Introduction
Apologies for the late arrival of this Newsletter and thanks to Luisa Fernandez for helping to put it together. The experiment with disseminating the Newsletter online was not wholly successful as a number of readers were unable to access the files sent them. Therefore we are sending this issue out in hard copy only and will look at this again when things quieten down over the summer. The next issue will appear in October: any contributions by the end of September please.
Editor CHNN
Department of Government
University of Manchester
Manchester
United Kingdom
M13 9PL
Contents
Editor's introductionAnnouncements
- Ferdinand Smith
- Les Stannard (1919-1996)
- Communism and the British labour movement
- The Left in Britain in the 20th Century
- Class Against Class: The Communist Party of Great Britain in the Third Period, 1927-1932
- Neil Redfern's thesis — a critical comment
- All the Trees were Bread and Cheese: The Making of a Rebel, Harold Horne, and The Death of Uncle Joe, Alison Macleod, reviewed by Nina Fishman
- Anchorman, Bert Lowe, reviewed by Kevin Morgan
- The Political Trajectory of J T Murphy, Ralph Darlington, and Molly Murphy: Suffragette and Socialist, , Ralph Darlington (ed), reviewed by Raymond Challinor
- The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality, Stuart Macintyre, reviewed by Kevin Morgan
- Glasnost, New Labour Style, David Turner
Announcements
FERDINAND SMITH: Gerard Horne writes: "I am researching the life of Ferdinand Smith, of Jamaican origin, who became a leader of the CPUSA and the National Maritime Union, then was deported to Jamaica during the Red Scare, where he became a leader of the trade union movement there. I am interested particularly in locating archives of the Peoples National Party of Jamaica, the union movement there and the Smith family. Likewise, I am interested in finding histories and novels that deal with eg the relationship between Jamaicans and Afro-Caribbean peoples generally to the sea and maritime industry." Postal address: Gerald Horne, CB 5250, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-5250, USA.
LES STANNARD (1919-1996): Helen Tomkins writes in connection with her research for a biography of Stannard, a member of the CPGB and ETU shop steward who lived in the Deptford/Lewisham area. Anybody who has relevant information or recollections can contact Helen at: 75 Quentin Road, London SE13 5DG (020 8) 851-8156.
COMMUNISM AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT: A PROSOPOGRAPHICAL STUDY: Under this heading Kevin Morgan, John McIlroy and Alan Campbell have been awarded an ESRC grant for a two-year project using oral, archival and printed sources. Based at the University of Manchester, the project is to result ina two-volume study, with an international colloquium scheduled for March 2001.
THE LEFT IN BRITAIN IN THE 20TH CENTURY: The 11th conference of the Institute for Contemporary British History, taking the British left as its theme, is to be held at the Institute for Historical Research, University of London, 12-16 July. The first day's theme is Marxist and socialist movements and includes a number of papers on the Communist Party. Full details from Alice Cryer, Summer School 1999, ICBH, Rm 357, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; acryer@icbh.ac.uk
:
Thesis Report
Class Against Class:
The Communist Party of Great Britain in the Third Period, 1927-1932
This PhD thesis was successfully completed at the University of Nottingham in September 1998.
he 'Third Period' of British Communist Party history (1928-1935) has generally been dismissed as a calamitous one. Noreen Branson labelled it 'a disaster' [1]. Willie Thompson described it as a time of 'total and bitter isolation' [2], and Kevin Morgan ventured that 'class against class' 'brought the CP to such a pass that, but for Soviet subventions, it would have virtually collapsed.' [3] Such damning accounts however, while not devoid of truth, are compromised by the fact that no study of the CPGB has focused exclusively, or in detail, upon the period in question. General histories and biographies obviously refer to it, but no concentrated attempt has been made to actually explain the period beyond the narrow parameters of the 'Party line'. It was my intention therefore, to widen the basis for a study into the CPGB between 1927 and 1932, to consider the socio-economic and political context in which the Party functioned, and to acknowledge the breadth of the communist experience beyond King Street and Moscow. In so doing, I did not intend to turn history on its head and suggest that the period was a 'positive' one. Rather, I hoped to get away from notions of 'good' and 'bad', and to objectively analyse the multiple experiences of the CPGB within the 'class against class' years. Consequently, I found the period to be neither as disastrous as Branson et al described, nor as progressive as Mike Squires has recently suggested. [4]
In chapter one, I outline the composition of the CPGB in 1926-29, detailing the geographical and industrial make-up of the Party. Between 1927 and 1930, the Party lost members across the country, while the number of communists inside the trade unions and the workplace similarly diminished. This has traditionally been attributed to the policy of 'class against class', through which the Party endeavoured to construct an independent communist leadership of the working class, while launching a fierce offensive against the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracy. However, it is clear that the Party's membership and influence within the wider labour movement was declining well before the Party adopted its 'New Line' in February 1928. Moreover, diminishing membership and influence were not the preserve of the CPGB. Union membership, in both size and density, was also falling, and the post-General Strike period was characterised by a significant decline in industrial action. This latter development was, in part, a consequence Britain's changing economic structure during the inter-war years, as technological modernisation, industrial rationalisation, and the extension of 'new industries' dramatically affected Britain's old 'staple industries' - ie the areas in which the CPGB had built up a basis of support. An obvious example is South Wales, where between 1921 and 1936, 241 mines closed down and a workforce of 271,161 fell to 126,233. Consequently, unemployment, migration and victimisation all impinged upon areas of 'traditional' communist support.
Similarly, the evolution of the CPGB must also be considered within the context of Labour Party and trade union homogenisation. The former was moving ever further away from its federal roots, and the hostilities of the 'class against class' years were in many ways an extension of the differences that had hampered Communist-Labour Party relations since the CPGB's inception. With regard to the trade unions, the central bureaucracy of the TUC had also been strengthened in the years following the First World War, and 'disruptive elements' within the movement became a principal target of the central bureaucracy. Prior to the General Strike, the Labour Party, TUC and trade union executives had all taken measures to limit communist influence within their respective organisations, and such action intensified between late 1926 and 1930. As such, it is possible to argue that the attitudes that shaped 'class against class' were in response to communist exclusion from the wider labour movement, rather than the immediate cause.
