Introduction
Thanks again to all contributors, especially Bert Hogenkamp for his comprehensive filmography. Thanks go to the University of Manchester Government Department for its continuing support of the Newsletter, and to Jane Harden for putting it together. The next issue should appear in April 1998.
Editor CHNN
Department of Government
University of Manchester
Manchester
United Kingdom
M13 9PL
Contents
Editor's introduction
Announcements
- TUC Library Collections
- British Library Subject Guide
- Historians of American Communism
- Tribute to Eddie Frow
Work in Progress
- Project on the Comparative International History of Left Education, Martin E Gettleman
Thesis Report
- The Anti-Colonial Politics and Policies of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920-1951, Jean Jones
Report on Sources
- Communist Party and Related Films held by ETV
Bert Hogenkamp
Some Recent Books
- Histoire du Parti communiste français, by Stephane Courtois and Marc Lazar, reviewed by Stephen Hopkins
- Generating Socialism: Recollections of Life in the Labour Party, by Daniel Weinbren, reviewed by Jo Stanley
Conference Report
- 'British Trade Unionism, Workers' Strategies and Economic Performance, 1940-79', Richard Stevens
Announcements
TUC LIBRARY COLLECTIONS: The Trades Union Congress Library Collections have been deposited with the University of North London. The collections include extensive pamphlet and periodical holdings published by or relating to the communist movement include runs of many CPGB periodicals from the 1920s onwards. The collections can be consulted Monday to Friday, 10-4.30 and appointments should be made through the librarian, Christine Coates, TUC Library Collections, Learning Centre, University of North London, 236-250 Holloway Rd, London N7 6PP; 020-7753-3184; c.coates@unl.ac.uk.
BRITISH LIBRARY SUBJECT GUIDE: The British Library of Political and Economic Science has produced a new series of guides to its pamphlet collections. Subjects covered include industry, transport, social policy and — most directly helpful to historians of communism - labour. Details from BLPES, 10 Portugal Street, London WC2A 2HD.
HISTORIANS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM: Thanks to the Historians of American Communism for drawing attention to the newsletter. The HOAC Newsletter, now in its seventeenth year, includes a running bibliography of writings on US communism, notes and queries on work in progress and archival news. Subscriptions (individuals: $13; libraries and overseas: $19) should be sent to Dan Leab, HOAC, PO Box 1216, Washington, CT 06973.
DECODED CI MESSAGES: Copies of coded messages between the Communist International and its national sections are now accessible to researchers in the Public Record Office (ref. HW17). The messages were decoded by the British government's Code and Cypher School and relate to a number of other communist parties as well as the CPGB, for which there are six files of messages 1934-37. Matters of party policy, its funding by the Comintern and pressure for enrolments for the International Lenin School are among the subjects touched upon.
TRIBUTE TO EDDIE FROW: Many readers will have been saddened by the death in May of Edmund Frow, communist, trade union activist and co-founder with his wife Ruth of the Working Class Movement Library. A tribute to Eddie is to be published in the new year by the North West Labour History Group, details from WCML, 51 Crescent, Salford M5 4WX.
Work in Progress
Project on the Comparative International History of Left Education
At my college during the tail end of that weird period in US history known as 'the McCarthy Era' [1] two government agents entered a classroom where the teacher was lecturing on English literature, took him by the arms and led him out. It was mid-semester; his students never saw him again. At that time I made a vow to find out what brought about this extraordinary act of political and intellectual repression. I interviewed scores of people, and wrote a series of articles on the subject, not all of them published [2]. Then in 1986 Ellen Schrecker brought out No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (Oxford), an outstanding book which illuminated one side of the story: why the repression was unleashed on American academics.
Another side of the story remained to be explored: the nature of the pedagogical work carried out in the 1920s to the 1950s by those in and near the US Communist Party. I began work on a still uncompleted book tentatively entitled 'Training for the Class Struggle': American Communists and Education. There was no secondary literature on the subject, although US Socialist Party schools had been carefully studied by several American scholars [3]. Probably McCarthyist attitudes hindered scholars from looking at the far more ambitious widespread pedagogical work of the CPUSA. While the sheer virginity of the field had its attractions, I did hope to find guidance and inspiration in the writings of historians of Communist education outside the American three-mile limit.
And I did. Such works as Stuart Macintyre's Little Moscows (1980); searching essays by the late Raphael Samuel in several numbers of the New Left Review; Danielle Tartakowsky's Les premiers communistes français (1980); and Brigitte Studer's massive work on the Swiss CP, Un parti sous influence (1994) are superb. But little else had been published. Whole swathes of left-wing pedagogy remained unstudied, so I organised the Project on the Comparative International History of Left Education to fill the gap. How foolhardy this was for an academic near retirement from a non-elite technical college whose administration had little interest in supporting historical research, became clear over time. But, after calling into existence an international steering committee, which did not object to having me take on the designation Project Director, we plunged right in.
The debut of what I will henceforth just call 'the Project' took place at the 18th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Montreal, Canada. There, a diverse (and some felt scattered and collectively incoherent) selection of papers on International Communist Education was presented by a group of scholars nearly as international as their subjects: John Manley from the UK presented a study of how the Communist Party of Canada carried out its educational work, 1924-1954; while Geoff Andrews, also of the UK, dealt with British Communist education in the 1970s. Coming from the Indian state of Kerala, PM Parameswaran presented the work of the People's Science Movement in his state and country. Phan Gia Ben of Vietnam talked on the role of education in the Vietnamese liberation struggle. Norman Levy of South Africa discussed the liberation struggle in his country with emphasis on education. Jörg Wollenberg of Germany talked on Communist and Left Education in the Weimar period and its legacy. John Hammond of the USA presented pedagogical aspects of the 1980s guerrilla war in El Salvador based upon his on-site field work. I talked generally on US Communist efforts before McCarthyism and on the Project.
