, Twentieth Century British History, 13, 1, 2002 Alison Macleod, ‘John MacDiarmid’s ghost. A tale of socialist Scotland’, Socialist Richard Cross, ‘The Communist Party of Great Britain and the “collapse of History, 19, 2001, 29–39 socialism” 1977–1991’, Manchester, PhD, 2003 Barry McLoughlin, ‘Proletarian academics or party functionaries? Irish commu- Mike Crowley, ‘Communist engineers and the Second World War in nists at the International Lenin School, 1927–1937’, Saothar, 22, 1997, 63–79 Manchester’, North West Labour History, 22, 1997–8, 60–9 Anthony Mason, ‘The Miners’ Union of Northumberland and Durham Wayne David, ‘The Labour Party and the “exclusion” of the communists: the 1918–1931, with special reference to the General Strike of 1926’, Hull PhD, case of the Ogmore Divisional Labour Party in the 1920s’, Llafur,3,4,1983, 1967 5–15 James A. Miller, Susan D. Pennybacker and Eve Rosenhaft, ‘Mother Ada Wright Sam Davies, ‘The membership of the National Unemployed Workers’ and the international campaign to free the Scottsboro boys, 1931–1934’, Movement’, Labour History Review, 57, 1, 1992, 29–36 American Historical Review, 106, 2, 2001, 387–430 Jacques Derville and Maurice Croisat, ‘La socialisation des militants commu- Kevin Morgan, ‘The archives of the British Communist Party. A historical nistes français: éléments d’une enquête dans l’Isére’, Revue française de science overview’, Twentieth Century British History,7,3,1996, 404–21 politique,vol. 29, 1979, 760–90 —— ‘Cambridge communists: 1930s–1940s’, Socialist History, 25, 2004, 40–78 Robert Duncan, ‘“Motherwell for Moscow”. Revolutionary politics and the —— and Tauno Saarela, ‘Northern underground revisited: Finnish Reds and Labour movement in a Lanarkshire constituency 1918–1922’, Scottish Labour the origins of British communism’, European History Quarterly, 29, 2, 179–215 History Society Journal, 28, 1993, 47–70 Bernard Moss, ‘Socialism and the republic in France. A long view’, Socialist Martin Durham, ‘British revolutionaries and the suppression of the left in History, 18, 2000, 32–49 Lenin’s Russia, 1918–1924’, Journal of Contemporary History, 20, 1985, 203–19 Emmet O Connor, ‘Reds and the green. Problems of the history and historiog- Conan Fischer, ‘Class enemies or class brothers? Communist-Nazi relations in raphy of communism in Ireland’, Science & Society, 61, 1, 1997, 113–17 Germany 1929–33’, European History Quarterly, 15, 1985 Manus O’Riordan, ‘Irish and Jewish volunteers in the Spanish anti-fascist war’, Andrew Flinn, ‘Cypriot, Indian and West Indian branches of the CPGB lecture at Irish Jewish Museum, 15 November 1987, at wysiwyg://11//http: 1945–1970. An experiment in self-organisation’, Socialist History, 21, 2002, //members.lycos.co.uk/spanishcivilwar/MoR1.http 47–66 Steve Parsons, ‘British Communist Party school teachers in the 1940s and Hwyel Francis, ‘Language, culture and learning. The experience of a valley 1950s’, Science & Society, 61, 1, 1997, 46–67 community’, Llafur,6,3,1994, 85–96 —— ‘Communism in the professions: the organisation of the British Brian Harrison, ‘Oxford and the Labour movement’, Twentieth Century British Communist Party among professional workers 1933–1956’, Warwick PhD, History,2,3,1991, 226–71 1990 Royden Harrison, ‘Communists’, Labour History Review, 59, 1, 1994, 40–1 Neil Rafeek, ‘Agnes Maclean 1918–1994’, Scottish Labour History, 30, 1995, James Hinton, ‘Coventry communism. A study of factory politics in the Second 121–30 World War’, History Workshop Journal, 10, 1980, 90–118 —— ‘Mabel Skinner 1912–96: communist politics amongst a Highland Charles Hobday, ‘Charles Poulsen (1911–2001). A study in loyalties’, Communist community’, Scottish Labour History, 33, 1998, 78–96 History Network Newsletter, 14, spring 2003 —— ‘Rose Kerrigan 1903–1995’, Scottish Labour History, 31, 1996, 72–84 Eric Hobsbawm interview with David Howell, Socialist History, 24, 2003, 1–15 Stuart Rawnsley, ‘Fascism and fascists in the North of England in the 1930s’, 344 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY

Bradford: PhD, 1983 Raphael Samuel, ‘British marxist historians, 1880–1980: part one’, New Left Review, 120, 1980, 21–96 —— ‘The lost world of British communism’, New Left Review, 154, 1985, 3–54 and 156, 1986, 63–113 INDEX Mike Squires, ‘CPGB membership during the Class Against Class years’, Socialist History,3,1993, 4–13 Jo Stanley, ‘Including the feelings. Personal political testimony and self-disclo- sure’, Oral History, 24, 1, 1996, 60–7 Brigitte Studer and Berthold Unfried, ‘At the beginning of history. Visions of the Comintern after the opening of the archives’, International Review of Social History, 42, 1997, 419–46 Carol Thornton and Willie Thompson, ‘Scottish communists, 1956–57’, Science & Society, 61, 1, 1997, 68–93 Aaronovitch, David, 22–3, 236 218, 219, 221–2, 230, 234, 249 Arrowsmith, Pat, 73 242 Andrew Thorpe, ‘The membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Abbott, Syd, 266 Arundel, Honor, 209 Benson, Ernie, 113 1920–1945’, Historical Journal, 43, 3, 2000, 777–800 Abel, Jack, 266 Ashleigh, Charles, 127–8, 237 Bernal, J.D., 83–4, 185, Gerrit Voerman, ‘“Away with all your superstitions!”The end of communism in Aberdare, 58, 209 Ashton-under-Lyne, 161, 197 201–2, 263 the Netherlands’, Journal of Communist Studies,7,4,1991, 460–76 Aberdeen, 254; communist Association of Building Besant, Annie, 162 Mike Waite, ‘Young people and formal political activity: a case study: young party, 116 Technicians, 43 Bethnal Green, 65, 178, 194 Abingdon: constituency, 76 Association of Indian Betteridge, Marie, 175, 180 people and communist politics in Britain 1920–1991: aspects of the history Ablett, Noah, 139, 178, 208, Communists in Britain, Bevan, Aneurin, 45, 138 of the Young Communist League’, Lancaster: M.Phil, 1992 258 203 Billingham, ICI factory, 41, Peter Waterman, ‘Hopeful traveller. The itinerary of an internationalist’, History Abramsky, Chimen, 193, 196 Association