These notes are based on studies inspired by the book ‘Two Steps Back - Communists & the wider labour movement, 1935 - 1945. A study in the relations between vanguard & class.’ by Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson. In these notes we will look more closely at the transition of the CPGB from its ‘Third Period’ line to the ‘Popular Front’ policies as well as developments in the ILP. The headings relate to the corresponding Chapters in ‘Two Steps Back’.
How did dedicated class fighters end up following the crazy turns of the Communist International? Was it due to their psychology? The British CP was formed out of various sects with a syndicalist and/or ultra left and utopian background. Marxism was taken as a package from the Soviet Union without an independent development and understanding. The failure of the early CPGB to develop Marxism beyond a narrow dogmatism left the party vulnerable to a utopian and almost mystical worship of the first workers state. The Soviet Union and Stalin were considered infallible
The Communist International was at this time just starting to emerge from its disastrous ‘Third Period’ line. According to this analysis capitalism was on the verge of collapse, a new world war was looming, and the social democratic parties and the state were undergoing a process of fascisisation. This analysis led to the conclusion that the greatest danger to the working class came from the social democrats and not from fascists. Accordingly the social democrats were denounced as social-fascists. This policy prevented the working class from uniting and mobilising against fascism and led to the victory of Hitler in Germany in 1933. The crazy sectarianism of the ‘Third Period’ also resulted in a rapid decline in Communist membership on three continents.
The ‘Third Period’ has its origin in the Soviet Union. Following a grain strike Stalin initiated the policy of forced collectivisation of the peasantry, which in turn meant the removal of their protectors in the government, namely, Bukharin and the Right Opposition. The affairs of the Communist International could no longer be left under Bukharin and he was removed as a “rightist”. The main policy of this period was the “class against class” or “united front from below” policy. The “united front from below” entailed joint work with members of other organisations only if they accepted the leadership of the Communist Party. On no account were the social-fascist leaders to be worked with. Trotsky’s call for a policy of a united front with the social democrats against the fascists was rejected. In a CPGB pamphlet Gallagher explained that there could be no United Front since ‘between the social democrats and the fascist there is only “irreconcilability” as between the slow cunning poisoner and the open garrotter and cut-throat’.1
The increasing isolation of the Soviet Union led to a change of policy. In September 1934 the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations as part of a new policy of seeking alliances with powers such as Britain and France. In May 1934 the Soviet Union and France had signed a mutual aid pact for defence in case of attack by another ‘European power’. The national sections of the Communist International were already adapting to the new foreign policy requirements of the Soviet Union before the Popular Front campaign was officially ratified at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in August 1935. The Communists were now to seek alliances not only with the social democrats, who they had until then called “social-fascists”, but also with “progressive” Liberals and Tories. Trotsky who had been denounced as a ‘bourgeois liberal’ for advocating a united front policy had foreseen the course of events. On May 14th 1933, immediately after the victory of Hitler, he wrote: ‘Dozens of times the Left Opposition predicted that, under the blow of events, the Stalinists would be forced to repudiate their ultra-leftism and that, placing themselves on the road of the united front, they would begin to commit the opportunist treasons which they attributed to us only yesteryear’.
The policy of the Popular Front was being put forward at a time when the labour movement was still recoiling from the shock of the National Government formed by MacDonald and Snowden in 1931. This example of a bloc between progressive Liberals, Tories and MacDonald was not one that engendered a desire for a new cross-class alliance. The split of the ILP from the Labour Party in 1932 increased the feeling of disunity in the ranks of the labour movement. Revulsion at the National Government led to a general shift to the left in the labour movement. The victory of Hitler was largely blamed on the division of the German working class and hence there was a strong desire for unity in the Labour Party ranks against the class enemy. The approaches of the CP for affiliation were resoundingly rejected. The Labour Party’s fortunes at the polls was now recovering and the Labour leadership expected to form the next Government.
The change of line by the British CP was a confused and uneven process. This was largely due to the confusion in the Comintern following the victory of Hitler. As late as June 1933 they were still saying that ‘only defeatists and opportunists can talk about the working class being beaten in the struggle against fascism’ or its having ‘lost a battle’ and ‘suffered a defeat’ and that the ‘KPD (German CP) is not only undestroyed but its influence on the masses is greater than ever’. However it became necessary to save face by making unity appeals ‘for the record’ in order to shift the blame for the splits and divisions in the working class on to the shoulders of the Social Democrats. Shortly after Hitler took power in March 1933 the Executive Committee of the Communist International instructed its national sections to approach their opposite numbers of the Socialist International with proposals for joint action, and for the meantime ‘during the time of a common fight against capitalism and fascism to refrain from making attacks on Social Democratic organisations’. The British CP approached the Labour Party, ILP, TUC and Co-op Party to consider plans for joint activity. The Labour Party replied on March 22nd with an abrupt refusal to meet either the CP or the ILP. Association with CP front organisations was also condemned at the Hastings Conference (1933) and at the 1934 Conference the EC of the Labour Party was given the power to take disciplinary action against anyone breaking the ban. Meanwhile the TUC sent out the famous ‘black circular’ of October 1934 instructing trade councils not to accept communists as delegates. It was not surprising that this call for unity was rejected by the Labour Party; by those who according to a CPGB pamphlet ‘only object to being called by their proper name - Social Fascists’. 2