Only a few of the Montreal participants engaged the work of their fellow panellists. This regrettably illustrated one of the weaknesses of the Project: its difficulty in getting scholars to rise up from their locally-based documentation and attain a genuinely comparative perspective. This happened despite my attempt to come up with an extensive set of questions common to all the papers. Too lengthy for inclusion here, this abortive effort (which might succeed given a different institutional context — backing from a major university with a strong international programme in the history of education) will be sent to any person who asks for it, especially if it can be sent via email.
Modest funding for the Project's session at the Montreal Congress came from Brooklyn Polytechnic University, from Science & Society and from the Lipman-Miliband Trust. In the following year, the Lipman-Miliband Trust helped the Project's Direct attend the first European Social Science History conference in Noorwijkerhout (the Netherlands) where I presented a paper on 'Communist Education in the Golden State: The Californian Labor School, 1944-1957', made many contacts with scholars and was asked to organize two panels on the history of left education for the second European Social Science History Conference, scheduled to take place in Amsterdam in March 1998. These panels and their participants are:
Panel 1
LEFT EDUCATION IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE'The Working Men's International And Workers Education'
Daisy Devreese, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands'French Syndicalist Education Before World War I'
Stephen Leberstein, Center for Worker Education, City College of New York, USA'Education and the "Red Family" in Italian Communism'
Sandro Bellassai, University of Bologna, ItaliaPanel 2
LEFT EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES'Kibbutz Education in Mandate Palestine'
Yuval Dror, Oranim School of Education, Israel'African Students at the Comintern's KUTV School, USSR'
Irina Filatova, University of Durban-Westville, South Africa'British Workers' Educational Association and the Labour Colleges'
Janet Coles, University of Leeds, UK'International Education: The Gramscian Paradigm'
Marvin E Gettleman (Emeritus) Polytechnic University
In the future the Project may attempt to attach other sessions to international conferences in various locales on the model of the Montreal and Amsterdam conferences. It will thus, incrementally, help give rise to a body of scholarship that did not exist before on international left education. Hopefully the separate essays produced will be published in various journals, and may eventually be collected in a volume of proceedings. An alternative would be the construction of a Project website where essays and problems can be discussed, which may contribute to new cross-borders and cross-disciplinary efforts. A best-case scenario is that brought into electronic (and then face-to-face) contact, almost spontaneously a widely scattered group of scholars working on related subjects, can discover a set of more-or-less coherent problematiques and empirical solutions to them.
Or, for a variety of reasons, the Project may fail. For one thing, the Director, after attaining the status of professor emeritus, has become re-employed (as Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in the USA), and will have less time than ever to devote to the Project. This will be a serious drawback to what has essentially been for three years a one-person operation. Or, the lack of institutional support and funding may exacerbate what might be called the internal contradictions of the Project: that is, the likelihood that some of the most important left educational work (in what used to be called the 'third world') will go unstudied [4] while what may be less significant efforts in the Euro-Atlantic context will be favoured. In the former regions, and in poorer areas in the industrial countries, scholars lack research resources and opportunities, and without far more assistance than this Project has so far generated, cannot readily attend international conferences or participate in electronic interchanges. Or both.
Yet, just as this essay was taking shape a ray of hope appeared on the horizon. I received a set of reports from the Centre de Documentation sur les Internationales Ouvriers (CDIO) at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France that describe and exciting 'journée d'étude' on 'propagande et diffusion des savoirs dans les milieux populaires en Europe aux XIXe et XXe siècles' — in short left education. Eagerly I responded, explaining the parallels between what the Comparative Education in the USA was attempting and what CDIO was planning. Of course I called attention to what surely are the eurocentric limitations of the efforts presently underway in Dijon. But if the Burgundians expand their geographical vision and embrace some of the themes of the Project described here, the Comparative International History of Left Education may very well have found a far, far better home than New York (as presently configured) could provide. And I won't even mention the food.
Marvin E Gettleman
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1. |
Early in 1998 Ellen Schrecker's study of what has been this inadequately-studied phenomenon, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, will be published in the US.
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2. |
Gettleman, 'Communists in Higher Education: CCNY and Brooklyn College on the Eve of the Rapp-Coudert Investigation, 1935-1939', paper presented at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Atlanta, GA, 1977; 'Rehearsal for McCarthyism: The New York State Rapp-Coudert Committee and Academic Freedom, 1940-41', paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Washington DC, 1997. The data in these unpublished papers have been incorporated into Ellen Schrecker's No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), chs 2-3. See also Gettleman, 'The Jefferson School of Social Science', in Mary Jo Buhle et al (eds) Encyclopedia of the American Left (New York, 1989), pp 389-90 and Gettleman, 'The New York Workers School, 1923-1944: Communist Education in America', in Michael Brown et al (eds) New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US Communism (New York, 1994), pp 261-280.
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3. |
Key works are Richard Altenbaugh, Education for Struggle: The American Labor Colleges of the 1920s and 1930s (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Kenneth Teitelbaum, Schooling for 'Good Rebels': Socialist Education for Children in the United States, 1900-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); John Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932-1962 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988).
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4. |
Among the third world educational projects that badly need systematic study is the liberatory pedagogy promoted by the Brazilian educator Paolo Friere (1922-1997), author of what may be the most acclaimed pedagogical volume of the twentieth century, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). I also offer the following political justification for a broad internationalist perspective on left education: namely, that despite the current triumphalism voiced by spokespersons for global capitalism, it is more than possible that capitalism will not succeed in the third world (I pass over in silence here whether a collapse of 'southern' economies would drastically and catastrophically affect 'the north' as well). If so, the rebirth of the global left may take place in these regions, and if so, where they would surely generate a significant pedagogy, probably drawing heavily on Freireist concepts.
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Thesis Report
The Anti-Colonial Politics and Policies of the Communist Party of Great Britain: 1920-1951
The Anti-Colonial Politics and Policies of the Communist Party of Great Britain: 1920-1951, Wolverhampton, PhD, 1997.