of Scientific 74 Workshop Journal, 35 1991 Abyssinia crisis (1935), 223 Workers, 43 Birch, Minnie, 164 Ackland, Valentine, 129 Attlee governments Bird, John, 107 Lyndon White, ‘The CPGB and the national question in post-Wales. The case Adams, Bill, 47 (1945–51), 266, 267 Birkenhead, 201 of Idris Cox’, Communist History Network Newsletter, spring 2002, 16–24 Ahern, Tom, 94, 200 Auden, W.H., 82, 149, 246 Birmingham, 68, 79, 111, Susan B. Whitney, ‘Embracing the status quo. French communists, young Ainley, Ben, 190 Australia, 155, 187; commu- 197; Austin motor works, women and the Popular Front’, Journal of Social History, autumn 1996, 29–53 Ainley, David, 46, 190, 237 nist party, 146, 202, 213 247; communist party, 58, Stephen Yeo, ‘A new life. The religion of socialism in Britain, 1883–1896’, Ainley, Ted, 116, 190, 263 Austro-Marxists, 189 76, 96–7, 116, 161 Alexander, Bill, 85 Austria/Austrians, 219, 225 birth control, communists History Workshop Journal,4,5–56 Allan, Willie, 202 Ayriss, Paddy, 126, 164 and, 154–5, 175 James D. Young, ‘Marxism and the Scottish national question’, Journal of Allaun, Frank, 72 Bishop, Reg, 89 Contemporary History, 18, 1, 1983 Allen, Bill, 266–8 Bacharach, A.L., 192, 234 Blackburn, 199 Alpari, Julius, 215 Bailey, Frank, 203, 205 Blain, Brian, 23, 108 Amalgamated Engineering Baldwin, Stanley, 102 Blatchford, Robert, 263–4, Union (AEU, AUEW), Balfour, A.J., 260 282 69–70, 74, 75, 125, 131, Barke, James, 207, 209 Blunt, Anthony, 265 136, 137, 141, 142, 143, Barnard, George, 133, 211 Body, Molly, 193 168, 177, 208, 246 Barnes, Robert, 211 Body, Ron, 193 Amalgamated Society of Barnett, Barney, 193 Boilermakers’ Society, 244 Woodworkers (ASW), 258 Barr, Golda, 174 Bolton, 199 Amery, Leopold, 184 Barrow, Mollie, 76 Bolton, Harry, 39 Antrim, County, 199 Battersea, 81, 136–7 Bone, Edith, 103, 227 Aragon, Louis, 222 Bean, June, 86, 171–2, 173 Boothroyd, Bernard, 88 Architects, 91; Architectural Beauchamp, Joan, 107, 154 Boughton, Rurland, 274–5 Association, 171 Beauvoir, Simone de, 182 Bower, Hettie, 170, 194, 196 Arcos, 218 Beaverbrook, Lord, 115 Bradbury, Gil, 120 Argentina, 127 Bebel, August, 181 Bradford, 47, 266; communist Army Comrades’ Association, Bedford, 111 party, 161 200 Behan, Brian, 93, 112, 200–1 Bradley, Ben, 118, 217 Arnison, Albert, 136 ‘Bejay’, see Boothroyd, Bramley, Ted, 119, 252 Arnison, Jim, 95, 122 Bernard Branson, Clive, 81, 211 Arnold-Forster, see Ros Faith Bell, Tom, 16, 100, 109, 146, Branson, Noreen, 81, 88, 162, Arnot, R. Page, 137, 234–5, 163, 173–4, 199, 214, 216, 164 346 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INDEX 347

Brewster, Frieda, 144, 178, 127 34, 38, 41, 63–8, 78, 107, branch activities, 174; 60–2, 75, 95, 98–142 Cox, Dora, 181 183, 220, 255 Caribbean Labour Congress, 109–10, 137, 150, 156, central/executive commit- passim, 144, 147ff, 153, Cox, Idris, 207–8, 210, 257, Bright, Frank, 208 204 165, 198, 206, 207–8, 209, tee, character and compo- 155–60, 167, 179, 197, 265 Brighton: communist party, Carpenter, Edward, 254, 256 210, 241, 243–4, 245, 253, sition, 113, 138, 161, 176, 231, 234–6, 237, 241, Crawfurd, Helen, 153–4, 155, 18, 256 Carpenter, Walter, 197 269; lockout (1926), 17, 177, 178, 203, 239, 241, 246–7, 271, 277–9; organ- 158, 161, 163, 164, 167, Bristol, 208 Carr, Bill, 47 38, 157, 251 247, 249; children’s activi- isers and functionaries, 36, 177 British Peace Committee, 168 Carr, Del, 86 Cockburn, Claud, 88, 103, ties, 100, 155, 174, 190; see 97, 112–23, 133, 141–2, Crawley, 47–8, 73 British Socialist Party (BSP), Carritt, E.F., 82 227 also YCL; churchlike or 161–2, 175, 196, 207, 208, Cree, Annie, 70, 176 11, 14, 137, 153, 166, 190, Carritt, Gabriel, 82, 107, Cohen, Gabriel, 190, 236, religious character, 56–60, 213, 214, 239; political Criterion, 79 237, 246, 268 246–7 242 101–2, 229, 264–6; ‘Class bureau/committee, char- Crosland, Anthony, 49 British Youth Peace Assembly, Carter, Pete, 97 Cohen, Gerry, 36 Against Class’ (‘third acter and composition, Crossley, Jim, 237 225 Carter, Trevor, 57, 204–5 Cohen, Jack, 190–1 period’), 4, 12, 18, 40, 53, 177; professional groups, Crossman, Richard, 72, 85 Brixton, 81 car workers, 72 Cohen, Margaret, 163, 166, 55, 64, 80, 88, 108, 89–90, 92, 250, 261, 265; 172, 268 Brooks, Gladys, 181 Cattermole, Gladys, 219, 254 172 111–12, 115, 119, 124, ‘popular front’ period and Cumberland, 38, 198; Browder, Earl: Browderism, Caudwell, Christopher, 81, Cohen, Nellie, 154 215, 216, 234, 235, 236, strategy, 53, 169, 191, 195, Maryport, 116 99 263 Cohen, Rose, 78, 154, 163, 253, 262; congresses, first 262; recruitment and Cummings, R.W., 197, 266 Brown, Don, 43 Central Labour College, 78, 164, 215, 227–8 (1920), 124, 233; eighth membership turnover, 8, Cyprus communist party, 203 Brown, Ernest, 79, 116, 158 110, 179, 208; see also Cold War and CPGB, 19, 23, (1926), 117; tenth (1929), 12–48 passim, 100, Czechoslovakia, 94, 212, 215, Brown, Isabel, 105, 145, 158, labour colleges 53, 61, 125–6, 267 101, 156, 157; eleventh 146–53, 170, 191, 210, 227; communist party, 161, 178, 198 Ceretti, Giulio, 215 Cole, G.D.H., 78, 90, 234, (1929), 138, 215, 234; thir- 247, 268–9; social services 146, 224; Czech-British Brown, Norman, 43, 72 Ceylon: communist party, 226 264, 265 teenth (1935), 98, 157; committee, 93; training Friendship Clubs, 225; Browne, Felicia, 81–2 Challenge, 121 Cole, Margaret, 246 fourteenth (1937), 149, and education, 113–14, invaded by Warsaw Pact Browne, Joyce, 167 Chandrisingh, Ranji, 203, Coleman, Doris, 158 169, 226; eighteenth 120; university branches, (1968), 229, 232; ‘Prague Browne, Stella, 154 204 Collins, Henry, 20, 196 (1945), 226; twenty-first 96; West Indian commit- coup’, 268; Slansky trial, Brussels, 184, 215, 235 Charlton, Val, 180 Comment,21 (1949), 226; twenty-second tee, 204–5; women 227–8 Budden, Olive, 162, 164, 166 Chelsea, 171, 211 Committee of 100, 56 (1952), 102; twenty-fourth members, attitudes and building workers, 43, 