In chapter two, I consider how these developments shaped the communist perspective, and suggest that the CPGB was moving towards the more independent position of 'class against class' prior to 1928. [5] The experience of the General Strike and the increase in Party membership that immediately followed it; the emergence of the Left Wing Movement within the Labour Party; and the offensive conducted against communists inside the trade unions, Labour Party and workplace (by the TUC, Labour bureaucracy and employers alike), convinced many Party members of the need to respond more 'openly' to the 'treacherous nature' of 'reformism'. Furthermore, such a hardened perspective was also emerging within the Communist International, as Bukharin's speeches to the Fifteenth Conference of the Soviet Communist Party in October 1926, and throughout 1927, demonstrate. By the end of 1927 therefore, concepts central to the 'Third Period', such as 'sharpening class struggle', the 'rapprochement' of social democracy and the capitalist class, and the 'fascist methods' of capitalist rule, were all established components of the official communist perspective. [6]
Chapter three offers an examination of the 'New Line's' introduction. The impetus to realign Party policy undoubtedly came from the Comintern, but as I argue in chapter two, it would be wrong to assume that the more independent position of 1928 did not correspond to developments in Britain as perceived by the Communist Party. What emerges from the British Party leadership's protracted adoption of the New Line therefore, is not the Party's resistance to a change of line, but the Party membership's embrace of a tougher line and a section of the leadership's attempt to restrict the extent of the shift to the left. It is also important to note that the initial 'New Line' was limited in scope, referring principally to standing communist candidates against those of the Labour Party in forthcoming electoral contests, and recognising changes in the dialectical relationship between capitalism and the working class. As such, the dramatic transformation of policy that occurred between February 1928 and the Tenth ECCI Plenum of 1929 was directed by four inter-linking factors. First, the attempt to apply the logic of a mutating ECCI theory to the practical work of the CPGB. Second, the referral of the Comintern line to all areas of CPGB theory and activity. Third, the varied interpretations of the 'new period' and the necessity to develop a 'correct' policy. Fourth, the absorption of the 'New Line' debate into the emergent struggle between Stalin and Bukharin inside the Soviet Party. Subsequently, the theoretical backdrop to 'class against class', and the means of turning theory into practice, continually evolved throughout the 'Third Period'. The ramifications of such ambiguities and flux for a Party attempting to develop a fixed policy became obvious in late 1928, and throughout 1929, as the CPGB plunged into a period of in-fighting and transformation. Throughout chapter four, I endeavour to chart the development of the Comintern line, demonstrating that official International policy was never as extreme or sectarian as contemporaries and subsequent historians have assumed. This was clearly apparent in the Comintern's approach towards the establishment of communist-led ('independent') trade unions. While the notion of 'Red' trade unions was adopted by the Comintern in accordance with the perceived 'social fascist' character of the 'reformist' (or social democratic) trade unions in a (supposedly) revolutionary period, the Comintern never abandoned the policy of work within the already existing 'reformist' unions, and consistently maintained a malleable policy in relation to forming new unions. [7] Thus, when Harry Pollitt argued that conditions were unfavourable to the formation of a second 'Red' Miners' union in Britain in 1930, the Comintern backed Pollitt over the heads of more hard-line comrades in the CPGB, and against the recommendation of the RILU representative in Britain at the time. [8]
From such an observation, we must recognise that i) the theoretical (as opposed to practical) conceptions of the 'New Line' were the principal cause of friction between the CPGB leadership and the Comintern in 1928-29 and, ii) there was a disparity between the official 'New Line' and the line pursued or endorsed by sections of the communist movement. With regard to the CPGB, the consequence of this was that the Comintern intervened in CPGB activity to the extent of adding or re-drafting the Party's theoretical declarations and instigating divisions within the Party to transform the Party hierarchy. Crucially however, the Comintern never endorsed a full overhaul of the CPGB leadership, continually warned against the danger of 'left sectarianism', and remained committed to more moderate, or pragmatic, British leaders such as Pollitt. As such, the CPGB's apparent shift to the left often went beyond the requirements or expectations of the Comintern, and the peculiar evolution of the CPGB in 1928-30 was driven by militant sections of the Party membership, most obviously in London and Tyneside.
This is very clear when one examines the Party 'at work' during the early years of 'class against class'. Also in chapter four therefore, the various strikes in which the Party involved itself are analysed, the re-emergence of the NUWM is considered, and the Party's General Election performance is put into perspective. From this, divergent interpretations of the 'New Line' are evident across the country, and the shifting focus of communist activity from the workplace to the dole queue (caused by the socio-economic structural changes outlined in chapter one), is demonstrated. Thus, the character of Party policy was shaped by a combination of internal and external factors, and could develop differently in accordance with the 'objective situation' in each part of the country. In certain areas, the 'left sectarianism' that has traditionally been associated with the 'Third Period' was clearly evident and served to isolate the Party. Elsewhere, as in the Midlands and Yorkshire, local communists resisted the more 'hard line' interpretation of 'class against class'. Even so, 1929 was perceptively described by the Party's London District Secretary (R.W. Robson) as a 'year of great internal discussion' which alienated much of the Party rank and file as well as potential Party members. [9].
Chapter five assess the consequences of the upheavals of 1928-29. Following two Party Congresses, during which the central leadership was overhauled and the Party line was radicalised, the CPGB had become isolated and divided. Subsequently, the chapter discusses how the Party and the Comintern responded to the excesses of the 'left turn', and analyses the measures taken to realign communist policy. The CPGB 'learnt from experience', as the Party's deconstruction of its campaign in the 1930 Yorkshire Woollen Strike demonstrated; and a re-emphasis was placed on work within the existing trade unions. Furthermore, sectarianism was denounced, Harry Pollitt received the full backing of the Comintern in an attempt to unify the CPGB, and the Party actively sought to mobilise support around the 'day to day demands' of the workers. While not immediately effective, the Party's recognition of its shortcomings was nevertheless important. Initiatives such as the Workers' Charter, and the protracted debate over the content of the Daily Worker, necessitated that the Party once again focus on the working class it claimed to represent.