The approach to the ILP met with greater success. The ILP had disaffiliated from the Labour Party in July 1932 and had started to shift further to the Left. In Feb. 1933 the ILP and its sister parties in the London Bureau approached the Communist and Socialist Internationals appealing for co-operation in resisting fascism. There was in the ILP a strong move towards unification with the CP, which was particularly advocated by the Revolutionary Policy Committee of Dr C.K.Cullen and Jack Gaster who had originally advocated the disaffiliation from the Labour Party. The ILP accepted the proposal for a United Front with the CP on 17th March 1933 and its annual conference carried a resolution by 83 votes to 79, against the wishes of the NAC, instructing it ‘to ascertain in what way the ILP may assist the work of the Communist International’. There was much co-operation with the CP not only in the Anti-Fascist campaign but also in the Anti-War movement, Hunger Marches, agitation against U.A.B cuts etc. An agreement for ‘day to day’ co-operation had been signed. The negotiations with Kuunsinen and Manuilsky of the Communist International (CI) started with a letter from the ILP referring to its conference resolution. The reply proposed that the ILP should assist the work of the CI by (1) extending co-operation with the CP in Britain; (2) ruthlessly attacking the reformists; (3) developing a United Front with the Labour Party rank and file from below (that is despite the leadership); (4) studying the program of the CI with a view to adopting it, and forming ‘a single, strong, mass Communist Party’ in Britain. The CI was to retain its ‘right of comradely criticism’. 3
It was, in effect, a demand to liquidate their party and join with the Communists on the basis of the unconditional submission to the dictates of the Executive Comintern. The ILP replied saying that co-operation was desirable; that the right of criticism applied both ways; that the policies of the Second and Third Internationals had been disastrous in the past and that policies should be re-examined in the light of these lessons; that there should be a world congress to secure united action by all revolutionary sections of the working class. The reply from the CI was ‘obviously aimed at splitting’ the ILP. It denounced the proposal for a World Congress as a manoeuvre to lead the workers back into the Second International and then proceeded to attack the ILP leadership for criticising Russian foreign policy and Communist Party tactics in Germany. The CI went on to propose discussion in the ILP on (1) mass action on the basis of the ILP-CP united front, and (2) the desirability of the ILP joining the CI ‘as a Party sympathising with Communism, with the right to a consultative vote’.
In reply the ILP sent a document dealing with international tactics and organisation. Three primary duties were outlined; (1) the defence of the Soviet Union (2) the creation of the broadest United Front to resist Capitalist reaction, fascism and war; (3) the national and international union of revolutionary socialists. It went on to ask about rights and duties which would bind the ILP in the case of sympathetic affiliation. The ILP’s view of the role of a revolutionary International was elaborated and a corresponding critique of the CI with the proposal that there should be; (1) the extension of the right of criticism, at present only enjoyed by the leadership; (2) the preparation of important CI decisions through international discussion; (3) the replacement of the actual monopoly of the Russian leadership by a real collective international leadership.
The reply from the CI was an even clearer attempt to split the ILP; it was directed at the ILP rank and file with a denunciation of the ‘left reformist’ leadership who were ‘slanderer(s) of the Soviet Union’. The ILP leadership were not impressed by this or by the fact that whilst an international boycott of Nazi Germany was trying to be built, the Soviet Union had signed an agreement to expand trade. All of this, plus growing anger amongst the rank and file at the sectarianism of the CP, led to the United Front being broken off and the 1934 ILP conference accepting the recommendation of the National Council to end ‘day to day’ co-operation with the CP.
The ‘United Front’ formed by the CP was thus in reality little more than a poaching operation. However, despite the ending of the United Front there was still co-operation on issues, such as the struggle against Mosley’s Blackshirts. Mosley who had started his political life as a Conservative had joined the ILP and become a left-wing critic of the MacDonald Government. He formed the New Party which shortly broke up and then he formed the British Union of Fascists. The BUF was estimated to have 40,000 members in 1934. Mosley planned three main rallies in 1934. The first of these was held at the Albert Hall in April which had a small counter-demonstration. The second was on the 7th June at the Olympia with a capacity of 13,000. The violent ejection of anti-fascists led to a great deal of bad publicity for Mosley. The third rally was to be on September 9th at Hyde Park. A massive counter demonstration was organised resulting in over 100,000 anti-fascists opposing about 2,500 fascists in Hyde Park. The CP and the ILP co-operated on these demonstrations.
The danger of fascism was becoming more and more important throughout Europe. In order to understand the subsequent development of the CI towards the Popular Front it is quite constructive to look at the situation in France. 4
Following the Nazi victory in Germany a number of fascist and extreme right-wing groups became active in France. On February 6th 1934 several thousand armed fascists and Royalists marched on the French parliament building. For several days there were riots and street fighting in Paris. The response of the CP was completely confused. The French CP paper ‘L’Humanite’ gave the impression that an onslaught on parliament should be supported from whatever quarter it came and any repression of such an attack was only proof of the fascist nature of the government. Even more bizarre was the presence of members of the ARC (the CP ex-servicemen’s organisation) alongside the extreme right Croix de Feu on the Feb 6th demonstration. On the evening of the 6th Thorez, the leader of the French CP, refused a proposal made by Doriot and other Social Democrats for a mobilisation of the working class against the attempted fascist coup. Under increasing pressure the CP eventually called a demonstration on for Feb 9th. The CP had been compelled by events into joint action.
The French CP and the French Socialist Party signed their ‘Unity in Action Pact’ later in July 1934. Meanwhile Stalin had signed a mutual assistance pact with France in May. By October 1934 the French CP had adopted its ‘Popular Front’ policy of an alliance between the working class and ‘democratic forces’. This coincided with the eventual abandonment by the Executive Committee of the CI of the theory that the United Front must be ‘from below’. The popular front policy of the CI was formally adopted later at the Seventh World Congress of the CI in August 1935.