73, 92, Chester, 23, 249; Cathedral, Committee to Defend (1956), 248; twenty-fifth activities, 64, 69–71, 75, Dagenham, 42 97, 121, 137, 266, 270 265 Czechoslovak Socialists, 94 (1957), 248; thirty-first 156–7, 161–2, 165, Daily Herald, 76–7, 86, 88, Bulgaria, 226 Chicherin, Georgii, 246 Communist, 237 (1969), 232; forty-first 167–73, 179, 182 251; Herald League, 238 Burgess, Guy, 132–3 China, 134, 212; communist Communist International, 77, (1991), 230; crisis of Communist Party of Daily Worker, 85, 88–9, 133, Burnham, Forbes, 204 party, 226 104, 211ff, 231, 236, 245, 1956–7, 18–19, 91–2, 196, Scotland, 97 137, 143, 158, 160, 163, Burns, Emile, 241, 278 Chopwell, 39–40, 107 262, 268; Anglo-American 212, 218, 228, 248–9, 255; Communist University of 166, 167, 181, 227, 228, Bush, Alan, 91, 274–5 Christian socialists, 265; secretariat, 78, 214, economics committee, 95; London (CUL), 25 238, 239–40, 248, 265, Busman’s Punch, 43 churches, British commu- 215–16; British commis- electoral policy and Connolly, James, 199, 201 268; bazaars, 159, 165, Busmen’s Rank-and-File nists and, 187, 207, 264–5, sion (1923), 235; British performance, 71, 75–6, Connolly Association, 173, 166, 168, 171, 174 Movement, 43 268, 274; Anglican, 56, representatives and func- 110, 111, 112, 136, 141, 201, 202, 204 Dand, Jenny, 67 busworkers, 83 194, 197, 252, 265–7; tionaries, 117, 133, 174, 158, 161, 166, 177, 184, Connolly Battalion, 200 Davies, Dai Lloyd, 40, 257–8 nonconformist, 56, 57, 78, 214, 216, 218, 219; 188–9, 191–2, 195, 198, ‘continuity’ narratives and Davies, Margaret Llewellyn, Caborn, George, 69–70 109, 201, 206, 207–8, 256, congresses, fourth (1922), 200, 207, 210, 222, 246; experiences, 49–55, 274 162 Cadogan, Peter, 56, 57, 58, 81 264, 265; Roman 147; fifth (1924), 76; sixth ethnic composition, ‘conversion’ narratives and Davies, R.W., 121–2 Cambridge, 81, 107, 129, Catholic, 31, 57, 70, 144, (1928), 137, 216; seventh tensions and identities, 22, experiences, 2, 49–51, 55, Davis, Angela, 183 149, 184, 268; communist 187, 188, 190, 194, 197–8, (1935), 102, 110, 205; 31, 115, 184–217 passim; 56, 273 Deakin, Fanny, 68, 152 party, 58, 85–7, 90, 121, 200, 201–2, 207, 209 dissolved, 58, 219; and industrial activities, 60 ff, Conway, Jane, 166 Deal, 170 132–3, 182, 264; spies, Churchill, Winston, 58 CPGB, 199, 205, 234, 93–4, 96, 97, 120–1, 135, Cook, A.J., 108, 208, 233 Degras, Jane, see Jane 132–3; university, 78, 83, Clark, Andrew, 94 245; ‘negro conference’, 139–40, 165, 179; interna- Cooney, Bob, 116 Tabrisky 84, 86, 90, 192, 211, 267 Clarke, Maggie, 161 216; publications, 214; tional committee/depart- Cooper, Mary, 39 Democratic Left, 230 Cambridgeshire, 207 Clarke, Ruscoe, 58 ‘twenty-one conditions’, ment, 88, 193, 210; and Cooper, Selina, 39 Derby, 156, 157; communist Campaign for Nuclear Claydon, Cyril, 86, 87 211 international communist co-operative movement, 160, party, 158 Disarmament (CND), 24, clerical workers, 159 Communist Party of Great movement, 22–3, 55, 57, 168; Co-operative Derbyshire, 82 73 Clerkenwell, 201 Britain (CPGB): 120, 186, 199, 203, 242; Women’s Guild, 67, 157, Despard, Charlotte, 177 Campbell, Beatrix, 180, 249 Cleveland child abuse scan- ‘Bolshevisation’, 61, 77, language and national 168–9, 174 de Valera, Eamonn, 197 Campbell, J.R., 108, 139, dal, 26 80, 99, 113, 215, 233, 237, sections, 202–3; local Cork, 200 Devine, Frieda, see Frieda 219, 239, 247 Cleyre, Voltairine de, 263 239; and British state, government committee, Cornford, John, 86, 104, 222, Brewster Canada, 102; communist clothing workers, 175, 197, 9–10, 117–19, 120, 136, 93; national cultural 240 Devine, Pat (junior), 255 party, 202 258 138, 184, 190, 192, 205, committee, 89, 269; Coventry, 24, 47, 121, 136; Devine, Pat (senior), 144–5, Cannon, Jim, 252–3 Clyde Workers’ Committee, 206, 210; anti-colonial National Jewish communist party, 23, 41, 156, 183 Cant, Ernest, 116, 119 199 activities, 118, 203–5, Committee, 192–3; organ- 70–4, 76; trades council, Devon and Cornwall: Capper, David, 193 Clynes, J.R., 244 213–14, 216, 255; colonial isational forms and 159; YCL, 24, 97 communist party, 209 Cardiff, 140; ‘land grabbers’, coalminers and coalmining, department, 163, 217; precepts, 10–56 passim, 59, Cowe, William, 134–5, 259 Diamond, Dorothy, 225, 228 348 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INDEX 349

Dimitrov, Georgi, 98, 103–5, Elsbury, Sam, 135, 235, 237 party, 7, 8, 17, 38, 66–7, Garman, Douglas, 126 Greenhalgh, Sarah, 237 Forward March of Labour 113 Emery, H.W., 70–1, 125, 197 74, 157; Council of Action Garman, Paddy, see Paddy Greenhalgh, Willie, 237 Halted? (1978), 25 Dingley, Tom, 75 Engels, Friedrich, 180 (1926), 115; West Fife Ayriss Green Party, 111 Hodges, Frank, 243 Dixon, Les, 69 engineering and metal work- constituency, 67; YCL, 67, Gaster, Jack, 194, 223 Greenwich: communist party, Hodgson, Geoff, 26–7 Dobb, Barbara, 123 ers, 33–4, 68–76, 86, 121, 236 Gates, Herbert, 53 166 Home, Alec Douglas, 207 Dobb, Maurice, 83, 90–1, 98, 125, 137, 143, 152 , 163, Financial Times,95 gay liberation movement, Gresham’s School, Holt, 260, Horner, Arthur, 17, 40, 63–4, 267 167, 176, 217, 238, 257, Fineberg, Annie, 190 129, 180 266 94, 109, 115, 117, 136, dockers, 151, 211 258, 260 Fineberg, Joe, 190 Geddes, Alec, 116, 117 Grove, David, 73 139–40, 179, 197, 208, Doherty, Mary, 67, 257 Esperanto, 275 Finland /Finns, 219; civil war Gee, William, 75, 107 Guest, David, 81, 86, 221 210, 244, 263, 265 Doriot, Jacques, 137 Etheridge, Dick, 247 (1918), 169; communist gender relations, 121, 144, Guggenheim, Peggy, 126 Horner, Ethel, 179 Douglas, C.H., 88, 206–7 Eton School, 85, 90, 124, 274 party, 251; Soviet invasion 145, 150, 161ff, 173–9, guild socialism/socialists, 76, ‘Hornerism’, 64, 99, 139–40, Dowsett, Betty, 83 eugenics/eugenicists, 154–5, of (1939), 151 191, 193; ‘familialism’, 78, 90, 186, 192, 234, 263 245 Doyle, Bob, 200 233 Fire Brigades Union, 47 148, 149–50 Guildford Trades