From 1924, the Comintern devolved responsibility for anti-colonial work within the territories of the British Empire to the small and relatively immature Communist Party of Great Britain. The Party was greatly facilitated in this weighty task by the inclusion among its membership of a number of dedicated and informed activists with a special interest in colonial issues, who were instrumental in the establishment and operation of various anti-colonial initiatives within Britain and the British Empire.
In its examination of the policies and practical measures taken by the British Communist Party to promote colonial liberation in the period under review, this thesis highlights the work of Communists such as Shapurji Saklatvala, Clemens and Rajani Palme Dutt, Emile Burns and Ben Bradley. Saklatvala, for example, was active during the inter-war years in the British-based Indian Labour Bureau, the Oriental Seamen's Union, the British branch of the Indian National Congress and the Workers' Welfare League of India, in addition to directing the bulk of the Party's work with Indian students studying in Britain. British Communists also played an important role in conceiving and organising the 1927 Brussels Congress — a highly successful initiative which brought together colonial nationalists and sympathetic Western opinion — and formed the largest contingent at the conference. Together with 'fellow traveller' Reginald Bridgeman, Party members formed the bedrock of the British League Against Imperialism, the organisation launched at Brussels, which served as a focus for anti-colonial agitation and information and provided a useful contact-point for colonial activists in Britain.
During the inter-war years, the Party's activities tended to focus on India — Britain's 'Achilles heel' — and the study reflects this priority. It records the work of those CPGB emissaries who were sent to India during the 1920s with instructions to organise Indian labour and co-ordinate the activities of the Indian left, and assesses the impact of their subsequent arrests and trial in Meerut. The CPGB was able to use the Meerut Conspiracy Trial as an example of British repression of Indian trade unionists, maximising publicity by nominating one of the gaoled Indian Communists, Shaukat Usmani, as the Party's candidate in the British Parliamentary elections of 1929 and 1931. The thesis also notes the efforts of the CPGB to minimise the damage done to its carefully nurtured relationship with left-leaning Indian nationalists like Nehru by the sectarian policies of the 'Third Period'. The Party developed its own distinctive analysis of the Indian economy during the 1920s and managed to retain a policy of co-operation with the Indian bourgeoisie up to and after Indian independence.
The very different case of British colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, where nationalist movements were still in their infancy in 1951, is considered against the background of the deepening Cold War. Here, the CPGB struggled to establish even rudimentary contacts, belying the Government line which attempted to link every instance of colonial unrest to 'Communist subversion'. Although the Party's criticism of the British Governments' colonial policies was substantially reduced between 1941-1947 — mainly in deference to the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union — attacks resumed with the escalation of East-West tension. In particular, British Communists exposed the exploitation inherent in the Attlee Government's Welfare and Development programme for Africa. It was a position which, together with its domestic stance on opposing racism, won the Party respect among colonial nationalists.
In trying to establish the scope and nature of the CPGB's anti-colonial work, the thesis is necessarily concerned to some extent with the sympathetic periphery of individuals and organisations that came into the Party's orbit. One line of inquiry, which examines the claim that the implementation of the 'Popular Front' policy during the 1930s cost the Communist movement support among black activists, concludes that the policy in fact enabled the CPGB to develop co-operation with non-communist anti-colonial activists and groups operating in Britain. Thus the forms of political activity considered in this work range from the purely agitational and propagandistic to the directly interventional. In tracing these activities, the research makes extensive use of the archive of the CPGB, much of which has only recently become available, in an attempt to shed light on this important, but largely neglected, area of Communist politics in the twentieth century.
Jean Jones
Please note: a copy of this thesis is being deposited in the National Museum of Labour History. Jean Jones has also published accounts of the LAI and of the anti-imperialist activist and Meerut defendant Ben Bradley. These can be obtained for £2.50 each, including p&p, from: Socialist History Society, 50 Elmfield Rd, London SW17 8AL.
Report on Sources
Communist Party and related films held by ETV Ltd
From the Spring of 1951 Plato Films Ltd. provided the Left and in particular the Communist movement with films from the Socialist part of the world. Its managing director was Stanley Forman who had previously had a career with the YCL, the British-Soviet Society and the Civil Service Union. Among its shareholders were such Communist luminaries as Eva Reckitt (of Collett's bookstore fame), trade-union official Bill Ellerby, secretary of the British-Soviet Friendship Society Bill Wainwright, composer Alan Bush and singer Martin Lawrence, with British-Soviet Friendship Houses Ltd. making a substantial investment of £500.
After the 22nd Party Congress when Party organisations were urged 'to develop the cultural struggle as a part of the political struggle', film shows proliferated. Plato provided most of the films and through a national network of agents in many cases provided the projection service as well. After it had fought a successful campaign to lift the ban imposed by the British Board of Film Censors on the GDR documentary OPERATION TEUTONIC SWORD in the territory controlled by the London County Council, Plato was hit in February 1959 by a libel suit issued by British lawyers on behalf on the NATO General Speidel. The court battle went all the way to the House of Lords and lasted more than three years. A new company was set up, Educational & Television Films Ltd. (ETV) which is still trading today. It has been and still is contributing to many of the major historical TV documentaries such as THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY (watch the credits!).
The collection of Plato Films includes a good deal of the feature films, newsreels and documentaries from the Socialist part of the world that it has distributed since 1951. Of particular interest to historians of British Communism is its collection of British Labour Movement films. The origins of this collection go back to the Progressive Film Institute (PFI), which was established in the 1930s by the well-known Communist zoologist/journalist/film maker Ivor Montagu. After the demise of the PFI in the late 1940s, Montagu donated a number of British left-wing films, both PFI-productions and films made by organisations like Kino and the Workers' Film & Photo League, to Plato. To this core collection were added CPGB election campaign films and footage of May Day demonstrations and the like shot by Communist cameramen such as Lewis McLeod and Manny Yospa during the 1950s. In the 1960s Plato and ETV developed an active policy of covering on celluloid (16mm, without synch sound) events of importance in the movement, such as the funerals of well-known comrades. The company took an active part too in the rare television party political broadcasts that the CPGB was allowed to make.
