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The CPGB, the Comintern and the War, 1939-1941:
Filling in the Blank Spots
Based on the researches in the Communist International archives in Moscow, the paper explored the relationship between the CPGB and the Comintern in the first period of world war two. After Stalin had spoken to Dimitrov on 7 September 1939, the Comintern secretariat issued a directive in which the communist Parties of France, Britain, Belgium and the USA were instructed to 'immediately correct their political line' to one of opposition to the war. The nature of the communications in this period between Moscow and the CPGB were examined and the coded messages sent in both directions were quoted after the line had been 'rectified'. The original radio-link through Harry Pollitt was interrupted due to the fight he put up against the Comintern's anti-war line. From November 1939 a radio-link was re-established on the basis of a new code. The messages now passed through National Organiser D.F. Springhall, who was instructed to 'create a new conspiratorial apparatus'. From the Soviet side a number of the messages came directly from Dimitrov. They concerned questions of both policy, organisation and personnel, including whether or not a new general secretary should be appointed to replace Pollitt, who had been removed. On the Comintern's advice no replacement was made, although Palme Dutt fulfilled that role de facto till the Soviet Union's entry into the war. Proposals from the CPGB leadership to hold a closed party congress in February 1940 were also dropped on the Comintern's advice.
The paper documented a 'mini-turn' in the CPGB's line on the war at the time of the fall of France in June 1940. The Central Committee's denunciation of 'defencist feeling' in May 1940 now temporarily gave way to the strongly defencist demand to arm the workers in the factories to help withstand 'the danger of Fascist invasion and tyranny'. The archives do not reveal any Comintern directive to the CPGB to explain this change, which reflected the British Communists' assertion of their basis anti-fascism. However, the Comintern-controlled press service had just sent out a declaration from the French Communist Party leadership in Moscow with a similarly defencist line. The CPGB leadership would have recognised that this had the approval of the Comintern, in which France's defeat produced some confusion and policy re-examination.
Dimitrov advised the CPGB in January 1941 to make the People's Convention 'a broad mass movement but not to appear publicly as its organisational leader'. He added that, if the Convention was banned, this should be denounced as 'weakening the capacity of resistance of British people against German imperialism'. The CPGB's support for the Yugoslav and Greek struggles against the German invaders in April 1941 as just wars corresponded to the Comintern Secretariat's line reflected in messages from its press agency.
The Comintern's final intervention came in June 1941 after the German attach on the Soviet Union. Although the CPGB Political Bureau had immediately declared support for the war against Nazi Germany, it had continued to demand the replacement of the Churchill government by a 'People's Government'. This was changed under criticism from the Comintern to call for unity around the Churchill government. Pollitt, who had argued for this change, was re-elected as general secretary in July 1941.