Council, Horney, Karen, 181 Doyle, Mikki, 183 Eurocommunism, 25, 93–5, Firth Brown Tools, 69–70 General and Municipal 254 Hornsey, constituency, 30, 76 dress, of British communists, 180, 182 Flannery, Martin, 69 Workers’ Union, 81 Guy, George, 121 ‘housewives’, 70, 148, 153, 123 Evans, George Ewart, 40, 207 Fles, George, 196 generational differences and Guyana, 203–4; People’s 155, 167; councils and drink and temperance issues, Evans, Gwilym, 42 Fogarty, Sid, 23–4 identities, 89, 191, 192, National Congress, 204–5 factory groups, 154 75, 89, 124–5, 127, 128, Exell, Arthur, 72, 208 Forman, Stanley, 36, 103, 195 201, 230–71 passim, 273 Hoxton, 265 173, 233 For Soviet Britain, 205 Germany/Germans, 126, Hackney, 16, 18; communist Hull, 199 Dublin, 175, 179, 197–201 Fabians/Fabian Society, 192, Fox, Ralph, 78, 80–1, 101, 168, 219, 225, 246; party, 195; People’s L’Humanité, 137 Dulwich, 266 234, 262–4, 266–8, 104, 164 communist party (KPD), Players, 170; Study Group, Hungary, 227; revolt and Dumfries, 47 269–70; Arts Group, 171; France: communist party 4, 8–9, 31, 66, 71, 74, 192 repression (1956), 19, 92, Duncan, Kath, 64, 156 Nursery, 35; Research (PCF), 7, 9, 13, 31, 48, 51, 137, 146, 156, 213, 215, Haldane, Charlotte, 104, 125 207, 228 Dundee, 198 Department, see Labour 76, 92, 98, 111, 135, 137, 217, 251; GDR, 227, 229, Haldane, J.B.S., 19–20, 91–2, hunger marches, 81, 107, 115, Dunstan, Robert, 267 Research Department 146, 148, 152–3, 178, 213, 274; Social Democratic 98–9, 125 175, 208, 249; see also Durham, 42, 137, 256; Fagan, Hymie, 124, 194, 247, 214–15, 218, 239, 251, Party (SPD), 114, 220 Halff, Max, 190 National Unemployed communist party, 39–41 258 277–8 Gibb, James, 20 Halifax, 78 Workers’ Movement Dutt, Clemens, 78, 129, 216 Failsworth, 54 Francis, David, 208 Gibbon, Lewis Grassic, 207 Hall, Bill, 42, 256 Hurn, Henry, 257 Dutt, R. Palme, 3, 28, 51, 52, Fairey Aviation, Stockport, Frankel, Ben, 196 Gibbons, John, 218 Halpin, Kevin 43–4 Hutchinson, Lester, 118 57, 60, 80, 81, 84, 88, 46, 54 Frankel, Hymie, 36 Gilbert, Tony, 225 Hamilton, Patrick, 89 Hutt, Allen, 220, 240 105–6, 124, 129, 193, 199, Faith, Ros, 260 Free Austrian Movement, 225 Giles, G.T.C., 90 Hampshire and Dorset: Hutt, Avis, 58, 97, 172 238, 245, 246, 247, 254, family backgrounds of British Free German League of Gill, Vi, 70, 163, 177, 182 communist party, 45, 119 Hyde, Douglas, 56–7, 112, 264; and Guild Socialism, communists, 18, 21–2, 29, Culture, 225 Glading, Percy, 163–4, 217 Hannington, Wal, 28–9, 106, 131 78, 130, 186; international 31, 181, 193–4, 199, 200, Free Speech Defence Glasgow/Clydeside, 23, 114, 118, 126, 136, 137–9, Hyndman, H.M., 213 perspectives, 184–6, 210, 201, 208, 220, 229, Committee (1921), 118 115–16, 141, 156, 175, 176, 246, 247 215–16; and USSR/Soviet 250–61, 265; ‘cradle Freethinker, 193 177, 199, 204, 241; Hardie, Keir, 51, 206, 274 Ibárruri, Dolores (La communists, 100, 101, communists’, 254–7; French, Sid, 120 communist party, 7, 18, Hardy, George, 55, 125–6 Pasionaria), 104–5 186, 232 family relations and Fried, Eugen, 215 163, 236; Gorbals, 267; Harrison, Betty, 47, 181, 256 Independent Labour Party Dutt, Salme, 155, 156, 162, responsibilities, 97, 117, Friell, James (‘Gabriel’), 57, rent strike (1915), 154; Hartshorn, Vernon, 208 (ILP), 14, 27, 30, 32, 51, 169, 178, 215 124, 125–6, 150, 158–60, 143 unemployed workers’ Hawker Siddeley, Hamble, 45 53–4, 68, 78, 106, 133, Dutt, Upendra Krishna, 184 164, 255–7 Friends of the Soviet Union, movement, 176; university, Hawkins, Albert, 11, 154 134, 153–4, 166, 170, 178, fascists/fascism: in Britain, 222, 268; see also Russia 234; YCL, 23 Haxell, Frank, 166 199, 206, 201–11, 223, Ebbett, Grace, 151 38–9, 83, 192, 198–9; Today Society Glasier, Katharine Bruce, 49 Healey, Denis, 85, 137, 240 235, 241, 247, 254, 256 Ebury, George, 233 anti-fascist activities, Frow, Edmund, 74, 109, 125, Gloucestershire, 208 health workers, 160, 171, 173 India, 118, 184, 217, 225; Eccles, Lancs, 75 194–5; in Germany, 192, 168, 260 Godfrey, Eric, 80, 254 Hecker, Julius, 127 communist party, 216, Ecclestone, Alan, 56, 59–60, 196 Frow,Ruth, 125, 168 Goldman, Willie, 195 Heffer, Eric, 258, 260 225, 226 265–8 feminism/feminists, 145–6, Fryer, Peter, 92 Goldstein, David, 32–3 Heinemann, Margot, 88, 162, Indian Workers’ Association, ‘economism’, within CPGB, 153, 156, 179–83, 231, Gollan, John, 116, 117, 140, 164–5, 240, 261 203 72 233; ‘feminist cadres’, ‘Gabriel’ (Daily Worker 141–2, 239, 241, 242, 247 Hendon, 47 Industrial Relations Act Edinburgh, 88, 199 169ff., 255 cartoonist), see Friell, James Goodman, Geoffrey, 193, 194 Hertford, 260 (1971), 120 Egypt, 197, 237 Fenianism, 198; see also Sinn Gadsby, Ellen, 159 Goodman, Richard, 104, 260 Heslop, Harold, 103 Inkpin, Albert, 113, 117, 234 Eisler, Paul, 227 Fein Gaitskell, Hugh, 28 Gorki, Maxim, 152, 173; on Higgins, Mary, 54 Inprecorr, 88, 214, 237–8 Electrical Trades Union, 48, Ferguson, Aitken, 79, 206 Gallacher, William, 64, 67, Tolstoi, 240 Higgins, Percy, 54 intellectuals, professional and 136; ballot-rigging case, Ferguson, Alec, 160 68, 71, 101, 106–7, 109, Gramsci, Antonio, 25 Hill, Christopher, 207, 265 middle-class: communists, 166 Ferguson, Jean, 160 118, 124, 125, 134, 137, Greaves, C. Desmond, 173–4, Hill, John, 258 76–92, 94–7, 106, 123, electricians/electrical workers, Ferguson, Lily, 161 164, 169, 175, 187, 198, 201 Hill, Stuart, 25–6 185, 270; scientists, 196, 23 Ferguson, Maurice, 116 213, 230, 234, 240, 242, Green, Jean, 166 Hobsbawm, Eric, 25, 85, 87, 201, 263 Elias, Sid, 116, 125 Festival of Britain, 196 243–4; and temperance, Green, Laurie, 166 92, 121–2, 129, 174, 196, International Eliot, T.S., 79 Fife, 71, 107, 115; communist 75, 124 Green, Nan, 126 211, 224, 225, 228, 248; Brigade/Brigaders and 350 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INDEX 351