A brief summary is provided on each of the fifty odd titles listed below. Unless indicated the films are black and white. The running times are approximate. In due time most of the films will be given in trust to the Archive Trust of the CPGB.
For further information about the films, please contact ETV Ltd, 247a Upper Street, London N1 1RU; 0171-226-2298 (tel); 020-7226-8016 (fax)
ACTION AGAINST THE MEANS TEST (1935) — a silent film (10 mins.), made by the Film & Photo League, of demonstrations against the Means Test.
ANTI-FASCIST DEMONSTRATIONS 1937 — a silent film (2 mins.) composed of footage of various anti-fascist demonstrations in Paris, Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
BRITAIN 1935 - JUBILEE YEAR [JUBILEE] (1935) — a silent film (10 mins.) made by the brothers H.A. and R. Green, contrasting the East End Jubilee tour of King and Queen, covered by batteries of newsreel cameras, with the day-to-day East End with its slums, poverty and dole queues that the newsreel cameras never showed.
BUSMEN'S HOLIDAY (1937) — silent colour footage of the London busmen's contingent in the May Day parade (the London busmen were on strike against the wishes of the TGWU leadership); Bert Papworth is shown; followed by a black and white reportage of an outing by the busmen to a seaside resort where they are entertained by Tom Mann; total running time is 7 mins.
CLAUDE BERRIDGE FUNERAL (13 JULY 1966) — silent footage shot by Manny Yospa for ETV Ltd., showing the crowd assembling in Golders Green, the cortege on the move, people entering the crematorium; among the palbearers are Wolf Wayne, Bill Jones, Dennis Goodwin, Bill Alexander, John Mahon and Pat Devine; other well-known Communists are present.
COLLET'S ADVERT FOR SOVIET UNION MAGAZINE — a short colour advert (5 mins.) for the magazine Soviet Union, sponsored by its distributor Collet's and shot at Stanley Forman's North London home by Peter Robinson and Peter Weingreen.
CP CONGRESS 1963 — silent footage (10 mins.) of the Congress held at St. Pancras Town Hall shot by Manny Yospa for ETV Ltd., showing such well-known Communists as Willie Gallacher and Bob Stewart, with Frank Stanley in the chair and John Gollan delivering the main report.
CP 15TH CONGRESS 1938 [XVTH CONGRESS FILM] — a silent film (10 mins.) made by Ivor Montagu's Progressive Film Institute of the CPGB Congress in Birmingham that was overshadowed by the Münich crisis; well-known Communists such as Pollitt, Hannington, Gallacher, Mann and Gollan are shown on the stage of the town hall that had been especially decorated for the occasion; A PLANT IN THE SUN is performed by Unity Theatre and Tom Mann leads the community singing.
CP HOME POLICY (1955) — a silent film (8 mins.) made of photographs and prints from the James Klugmann collection; this film was made to be screened by the Communist Party cinema van during the 1955 local and Parliamentary election campaigns.
CPGB DEMONSTRATION CA. 1953 — colour footage (10 mins.) shot by Lewis McLeod showing the London District contingent leaving Hyde Park; Peter Kerrigan is seen among the marchers; Harry Pollitt addresses the crowd on Trafalgar Square.
CPGB DEMONSTRATION, LONDON 13 JUNE 1971 — silent colour footage (10 mins.) of a CPGB demonstration against the policies of the Heath Government; the film ends with John Gollan addressing the demonstrators on Trafalgar Square.
CP ELECTION FILM 1963 — this film (10 mins.) also known as OUR LIFE IN OUR HANDS was made by ETV Ltd. as a party political broadcast for the 1964 elections but never transmitted as the CPGB was unable to field the required 50 candidates; it features John Gollan, who discusses party policies and introduces the candidates Gladys Easton, Frank Stanley, Julian Tudor-Hart and Jimmy Reid.
CP ELECTION FILM 1970 — John Gollan addresses the nation in a party political broadcast (5 mins.) made by ETV Ltd. for the 1970 elections; it ends with the slogan 'Go one better — Vote Socialist'.
CRIME AGAINST MADRID (1937) — a CNT film (30 mins.) re-edited with other material.
DAILY WORKER EDITORIAL BOARD (1948) — footage (5 mins.) shot by Pathé News in 1948 but never included in its newsreel; Daily Worker staff and offices in their new building.
DAILY WORKER TRAILER (1938) — a short silent advertising film (3 mins.) for the Daily Worker.
DECISION — this film on the Inner Party Democracy congress held in September 1977 was made by Roger Graef for Granada Television.
DEFENCE OF MADRID (1936) — silent film (50 mins.) made in Madrid in November 1936 by Ivor Montagu and Norman McLaren as the Progressive Film Institute's contribution to raise money for Spanish Aid; in the first Part the history of the war is explained, with its consequences: Italian airplanes bombing Madrid, the destruction of human lives and historic buildings, the rescue work; in Part II the formation of the Republican army is shown, the front line near the University City, the food queues and the evacuation of women and children; the last Part shows the arrival of a Soviet food ship and the activities of the International Brigade, with footage of Ludwig Renn and Hanns Beimler; Eleanor Rathbone and Christopher Addison add their comments (in captions).
DINNER FOR AMBATIELOS — silent footage (10 mins.) of a dinner held to celebrate the release from jail and arrival in the UK of Greek Communist Tony Ambatielos.
ELECTION 1966 — John Gollan addresses the nation in a party political broadcast (5 mins.) made by ETV Ltd. for the 1966 elections.
ELECTION 1966 — John Gollan introduces three CPGB candidates: Irene Swann, Frank Stanley and Tony Chater; this party political broadcast (10 mins.) was not transmitted.