The Party's separation from the wider labour movement and its attempt to forge an independent leadership of the working class also necessitated new CPGB initiatives. A significant consequence of this became apparent in the Party's cultural activity, and chapter six attempts to analyse this development. Tensions between Party and non-Party members were becoming increasingly strained in organisations such as the British Workers' Sports Federation and the Labour Colleges prior to the adoption of 'class against class' in 1928. By the late twenties therefore, the CPGB endeavoured either to establish parallel organisations (Party schools), or seize control of already existing ones (BWSF) in an attempt to ensure a particularly communist cultural direction. As a result, a distinct Party culture emerged as communist activists developed alternative means of expression to compliment the Party's more offensive stance. Thus, the Workers' Theatre Movement developed an agit-prop style of theatre that saw its members discard stage and props in favour of street theatre relevant to contemporary issues. Party rambling clubs and football leagues emerged under the auspices of the BWSF, and film societies, a Camera League and even an Esperanto Club were established by Party members. At a local level, such initiatives did much to extend the Party's presence, as Red Wheelers in Leeds mobilised to raise resistance to bailiffs seeking to evict victims of the means test, and workers in Tottenham rallied to support the BWSF's campaign against the district council's banning of Sunday sporting activity.
By late 1931, the Party was emerging from the doldrums of 1927-30. The Unemployed Movement was becoming increasingly effective in organising local and national protests, the political-economic crisis of 1931 created a political climate more conducive to communist recruitment, the Party's recognition of its sectarian tendencies prompted a more pragmatic response to Party policy/strategy, and the Party's cultural initiatives had forged a lively world of communist activity outside the traditional political arena. In chapter seven therefore, I consider the CPGB's response to the events of 1931 (the Labour Government crisis, rising unemployment etc.) and detail the organisational overhaul of the CPGB in January 1932. As a result, I demonstrate that the flexibility of the 'class against class' line enabled the Party to advance, as well as decline, during the 'Third Period'. Most importantly, the Party smothered the sectarian approach to trade union work and re-immersed itself inside the trade union movement through its support of workers' rank and file movements. Nina Fishman's The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions, 1933-1945 takes up that particular story.
Overall therefore, the 'Third Period' was one of mixed fortune for the CPGB. Between 1927 and 1932, Party strongholds disintegrated, bitter in-fighting occurred within the central and district leadership, two disastrous General Election campaigns were fought, and significant spheres of communist influence inside the wider labour movement were lost. However, the period also included the mobilisation of a sizeable percentage of the British unemployed under the CP-led NUWM, the advent of a distinctive Party culture around such organisations as the Workers' Theatre Movement and the BWSF, the effective restructuring of the Party apparatus in January 1932, a steady increase in membership from 1931, and the re-establishment of communist influence within the trade unions from 1932-33. Furthermore, my research suggests that the Party's (mis)fortunes moved in tandem with developments in the wider British labour movement, and related as much to the socio-economic forces of the time as to dictates of Moscow. The 'Third Period' was thus a difficult period, but a far more complex one than has hitherto been recognised.
Matthew Worley, University of Nottingham
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1. |
N Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1927-1941, (London 1985) pp17-51.
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2. |
W Thompson, The Good Old Cause: British Communism 1920-1991 (London 1992) pp44-50.
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3. |
K Morgan, 'The CPGB and the Comintern Archives', in Socialist History (Autumn 1993) p19.
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4. |
M Squires Saklatvala: A Political Biography (London 1990). Also, 'CPGB Membership During the Class Against Class Years' in Socialist History (Winter 1993).
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5. |
This does not been the policy of class against class would have 'inevitably' developed, but that the Party was moving towards a more independent position in some form or other.
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6. |
See the documents of the Eighth ECCI Plenum, held between 13-30 May 1927, for evidence. Inprecorr 23 June and 18 August 1927.
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7. |
See, The World Situation and Economic Struggles. Theses of the Tenth Plenum of the ECCI (London 1929).
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8. |
See the various minutes of the Party Central Committee and Political Bureau between March and July 1930 (National Museum of Labour History).
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9. |
Report on the London District Party 9 July 1930. Klugmann Papers (National Museum of Labour History). Many members were "not interested" in discussions of theory Robson said, "and left."
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Comment
Neil Redfern's thesis — a critical comment
I read with dismay the summary of Neil Redfern's thesis on the British Communist Party 1935-45. I thought it a regrettable example of the simplistic political dogma that has been all too common during the twentieth century. I have not read Redfern's thesis, but I think it reasonable to assume that his own summary is a fair account of his general approach.
'A fundamental part of the conceptual framework deployed', to quote his own words, is that 'the principal content of World War Two was a battle between two rival imperialist blocs for world hegemony'. In other words, as he says elsewhere, World War Two was similar to World War One, whose imperialist character no marxist denies. What his present analysis assumes, therefore, is that in World War Two there was not difference in fundamentals between the bourgeois democracies of Britain and America on the one hand and the fascist powers, Germany most particularly, on the other. It would follow, among many other consequencies, that which of the two blocs won, the working people could expect to be treated in broadly the same way.
There is no dissent from my side concerning the imperialistic character of British and French societies, or that one of the central purposes of Britain, the largest imperialist power, was the preservation of Empire and, if possible, its extension when the war ended. Throughout the years of war, Churchill was always in undeviating opposition to any serious alteration in the relationships between the colonial Empire and Britain. This was especially true for India, where the national movement was strong. Wavell's serious attempts at a minimum of concessions in the post-war ere were constantly blocked in London. In the Mediterranean, where Britain had no direct political control along its northern boundaries, war policies were always directed to maintaining a dominant influence. Hence the military intervention in Greece from December 1944. When Labour won the General Election of 1945 and Ernest Bevin became Foreign Secretary, the foreign policies that were followed were no different from those a Tory government would have accepted.