Spanish volunteers, 19, 23, Jackson, Annie, 159 Kiernan, Victor, 122, 132, Lansbury, Nellie, 11 London, 7–8, 47, 143, 156, 214, 219 35, 41, 78, 81–2, 85, 86, Jackson, Frank, 159 264, 265 Lansbury, Violet, 154, 219 170, 183, 194, 214, 216, Macmillan, Nan, 170 104, 107, 115–16, 133, Jackson, Leonard, 159 Kincaid, Jimmy, 42, 43 Larkin, Jim, 198, 199 225; communist party, 16, MacMurray, John, 266 160, 176, 200, 209, 224, Jackson, T.A., 81, 201, 237–8 Klugmann, James, 85, 121–2, Laski, Harold, 90, 264 17, 41–2, 116, 119, 120, McShane, Harry, 75, 98, 102, 225, 231, 240, 263; Jackson, Thomas Pendred, 174, 186, 226, 260; From Lawrence & Wishart, 24, 270 131, 133, 146, 166, 167, 209 International Brigade 159 Trotsky to Tito, 226 Lawther, Will, 39, 165 199, 203, 252; West Maesteg, 208–9 Association, 177 Jacobs, Julius, 259 Koestler, Arthur, 265, 278 Lazarus, Abe, 112 Central branch, 90; East Mahon, John, 119, 125 International Class War Jacques, Martin, 249 Kollontai, Alexandra, 181 League Against Imperialism End, 115, 185, 205, 211, Malone, Cecil L’Estrange, 136 Prisoners’ Aid (ICWPA), Jagan, Cheddi, 203, 205 Kravetz, Tamara, see Tamara (LAI), 164, 216, 217 217; Irish Workers’ Manchester, 23, 106, 108–9, 118 Jamaica, 204 Rust League of Nations Union League, 199; Labour 118, 125, 143, 168, 196, International Lenin School Jara, Victor, 105 Kriegel, Annie, 92 (LNU), 24, 172 Choral Union, 274; May 199, 200, 266–7; (ILS) and ILS students, 2, Jardine, Robin, 267 Kurella, Alfred, 215, 232 Leckie, Jack, 70, 114, 168 Day demonstrations, 200; Cheetham, 189, 191, 194; 4, 25, 67, 78, 79, 103, Jenkins, Mick, 46, 109, 190 Kuya, Dorothy, 145–6, 182–3, Lee, Hymie, 103, 116, 190–1 North West, 68, 215; communist party, 20, 46, 114, 115, 116–17, 119, Jessop, Marian, 18, 135, 161, 204 Leeds, 199, 256; communist trades council, 259; 62, 74, 95, 116, 122, 146, 120, 130, 133, 134, 135, 181, 239, 256 party, 18, 26, 48, 52, 113, university, 78, 80, 84, 90, 237; Communist Sunday 161, 164, 174, 190, Jewish bakers’ union, 220 labour colleges, 77, 260; see 162; labour college, 260 95; Women’s Parliament, School, 236; Moss Side 199–200, 209, 216, 218, Jewish communist party also Central Labour Left Book Club, 25, 53, 166 170, 171; YCL, 42, 236, constituency, 143; Trafford 219, 220, 222, 238, members, 22, 31, 36, 56, College, Scottish Labour Left Review, 104, 127, 209 247; see also individual Park, 74; university, 96; 239–40, 244, 246, 263, 74, 183, 184–6, 188–96, College Leicester, 75 districts YCL, 190, 194 279 200, 201, 205, 219, 237, Labour League of Youth, 45, Leigh, Bessie, 179 London, Jack, 127, 189, 259, Mandela, Nelson, 105 International Red Aid 253, 261; experiences of 47, 86, 131–2, 240, 242, Leiston, Suffolk, 111 270 Mann, Tom, 24, 50–1, 108, (MOPR), 9–10, 71, 214, anti-Semitism, 193–4, 209, 259–60 Lenin, V.I., 87, 105, 230; as London Society of 118, 143, 222, 233 216 237 Labour Monthly, 28, 105, 274 influence on British Compositors, 233 Mansfield, 147 International Socialist Review, Jewish Labour Party Labour Party, 13, 14, 20, 22, communists, 54, 56, 57, Lovell, Bob, 118, 125, 136 Manuilsky, Dmitri, 214–15, 127 (Palestine), 193 26, 28, 39, 46, 50, 53–4, 80–1, 98–9, 100–2, 109, Lowe, Bert, 73 278 International Socialists, 250 ‘Jewish Union’ (Irish clothing 78, 84, 152, 170, 171, 173, 197, 211, 213, 242, 244, Luton, 42, 168 Maoism, 96, 205 International Workers of the workers), 197 177, 195, 197, 198, 253, 255; ‘Leninism’, 238; Luxemburg, Monica, 172, Mardy, 30, 42, 208 World (Wobblies), 55, 125, Joan of Arc, 263 258, 259, 264, 266, 267, ‘Leninist generation’, 232, 194 Marks, Louis, 260 127 Johnson, Hewlett, 260, 267 277; communist activities 235 Luxemburg, Rosa, 101, 154, Marshall, Dave, 35 Internationalism, CPGB’s, Johnston, Tom, 209 within, 30, 44–5, 68, Leslie, J.R., 243 189, 197, 213, 263; Martin, Stan, 94, 96, 165 22–3, 57, 134, 195, 197, Johnstone, Monty, 121–2 131–2, 136–7, 143; Letchworth, 44 ‘Luxemburgianism’, 206, Martov, Julius, 189 202, 205–6, 210–18, 221, Jones, Claudia, 183, 204 communist attitudes Leven, Vale of, 109 226 Marty, André, 119 223–7 Jones, G.J., 30 towards, 53, 77, 112, Levitas, Maurice, 200 Lynd, Sheila, 89 Marx, Eleanor, 171 Inter-Parliamentary Union, Jones, Lewis, 66, 109 123–4, 190, 213, 236, 255, Levitas, Max, 200 Lysenko affair (1948–9), 19, Marx, Karl: influence on 137 Jones, Mike, 23, 249 268; and family back- Levy, Hyman, 84, 185, 196 91–2 British communists, 54, Inverness, 209–10 Jordan, Maggie, 161 ground of CPGB Lewis, C. Day, 107 99, 189, 259, 266 Ireland/Irish, 185, 194, Joss, Bill, 116 members, 16, 18, 21, 46, Lewis, John, 264, 267 McArthur, John, 67 Marx-Engels Institute, 79, 80, 196–202, 209, 210, 213; journalists, 91–2, 127–8, 193 86, 252, 255–6, 261; rela- Liberalism, 85, 169, 208, 244, McCarthy, Margaret, 38, 39, 164, 218 communist parties, 144, Junior Imperial League, 18 tions with CPGB and 260, 261, 266 112, 126, 190–1 Marxism Today, 21, 25, 85, 96, 197, 198, 199, 239 communist-sponsored libraries, public, 260 Macartney, Gary, 258 182 Iremonger, Ronnie, 69 Kane, Betty, 256 campaigns, 29, 39, 64, Liebknecht, Karl, 101, 213 Macartney, Wilf, 115 Mason, John, 34 Irish Citizens’ Army, 179 Kane, Mick, 41 76–7, 100, 210, 211, 232; Lilley, Sam, 97 MacColl, Ewen, 102 Masses, 127 Irish Republican Army (IRA), Kapp, Yvonne, 172 women’s sections, 156, 168 Lindsay, Jack, 187–8; and MacDiarmid, Hugh, 101, Matthews, Betty, 85, 162, 178, 71, 197, 199, 209 Kay, John, 23 Labour Representation Edgell Rickword, A 124, 206–7 , 209, 210, 212 181 Irish Workers’ League, 199 Kaye, Solly, 121, 195 Committee, 233 Handbook of Freedom, 206 MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 266, Matthews, George, 85, 240, ironmoulders, 173 Kent: coalfield, 41; commu- Labour Research Department ‘little Moscows’, 7, 27–8, 111, 274 241 Isherwood, Christopher, 82, nist party, 42, 119–20, 254 (LRD), 28, 77–8, 88, 130, 115, 185, 208 MacEwen, Malcolm, 85 Maxton, James, 106, 108 246 Kentish Town, 137, 246 162, 163, 164–5, 235, 246, Lismer, Ted, 68, 125 McIlhone, Bob, 16 May Day, commemorated, Islington, 