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The CPGB and
Comintern: Problems of Control
Too often, historians have assumed that Comintern 'controlled' the CPGB without really looking at how such 'control' was exercised. The purpose of this paper was to show, on the basis of extensive research in the Moscow archives and comparison with other Communist parties, that in fact such control was usually weaker, and easier for the British party leadership to subvert, than has been generally assumed. The mechanisms of control were, admittedly, numerous, and included the following:
(a) surveillance and supervision, through exchange of personnel, general monitoring, and more clandestine methods such as the interception of mail sent to or by Britons in Moscow
(b) concrete assistance, in the form of Comintern representatives to the British party, cash (especially in the 1920s), and the deployment of foreign Communists to act as 'shock brigades' to help in strikes, etc
(c) persuasion, with frequent meetings between CP leaders and leading figures in Comintern, propaganda material and directives from Moscow, and the practical example of the USSR as the first 'Workers' State'
(d) encouragement of anti-leadership factions and/or individuals to put pressure on the party leadership: this tactic was used with Pankhurst in 1920, Murphy in 1927, Dutt and Pollitt in 1928-9, and the youth section (especially the students at the International Lenin School in Moscow)
(e) coercion: this was used especially around the time of the switch to Class against Class in 1928/9, with Horner and Rothstein particularly good examples: both spent periods of exile in Moscow.
On the face of it this was an impressive array of resources at Comintern's command. But there were real limitations on their utilisation. Comintern headquarters was a busy place, which often had bigger fish to fry than the CPGB: hence attention varied over time. This, in turn, meant that the CP could usually secure for itself a good deal of leeway in its activities. If it could put those activities into language that the Comintern would understand and like, it would usually satisfy Moscow (this was a talent that Pollitt, in particular, developed into a very fine art).
It should also be added that Comintern was only one of the pressures on the CP leadership, albeit arguably the most important. Thus although there was a relationship that mattered between the Comintern and the CP, it was not a simplistic question of the former pulling the latter's strings. The great potential that there now is for research on Comintern and its constituent sections should not lead us to a blind acceptance of ideas of totalitarianism and monolithism, but rather, in words that Comintern functionaries would have appreciated, towards a sharpening of, and differentiation between, the various factors that impinged on Communist parties in their work.