Let me now turn to the fascist powers and concentrate upon German fascism. Germany was not to be classified as an imperialist power in the way that Britain was, although by1939 Germany had absorbed Austria and dismemebered Czechoslovakia. It is the political and social dynamics of German fascism that must be contrasted with those of the bourgeois democracies, and one must assume that Redfern developed a comparative analysis in the body of his thesis.
This is not the place for a comprehensive discussion of the nature and character of German fascism, but it is possible to summarise quite briefly certain of its central features. It is interesting that before Hitler came to power Leon Trotsky was warning the European movements against the dangers of fascism in the most vigorous fashion: "Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank". By 1939 the consequeneis of fascist rule had become quite clear. The Nazi regime was virulently anti-semetic and racist in general; it had destroyed the democratic structures of the Weimar Republic; in particular the Left parties had been sent underground and many were in prison, and the trade unions were no longer in existence. Political violence against the Left of all shades of opinion was the general rule. Does Redfern believe that a Nazi victory would have provided a different kind of society?
History is a very complicated story, and it is the complexity of historical situations that has so often in the twentieth century made the matter of choice of policy for socialists so difficult. Had Redfern been of age during World War Two I wonder what policy, given his present views, he would have adopted. I assume that he would have recognised that Lenin's slogan for the 1914 war — turn the imperialist war into a civil war — was not a practical proposition in the British society of those days, so presumably he may have followed the example of some socialists of 1914 and refused to be conscripted, to be followed by prison. And suppose he had been a Frenchman, either in the North or in Vichy? Would he have considered the Resistance a politically legitimate activity for a socialist of his persuasion? But I would not wish him to move too much into the side-tracks. The crucial argument relates to the nature and character of fascism in relation to the bourgeois democracies as I have defined tham, and it would be helpful to learn his views.
John Saville, University of Hull
Some Recent Books
All the Trees were Bread and Cheese and The Death of Uncle Joe
All the Trees were Bread and Cheese. The Making of a Rebel. The autobiography of Harold Horne, published by Owen Hardisty, 51 Ravenbank Road, Luton, Beds LU2 8EJ; (01582-738268), 1998, £2.95. pp.74.
Alison Macleod, The Death of Uncle Joe, Merlin Press, 1997, ISBN 085036 467 1, pp.269.
The end of the Cold War and the consequent opening of many Communist and state archives has had an enduring impact on historians of Communism. But though the new and important sources — not least the greater numbers of people who are now keen to be interviewed — are important, another aspect of historians' work has been just as profoundly affected. This is our job of explaining the past to the present generations. There is a palpable willingness to re-assess and re-evaluate the whole phenomenon of Communism, and the period of the 1940s and 50s in particular. It is a real challenge to be able to contribute to this process.
The new sources make it possible to subject many of the historical cliches which abound in this contentious area to fresh scrutiny and debate. Moreover, historians' work is being complemented by the thinking, writing and speaking being done by many of the participants on their own behalf. We are fortunate indeed in being able to take advantage of the reflections and recollections coming from people who were at the cutting edge of Communist activities.
The two books under review are examples of the assistance which scholars are receiving from their 'subjects'. Harold Horne's autobiography, was completed shortly before his death in 1978. However, All the Trees were Bread and Cheese was not published until 1998 by his close friend Owen Hardisty. No reason for the twenty years' delay is given, but I think it likely that the situation inside the AEU — riven by conflict between right and left during this period — was not unimportant. Harold Horne played a critical role in building and maintaining the AEU's strong position inside Vauxhall's factories, first and Luton and then Dunstable, between 1940 and his retirement in 1972.
Owen Hardisty, the Harold Horne Memorial Trust and the AEEU (both bodies supported its publication), should be heartily congratulated for ensuring that the autobiography has been finally published. Until now, people interested in union organisation at Vauxhall motors have had to rely on second-hand information in the general literature on union and Communist activities in the 1940s. Unfortunately, Len Holden's Open University PhD thesis which draws extensively on interviews with Harold Horne remains unpublished. The section in the autobiography dealing with Vauxhall's is therefore particularly welcome.
There is no doubt that Communist Party members played a fascinating and creative part in the political, trade union and cultural lives of the new working class communities which prospered in Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire at the height of the Cold War. It was not merely Dagenham, but Harlow, Hemel Hempstead, Luton, Letchworth, Watford which were significantly affected by a comparatively large and active Communist presence.
As Richard Croucher, points out in his introduction, the international dimension of Harold Horne's life is also of great interest. He writes both about his time at the Lenin School (1934-5) and his experiences in the International Brigade. For me, his extended description of his childhood and adolescence in Willesden were riveting. West Middlesex, from Willesden to Southall, was a cradle of engineering trade unionism, unemployed agitation and Communism from World War I. Joe Scott, Claude Berridge, Ernie Athorn, Fred Elms, Les Elliot, and Len Chollerton, (and Reg Birch of course) were either born and raised and/or spent most of their working lives as active trade unionists here.
The publication of Harold Horne's autobiography is a beginning. We now urgently need historians to follow it up with much more research. And hopefully, other participants will follow Harold's example and record their memories. There will also perhaps be a great deal of documentary material held by the Harold Horne Memorial Trust or still in the possession of veteran activists which could be reproduced in some form, and thus made more widely available.