180 Kenton, Rafa, 194 261; Local Government News Lithuanian Communist Mackay, Moira, 197 200, 213, 222, 274–5 Islington Gutter Press, 253 Kerrigan, Peter, 115–16, Service, 266 Federation, 202 McLaine, William, 155 Medical Research Council, 83 Israel, British communist atti- 175–7, 239, 253 Lanarkshire, 30, 202 Lithuanian Social Democratic McLean, Agnes, 163, 177 Medvedev, Roy, 96 tudes to, 195–6 Kerrigan, Rose, 175–7, 230, Lancashire, 109, 156, 178, Party, 202 Maclean, Donald, 132–3, 260 Meerut trial and campaign, Italy: communist party (PCI), 253 245, 249, 266; communist Littlewood, Joan, 35 Maclean, John, 107, 175, 205, 118, 216, 217 7, 9, 21, 25, 31, 57, 62, Kerstein, Joe, 18 party, 38–9, 53–4, 114, Litvinov, Maxim, 190, 246 206 Mellor, William, 77 76, 124, 129–30, 146, 229, Kettering, 30 136, 148, 163, 165, 209, Liverpool, 87, 145, 199, 200; McLennan, Gordon, 142, Merthyr, 209; Pioneer, 206 230, 251, 278; CGIL Kettle, Margot, 172, 240 266; YCL, 42, 126 university, 96, 201 205, 241 Mexborough, 34 (union confederation), 62 Keyworth, Florence, 69, 75, Lancaster, Osbert, 85 Llais y Werin, 206 Macleod, Alison, 91, 251–2 Meynell, Francis, 77 89, 163, 167, 168, 180, Lansbury, George, 76, 118, Llewellyn, Mavis, 65–6, 110 MacManus, Arthur, 68, 109, Middlesbrough, see Teesside Jacks, Digby, 122 181 153–4 Llewellyn, Miriam, 209 114, 124, 125, 156, 199, Midlands: communist party, 352 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INDEX 353

46, 114; metal bureau, 72 National Assembly of Oates, Jimmy, 254 Jozsef Putney, 50, 55, 264 Russia, 181; see also USSR; Midlands, East: communist Women, 172, 183 O’Duffy, Eoin, 200 Péri, Gabriel, 137 Pogroms, 194 party, 44 National Association of Local Ogden, Dennis, 224 Peri, Peter, 103 Quelch, Harry, 213 Russia Today Society, 128, Midlands, South East: Government Officers Ogmore and Garw, 65 Petrovsky, David (Max), Quelch, Tom, 155, 213 159; see also Friends of the communist party, 42, 44, (NALGO), 93 O’Hara, Roger, 200 215–16, 227 Soviet Union 46, 121–2, 162 National Campaign for O’Lyhane, Con, 201 Piatnitsky, Osip, 228 Radford, Anni, 171 Russian Oil Products, 218 migration , 29–30, 37 ff, 57, Nursery Education, 172 Onllwyn, 40, 208–9 Piratin, Phil, 76, 188–9, 198 railway workers, 23, 35, 86, Rust, Kath, see Kathleen 186, 187–8, 195, 197, 208, National Council for Civil oratory, communist, 105–10, Plato, 267, 274 94, 127, 134, 254 O’Shaughnessy 209, 251 Liberties, 89 141; accents, 137, 268 Plato Films, 36 Rákosi, Mátyás, 104 Rust, Tamara, 178, 239 Miles, Dick, 73 National Guilds League, 235 O’Reilly, Joe, 108–9 Plebs League, 83, 90 Ramelson, Bert, 85, 93, 95, Rust, William, 114, 118, 164, Miner, 79 National Unemployed O’Shaughnessy, Kathleen, Pogány, Jozsef, 76 119, 181, 186, 196 234, 236, 237, 238, 239 Miners’ Federation of Great Workers’ Movement 238–9 Poland/Poles, 209, 219 Randell, Ken., 69 Rutherglen, 134, 259 Britain, 233, 235 (NUWM), 28–9, 68, Our Time, 103 Pollitt, Harry, 5, 16–17, 54, Rankpelnis, 202 Rye, 170 Miners’ Next Step, 139 110–11, 137–9, 176, 258; Oxford, 42–3, 44, 68–9, 107, 55, 60, 62, 63–5, 80, 84, Rathbone, Hugo, 78, 216 Minority Movement, 5, 41, women’s sections, 70, 162 108, 208; communist 105, 108, 114–15, 117, Reade, Arthur, 124, 274–5 St Albans, 23, 42, 46 53, 55, 168, 235, 244; National Union of Ex- party, 72–3, 76, 85–7; 119, 126, 128, 137, 139, Reckitt, Eva, 166 St Marylebone, 170 Miners’, 245 Servicemen (NUX), 11 Cutteslowe walls, 231; 168, 169, 191, 199, 210, Reckitt, Maurice, 186 St Pancras, communist party, Mitchell, Hannah, 178 National Union of Morris Motors, Oxford, 212, 217, 219, 235, 239, Red International of Labour 123, 152, 154, 162, 213, Mitchell, Tom, 44–5 Mineworkers (NUM), 78, 43, 68; Pressed Steel strike 247, 255, 270; and gender Unions (Profintern), 69, 235 mobility, 31–48, 171 94, 140, 165 (1934), 43, 112; Ruskin issues, 156–7; in Germany 213 Saklatvala, Shapurji, 106, Modern Quarterly, 266 National Union of Public College, 143, 180, 243, (1924), 213; leadership ‘Red Officers’ Corps’, 169 108, 136–7, 216–17 Moffat, Abe, 67, 94, 115, 241 Employees (NUPE), 93 296 n. 115; university, 78, style and attributes, Red Rag, 181 Salford, 136 Moffat, Alec, 248 National Union of 79, 85, 86, 169, 172, 184, 98–100, 106, 114, 122, Reed, John, 127 Samuel, Raphael, 108 Montagu, Hell, 159–60 Railwaymen, 200, 259 262 140, 141, 143, 240, 246, Reeves, E.B., 233 Sara, Henry, 101 Montagu, Ivor, 103, 105, National Union of Scientific Owen, Jack, 143–4 248–9; oratory, 109, refugees, 225 Saville, John, 249 159–60, 164, 268 Workers, 84 248–9; removal from Reichstag Fire Trial Schling, Jan, 94–5 Montefiore, Dora, 153, 155, National Union of Students, Packman, Lydia, 162 CPGB leadership campaign, 159, 164 school experiences of British 177, 233 122 Palestine, 193, 195 (1939–41), 106, 135, 245 , Reid, Betty, 166, 260 communists, 259–61 Moorends, Yorks, 111 National Union of Teachers, Palmer, Madge, 164 254; Serving My Time Reid, Jimmy, 141–2, 209 Scotland, 144, 150, 185; coal- Moorhouse, Mary, 78, 162, 90, 161, 170 Pankhurst, Harry, 127 (1940), 51, 54, 77, 101, religious influences and affili- fields, 244; see also Fife, 234 National Union of Vehicle Pankhurst, Sylvia, 78, 101, 134, 184, 236–7, 245–6, ations, 39 Lanarkshire; communist Morning Star, 21, 96, 180, 183; Builders, 158 153–4, 155, 156 254, 256; and Remarque, Erich Maria, 24, party, 17, 40, 115, 116, see also Daily Worker National Union of Women Pan-Pacific Trade Union USSR/Soviet communists, 260, 282 124–5, 141, 241; identity, Morris, William, 49, 256, 264, Teachers, 170 Secretariat, 126 100, 102, 222–3, 227–8, Renton, Donald, 20, 176 205–7, 209–10; YCL, 23 274 Neath, 116, 209 Paris, 214–15, 216 243, 245 Revolutionary Policy Scottish Labour College, 175 Morton, A.L., 79, 84 Negro Affairs Quarterly, 204 Parsons, Henry, 165 Pollitt, Marjorie, 178 Committee, 210, 223 Scottish Nationalist Party, 206 Moscow Daily News, 127, 218 Neill, A.S., 260 Parsons, Olive, 