The implications of the pact between the Soviet Union and France were not missed by the leaders of the ILP. Brockway reminded the Communists that the Sixth World Congress of the CI had denounced alliances with capitalist governments “because they would represent an alliance for the suppression of the proletarian revolution and of the national liberation movements of colonial peoples“.5 He also reminded them that Lenin had described the League of Nations as the “thieves kitchen“. Discussing these issues at the NAC later in 1934, Maxton summed up the situation; ‘The Russian Government cannot become allied to the French Government without subduing the class struggle previously carried on by the French Communists. Neither can it support the struggle of the oppressed colonial peoples against both British and French imperialism“.6
According to the Stalinist historian, Noreen Branson, the adoption of the Popular Front policies occurred in a different manner. The change is attributed to the Bulgarian Communist Dimitrov and to the French CP, which was ‘in practise... already showing the way’.7 Dimitrov met with Stalin and Manuilsky in March 1934 where he ‘urged drastic policy revisions’ regarding the ‘class against class’ approach. Apparently Stalin ‘was still very attached to the old conception, little disposed to change (his) position, to accept the turn that his interlocutor was proposing’.8 Manuilsky, ‘alone among those present, supported Dimitrov. In the end, it took five months to convince the majority of the ECCI that change was necessary’. The French CP apparently showed the way by its agreement with the French Socialist Party in July 1934 and by adopting in October a programme ‘for an alliance of all proletarian and democratic forces under the slogan of “Popular Front“ an action not initially approved of by Stalin, who advised against it’.
Undoubtedly there was confusion in the CI following the victory of Hitler. Indeed the Seventh World Congress which was due to take place in September 1934 was cancelled due to ‘lack of political preparation’ and wasn’t held until July/August 1935. However, it is clearly absurd to claim that the policy change had nothing to do with Soviet foreign policy (re. French-Soviet pact May 1934, the joining of the League of Nations in September 1934) and even more absurd to imply that it was foistered on a reluctant Stalin. As for the French CP it had throughout the 1920s been subjected to the dictats of the Comintern which ‘claimed the right not only to settle their policy for them from Moscow, but also to decide over their heads who was to be expelled or demoted and who to be appointed to positions of party authority.’ The French CP leader, Maurice Thorez, had by ‘faithfully following the lead of Moscow through all its changes, avoided the successive purges and remained at the head of the Party’.9 Rather than the French CP leading the Comintern it would seem somewhat more plausible that the French CP was being led by Moscow combined with the pressure of events. The July 1934 pact with the French Socialist Party may have preceded the formal dropping of the ‘United Front from Below’ policy by the ECCI in October 1934 but this had in effect partially been done already by the ECCI in March 1933 by instructing national sections to seek agreements with Socialist Parties for joint action against fascism and capitalism whilst, in the meantime, refraining from attacking those Parties. In any event the logic of Stalin’s move for alliances with France and Britain after the victory of Hitler necessitated dropping the old sectarian Third Period policies and moving towards more compliant class collaborationist policies for that purpose.
The late thirties provided an ideal setting for the turn of the Communists to Popular Front politics. The liberal conscience had received a shock at the coming to power of Hitler and the lack of resistance of the traditional parties. At home and a complacent government presided over the sufferings of over a million unemployed. Abroad it temporised, or aided Hitler in expansion, hoping he might turn against the Soviet Union. The contrast between the stagnation of the capitalist economy with the expansion of Russian industry. All these factors created a favourable climate for the CP not only among workers but among the supporters of liberal democracy. It was the great age of the ‘fellow traveller’; the middle class and establishment supporters as well as intellectuals. There was no harm in winning the support of such people if they could be won over to revolutionary Marxism, instead though they were encouraged to retain their patriotism and their illusions in capitalist democracy.
Crucial for attracting the intellectuals was the Left Book Club. The left Book Club was formed in May 1936 as an outlet for writing supposedly representing a broad spectrum on the Left. In reality it became little more than a propaganda outlet for the CP with an ultimate audience of 57,000. Trotskyist writings and even Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’ were banned, whilst lying to cover up the show trials was accepted in works such as Dudley Collard’s ‘Soviet Justice and the trial of Radek and Others’. Books such as the Webbs’ ‘Soviet Communism, a new civilisation’ were particularly influential in creating a rosy image of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.
The Popular Front campaign received the support not only of the Labour intelligencia but also of a number of MPs such as Richard Acland, newspapers such as the Guardian and the News Chronicle. Pundits and commentators, vicars and scientists, poets and philosophers, dissident Liberals and Tories, in brief, all those who disagreed with the policy of the National Government on ‘patriotic’ lines, were enlisted by the Communists in their drive against the independence of the labour movement.
The attitude of the leadership of the Labour Party and of its rank and file was, however, different. After the 1935 General Election the CP applied again for affiliation to the Labour Party. In January 1936 the NEC of the Labour Party promptly rejected affiliation on the basis that little had changed since the decision of 1922 to reject affiliation; namely; that the CP adhered to a Soviet system which was considered incompatible with Parliamentary Democracy. The CP then launched a campaign for affiliation which received the backing of the Fabian Society and the Socialist League. According to Branson 831 trade union branches and 407 local Labour Party organisations had been won over by the CP before the October 1936 Labour Party Conference. The CP had also gained the support of the Mineworkers Federation, the AEU and ASLEF. The Labour leadership had however stated in July that they did not wish the Labour and trade Union movement to be subjected ‘to the dictation of the Russian Government’ and they noted that ‘the Communists are now active in practising that class collaboration that they have so roundly denounced in the past’.
When it came to the conference the resolution on Communist affiliation was resoundingly defeated. An amendment asking the National Executive to mobilise ‘all peace-loving and democratic citizens in the struggle for peace and the fight against fascism’ was even more ignominiously defeated. A resolution ‘irrevocably opposed to any attempt to “liberalise“ the Labour Party by “watering down“ its policy in order to increase its membership’ was, however, passed almost unanimously.