FASCISTS DEFEATED AT CABLE STREET (1936) — silent footage (5 mins.) of anti-fascist campaigns in 1936 (poor quality).
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF LABOUR MONTHLY — silent footage (10 mins.) of the party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Labour Monthly in 1971; with shots of Rajani Palme Dutt and Robin Page Arnot.
FIFTY FIGHTING YEARS (1972) — a sound film (45 mins.) on the history of Labour Monthly and the history of the British Labour movement in this century; the film was written by Stanley Forman, Ivor Montagu and Roger Woddis, co-directed by Forman and Roland Bischoff and made possible by East German financial support; it features Rajani Palme Dutt and Robin Page Arnot.
FREE THAELMANN (1935) — silent film (18 mins.) edited from a longer American film by Ivor Montagu's Progressive Film Institute in support of the campaign of the Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism; the career of Thälmann is traced, with footage of the Weimar period, and the Nazi terror, the underground press and the international campaign for the release of the German CP leader are shown.
GALLACHER'S FUNERAL (1965) — silent footage (10 mins.) filmed by Scottish comrade(s) in Paisley; among those paying their last respect are Bob Stewart, Rajani Palme Dutt, D.N. Pritt, Hugh McDiarmid, Frank Stanley, John Platts-Mills, Johnnie and Elsie Gollan; among the pallbearers are Frank Stanley, Gordon McLennan and Peter Kerrigan; the cortege moves through Paisley; shots of the crowd at the funeral; the nameplate on the door of Gallacher's house.
HARRY POLLITT'S FUNERAL (1960) — silent footage (7 mins.) shot by Manny Yospa for ETV Ltd., showing well-known Communists assembling; among the crowd are Hewlett Johnson (the 'Red' Dean of Canterbury), Paul Robeson, a Chinese delegation and Soviet ambassador Ponomariov; Majorie Pollitt in the car, which is followed by Gollan, Gallacher, Kerrigan, Annie Powell and Brian Pollitt; the cortege arrives at Golders Green crematorium.
HARRY POLLITT IN AUSTRALIA (1960) — silent footage (20 seconds) of Harry Pollitt talking to reporters on his arrival in Australia; the film was sent as a fraternal gift by Australian comrades.
HARRY POLLITT IN CHINA (1955) — a sound reportage (9 mins.) of the visit of Harry Pollitt and Bob Stewart to China in April/May 1955; they visit Peking, Shanghai, meet Mao Zedong and join the May Day celebrations on Tiananmen Square; the commentary is spoken by Daily Worker correspondent Alan Winnington.
HARRY POLLITT IN MANCHESTER (1959) — silent footage (3 mins.) of the arrival of Harry Pollitt in the (Free Trade?) hall in Manchester on Sunday 22 February 1959 where a meeting against the Tory policies is held, followed by footage of the meeting itself; shot by Lewis McLeod for the Soviet newsreel.
HARRY POLLITT IN THE 1950s — silent colour footage of a demonstration in Hyde Park with Julius Jacobs, Solly Kaye and George Bridges; silent colour footage of a May Day demonstration starting on the Embankment and ending in Hyde Park, with Harry Pollitt speaking from the platform; black and white footage of a CP delegation delivering a petition to 10 Downing Street; total length of this material shot by Lewis McLeod approx. 10 mins.
HARRY POLLITT 1955 ELECTION — a sound film (3½ mins.) shot by Ralph Bond in the United Motion Pictures studios in London; Bond (off screen) introduces the General Secretary of the Communist Party who exhorts the audience to vote Communist; this film which was made to be shown by the Communist cinema vans may possibly already have been shot in 1951.
INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE (1937) — silent film (12 mins.) made by Vera Elkan with support of Ivor Montagu's Progressive Film Institute; unique material on the day-to-day activities of the International Brigade; including shots of Pravda correspondent Michail Koltsov, Daily Worker correspondent Frank Pitcairn, Professor Haldane, Jock Cunningham, George Nathan, Hans Kahle, Giuseppe di Vittorio and Ludwig Renn.
INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE - EMPRESS HALL RALLY (1939) — silent footage (10 mins.) shot by ACT members of the meeting in the Empress Hall to celebrate to return to Britain of the British International Brigaders who fought in Spain.
JUNE 29TH DEMONSTRATION — a film (10 mins.) of the CPGB National Demonstration in 1954, shot by Manny Yospa.
KING STREET, 1948 — silent footage (5 mins.) shot by Pathé News but never included in the newsreel; Communist MPs Phil Piratin and Willie Gallacher in discussion with General Secretary Harry Pollitt; John Gollan working in his office; members of the staff at 16 King Street.
LAWRENCE BRADSHAW INTERVIEW — the artist is interviewed (5 mins.) by GDR cameraman Dieter Kratz on his Karl Marx sculpture.
LDCP GARDEN PARTY AND COACH OUTING (1935) — a silent film (5 mins.) of a garden party and coach outing of the London District of the CP.
LONDON WORKERS' OUTING, EASTER 1935 — a silent film (4½ mins.) of sports and other amusements at High Beech, organised by the London District of the CPGB.
MAY DAY 1937 — a silent film (9 mins.) of the Communist demonstrations at May Day 1937.
NEVER AGAIN (1955) — a silent film (8 mins.) about the horrors of Nazism and the campaign against nuclear armament; this film was made to be screened by the Communist Party cinema van during the 1955 local and Parliamentary election campaigns.
OUR LIFE IN THEIR HANDS — see CP ELECTION FILM 1963
PALME DUTT INTERVIEW 28 JUNE 1966 — Rajani Palme Dutt is interviewed by GDR Television (20 mins.).