165, 194 Pollitt, Mary Louisa, 51 Revolutionary Workers’ Seamen, 55, 216 Mosley, Oswald, 79, 195, 199, Nelson, 39 Pauker, Anna, 215 Postgate, Raymond, 77 Groups (Ireland), 199 Second World War: and 264 Nelson, Maggie, 178 Paul, Cedar, 154–5, 197 Pottery Workers’ Guild, 171 Rhondda, 40, 43, 139, 208, CPGB recruitment, Mossley, 54 Netherlands: communist Paul, Eden, 154–5, 197, 233 Powell, Annie, 65, 67 258; communist party, 9, 18–19, 23, 45–7, 223, 231; Motherwell, 158, 198, 209 party, 21, 57, 284 n. 28 Paul, William, 54 Preece, Jack, 71 30, 32, 38, 54, 64, 65–6, CPGB’s industrial policies, Movement for Colonial Newbold, J.T. Walton, 77, Paynter, Irene, 158 Preston, 44 75, 109–11, 119; East 72; CPGB’s opposition to Freedom, 225 106, 198, 209 Paynter, Will, 38, 63, 208 printworkers, 95, 155, 213, Rhondda constituency, 67, (1939–41), 14, 63–4, 99, multiplexity, 7–8, 13 New Communist Party, 120 peace and peace campaigns, 233 76 135, 140, 211, 245 Münzenberg, Willi, 129–30, New Left, 19, 182, 262 24, 132, 167–8, 172, 228, Priscott, Dave, 119, 122 Riazanov, David, 79 Seifert, Connie, 195 215 New Statesman, 267 274; see also British Peace prison, imprisonment and Roberts, Ernie, 136 Selkirk, Bob, 67 Murdoch, Iris, 86 new towns, 30, 47; see also Committee, CND; No prosecution 42, 231, 234, Robertson, Archibald, 267 sexuality and sexual relations, Murphy, J.T., 68, 69, 75, 103, individual towns Conscription Fellowship, 238; see also CPGB and Robeson, Paul, 105 communist attitudes to, 117, 214, 219, 245, 265 Nicholas, T.E., 101, 206–7 Peace Ballot British state Rogers, Ted, 47 93, 123–9, 150–3, 164, Murray, Sean, 199–200 Nigeria, 210 Peace Ballot (1935), 171 Profintern, see Red Romania, 117, 192, 215 173–9 music and musicians, 89, 91, No Conscription Fellowship, Pearce, Brian, 101, 251 International of Labour Romford, 194 Sharma, Vishnu, 203 96, 97, 123, 196, 237, 269, 154 Peck, John, 111 Unions Rosen, Harold, 255 Shaw, George Bernard, 10, 274–5; Soviet composers’ Noel, Conrad, 265–6 Pefkos, George, 203 progressivism/progressive Ross, William, 30 24, 171, 181, 201, 259, controversy, 91 Northumberland, 47 Pekkala, Salme, see Salme tradition, 262 Rothman, Benny, 194 263–4, 270, 274, 282 Norwich, 86 Dutt Promethean Society, 267 Rothstein, Andrew, 154, 186, Sheffield, 125, 163, 176, 181, National Amalgamated Nottingham, 111, 116, 168 People’s Convention, 39 Prooth, Michael, 220 190, 196, 218–19, 242 182, 256; communist Furnishing Trades’ Nottinghamshire, 265; coal- People’s Progressive Party, Proudfoot, David, 38, 236 Rothstein, Theodore, 190 party, 18, 68–70, 76, 116, Association (NAFTA), 189, field, 41 203–4 Purcell, A.A., 143, 233 Russell, Ralph, 225 161; NUWM, 70; Sheffield 259 Pepper, John, see Pogány, Purkis, Stuart, 112 Russell, Sam, 160, 193, 240 Star, 89; YCL, 43, 75 354 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY INDEX 355

Sherman, Alfred, 16, 186 Brigade/Brigaders and 231, 252 parties likened to, 1 ff, 59 YCL, 144 157, 158, 189, 210, 243, Shipley, 158 Spanish volunteers Sudan, 198 Toynbee, Philip, 87 USSR, 193; attitudes to, 19, 257, 260, 266; communist shop and distributive workers, Spanish Medical Aid, 171 Summerhill School, 83, 104, trade unions: communist 20, 24, 26, 58, 81, 91–2, party, 16, 17, 18, 38, 39, 53, 243 Spender, Stephen, 82, 128, 260 activities in, 28, 33–4, 41 95, 97, 100–3, 105, 126–7, 41, 62, 68, 111, 139–40, shop stewards’ movement, 240, 246 Sunday Worker, 79, 91, 237 Trades Disputes Act (1927), 132–3, 145, 155, 172, 179, 157, 158; YCL, 42; iden- 70–1, 246 sport, British communist atti- Sunderland, 44–5, 47 137 185–6, 195, 204, 206, tity, 205–8 Short, George, 120, 244, 246 tudes to, 89, 91, 115, 138, Surrey, 58; communist party, Trades Union Congress, 112 211–12, 217–29, 233, 243, Walker, Melvina, 156 show trials, see USSR, show 159, 268 120, 209 Transport and General 244, 258, 264, 267–8, Wallace, Bruce, 67 trials and political repres- Spratt, Philip, 88, 118 Sussex: communist party, 42 Workers’ Union, 96, 97; 274–5, 277; anti-Semitism, Walthamstow, 211; trades sion Springhall, Dave, 116, 119, Swingler, Randall, 20, 34, Pressed Steel branch, 44 195–6; attacks on council, 159 Simon, Brian, 266–7 133–4, 164, 223, 236, 239 221, 265 Transport Workers’ churches, 198; visit or stay, Warner, Sylvia Townsend, Simon, Ernest, 266 Stacey, Enid, 162 Switzerland: communist party, Federation, 233 78–9, 80, 114, 116–17, 129 Simon, Roger, 164–5, 266–7, Staffordshire, North: commu- 48, 146, 286 n.23 Tredegar, 45 119, 127, 133, 144, 159, Watford, 171 268 nist party, 68 Sydenham, 119 Tressell, Robert, Ragged 160, 164, 174, 178, Watkins, Nat, 245–6 Simon, Shena, 266 Stalin, Josef, 98, 99, 105, 127, Syndicalism/syndicalists, 70, Trousered Philanthropists, 218–21, 222, 224, 231, Watters, Frank, 67, 97, 122, Simpson, Derek, 69 229, 244, 252; leadership 139, 143, 258; see also 258, 270–1 238–9, 244, 254, 267; 259 Sinclair, Upton, 189, 260 cult, 101–3, 110, 143, economism Trinidad/Trinidadians, 203, British employees and Watts, A.A., 233 Sinn Fein/Sinn Feiners, 71, 222–3, 226 204 diplomatic presence, 154, Webb, Beatrice, 49, 154 184, 199 ‘Stalinisation’ thesis, 217 Tabrisky, Jane, 80 Trory, Ernie, 18 218–19, 254; collapse, Webb, Lily, see Lily Ferguson Skinner, Mabel, 209 Stalinism, defined, 7, 98–9, Tapsell, Wally, 236 Trotsky, Leon, 80, 100, 101, 230; communist party Webb, Sidney, 81, 267 Slade School, 81 100 Taylor, Cleston, 204 189, 198, 274 (CPSU), 13, 19, 99, 102, Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, Sling,´ Otto, 94, 225 Stanton, C.B., 206 Taylor, Kath, see Kathleen Trotskyism/Trotskyists, real 120, 212, 213, 228, 248; 14, 24, 77, 98, 117, 204, Slingová,´ Marian, 225, 227 Steelworkers, 198 O’Shaughnessy or alleged, 80, 99, 112, ‘cult of personality’, 99, 258, 264, 266 Sloan, Pat, 102–3, 267 Stepney , 220; ‘Battle of teachers, 53, 64, 65, 79, 90, 127, 131, 193, 214, 250, 102–3; cultural policies, Wedderburn, Dorothy, 86, 90, Slough, 42 Cable