The great purge trials were in full swing at this time. The old Bolshevik leaders were being methodically annihilated along with foreign Communists. The extension of the terror to Spain made it even more clear that the Soviet Union really had abandoned the World Revolution. The message to the potential bourgeois supporters of the Popular Front was clear. As R.Page Arnot confidently confirmed; ‘The answer of all those outside the ranks of the working class, who have rallied to the defence of democracy in Spain, must be to deepen and extend that democratic front of support to democracy, and to use the Moscow Trial as one of the best examples of how a real democracy can defend itself against fascism’.10
The Labour leaders were to link the show trials with the Popular Front. As the ‘Herald’ put it ‘the Moscow Trial shows that the affiliation of the Communist Party to the Labour Party should not now be accepted’. Brockway was to comment later that the Unity campaign ‘was killed by the effect of the Moscow Trials, which caused a deep revulsion in the minds of the ordinary British Workers’.11
At the same time as the campaign for affiliation to the Labour Party, the Communist Party had become involved in secret talks with the Socialist League and the ILP at the so-called ‘Unity Committee’. The CP hoped to embroil the ILP and the Socialist League in its schemes for a Popular Front. This entailed enlisting their support in the affiliation campaign. With their assistance the Labour Party was to be pressured into accepting ‘unity’ through affiliation of the CP and the ILP with the eventual aim of ‘unity’ with the so-called ‘Progressives’ outside the Labour movement.
It was far from an easy strategy for the CP. The ILP was also in no rush to reaffiliate to the Labour Party especially whilst the problem of the right of criticism for the ILP Parliamentary Group, the original cause of the split from the Labour Party, still remained.
The Socialist League also had its difficulties for the CP. The Socialist League was founded in 1932 from a merger between the old Labour Party ‘Society of Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda’ of GDH Cole and the group of ex-ILP-ers led by Frank Wise, who had split from the ILP when they disaffiliated from the Labour Party. On Wise’s death in November 1933 he was succeeded as chairman by Sir Stafford Cripps. The Socialist League had about 2,000 members in 1932 and by 1936 its numbers had grown to about 3,000. Whilst its membership was basically middle class it shifted rapidly leftwards during its brief existence. At the Leagues annual conference in 1935 a position was adopted against support for Popular Fronts. The League, like the ILP, disagreed with the CP’s policy of reliance on the ‘collective security’ of the League of Nations. When the Abyssinian crisis began (Abyssinia had been invaded by Italy) the Socialist League called mass meetings all over the country to protest at the threat to peace from Mussolini and to oppose imperialist war and League of Nations sanctions. Opposition to these policies of the Socialist League came mainly from people under Communist influence. For the Soviet Union had just joined the League of Nations and supported sanctions. The Socialist League was essentially far to the Left of the Communist Party in 1936. At its annual conference at Whitsun 1936 the Socialist League reaffirmed its opposition to League of Nations sanctions and to the policies of ‘Peace Fronts’ and Popular Fronts and against a long list of Communist resolutions and amendments trying to support them. The Socialist League had also agreed to send an observer to the meetings of the International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity a group of socialist Parties including the ILP.
The Unity Committee was formed shortly after the November 1935 General Election. On the committee the CP was represented by Harry Pollitt and Palme Dutt, the Socialist League by Stafford Cripps and William Mellor, the ILP by Fenner Brockway and James Maxton. These secret negotiations seem to have been initiated by Stafford Cripps, the Chairman of the Socialist League. This was the case according to Brockway12, McNair13, Branson14 and others. Bornstein and Richardson, however, state that the talks were in fact initiated by the CP, presumably via Cripps15. Cripps certainly invited the ILP to take part and he also hosted the talks, he didn’t however, inform the Socialist League about the secret talks. It does seem more likely that Cripps did initiate these talks, but they suited the purpose of the CP perfectly. Brockway describes Cripps as being sincere and naive with ‘no experience of the working class and... no knowledge of socialist theory’. During the talks he was ‘obviously lost when William Mellor put the Marxist case against the Popular Front; he acknowledged that he had not thought out the subject’. Whether Cripps started the talks he certainly ended up as being a pawn of the Communists. Brockway was to observe that ‘his paper The Tribune became shortly afterwards virtually a Communist Party organ, and Will Mellor, the editor had to leave’.
The Unity committee was not all unity, the preliminary negotiations nearly broke down half-a-dozen times. One of the problems was the form of organisation being aimed at. It was not intended that the three parties should merge, rather that they should seek affiliation to the Labour Party. The Communist Party was, of course, at this time running a campaign for affiliation to the Labour Party. The ILP however had disaffiliated from the Labour Party and did not intend to reaffiliate to the Labour Party unless ‘either its policy were changed or freedom were granted to advocate and carry out a revolutionary programme’. Maxton eventually agreed that the ILP could consider re-affiliation if the Unity Campaign succeeded in convincing the Labour Party that it should open its doors to the CP and the ILP.
The main disagreement however, was over the programme of the Unity Campaign. At stake was whether ‘the Popular Front view of the CP or the Workers Front view of the ILP should win the allegiance of the Left in the Labour Movement’.16 The CP submitted a full Popular Front document which the ILP rejected. This was then passed back to the Socialist League to revise in consultation with the CP. The revised document returned retaining ‘a pledge to defend the Soviet Union’s “fight for peace“ and endorsement of a Pact between Russia, Britain, France and other countries’. The ILP could not accept this; it was opposed to any imperialist alliances and believed that only alliances between working class governments should be supported. The ILP simply did not regard the foreign policy of the Soviet Union as being either socialist or peace-making. In the end the ILP was persuaded to sign whilst expressing its reservations on these points in a memorandum to Cripps. When they published it Dutt and Pollitt were furious.