PEACE AND PLENTY (1939) — Communist Party election film (sound; 23 mins.) made by Ivor Montagu's Progressive Film Institute; an audiovisual adaptation of Harry Pollitt report at the Party's XVth Congress, indicting the Chamberlain Government and calling for the election of a democratic government; the puppet of Chamberlain was made by the mother of actress Elsa Lanchester; the music was written by well-known bandleader Van Phillips; embodying the Popular Front policy the film became obsolete in September 1939, while the Parliamentary elections in view of which it was made did not take place until 1945 due to the outbreak of World War II.
PEOPLE'S JUBILEE (1977) — colour footage (10 mins.) shot by Jeff Perks of the alternative jubilee festivities in Alexandra Palace.
RHONDDA DEPRESSION YEARS (1935) — incomplete print (11 mins.) of a silent film shot in 1935 by Donald Alexander and Judy Birdwood in the Rhondda Fach, where the former stayed in CP councillor Jim Morton's home; shots of housing conditions; miners on their way to a protest meeting.
RUSSIAN DANCERS IN LONDON/FOLK FESTIVAL 1935 — silent film of Russian folk dancers appearing in London; originally this was an item in WORKERS NEWSREEL NO.4, produced by the Workers' Film & Photo League.
SPANISH ABC (1938) — sound film (18 mins.) made by Ivor Montagu's Progressive Film Institute for the Spanish Republican Government (directed by Sidney Cole).
STOP FASCISM 1937 — silent footage (3 mins.) of anti-fascist demonstrations.
TOM MANN'S 80TH BIRTHDAY 1936 — a silent film shot by J.E. Richardson of the birthday party in honour of Tom Mann.
UNVEILING OF THE KARL MARX MEMORIAL (1956) — sound film (10 mins.) produced by Plato Films but never released in Great Britain; it was financed by the Socialist countries through the services of Andrew Rothstein, who appears alongside Harry Pollitt, Arthur Horner and J.D. Bernal to speak at the occasion of the unveiling of the memorial in Highgate Cemetery.
WORKERS' NEWSREEL NO.1 (1934) — silent newsreel (10 mins.) produced by Kino, showing the Daily Worker Gala in Plumstead, the building of a new store for the London Co-operative Society, the Hendon Air-Display, the Youth Anti-War Congress in Sheffield and the anti-war demonstration in Hyde Park in August.
WORKERS' NEWSREEL NO.2 (1934) — silent newsreel (15 mins.) produced by Kino, showing the anti-fascist demonstrations in Hyde Park on 9 September, the removal by the police of a 'Free Thaelmann' banner on the Strand, the Gresford Colliery Disaster and the anti-fascist sports rally in Paris.
YOUTH PEACE PILGRIMAGE 1939 — silent film (9 mins.) of a peace march by members of the Labour Party League, the Co-operative Societies and various youth groups, culminating in a meeting in Trafalgar Square; among those shown are Charles Gibson, John Gollan, Bill Carritt, Denis Healey and Ted Willis.
Bert Hogenkamp
Head of Research
Netherlands Audiovisual Archive (NAA)
Zeeburgerkade 8
1019 HA Amsterdam
00-31.20.665.2966 (tel); 00-31.20.665.9086 (fax)
bert.hogenkamp@sfw.nl
Author of Deadly Parallels: Film and the Left in Britain, 1929-39, Bert Hogenkamp is currently writing a sequel dealing with the 1950s-60s. His article '"The sunshine of Socialism". The CPGB and film in the 1950s' will appear in Andy Croft (ed) A Weapon in the Struggle: the Cultural History of the British Communist Party, Pluto, forthcoming, spring 1998.
Some Recent Books
Histoire du Parti communiste français
Stephane Courtois and Marc Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste français, 439pp, Presses Universitaires de France, 1995, 149FF (pb); ISBN 2 13 047048 3
The authors approach their subject in a broadly chronological manner, setting themselves the difficult task of synthesising often controversial aspects of the PCF's complex history in a matter of a few pages. In eschewing a more thematic or comparative methodology, there are several dangers, not the least of which is that broader themes, running through the various events that have formed the party's history, may not be brought sufficiently into the foreground. In other words, the scope for analytical or interpretative understanding of the context within which events, strategies and tactics are located, may be reduced.
This is a problem for any single-volume synthesis, and it is one that the authors recognise, and (partially) attempt to address in their introduction, although the perfunctory conclusion certainly requires a fuller treatment, in order to provide an interpretative overview. That said, the book provides a great deal of thought-provoking material, and Courtois and Lazar have performed a valuable service in rendering a nuanced account, taking into consideration the evolution of historical scholarship. Drawing upon the secondary literature extensively, they provide indicative bibliographies at the foot of each chapter (sub-divided into 'Archives, documents and periodicals', 'Communist publications and testimonies', and academic 'Studies').
These are certainly useful, although of course they cannot be comprehensive, but the absence of footnotes referring to points made in the body of the text is likely to irritate some readers (just as an unnecessary proliferation of footnotes can interrupt the flow of the argument). In this case, with the authors' stated intention to update the historical narrative through use of the newly-opened archives (both in Moscow and in Paris), it would have been helpful to know precisely the source for those arguments that challenge aspects of the 'orthodoxy'. In particular, this is the case for the authors' treatment of the Comintern period, and especially controversial issues such as the role played by the PCF between June 1940 and June 1941 (the attempt to legalise the production of L'Humanité, the question of 'passive' resistance to the German occupying forces, and the 'Appeal of the 10 July', used subsequently by the PCF to claim justification for its post-war assertion that resistance had been fomented well before the Nazi invasion of the USSR).
Courtois and Lazar are surely right to point out the passionate engagement of researchers with the PCF's history (as well as with its contemporary political strategy), particularly during the explosion of interest in the 1960s and 1970s. They even label this enthusiasm as 'excessive', but they also note that 'since the start of the 1980s, the generalised decline of the PCF has occurred in an environment of stupefying indifference.' (p.11). This attitude has recently been questioned in at least two ways: the unexpected return of the PCF to government in May 1997, as a junior partner in the Jospin coalition, has had the effect of reigniting respectable intellectual interest in the French communist movement; and, the continuing soul-searching with regard to the French wartime experience, communist and non-communist, that has accompanied events like the current Papon trial, has also contributed to renewed scrutiny of the PCF's role in events that, for a lengthy period, were either considered too sensitive to expose to the light of day, or were buried in closed archives.