Street’, 195; 156, 170, 172, 193, 201, 253, 277 19–20, 91–2, 267, 274; 182 Smillie, Robert, 243 communist party, 7, 31, 259–61, 270 Tuckwell, Gertrude, 162 fellow-travellers, 39; Wellard, Charlie, 166 Smith, David, 204 121, 188–90, 192, 198; Teachers’ Labour League, 53 Turner, Beth, 156, 157, 158, History of the CPSU (B), Wells, H.G., 155, 191, 201, Smith, James Austin, 256 Mile End constituency, 76, Teesside, 74; communist 161 101, 222; Konsomol, 239; 263 Smith, John Maynard, 19–20 188, 195; Whitechapel, party, 25–6, 30, 40–1, Tyneside: communist party, political exiles return to, Wesker, Arnold, 196 Smith, Rose, 147, 177 200; Whitechapel and St 119–20, 244; YCL, 32–3, 17, 38, 46, 47, 116, 125, 190; relief activities, 167; West, Alick, 81, 82, 107 Snowden, Philip, 49, 53 George’s constituency, 35, 191, 193–4 133, 146, 161, 167 security services, 127, 169; West Indian Workers’ Social Credit, 88 191–2, 198 temperance, see drink and Tuckett, Angela, 89 show trials and political Association, 205 Social Democratic Federation Stevenage, 73 temperance issues repression, 94, 196, West Indies, 203–5 (SDF), 68, 146, 159, 176, Stevenson, Graham, 24, 97 tenants’ movements and hous- UCATT, 97, 258 222–3, 224, 227, 229, 239; Westacott, Fred, 44–5 199, 213, 233 Stewart, Bob, 75, 124, 199, ing campaigns, 154, 156, Ulbricht, Walter, 215 social policies, 126–7; Westminster: St Paul’s School, Socialist Labour League 235 167–8, 172 unemployment, 115, 257; and spies, 185–6, 223–4, 239 234 (SLL), 112 Stewart, Maria, 67 textile workers, 157, 161 communist party recruit- Utley, Freda, 80, 127, 219 Whitechapel, see Stepney Socialist Labour Party (SLP), Stewart, Michael, 259 Thaelmann, Ernst, 104, 113 ment, 18, 28, 29; welfare Utting, Arthur, 92–3, 97, 121, white-collar workers/unions, 70, 77, 147, 185, 199, 214, Stockport, 54, 194, 197 ‘third period’, see Communist activities, 172 122, 258–9 28, 34–5, 36 219; American SLP, 185 Stoke Newington, 191 Party of Great Britain, Unions des Jeunes Filles de Wigan, 43, 116, 137, 252 Socialist Labour Press, 175 Stoker, W.R., 219 ‘Class Against Class’ France, 148 Vauxhall, 159 Wilbraham, Marian; see Socialist League, 45, 47 Strachan, Billy, 204–5 Thompson, Dorothy, 87 United Clothing Workers’ Vauxhall, Luton, 43 Marian Sling Socialist Prohibition Strachey, John, 79, 81, 102, Thompson, E.P., 87, 90, 226, Union, 135, 176 vegetarianism, 125, 233 Wild, Sam, 200 Fellowship, 124 264 228, 249, 265 Unity Theatre, 35 Vema, 203 Wilkinson, Ellen, 11, 76, 108, Socialist Review,79 strikes and industrial disputes, Thompson, Frank, 226 University Labour Federation, Ver meesch, Jeanette, 178 177 Socialist Sunday Schools, 175, 134, 168; apprentices’ Thompson, Fred, 151 87, 131 Ver non, Hilda, 166, 170, 177 Williams, Bill, 78, 88 254, 259 (1937), 241; Firestone Thomson, George, 96 Unofficial Reform Ver non, Tom, 170 Williams, Garfield, 40 social workers, 180 (1934), 112; General Thomson, Katharine, 96 Committee, 139 victimisation, of communists, Williams, Gwyn, 43 Society for Cultural Relations, Strike (1926), 17–18, 43; Thorez, Maurice, 12, 51, 102, Upward, Edward, 52, 82 62, 79, 257 Williams, J. Roose, 207 159 Lawrence textile (1931), 122, 138, 178, 219 USA/Americans, 125, 127, Vietnam war, 22–3, 25, 249 Williams, Raymond, 86 Soldiers’ and Sailors’ 144, 146; matchgirls Timberlake, Percy, 132 182, 189, 201, 219, 220, Voice of Scotland, 206 Williams, Robert, 233 Families’ Association, 171 (1889), 171; miners’ lock- Tipperary, County, 201 238; civil rights move- Vyse, Nell, 151, 170–1 Willis, Ted, 132 Southwark, 171 out (1926), 115, 157; Tito, Josip Broz, 226; ment, 204; communist Wilson, Alistair, 57 Soviet Monitor, 150 Pressed Steel (1934), 43, denounced by Stalinists, anti-Americanism, 269; Wales and Welsh, 189; North Wilson, Douglas, 236 Spain and Spanish Civil War, 112; Upper Clyde 19, 216; Titoism, 99, 127 communist party Wales communist party, Wilson, Elizabeth, 129, 180, 24, 110, 149, 159, 171, Shipbuilders (1972), 141; Togliatti, Palmiro, 219 (CPUSA), 8, 9, 26, 121, 207, 249; South Wales, 7, 182 172, 198, 219, 224, 254; woollen workers (1930), 47 Toller, Ernst, 106–7 144, 145, 182–3, 191–2, 16, 17, 18, 32, 38, 39, 40, Winchester School, 85, 265 migrants in Britain, 209; students/student politics, 20, Torr, Dona, 50, 156, 265 202, 203–4, 213; 41, 42, 43, 48, 63–6, 68, Wincott, Len, 227 see also International 22–3, 28, 84–7, 216, 225, total institution, communist Scottsboro boys, 246; 78, 108, 111, 139–40, 156, Wintringham, Tom, 101, 104, 356 COMMUNISTS AND BRITISH SOCIETY

169 236 Young, Harry, 164 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 181 Workers’ Circle, 192 Young Communist Woman Today, 167 Workers’ Educational International (YCI), 164, Women’s Campaign against Association (WEA), 91, 227, 238 War and Fascism, 167 261 Young Communist League Women’s International Workers’ International Relief (YCL), 21, 23, 24, 32–3, Council of Socialist and (WIR), 167–8 35, 36, 42, 53, 87, 97, Labour Organisations, 154 Workers’ Legion, 118–19 115, 121, 131, 134–5, 141, women’s liberation move- Workers’ Socialist Federation 149, 159, 161, 164, 179, ment, 129, 146, 179–83; (WSF), 70, 153–4, 155, 182, 190–1, 193, 194, 227, see also feminism 156, 158, 164, 238 236–8, 239, 241–2, 247, women’s parliaments, 170, Workers’ Weekly, 237 252 171 World Congress of Women Yugoslavia, 213; youth rail- Women’s Social and Political Against War and Fascism, way, 226; see also Union, 170 170 Tito/Titoism women’s suffrage movement, World News and Views, 121 134, 153–4, 177, 252 Worsley, Peter, 225 Zaidman, Lazar, 117, 192 Woodhams, John, 23, 24 Wythenshawe, 174 Zetkin, Clara, 154, 198 Woods, Charlie, 116 Zhdanovism, see USSR, woodworkers and furnishing Yorkshire: coalfield, 41, 269; cultural policies trades, 94, 159, 189, 233, communist party, 90, 119; Zionism, 195–6 258 West Riding, 47, 157, 181, Woolf, Virginia, 181 256; communist party, 38, Woolley, Ernie, 116, 118–19, 46, 116, 161; YCL, 42