Neither the title of Alison Macleod's book, The Death of Uncle Joe, nor the preface prepares the reader for what is to come in the body of the book. For some obscure reason, the cover photograph, "Stalin with his daughter Svetlana", reminded me faintly of a still from a Mel Brookes movie. The reader does not discover Alison Macleod's main drift until around chapter III. Her first chapter begins with a brief description of the her year-long search for Bill Rust's daughter Rosa in 1991, and is followed by a riveting narrative of Rosa's life in the Soviet Union from 1928 until her return to Britain in the spring of 1944. At the end of the chapter we are told that this was the same time that Alison Macleod was starting to work at the Daily Worker under its editor, Bill Rust.
Chapter II sets sketches the three interwoven strands of Alison Macleod's life in the early 1950s — personal, work and political. She, has married a Communist schoolteacher, Jack Selford and they are jointly raising a growing family; she is working at the Daily Worker as a sub-editor; she also finds time to take some part in her local party branch in Muswell Hill.
In chapter III, the main thrust of the book appears. We are launched into an action-packed narrative of the events which the author lived through from February 1956 when Khruschev delivered his 'secret speech' at the 20th Congress of the CPSU(B) until the special British party Congress in April 1957. Alison Macleod is a veteran journalist and distinguished author of historical novels. This is a rippingly good yarn packed with pithy character sketches, humour and hard-hitting judgements of her political past.
The book can be described as a political memoir. But there is far more than autobiography here. We have not only her life but also her times. Macleod has placed her experiences in two wider contexts. The reader is given a running commentary on the main events in international, Soviet and British politics. At certain points, she moves from a broad brush approach to homing in on small, but not insignificant vignettes, which she finds particularly apt. They are vividly evoked across thirty years. Secondly, there is Alison Macleod's assessment of the significance of herexperiences and the people she came to know. She provides a distillation of both her past and current views.
For the historian, the book is an invaluable source. The people and the routines on the Daily Worker were, for me, the most important insight. The journalists who were taking their own politics and the stories they wrote for the paper in dead earnest. There is little evidence of cynical, hardbitten hacks spinning out stories to King Street's order. The reader observes both the daily ebb and flow of events and the profound influence of Stalin's death on the Communist world. It was fascinating to read about the nuances, gradations and subtleties in different people's positions. I found Alison Macleod on the whole even-handed in her judgement of former comrades. Peter Zinkin was the only person for whom unmitigated scorn and contempt was evident. But then, she and her colleagues had always felt that way about Zinkin. It was not his conduct in 1956 which soured relations.
The book can also be read as an extended meditation on the character of Johnnie Campbell. In the absence of an index, I could only make a rough estimate of the space devoted to particular people. But my reckoning found Campbell having more entries than anyone else (including Alison Macleod). He was assistant editor of the Daily Worker when the author began work there, and after Rust's death in February 1949 succeeded him as editor. Macleod had both occasion and ample time to know him well. She came to have the highest regard for Campbell, and her disappointment in his conduct at the special party Congress was profound. Nevertheless, when she took her leave on 29 April 1957 they shook hands and she told him '"I love you very much. I think you know that." He smiled.' (p.259)
The final vignette in the book is devoted to Campbell. She recounts her meeting George Aitken and his wife in the Hornsey Labour Party. They told her a story about Campbell which offered a reason for his acquiescence in the Communist Party's change of line to opposing the war in October 1939. His stepson Willie had become a Soviet citizen and Campbell was unwilling to do anything to Jeopardise his life. 'If the Aitkens' supposition is true, Campbell's stepson may have affected the course of history. If Campbell had left the Party in 1939, when he was in his forties, he would not have said, as he did in 1957: "But where can I go?" He would have gone into the Labour Party. There, his rise would have been unstoppable. Campbell was the stuff of which cabinet ministers are made.' (pp.267-8)
Such confident counter-factual speculation provides a cordon bleu meal for thought. From my own research, I concluded that Campbell was the most interesting and significant British Communist leader, and that the partnership between Campbell and Pollitt from the late 1920s up to 1945 had been both creative and fruitful. However, my judgement is not typical. However, the scholarly consensus remains behind Palme Dutt being the brains and Pollitt the charisma. Alison Macleod has presents a wealth of material about the Johnnie Campbell of the postwar period, along with vital insights into the cut and thrust of political conflict inside the CPGB leadership about how to respond to the fluid situation inside the Soviet politburo between Stalin's death and Soviet military intervention in Hungary. We are all am much better equipped to begin assessing the balance of forces at King Street and Campbell's role.
Readers may find it helpful to consult Robert Service's A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Penguin, 1988) in conjunction with The Death of Uncle Joe. As a specialist in Soviet history, Service fills in useful gaps. For example, Macleod is only able to speculate about whether or not the British delegates to the 20th Congress were or were not given copies of the secret speech before their return to Britain. Service devotes four pages to the genesis and reception of the speech, (pp.338-341), during which we learn that 'Khruschev transcripts to foreign communist party leaders as they departed home. As if suspecting that several of the recipients might censor its contents, he also arranged for the KGB to ensure that the CIA should obtain a copy, and the London Observer scooped the world by printing a full version.'
The secret speech and its aftermath were watersheds for Alison Macleod's own life and the British Communist Party. Her conclusion that the British party was morally and mortally affected would probably be accepted by most historians. Macleod left the party after the special Congress had rejected attempts by members (including herself) to break with its Stalinist past and joined the Labour Party. She seized the opportunity of the end of the Cold War to write The Death of Uncle Joe, and settle accounts with the past.
I have read the book twice, and expect to read it again many times over. Like All the Trees were Bread and Cheese, it would probably not have appeared until the Cold War had ended. Its immediacy is remarkable, but so also are its considered judgements. She tells us that she has kept her notes of Daily Worker staff meetings during this period, and no doubt they have acted as a mnemonic for her bringing back many more recollections. She has also done an immense amount of research since 1989, remaking contact with many people who were part of her life during the earlier period.