The authors convincingly explain the willingness, until the recent resurgence, of French intellectuals to 'drop' the PCF as a significant object of study, as stemming from a desire to escape an 'ideological strait-jacket', wherein research into PCF history was necessarily interpreted as either objectively pro- or anti-communist, whatever the intention of the researcher. This politicisation may well have been unavoidable, for the PCF set out to control the projection of its own history, and 'sees in any critical evaluation of its past or present activity, the mark of an anti-communism which it obstinately denounces.' (p.13). Readers may well sympathise with the difficulties facing researchers, confronted with this partisan history of half-truth, omission and falsification. Yet, Courtois and Lazar do not acknowledge that this must surely slice both ways; anti-PCF propaganda and falsification were also a reality, and it is bound to distort the task facing historians now, if responsibility for partisanship is placed only at the communist door.
From its foundations in the 1960s, the historiography of French communism constituted itself around 3 poles, according to Courtois and Lazar. First, Annie Kriegel's work attempted to demonstrate that communism in France was characterised by an 'irreducible exteriority' flowing from its appartenance as part of a worldwide communist system. In this vision, the PCF represented a break with the tradition of the French workers' movement. Second, communist historians such as Roger Martelli, Serge Wolikow and Jacques Girault, grouped around the Maurice Thorez Institute (renamed the Institut de recherches marxistes) managed to find a working accommodation with the PCF leadership, permitting them a certain degree of autonomy, but Courtois and Lazar are quick to point out the strict parameters that attached to this independence, whether imposed by the leadership's conditions, or due to self-discipline in the face of political calculation. Contra Kriegel, these authors argued that the PCF should be properly studied in the context of its 'implantation' at the heart of French social, economic and political realities, and that its strategic direction was 'an essentially French product.' (p.15). Third, political scientists and sociologists, the most significant being Georges Lavau, applied methods, techniques and interpretative models to study the PCF that had been designed and applied elsewhere in the social sciences. Lavau, for instance, used functionalism to argue that the PCF fulfilled a 'tribune' role within the national polity, and that eventually it would be integrated into mainstream French society.
During the 1980s, in the shape of a new journal largely devoted to the study of the French party, Communisme, (Courtois and Lazar are members of the Comité de redaction) a new generation of researchers studied various aspects of PCF history, united only by the desire to understand it in terms that avoided partisan polemicising, and to stress the benefits of an inter-disciplinary approach. Despite the initial scepticism or even hostility of the 'communist historians' to this project, Courtois and Lazar argue that the value of this approach was recognised by all 3 poles, and that this was helped by the rapid marginalisation of the party, which lessened partisanship, and the fact that several PCF historians were supportive of dissident waves of opposition to the Marchais leadership.
That there were disagreements and limits to the extent of this rassemblement is unsurprising, and a significant example of the type of dispute that can arise is currently unfolding. Courtois, along with a number of collaborators has just published a book, to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, claiming to shed light on the crimes committed by communist regimes (Le livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreurs et répression, Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin; published by Robert Laffont; 830pp., 189FF). A certain scepticism has been advanced with regard to the figure of 100 million deaths attributable to communist regimes that the book puts forward, and a fierce polemic has ensued. Courtois' introduction, in which he makes an 'assimilation' between 'class genocide' and 'race genocide', and calls for a Nuremburg process to be instigated targetting ex-communist officials, was disowned by two of the book's authors (Werth, Margolin), and those close to the PCF have reacted with anger. Martelli welcomed the serious and critical studies contained in the body of the text, but accused Courtois of 'abandoning historical interpretation in favour of political engagement' (Le Monde, 10 November 1997). Martelli went on to underline a crucial distinction; 'For Courtois, stalinism is the truth of communism. I do not go along with that. Stalinism was a part of communism, but was not its truth.' Official comment from the PCF has been more acerbic still; Claude Cabanes, editor in chief of L'Humanité, argued that the comparison with Nazism was 'insupportable', and cited Primo Levi's phrase, that one cannot think of Nazism without the gas chambers, but one can think of communism without the camps.
Undoubtedly, this controversy will continue to excite strong emotions, and its likely effects upon the historiography of French communism can only be surmised. However, it is clearly the case that Courtois' professed aim, to reduce the partisanship associated with the study of the PCF's history, has been ill-served by this polemic par excellence. Nevertheless, Courtois and Lazar have produced a highly useful, and provocative book, that should help to galvanise a new generation of researchers into French communism, that most stubborn of western parties.
Stephen Hopkins, University of Leicester
Generating Socialism: Recollections of Life in the Labour Party
Daniel Weinbren, Generating Socialism: Recollections of Life in the Labour Party, vi & 250pp., Sutton Publishing, 1997, £17.00 (hb); ISBN 0 7509 1193 X
Subjective accounts of any organisation's history are unfailingly illuminating and necessary. And parties of the people, such as the Labour and Communist parties, particularly lend themselves to such a form which enables the voices of its members to be heard. When those voices are represented collectively — and not just in single-authored autobiographies — then readers really can gain some sense of how being in that particular party in that particular time might have felt.
Generating Socialism is one such collective autobiography. As such it is the voices of eighty people — past and present members — mediated by Weinbren and his colleagues in the Labour Oral History Project. Contextualising recollections is a crucial part of editing oral history texts; memories do not usually stand alone. They require explanation. Dan Weinbren has done something very adept in mixing the genres of formal and subjective party histories by writing enviably succinct introductions to, and linking text in, each of the chapters in this book. His background reading goes far beyond the call of duty.