The policy still had to be sold to the Socialist League. The National Council of the Socialist League was not informed of the secret negotiations until as late as November 1936. Much to the irritation to the Communists there was a small but influential group of Trotskyists in the Socialist League. One of them, Reg Groves, led the opposition to the Unity Campaign on the National Committee. Groves suspected that the Communists wanted to smash the Socialist League, after all the Labour leadership was unlikely to tolerate such a campaign. A special delegate conference of the Socialist League was held to consider the matter on January 16-17th 1937. The agreement was ratified by 56 votes in favour, as against 38 and 23 abstentions. The vote reflected their confusion in the Socialist League, which had a strong policy against Popular Fronts.
The Unity Campaign was launched at a public meeting addressed by Pollitt, Cripps and Maxton on January 24th 1937. It met with a swift response from the NEC of the Labour Party; on January 27th the Socialist League was disaffiliated from the Labour Party and its membership urged to desist from carrying out joint activity with the CP and the ILP. The Unity meetings continued and on March 24th the NEC responded by declaring that after June 1st membership of the Socialist League would be incompatible with that of the Labour Party. Pollitt suggested that the League should go into voluntary dissolution to free its members to campaign for unity individually. Cripps agreed much to the surprise of the ILP delegates at the Unity Committee. Mellor disagreed, arguing that such a course would be a victory to the Right Wing of the Labour Party, who would be glad to rid it of all separately organised Left organisations. The Socialist League did, however, suspend itself until the Labour Conference in October, which would give the opportunity to reverse the decision. The Annual Conference met at Bournemouth in October 1937. A resolution was put down to support the Popular Front, and Cripps, Laski and Strauss tried to refer the NEC report, ‘The Socialist League and Party Loyalty’, back. The Popular Front resolution was rejected by a large majority and the NEC report on the Socialist League was also carried by a large majority. That was the end of the Socialist League, although Grove sand other opponents of the dissolution tried to keep it going under the label of the ‘Socialist Left Federation’. In the mean time the Labour Party individuals who were backing the Unity Campaign were being threatened with expulsion. G.R.Strauss MP, was told by the NEC that if he went ahead with a speaking engagement with Pollitt and Maxton he would be expelled. Again it was Pollitt who signalled the retreat. The CP and the ILP were to withdraw from the campaign which would now be conducted solely by Labour Party members with the object of winning their Party to the Unity proposals. In reality the Unity Campaign had been reduced to individual Labour Party members agitating for CP affiliation and the Popular Front.
The policy of the Popular Front had its own terrible logic, whatever the motives of those promoting it, and that was the destruction of the organisations of the working class. ‘Thus ended ingloriously the Unity Campaign’, observed Brockway. ‘Its result was the destruction of the Socialist League, the loss of influence of Cripps, Bevan, Strauss and other “Lefts“, the strengthening of the reactionary leaders, and the disillusionment of the rank and file’.17 Did the Communist Party set out to deliberately destroy the Socialist League? Brockway was to ponder on this question18, whilst Groves and other opponents of the Unity Campaign believed that it was inevitable from the start. The Communists certainly gained from the destruction of the Socialist League. A left rival had been removed amongst whose ranks there was a growing opposition to the Moscow Trials and the Popular Front abroad. It also left the field clear for the growing number of Communist Party entryists into the Labour Party who were attempting to secure the affiliation of the CP.
The Unity Campaign was also successful in taming the ILP’s criticism of international Communist policy. During the Unity Campaign the Popular Front in Spain was starting to reveal its anti-working class content. In May 1937 the POUM, the sister party of the ILP, was suppressed by the Stalinists. Working class militants such as Andres Nin, the leader of the POUM, were being arrested, tortured and murdered for being “Trotsky-Fascist agents“. The methods of the Moscow Trials were being employed by the Stalinists to behead the Spanish Revolution. In Britain the Popular Front had destroyed the Socialist League as an organisation, in Spain it was physically liquidating the POUM. At the Unity Committee the ILP insisted on its duty to vindicate its Spanish comrades, however, on the platforms of the Unity meetings both parties were ‘scrupulously careful not to reflect our Party differences’ as Brockway recalled. McNair was to comment that ‘the Unity Campaign in Britain should engender unity in Spain rather than allow Spanish disunity to break up the Unity Campaign in Britain’. The ILP, which was already in decline in terms of membership, was thus further weakened to the benefit of the CP.
The next phase of the Popular Front campaign was to involve an attack, not only on the independence of the Labour Party, but even on its very existence in the rural districts, a liquidation of the party outside its main centres for the benefit of Liberals and ‘democratic’ Tories. It was an attempt to return to the conditions of the 1880s. The greatest step forward in the previous history of the British working class had been the abandonment of the loose relationship of the trade unions with the Liberal Party and the struggle for the political independence of Labour. The CP having destroyed the Socialist League and weakened the ILP, was now to launch an assault on the hard won independence of the Labour Movement. This was to be a difficult task since the need for the independence of the labour movement had sunk deeply into the consciousness of the class. The CP was to attempt to achieve this by utilising its allies in the Labour Party together with its own massive scale entry operation in order to agitate again for affiliation. With the expansion of Germany, leading to the Munich crisis and then on to the Second World War, everyone’s attention was quite naturally focused on foreign affairs. The Communists grew ever more desperate to remove the National Government and replace it with a government of no matter what sort that would provide an ally for the Soviet Union. Inevitably this lead to an appeal to patriotism, to those who felt that the Chamberlain government was not serving the interests of the nation. The Communists were now shifting so far to the right that they were appealing to Tories who were even more nationalistic than the largely Tory National Government. The Popular Front policy was rapidly becoming an attack on the labour movement by patriots, war mongers and ‘democrats’ - all of course, in the name of ‘peace’.