Nina Fishman
Anchorman
Bert Lowe, Anchorman, published privately, 1996, 180pp, £5.00
Nina Fishman in the above review rightly emphasises the important to historians of the life-histories written by political activists themselves. Bert Lowe's Anchorman is another such account of great value to anybody interested in the industrial activities of the Communist Party of more generally in post-war building trade unionism. It also provides another personal view of the new working-class communities north and north-east of London to which Nina also refers. Describing himself as a 'socialist, trade unionist, bricklayer and Stevenage pioneer', Bert Lowe gives a vivid insight into union organisation and political campaigning in the first of Britain's post-war new towns. As well as the many effective campaigns he describes, he also acknowledges the tensions that existed both within the building unions and between party activists themselves, whose different union bases and priorities were not always spirited away by the uneven operation of democratic centralism. On the other hand, he writes positively of the role of the party's industrial advisory committees and without regrets for his lifetime's commitment to the Communist Party. An interesting sidelight on post-war industrial relations, at least within the building industry, was Lowe's appointment as a labour relations officer for Mowlems despite his continuing CP activities. While the book is a mine of information (if only we had more such accounts for earlier generations of activists), possibly the most readable chapters are those describing Bert's London childhood and war service. I particularly liked the description of children queuing for the flea pit on a Saturday morning. 'Once the cinema door was opened they all disappeared into the darkness leaving behind them a long line of peanut shells, orange peel, apple cores and sweet papers, just like some giant reptile has shed its skin and slithered into its lair.'
Kevin Morgan, University of Manchester
The Political Trajectory of J T Murphy and Molly Murphy: Suffragette and Socialist
Ralph Darlington, The Political Trajectory of J T Murphy, Liverpool University Press, pp.336, and, with an introduction by Ralph Darlington, Molly Murphy: Suffragette and Socialist, University of Salford, pp.169, pbk.
Reading Ralph Darlington's admirable biography, I am reminded of the title of the memoirs of a Jewish communist — Joseph Berger's The Shipwreck of a Generation. Both J T Murphy and his wife displayed immense idealism and vitality. He possessed, like many of the other worker-intellectuals who joined the early Communist Party, a dazzling intelligence. In at the birth of the shop stewards' movement, J T Murphy led the militant Yorkshire rank-and-file He also wrote articles and a pamphlet, undoubtedly the best of those times, explaining how the workers' potential power could be most effectively deployed. Within a few months of joining the Socialist Labour Party, he sprung into its leadership At the 1918 general election, he stood as its candidate at Gorton, the constituency of the Minister of Pensions. The First World War bloodbath had created both widows and maimed on a colossal scale. In his election speeches and his pamphlet, Equality of Sacrifice, he contrasted the wealth war had accrued to the arms manufacturers and industrialists with the suffering for working people.
Though at first reluctant to see the SLP join the newly-formed Communist Party, he eventually threw himself with enthusiasm into the new organisation. He played a vital role in the Communist International, eventually reaching the highest echelons, where in 1927 he successfully moved the expulsion of Leon Trotsky.
At the time, the full implications of this action could not be foreseen. It would be as wrong to blame J T Murphy as it would be to blame the unfortunate Durham miners who signed Ramsay MacDonald's nomination papers at the 1929 general election.
What seems to me of greater import is the failure of the entire Communist Party, including J T Murphy, to ever adopt a critical line, independent of Moscow Revolutionaries like John Maclean and Sylvia Pankhurst had not such inhibitions. In my book, The Origins of Bolshevism, I attempted to assess the various positions, but regrettably Ralph Darlington fails to consider this dissident view.
If the CPGB underwent a process of Bolshevisation, as the book suggests, then how was it that, without a whiff of opposition the Party could then be Stalinised? Should we accept, as many right-wing historians do , that Stalinism is the inevitable outcome of Leninism?
After J T Murphy and the Communist Party had parted company, he strived to build the Socialist League, a small left-wing organisation functioning within the Labour Party. While he must have been aware that Reg Groves, one of the founders of British Trotskyism, sat alongside him on the Socialist League executive, he probably did not know that this was an application of Trotsky's French turn, where he asked his followers in all countries to operate within the mass working-class parties.
This tactic seems to have borne little fruit for anybody The comparative handful attracted to the Socialist League were essentially reformists, wanting to give the Labour Party a fresh face and did not strive to liberate new class forces that might show a parliamentary road to socialism was a mirage.
The Socialist League still awaits detailed historical scrutiny. The book can therefore be forgiven, though perhaps J T Murphy cannot, for not being more critical of its leader. In 1935 Sir Stafford Cripps and his wife went on holiday with Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, while in 1939, as one of Britain's highest paid lawyers, he resolved not to attend a Labour Party NEC, where his expulsion was being discussed, but rather to defend the Midland Bank in court.
In his later years J T Murphy dropped out of politics probably disillusioned with his experiences in the Communist and Labour Parties as well as by the general drift of world affairs Yet he still remained a political animal, willing to give researchers the benefits of his wisdom. He did, moreover, establish contact with CP dissidents John Saville and Edward Thompson and wrote an interesting article on the early days of the Communist Party for their journal, the New Reasoner.
Molly Murphy was a much less significant figure. Yet, she was far from living entirely under her husband's shadow. Her autobiography remains a valuable document. It details her experiences as a suffragette in Manchester before the First World War, as a valued foreign comrade in the Soviet Union of the 1920s, and as a nurse in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. This book shows her to have been a formidable feminist and revolutionary throughout her political life.
Raymond Challinor
The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality
Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality,St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1998, ISBN 1 86448 580 9: xii & 482pp, Australian $49.95.
In some ways the writing of the history of a communist party has become more straightforward. Though research costs can be prohibitive, the Moscow archives are easily enough worked once one gets to them and the business of empirical extraction has already expanded enormously our knowledge of the Comintern period. As a result, basic narratives and data are now more accessible for the communists than for many other social movements that were better supported. This first volume of what promises to be a comprehensive history of the Australian CP thus takes its place among a new crop of national party histories which are authoritative in ways previously unattainable.