The chapters are thematic and include becoming involved in the party, youth, left culture, countering racism and fascism, cross-party links, party debates, the electoral victory of 1945 and achievements. Within the chapters, events are discussed in chronological order.
One of the great pleasures of cruising Generating Socialism is that it is so copiously illustrated, by personal snaps as well as more official photographs. The vivid impact they create suggests that perhaps this really should have been a TV documentary or CD-rom, because then the brief sound bites that we see on the pages here would have two extra elements added to them: the sound and image of the person speaking, and the contextualised or suggestive juxtaposition of cutaways showing us the demo in question, the rally that preceded the event being discussed etc.
This is my main problem of the book: many of the snips of recollection are far too short (less than three sentences) to be satisfying. And many such snippets are actually not laden with enough meaning to warrant a place. It leads me to wonder about the merits of a thematically organised collection of memories such as this over an anthology of short and unbroken autobiographies.
Generating Socialism has important lessons for those of us in the Communist Oral History Project in thinking about a book based on oral testimony. I have concentrated on form rather than content in this review because Dan Weinbren's book is the vanguard party history based on recollection. Because it is ground-breaking it provokes questions about how we can best use this form. For me, those questions include the following.
Firstly, given that such a volume aims to be — and maybe should be — popular and accessible, how far should we as editors go down the road in sacrificing our critical intelligence and avoiding offending some groups of readers/members? There is usually a gap between the highly - and specifically - educated oral historians/editors of collections of memories (we who know our Portelli and our Passerini, we who can discuss narrative tropes, Lejeune's autobiographical pact and Foucauldian absences on half a lager before breakfast squire) and the members who think they are simply there recounting a real experience. Given that, how can the editors come clean in print? Indeed, should they? Should the editors reveal in the book the eyes and ears with which they themselves received and processed the interview? This issue is important for all oral histories but particularly for socialist oral histories where the editors and story givers could be expected to share values, believe in mutual respect, and have an interest in presenting their party in a favourable light (for the benefit of future members as well as to assure themselves it is/was a good party).
Secondly, given that such a book is 'kind of by the people for the people', does that necessarily mean that the interviews in it have to not be as probing as, say, interviews by critical even hostile interviewers of more public figures? Should we ditch our Jeremy Paxman mode for the duration, if we're listening to old comrades? Should generalisations be accepted and reproduced, even if they are illuminating characteristic?
Thirdly, what weight should the contributor's own summaries of their whole life be given? Should the biographies of each story-giver be presented at the front, not the back of the book? While there are always tensions about the length of potted biographies of contributors in such books, it might be a mark of respect to make them longer than four to eight lines. And should they be put in a bigger, not a smaller, typeface than the body text of the book? As guides to the (almost) raw material in the book, I feel contributors' autobiographies matter more than the technical treatment in Generating Socialism suggests.
Fourthly, how much should the collection and editing process be explained in the book? The methodology of such a project can explain a lot about the finished product and personal modesty is not appropriate here. Science is, and it can be put into an appendix. I wanted to know much more than the one page at the start of this book.
Fifthly, how much should an editor insert testimony that is not well articulated enough to merit a place? How much does the need to include under-represented groups or topics justify the inclusion of poor quality material, and how does a socialist editor live with making value judgements which could be seen as elitist?
I esteem Generating Socialism and have learned a lot from it. It is an important landmark in labour history and in Labour Party history. It fills in many of the gaps in existing histories and will be invaluable for future historians who will never be able to meet the people born before the turn of the last century. Implicitly the book also states the importance of the Labour Oral History Project in collecting so many telling and lively memories of daily party life. It is both a book to browse in and a book to use as a research tool. I hope the author is invited to many meetings where he can articulate his reflective and critical intelligence as he speaks about the makings and content of the book.
Jo Stanley, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London
Jo Stanley is editor of the Communist Oral History Project Bulletin
Conference Report
British Trade Unionism, Workers' Strategies and Economic Performance, 1940-79
Conference organised by the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Modern Records Centre, and Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, at the University of Warwick, on 19 and 20 September 1997.
This wide-ranging two-day conference was attended by some seventy people and opened with a stimulating 'witness session' with Jack Jones and Len Murray. It was organised around parallel thematic sessions consisting of three papers, plus plenary sessions at the end of each day.
There were a number of papers which directly or indirectly dealt with Communist activity and influence in the unions.
Those concerned directly with Communist activity were Alan Campbell and John McIlroy, 'The CP and industrial politics, 1964-75'; Richard Stevens, 'Cold war politics: communism and anti-communism in the trade unions, 1951-65'; John Lloyd, 'Were we a fighting union? The ETU, 1945-60'.
There were several other papers that contained substantial references to Communist activity, or produced considerable discussion thereof. These included Jim Phillips regarding dockworkers; Nina Fishman on the 1957 engineering and 1958 bus workers' strikes; Tony Carew on TUC international policy; Rod Hague on the AEU; John Foster and Charles Woolfson on the UCS work-in; and Kerrie Ryan on Hugh Scanlon.
The Phillips-Stevens-Campbell/McIlroy session, chaired by Paul Smith produced much discussion of a number of points. These included the revolutionary aims of British Communists in the post-war period; the degree to which the CP recovered after the events of 1956; the CP's role in the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions; 'rank-and-file' hostility to Communists; input by the International Socialists; local variations in Communist influence and activity; and the role of Bill Jones of the TGWU after 1956. Participants in the debates included Chris Wrigley, Richard Hyman, Alan McKinlay, Joe Melling, John Lloyd and Ruth Frow. Various opinions and assessments were put forward, and at times the session 'threatened' to become another 'witness' event. A measure of the interest stimulated is, perhaps, that its allotted time of ninety minutes was greatly exceeded and could have continued for much longer.
A number of the conference papers are to be published by Scolar Press in a two-volume collection under the auspices of the SSLH. Others will appear in Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. A more detailed report on the conference will be published in a future Labour History Review.
Richard Stevens, Nottingham
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