The CP operation in the Labour Party was greatly assisted by a change of the method of electing the constituency section of the NEC, resulting in the election of Cripps, Laski and Pritt, all supporters of ‘unity’. Behind them the CP intensified its faction work via mass scale entryism. At a conference held to aid Spain in 1938 the CP had won over 120 constituency parties to support the Popular Front. Their greatest success, however, was in the Labour League of Youth. the Communists around the paper Advance had already captured control of the National Administrative Council of the LLOY as early as its 1936 conference. The LLOY, which had a large working class membership, began to increasingly follow the twists and turns of Stalinist propaganda, and joint conferences were held with the Young Communists and Young Liberals. The LLOY was a great asset to the Communist fraction work in the Labour Party.
The main task of this fraction work was to persuade, if possible local Labour Parties not to stand candidates in elections where the CP favoured Liberals or ‘progressives’ as the only anti-Tory candidate. In May 1938 the CP rechristened its campaign ‘The United Peace Alliance’ of ‘democratic peoples of all parties’ who were ‘working desperately to build a PEACE ALLIANCE THAT WILL DEFEAT CHAMBERLAIN and set up a People’s Government pledged to join Britain to the democratic countries in a strong Peace Bloc which can stop war’. Instead of war being the result of Imperialist rivalry, preventable only by overthrowing the Capitalist system that created it, the CP now believed that the Imperialist nations could be ‘peace-loving’ and that classes and parties should merge to encourage them to be.
This policy was put to the test in a by-election in Aylesbury in May 1938. The local Labour Party had selected Reg Groves, the Trotskyist who had led the opposition to the ‘Unity Campaign’ in the Socialist League. Transport House wanted Groves to stand down in favour of a less controversial candidate, a retired colonel, but the local Party insisted on Groves. The CP had a number of ‘concealed’ people on the executive of the local Party, and they argued that Labour should stand no candidate to give the Liberals a free run against the Tories. When they failed to get this they switched to supporting the colonel. Despite this and huge pressure from outside the Party nationally, Reg Groves was eventually adopted as the candidate. Despite the Daily Worker denouncing Groves as a ‘friend of Chamberlain’ and ‘an agent of Franco’ the Labour vote increased by 3,000 on a class war platform, the Liberal and Tory vote slumped, and Labour saved its deposit in the constituency for the firs time. The Labour Herald summed it up by suggesting that the Popular Fronters should take a ‘look at the Aylesbury result and crawl off home’.
The Aylesbury by-election did much to turn the tide against the Peoples Front. resolutions in favour of the United Peace Alliance were defeated at the annual Co-operative Congress in June 1938 reversing an earlier position of support. Similarly such resolutions were defeated at the national conferences of Labour Women and the National Union of Railwaymen. The Munich crisis, however, in September 1938 renewed Communist pressure upon Labour for a Peoples Front. They were assisted in this respect by a seat falling vacant in Oxford in October. The CP had strong influence in the Oxford Labour Party which was eventually persuaded, against the advice of the NEC, to withdraw its candidate in favour of A.D.Lindsay an ‘Independent Progressive’ who was to be unopposed by the Liberals. Despite the Tory vote dropping, Lindsay was defeated by Quintin Hogg.
A month later there was another by-election, in Bridgwater in Somerset. The Communists persuaded the local divisional Labour Party not to stand and allow a free run for the Liberal candidate, Vernon Bartlett, a Popular Front supporter. George Strauss assisted the Communists by getting 39 Labour MPs to sign a letter of support to Bartlett. Bartlett won the seat and thus the Liberal Party was revived in this rural district at the expense of the Labour Party.
The Labour Party was not the only Party to be attacked from the Right by the Communists. In December 1938 the Duchess of Atholl resigned from the Tory Party over foreign policy and resigned from her Perth seat causing a by-election. The Duchess of Atholl, a supporter of the United Peace Alliance and a fellow traveller of the Communists, faced opposition from an official Tory candidate and since the Labour Party had no organisation in the constituency, it fell upon the Liberals to turn the fight into a three cornered one. It was now the turn of the Liberal Party to earn the wrath of the Communists for splitting the anti-Tory vote. The Daily Worker attacked them for their lack of patriotism for doing so.
‘It is extremely unfortunate that the Liberal has decided to stand. But there can be no sacrifice too great in the struggle against those who are selling our country to German and Italian Fascism. The Duchess realises this... Is it too much to ask the Liberals to realise this? If they now place country above party and withdraw their candidate, the Duchess will be returned on a policy no different from that which all true Liberals subscribe’.
Despite the support given to the Duchess by the Communists and a number of Labour MPs, the Duchess was beaten by her Tory opponent. A series of by-elections in the following year demonstrated that Labour could beat National Government candidates despite the Popular Front and that the Labour vote was on a class basis and could not simply be transferred to ‘Independent Progressives’ who had no class allegiance.