Methodologically, the issues are not quite so simple. The very abundance and obsessiveness of this Comintern documentation can defy any sense of historical perspective. Descriptive accounts are made that much easier, but their meaning and wider relevance can prove obstinate and elusive. The rationale for institutional histories, though the footnotes lie there just waiting to be written up, is undermined as much by changing historiographical agendas as by the diminishing significance attached to the lines and pronouncements of these institutions in particular. The high politics of parties that never got very high will not bear infinite exploration. The task of addressing the wider challenges of a labour, social or cultural history, and yet doing so within the narrative framework of a 'communist party history', is truly a formidable one.
That Stuart Macintyre nevertheless succeeds in this objective testifies both to his own accomplishments as a historian and perhaps to the relatively manageable dimensions of his subject. To those interested in British communism he is familiar as author of two seminal works, both of which enlarged the scope of British CP history while setting exacting standards for its future practitioners. To this breadth of approach Macintyre adds a commanding knowledge of the sources for Australian CP history, and thus the ability to use with discrimination and a real sense of historical context the distinctive perspectives of the Moscow archives. As well as drawing on numerous memoirs and a wide range of oral, printed and archival sources, his account is enlivened by what was evidently a flourishing literary culture and by a generous provision of contemporary illustrations. Although the structure is largely determined by the customary strategic landmarks, the discursive approach he adopts allows unhurried explorations of specific locales and milieux, and the movement's social texture and human motivation are captured with an impressive sense of empathy and engagement. That approach could easily have made for a meandering and putdownable read. It is a tribute to Macintyre's considerable literary skill that the opposite is the case.
While any Comintern historian will gather much from this book, it will have a particular interest for British readers. Migratory movements between the two countries, mainly of course into Australia, combined with certain evident comparabilities of social and political context to provide a number of fascinating parallels. In its relative affluence, the apparent violence of its industrial relations and the centrality to the labour movement of the issue of race, Australia perhaps bears more fruitful comparison with the US, and the CPA, like the US labour movement, was confronted with its own indigenous theory of 'Australian exceptionalism'. On the other hand, in its relations to a dominant Labour Party, a unitary trade union movement and a palpably non-revolutionary situation, the CPA confronted many of the same dilemmas as the CPGB. That they very often hit on comparable strategies and vocabularies obviously says something of the common world leadership to which both parties deferred, and there are striking moments of synchronisation that need some explaining if one is to stress the indigenous determinants of formal communist policy. Conversely, there are just as clearly evident patterns of cross-fertilisation which both predated and in some measure survived the less spontaneous networks of the communist era. One notes for example the existence in Australia as well as Britain of a Plebs League and labour college movement, with which both communist parties wrestled in the 1920s, and the use even in CP education of the texts by Mark Starr and the Webbs. Evidently it was by much the same sort of process that the expatriate Scots and Geordies of the CPA's Lithgow branch, one of its strongest, initiated a Miners' Minority Movement on the British model. One of them, Bill Orr, whose Lanarkshire mother had declared 'what a fane meenister oor Wullie would have made', subsequently became the Minority Movement's organiser (and later secretary of the Miners' Federation), where his tendencies to trade union legalism were abetted by Harry Pollit's one time associate, Esmonde Higgins. That is just to take a single example. More generally one could maybe posit a common labour movement orientation by which both the Australian and British parties were arguably distinguished from some other sections of the Comintern. Both, at least in the 1920s, proudly affirmed their proletarian composition, and both admitted, as a defining virtue or shortcoming depending on the party line, a 'grim patience in trade union detail work' (p.131).
These are questions which, as John Manley suggested in the last Newsletter, would bear more detailed consideration. At the CPA's tenth congress in 1931, almost as many delegates had been born in Britain and Ireland as Australia, and the special prominence of Scots makes for some interesting comparisons with the Canadian examples given by Manley, reinforcing his case for a study of the 'radical British diaspora' of the inter-war years. In Australia, as Macintyre clearly shows, these linkages and common origins were not invariably productive of fellow-feeling alone. Like others in Britain's colonies and dominions, the CPA's leaders could resent the assumption by the CPGB of metropolitan prerogatives and it was even mooted that their party be relocated from the CI's Anglo-American secretariat to the Eastern secretariat which included Japan and China. That relationship, strangely paralleling the British party's resentment at the superior posture of some European communists, makes the British party an intriguing case: peripheral in some ways to the larger parties of continental Europe, but also a possible channel of funding and directives to what it could too easily assume to be its own sphere of influence.
With this fascinating and densely documented history, I had just one difficulty. Just because it is so useful for the communist historians elsewhere, it is a pity that it rather takes for granted an Australian readership. Maps and statistical tables would have provided a helpful reference point for the discussions of membership, electoral performance and geographical distribution, and a sense of the distinctive and not so distinctive traits of the CPA would have been easier to grasp if relevant data had been brought together in summary form. Perhaps that it just this reviewer's confession of ignorance as to Australian labour history. Certainly it doesn't detract from what is an achievement of the highest order, which will again set a daunting standard for any comparable treatment of the CPGB.
Kevin Morgan, University of Manchester
Glasnost, New Labour Style
Historians of British communism have every reason to be interested in the contents of the files of the Security Service (popularly known as MI5). Throughout the CPGB's existence, it was regarded by MI5 as the dangerous agent of a hostile foreign power, liable to commit acts of espionage, sabotage and subversion against the interests of the imperial British state. Any and every activity of British communists, including perfectly lawful and peaceful trade-union and political activity, was fair game for the snoopers, to whom all facets of communism were by definition part of an imagined Russian grand design for world domination. As well as compiling detailed records on the Party and its members (using information gleaned from bugging, infiltration, interception of communications and the monitoring of public political activity), it seems that MI5 may also have acquired a substantial quantity of the CP's own files as a result of burglaries and police raids. Other far-left groups, such as the Trotskyists, were also targeted because of their 'subversive' politics. The extent to which the spooks went beyond mere snooping and used disruptive tactics (such as the employment of agents provocateurs) against the far left remains an open question.