In the meantime the Communists and their allies in the Labour Party were becoming increasingly desperate. War was looming and still the Chamberlain Government refused to sign a pact with the Soviet Union. Cripps placed a memorandum on the Popular Front to the NEC of the Labour Party in January 1939. When this was rejected he circulated it to all Labour MPs and affiliated organisations. The NEC demanded he cease his activity for the Popular Front and when Cripps refused to withdraw his memo he was expelled from the NEC. The NEC justified the expulsion in two pamphlets, ‘Socialism or Surrender?’ and ‘Unity True or Sham’. Cripps was accused of breaching Party discipline by campaigning for his own private programme ‘from which all Socialist proposals have been eliminated’ and representing a ‘reversion to Liberalism’. Later, on March 22nd 1939 Cripps and his closest allies, Aneurin Bevan, George Strauss, C.P. Trevelyan and Commander Edgar Young, were expelled from the Labour Party for persisting in campaigning for the Popular Front. At the Labour Party Conference in May 1939 the expulsions were upheld by a large majority and the Popular Front rejected again by an even larger majority.
The mainstream of the Labour movement and the Communists along with their “Left“ allies had now reversed their relative positions. It was now Labour who were now using the language of class struggle against the Communists and their followers who were accused of abandoning it. The Communists for their part were all to happy to abandon the class struggle. In September 1937 the Central Committee of the CP dropped the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as being ‘not now on the order of the day’ in Britain. In January 1938 the slogan ‘Workers of all lands Unite’ was dropped from the masthead of the Daily Worker. The Communists led no more mass demonstrations of the unemployed after 1936. Even the great mobilisation against Mosley at Cable Street in October 1936 was originally opposed by the Communists. The Youth Communist League had organised an ‘Aid for Spain’ demonstration which happened to clash with the Mosley march. According to Joe Jacobs19 they were initially instructed to allow the Mosley march to go through and it was only after repeated protests and the threat of loss of members that the position was changed20.
The CP was during this period recruiting many new members particularly from the middle class. It was however, also picking up important recruits in the trade unions particularly in industries such as engineering. Many workers saw the Labour leaders opposing the National Government in words whilst the Communists did so in deeds. The CP was however moving rapidly to the Right. Having taken on board pacifism, “bourgeois“ collective security through the League of Nations including ‘economic and military sanctions if necessary’, the next logical step was in the direction of support for imperialist war preparations and chauvinism. The war-mongering wing of the Tory Party were now to be supported against the appeasers in the ‘interests of Britain’. Churchill was to be supported against Chamberlain as a better defender of British interests.
Bornstein and Richardson sum up the progression of the Communist Party as ‘having been more Labour than Labour, and then more Liberal than the Liberals, they had finally ended up being more Tory than the Tories’.
In the period running up to the Second World War the British Communists had in their Popular Front phase become increasingly desperate to remove Chamberlain and replace him with anyone who would form an alliance with the Soviet Union. The logic of the ‘United Peace Alliance’ had led the CP to chauvinism and support for Churchill and the war-mongering wing of the Tory Party.
The British Communists were still insisting that good patriots should support ‘Peace Blocs’ to defend democracy against fascism when the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact was announced on 23rd August 1939. The British Communists were a bit slow to realise that this necessitated another turn in policy and they still adhered to the old Popular Front line through to late September. Germany had invaded Poland on 1st September resulting in Britain and France declaring war on Germany on the 3rd September. The CP declared its support for the war describing it in a pamphlet issued on 14th September as ‘a just war which will be supported by the whole working class and all friends of democracy’21. Unfortunately for the British CP the Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union now meant that the war was after all an imperialist war and no longer a war to defend democracy from fascism. The Comintern eventually got round to informing the British CP about this. The about turn was a serious embarrassment for the CP which now had to admit that its support for the war was wrong. Pollittt and Cambell became the sacrificial lambs, having to write their ‘self-criticism’. The CP now described the war as imperialist and ‘the struggle of the British people against the Chamberlains and the Churchills’ was ‘the best help to the struggle of the Germans against Hitler’. The new position resulted in a shift to the Left for the Communists but they still used the Popular Front language of vague cross-class struggles of ‘peoples’ for a ‘peoples government’. The Leninist conception of revolutionary defeatism in an imperialist war and the need for working class revolution were not advocated by the Communists.
On June 22nd 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and on July 12th an Anglo-Soviet mutual Aid Pact was signed. The British Communists had again not anticipated the course of events and the need for yet another turn. Earlier, they had marked the first anniversary of the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact by reproducing an article from Izvestia in the Daily Worker.
‘For a number of months before the Pact Britain and France made persistent attempts to harness the Soviet Union in their chariot, to use the Soviet Union for their imperialist aims. Above all they strove to provoke armed conflict between the USSR and Germany... The good neighbourly and friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Germany was not based on fortuitous considerations of a transient nature, but on the fundamental State interests of both the USSR and Germany. This truth has long been understood in the USSR and Germany’.22
The attack on the Soviet Union had, however, changed the situation. The imperialist war was no longer to be ended by the ‘peoples struggle’ for a ‘Peoples Government’ that would conclude a ‘Peoples Peace’. For the Communists were now to realise through their mastery of dialectics that the imperialist war had transformed itself back into a war to defend democracy from fascism. There was now to be ‘a fight for a united national front’ to give ‘the most whole-hearted support to the Churchill government in every measure it adopts’. The Communists had returned again to patriotism issuing a series of pamphlets in the fetching colours of red, white and blue. Opponents of the war were now dismissed as ‘fascists in disguise’.
At this time there was an electoral truce between the main political parties. Labour had entered a coalition cabinet under Churchill in May 1940 having refused to work with Chamberlain who was removed. Attlee became Deputy Prime Minister and Bevin the Minister of Labour and National Services. Dalton, Morrison and Alexander were also included in the cabinet. The mood amongst the working class was, however, becoming increasingly hostile to the Tories and the National Government. In a series of by-elections this anti-Tory feeling was registered with large votes for the ILP and also the ‘Common Wealth’ Party of Sir Richard Acland which succeeded in beating the Tories on three occasions. The Communists, however, were actively against this groundswell of anger in the working class. At a by-election in Edinburgh in December 1941 the CP issued a manifesto supporting the Tories on the grounds that ‘the ILP openly associates with Trotskyists who were publicly convicted of acting as Hitler’s agents in every country in the world’. In April 1942 the Communists campaigned for the Tory candidate Sir James Grigg in the Cardiff East by-election under the slogan ‘A vote for Brockway is a Vote for Hitler’. However it was in the industrial field that the Communists really excelled themselves.