For nearly nine decades no MI5 records of any description were allowed into the public domain. Then, in November 1997, after years of rumours that this policy was to change, MI5 files from the first ten years of the organisation's existence (1909–19) were released into the Public Record Office at Kew. These consisted of edited versions of anodyne official in-house histories (Class KV1) and the two surviving Subject Files from this period (Class KV3). The release of the records was a carefully stage-managed media event and can be seen as part of the 'charm offensive' which MI5 has been mounting since the end of the Cold War, as it attempts to justify its continued existence and considerable budget.
At the same time, there was much controversy about the fate of more recent MI5 records, following the revelation by the MI5 whistle-blower David Shayler that the organisation had counter-subversion files on Harriet Harman, Peter Mandelson (a former YCL member) and Jack Straw.
In January 1998 Straw outlined in the House of Commons the basis used by MI5 in selecting files for preservation; it turned out that the Service was concerned to retain records of significant events and individuals, and of changes in policy, as well as 'period pieces' illustrative of its work. Then, in July 1998, Straw revealed to the Commons that MI5 had created a total of 725,000 files since its establishment in 1909; of these, some 285,000 had been destroyed (110,000 since the end of the Cold War). Of the files still extant, 40,000 are Subject Files; 290,000 are Personal Files, made up as follows: 40,000 'restricted' files on microfilm; 230,000 'closed' files; and 20,000 'current' files. In October 1998 the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee also stated that MI5 has 290,000 Personal Files, 40,000 held on microfiche. The Committee categorised the 250,000 hard-copy Personal Files as follows: 17,500 'Green' (active inquiries may be made); 97,000 'Amber' (inquiries prohibited but relevant information may be added); and 135,500 'Red' (inquiries prohibited; information may not be added; access for research purposes only). In addition, there were said to be 3,000 temporary 'Green' files. How these figures relate to those given by Straw is an interesting question. It would seem that the 40,000 files in microform (either film or fiche) are outside the 'traffic light' classification; that the figure of 20,000 'current' files given by Straw is made up of both permanent and temporary 'Green' files (17,500 + 3,000 = 20,500); and that Straw's figure of 230,000 'closed' files includes both 'Amber' and 'Red' files (97,000 + 135,500 = 232,500).
In July 1998 it was also announced that MI5 was no longer actively pursuing any counter-subversion investigations; and in October the Intelligence and Security Committee revealed that MI5 was only destroying counter-subversion files on individuals aged 55 or over.
In January 1999 a second batch of MI5 files was released into the PRO. This was made up of Personal Files from the First and Second World Wars relating almost exclusively to espionage cases (Class KV2) and further expurgated versions of in-house histories (Class KV4). The most important document in KV4 is the Curry Report, a review of MI5's entire history from 1909 to 1945, which contains substantial sections on the CPGB. (The PRO plans to publish the Report in book-form, with an introduction by Professor Christopher Andrew, in June 1999.)
In February 1999 surprisingly radical changes to the rules regarding the preservation of MI5 files were announced by Straw following representations from the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, and the Advisory Council on Public Records (the latter of which Straw had asked to conduct a review on the subject). Files relating to less significant or less newsworthy events will be kept; at least 1% of Personal Files relating to individuals who were spied on, but not the subject of 'security action', will be saved; and all substantive Policy and Subject Files, as well as means of reference, will be preserved. In addition, files earmarked for destruction will be reviewed by officials from the PRO. This undeniably represents a significant, and very welcome, retreat from previous government policy; yet there remains much for historians to be dissatisfied about.
Straw has remained adamant that the new Freedom of Information law (if it ever appears) will not cover security and intelligence records.
Those pre-1945 MI5 files which have so far been released consist only of bowdlerised in-house histories (in which counter-subversion is either ignored or glossed over) and a narrow, and self-serving, selection of operational files (none of which relates to counter-subversion). Historians are being expected to accept at face value MI5's own 'party line' account of itself; but to get to the bottom of MI5's (and its targets') history, we need much broader access to operational files, which are still largely being either destroyed or retained by MI5.
There is also the question of how long it takes for files to migrate down the Thames to Kew. We are promised one further release of pre-1945 files (from the inter-war period) in due course, but that will be the last release for the foreseeable future. Straw indicated to the Commons Select Committee on Public Administration in April 1998 that it will be 'some decades' before any post-1945 material sees the light of day.
In July 1998 Straw told the Commons that the following considerations restrict the release of files: 'the need to protect sensitive investigative techniques; to protect information supplied in confidence by agents and liaison services; and to bear in mind the potential impact of release on those individuals concerned and their families'. Yet MI5's modus operandi is well-known. If it is to be argued that MI5 personnel and agents, and / or their descendants, could face distress or endangerment, the onus must be on MI5 i) to establish that this really is the case (are there any descendants?; have they said they would feel distress?; from whom does any purported danger come?); and ii) to show that the problem can only be addressed by completely withholding the files concerned, rather than releasing them in a 'sanitised' condition. As regards the impact of release on the subjects of files, and / or their families, surely the person concerned, or his / her relatives if he / she is dead, could be consulted about whether the file should be released, either in its complete state or 'sanitised' in some way.
There is also the matter of the records of the Police Special Branches (which have played an important counter-subversive role); none of these has ever reached the public domain and no information about them has ever been given.
What looks like limited progress towards openness seems actually to be the result of a curious symbiosis of New Labour and "New Spooks', with the former now converted to the cult of the Free Economy and the Strong State, and the latter to the cult of Public Relations.
More substantial openness is apparent in America, where Freedom of Information provisions do apply to security and intelligence bodies. Historians of American Communism have been able to make significant use of FBI files; and counter-subversion records from as recent a period as the 1960s are in the public domain. In Canada and Australia, too, historical counter-subversion records seem to have been substantially preserved and made available.
We may never achieve such a state of affairs in this country; if we do, it will only be after a good deal more agitating and complaining.
David Turner, Borden, Kent
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