The Communists had built up quite a substantial influence in the trade unions particularly in industries such as engineering. From late 1941 to the end of the war the task of the Communists in industry was not to defend the interests and rights of workers but to fight for increased production. Strikes were now to be opposed at all costs and instead good trade unionists were to be involved in Production Committees. Stakhanovism had now been imported from the Soviet Union complete with the denunciation of ‘idle workers’, ‘restrictive practices’ and ‘ignorant and conservative’ trade union attitudes. Communist trade unionists were now offering to form joint committees with management to fight for longer working hours, shorter lunch breaks and action against ‘absenteeism’ and ‘idleness’. In one case a CP convener at the Rover plant in Birmingham was actually sacked for pestering management constantly about supposedly idle men, machines and materials. When the local AEU shop stewards voted for a protest strike action the Communist convener was obliged to persuade them against it.
During the first two years of the war the tie of patriotism had successfully dampened down any industrial militancy. However, by 1942 the tide was starting to turn. A number of strikes broke out in the engineering industry which had expanded rapidly due to the war. The Communists did every they could to disrupt and break these strikes including organising scabbing. When 5,000 engineers took strike action at the Barrow shipbuilding works in September 1943 the Communists sent a succession of their national organisers to disrupt and break the strike. The engineers, who had not received a pay rise for 29 years, responded by kicking the local Communists of the strike committee for their disruption. Despite the suspension of the local AEU branch and the efforts of the Communists, the Barrow workers won substantial increases when the management caved in after 18 days. It was in the mines, however, where the new mood of militancy really expressed itself. In 1944 there were more working days lost in the whole industry through strike action than had occurred since 1932, and of these two thirds were in the coal industry. A large number of miners were fined or imprisoned for illegal strike action and by March 1945 no less than 18,436 had been punished under the Essential Works Order of whom 1,323 had been jailed. the Communist attitude to the use of the draconian powers that Bevin had acquired was summed up later by R.Page Arnot; ‘They were such powers as no government, democratic or despotic, modern or feudal, had ever possessed in this country. There began to be keen disappointment that these powers were not used’23. There was by the end of the war a growing militancy in the working class which was bound to be reflected in the fortunes of the Labour Party. The Communists were, however, against it.
The militancy in the working class was reflected by an increasing demand by from the rank and file of the Labour Party to break from the National Government. The Communists, however, believed that the interests of the working class would be best served by a continued coalition with the Tories. When the NEC of the Labour Party announced in October 1934 its intention to campaign for a Labour Government the CP campaigned to reverse this decision on the basis for the need for ‘progressive unity’. Despite the CP campaign the Labour Party Conference, two months later, overwhelmingly endorsed the campaign for a Labour Government. The Communists were not deterred by this and they continued to campaign for a continued coalition National Government, albeit with Labour replacing the Tories as the dominant coalition party. The Communists were not concerned with the growing militancy in the working class, their attention was fixed on the international plane where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were carving up the world. To the Communists the ‘progressives’ were those who supported the Yalta Accords, and their policy was to ‘struggle against all the reactionary sections of the capitalist class and the enemies of the decisions of the Crimea (Yalta) Conference’. In reality the only people in parliament who opposed the ratification of the Yalta agreement was the ILP and not any section of the Tory Party. When the General Election was announced the Communists responded to Labour’s rejection of ‘progressive unity’ by standing 21 candidates and then blaming Labour for splitting the anti-Tory vote. Despite the Communists, Labour achieved its landslide victory. The Communists, however, continued to talk of the need for winning the peace through ‘national unity’ which entailed continued opposition to strikes. However, the Labour Part had now asserted its dominance in the working class and the Communist Party continued to decline over the post-war years.
1 Quoted from 'Pensioners of Capitalism' - Gallagher 1933 (see article 'History of British Stalinism' in Labour Review Oct. 1985)
2 'The Truth about Trotsky' - R.F.Andrews. Feb 1934
3 Fenner Brockway, 'Inside the Left',pp248-253
4 Labour Review Oct, 1985, 'The History of British Stalinism'.
5 Fenner Brockwy, 'Inside the Left' p257
6 John McNair, 'Maxton the Beloved Rebel'.
7 Noreen Branson, 'History of the CPGB 1927-1941'
8 Jean Merot, 'Dimitrov:Un Revolutionaire de Notre Temps' (as quoted by Branson)
9 G.D.H. Cole, 'A History of Socialist Thought Vol. 5'
10 'The Soviet Trial' in 'Labour Monthly' October 1936
11 Fenner Brockway, 'Inside the Left'
12 Brockway, 'Inside the Left' p264f
13 MacNair, 'Maxton the Beloved Rebel' p262
14 Branson ibid.
15 Bornstein and Richardson, 'Two Steps Back'
16 Brockway, ibid.
17 Brockway, 'Inside the Left' p269-270
18 Brockway, 'Inside the Left' p268
19 Joe Jacobs, 'Out of the Ghetto' pp235f
20 Branson denies this was the case. op. cit. p171
21 Harry Pollitt, 'How to Win the War' CPGB pamphlet
22 Daily Worker, 24th August 1940
23 R.Page Arnot, 'The Miners in Crisis and War',1961